Categories
Classic Season 20 Doctor Who

Mawdryn Undead

Doctor WhoA schoolboy named Turlough cons a classmate into “borrowing” a vintage roadster belonging to one of the teachers at his private school, naturally getting into an accident moments later. During a near-death experience, Turlough is forced into a deadly pact by the Black Guardian: Turlough’s new mission is to kill a Time Lord known as the Doctor at any cost. Soon afterward, the Doctor lands the TARDIS on a seemingly derelict spacecraft orbiting Earth in both space and time, only to find that somehow, someone on board is still maintaining the vessel. The Doctor soon becomes a pawn in alien renegades’ plot to end their pitiful immortality, and discovers that his old friend Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, now a math teacher at Turlough’s school, is a pawn. It also soon becomes evident that Turlough is no ordinary schoolboy.

Order the DVDwritten by Peter Grimwade
directed by Peter Moffatt
music by Paddy Kingsland

Guest Cast: Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), Valentine Dyall (Black Guardian), David Collings (Mawdryn), Angus MacKay (Headmaster), Stephen Garlick (Ibbotson), Roger Hammond (Dr. Runciman), Sheila Gill (Matron), Peter Walmsley (First mutant), Brian Darnley (Second mutant), Lucy Baker (Child Nyssa), Sian Pattenden (Child Tegan)

Broadcast from February 1 through 9, 1983

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 20 Doctor Who

Terminus

Doctor WhoAt the Black Guardian’s bidding, Turlough interferes with the TARDIS internal systems enough to cause a critical failure: parts of the timeship’s interior are now surrounded by a deadly haze, and those sections could be open to the time vortex at any moment. Nyssa’s room is engulfed, and the Doctor performs an emergency merge with the nearest spacecraft in space-time to allow her to escape onto the other ship. When he stabilizes the TARDIS and then goes to retrieve Nyssa, however, the Doctor learns that he inadvertently sent his friend onto a plague-carriers’ ship – and Nyssa, now infected, can never leave, nor does that transport’s small crew seem even remotely inclined to help any of the people contaminated with Lazar’s Disease.

Order the DVDwritten by Stephen Gallagher
directed by Mary Ridge
music by Roger Limb

Guest Cast: Valentine Dyall (Black Guardian), Liza Goddard (Kari), Dominic Guard (Olvir), Rachel Weaver (Inga), Martin Muncaster (Tannoy voice), Martin Potter (Eirak), Andrew Burt (Valgard), Tim Munro (Sigurd), Peter Benson (Bor), R.J. Bell (The Garm)

Broadcast from February 15 through 23, 1983

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 20 Doctor Who

Enlightenment

Doctor WhoThe Doctor receives a very vague warning of danger from the White Guardian, but Turlough’s interference – passed off as worrying that the TARDIS console would be damaged by the White Guardian’s energy requirements – leaves the Doctor with only a shred of the information he needs. The TARDIS arrives on a vintage sailing ship, whose crew is not at all perturbed by the Doctor’s arrival, and whose officers are beings who live outside of time itself. The Doctor discovers that he is now taking part in a yacht race through the blackness of space, and the Eternals care nothing for the human sailors they’ve abducted. At the finish line lies the promise of everlasting enlightenment – or, if Turlough continues to fall under the sway of the Black Guardian, death for the Doctor.

Order the DVDwritten by Barbara Clegg
directed by Fiona Cumming
music by Malcolm Clarke

Guest Cast: Valentine Dyall (Black Guardian), Cyril Luckham (White Guardian), Keith Barron (Striker), Lynda Baron (Wrack), Christopher Brown (Marriner), Tony Caunter (Jackson), Clive Kneller (Collier), James McClure (First Officer), Leee John (Mansell), John Cannon (Helmsman), Byron Sotiris (Critas)

Notes: As a vocalist, guest star Lynda Baron had already been associated with Doctor Who, singing the background song heard throughout the William Hartnell story The Gunfighters.

Broadcast from March 1 through 9, 1983

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 20 Doctor Who

The King’s Demons – Part 1

Doctor WhoThe arrival of the TARDIS coincides with a dangerous digression in Earth’s history: King John is holding court at the keep of Sir Ranulf, insulting his host and demanding financial tribute toward the continuance of the Crusades. Ranulf’s son, Hugh, challenges the King’s champion, Sir Gilles, in a fight for his father’s honor, but before blood is drawn, the TARDIS materializes, and the Doctor is surprised by how unfazed King John is by its appearance…one of many clues leading the Doctor to believe that this isn’t the real King John. According to history, King John should be in London right now, where many of his loyal subjects will shortly present him with the Magna Carta – a document to secure not only their own rights, but which will shape democracy in Britain for centuries to come. When the Doctor draws an armed challenge from Sir Gilles, he manages to emerge victorious…but finds himself facing one of his mortal foes, who has no business being in England in 1215.

Order the DVDwritten by Terence Dudley
directed by Tony Virgo
music by Jonathan Gibbs & Peter Howell

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Janet Fielding (Tegan Jovanka), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Anthony Ainley (The Master/Sir Gilles Estram), Frank Windsor (Ranulf), Gerald Flood (King John/voice of Kamelion), Isla Blair (Isabella), Christopher Villiers (Hugh), Michael J. Jackson (Sir Geoffrey), Peter Burroughs (Jester)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 20 Doctor Who

The King’s Demons – Part 2

Doctor WhoWith the unmasking of the Master – posing as King John’s knight “champion” – the Doctor is now more certain than ever that an impostor is trying to prevent King John from singing the Magna Carta. The time travelers discover that his majesty is not all that he appears – King John has been replaced by an intelligent, shapeshifting android called Kamelion. But at the moment, Kamelion is merely a puppet, and his strings are held by the Master, who escaped from Xeriphas (bringing Kamelion, a Xeriphan invention, with him) and now hopes to unravel the entire history of western civilization.

Order the DVDwritten by Terence Dudley
directed by Tony Virgo
music by Jonathan Gibbs & Peter Howell

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Janet Fielding (Tegan Jovanka), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Anthony Ainley (The Master), Frank Windsor (Ranulf), Gerald Flood (King John/voice of Kamelion), Isla Blair (Isabella), Christopher Villiers (Hugh), Michael J. Jackson (Sir Geoffrey), Peter Burroughs (Jester)

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 20 Doctor Who

The Five Doctors

Doctor WhoThe Doctor, Tegan and Turlough find themselves in no immediate danger for once, until the Doctor suffers from repeated, severe pain, claiming that his past is being altered in a way that could endanger him in the present. Somewhere on Gallifrey, long-abandoned machinery from the earliest days of the Time Lords is reactivated and its powers are brought to bear on each of the Doctor’s first four incarnations, snatching each of them from their own timeline and depositing them in Gallifrey’s infamous Death Zone, where the tomb of Time Lord founding father Rassilon stands. The fourth Doctor is trapped in the time vortex and never makes it to Gallifrey. As the various personae of the Doctor join forces, along with many companions, they find themselves fighting a variety of old adversaries – and one new antagonist – for the future of Gallifrey itself.

Order the DVDwritten by Terrance Dicks
directed by Peter Moffatt
music by Peter Howell

Guest Cast: Richard Hurndall (The First Doctor), Patrick Troughton (The Second Doctor), Jon Pertwee (The Third Doctor), Janet Fielding (Tegan), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), John Leeson (voice of K9), Carole Ann Ford (Susan), Richard Franklin (Mike Yates), Caroline John (Liz Shaw), Frazer Hines (Jamie), Wendy Padbury (Zoe), Anthony Ainley (The Master), Philip Latham (Lord President Borusa), Dinah Sheridan (Chancellor Flavia), Paul Jerricho (Castellan), Richard Mathews (Rassilon), David Savile (Colonel Crichton), Ray Float (Sergeant), Roy Skelton (Dalek voice), John Scott Martin (Dalek), Stephen Meredith (Technician), David Banks (CyberLeader), Mark Hardy (Cyber Lieutenant), William Kenton (Cyber Scout), Stuart Blake (Commander)

Appearing in footage from The Dalek Invasion Of Earth: William Hartnell (The First Doctor)

Appearing in footage from Shada: Tom Baker (The Fourth Doctor), Lalla Ward (Romana)

Broadcast November 23, 1983 (US) / November 25, 1983 (UK)

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 21 Doctor Who

Warriors Of The Deep

Doctor WhoIn the twenty-first century, the Doctor tries to show his companions Tegan and Turlough the shape of things to come on Earth. Unfortunately, their arrival coincides with a dangerous buildup of nuclear tensions between two unspecified superpowers, and the TARDIS brings them to an underground weapons platform manned by an edgy crew – particularly crewman Maddox, who has a computer interface implanted directly in his brain to allow him to fire the sea base’s nuclear missiles with a single concentrated thought. Maddox, shell-shocked after months of unannounced battle drills, collapses, leaving the base defenseless. But the base isn’t just prone to foreign attack – the repitile Silurians and Sea Devils, both ancient races which roamed the Earth freely before the evolution and rise of man, plan to launch the base’s missiles, plunging Earth into an all-out nuclear war and destroying mankind so reptiles can once again be the masters of their world.

Order the DVDwritten by Johnny Byrne
directed by Ron Jones
music by Jonathan Gibbs

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Janet Fielding (Tegan), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Tom Adams (Vorshak), Ingrid Pitt (Solow), Ian McCulloch (Nilson), Nigel Humphreys (Bulic), Martin Neil (Maddox), Tara Ward (Preston), Norman Comer (Icthar), Nitza Saul (Karina), Stuart Blake (Scibus), Vincent Brimble (Tarpok), Christopher Farries (Sauvix), James Coombes (Paroli), Steve Kelly, Chris Wolfe, Jules Walters, Mike Braben, Dave Ould (Sea Devils)

Broadcast from January 5 through 13, 1984

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 21 Doctor Who

The Awakening

Doctor WhoThe Doctor tries to steer the TARDIS to the present-day village of Little Hodcombe, where Tegan plans to visit her grandfather, Andrew Varney. But he has disappeared and something is amiss in the village – the annual medieval reconstructionists’ wargames have taken a decidedly more hostile and sinister tone this year. In the nearby church, something terrible has taken hold of many of the villagers’ minds, and it’s manipulating them to create more fear and hatred – something the creature craves as psychic sustenance.

Order the DVDwritten by Eric Pringle
directed by Michael Owen Morris
music by Peter Howell

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Janet Fielding (Tegan), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Polly James (Jane Hampden), Denis Lill (Sir George Hutchinson), Glyn Houston (Colonel Wolsey), Jack Galloway (Joseph Willow), Frederick Hall (Andrew Verney), Keith Jayne (Will Chandler), Christopher Saul (Trooper)

Broadcast from January 19 through 20, 1984

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 21 Doctor Who

Frontios

Doctor WhoQuite by accident, the TARDIS brings the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough to Frontios, the home of the last surviving colony of the human race. A meteor storm brings the TARDIS tumbling out of orbit and right into the middle of the colony. The paranoid colonists, who have been enduring killer meteor showers for many years, believe the Doctor and his friends are responsible. The Doctor tries to lend a hand and is met only with suspicion, but soon he is as trapped as the colonists when another meteor shower appears to destroy the TARDIS. Tegan stumbles across evidence that there are more menaces to the population of Frontios than just rocks from the sky, and Turlough discovers that he has a terrifyingly intimate knowledge of that menace.

Order the DVDwritten by Christopher H. Bidmead
directed by Ron Jones
music by Paddy Kingsland

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Janet Fielding (Tegan), Mark Strickson (Turlough), John Gillett (Gravis), Peter Gilmore (Brazen), Lesley Dunlop (Norna), William Lucas (Range), Jeff Rawle (Plantagenet), Maurice O’Connell (Cockerill), Richard Ashley (Orderly), Alison Skilbeck (Deputy), Raymond Murtagh (Retrograde), George Campbell, Michael Malcolm, Stephen Speed, William Bowen, Hedi Khursandi (Tractators), Jim Dowdall (Warnsman), John Beardmore (Captain Revere)

Broadcast from January 26 through February 3, 1984

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 21 Doctor Who

Resurrection Of The Daleks

Doctor WhoWith the TARDIS caught in a time corridor at the end of the previous story, the Doctor is surprised to find that he is being taken to some rather unremarkable London docks. His investigation into the origins of the time corridor lead him to a meeting with a group of hapless 20th century soldiers who can’t even begin to imagine the traces of technology they’ve discovered in a nearby warehouse. The Doctor’s arrival has been expected – in fact, carefully orchestrated – by the Daleks, who are in the midst of a plot that involves clones, biological warfare, and the rescue and revival of their mad creator, Davros.

Order the DVDwritten by Eric Saward
directed by Matthew Robinson
music by Malcolm Clarke

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Janet Fielding (Tegan), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Terry Molloy (Davros), Maurice Colbourne (Lytton), Rodney Bewes (Stien), Rula Lenska (Styles), Del Henney (Colonel Archer), Chloe Ashcroft (Professor Laird), Philip McGough (Sergeant Calder), Jim Findley (Mercer), Leslie Grantham (Kiston), Sneh Gupta (Osborn), Roger Davenport (Trooper), John Adam Baker, Linsey Turner (Crew members), William Sleigh (Galloway), Brian Miller, Royce Mills (Dalek voices), John Scott Martin, Cy Town, Tony Starr, Toby Byrne (Daleks), Nicholas Curry (Chemist), Michael Jeffries, Mike Braben (Policemen), Mike Mungarven, Simon Crane (Soldiers), Pat Judge (Man with metal detector)

Broadcast from February 8 through 15, 1984

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 21 Doctor Who

Planet of Fire

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS has been set for a new course by Kamelion, who is attempting to go to the source of a distress signal which is overriding his every function. The Doctor manages to wrest control of the ship from Kamelion and lands the TARDIS on Earth to investigate. While the Doctor finds little of importance, other than a freshly uncovered batch of artifacts from an archaeological expedition, Turlough discovers the signal’s source and immobilizes the TARDIS to avoid going there. Turlough also spots a drowning swimmer on the TARDIS scanner. He rescues the girl, discovering that she has stolen the oddest of the artifacts that the Doctor saw earlier. When the Doctor returns, the TARDIS again takes off without his control, and apparently with a new passenger on board. The mystery of the new passengers unravels quickly, as does the mystery of who has been controlling Kamelion. But why is Turlough so keen to avoid a colony from his own planet – a colony of outcasts of which he may be a member?

Order the DVDwritten by Peter Grimwade
directed by Fiona Cumming
music by Peter Howell

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Janet Fielding (Tegan), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Anthony Ainley (The Master), Peter Wyngarde (Timanov), Barbara Shelley (Sorasta), Gerald Flood (voice of Kamelion), James Bate (Amyand), Dallas Adams (Professor Foster), Edward Highmore (Malkon), Jonathan Caplan (Roskal), John Alkin (Lomand), Michael Bangerter (Curt), Simon Sutton (Lookout), Max Arthur (Zuko), Ray Knight (Trion)

Broadcast from February 23 through March 2, 1984

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
5th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Phantasmagoria

Doctor Who: PhantasmagoriaThe Doctor and Turlough arrive in London, 1702, amidst a rash of disappearances, murders, and robberies. Well-to-do men have been vanishing without a trace, and the only connection anyone can draw between the victims is that they were last seen playing cards with the sinister and enigmatic Sir Nicholas Valentine at the Diabola Club. Turlough himself witnesses one of the horrifying disappearances and finds himself separated from the Doctor, and joins the intrepid Jasper Jeake as he tries to uncover the whereabouts of his friends. The Doctor befriends self-proclaimed occultist Dr. Samuel Holywell, who claims to have made contact with the dead – but the Doctor believes the explanation is simultaneously simpler and more complex than that. And largely unnoticed by the time travelers is the sudden transformation of a well-known robber into a murderer. At least two of these players are not from Earth – and even if the Doctor can discover who they are, the game is almost up.

Order this CDwritten by Mark Gatiss
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Alistair Lock

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Mark Strickson (Turlough), David Walliams (Quincy Flowers), Jonathan Rigby (Edmund Carteret), Mark Gatiss (Jasper Jeake), Jez Fielder (Poltrot/Major Billy Lovemore), David Ryall (Sir Nicholas Valentine), Steven Wickham (Dr. Samuel Holywell), Julia Dalkin (Hannah Fry)

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
5th Doctor

Loups-Garoux

Loups-GarouxThe TARDIS brings the Doctor and Turlough to Rio de Janeiro in the year 2080, just in time for the carnival. During the festivities, both of the time travelers become aware of another presence that seems out of place – something lurking, waiting patiently in the dark as it has done for centuries – something that will draw them both into the center of a battle for dominion over the human race.

Order this CDwritten by Marc Platt
directed by Nicholas Pegg
music by Alistair Lock

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Elanor Bron (Ileana De Santos), Nicky Henson (Pieter Stubbe), Sarah Gale (Rosa Caiman), Jane Burke (Inez), Burt Kwouk (Dr. Hayashi), David Hankinson (Anton Lichtfuss), Derek Wright (Jorge)

Timeline: between Phantasmagoria and Singularity

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
5th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Singularity

Doctor Who: SingularityA time displacement brings the TARDIS down for a hard landing in 21st century Moscow, stranding the Doctor and Turlough there until they can find the source of the distortion and put an end to it. While Turlough complains bitterly about the cold, the Doctor explores the enormous glass tower erected by the mysterious Somnus Foundation. Turlough hears a woman’s cries for help, and despite trying to talk himself out of it, runs to help her, finding that she’s looking for her brother, who has gone missing after joining the cult-like Foundation. The Doctor and Turlough help her get to safety, and become even more interested in her stories of the Somnus Foundation causing its enemies to “disappear.” The Foundation claims to be advancing human evolution, but the Doctor soon discovers that it’s something much more twisted than that – something that will bring power that the human race isn’t ready for.

Order this CDwritten by James Swallow
directed by Gary Russell
music by Steve Foxon

Doctor Who: SingularityCast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Eve Polycarpou (Qel), Maitland Chandler (Seo), Michael Cuckson (Cord), Natasha Radski (Lena Korolev), Oleg Mirochnikov (Alexi Korolev), Max Bollinger (Pavel Fedorin), Dominika Boon (Natalia Pushkin), Billy Miller (Tev), Marq English (Xen)

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
5th Doctor Doctor Who

Cobwebs

Doctor Who: CobwebsHaving just escaped the machinations of the Black Guardian, the Doctor finds himself in unsettled company. Tegan doesn’t trust Turlough, and Turlough is tired of being reminded that Tegan doesn’t trust him. His request to return home meets with the same fate as most requests for specific stops in the TARDIS: instead of going to Turlough’s home, the TARDIS is pulled off course and makes a rough landing on the planet Hellheim, the site of a quarantined genetic engineering facility. To the time travelers’ amazement, someone else is here: Nyssa, now 70 years old, still crusading for the cures to plagues that are ravaging the galaxy. With her security robot, Loki, Nyssa landed at this base to find the cure to a virulent disease, hoping that perhaps the long-dead crew had found a cure before they died. But what the reunited friends find there is far more disturbing: a base crawling with robotic spiders, projected memories of what seem to be the original crew’s grisly deaths, a computer who insists that the Doctor and his friends have been here before… and four decayed bodies, dressed exactly like the TARDIS crew.

Order this CDwritten by Jonathan Clements
directed by Lisa Bowerman
music by Simon Robinson

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Janet Fielding (Tegan Jovanka), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Helen Griffin (Director Cardell / Ship’s Computer), Raymond Coulthard (Loki / EDGAR / Hawks), Adrian Lukis (Enforcement Officer Bragg), Charlotte Lucas (Bio Technician Valis / Echelon)

Timeline: for the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough: between Enlightenment and The King’s Demons; for Nyssa: 50 years after Terminus.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green