Tag: Polly

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Classic Season 03 Doctor Who

The War Machines

Doctor WhoThe Doctor and Dodo arrive in 1966 London, finding that the city has undergone some changes since they were last there. The Post Office Tower has been completed, and something about it makes the Doctor suspicious. He and Dodo visit the Tower and find that an immense computer called WOTAN has been constructed, and its designers intend for it to take over functions that normally occupy the time of human beings. But WOTAN’s vast artificial intelligence has already decided that it can take over all of humanity’s functions – and those who refuse to follow its orders will be eliminated. But WOTAN also realizes that it requires the Doctor’s expertise – and so it takes control of Dodo and and a secretary named Polly to lure him into a trap.

written by Ian Stuart Black
directed by Michael Ferguson
music not credited

Guest Cast: Alan Curtis (Major Green), John Harvey (Professor Brett), Sandra Bryant (Kitty), Ewan Proctor (Flash), William Mervyn (Sir Charles Summer), John Cater (Professor Krimpton), Ric Felgate (American journalist), John Doye (Interviewer), Desmond Callum-Jones (Worker), Roy Godfrey (Tramp), Gerald Taylor (War Machine operator/voice of WOTAN), John Rolfe (Captain), John Boyd-Brent (Sergeant), Frank Jarvis (Corporal), Robin Dawson (Soldier), Kenneth Kendall (Himself), George Cross (Minister), Edward Colliver (Mechanic), John Slavid (Man in phone box), Dwight Whylie (Announcer), Carl Conway (U.S. Correspondent), Michael Rathbone (Taxi Driver), Eddie David (Worker)

Broadcast from June 25 through July 16, 1966

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 04 Doctor Who

The Smugglers

Doctor WhoThe Doctor is infuriated when Ben and Polly burst into his TARDIS just before he takes off; they were merely trying to return Dodo’s TARDIS key to the Doctor, but now find themselves on the coast in Cornwall in the 1600s. While the two were instrumental in helping the Doctor defeat the War Machines in 1966, they’re utterly lost in their first time trip – which is not a good thing when they find themselves in the midst of some pirates’ search for a lost treasure, and the pirates’ feud with contraband smugglers. The local church warden seems to know something about the whereabouts of the treasure, but he’s killed not long after divulging this secret to the Doctor, who now becomes the pirates’ target. It seems that everyone in this seemingly quiet seaside town is on the take somehow – but the time travelers simply want to get home.

Season 4 Regular Cast: William Hartnell (The Doctor), Patrick Troughton (The Doctor), Michael Craze (Ben), Anneke Wills (Polly), Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon), Deborah Watling (Victoria Waterfield)

Order this story on audio CDwritten by Brian Hayles
directed by Julia Smith
music not credited

Guest Cast: Terence de Marney (Churchwarden), George A. Cooper (Cherub), David Blake Kelly (Jacob Kewper), Mike Lucas (Tom), Paul Whitsun-Jones (Squire), Derek Ware (Spaniard), Michael Godfrey (Pike), Elroy Josephs (Jamaica), John Ringham (Blake), Jack Bingh (Gaptooth)

Notes: The master tapes of this episode were destroyed by the BBC in the early 1970’s, and no video copies exist.

Broadcast from September 10 through October 1, 1966

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 04 Doctor Who

The Tenth Planet Part 1

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS arrives at a military base on the South Pole in 1986. The base is routinely tracking a spacecraft in orbit when odd things begin to occur. The base guards discover a trio of oddly-dressed people outside, emerging from a police box, and then observatories (and the orbiting capsule) spot the approach of a planet which is identical in mass and geography to Earth. The planet, previously hidden on the other side of the sun, is speculated to be Mondas, Earth’s identical twin, though the planet’s existence was previously only the stuff of legend; the Doctor confirms this, almost as if he has been expecting its arrival. Undetected by the base personnel, a spacecraft from Mondas lands at the polar base, and its occupants stun the guards outside before advancing on the base itself…

written by Kit Pedler (credited onscreen as “Kitt Pedler”)
and Pat Dunlap and Gerry Davis (not credited onscreen)
directed by Derek Martinus
music not credited

Doctor WhoCast: William Hartnell (The Doctor), Robert Beatty (General Cutler), Dudley Jones (Dyson), David Dodimead (Barclay), Alan White (Schultz), Earl Cameron (Williams), Shane Shelton (Tito), John Brandon (American Sergeant), Anneke Wills (Polly), Michael Craze (Ben), Steve Plytas (Wigner), Christopher Matthews (Radar technician)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Classic Season 04 Doctor Who

The Tenth Planet Part 2

Doctor WhoCybernetically augmented humans – Cybermen – have emerged from the spacecraft to take control of Snowcap Base. Their world, Mondas, was thrown out of its orbit around the sun long ago, forcing its inhabitants to turn to cybernetics to preserve their species. Now, having succumbed entirely to the machinery that was only intended to extend their lives, the Cybermen face another kind of extinction. Mondas is a dying planet, and the Cybermen hope to colonize Earth for its resources – and its population – starting with initiating a transfer of Earth’s energy to Mondas.

written by Kit Pedler (credited onscreen as “Kitt Pedler”)
and Pat Dunlap and Gerry Davis (not credited onscreen)
directed by Derek Martinus
music not credited

Doctor WhoCast: William Hartnell (The Doctor), David Dodimead (Barclay), Dudley Jones (Dyson), Robert Beatty (General Cutler), Christopher Matthews (Radar technician), Reg Whitehead (Krail), Harry Brooks (Talon), Gregg Palmer (Shav), Michael Craze (Ben), Anneke Wills (Polly), Steve Plytas (Wigner), Ellen Cullen (Geneva Technician), Glenn Beck (TV Announcer), Earl Cameron (Williams), Alan White (Schultz), Roy Skelton (Cyberman voice)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Classic Season 04 Doctor Who

The Tenth Planet Part 4

Doctor WhoCutler blames everyone from the Doctor to Ben to his own personnel for the failure of his plan to render Earth toxic to the Cybermen, who have now invaded other parts of Earth and taken Polly as a hostage to ensure the Doctor’s cooperation. Time is running out for the Cybermen as Mondas continues to drain Earth’s energy, something which the Doctor warns will destroy their world as well as damaging Earth. The Doctor seems to know about the fate of Mondas and its people already…but he also seems to have a premonition of something else, a momentous change that could render him helpless in the ensuing battle with the emotionless Cybermen.

written by Kit Pedler (credited onscreen as “Kitt Pedler”)
and Pat Dunlap and Gerry Davis (not credited onscreen)
directed by Derek Martinus
music not credited

Doctor WhoCast: William Hartnell (The Doctor), Anneke Wills (Polly), Michael Craze (Ben), Robert Beatty (General Cutler), David Dodimead (Barclay), Christopher Dunham (R/T technician), Callen Angelo (Terry Cutler), Christopher Matthews (Radar technician), Dudley Jones (Dyson), Harry Brooks (Krang), Reg Whitehead (Jarl), Gregg Palmer (Gern), Steve Plytas (Wigner), Ellen Cullen (Geneva Technician), Peter Hawkins (Cyberman voice), Roy Skelton (Cyberman voice), Bruce Wells (Cyberman), John Haines (Cyberman), John Knott (Cyberman), Sheila Knight (Secretary), Patrick Troughton (The Doctor)

Notes: For the first Doctor, the entirety of the 2017 Christmas special Twice Upon A Time (a story in which he meets his fourteenth incarnation) happens in the interval between the Doctor rushing out into the Antarctic cold, and Ben and Polly catching up to him in the TARDIS.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 04 Doctor Who

Power of the Daleks

Doctor WhoThe Doctor recovers from his first regeneration quickly, only to find himself trying to reassure Ben and Polly that the diminutive person who now shares the TARDIS with them is, in fact, their time-traveling companion. The TARDIS takes them from the South Pole to the planet Vulcan in the distant future, where an Earth expedition has made a disturbing discovery in the planet’s mercury pools – deactivated, but perfectly preserved, Daleks. The chief scientist of the human colony on Vulcan reactivates the Daleks, who promptly vow obedience and subservience…but even after a traumatic regeneration, the Doctor doesn’t believe this for a second. But someone in the colony may know the Daleks’ true colors – and may be using them to achieve a sinister objective anyway.

written by David Whitaker
directed by Christopher Barry
music by Tristram Cary

Guest Cast: Martin King (Examiner), Nicholas Hawtrey (Quinn), Bernard Archard (Bragen), Robert James (Lesterson), Pamela Ann Davy (Janley), Peter Bathurst (Hensell), Edward Kelsey (Resno), Richard Kane (Valmar), Peter Forbes-Robertson (Guard), Steven Scott (Kebble), Robert Russell (Guard), Robert Luckham (Guard), Gerald Taylor (Dalek), Kevin Manser (Dalek), Robert Jewell (Dalek), John Scott Martin (Dalek), Peter Hawkins (Dalek voice)

Note: The master tapes of this episode were destroyed by the BBC in the early 1970’s, and no video copies exist.

Broadcast from November 5 through December 10, 1966

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 04 Doctor Who

The Highlanders

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS arrives in Scotland, 1745, plunging the Doctor, Ben and Polly into the aftermath of the battle of Culloden. They encounter some fleeing Scots who are trying to escape the Redcoats with their injured Laird in tow. The Doctor tends to the Laird’s injuries, despite the suspicions of the others. However, his aid comes too late – the entire group is captured by English soldiers. Polly befriends a woman named Kirsty, and they manage to stay on dry land while the men are hauled off to a ship. Englishman Trask plans to take the captives to be sold into slave labor, including Ben and piper Jamie McCrimmon. But when Polly is fighting to protect herself in an era which isn’t even remotely emancipated for women, and Ben is sentenced to death as an object lesson to keep his fellow prisoners in line, where is the Doctor?

Order this story on audio CDwritten by Gerry Davis and Elwyn Jones
directed by Hugh David
music not credited

Guest Cast: William Dysart (Alexander), Donald Bisset (Colin McLaren), Hannah Gordon (Kristy), Michael Elwyn (Ffinch), Peter Welch (Sergeant), David Garth (Gray), Sydney Arnold (Perkins), Tom Bowman (Sentry), Dallas Cavell (Trask), Barbara Bruce (Mollie), Andrew Downie (MacKay), Peter Diamond (Sailor), Guy Middleton (Attwood), Eric Mills (Wounded Highlander), Nancy Gabriel (Woman at inn), Reg Dent (English horseman)

Broadcast from December 17, 1966 through January 7, 1967

Note: The master tapes of this episode were destroyed by the BBC in the early 1970’s, and no video copies exist.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 04 Doctor Who

The Underwater Menace

Doctor WhoJamie’s first trip in the TARDIS is anything but uneventful, as the timeship brings the Doctor and friends to a volcanic outcropping in the middle of the ocean on Earth. The time travelers are quickly captured taken to an underground city, which they soon realize is Atlantis. The somewhat backward natives seem friendly enough, but they also seem intent on sacrificing the newcomers to the patron goddess of their island. Salvation comes from an unlikely source – a scientist called Zaroff rescues them, but then reveals his plan to cause the Earth to explode by draining the world’s oceans into a shaft leading straight to the planet’s molten core. Zaroff has also been performing horrific experiments to turn the locals into an enslaved population of Fish People. Now on the run from both Zaroff and the Atlanteans, the Doctor and his friends realize that their only hope of escape – and of stopping Zaroff’s mad scheme – may lie with liberating the Fish People. But when Zaroff is so intent on destroying the world, can anything really be a deterrent to his plan?

written by Geoffrey Orme
directed by Julia Smith
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Joseph Furst (Professor Zaroff), Catherine Howe (Ara), Tom Watson (Ramo), Peter Stephens (Lolem), Colin Jeavons (Damon), Gerald Taylor (Damon’s Assistant), Graham Ashley (Overseer), Tony Handy, Alex Donald, Tony Douglas (Guards), Paul Anil (Jacko), P.G. Stephens (Sean), Noel Johnson (Thous), Roma Woodnutt (Nola), Bill Burridge (Executioner Priest), Jimmy Mack (Refugee Priest)

Broadcast from January 14 through February 4, 1967

Note: While the Doctor wasn’t mad about Zaroff’s idea to drain the oceans of the Earth into the core of the planet, he was much more sympatico with the idea of draining at least the Thames into the Earth’s core to destroy the emerging children of the Empress of Racnoss in 2006’s The Runaway Bride. This story is quietly sidestepped by other future entries in the Doctor Who canon, including the Jon Pertwee story The Time Monster, which offers a completely different story of the destruction of Atlantis. The master tapes of this story were destroyed by the BBC in the early 1970’s, and only episode 3 and a handful of select clips from episodes 1, 2 and 4 remain intact.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 04 Doctor Who

The Moonbase

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS lands on the surface of the moon in the year 2070, and the Doctor provides Ben, Polly and Jamie with pressure suits so they can explore outside the TARDIS. They spot a massive lunar base in the distance, but when Jamie damages his space suit, reaching the base becomes a matter of urgency. Inside the base, the Doctor and his friends are shocked to find that Jamie won’t be alone in the sick bay – a plague is sweeping through the moonbase’s population seemingly at random, leaving those it strikes comatose. Worse yet, even the comatose patients have been disappearing without a trace, leaving the base – whose gigantic Gravitron controls the tides and governs Earth’s weather – dangerously short-staffed. The Doctor tries to find out what disease is slowly claiming the moonbase’s crew, only to find that the base has been deliberately infected by the Cybermen, who intend to take control of the base and use it as a staging area for an invasion of Earth.

written by Kit Pedler
directed by Morris Barry
music not credited

Guest Cast: Patrick Barr (Hobson), Andre Maranne (Benoit), Michael Wolf (Nils), John Rolfe (Sam), Alan Rowe (Dr. Evans, Space Control voice), Mark Heath (Ralph), Barry Ashton, Derek Calder, Arnold Chazen, Leon Maybank, Victor Pemberton, Edward Phillips, Ron Pinnell, Robin Scott, Alan Wells (Crew), John Wills, Peter Greene, Reg Whitehead, Keith Goodman, Sonnie Willis, Ronald Lee, John Clifford, Barry Noble (Cybermen), Peter Hawkins (Cyberman voice), Denis McCarthy (Controller Rinberg’s voice)

Broadcast from February 11 through March 4, 1967

Note: The master tapes of episodes 1 and 3 were destroyed by the BBC in the early 1970’s, leaving only episodes 2 and 4 in the archives. The missing episodes are still available as audio recordings, and are presented in that form both on CD and on the Lost In Time DVD set.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 04 Doctor Who

The Macra Terror

Doctor WhoIn the future, the Doctor, Jamie, Ben and Polly arrive at a human colony, whose people find them just as they catch up with a refugee named Medok. Medok is treated like a criminal, and even as the colonists show the time travelers their miraculous machines, Medok warns of creatures that stalk the colony. The Doctor later sets him free, much to the consternation of the colony’s leaders. He follows Medok to a construction site outside the colony, where he discovers enormous, crab-like creatures called Macra. As the Doctor’s friends sleep, a hypnotic voice extolls the virtues of obeying the colony rules; when they awaken, Ben betrays the Doctor to the colony authorities. Polly flees and Ben pursues her, but once they catch a glimpse of the Macra, even Ben can no longer deny that this colony is under the control of aliens. Jamie escapes into a shaft where the colonists mine a poisonous gas that none of them can breathe – but the Macra can breathe it, and they’ve seized control of the colonists’ minds to ensure that their supply of gas continues. But the Doctor can convince the innocent colonists of none of this.

written by Ian Stuart Black
directed by John Davies
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Peter Jeffrey (Pilot), Graham Armitage (Barney), Ian Fairburn (Questa), Jane Enshawe (Sunnae), Sandra Bryant, Karol Keyes (Chicki), Maureen Lane (Majorette), Terence Lodge (Medok), Gertan Klauber (Ola), Graham Leaman (Controller), Anthony Gardner (Alvis), Denis Goacher (Control voice), Richard Beale (Broadcast voice), Robert Jewell (Macra), John Harvey (Official), John Caesar, Steve Emerson, Danny Rae (Guards), Roger Jerome, Terry Wright, Ralph Carrigan (Cheerleaders), Linda Reynolds (Pilot’s secretary), Paul Phillips (Scientist), Nina Huby (Girl)

Broadcast from March 11 through April 1, 1967

Note: The master tapes of this story were destroyed by the BBC in the early 1970’s, and only select clips remain intact.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 04 Doctor Who

The Faceless Ones

Doctor WhoThe moment they step out of the doors of the just-landed TARDIS, the Doctor and his friends must contend with one rather major problem – their time machine has parked itself on a runway at Gatwick Airport and, as Jamie puts it, there’s a “flying beastie” coming in for a landing right now. A foot patrolman spots the four time travelers and chases them. The Doctor and Jamie go one way, and Ben and Polly in another; eventually Polly is separated from Ben, but while she’s hiding in a hangar warehouse building, she witnesses a gruesome murder committed with a futuristic weapon that doesn’t belong on Earth in 1967. Worse yet, the killers have seen her face, and eventually trap her. At the airport terminal, the Doctor and Jamie own up to being responsible for the strangely out-of-place police box on the tarmac, but they also realize that something else is even more amiss. Reunited with Ben, and with the help of a young woman who is searching for her missing brother, the Doctor goes to investigate the hangar where Polly disappeared, belonging to Chameleon Tours. He finds more evidence of otherworldly equipment, and proof that wherever passengers are booking their flights to aboard Chameleon Tours’ planes, they aren’t arriving there. The airline is being run by a race of displaced aliens who have lost their identities due to a disaster on their home planet – and the solution they’re pursuing is a kind of identity theft that could eventually rob Earth of its entire population.

written by David Ellis & Malcolm Hulke
directed by Gerry Mill
music not credited

Guest Cast: James Appleby (Policeman), Colin Gordon (Commandant), George Selway (Meadows), Wanda Ventham (Jean Rock), Victor Winding (Spencer), Peter Whitaker (Gascoigne), Donald Pickering (Blade), Christopher Tranchell (Jenkins), Madalena Nicol (Pinto), Bernard Kay (Crossland), Pauline Collins (Samantha Briggs), Gilly Fraser (Ann Davidson), Brigit Paul (Announcer), Barry Wilsher (Heslington), Michael Ladkin (Pilot), Leonard Trolley (Reynolds), Robin Dawson, Barry du Pre, Pat Leclere, Roy Pearce (Chameleons)

Broadcast from April 6 through May 13, 1967

Note: Two actresses in this story appeared in (much) later Doctor Who adventures; Wanda Ventham appeared 20 years later in Sylvester McCoy’s debut story, Time And The Rani, while Pauline Collins’ next Doctor Who appearance would come nearly four decades later in the David Tennant episode Tooth And Claw, in which she guest starred as Queen Victoria. Her character in The Faceless Ones, Samantha Briggs, had been considered as a potential companion but the show’s producers decided against that, in favor of introducing Victoria Waterfield in the following serial. Episodes two, four, five and six of The Faceless Ones are missing from the BBC’s vaults; the first and third episodes appeared in the Lost In Time DVD set, and the complete story is available in audio form. Ironically, despite the story’s title, The Faceless Ones marked the introduction of a new title sequence which prominently featured the new Doctor’s face, an element that would remain a tradition through the end of Sylvester McCoy’s era. “Spangly” sounds were added to the theme music to go along with the visual changes.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
5th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Five Companions

Doctor WhoThe Doctor’s companions find themselves united and in deep trouble. Steven and Ian barely have the time to reintroduce themselves before they are pursued through a mazelike structure by a Dalek, while Polly and Sara Kingdom get to know each other while being pursued by dinosaurs. Nyssa, imprisoned in a cell, has only Daleks for company. The Doctor’s friends and allies join forces, certain that their time-traveling old friend is involved. When the Doctor finally makes an appearance, having just escaped from a platoon of Sontarans, his friends who knew his first and second faces are startled by his youthful appearance, and explanations ard in order. The Doctor has just escaped from the Death Zone on his home planet, Gallifrey, and believes that this place and its combatants – former companions and enemies alike – were also intended to be taken there, but were misplaced by whoever controls the Time Scoop. Now the Doctor must find a way to help his friends escape… without also releasing his enemies.

Order this CDwritten by Eddie Robson
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Richard Fox & Lauren Yason

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), William Russell (Ian Chesterton), Peter Purves (Steven Taylor), Jean Marsh (Sara Kingdom), Anneke Wills (Polly), Dan Starkey (Sontarans), Nicholas Briggs (Daleks)

Notes: The Five Companions was the subscriber-only exclusive released in 2011 alongside the audio story Army Of Death. Dan Starkey has played numerous Sontarans since they began appearing in the current Doctor Who TV series, as well as playing the part of the imp Randall Moon in Russell T. Davies’ series Wizards vs. Aliens, but most Who fans know him best as the Doctor’s Sontaran ally, Strax.

Timeline: from the Doctor’s perspective, this entire adventure happens during The Five Doctors, between the Doctor’s escape from the Cybermen and his appearance in the transmat in the Time Lords’ capitol.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green