Tag: The Fourth Doctor

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Classic Season 11 Doctor Who

Planet of the Spiders

Doctor WhoPast events catch up with the Doctor in an unexpected way. A race of evil giant spiders on Metebelis 3 is looking for one of their planet’s perfect blue crystals to complete a crystal “web” that will broadcast the will of their leader, the Great One (not Jackie Gleason), across the entire universe. But the Doctor stole that crystal during a previous visit without realizing its significance, and his actions have drawn unwanted attention to Earth. The spiders use a monastery in the English countryside as their gateway to Earth, taking over the minds of a criminally-minded man named Lupton whose meditations have failed to turn him into a better person. In the end, the Doctor is obliged to return the crystal to prevent Earth from being overrun by the spiders – but the personal cost will be very high.

written by Robert Sloman
directed by Barry Letts
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), Richard Franklin (Mike Yates), John Levene (Sergeant Benton), John Dearth (Lupton), Terence Lodge (Moss), Andrew Staines (Keaver), Christopher Burgess (Barnes), Carl Forgione (Land), Cyril Shaps (Professor Clegg), Kevin Lindsay (Cho-Je), John Kane (Tommy), Pat Gorman (Soldier), Chubby Oates (Policeman), Terry Walsh (Man with boat), Michael Pinder (Hopkins), Ysanne Churchman, Kismet Delgado, Maureen Morris (Spider voices), Ralph Arliss (Tuar), Geoffrey Morris (Sabor), Joanna Monro (Rega), Gareth Hunt (Arak), Jenny Laird (Neska), Walter Randall (Captain), Max Faulkner (Second Captain), Maureen Morris (Great One), George Cormack (K’anpo)

Broadcast from May 4 through June 8, 1974

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Classic Season 13 Doctor Who

Terror Of The Zygons

Doctor WhoRecalled to Earth by the Brigadier via time-space telegraph, the TARDIS brings the Doctor, Sarah and Harry to the Scottish moors, not far from where offshore oil drilling platforms have been subjected to a series of attacks from the sea – but UNIT can find no traces of attacks from either a boat or a submarine. In the nearest village, the Doctor uncovers evidence that someone there may be behind the attacks, and Harry is shot while trying to help a man washed ashore from the latest attack.

Season 13 Regular Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith)

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

Guest Cast: Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan), John Levene (RSM Benton), John Woodnutt (Duke of Forgill / Broton), Hugh Martin (Munro), Tony Sibbald (Huckle), Angus Lennie (Angus McRanald), Robert Russell (The Caber), Bruce Wightman (Radio Operator), Lillias Walker (Sister Lamont), Bernard G. High (Corporal)

Broadcast from August 30 through September 20, 1975

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 13 Doctor Who

Planet of Evil

Doctor WhoOn the planet Zeta Minor, an expedition from a neighboring planet is doomed. Their ship is unable to lift off from the surface, and something is stalking and killing the crew one by one. The TARDIS arrives and the Doctor and Sarah offer their help, but they’re also suspected of causing the difficulties. The Doctor discovers that an attempt to bring a sample of antimatter back has attracted the unwelcome, but instinctively protective, attention of Zeta Minor’s native antimatter life forms. Worse yet, Professor Sorenson, hell-bent on keeping the sample aboard, continues his experiments with antimatter, slowly transforming himself into a hybrid matter-antimatter creature with no control over his actions.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Louis Marks
directed by David Maloney
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Terence Brook (Braun), Tony McEwan (Baldwin), Frederick Jaeger (Sorenson), Ewen Solon (Vishinsky), Prentis Hancock (Salamar), Michael Wisher (Morelli / voice of Ranjit), Graham Weston (De Haan), Louis Mahoney (Ponti), Haydn Wood (O’Hara), Melvyn Bedford (Reig), Mike Lee Lane (Monster)

Broadcast from September 27 through October 18, 1975

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 13 Doctor Who

Pyramids of Mars

Doctor WhoIn 1910, Egyptologist Marcus Scarman makes his greatest find ever – a crypt said to be the tomb of the god Sutekh. It is also Scarman’s last find. His life as he has known it ends and his body becomes an obedient servant to the still very-much-alive Egyptian god Sutekh, in fact an alien consciousness trapped on Earth.

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Sarah to Britain that same year, after a close call in the time vortex and the appearance of Sutekh’s face in the console room – a psychic breach of the time machine’s most important defenses. The Doctor follows the source of the interference to Scarman’s mansion, where strange things are afoot – including the shadowy appearance of walking mummies. With Scarman’s brother Lawrence in tow, the Doctor and Sarah stumble upon the force behind the unusual happenings: Sutekh is planning a strike, from Earth, against a mechanism on the surface of Mars which hold him captive on Earth. Even the primitive state of rocketry isn’t holding Sutekh’s effort back: he’s lending Scarman and his robot mummies advanced technology. Sutekh hopes to dominate the Earth with his immense willpower and then take revenge upon his fellow Osirans on Mars – even if it means wiping out the human race to avenge his centuries of captivity.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Lewis Griefer (a.k.a. Robert Holmes)
directed by Paddy Russell
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Bernard Archard (Professor Macrus Scarman), Vik Tabian (Ahmed), Peter Mayock (Namin), Michael Bilton (Collins), Peter Copley (Dr. Warlock), Michael Sheard (Laurence Scarman), George Tovey (Ernie Clements), Gabriel Woolf (Sutekh / voice of Horus), Nick Burnell, Melvyn Bedford, Kevin Selway (Mummies)

Broadcast from October 25 through November 15, 1975

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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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

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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