The William Hartnell Years

You didn't ask for it, but here it is anyway: before we embark on the next phase of our journey, it's time to look back on our adventures so far.

First, let's recap Hannah's scores:

10/10
The Savages: "I love that kind of sci-fi story"

9/10
The Daleks: "I don't see much room for improvement"
The Keys of Marinus: "I like the fact that it was a quest story"
The Aztecs: "a lot of this is very believable"
The Dalek Invasion of Earth: "an amazing story"
The Time Meddler: "I feel like I wanted more"
The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve: "this could have been a 10 out of 10"

8/10
Marco Polo: "not much to say, it's just a really good story"
The Romans: "the comedy grew on me"
The Ark: "I liked the twist"
The Gunfighters: "it's just the shit bits that I don't like"

7/10
The Chase: "so much weirdness and rubbishness that it doesn't flow properly"
The Myth Makers: "you say this is a comedy?"
The Daleks' Master Plan: "it wasn't awful"
The Celestial Toymaker: "I really do like the concept"
The War Machines: "it feels a little bit anticlimactic"

6/10
An Unearthly Child: "I didn't like it a huge amount"
The Sensorites: "I'm disappointed with the amazing potential they had"
The Reign of Terror: "the way that the story is told felt a bit rubbish"
The Web Planet: "it's like your child has made you a painting, but it's shit"
The Crusade: "it was interesting... no, it wasn't"
Galaxy 4: "it's just silly"
Mission to the Unknown: "it was interesting but it didn't feel quite right"
The Tenth Planet: "it's all a bit messy and clumsy"

5/10
Planet of Giants: "very middle-of-the-road"
The Rescue: "there's so much more they could have done"
The Space Museum: "it feels like the writer got bored"
The Smugglers: "I really wish it had been a better story"

3/10
The Edge of Destruction: "total crock of shit"


Me: So... will you miss William Hartnell?
Hannah: Yes. Of course I'll miss him. I liked his character; it was deep and complex with a general abundance of grandfatherly silly man, and then little pokey bits of Doctor came out. It was like a great big shell of somebody that I don't recognise, and then every now and again a little bit pokes out and says "I'm the Doctor, and I'm just like all the other Doctors that you already know." And then, over time, I realised that those weren't special bits; he obviously was the Doctor, the original, the first, and so those little bits sticking out were just a part of the whole.
Me: What memories stand out for you?
Hannah: His fluffs. Especially when they're funny. Any time that he stands up for something worthwhile. When he has a laugh with people. I can't think of any specifics.
Me: If you could only watch one story again, what would it be?
Hannah: I can't remember them all. Well, the one I gave 10 out of 10.
Me: The Savages?
Hannah: Actually no, it wasn't the most exciting story, it was just the best-done episode. The Menoptra one. The Web Planet.
Me: Really?! Why?
Hannah: Just to remind myself whether it really was as bad as... what did I give it?
Me: 6.
Hannah: Anything with aliens I really liked. So either the Menoptra or the Chumblies or something. Yeah, I think I'd watch The Web Planet, just to see those creatures again. I liked them as an alien species; the Menoptra and the Zarbi and the gun lice. They were fun. It's not my favourite, I just have an urge to see all the aliens again.
Me: How has the Hartnell era matched up to your expectations?
Hannah: Well, I knew that it would probably be nothing at all like new Who, and nothing at all like anything I would usually choose to watch, so I thought it would be a bit of a slog really. I thought the episodes would be interesting, but I knew all the pacing and the style would be slower and cheaper and less sophisticated than the stuff I usually watch. And I was right, but that didn't make it... less worthy of watching. I mean, I thought all those things would be bad things, but then I started watching it and realised that, no, in their own way they're amazing and I was wrong for judging it so harshly. Yes, it's a different style, but it's not a worse style; yes, it is slower in pace, but that just means that you can feel it more in-depth. Modern television goes past so quickly and then it's over, whereas this was designed to be somewhat educational, and being slower-paced does it no harm. And it took me a while to get used to it, but I've really, really enjoyed it. So, it was what I thought it would be, but I learned to love it.
Me: And what are your expectations of the Patrick Troughton era?
Hannah: Well... I know almost nothing. Old Who is all the same to me until I've seen it. The first three I just see as old men in black and white, and then Tom Baker's fun, and the others are just weird and I know very little about them.
Me: So you have no expectations?
Hannah: Not really, other than that I don't like his appearance. Just on a purely superficial level; I don't like him visually.
Me: Are you looking forward to it?
Hannah: Yes, because I know he's your favourite, and I want to finally share in something that you love so much.
Me: You already are.
Hannah: Yes, but if he's in your favourite part of the whole thing...
Me: I wouldn't say it's my favourite period of the series, just that he's my favourite Doctor. It doesn't mean they're my favourite stories; that would probably be the Matt Smith era.
Hannah: Well anyway, I want to meet the person that you like.
Me: Hopefully you'll like him as well.
Hannah: Maybe. I don't see why not.
Me: So you are looking forward to doing Patrick Troughton?
Hannah: Yes. I want to meet all of them and compare all of them. It's just that I'm going to miss Hartnell a lot, so it's going to be hard. I've just about gotten over Ian and Barbara, but this is maybe too much.
Me: This is what happens every time he changes, though. Every new Doctor. You have to get over the loss of the old one and learn to love the new one, just like with the modern series.
Hannah: Yes, I've had to do that before; I liked Eccleston much less when I realised that he could have been David Tennant all along. So I can get used to new Doctors.

The Tenth Planet

Episode 1

The good news is that Hannah is completely oblivious to the significance of this story, having skipped the 2017 Christmas special "Twice Upon a Time" to avoid any potential spoilers about the end of the William Hartnell era. I hope she'll be pleasantly surprised.

Hannah: So which episode is missing?
Me: Episode 4.
Hannah: But it appears to be on the DVD?
Me: That's because it's been animated.
Hannah: Ah! Sweet.

Yes, for only the second time since we started (after The Reign of Terror), a missing episode has been animated to plug the gap in a partially-missing story to make it "complete" for the DVD release.

After another bespoke title card (slightly more understated than the one used for The War Machines) the writing credit introduces us to Dr Kit Pedler, someone who will become very important to the series in about 20 minutes' time.

Hannah: This is a cool introductory sequence.
Me: This story was written by an actual doctor.
Hannah: What kind of doctor?
Me: He was an ophthalmologist.
Hannah: Really? Is that what the story is about? Or was he just doing this in his spare time?
Me: Sort of. He was working as the head of a research unit at the University of London, but then he also became the unofficial scientific adviser for the Doctor Who production team. He's trying to introduce more science into the series, so the enemies in this story are inspired by real technology.
Hannah: Seems a bit odd for an eye doctor to write a science-fiction story.
Me: For some reason a fair amount of medical professionals seem to move away from practising medicine and end up working in television. Graeme Garden, Harry Hill and Graham Chapman are all qualified doctors who went on to become comedians, so it's not that far-fetched.

The Doctor, Ben and Polly have arrived at the South Pole in the middle of a snowstorm.

Hannah: This looks good; the outside shots aren't 100% convincing but they've got the right feel with the blustery, dark conditions. Good atmosphere.
Me: Yes, it's amazing what you can do with polystyrene and a wind machine.
Hannah: Why would you choose to go outside? Surely you'd just say "Nah, not this one."

On the contrary, our heroes are more than happy to go for a walk; indeed, Polly doesn't seem the slightest bit interested in dressing appropriately for the weather conditions, much to the delight of the surveillance guards in the international military base.

Hannah: I don't like this. Hot-blooded Italians, trapped in an underground bunker.

The international flavour of the cast does have its advantages, though.

Me: Look, one of the characters is a black astronaut!
Hannah: Well, you've already pointed out that the previous story had the first speaking part for a black actor in the series. So this is the second one.
Me: Yes, but it's so much more progressive! For a start, they've actually got black people being astronauts here. Even in Star Trek they've just got her answering the phone.
Hannah: She is a scientist. But yes, in fairness they've just got her answering the phone and wearing a really short skirt.

The Doctor's sarcastic response to the howling sergeant ("Why don't you speak up, I'm deaf") goes down very well with Hannah, but his riposte to General Cutler ("I don't like your tone, sir") is met with a churlish "I don't like your face, nor your hair."

Hannah: (appalled) How rude!
Me: What do you think of the story title?
Hannah: What about it? Obviously they're thinking there's going to be another planet beyond Pluto.
Me: Yes, but the title doesn't make sense now that Pluto has been re-classified; there were nine planets when this was written, but now there eight planets so it's scientifically inaccurate.
Hannah: I don't care about that. It was correct at the time.

The extra planet in question is identical to Earth right down to the shape of the continents, except that the continents are all upside-down. But even this isn't as absurd as the sight of everyone trying to put their finger on why it looks so familiar.

Hannah: It's the Earth upside, you fools! How does she recognise Malaysia but not Asia? Malaysia is tiny in comparison; how would she pick it out without noticing any of the actual continents?

Meanwhile, some of the soldiers are trying to break into the TARDIS.

Hannah: I wish the TARDIS was like R2-D2.
Me: What?
Hannah: It should have a little squirt gun or something. People stand there for ages trying to break in, and it just whips out a nozzle and goes "psst" in their faces, like when R2-D2 brings out a little taser and goes "tzzz" any time anyone gets too close and he doesn't like them. I want the TARDIS to have a cheeky little attitude.
Me: Interesting idea. Although it might be tricky to squirt someone with water in the middle of a force 8 Antarctic blizzard.

But before it comes to that, the soldiers are intercepted and struck down by some uninvited visitors.

Hannah: I can't see them clearly enough. Oh! Hello! I wondered how early they'd turn up.

It's the first appearance of the Cybermen, and Hannah is furious at herself for not expecting them sooner.

Hannah: I should have got it when they said "twin Earth"! The Cybermen are from a twin Earth! They come from Mondas. As soon as they said "twin Earth" I should have known. But I didn't think it meant that the continents were literally the same; that would be a fluke of geology and tectonics and time and water levels, so both planets must have been created absolutely identically to have the same continents.

She's been familiar with the original Cyberman design for years, and the sight of their cloth faces (which falls squarely into "uncanny valley" territory) is something she's been dreading since we began watching the series. Fortunately their recent appearance in the Peter Capaldi era has done much to lessen her anxiety.

Hannah: I've seen Sock-Face before.
Me: It's surgical cloth from the surgery.
Hannah: Yes, tube socks. I've seen the original Cybermen before, so it's not such a creepy shock. I still don't like them - I don't like things that look "not quite human" - but at least I can watch it now that I'm slightly desensitised to them. If I was seeing them here for the first time I'd be slightly freaked out, but also really impressed by the design. Modified humans. It's a creepy idea.

Episode 2

Hannah: It's unsettling that these Cybermen have got real, uncovered hands. Which also means that they must be freezing to death out there.
Me: In retrospect this feels like a transitional phase for them, in a lot of ways. They haven't quite been fully converted from their human form yet, so the body horror implications here are a lot more vivid than usual.
Hannah: They're just surgically altered humans. Mondasians, I mean. But they must have been altered quite a lot to have bare hands out in a blizzard.
Me: Well, Polly's wearing a miniskirt, so obviously the South Pole can't be that cold.
Hannah: In the last episode the Doctor seemed to know exactly who they were and where they were coming from. It's like he's met them before.
Me: Or it's a known historical event.
Hannah: Oh yeah. Earth forgets about it, but Time Lords know about it.
Me: Which is odd, because other alien invasions aren't treated like that; they're always treated as aberrations in the timeline, things that need to be put right.

Having forced their way into the base, the Cybermen serve up a heaping helping of exposition: once upon a time, their home planet Mondas drifted away to "the edge of space" but has now returned to its twin planet Earth.

Hannah: Which is stupid, because without a sun they would have been cold. At the very least.

The design isn't the only unsettling thing about these Cybermen; the lilting sing-song voices, with the inflections placed on the wrong syllables, is almost as eerie.

Me: What do you think of the voices?
Hannah: They're alright. They sound like K9.
Me: I really like them. They're far more interesting than any of the later voices.
Hannah: I find it creepy that they open their mouths to speak, but they're clearly not using their lips or their tongues or anything to speak. They just open their mouth and the electronic voice comes out.

But the creepiest part is when their cold emotionless logic refuses them to allow the base to save the lives of the two astronauts, declaring that human lives are an irrelevance to them.

Hannah: Shame about the astronauts. They acted being up in space very well, and they were left up there not knowing what was going on and then they got flung into space and blew up. Poor guys.

Ben immediately dismisses the thought of tackling them with a screwdriver.

Hannah: That's a very slow way to stop them. Taking them apart one screw at a time and then stabbing the fleshy bits.

Speaking of their fleshy bits...

Hannah: There are some very odd shot compositions here. Has that Cyberman got one leg cocked up so that we can see the General through its legs? The director has just framed his head perfectly with the Cyberman's groin. What a mastery of filming that was.
Me: It wouldn't be so bad if that Cyberman didn't look like Mrs Robinson in the seduction scene from The Graduate.

It doesn't take long for Ben and Cutler to clear the Cybermen out from the base, but the radar screen shows a large formation of incoming spaceships.

Hannah: What formation is that? Dandelion head? I like the fact that they thought that in 1986 we'd be able to fight an alien invasion.

When we get to the credits, a few of the character names seem unfamiliar to Hannah.

Hannah: "Shav"?
Me: In this story, and only in this story, the Cybermen have individual names.
Hannah: Ohhh. That's just weird.
Me: At this point in the series they're just another alien race. It sort of makes sense; the Cybermen still have a bit of individuality at this point, but in all their later appearances they're more advanced and act more like generic robot villains. In retrospect this feels like a transitioning phase from their lost humanity into proper Cybermen.
Hannah: That's why Ben was sad when he killed one in self-defence.
Me: But the really interesting thing here is that they're actually trying to help us. They have positive, rational motives and they honestly believe they're doing humanity a favour by trying to upgrade them. In later stories they're doing it as a means to galactic conquest, but here they're doing what they think is the merciful and logical thing for our survival and they're so far removed from their emotions that they can't understand why anyone would object. I always think this is the story where they're at their most interesting, both in design and concept.
Hannah: I'm going to have to try and judge this as if I'd never met them before. The Daleks were easy enough because they haven't changed that much, but with this I'm going to have to pretend that I don't know anything about future Cybermen.

Episode 3

Hannah: We're two episodes in and there's still no explanation as to how they brought Mondas to Earth. How can a planet fly from one place to another? I like how this massive event never gets remembered, like so many others.

The Doctor (or a reasonable likeness thereof) collapses from exhaustion and is taken to the crew quarters to recover.

Hannah: Is the Doctor on holiday by having a nap?
Me: No, William Hartnell had bronchitis.
Hannah: Oh! So he's ill because he's ill. Did they have to change the story at the last minute, then?
Me: Sort of. They gave all his scientific dialogue to the head scientist.
Hannah: Did they make the story rubbish? Is there an original script somewhere of what it was supposed to be?
Me: Episodes 3 and 4 were finished by someone else after Kit Pedler was rushed to hospital during the writing.
Hannah: So they were both ill. Was he okay?
Me: Yes, he comes back to write the Cybermen's next appearance.
Hannah: Is the Doctor sick for two episodes, then?
Me: No, he's in the next one. It would be a bit rubbish if he was absent from the final episode of a story.

Cutler intends to tackle the Cyberman problem by destroying Mondas with a doomsday device that conveniently happens to be lying around the base.

Hannah: So why did anyone invent that? It will kill everybody; no one will ever use it. And I doubt they've made a bomb big enough to turn a planet-sized lump of matter into a nuclear sun. Why is their bomb being kept in the same place as their space tracking station? Or is that just the safest place for it? The South Pole?
Me: It doesn't seem that safe at the moment...
Hannah: It looks safe enough when it's not being invaded by Cybermen. But why put the same people in charge of the most dangerous thing on the planet and also their space missions? They're spreading themselves a bit too thin for my liking.

It doesn't help that the base is a health and safety nightmare; the ventilation shaft leading from the bunk room to the rocket silo is handy enough when Ben wants to immobilise the rocket, but completely impractical if you don't want anyone to get roasted alive.

Hannah: That means any exhaust fumes from the rocket silo would go into the bunk room. That sounds like a really great design plan.
Me: It also means that anyone who happens to be in bed when the rocket takes off will get incinerated.
Hannah: It'll certainly be very noisy.

As the episode ends Hannah is looking forward to seeing Hartnell back in action again, if only in animated form.

Hannah: I wonder how they're going to explain away his being unconscious for half an hour?

Episode 4

We don't need to wait long for the answer. When Polly asks the Doctor what happened to him, he suggests that it could have been the result of some outside influence; either that, or "this old body of mine is wearing a bit thin."

Hannah: Are they trying to imply that he's getting on a bit? I wonder if... how far in advance did they realise that they would need to make the Doctor change?
Me: The concept of regeneration was invented for the story in which it happens; someone was given the task of writing a story where he changes.
Hannah: So, whenever it happens, they weren't planning it long in advance and dropping hints by having the Doctor saying "my body is getting a bit old"? It just happens when it happens, and when he says "this old body of mine is wearing a bit thin" he's literally just saying that he's an old man. But it really does sound like they're dropping hints, like he knows he changes his body.
Me: It's just an expression.
Hannah: I know, I'm just saying it sounds like that.

Before she can read anything else into it, the Cybermen kill General Cutler's son.

Hannah: It's annoying that the Cybermen are being proved to be correct; emotions are bad for people. He's gone mental because he cared for his son.

Ben, meanwhile, is coming up with a plan to take down the Cybermen while they're waiting for Mondas to disintegrate.

Hannah: If Mondas is absorbing too much energy from the Earth, why don't they just fly it away again? The Cybermen are cool, but the science of their planet is stupid.
Me: What do you think of Ben now? You weren't too impressed with him last time.
Hannah: Somewhat clever; he's got tactics. He's very brave, even if he's a bit foolish.

Fighting the Cybermen with radiation sounds feasible in theory but Hannah wonders about the practicalities of Ben and the scientists wandering around the base irradiating everything, including any humans who they might potentially find along the way. Not that there was any need because Mondas eventually melts anyway, causing all the remaining Cybermen to do likewise.

The Doctor isn't looking well, either. I can sense Hannah eyeing me with increasing suspicion when he announces "It's far from being all over" and starts urgently making his way back to TARDIS; by the time he's inside, she definitely knows something is up. She watches as William Hartnell collapses to the floor and inexplicably changes into Patrick Troughton, not saying a word until the credits.

Hannah: You mean that episode doesn't exist?!
Me: Correct.
Hannah: Ohhhh!
Me: And actually, given that he was absent from episode 3, the last surviving episode of the Hartnell era doesn't feature William Hartnell; the last we see of him is episode 2. But you'll be glad to hear that the important bit still exists.
Hannah: So when I said he seems to be dropping hints... he really was?
Me: Yes. The concept of regeneration was conceived in this story when they needed a way to write him out, although they don't call it a regeneration for a while yet and it's not actually explained here at all.
Hannah: I wasn't expecting that to happen yet. I thought we had another full series, but he leaves after the second story.
Me: A while ago I suggested to you that he might leave in the middle of a season, and you dismissed the idea as being utterly ridiculous.
Hannah: Yeah, I suppose they didn't have much choice if he was too ill to continue. I know you told me that Hartnell had the most episodes apart from Tom Baker, so I thought it couldn't be too much longer because there can't have been that much Tom Baker really... otherwise it's just getting silly, in terms of the proportion of Hartnell compared to everyone else. I was beginning to think one of the other Doctors must only have two stories in order to fit this number of episodes in.

There's just one piece of unfinished business before we move on to the scoring.

Hannah: I want to see the actual clip first.

We watch the clip from the DVD extras, and Hannah finally gets to witness this pivotal moment of TV history.

Hannah: He looks very sweaty.
Me: Is that it?

The Score

Hannah: Well. It's very difficult, because that was quite a big surprise.
Me: Thank God I don't need to keep that quiet anymore.
Hannah: The story itself is good, and it looks good; I like the outdoor shots, it all looks dark and mysterious and atmospheric and windy and cold, even if they're not going to be sensible and wear proper clothes. But the science is, like so many times, rubbish. There's lots of weird science bits that I don't think make sense. Good story idea, but it's all a bit messy and clumsy, especially when they have to write the Doctor out for a whole episode and Ben and Polly have to move the plot along.
Me: I think a lot of fandom has a tendency to rate this story on the basis that it's the arrival of the Cybermen and the departure of William Hartnell, rather than considering the merits of the story itself.
Hannah: It makes it really difficult to score. The Cybermen are good, and I've always thought they were a particularly good design; it's body horror, and also the horror of removing your emotions. They're a good enemy, and if I didn't know they were going to become a successful recurring enemy I'd definitely want to see them again and know more about them. And it's also really an important story because of the Doctor regenerating at the end. I only want to give it a 6, because although it has good aliens and good ideas it's also really clumsy. Are the Cybermen and the regeneration enough to redeem it as high as a 7? Nah, probably not.

6/10

Hannah: Hmm, so he's gone. I want to watch the next one now. I want to know how different he is. I want to see the contrast. I want to see how they react to him being a different person. I want to know how he explains what's just happened to himself. I want all those questions answered; I don't want to wait.

The Smugglers

Episode 1

The fourth season picks up where the previous story left off, with Ben and Polly wandering on board the TARDIS just in time for take-off. After a brief angry rant, the Doctor explains the TARDIS to his two young interlopers.

Hannah: I like this, it's like a summary for anybody who's never watched it before. Is the Doctor annoyed that he has two new travelling companions, or not? He says he thought he'd be alone for a bit, but did he want that to happen or does he actually feel relieved? I don't know. He probably would have been fine by himself, and there'd be fewer people around to get captured.

Ben and Polly's first trip has brought them to a fairly innocuous beach, but experience has taught Hannah to expect the worst.

Hannah: I thought the water was made of acid.
Me: Why?
Hannah: There's always acid water. It would learn them well.

It comes as a bit of a surprise, therefore, when our heroes discover a local church.

Hannah: Oh, they are on Earth then?
Me: Yep. This story was filmed in Cornwall during the summer, so I'm sure it would look beautiful if we could see it.
Hannah: Yes. Although I went to Cornwall just after the summer and it rained every day.

Specifically we're in 17th century Cornwall, and it's not long before the extremely feminine-looking Polly is being addressed as "lad" by the churchwarden.

Hannah: Do they think Polly's a boy because she's wearing trousers?
Me: She also has her hair under a cap.
Hannah: That's ridiculous. She's a beautiful woman with long blonde hair and a high-pitched voice. And she's far too tall to be a boy who hasn't hit puberty yet.

Once the Doctor's new companions have finally accepted that they're in the 17th century, Polly resigns herself to the situation and decides to make the best of it.

Hannah: She's very practical. I like her. But I want Ben to shut up. His Cockney accent annoys me.

The plot, such as it is, revolves around the search for the late Captain Avery's buried gold.

Hannah: Cursed treasure! I want a proper pirate story.
Me: There are pirates in this, although admittedly the story is more Famous Five than Pirates of the Caribbean. But there was also a Matt Smith pirate episode called "The Curse of the Black Spot".
Hannah: (dismissively) Oh yeah.

This episode concludes with the Doctor meeting the pirate captain. Once Hannah has gotten over her disappointment that he isn't played by Tutte Lemkow in his customary eyepatch, she starts to wonder how Captain Pike got his name.

Hannah: Is it because he's got a pike for a hand? I love that he has a pike instead of a boring hook.
Me: I think it's a barbed hook.
Hannah: It's got a pointy bit and a curvy bit. It's a pike.

Episode 2

One of Captain Pike's pirates, Jamaica, is particularly noteworthy.

Me: This is the first ever speaking part for a black actor in Doctor Who.
Hannah: Really?
Me: We've occasionally seen black actors in non-speaking roles before, and speaking characters played by blacked-up actors, but this is a genuine first. Although the character is still a fairly dodgy caricature, so it's not that progressive.
Hannah: His name is Jamaica? I've never known that to be a name.

Hannah is clearly thrilled that we're getting a story about pirates and smuggling, but things get even more Blytonian when Ben discovers a secret passageway after catching one of the King's revenue men; she just about recognises John Ringham (from The Aztecs) after I point him out, but she's not impressed with Ben's conduct.

Hannah: He's a bit thick, saying all these things; he's wittering on about the TARDIS to the captured official when he's already being viewed suspiciously. Why does the Doctor attract such silly people?

Episode 3

Hannah: I don't think you're going to have anything interesting to write for this story.
Me: Why not?
Hannah: Because I haven't got much to say. There's very little to say, and we can't see anything.
Me: To be fair, it's not like anyone else has got much to say about it either. This is easily the least-remembered Doctor Who story of all time.
Hannah: Why?
Me: Well, there are no surviving episodes, so nobody has been able to watch it since the original transmission, and it was made at a time when the "pure" historicals were starting to lose favour. It also doesn't have any kind of memorable hook because there are no monsters or enduring imagery or anything, and the historical setting isn't particularly iconic in the way that most of the others were, so essentially it's just four episodes of a runaround in Cornwall that nobody can watch.
Hannah: I like the setting. I find smugglers and pirates really interesting.
Me: It's not a judgement on the quality of the story, it's just that it's probably the most obscure story in the history of the series. It's like the Brad Dexter of Doctor Who.
Hannah: I don't know who that is.
Me: Exactly. He's the one from The Magnificent Seven that everyone always forgets about.
Hannah: I like Cornwall, I like the seaside and I like smugglers and pirates; I'd love this story to be amazing. They could have done it so much better.

Episode 4

This story has now become one of my most wanted missing episode recoveries, just on the strength of the location filming alone.

Hannah: There's a lot of violence in this one.
Me: It is unusually brutal, even for the historical ones.
Hannah: Wait, what? Did he flay people? Is that what he said, he turned people into sailcloth? This is getting darker every moment.
Me: He said the ship's chandler has "sewed many a merchant into a sailcloth nightgown," so I think we're supposed to interpret that as literally making clothes out of recycled sailcloth. I hope so, anyway.

Meanwhile, one of Captain Pike's pirates asks him whether there are any more smuggled goods inside the church.

Me: Don't tell him, Pike!
Hannah: (weary sigh)

As the story ambles towards its conclusion, the pace suddenly starts to pick up. At least, that's what it sounds like.

Hannah: Yay, a sword fight we can't see. It's so exciting. Swish swish, clang clang.
Me: You're never that impressed when you can see them.
Hannah: Not often. Sometimes I am.
Me: Maybe it's best left to your imagination.

That stupid boy Pike manages to let the Squire goad him into proving the obedience of his crew.

Hannah: Make them all prove their obedience by doing handstands and balancing their swords.
Me: I think you might be confusing this with Cirque du Soleil.

Then it all climaxes with a chaotic brawl in the church tomb.

Hannah: This is really weird. Such a quiet smuggling story, and then a massive fight.

After the Doctor, Ben and Polly have slipped away and the TARDIS is ready to leave, Ben is keen to get back to 1966 and rejoin his own ship before he gets in trouble.

Hannah: He still doesn't quite understand time travel. He thinks every moment that he's running around doing stuff, time is passing in his original timeline. No, that's not how time travel works; if there's any chance of you getting back, either it'll be random and nowhere near that time anyway, or hopefully you'll eventually be able to go back to exactly where you left off. So he'll have aged by however long it takes to get back, but nothing will have changed. He wants to get back to 1966 before it's too late, but it will never be too late! Time travel!
Me: But what if the next story takes place in, say, 1986?
Hannah: Yes? And?
Me: He'd be 20 years late.
Hannah: Yeah, but it's so far out that it doesn't count.

The episode ends with the set-up for the next story, as the Doctor declares that the TARDIS has landed in the coldest place in the world.

Hannah: The world?
Me: Yes.
Hannah: Coldest place in the world?
Me: That's right.
Hannah: Which world?
Me: You'll find out next week.

The Score

Hannah: I really wish it had been a better story because I like smugglers and pirates, and there were some fun bits. But as it stands, it was nothing special and I didn't understand much of what was going on, so it's only really worth...

5/10

The War Machines

Episode 1

The last story of the third season is a refreshing change of pace for a number of reasons. For one thing...

Hannah: Real episodes!

The story title is displayed in giant computer-lettering, which is so big that the last word needs to be split over two lines.

Hannah: What are they doing? "The War Mach Ines". Interesting.
Me: It's only the second story with an overall title, so they're still experimenting with the style.
Hannah: It's relevant to this story, I assume.

The TARDIS arrives in Fitzroy Square. Hannah is gobsmacked.

Hannah: How's he done that, then?
Me: What?
Hannah: How did he get them back to sixties Britain? This appears to be sixties Britain.
Me: Yes, it's the first modern-day story. Well, actually the first modern-day story was Planet of Giants but it features a shrunken TARDIS crew that doesn't interact with any other characters, so most people tend to skip over it and acknowledge this as the first instead.
Hannah: So this is the first proper contemporary sci-fi story. Very exciting.

To Hannah's obvious delight, the Doctor places an "out of order" sign on the TARDIS door ("So he does sometimes learn!") before noticing a newly-erected but very familiar landmark.

Hannah: Is that the BT Tower?
Me: It is now, but it was originally the Post Office Tower.
Hannah: He's sniffing aliens? Oh, now he can feel the presence of Daleks? Is this the first time that Daleks have interfered in modern times? It feels very modern Who-ish to me, now that the Daleks have sneaked into a human organisation and built something.
Me: This is the modern show, pretty much; it's a sci-fi story set in contemporary London. It becomes a standard of the series later, but this is the very first time it happens.
Hannah: I'm liking the new style, it's just weird that this is the first time he's started wigging out because he can sense Daleks. Is it some weird Time Lord intuition thing?

The Doctor and Dodo somehow manage to casually walk straight into the laboratory on the top floor and discover that Professor Brett has created the ultimate supercomputer, WOTAN.

Hannah: What a waste of paper; it's printing out a six-digit answer on a whole sheet of A4. You know what this reminds me of? The Discworld computer, Hex. Out of cheese error!

The professor's secretary Polly takes Dodo to "the hottest nightspot in town," the Inferno nightclub, and Hannah's senses are immediately assaulted with an explosion of fab and groovy stock music.

Hannah: Well, this seems completely out of place! Did somebody complain that it wasn't "in touch" enough?
Me: It's 1966! We're in contemporary London at the beginning of the Swinging Sixties; this is when the cultural revolution started happening.
Hannah: It actually does make sense, because it makes the story feel closer to home and more relevant. It's scarier having a threat in modern times. So it's not the Daleks that he was sensing earlier, but something else has still spooked him?
Me: How do you know it's not the Daleks? It would fit the title.
Hannah: Polly seems strangely important in this.
Me: That's Anneke Wills; she was married to Michael Gough at the time, who you may remember from The Celestial Toymaker.
Hannah: I feel like there's an age difference.
Me: About 25 years. He encouraged her to do this because he had so much fun playing the Toymaker.
Hannah: Ah, that's nice.

When Polly and Dodo's new friend Ben gets into a fight with one of the rowdy clubbers, Hannah is impressed with the choreography for a change.

Hannah: Nice. Not too shit. There's no hesitation; usually they do it slowly to avoid hitting each other. The two actors are really good. Wait a minute, the Doctor took a taxi?
Me: Yes?
Hannah: And he paid for it?!
Me: Why wouldn't he pay for it?
Hannah: He doesn't have money!

The Doctor stops off at the Royal Scientific Club, where Sir Charles Summer informs us that WOTAN operates itself without any human input; Hannah finds it odd that this is supposed to be reassuring ("I'm much more disturbed by that!"), especially when she realises that it can hypnotise the scientists in Brett's office. WOTAN believes humans are incapable of running the planet, a point of view to which I can readily relate.

The Doctor entered the nightclub in search of Dodo and the bar staff immediately start digging his fab gear; Hannah responds with the most disbelieving expression I've ever seen since we started this project. And that's really saying something.

Hannah: What?! "He looks like a disc jockey"?!
Me: "He looks like that disc jockey." A particular one, not disc jockeys in general.
Hannah: Which one?
Me: Jimmy Savile, presumably.
Hannah: Ah... okay.
Me: Yes, probably best if we don't get into that.

And then we come to the moment I've been waiting for. Dodo is hypnotised by WOTAN and receives her instructions: "Doctor Who is required. Bring him here." I turn to Hannah, expecting her to erupt with apoplectic fury, but we segue into the credits without so much as a raised eyebrow.

Hannah: One of the characters was called Flash.
Me: Okay... not... you're not going to comment on what just happened?
Hannah: Why? What just happened?
Me: Weren't you listening to what he said?
Hannah: I didn't hear the last bit; I only heard him say "Doctor Who is required."
Me: ...
Hannah: What?
Me: You're not interested that they're calling him "Doctor Who", then?
Hannah: No.
Me: Okay, great.
Hannah: It's happened before.
Me: That's the first time he's ever been called "Doctor Who" on-screen, apart from in the credits.
Hannah: Really?
Me: Yes.
Hannah: Does it matter?

Episode 2

Hannah: Maybe WOTAN is asking one of the scientists "Doctor, who is required?".
Me: I'm sure that must be it.
Hannah: WOTAN wants to create new machines that are portable and have their own power unit included. So basically they need him to help invent the laptop.

Their first attempt to recruit him to the cause is not an unqualified success, and basically amounts to Dodo trying to guide him towards two men who are waiting across the road with a bottle and a cloth. Meanwhile, in a nearby warehouse, WOTAN's new "mobile computers" are already in production.

Hannah: I love how he just casually proffered a bottle of chloroform in the middle of the street. How have they already gathered everything they need to build these War Machines? Oh, and all the crates have got a "W" printed on them! A "WOTAN" logo! They've organised that very quickly. There's no way they got all this stuff together in less than one night.
Me: Astonishing, isn't it? It only takes the Post Office a few hours to build an army of war machines capable of world domination, but it took them five days to deliver my Father's Day card by first-class post.
Hannah: Oh, no.
Me: What's wrong?
Hannah: It's got spiky whisks. It's got four arms, and two of them are spiky whisks.

The workers even manage to take time out of their busy schedule to murder a local tramp ("Poor tramp"), whose death is somehow momentous enough to make the pages of the morning newspaper. After WOTAN fails to condition the Doctor over the phone (and thoroughly disturbs Hannah with the accompanying music) the Doctor expertly deprograms Dodo, wipes her memory of the whole ordeal, and sends her away to recover in Sir Charles' house in the countryside. Having achieved all this, he stops to wonder what Dodo knew about WOTAN's plan.

Hannah: Too late, you've already put her to sleep. Isn't it better to keep her memory, so that he can get information and know exactly who or what he's up against?

When WOTAN's pet project is finally unveiled, Hannah is even less impressed than before; as far as she's concerned it's nothing more than a bigger and bulkier version of a Dalek, gliding around with its waving arms and whisk-shaped guns.

Hannah: It's a tank with arms. I wonder where I've seen that kind of design before.
Me: Surely most tanks are armed?
Hannah: Ha. No, it's a small portable tank with arms.
Me: A portable tank? As opposed to what, a fish tank?
Hannah: It looks silly. Clumsy, inefficient, slow and hard to manoeuvre. What is it doing? It's just knocking into everything!

During the credits, Hannah gets to play her favourite game.

Hannah: Is Dodo going to be on holiday next week?
Me: I genuinely don't know how to answer that.

Episode 3

Me: I can tell you're impressed with the War Machines.
Hannah: Bollocks. They're careening around all over the place like drunk toddlers.
Me: When was the last time you saw a drunk toddler?
Hannah: A video on YouTube. Although to be honest I think it was just a toddler.

While the Doctor and Sir Charles await Ben's return ("There's all kinds of bad things happening, and he's sitting there drinking?") and a truckload of army soldiers prepare to tackle the War Machines ("Aww, what a big radio!"), the hypnotised Polly is starting to question her conditioning.

Hannah: Why is it that always one of the main characters that manages to break their programming? It's never one of the other random guys who thinks "maybe I shouldn't be doing this" and just leaves.
Me: I think the main characters are supposed to be made of stronger stuff.
Hannah: They're just people.

The battle in Covent Garden shows that the soldiers' weapons are predictably useless against War Machine 3, although the War Machine's weaponry doesn't look any more formidable.

Hannah: Look at him, firing his smoke-whisk.
Me: They're hardly likely to fire actual ammunition around all these crates of explosives, are they?
Hannah: Maybe they're just fire extinguishers and the War Machines are being misunderstood. Why do they keep crashing into all these piles of empty boxes? Are they not dramatic enough by themselves? They've got mallets for arms - which are only really useful for crushing things - and they've got the fire extinguisher whisks. Two mallets and two smoky whisks.

The episode ends with one of the all-time great dramatic cliffhangers: everyone decides to make a hasty strategic withdrawal except the Doctor, who stands his ground to face the War Machine alone.

Hannah: Uh... Doctor? You wanna, like, run? No?

Episode 4

Hannah: That's just blatant vandalism.

Either the War Machines are very keen on wanton destruction, or the props are so cumbersome that the production team can't steer them properly.

Hannah: It's like a cowboy, shooting its guns into the air. It really doesn't like telephone boxes, does it?

Luckily we have Kenneth Kendall to bring some much-needed credibility to the proceedings.

Hannah: Is this a real television newsreader?
Me: Yes, he's the first celebrity ever to play themselves in Doctor Who. He also plays the BBC announcer in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Speaking of things whose origin and purpose are still a total mystery, the War Machine is surrounded by a magnetic field when it trundles straight into the Doctor's blindingly obvious trap.

Hannah: It's a silly robot in a boxing ring.

The Doctor reprograms the War Machine to enter Brett's office and destroy HAL (excuse me, "WOTAN"), almost killing Polly in the process. Presumably most of the scientists weren't so lucky.

Hannah: It feels a little bit anticlimactic; the Doctor just tinkered with a robot and sent it in. He didn't have to have a heart-to-heart with WOTAN.
Me: "A heart-to-heart with WOTAN"?
Hannah: Yeah, the Doctor often likes to try and talk his enemies down before he destroys them.
Me: It's a computer; what do you want him to say?
Hannah: It's a sentient computer! It would have been nice for them to have a little talk, even if it was just: "I'm the Doctor, what do you want?" "Everything." "Well, you can't have that, and I'm going to stop you." It seems like a bit of an abrupt way to defeat something that was going to take over the world.

The Doctor returns to the TARDIS now that everything has been resolved. Well, almost.

Hannah: So where is Dodo? She was on holiday... wasn't she? Is she not coming back?

Ben and Polly bring the Doctor a message from Dodo; she's decided to stay behind in London.

Hannah: That's not a proper goodbye! She left in the middle of a story?
Me: Yep. Episode 2 was the last you'll ever see of her.
Hannah: In the middle of a story? Why would you not even say goodbye?
Me: It's not the only abrupt departure in the series, but it's the worst offender by a country mile.

But it's okay, because Ben and Polly end up boarding the TARDIS when he's not looking.

Hannah: Has he left again without realising that they've come on board? That's just... why doesn't he just ask people if they'd like to come with him?

The Score

Hannah: I like the new style. I don't know how I feel about WOTAN; he was obviously a bit rubbish if he can be defeated by a handful of people. And as for the War Machines themselves, I can't even begin to say just how rubbish they are; I don't see how he was ever going to take over the world with those. So there are lots of good elements, but overall there was a little bit too much running around and not doing much, with a slightly weak ending.

7/10

The Savages

Episode 1

Hannah: I miss the individual episode titles.

We're not even three minutes into the first episode before Hannah's archaeological sensibilities are affronted once again, this time by Dodo's suggestion that the people of the stone age were savages.

Hannah: They weren't savages! They had culture and things!

I always enjoy it when she inadvertently gets to the core of the story right at the very beginning.

The Doctor walks up to the city so that he can make some calculations with his Reacting Vibrator ("His what?!") but instead meets the city Elders, who have been following his exploits and have already anticipated the arrival of "the Traveller from Beyond Time". This is particularly impressive when you consider that the Doctor himself has no idea where he's going.

Hannah: I don't see how they could predict that he would arrive. Sounds like bollocks to me. But I like the idea of a group of people that already knows who he is before they've met him, so that he arrives somewhere where he already has a reputation.
Me: They're essentially watching his adventures on television, so maybe they're the in-universe equivalent of Doctor Who fans. Except, you know, civilised.
Hannah: Are Doctor Who fans not civilised, as a rule?
Me: They're mostly okay, as long as you stay away from social media. I've had to stop reading the official Facebook page because the user comments are so cancerous.

Their leader Jano is keen to show his celebrity guest just how civilised the Elders are (in contrast to the savages living outside of the city), so he gifts Steven and Dodo with an ornate dagger and a diamond-encrusted mirror. Dodo excitedly remarks that the diamonds are genuine.

Hannah: How can she tell? As Dave Gorman teaches us on Modern Life is Goodish, you can't identify a real diamond without specialist equipment. Or by holding it against a piece of newsprint.
Me: Well, considering none of these episodes actually exist anymore, we can't tell what's going on. For all you know she could have picked up a newspaper in Tombstone.
Hannah: Those helmets look useless, by the way. Whose idea was it to give the city guards some protective headgear that doesn't even cover their heads?

Hannah, genre-savvy as ever, is convinced there's some corruption at work in this ostensibly perfect civilisation, but the Elders are reluctant to discuss their secret.

Hannah: It ruins the mystique a little when people are being so openly dodgy about the subject. Is it a drug, or something? A drug that increases their brain power, to the detriment of something else?

Then...

Hannah: Ah, they're like vampires. They suck the life energy out of the savages and absorb it into themselves. Then the extra energy turns the brain up, and they can use more of their intellect to achieve clever things that no one else has done before.
Me: You don't sound very impressed.
Hannah: I've read other stories like that.

The cliffhanger, in which Dodo wanders away from the guided tour and discovers one of the poor discarded savages lurching down the corridor, looks like something from a horror film. At least, that's what we assume it looks like.

Hannah: It's shrivelled like a zombie. I like this story. It's my kind of sci-fi.
Me: In what way?
Hannah: A colony that's so-called perfect, but with a horrible dark secret beneath it all. It's a lot like some episodes of modern Doctor Who in many ways, like "New Earth" or "The Beast Below". Perfection with an evil undercurrent.

Episode 2

The soundtrack feels a lot more atmospheric than usual; the string music for these episodes sounds completely unlike any of the incidental music we've heard in the series thus far.

Hannah: I'm liking the music in this. It's a lot more intense and emotional.

Hannah is disappointed that the Doctor doesn't seem too worried about Dodo's disappearance ("He has more interest in science than people sometimes"), although she's rather callous herself when a laboratory technician fluffs his line.

Hannah: Sack him.
Me: Sack him?
Hannah: Yeah. Fumble McFumbles.

In fact she hasn't been too impressed with the Doctor's behaviour in general; he's been "annoyingly aloof" from the beginning, ignoring the concerns of his companions and refusing to listen either when Dodo goes missing or when she returns shortly afterwards in a state of distress. It comes as a huge relief to find that he's equally suspicious of this "wonderful civilisation" and has been staying on the right side of his hosts while he worked out what was going on.

Hannah: So now they have a perfect opportunity to just go back to the TARDIS and leave.
Me: Except they're not going to want to leave if they know something's up.
Hannah: Exactly. That's why they can leave. Story-wise there always needs a reason for them to have to stay, and it's either because they can't or because they don't want to. They're staying because it's the right thing to do.
Me: We've come a long way since the morally-ambiguous Doctor of the early days. Three years ago the writers would have needed to cut him off from the TARDIS to get him to stick around and help.

For a story that doesn't often receive too much attention, Hannah seems even more engaged with it than usual.

Hannah: I like the pace that things are revealed; it's always a sign of good writing when the storyline keeps you curious but also doesn't keep you painfully in the dark for too long.

The Doctor makes an impassioned appeal to the Elders.

Hannah: Why is he calling himself a human?
Me: He's probably just speaking figuratively.
Hannah: Jano doesn't seem to appreciate being compared to the Daleks. He should be flattered that he's in such esteemed company.

Inevitably, the Doctor's plea only results in him being taken away to have his own life-force extracted.

Hannah: I wonder if he's going to break the machine. By being too shiny.
Me: Too shiny?
Hannah: Yeah. He's full of life-force. Lots of it! He's a Time Lord, he's not human. Maybe this won't work.

As the Doctor undergoes the procedure it's obvious that the episode is building up to a climax, but it's clearly not in any hurry to get there.

Hannah: It's a long cliffhanger!

Then, two seconds later...

Hannah: There we go.

Episode 3

Hannah: The choices people are making throughout the story seem to be less stupid than usual.

Jano is now planning to perform the same operation on Steven and Dodo, once he's transferred the Doctor's life-force into himself.

Hannah: Greedy bastards.

Hannah is uncomfortable when one of the savages, Tor, tells Steven and Dodo that the Doctor has been "used" ("Such a dirty word"), but she's downright livid when an enemy guard asks Tor where our heroes are hiding and he accidentally gives away their location by glancing towards it.

Hannah: Well, it's all his fault then. He looked at the cave. They wouldn't have gone in there if he hadn't been loitering around and given them away. I would have pretended to give them away, sent the guard down the wrong tunnel, and then crept up behind him in the dark and knocked him out; it's not like his helmet would have done any good.
Me: You're very sneaky.
Hannah: Yes. I'm also not stupid.

As luck would have it, Dodo's new mirror works nicely against their light guns.

Hannah: Very handy that she was given a mirror as a present. Almost as if this was always going to happen.
Me: I do love a good Chekhov's Gun.
Hannah: I like the way the script emphasises how human the savages are, showing that they're capable of great buildings and art; it makes their usage by the Elders all the more abhorrent. It's just a shame they've jumped to calling the strangers "gods" as soon as Steven proves the guards can be successfully defeated.

Meanwhile, Jano isn't quite feeling himself; it looks like the transference hasn't quite gone according to plan.

Hannah: Has his brain been fried?

But it's even better than that: he starts doing a spot-on impersonation of William Hartnell.

Hannah: Hmmm.

Predictably, this is our main talking point after the episode ends.

Hannah: So even though he's talking as if he were the Doctor, he hasn't actually stolen the Doctor out of his head?
Me: The Doctor's mind and body are still intact, they just took some of his life-force from him. It's like giving blood; you take blood out of someone and give it to someone else, and then the donor's body replaces the missing plasma and red blood cells. Normally the same thing happens with the life-force; it's removed from the savages to give to the Elders, and then the savages eventually recover.
Hannah: And the Elders aren't at all disturbed by the fact that they suddenly get the memories and personalities of the savages?
Me: That bit doesn't normally happen. That's the point.
Hannah: That's what I'm saying, I thought perhaps they had accidentally stolen the Doctor's soul this time because he's different.
Me: Not stolen, exactly, it's just that they've never done it to a Time Lord before, so it's having this unforeseen side-effect. Although obviously the concept of a Time Lord still hasn't been invented yet.
Hannah: So his life essence is a bit different and has started making them talk funny?

Episode 4

Hannah: He's very good at imitating the Doctor. Pity we can't see the action.
Me: Yes, he's got exactly the right speech pattern and mannerisms and everything.

Jano starts giving orders to the guards and Hannah briefly wonders whether he's gone back to normal, but we later find out that he hasn't just absorbed the Doctor's intellect; he's also received a permanent sense of conscience.

Hannah: Does this mean that not a single one of the Elders or guards has a conscience at all? They're completely happy to go along with the idea that the savages are basically sub-humans?
Me: I believe the original idea was for this story to be a parable about apartheid-era South Africa, so I think we're supposed to assume that it's a sort of institutionalised discrimination.
Hannah: Even at the time of apartheid there were people who disagreed with it.
Me: It wasn't enough, though, was it? Apartheid lasted for over 40 years.
Hannah: But I find it a little bit questionable that not a single person ever has tried to go against this system. Either that or they've been very unsuccessful.

Having shown Jano a better way of life, the Doctor decides to forgo diplomacy in favour of sheer brute force and he cheerfully joins Jano and the savages in smashing up the laboratory.

Hannah: They could just rebuild it, though. What they need to do is find and destroy the blueprints, wipe the data from the computer, and hope that nobody remembers enough to rebuild it. I'd like to see all this savage violence.

It looks like the Elders and the savages are on the verge of peace, but they need a mediator to smooth things over.

Hannah: I bet they turn to the Doctor and find that he's gone. It's always the way. The Doctor will start something, but he won't stay and finish it. He can't be expected to lead everybody and show them all the way.

Then I feel her starting to squeeze my hand when she realises what's happening.

Hannah: No, I like Steven! I can see what's happening here! I really like him. He's possibly my favourite companion so far, as an individual. Ian and Barbara together are a good pair, but individually, Steven is my favourite.

Thankfully, some fragments of Steven's departure exist on Super 8 film, and we get to see the Doctor shaking his hand and saying goodbye.

Hannah: It's nice to see people actually being able to say goodbye to each other. Sometimes it feels too quick.

After Steven walks away for the very last time, we get a bittersweet exchange between the Doctor and Dodo as they return to the TARDIS.

Hannah: Oh, it didn't have a eulogy.
Me: A eulogy?
Hannah: Yeah, the Doctor always says something nice. Well, I wasn't expecting him to leave. I suppose he's a good person for them to choose, but I'm trying to work out whether or not Steven really would have chosen to stay. Wasn't he happy going around with the Doctor? I know he's found somewhere he's wanted, but he's still a bit of a prisoner.
Me: He was already a prisoner when they first picked him up in The Chase, so I don't suppose he's too worried about it.
Hannah: Anyway, I think that ended quite well. And it's even better because usually the Doctor just walks away from things and says "Hopefully you can rebuild your civilisation, we're leaving now." Whereas in this situation, everything has changed and they're sort of responsible for it, so it's good to see them following through with something.

The Score

Hannah: Well. I love that kind of sci-fi story, where it's a perfect civilisation but you know there's something going on underneath, and then they uncover some kind of morally-corrupt problem and fix it. It had a good ending and I'm sad that Steven's gone, but they did it well and at least he got to say goodbye. I feel a little bit uncertain because we couldn't see any of the action, so I don't know what the story deserves. But if I'm judging it on what I can see, I really enjoyed it and couldn't find anything too wrong with it. I genuinely feel like there's no reason not to give it...

10/10

Wow. Our first perfect score. And to a story that doesn't even exist anymore!

The Gunfighters

A Holiday for the Doctor [Episode 1]

We're in Tombstone, Arizona, 1881. Hannah can see where this is heading but she knows very little about the historical event, having turned down my offer to show her the 1957 John Sturges film Gunfight at the O.K. Corral earlier in the week. Fair enough; who needs a hit film from the director of The Magnificent Seven when you could be watching the first ever TV western made by the BBC?

Hannah: The Doctor almost looks dressed for the period.
Me: This is exactly the period he's dressed for; Hartnell's costume has a late-Victorian look.
Hannah: This is ancient history for Steven.

We open with a song. "The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon" plays at intervals throughout the story, providing a linking narration in the style of a western ballad. Personally I love it, and I've never understood the objections that it sometimes receives; it enhances the atmosphere of the western setting, and it's an interesting and unique narrative device for the programme. But what will Hannah think?

Me: What do you think of the linking narration? It's sung by Linda Baron from Open All Hours.
Hannah: I like it.

Phew.

After getting a toothache at the end of the previous episode, the Doctor is in search of a dentist and just happens to come across Doc Holliday's surgery.

Hannah: What a coincidence, he's a dental doctor.
Me: Yes, that's historically accurate.
Hannah: I mean it's a coincidence that the Doctor happens to come here just when he needs a dentist. It's also very lucky that he's arrived somewhere with a humanoid dentist who knows the anatomy, as well. What if the TARDIS just randomly takes you to places with no humanoids for ages, while your toothache keeps getting worse?
Me: Oh, I don't know; based on the last three years, the chances of the TARDIS randomly arriving on Earth seem to be pretty good.

The Doctor is happy to confront Daleks and demigods but he's terrified of a trip to the dentist, and the look on his face as he braces himself for the extraction shows a side of Hartnell's Doctor that we've never seen before.

Hannah: Awww! Poor Doctor.

Meanwhile, the Clanton Brothers and their hired gunslinger Seth Harper are in town to take revenge on Doc Holliday; the Doctor, of course, gets caught in the middle of their vendetta.

Hannah: I love how they just get mixed up in anything, anywhere.

But when the Clantons force Steven and Dodo to perform a musical routine at gunpoint, we find that Hannah can only suspend so much disbelief.

Hannah: They're very lucky that she can actually play the piano. And that he's able to sing perfectly, just by sight-reading the sheet music for the first time. It was all going so well until then, and then it became improbable.

I thought we'd already bypassed "improbable" in the previous story, but apparently not.

After the credits, and once Hannah has gotten over her initial surprise that the ballad was an original song written for this production (some of the verses in the next three episodes would be an impressive coincidence otherwise), she turns her attention to the story's biggest weakness.

Hannah: The accents are very annoying. Obviously I don't know what the authentic accents would have sounded like, but I doubt they'd sound like this. Very annoying. Little bit grating.
Me: You can't have everything. Mary Poppins had already been released a couple of years earlier, so try thinking of it as our response to Dick Van Dyke.
Hannah: Fair enough.

Don't Shoot the Pianist [Episode 2]

Hannah's credulity is stretched even further when Steven takes over the piano duties.

Hannah: So, will this astronaut from the distant future be able to play the piano? Oh, apparently he can! Do they even have pianos anymore?
Me: Maybe it's a pianola? It would explain why their hand movements aren't matching any of the notes.
Hannah: Then why do they need a piano player at all? The Doctor just happens to have picked up two people who know how to play the piano incredibly well. It's not impossible, but it seems extremely unlikely that two companions picked up from very different parts of time and space would coincidentally both have these musical skills.

She doesn't seem to know how seriously she should be taking this story. Fortunately, this is clarified nicely when the Doctor finally shows up and Seth Harper tells him that he won't be leaving town, prompting the entire Clanton gang to lean forward and collectively say "Alive, that is."

Hannah: Is this supposed to be a comedy?
Me: Yes, it's yet another comedy historical. It's written by Donald Cotton, the same writer who did The Myth Makers.

Given her mixed feelings about that story (not to mention The Romans), I'm wondering how she's going to react to this information. Thankfully, she seems to be okay with it.

Me: Would it surprise you to learn that this story used to have a reputation as the worst Doctor Who adventure of all time?
Hannah: It does surprise me, because it's not that bad.
Me: It's one of my favourites, and certainly one of my top Hartnells. A couple of fans wrote a review of this story in the eighties, back when hardly anyone had seen the older ones, and called it the worst Doctor Who story ever; these are the same people who called The Celestial Toymaker a lost classic, if that tells you anything. Thankfully most people know better these days, now that everyone can see it for themselves.
Hannah: It's captivating. It's a well-acted, interesting story.

The highlight of the story is Hartnell's performance; he has some very funny lines, and he's clearly enjoying himself immensely. My favourite part of the whole adventure is his response to the Clanton Brothers introducing themselves, while Hannah particularly enjoys his complaint that "people keep giving me guns and I do wish they wouldn't" ("That's very Doctor-y").

Hannah: I do actually find the song annoying.
Me: You said you liked it last time!
Hannah: It's a good idea; it's an interesting device and adds another layer to the episodes. But it's annoying.

Never mind. I'll settle for that.

Me: So how do you think this compares to other sci-fi comedy westerns?
Hannah: Like what?
Me: Well, there's Back to the Future: Part III, there's that episode of Red Dwarf...
Hannah: I don't remember much about the Red Dwarf episode.
Me: "Gunmen of the Apocalypse" won an International Emmy Award, you know.
Hannah: And how many awards did this win?
Me: The same number as Carry On Cowboy.

Johnny Ringo [Episode 3]

Hannah: People are dying left, right and centre, but weirdly there's no real sense of danger. I didn't even feel worried when Steven had his head in a noose. It feels odd that there's a sense of light-heartedness at the same time as being dark.

I don't ever bother trying to point out that the director's daughter Jane Tucker (from Rod, Jane and Freddy) appears in the mob scene, because Hannah never watched Rainbow as a child. I've tried to get my head around this, but frankly it just doesn't bear thinking about.

Hannah: The Doctor still keeps calling Wyatt Earp "Mr Werp". Is that on purpose?
Me: Yes.
Hannah: Why?
Me: It's a running joke.
Hannah: Steven even picks up on it, but the Doctor never corrects himself; usually he calls people the wrong name once or twice, but this is continuous. And how are we spelling that? "Wearp"? "Wurp"?

After the mob has broken up, accompanied by what Hannah regards as some of the ballad's more peculiar lyrics ("He's gone kind of mental"), she's expecting the plot to be neatly wrapped up.

Hannah: That felt like the end. Everything's fine now, all they have to do is get Dodo and go back to the TARDIS. What could possibly stop them?
Me: Well, the fact that they haven't got Dodo.
Hannah: Ah. That'll be it, then.
Me: And also that we've spent three episodes building up to a shootout that hasn't happened yet.
Hannah: I was genuinely thinking this story could have ended now; I'd completely forgotten that Doc Holliday had run away from town and taken Dodo.

As the cliffhanger sets up the inevitable finale, Hannah seems strangely quiet.

Me: Are you alright?
Hannah: I was thinking about cowboy hats.

The OK Corral [Episode 4]

Hannah: Oh. I'd forgotten about this.
Me: What?
Hannah: The singing.
Me: Don't you think it adds to the atmosphere?
Hannah: Yes. Adds to the western theme.
Me: And it's unique in the history of Doctor Who. Even if I hated the song, I'd love the fact that they tried it.
Hannah: I love it as a concept. I don't like that style of song that much, that's all. It's not for me, but it works.
Me: It's not like I'd normally spend my time listening to Old West ballads either, but there's a time and place for everything.
Hannah: Why have the town marshals got two identical "wanted" posters in their office? Surely it would make sense to have different ones. I'm sure there's more than one person who's wanted.

When the legendary gunfight finally comes, there's a familiar sense of mood whiplash.

Me: It's like The Myth Makers; you get three episodes of light comedy, and then it turns all violent and brutal.
Hannah: They're all lousy shots.
Me: Maybe everyone's very good at dodging?
Hannah: They're just walking forwards and being shot at!
Me: I think the Earps are supposed to be better marksmen than the Clantons.
Hannah: Yeah, but they're facing off almost point-blank. There's no excuse for this.

I try to distract her by pointing out some notable historical inaccuracies in this story, but she's not having it.

Hannah: I don't care, I'm trying to get over the fact that nobody can shoot each other. They should all be out of bullets by now. Why is it taking so long?
Me: Historically the gunfight lasted about thirty seconds, but in dramatic terms it would be a bit boring if they all killed each other straight away.
Hannah: Well it's much more realistic. Are these guns so old and shit that nobody can fire in a straight line and hit anything that they're pointing at? Oh good, people are starting to actually die.
Me: It's called dramatic licence. You don't want a total anticlimax after two hours of story.
Hannah: That doesn't mean you have to give everyone the aim of a Stormtrooper.

As the time travellers prepare to leave, Dodo stops to listen to the ballad.

Hannah: Are they breaking the fourth wall and implying that they can hear their own narration song?
Me: No, that's coming from the saloon.
Hannah: Thank God for that.

Sadly, we've come to the end of an era.

Me: That was the last story with individual episode titles.
Hannah: It sounds more boring that way. The stories are still more than one episode each, right?
Me: Yes, but now the audience has some sense of the series being divided into specific adventures, rather than one continuous ongoing story.
Hannah: Great.

The Score

Hannah: I did like it, but I didn't like all of it. Certain things were good, but the accents were a little bit annoying. It's a nice balanced story; dark and gritty with some comedic elements. It's just the shit bits that I don't like.

8/10

Me: You're sure?
Hannah: It's fun, well-balanced, entertaining, mostly well-acted and well-directed. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood because my tooth still hurts.
Me: You should see a dentist.
Hannah: Hilarious.

The Celestial Toymaker

The Celestial Toyroom [Episode 1]

Hannah: That's concerning.

That phrase could sum up a lot of my feelings about this story, but the cause of Hannah's concern here is that something extremely powerful has penetrated the safety barrier of the TARDIS. Only Dodo seems particularly anxious about what might be outside.

Hannah: She does make good points. She was all up for running around and doing stupid things last time, and now suddenly she's being all cautious because they don't know what's out there.
Me: Maybe it's just more scary now.
Hannah: But it makes sense that the Doctor's curiosity gets the better of him, and it's his fault that they're stuck.

The story's premise in a nutshell: our heroes are forced to play a series of deadly party games in the nursery-like realm of the Celestial Toymaker, which apparently exists outside of space and time.

Hannah: This is an interesting story. You would assume it's not likely that they'll actually lose the games, but maybe one or both of the companions could be lost. Are Steven and Dodo expendable to show the Doctor's flaws, like his curiosity and ego?

I think she may be overestimating how much narrative depth we're going to be getting out of this story.

Meanwhile, the Toymaker selects Steven and Dodo's opponents for the first game, but there's a problem.

Hannah: I don't like clowns!
Me: That's a shame.
Hannah: I don't really want to see this.

Dodo's verdict is that the Toymaker's surreal playroom "looks dead boring."

Hannah: No, it doesn't! She's weird.

Whilst we talk amongst ourselves about the correct pluralisation of "TARDIS" (Hannah favours "TARDI" but it's clearly "TARDISes"), it's time for Steven and Dodo to meet their opponents.

Hannah: NO! Not clowns!
Me: Would you find it worse if these episodes existed and you could see the clowns moving, or is it worse seeing them frozen in still images like this?
Hannah: I'm not sure.

One of the clowns presents Dodo with a bouquet of flowers, and a jet of water squirts her in the face.

Hannah: Hilarious.

Hannah has a theory about the Toymaker.

Hannah: I think he's a Time Lord, if he's able to affect TARDIS machinery. Or is he actually just magic?
Me: He's supposed to be like some kind of demigod. He's probably more powerful than a Time Lord if he can create entire worlds.
Hannah: I don't like those kinds of enemies because they're overpowered, and there's no way to beat him unless you play the game; you can't outwit him, you can't run, you can't trick him, it's just a god making you play games and you literally can't win unless you play by his rules. I don't like it when someone is so overpowered that there's no way to outsmart them, it just takes the fun out of it.
Me: You haven't even seen it yet.
Hannah: I've seen situations like this before.
Me: You never know, they might still find a way to outsmart him.
Hannah: Yeah, but within the parameters of the game that's set. So the Doctor has met him before, then? How did he escape the first time?

The Toymaker, by the way, is played by Michael Gough.

Me: He was Alfred in the Batman films in the eighties and nineties.
Hannah: Which I haven't seen.
Me: He also played Bertrand Russell in Wittgenstein, Derek Jarman's 1993 biography film about the life of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Hannah: I certainly haven't seen that.
Me: Would you like to? We have it on DVD.
Hannah: No.

While Steven and Dodo play their own game, the Doctor has to play the Trilogic Game (a version of the Tower of Hanoi puzzle).

Hannah: Arin was able to do this in an episode of Game Grumps, so I'm hoping the Doctor can.
Me: Well it can't be that hard if Arin was able to do it, he can't even play any of the Sonic the Hedgehog games properly.
Hannah: Well, he did a simplified version, anyway. The Doctor has to make 1,023 moves in this one and he's only got one attempt, so he's going to find it a lot harder.
Me: I bet he could still complete Sonic Mania with all seven Chaos Emeralds, though.

The female clown has an annoyingly squeaky voice.

Hannah: That's painful.
Me: That's Carmen Silvera.
Hannah: Who's that?
Me: She was in 'Allo 'Allo!.
Hannah: I saw half an episode once.
Me: She also appeared in one of the best episodes of Dad's Army, if that helps.

In a (literally) transparent attempt to write William Hartnell out of the remainder of the story, the Doctor is rendered invisible again except for one hand.

Hannah: That's creepy. I don't really know why.
Me: It may have something to do with the fact that his disembodied hand is still playing the game.

Steven and Dodo also have a significant disadvantage.

Hannah: Does it actually say anywhere that they have to keep the blindfold on? Why doesn't Steven just take it off? If the clowns can cheat, he can cheat.
Me: They're playing blind man's buff; I think you're supposed to take it for granted that you can't remove the blindfold.
Hannah: I thought that was a different game? I thought that was running around trying to catch people?
Me: Well, yeah, you don't tend to swing from ropes like this when you play it at children's parties.
Hannah: Exactly. It's not usually an obstacle course.

The good news for Hannah is that we're done with clowns for the time being; the bad news is that the next episode promises something else that she finds even more disturbing.

Hannah: Oh, "Hall of Dolls". Sounds like there's going to be more horrible things for me to look at that I don't like.

The Hall of Dolls [Episode 2]

Steven and Dodo's opponents for this episode are the King and Queen of Hearts, and something about them seems eerily familiar. For a moment, it looks like Hannah may have spotted it.

Hannah: Is that somebody we know, dressed up as the King?
Me: Did you have anyone in mind?
Hannah: It sounds like the Doctor.
Me: No, it's the two clowns from the previous episode. If you lose one of the Toymaker's games you become one of his toys, so all the people Steven and Dodo meet in this story are played by the same handful of actors. These are people that have played the games before and are now being constantly resurrected as different characters by the Toymaker.
Hannah: Interesting concept; people stuck as toys forever. It's creepy, terrifying, and gives the episodes a sense of urgency.
Me: You'd think so, wouldn't you?

We eventually come to the point where the King is trying to choose which one of the dolls to pick up. The dialogue here is almost indistinguishable, and I probably shouldn't be drawing anyone's attention to it, but I just can't let it pass without comment.

Me: Now, listen carefully...
Hannah: (distastefully) Oooh.
Me: Yes.

The king has decided to play "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" to make his selection, but has regrettably opted for the version containing a racial slur (i.e. the n-word).

Hannah: Did other people notice that?
Me: The audio has been deliberately muffled on this copy of the recording, and it's been hidden on the official soundtrack CD by placing Peter Purves' narration over the top so that you can't hear it. But it's definitely there; it's officially a word that appears canonically in Doctor Who.
Hannah: Was it in the script? Or was the actor just improvising?
Me: The script just says "the King closes his eyes and eeny-meeny-miny-mos at them," so it looks like the actor interpreted it as reciting this version.
Hannah: Hmm. (after a long pause) The sixties were a different time.
Me: Not that different. It definitely wasn't an acceptable term even in 1966, in spite of all the people that still try to defend it as a product of its time.

The game involves throwing some life-sized dolls into a series of deadly chairs in order to identify the safe one. Sounds straightforward, right?

Hannah: I don't know why it's taking them so long. Just get on with it! How difficult is it to pick up a doll, throw it in a chair and try another one? There's no other obvious way to find the safe chair. Also, there aren't enough dolls, so how could anyone ever win unless their opponents sacrificed themselves?

Dodo agrees with this assessment, and takes her chances with one of the remaining chairs.

Hannah: She is foolish.

Having won the game, she seems surprised that their ordeal (and ours) still isn't over.

Hannah: They thought he'd only do two things? Idiot.

As with the previous cliffhanger, Steven and Dodo are presented with a riddle to tease the game for the next episode. In addition, the reconstruction we're watching also shows the riddle on-screen at the beginning of the credits sequence.

Hannah: It's not really a riddle this time. Just instructions.
Me: I wonder if the real episodes recapped each riddle in the credits like that.
Hannah: It would be interesting if they did, giving people an extra bit of cliffhanger to see if they could work it out by next week. But that wasn't a riddle, so there wasn't much point having it up there.
Me: What do you make of this so far?
Hannah: I like it, it's an engaging story. No one's annoying me very much.

The Dancing Floor [Episode 3]

Hannah: I don't like how overpowered the Toymaker is. But actually, it just goes to show that there's so much out there in space and time; you can't always come across a "normal" enemy and expect to simply beat them. Travelling in the TARDIS really is dangerous, beyond their imagination.

So what exactly does the Toymaker do with his god-level power? He makes Steven and Dodo spend an entire episode searching for a key, which has been hidden somewhere in a domestic kitchen.

Hannah: It doesn't really feel like a game. Also, throwing dolls on dangerous chairs didn't feel like a game either. At least the first one was an actual competition, where they had to walk from one end of the room to the other.
Me: Yes, what a great game that was.
Hannah: Whilst blindfolded.
Me: That still doesn't make it great television. We're not exactly talking Blue Planet here.
Hannah: Why did it take them so long to realise they had to find a key? It's a door with a giant keyhole, and the words clearly say "hunt the key."

As usual, there's something familiar about the Toymaker's representatives.

Me: Same two actors again.
Hannah: Of course.

This time their tactic is to stand around bickering with each other for what seems like an eternity. It's like being alone in a room with a married couple while they're having a vicious argument, and no less depressing to watch, so we end up trying to find distractions wherever we can.

Hannah: There are sultanas in the cupboard.

We can only watch nonplussed as chaos ensues in the kitchen. In the middle of the commotion Steven accosts a young troublemaker, Cyril, who slinks away and locks himself in the pantry.

Me: Do you ever wonder if we're really watching the same show that Peter Capaldi is in?
Hannah: Mmm.

When Dodo finally locates the key inside a pie (it must have been a steak and Yale pie), Hannah starts to worry about the fate of the Toymaker's players.

Hannah: It's sad, because obviously Steven and Dodo want to escape and win, but they must know that all these people are going to die when they lose.
Me: They get reborn each time they "die" anyway.
Hannah: So can they be rescued? Is there a real "them" right at the bottom?
Me: There used to be. Maybe not anymore. Who knows?
Hannah: And can the Toymaker not make them real again?
Me: Probably.

After a shaky start at the beginning of the previous story, Hannah seems to be gradually warming to the Doctor's newest companion.

Me: What do you think of Dodo now?
Hannah: She's not as stupid as she used to be. She's gotten very intelligent very quickly. Well, not very intelligent.

Hannah finds the jerky movements of the dancing dolls extremely disturbing, despite not being able to see them. Or maybe it's more vivid in our imaginations because we can't see them.

Hannah: Eurgh, creepy body control.
Me: Makes you glad you can't see them moving, doesn't it?
Hannah: It's not as creepy as the Doctor's disembodied hand. Is the Doctor on holiday, by the way?

After the Toymaker decides to make the Doctor completely invisible, he reminds the Doctor "you forget that I can see you, even if no one else can", although we can't see what the Doctor does to provoke this. Hannah has a theory.

Hannah: The Doctor is gesticulating wildly at him with his middle fingers.

The Toymaker is clearly as sick of Steven and Dodo's regular opponents as we are, so he retires them for the final game and deploys Cyril the mischievous schoolboy instead.

Hannah: What, like Dennis the Menace?
Me: More like Billy Bunter. Almost litigiously like Billy Bunter, in fact.
Hannah: Except he looks, what, 40? Oh, it's the knave again, from the last episode.

Once this interminable episode is finally over and the credits start rolling, Hannah notices something familiar about the name of the choreographer.

Hannah: Tutte Lemkow sounds familiar. I think he was mentioned in one of the documentaries.
Me: He was in Marco Polo, The Crusade and The Myth Makers playing a Mongol, an Arab and a Greek, as well as an Egyptian in Raiders of the Lost Ark; basically he specialises in playing vaguely foreign-looking characters. He's the one who keeps wearing that eyepatch.
Hannah: So he mostly plays Asian characters. Where's he from?
Me: Norway.
Hannah: What?

The Final Test [Episode 4]

Finally, a moving episode!

Me: Ready to see some live action?
Hannah: Yes. It's been hard to judge the direction and much of the set from the still images.
Me: Okay, if you want to judge it effectively on its directive skills, then... well, anyway, let's see.
Hannah: Why, what's wrong with it?
Me: I don't know, you tell me.
Hannah: You're saying it in a way that indicates there's something wrong with this episode.

The Toymaker has been constantly advancing the Doctor's game for him, skipping over several moves at a time.

Hannah: If he's just fast-forwarding each time, surely the computer knows that it's the correct sequence? How is it possible for the Doctor to get it wrong? Also, what was the point of having the Doctor complete that test when the Toymaker could just skip forward whenever he wanted? At what point would he have eventually fast-forward to the last move? What was the point of having the Doctor do anything?

As the Doctor approaches his final move, the Toymaker decides to restore him to normal.

Hannah: And he's back off holiday.

Meanwhile, Steven and Dodo's game of "TARDIS hopscotch" comes to an end when Cyril ends up electrocuting himself, and we're treated to an unsavoury glimpse of his remains.

Hannah: Oooh, that's not nice!

At last, our heroes have won their respective games and are finally reunited with the TARDIS.

Hannah: It can't be that easy.

Of course it isn't; there's still one move left in the Trilogic Game, and once the Doctor makes the final move, the Toymaker's realm will disappear with them inside it. The only solution is to somehow complete the game from within the TARDIS; fortunately Hannah has a solution.

Hannah: Remote-control grabber.

The Doctor's idea is, if anything, even more unlikely: he commands the game to skip to the final move, and the Toymaker is hoisted by his own petard.

Hannah: (laughing) He just imitated his voice? Is that it? That's how they... is the Doctor good at voices?
Me: I think this is the only time he's ever used the Mel Blanc skills, but there's an occasion when the Master does it later as well. Maybe it's a Time Lord thing.

The Doctor celebrates by helping himself to one of Cyril's sweets...

Hannah: No...

...and breaks a tooth, shortly before the title of the next episode appears on-screen.

Hannah: Did that say "A Hospital for the Doctor"?
Me: "A Holiday for the Doctor".
Hannah: Either those sweets were super-sour, or they were made of glass.
Me: Eating broken glass might be a step too far, even for Doctor Who.
Hannah: There are some very, very sick jokes out there.
Me: Like what?
Hannah: Like boiled sweets made out of glass.
Me: Does that even happen?
Hannah: It just feels like a thing that could happen.

The Score

Hannah: I liked it quite a lot. It was gripping.
Me: Good grief.
Hannah: Only because I like riddles, and I like watching other people solve them. Unfortunately it wasn't really as intelligent or witty as I was hoping it would be, because everything was just full of stupid dawdling and messing around. So it was a really good story idea, with this omnipotent toymaker controlling everything, but it's just a shame that it was so slow and silly. What do other people think about it?
Me: Not a lot; it's pretty universally disliked these days. It used to have a reputation as a lost classic until the final episode was discovered in the 1990s and everyone saw how cheap it looked. In theory it's a great story concept, but in practice it's just four episodes of Steven and Dodo playing some fairly tedious parlour games.
Hannah: Yes, badly, and with stupid distractions.
Me: And it's hard to get away from the fact that episode 3 is almost entirely about them searching for something in a kitchen.
Hannah: But I really do like the concept; I like the idea that there's someone out there who might beat the Doctor one day. Lots of little things were really, really good, but...
Me: But no big things.
Hannah: Overall, it just felt annoying and irritating. But I'm feeling generous on this one, because I was so enthralled by the concept.

7/10