Category: Doctor Who

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Classic Season 13 Doctor Who

The Android Invasion

Doctor WhoThe Doctor and Sarah arrive near a village that Sarah recognizes as Devesham,but it’s immediately apparent that something is very wrong. Spacesuited robot guards patrol the countryside, firing guns built into their fingers at any intruders they see (including the time travelers), and they watch helplessly as a UNIT soldier bolts straight toward a cliff, and over the edge to his death. And yet he shows up later at the village pub, alive and well – and zombielike, until the clock strikes a certain hour. The Doctor has theories about the strange behavior, but nothing accounts for all of the variables until he realizes he’s not on Earth. Sarah is captured by androids disguised as UNIT troops, and taken to a ship manned by Kraal invaders, who have copied everyone from the villagers to Harry Sullivan as part of their plan to take over Earth.

Download this episodewritten by Terry Nation
directed by Barry Letts
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan), John Levene (RSM Benton), Martin Friend (Styggron), Roy Skelton (Chedaki), Max Faulkner (Adams), Peter Welch (Morgan), Milton Johns (Guy Crayford), Stuart Fell (Kraal), Patrick Newell (Faraday), Dave Carter (Grierson), Heather Emmanuel (Tessa), Hugh Lund (Matthews)

Broadcast from November 22 through December 13, 1975

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 13 Doctor Who

The Brain of Morbius

Doctor WhoOn the planet Karn, the Doctor and Sarah happen upon a castle, home to a driven scientist named Solon and his disfigured manservant Condo. Though the time travelers are welcomed at first, the visit quickly becomes less cordial when Solon poisons the Doctor and Sarah’s wine; he intends to use the Doctor’s head to house the brain of his latest experiment in life extension. The being Solon is trying to keep alive, however, is Morbius, one of the most feared renegades ever produced by Time Lord society. Even without the interference of Solon, Condo, and the enigmatic Sisterhood of Karn (quietly planning to put an end to Solon’s experiments), the Doctor may be no match for Morbius’ evil power.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Robin Bland (pseudonym for Terrance Dicks)
directed by Christopher Barry
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Philip Madoc (Solon), Colin Fay (Condo), Gilly Brown (Ohica), Cynthia Grenville (Maren), Michael Spice (voice of Morbius), Stuart Fell (Morbius monster), John Scott Martin (Kriz), Sue Bishop, Janie Kells, Gabrielle Mowbray, Veronica Ridge (Sisters)

Broadcast from January 3 through 24, 1976

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 13 Doctor Who

The Seeds of Doom

Doctor WhoThe Doctor is called in to help identify a vegetable pod found buried in the Antarctic tundra. But another party has already learned of the pod’s presence – the eccentric botanist Harrison Chase, who sends one of his hired guns and one of his scientists to procure the pod by any means necessary. At the south pole, the Doctor makes two dreadful discoveries: the pod is a Krynoid, an alien species of omnivore plant life which has been known to destroy all animal life on entire planets, and the overeager scientists at the Antarctic base have revived the Krynoid pod with ultraviolet light, causing it to open and take over the mind and body of one of them. Noting that Krynoid pods always arrive in pairs, the Doctor quickly finds another specimen of the deadly plant in the nearby ice just as Chase’s men arrive under false pretenses, taking the second pod and leaving the scientists, the Doctor and Sarah for dead. Help arrives, and the Doctor and Sarah track the pod down to Harrison Chase, who is delighted at the discovery of a breed of meat-devouring plant life – for he prefers plants to the company of humans. Under Chase’s obsessed care, the Krynoid soon grows to enormous proportions, ready to consume all animal life on Earth unless the Doctor can stop it.

Download this episodewritten by Robert Banks Stewart
directed by Douglas Camfield
music by Geoffrey Burgon

Guest Cast: Tony Beckley (Harrison Chase), John Challis (Scorby), John Gleeson (Charles Winlett/Krynoid humanoid), Michael McStay (Derek Moberly), Hubert Rees (John Stevenson), Kenneth Gilbert (Dunbar), Seymour Green (Hargreaves), Michael Barrington (Sir Colin Thackeray), Mark Jones (Arnold Keeler), Ian Fairbairn (Dr. Chester), Alan Chuntz (Chauffeur), Sylvia Coleridge (Amelia Ducat), David Masterman, Harry Fielder, Ian Elliott (Guards), John Achson (Major Beresford), Ray Barron (Sgt. Henderson), Mark Jones (Krynoid’s voice), Keith Ashley (Secretary)

Broadcast from January 31 through March 6, 1976

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
4th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Doctor Who And The Pescatons

Doctor Who and the Pescatons (Silva)The Doctor and Sarah arrive in modern-day England, where they are almost immediately stalked by a shark-like creature that can take to land for limited times. The Doctor recognizes it as a Pescaton – a being from a world whose ecosystem is doomed, probably searching for a new world rich in salt water for the rest of its kind to colonize. The fact that Earth is already quite inhabited doesn’t seem to faze the Pescaton invader at all. The Doctor patiently waits for the creature to exhaust itself after a few rampages through London, and it quickly dies – but not before summoning the rest of its kind. The entire Pescaton race is coming to Earth, including their sinister leader Zor, who the Doctor has met before – and to whose psychic powers even the Time Lord is not immune.

Order this CDwritten by Victor Pemberton
directed by Harvey Usill
music by Brian Hodgson

Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Bill Mitchell (Zor)

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 14 Doctor Who

Masque Of Mandragora

Doctor WhoDuring an aimless tour of the endless depths of the TARDIS, the Doctor introduces Sarah to the ornately wood-paneled secondary control room, which duplicates the functions of the master console room. When he fires up the secondary control room’s instruments, the Doctor discovers that the TARDIS is headed for the Mandragora Helix, a spaceborne vortex of malevolent energy. Forced to the land within it briefly, the Doctor is helpless to prevent a fragment of the Helix’s energy from boarding the TARDIS. After escaping from the vortex, the Doctor is surprised when the TARDIS brings them to late 1600s Italy, where Sarah is promptly kidnapped by a band of hooded figures. While trying to find her, the Doctor realizes that the Mandragora Helix has come to Earth. The local Duke has died, and his young, idealistic son Giuliano now holds his power, though the local population is under the tyrannical thumb of the boy’s uncle, Count Federico. And Sarah is about to be sacrificed by a murderous cult which will find a great ally in the unearthly newcomer which the Doctor has unwittingly brought with him.

Season 14 Regular Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Louise Jameson (Leela)

Download this episodewritten by Louis Marks
directed by Rodney Bennett
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: John Laurimore (Count Federico), Gareth Armstrong (Giuliano), Tim Piggott-Smith (Marco), Norman Jones (Hieronymous), Antony Carrick (Captain Rossini), Robert James (High Priest), Pat Gorman, James Appleby, John Clamp (Guards), Peter Walshe, Jay Neill (Pikemen), Brian Ellis (Brother), Peter Tuddenham (Mandragora voice), Peggy Dixon, Jack Edwards, Alistair Fullarton, Michael Reid, Kathy Wilfit (Dancers), Stuart Fell (Entertainer)

Broadcast from September 4 through 25, 1976

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 14 Doctor Who

The Hand of Fear

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS arrives in a desolate, rocky landscape – which the Doctor and Sarah realize, only too late, is actually a rock quarry. Sirens go off to signal imminent blasting, and the time travelers fail to get far enough away from the blast. The Doctor and Sarah survive, but Sarah finds something unusual and perhaps even alien: something which appears to be a petrified severed hand. Though she was only slightly injured by the blast at the quarry, Sarah soon begins to exhibit strange and dangerous behavior, even walking into the core of a nuclear reactor. As it turns out, she has been possessed by an entity known as Eldrad, whose quest for revenge upon her native world of Kastria is boundless – and who won’t hesitate to sacrifice the lives of everyone around her to achieve that aim.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Bob Baker & Dave Martin
directed by Lennie Mayne
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Roy Pattison (Zazzka), Roy Skelton (Rokon), David Purcell (Abbott), Renu Setna (Intern), Rex Robinson (Dr. Carter), Robin Hargreave (Guard), Glyn Houston (Professor Watson), Frances Pidgeon (Miss Jackson), Roy Boyd (Driscoll), John Cannon (Elgin), Judith Paris (Eldrad), Stephen Thorne (Eldrad), Libby Ritchie (Hospital Nurse)

Broadcast from October 2 through 23, 1976

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
4th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Exploration Earth: The Time Machine

Doctor Who: Exploration Earth / Genesis of the DaleksThe TARDIS tumbles backward billions of years, alarming the Doctor and Sarah. But the Doctor is able to show Sarah the origins of her planet, from the formation of the solar system to the beginnings of life itself. But they’re not the only visitors from another time there – an alien named Megron has arrived to bring chaos to the young planet Earth, possibly even to disrupt the history of human evolution.

Order this CDwritten by Bernard Venables
music by Dick Mills

Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), John Westbrook (Megron)

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 14 Doctor Who

The Deadly Assassin

Doctor WhoThe Doctor collapses in the TARDIS as it takes him back to his home planet of Gallifrey, experiencing a vivid premonition of the assassination of the President of the Time Lords’ High Council – a vision in which he seems to play the part of the gunman. Since the Doctor’s TARDIS is a stolen vehicle, he has to evade security guards upon his return to Gallifrey, trying to reach the President to warn him of his impending fate. When the Doctor tries to stop the assassin at the fateful moment, the only thing that any of his fellow Time Lords see is that he’s the man with the weapon. The Doctor uses a legal loophole to buy enough time to find the real killer, who turns out to be his oldest enemy – but this time, the Doctor isn’t the target. The Master, struggling at the end of his final regeneration, plans to take revenge on all of Gallifrey.

Download this episodewritten by Robert Holmes
directed by David Maloney
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Peter Pratt (The Master), Llewellyn Rees (President), Angus Mackay (Cardinal Borusa), Bernard Horsfall (Chancellor Goth), George Pravda (Castellan Spandrell), Derek Seaton (Commander Hildred), Eric Chitty (Coordinator Engin), Hugh Walters (Commentator Runcible), John Dawson, Michael Bilton (Time Lords), Maurice Quick (Gold Usher), Peter Mayock (Solis), Helen Blatch (Voice)

Broadcast from October 30 through November 20, 1976

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 14 Doctor Who

The Face Of Evil

Doctor WhoThe Doctor arrives on a distant world populated by two tribes, the Sevateem and the Tesh. He quickly bumps into a Sevateem woman named Leela, who has been banished from her village for denying the existence of Xoanon – an entity whom the Sevateem worship as a god. The Doctor can only stand by helplessly as the Sevateem mount a suicidal attack upon the more advanced Tesh. The Doctor soon realizes that these primitives are the descendants of an interstellar exploration detail: the survey team and the technicians. Both tribes recognize and revere him as the Evil One…but despite the bloodshed, no one will allow him to go near Xoanon, a sentient computer whose tyrannical rule is a result of the Doctor’s past interference.

Download this episodewritten by Chris Boucher
directed by Pennant Roberts
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Leslie Schofield (Calib), Victor Lucas (Andor), Brendan Price (Tomas), Colin Thomas (Sole), David Garfield (Neeva), Lloyd McGuire (Lugo), Tom Kelly, Brett Forrest (Guards), Leon Eagles (Jabel), Mike Elles (Gentek), Peter Baldock (Acolyte), Tom Baker, Rob Edwards, Pamela Salem, Anthony Frieze, Roy Herrick (voices of Xoanon)

Original title: The Day God Went Mad

Broadcast from January 1 through 22, 1977

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 14 Doctor Who

The Robots of Death

Doctor WhoThe Doctor and Leela arrive in a mobile sand refinery on a distant planet at precisely the wrong time – a murder has just taken place. Since they’re the only newcomers among a bunch of paranoid miners who have been cooped up together for months, the Doctor and Leela are naturally the prime suspects, but even while they’re under guard, members of the crew continue to turn up dead. The Doctor is the first to propose an outrageous theory – that the ships large complement of robots have somehow been programmed to override their built-in inability to harm human beings. But by the time he is able to convince anyone of the merit of this idea, most of the crew have fallen victim to the robots’ onslaught – leaving the Doctor, Leela, and the surviving crew as the next victims.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Chris Boucher
directed by Michael E. Briant
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Russell Hunter (Commander Uvanov), Pamela Stern (Toos), David Bailie (Dask), Rob Edwards (Chub), Brian Croucher (Borg), Tariq Yunus (Cass), David Collings (Poul), Tania Rogers (Zilda), Miles Fothergill (SV7), Gregory de Polnay (D84)

Broadcast from January 29 through February 19, 1977

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 14 Doctor Who

The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Doctor WhoThe Doctor brings Leela to Victorian-era London to give her some exposure to what he considers civilization, though things quickly become less than civilized when a Chinese man makes an attempt on the Doctor’s life. Relations between the natives of London and the city’s growing Chinese population are equally strained elsewhere, as allegations of kidnapping surround stage magician Li H’sen Chang during his residence at a local theater, run by Henry Gordon Jago. Numerous men confront Chang with accusations that he hypnotized their wives and ladyfriends during his magic show – and every woman disappeared shortly afterward. The Doctor investigates Chang’s magic show and discovers that the magician is using more than sleight-of-hand to accomplish his amazing feats – he is receiving technological help too advanced for the Victorian era, in exchange for which Chang is performing murderous services for his master – from the future.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Robert Holmes
directed by David Maloney
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: John Bennett (Li H’sen Chang), Deep Roy (Mr. Sin), Michael Spice (Weng-Chiang / Greel), Trevor Baxter (Professor Litefoot), Christopher Benjamin (Henry Gordon Jago), Tony Then (Lee), Alan Butler (Buller), Chris Gannon (Casey), John Wu (Coolie), Conrad Asquith (PC Quick), David McKail (Sergeant Kyle), Patsy Smart (Ghoul), Judith Lloyd (Teresa), Vaune Craig-Raymond (Cleaning Woman), Peggy Lister (Singer), Vincent Wong (Ho), Stuart Fell (Giant rat)

Original Title: The Talons Of Greel

Broadcast from February 26 through April 2, 1977

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 15 Doctor Who

The Horror Of Fang Rock

Doctor WhoLeela is unimpressed when the TARDIS once again arrives on Earth, and on another foggy night to boot. But this time, she and the Doctor have landed near a lighthouse on a particularly treacherous rocky shoreline at the turn of the 20th century. The lighthouse’s three-man crew is having trouble keeping their beacon lit, which leads to a ship running aground shortly after the Doctor and Leela make their presence known. But something else has made its presence known to at least one of the men – by killing him and assuming his shape. The survivors of the shipwreck make their way to the lighthouse, each with their own agenda blinding them to what could be the beachhead of an alien invasion. By the time the Doctor reveals the true nature of the threat to them, the alien visitor has claimed more victims.

Season 15 Regular Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Louise Jameson (Leela), John Leeson (voice of K9)

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Terrance Dicks
directed by Paddy Russell
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Colin Douglas (Reuben / voice of the Rutan), John Abbott (Vince), Ralph Watson (Ben), Alan Rowe (Colonel Skinsale), Sean Caffrey (Lord Palmerdale), Annette Woollett (Adelaide), Rio Fanning (Harker)

Broadcast from September 3 through 24, 1977

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 15 Doctor Who

The Invisible Enemy

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS encounters a huge, fibrous mass in space, and as it attempts to pass through the obstruction, a violent discharge from the central console knocks the Doctor out. He manages to set a course for a medical outpost, the Bi-Al Foundation. Barely able to explain the Doctor’s predicament, Leela leaves the Time Lord in the capable hands of Dr. Marius, a brilliant but eccentric pathologist (he has fashioned his portable computer in the shape of a dog and christened it K-9). But whatever affected the Doctor soon spreads to others at Bi-Al, and the Doctor is now clearly the center of a hive mind directing the actions of the infected. The fight to save the doctors and nurses at Bi-Al is a losing battle; the Doctor and Leela must take the fight to the source of the problem: inside the Doctor’s own body!

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Bob Baker & Dave Martin
directed by Derrick Goodwin
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Michael Sheard (Lowe), Frederick Jaeger (Professor Marius), Brian Grellis (Safran), Jay Neill (Silvey), Edmund Pegge (Meeker), Anthony Rowlands (Crewman), John Leeson (Nucleus voice), John Scott Martin (Nucleus operator), Neil Curran (Nurse), Jim McManus (Opthalmologist), Roderick Smith (Cruikshank), Kenneth Waller (Hedges), Elizabeth Norman (Marius’s Nurse), Roy Herrick (Parsons), Pat Gorman (Medic)

Broadcast from October 1 through 22, 1977

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 15 Doctor Who

Image Of The Fendahl

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS is sidetracked by a time anomaly, depositing the Doctor and Leela near a secluded priory which has been serving as the laboratory of Dr. Fendelman and his colleagues. The object of the scientists’ study is what appears to be a human skull…which, according to dating, originated over eight million years before homo sapiens existed on Earth. But Fendelman isn’t sharing the whole story with his fellow scientists – in fact, one of them has unknowningly become a channel through which something sinister is emerging. The Doctor tries to intervene as the body count mounts in the countryside, but Fendelman has his well-armed security guards lock the Doctor away. The Doctor recognizes the threat as one from Gallifreyan folklore: the Fendahl, a gestalt entity, was exiled by the Time Lords, its world time-looped for twelve million years. Fendelman knows that the skull is alien, and hopes that studying it will reveal new insights into the origins of man. But Fendelman’s trusted assistant has other designs on the alien artifact, plans which involve black magic. And somewhere between science and black magic, the Fendahl will gain the power it needs to strike.

Download this episodewritten by Chris Boucher
directed by George Spenton-Foster
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Wanda Ventham (Thea Ransome), Denis Lill (Dr. Fendelman), Edward Arthur (Colby), Scott Fredericks (Max Stael), Edward Evans (Moss), Derek Martin (Mitchell), Daphne Heard (Martha Tyler), Graham Simpson (Hiker), Geoffrey Hinsliff (Jack Tyler), David Elliott, Roy Pearce (Security Guards)

Broadcast from October 29 through November 19, 1977

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 15 Doctor Who

The Sun Makers

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS comes to an unexpected stop on a world that the Doctor hasn’t explored before, but moments after he and Leela step out of the TARDIS and onto the top of an immense building, Leela spots a man moments away from committing suicide. The time travelers stop him from jumping off the building and try to learn what has brought him to the brink. They learn that they’re actually on Pluto, which is now surrounded by artificial suns and colonized by the Company – which also employs virtually everyone who lives on Pluto, and and which also taxes them into poverty. Cordo, stuck with a debt he’ll never be able to afford to repay after failing to pay in full the tax on his father’s death, sees only despair, until he remembers stories of the Others, a group of underground rebels who fight against the Company’s taxes and bureaucracy. With the help of the Doctor, Leela and K-9, Cordo finds the Others and pledges to join them, only to discover that sticking it to the man could make him a dead man.

Download this episodewritten by Robert Holmes
directed by Pennant Roberts
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Roy Macready (Cordo), Richard Leech (Gatherer Hade), Jonina Scott (Marn), Michael Keating (Goudry), William Simons (Mandrel), Adrienne Burgess (Veet), Henry Woolf (Collector), David Rowlands (Bisham), Colin McCormack (Commander), Derek Crewe (Synge), Carole Hopkin (Nurse), Tom Kelly (Guard)

Broadcast from November 26 through December 17, 1977

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green