The Faceless Ones

Episode 1

Hannah: I'm optimistic about that title. Sounds good. It's not something boring like "The Killers" or "Death Swamp".

The TARDIS materialises on a runway at Gatwick Airport, moments before a plane is about to touch down. The occupants step outside and assess the situation.

Hannah: Why are they running away?
Me: Because they're in the middle of a runway!
Hannah: Just aim the TARDIS somewhere else.

Upon being accosted by a policeman, the TARDIS crew scatter.

Hannah: That just looks suspicious; why didn't the Doctor try to bluff his way out of it, like he normally does? They could have said, "We were taking a walk through the countryside and didn't realise where we were until it was too late. There's a hole in the fence."
Me: They were inside a police box in the middle of a runway at Gatwick Airport.
Hannah: Nobody saw them come out of it. (seeing a hangar) "Chameleon Tours"? Is that relevant?

Polly witnesses a murder in the Chameleon Tours hangar.

Hannah: Is this slightly in the future, then, if they're using ray guns? Or is he a shape-shifting alien? Oh, "The Faceless Ones"... yeah, a shape-shifting alien, and that's why it says "Chameleon". It's been done before. Probably after this, though.
Me: Just you wait. I'm almost certain that their backstory has never been done by anyone else, ever.
Hannah: Maybe they ate a bad prune and became shape-shifters.
Me: That's no more ridiculous than the actual reason, I promise.

Hannah has a lot of fun watching Jamie's bemused reactions to everything in this modern-day setting (especially the "flying beasties"), but it's not long before her attention shifts from airlines to hairlines.

Hannah: Wait, has Polly grown all her hair back?
Me: Yes, well... maybe they've been travelling for a while.
Hannah: Do you know how long it takes to grow hair that long?
Me: We don't know how much time has elapsed since The Macra Terror.
Hannah: At least a year.
Me: There could have been a year between stories.
Hannah: Maybe two or three years.

The airport's Commandant has heard about the four intruders and asks his secretary to contact the police chief.

Me: That's Wanda Ventham; she's Benedict Cumberbatch's mother.
Hannah: Oh, really?
Me: Yep, his parents are both actors. They also play his parents in Sherlock.
Hannah: Oh, I know that. So were they famous actors?
Me: Well, they're not quite household names, but yes, they're fairly well-known in the acting profession. She appears in Doctor Who three times altogether; once each in the sixties, seventies and eighties.
Hannah: Far enough apart that you can't tell. Unlike old Eyepatch Man.
Me: I don't think anybody's too worried about that; sometimes an actor appears twice in the same season, or even in the same story. Remember Peter Purves in The Chase? Anyway, I'll point her out again when we get to the seventies.
Hannah: And then old Cumberbundle comes along and outshines them.
Me: I suppose that depends on whether you're a Sherlock fan or a Doctor Who fan.
Hannah: I'm a Doctor Strange fan. But I do like Sherlock too.

The Doctor and Jamie are reunited with Polly, except that she's calling herself Michelle and claims not to know either of them. Then we get a look at one of the new arrivals at the airport's medical centre: a misshapen creature with a featureless face and distorted skin.

Hannah: Oooh. Put that in the blog. "Oooh."

Episode 2

After five episodes, the new title sequence has finally got a new musical arrangement.

Hannah: I love the twinkly bits.
Me: So you approve of the new music?
Hannah: Yeah, it's the same central song but I like it. It's still mysterious and ethereal as usual, but... twinkly.
Me: Do you like it better than the old music?
Hannah: I like them both; I liked the old one for being slower and more sincere...
Me: Sincere?
Hannah: Mysterious, but in a deep way. This new one's faster - more upbeat and twinkly - so it has a different feel to it, but I like both of them.
Me: Well, that's cleared that up.

The Commandant reports the Doctor and Jamie to the police ("There's a lot of phone calls in this"), but she's more interested in the aliens.

Hannah: They're only faceless so far because they haven't shown us their faces. I want to see what they actually look like.

Her wish is granted a few moments later.

Hannah: Ah. Eurgh. I can't tell if it's got a cloth covering, or if that's an overgrowth of skin or something.

This Chameleon takes the identity of Meadows, one of the air traffic controllers, and begins adjusting to his new body with some sensory tests. Hannah's discourse on ASMR videos is cut short when we reach an entertaining scene with the Doctor, Jamie and Ben hiding inside a small photo booth, so I take the opportunity to steer her back towards the plot.

Hannah: Is this entire thing going to be set in the airport, and it's going to be like watching The Terminal? Which is fine by me, because it's a good film.
Me: It's not that much like The Terminal so far, is it?
Hannah: It's entirely set in an airport.
Me: Only in the same way that The Macra Terror was like Hi-de-Hi! but with more giant crabs.

When Samantha Briggs turns up looking for her missing brother Brian Briggs ("Ryan Giggs?!"), I don't even bother asking Hannah to identify her.

Me: That's Pauline Collins; she is a household name.
Hannah: At this point?
Me: No, but shortly after this she went on to be one of the stars of The Liver Birds, although she's probably best-known for Shirley Valentine, and she's since been awarded an OBE. Oh, and she narrated the TV series based on the Little Miss books by Roger Hargreaves.
Hannah: I've never seen any of those.
Me: And she played Queen Victoria in the David Tennant episode "Tooth and Claw".
Hannah: Oh, I've seen that.

The Doctor and Jamie are managing to avoid the police by hiding behind a couple of newspapers. I think I saw this in an old episode of Chucklevision.

Hannah: If I were a policeman, I'd look behind the papers. Does anyone actually read the newspaper held up like that? It must look suspicious.

When the police finally catch up with them, the Doctor escapes by brandishing a fake bomb. Because bomb hoaxes always go down very well in airports.

Hannah: What was it? A rubber ball! I was hoping it would be something weird.
Me: Like what?
Hannah: I don't know. Something like a figurine, or a little china doll, or a grapefruit...
Me: Was that not weird enough for you?
Hannah: A small rubber ball is not.

Sam is still on the trail of her missing brother, but "Polly" expertly fobs her off. Maybe she really does work in public transport after all.

Hannah: I'm really sad, because now she thinks Polly's a cowbag. It's not Polly.
Me: How do you know it's not Polly?
Hannah: Are you trying to tell me she's doing this on purpose?
Me: Maybe she's found a new job.
Hannah: No. She's a nice person; she wouldn't act like that.

Of course, Hannah isn't fooled for a second; the real Polly was abducted in the last episode, and now even her duplicate is leaving on the next flight. The Doctor starts poking around the Chameleon Tours and finds a live feed to the hangar, where he sees Ben discovering Polly's motionless body in a packing case shortly before getting caught himself.

Hannah: It's like a horror movie, where you manage to get a live feed and watch someone else get attacked. Although in the Saw films it always turns out it was a recording and it was a trick the whole time.
Me: I was thinking more along the lines of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but okay.

DI Crossland is still looking for the Doctor, who he believes shouldn't be too hard to find ("You'd be surprised; he's just spent a couple of hours hiding behind a newspaper"), but the Doctor has returned to the Chameleon Tours hangar and finds the body of Meadows, whose duplicate is working in air traffic control.

Hannah: This is creepy; I like it. The build-up is good, but I'm impatient to find out what's going on. It's a curious setting; I'd have thought an airport would seem too limited, but actually it's a large space with loads of different types of areas. The perfect kind of place to have shenanigans going on.
Me: Do you remember when we watched The Underwater Menace, and I told you that the playwright Joe Orton wrote about it in his diary? This is the other episode that he wrote about.
Hannah: Does he talk about Jamie's legs again?
Me: Well, I still have a copy of The Orton Diaries from the university library. He writes: "Watched Dr Who on television. Rubbish, but there's a young boy in it who is worth looking at; like an Edwardian masher at a Gaiety show, I mentally undress him. I'm sure the BBC would be horrified if they realised that even a science fiction series can be used erotically."
Hannah: It's interesting to hear somebody's contemporary viewpoint of the series, even if they don't seem to care for the science fiction element of it at all and they just want an excuse to write about looking at young men.

Episode 3

The Doctor finally manages to persuade the Commandant that Chameleon Tours are up to no good, even if he still refuses to believe the part about them being aliens.

Hannah: They'll take it seriously now, even if they think it's just human trafficking instead of an alien invasion. There are situations where it would be easier for the Doctor to lie to the authorities and tell them he's uncovered an abduction case; he doesn't have to mention that it's aliens who are doing it.
Me: Maybe, but it's no good having the police storm in there and getting obliterated by alien technology.
Hannah: Well, he just has to say that they've got some very nasty weapons; he doesn't need to specify that nobody on the planet has seen them before, he can just say "They're really dangerous and we have to be careful" instead of going around shouting about aliens. After they've been rounded up he can say "Right, now here's the thing I haven't told you..."

The mysterious disappearance of Polly and Ben in the first two episodes is starting to concern Hannah.

Hannah: Are Ben and Polly on holiday?
Me: They're missing; it gives the plot a sense of urgency.
Hannah: They're on holiday, aren't they?
Me: No, it's part of the story.
Hannah: Well, it would be a convenient time for them to go on holiday. It's like a Bank Holiday for them, being forced to have a holiday whether they want it or not.

The secret of Chameleon Tours is revealed in the cliffhanger: the passengers disappear from the plane shortly after take-off.

Hannah: Well, I wasn't expecting that.

Episode 4

The Doctor, Jamie and Sam have been left paralysed on the floor with a laser beam slowly moving towards them.

Hannah: That's a very slow way to kill someone. Why didn't he just shoot them all and leave?
Me: It's the old Bond villain routine; leave the room and assume it'll all go according to plan. Maybe they're too squeamish.

Jamie manages to stop the laser without sustaining what Hannah calls "Luke Skywalker hand", then he steals Sam's plane ticket by distracting her with a sudden kiss. 007 would be proud.

Hannah: He's a sneaky bastard! He's just a young Highland boy and now he's doing all these things. Surely the ticket's got her name on it, and he hasn't got a passport.
Me: The ticket just says "S. Briggs".
Hannah: It's not very secure, is it?

Hannah is sceptical when the plane starts flying directly upwards towards Earth's orbit, but let's be charitable and assume that it's a spaceship built to look like a VC10. One thing she can't forgive is how absurd it looks, and as if to highlight this point, the reconstruction we're watching has used computer-generated graphics to illustrate how it might have looked.

Hannah: I mean, very well done to them for re-creating it, but it looks rubbish.

It also raises further questions about the disappearance of the passengers.

Hannah: I thought they just teleported them off the plane and then carried on where they were going. Why did they teleport them off and go and dock with the mothership? Maybe they use the passengers as a power source, but then why is it just people aged between 18 and 25? I thought they wanted spry young bodies to do something with.
Me: I beg your pardon?
Hannah: I mean to be their hosts! They're on the surface using important people for their hosts, but then they take the fit ones back...
Me: Er...
Hannah: Physically fit! And where are Ben and Polly?

Episode 5

Only episodes 1 and 3 of this six-part story currently survive in the archive.

Hannah: I hope we get to see something this time; I'm always disappointed when I've been waiting to see inside a spaceship and see the aliens, and then we only get to see clips. I hope there are some decent clips in this one.

One thing we do get to see is a rather chilling image of the plane's passengers stored neatly in a drawer.

Hannah: Oh! They miniaturise them! Okay. Now it's understandable.

The Chameleons are stealing the bodies of young tourists because the people of their planet have lost their identities in a gigantic explosion. I pause the episode.

Hannah: What?
Me: Just wondering if you had any thoughts.
Hannah: They had a massive explosion and they lost their identities? That sounds stupid. There was an explosion and they lost their faces and now they don't have personalities anymore. Absolute twaddle.

The Chameleons have collected fifty thousand young people during this operation.

Hannah: How on earth can they abduct fifty thousand people without them being noticed missing? How have they not been discovered if these mass abductions are taking place? Seven or eight planes' worth of people going missing every day, with only postcards being sent to convince their families that they're fine? Only one woman so far has noticed her brother missing. Surely people other than Sam have been trying to get hold of people and have been unable to do so? Also, don't airports check manifestos to see who should be coming off the planes at the other end? Or do they falsify them to show the plane was always empty? And won't people be curious that whole planes are being flown from country to country with apparently no passengers, which is a massive waste of money? How long has this been going on for? After a few weeks you'd expect people to start returning from their tours, and it's obvious that no one has been coming back.

Having already lost Polly and Ben, the Doctor now realises that Jamie has gone too.

Hannah: He's rubbish at looking after his companions.

Episode 6

Ben and Polly seem to be taking rather a long holiday.

Hannah: Are they dead, and they're not coming back?
Me: No, we just haven't seen either of them since episode 2. And even then, that was Chameleon Polly.
Hannah: That is a very long holiday; why did they get three weeks off?! No one else gets three weeks off!
Me: I told you, it's a plot device.
Hannah: What, to make us like Jamie more?
Me: It's dramatic tension, it raises the stakes. Their disappearance is an important part of the story.
Hannah: They've managed to get a three-week holiday out of it, though.

Having forced the Chameleons to give themselves up, the Doctor negotiates with them; he effectively lets them off with a caution and allows them to return to their planet unharmed, on the condition that they release their abductees and don't do it again. Presumably he's willing to overlook the murder and identity-theft.

Me: I think this is the first time that's ever happened.
Hannah: It wouldn't have worked if they'd come to Earth to enslave those people, or to infiltrate the whole planet because they want all our minerals and resources. Although that would be a more believable motivation than: "I don't have a face. Or any hobbies. Can I steal a person and become them, please?" They're just sitting around on their planet, mindless and faceless and bored, wanting to steal an 18-year-old from Liverpool so that they can start collecting football stickers or whatever it is they're going to do with their new identities. This whole premise is stupid!
Me: I like your theory that they're only doing this so that they can get some hobbies.
Hannah: The world is so shallow that they don't want to be faceless. Why not just carry on as they are? I don't understand how they can be lacking identities when they're still able to make plans and do things. They already have abilities and designated ranks, and those abilities aren't coming from the humans they've copied because the communications guy was Jamie and he's not good at anything.
Me: Maybe the Doctor let them off lightly because they're victims of circumstance and not trying to get power for its own sake.
Hannah: It makes them more interesting and thought-provoking, but unfortunately it makes the whole story fall apart.

The Doctor is reunited with the real Jamie, and the abducted people are restored to Earth. The Commandant arranges to have the TARDIS returned ("They're okay with the fact that he left it on the runway?"), and we cut to the Doctor, Jamie, Ben and Polly being dropped off at the airport hangar.

Hannah: There's no touching reunion scene?
Me: I think a lot of time has passed now and we're supposed to get the impression that this is some time later, after everything has been sorted out.
Hannah: Nah, it just feels rushed, like so many endings.

By a breathtaking coincidence, this turns out to be the exact same day that Ben and Polly originally left Earth in The War Machines.

Hannah: That never happens, even when the Doctor can actually fly the TARDIS.

They decide to stay behind and the Doctor says goodbye to his young friends, telling Ben to become an admiral and Polly to look after Ben.

Hannah: What, she doesn't have any ambitions of her own?
Me: Maybe he's hedging his bets because she doesn't have a job anymore.
Hannah: Oh yeah, her employer accidentally made something that tried to destroy the world. Now I know why you were being so weird about them being on holiday; really they'd just left the show, and this is essentially a cameo to say goodbye.
Me: I think they were contracted until about halfway through the next story, and got paid for it, but obviously Sam was being set up as the next companion...
Hannah: That's what I was thinking.
Me: ...so spending the whole story with her and Jamie together might have been a way of trying to establish the new dynamic.
Hannah: Sam doesn't seem like the kind of person who would run away if she's worried about her brother not speaking to her for a week.
Me: Pauline Collins was invited to be the next companion, but she turned it down.
Hannah: Well, it didn't make sense for the character.
Me: I don't think that was the reason she turned it down.
Hannah: No, but why offer it to her if it doesn't make sense for the character?

But the Doctor and Jamie can't leave yet; the TARDIS is missing.

Hannah: Ah, okay, so there's no flying off between episodes.
Me: No, it's a cliffhanger to lead into the next one.
Hannah: It's been mislaid. Which is funny, because luggage-handling at an airport always loses something, and now he's lost his TARDIS.
Me: No, it was there a minute ago. It was outside the hangar, but now it's gone.
Hannah: So it's flown off without him?
Me: Or...?
Hannah: It's camouflaged itself?
Me: Or...?
Hannah: Somebody else has got in it and flown it off?
Me: Or...?
Hannah: That's not the Doctor?
Me: Someone's stolen it.
Hannah: That's what I said.
Me: No, they've stolen it without flying it off. They've physically lifted it up and moved it.
Hannah: Maybe somebody thinks it's a real police box and they've taken it back.

The Score

Hannah: It's a really interesting idea; so many of them are, which is why I always start by saying that. But when you boil it all down, they're faceless aliens because there was an explosion, and they want new identities. Completely stupid idea to go and steal fifty thousand people. Some stories are far-fetched but it all works, whereas this is far-fetched and stupid. How can an explosion have wiped their personality and characteristics and appearance, and yet they're still able to function and carry out this mission without being people? The story is a good idea, up to a point, but it wouldn't hold up very long because such a huge number of people can't vanish unnoticed; stealing people from the margins of society would be far more effective. And there wasn't enough of the actual aliens; I'd like to have heard a lot more about them.
Me: They've got no identities! What is there to learn about them?
Hannah: What was this explosion? What they were like before? Are their children born like that?
Me: I don't think it's worth dwelling too much on their backstory.
Hannah: Why not?
Me: Because it doesn't make sense.
Hannah: Exactly! This is really hard, because I've enjoyed it; it's good as a conspiracy thriller-type story, but it's so full of holes.

6/10

The Macra Terror

Episode 1

After being spoiled by watching two consecutive stories with a mere 50% missing, we're back to another completely missing story. This doesn't seem to worry Hannah for once; after the cliffhanger at the end of the last episode, she's keen to see the giant crab monsters she recognised from the David Tennant episode "Gridlock".

Hannah: I'm excited, despite it not being real. I don't remember who originally told me that the Macra are a recurring species, but I liked the fact that they were a throwback, and even though I'd never seen any old Doctor Who I liked it whenever they referred back to it. They were a very small and inconsequential part of that episode and I wondered how big and important and impressive they were when they first came around, so I'm curious to finally see them now, especially considering it's something I've known about for eleven years.

For the first time since the series began, we get a brand new title sequence.

Hannah: This is different.
Me: Nothing gets past you, does it?
Hannah: Is this the first time they've changed it?
Me: Don't you know?
Hannah: Why would I?
Me: Because you've watched all of them!
Hannah: I don't like the "Doctor Who" bit as much as the previous one.
Me: What bit?
Hannah: The font. And I don't like his face being in it; it feels unnecessary and it ruins the abstract effect.
Me: Have you noticed what's not different?
Hannah: The music.
Me: Exactly. They've changed the title sequence, but the musical arrangement doesn't change until partway through the next story.
Hannah: Why would you do that?! Was it not ready?
Me: What do you think of the new opening?
Hannah: It's not a drastic change; it's the same style and a similar camera effect, just with the Doctor's face added to it. It's not bad and I don't dislike it, but it's not strikingly different. I really like the camera effect, though; I'll be sad when it goes.

Speaking of different music, Hannah's ears are immediately assaulted by the sound of a marching band, complete with accompaniment from a drum majorette.

Hannah: Oh, hello! This is different.
Me: It's a holiday camp. Like Butlins, although possibly not quite as frightening.
Hannah: It says it's a colony.
Me: Well, yes, it's a colony in the style of a holiday camp.
Hannah: Those are some very short skirts.

Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, so Hannah is immediately suspicious.

Hannah: I'm immediately suspicious. No entire group of people should be that jolly without some creepy background reason.

Before we can delve into the thorny issue of children's TV presenters, our heroes arrive at the colony. Jamie is suspicious of the strange colonists.

Hannah: I like him, he's usually right. I'm wary of everything that's different, just in case, because you could do anything wrong. If you go to visit other cultures and things, you could do something wrong and instantly be killed.

The Doctor and friends are offered spa-treatment hospitality. One of the colonists, Medok, is believed to be insane and has been arrested for trying to escape; after snorting derisively at Ben's colony-issue sunglasses, Hannah turns her attention to the mystery at hand.

Hannah: Is it that you're not allowed to be unhappy, or something?
Me: No, but you've just anticipated the plot of a Sylvester McCoy adventure.
Hannah: Maybe some kind of Macra mind-control thing that doesn't work on some people. Is the Controller actually appearing on those monitors, or is it supposed to be a still image? It's hard to tell from a reconstruction, when you're watching nothing but still images.
Me: Yes, it's meant to be a still image with his voice over it. Just like Big Brother in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The Doctor slips away to find Medok.

Hannah: He likes to stick his nose in everywhere and right wrongs. I like how the Doctor always identifies and seeks out the different and the repressed.

The colony's purpose is to mine a poisonous gas.

Hannah: Is that what the Macra feed on? I can't remember what they do in the David Tennant episode.
Me: They've devolved into mindless predators by then, but here they're intelligent and manipulative parasites.
Hannah: I remember they needed to live in the fumes at the bottom of the motorway.
Me: Well, that's the other thing. In this story the colonists are mining poisonous gas, which is what the Macra feed on, and then in "Gridlock" they're living off the exhaust fumes. So bringing them back wasn't just an arbitrary choice; it all fits together.
Hannah: Look at the miners and their neat little tunics. I like a square neck.

The cliffhanger sees the Doctor and Medok exploring a building site after curfew and being confronted by a giant crab. ("Oh! Light-up eyes. Very natural.")

Hannah: Very interesting so far; it's not what I was expecting.
Me: What were you expecting?
Hannah: I have no idea. Just crabs.
Me: You thought it would be more of a generic monster plot, with giant crabs on the rampage?
Hannah: I just thought there'd be more crabs.

Episode 2

Hannah: What else did Ian Stewart Black write?
Me: The Savages.
Hannah: Ah, that'll be why it's so good. And why there's a futuristic society with a dark secret.
Me: This is the last of his three stories; he also wrote The War Machines.

The Controller announces to the colony that there's no such thing as Macra. He seems awfully insistent about it.

Hannah: So one Macra, two Macra.
Me: What?
Hannah: One Macra, two Macra.
Me: Are you feeling okay?
Hannah: There's no difference between singular or plural?
Me: No.
Hannah: I knew "Macra" was plural, but I was wondering what the singular was. It's not a Macrum?
Me: I think that's Latin.

Ben, Jamie and Polly go to bed, but while they sleep a subliminal command urges them to conform to the colony. The Doctor manages to reach Polly and Jamie before the conditioning can take effect, but he's too late to save Ben.

Hannah: Oh no, they got Ben. How did the Macra establish all this mind-control technology? They're giant creatures with claws; how would they have gotten into everybody's rooms and built mind-control into the walls? Surely it's a human-built city, which means it was humans who put the nerve wires in the walls and installed the gas vents. That infrastructure must have existed before the Macra started using it for their own purposes; either that, or they had a more natural and biological way of brainwashing people to start with, and then they got those people to build this infrastructure to help them maintain it at a much better level.
Me: Or they just found some people who will do whatever they're told when they're threatened by giant crabs.
Hannah: How long have these people been at the colony? Who was on the planet first; humans or Macra? Maybe the colony had mind-control to start with, just to make everybody happy and work together.
Me: Or maybe the Macra are the indigenous population, and it's the humans who have invaded their planet.

And while we're on the subject of conditioning...

Hannah: Every now and then, it looks like Polly has had a really drastic haircut. It looks like she's had a pixie cut.
Me: That's exactly it.
Hannah: No, I mean... are you sure?
Me: Yes.
Hannah: I just thought it was pulled back.
Me: It seems to have been part of that shampoo and grooming treatment she was given in the last episode.
Hannah: I couldn't quite tell, because you don't get to see it that much.
Me: I think you'll see it a bit better in the clip that exists.

A surviving clip sees Polly being attacked by a Macra, but fortunately Ben still has enough presence of mind to come to her rescue.

Hannah: What does Ben think has grabbed her? Does he believe she's just waving her arms around and being lifted up by nothing? She's definitely had a haircut. I like it.

When the Doctor forces the Controller to reveal himself, he turns out to be a much older and dishevelled version of the man shown on the monitor. When his cover is blown and he finds himself suddenly dragged away by a giant claw, it becomes clear that the Macra are in control of the colony.

Hannah: It's like The Wizard of Oz, except he's a crab.

Episode 3

Hannah: Crabs are an interesting choice for a villain. I don't think they're particularly known for being clever, or even evil, but I suppose they're a little creepy and menacing because of the dangerous natural weaponry. I mean, I wouldn't want to meet a giant one, but it's odd to think of them being able to manipulate an entire colony.

As Jamie escapes from the gas mine, Hannah notices some very odd effects in the musical score.

Hannah: Has the composer started playing an Atari game?

Jamie finds himself in an old shaft full of dormant Macra. When the colony starts diverting poisonous gas in Jamie's direction, the Doctor surmises that it's not intended to kill Jamie; there's another reason altogether.

Hannah: To revive the Macra!

Sure enough, Jamie is having trouble with crabs.

Hannah: Their eyes look stupid.
Me: Because they light up?
Hannah: Yes, and also their weird shape and the way they point away from each other.

Episode 4

Hannah: I like it when the Doctor confuses people and then does a thing. He's a naughty man.

Jamie has managed to escape the Macra, only to find himself somewhere even more distressing: a cheerleading practice. Their "inspirational" propaganda chant is both excruciatingly spirited and genuinely sinister, and it's hard not to empathise with Hannah's assessment.

Hannah: I feel sick.

Fortunately the scene is lifted somewhat when Jamie is mistaken for an auditioning dancer and performs the Highland Fling, which culminates with him flinging himself out of the door. The cheerleaders seem to approve, but Hannah has her eyes on other things.

Hannah: Oh, they're really, really... they're basically wearing t-shirts!

A conflicted Ben identifies Jamie to the guards, but clearly regrets it.

Hannah: Oh, it's really sad! Ben is just watching himself from the inside, betraying everyone! I love the fact that there's a little bit of comedy in this, but it's really dark at the same time.

Thankfully Ben's conditioning wears off, and he comes to the rescue of his captive friends by triggering an explosion that destroys the Macra. Later, the colony holds a dance festival to celebrate its liberation.

Hannah: After the mind control has gone away, how do you look after yourself? You've had someone in charge of literally everything you've done for your whole life and suddenly you're given freedom. Is there a sequel novel? I'd love somebody to have written a re-visit to the colony. I want to know what they do next; do the rest of the hibernating Macra try to come up again and do the same thing? What do the Macra actually sound like? But I do understand why it's not addressed in this episode; you can't fit it all in, and they're supposed to be this mysterious terror.

The Doctor, keen to avoid being appointed as the new leader of the colony, follows Jamie's example and the four of them dance enthusiastically out of the door.

Me: I really wish we could see this.

The Score

Hannah: I really don't know how I feel about this story; it's not quite as well-told as I'd like, for such an amazing concept. A super-happy brainwashed colony of people living with crab overlords; I mean, how can that be anything other than a 10 out of 10? This is the one I'd most like to see properly so far, because I could probably give it a 10 if I actually saw it.
Me: The problem is that this story is a lot more visual than most of the others, so it's an awkward one to judge when you can't actually see it.
Hannah: I have a few little problems with the story, but overall I love it. Not just because it's crabs, but also I love weird cultural things where there's something profoundly different yet similar; as you say, it's like a horror story in Butlins.
Me: That's just Butlins.
Hannah: I went to one, it was alright. Except I got out-of-date drinks from the vending machine.
Me: Were you just expecting it to be a standard monster story?
Hannah: Yeah, I just thought it would be people having a problem with them and fighting them, that kind of thing. But no, it was people completely oblivious to them even existing. Completely oblivious to everything. "Why are we mining gas?" "Not a clue." It's a horrible concept that your entire life is being controlled by crabs who are using you as slaves and keeping you happy at the same time, but the story is fun and entertaining and gripping all the way through. Is it too soon for another 10?

On reflection, she has two main issues with the plot: the matter of how the Macra could have established their brainwashing equipment, and how that equipment could be so implausibly effective even after the subject has been confronted with actual Macra. After some serious consideration, she eventually decides to give The Macra Terror...

9/10

Hannah: It's almost a 10. But it's certainly the most entertaining so far.

The Moonbase

Episode 1

Hannah: "The Moonbase"! They're going to the Moon. Or a moon, anyway.

This story was broadcast in 1967, so of course the TARDIS has landed on our own moon. The Doctor supplies his companions with some very bizarre-looking spacesuits; unfortunately this is yet another missing episode, so we don't get to actually see them yet.

Hannah: Wow. They look... odd. Futuristic. Please tell me we get to see the actual costumes in the next episode? Or that there's some pictures, at least.
Me: I think we'll be seeing them later on.
Hannah: Cool music.
Me: What, you mean the weird Clangers sound effects?
Hannah: Simple, but cool.

It's not long before the travellers find the Moonbase.

Hannah: The people coming out of the base are wearing the exact same spacesuits; obviously the Doctor got spacesuits from the same era as them. What a coincidence.
Me: Maybe it's a design classic. I think they're slightly different, though.
Hannah: They just happen to find British people there as well.
Me: Actually I think you'll find it's a very international team. Well, there's a French one and a Danish one, anyway.
Hannah: They seem to be okay about people randomly turning up on the Moon. It feels like a massive security breach. Oh, they're expecting a doctor to arrive! How convenient!

The Doctor makes a casual guess at the date being 2050, and seems rather pleased with himself for being "only" twenty years out when base commander Hobson incredulously tells him it's 2070. Not that anyone on the base seems particularly troubled that their visitors don't know which decade it is.

Hannah: Why aren't they more concerned about that?

In fact, the Moonbase (which turns out to be responsible for controlling the Earth's weather) is so unconcerned about these four trespassers that they're soon asking Ben to run errands for them.

Hannah: They still haven't asked them "Where have you come from?"
Me: No, they're very trusting, especially given that they're controlling the weather for the entire planet. It's still not as bad as The Tenth Planet, where they were able to stroll right into a military base containing a nuclear doomsday device.

A mysterious infection has been spreading throughout the base; we don't get much time to puzzle it over, however, because a familiar shadow in the food store manages to completely give the game away. So much for the surprise cliffhanger.

Hannah: I saw that shadow. That was a Cyberman shadow.
Me: (innocently) Was it?
Hannah: Oooh, they've got electric-y hands now! I wasn't expecting them; definitely not so soon. It's not been very long at all, only a couple of stories.
Me: Yep, we've only had three stories since their previous appearance in The Tenth Planet.
Hannah: Did they decide The Underwater Menace was so shite that they needed something to pick it all up again?
Me: That's not what they wrote in the piece for the Radio Times, no.
Hannah: So they were always going to do Cybermen next?
Me: They're looking for another monster to rival the success of the Daleks, so the Cybermen are being teed up as a replacement.
Hannah: So they're trying to make them popular.

When Hobson hears that the station doctor has succumbed to the unknown plague, he decides to wait for more data before reporting it to the headquarters on Earth.

Hannah: Data? One person's missing and one person's dead. You might as well tell them.

Jamie has taken a blow to the head and spends most of the first two episodes in a state of delirium ("Odd how he gets so ill from having a little tumble"), and the cliffhanger sees him waking up in the sick bay and mistaking an approaching Cyberman for his clan's version of the Grim Reaper: the "Phantom Piper".

Hannah: Does he toot?

Episode 2

Our hot topic this evening is the Cyberman makeover.

Hannah: Hmmm, metal faces and covered hands; more robotic. Not as scary, because it's not a cloth face. And they can actually do stuff; they can zap people now with the zappy thing in their hand, rather than having a giant cumbersome lamp to shine at you, so they're a lot more threatening. I'm glad those silly lamps have been replaced with the weird arm balls; they still look silly but I assume that's what gives them zap powers, so it's excusable.
Me: They've also got bootlaces.
Hannah: I wasn't really looking at their shoes. Why have they got three-clawed hands? That doesn't seem right. How are they better than human digits? Stupid little lobster claws. With an extra bit.
Me: Why are they less scary than before?
Hannah: Well, they're more intimidating now, so it's a different kind of scary. They've been upgraded and given new powers, making them even more threatening and less human. But it hasn't got the same terror; the reason the Cybermen were terrifying last time was the body-horror of people who had changed themselves. Now they're basically just Dalek-like robots who want to kill everybody, so it's not scary in the same way. They're dangerous, but they're not horrific.

The Cyberman takes a body from the sick bay and carries it away ("Are they going to rip his wee-tubes out?"), but Hannah is wrestling with the idea that Hobson has heard of the Cybermen.

Hannah: So somehow Earth has remembered Cybermen this time, even though they usually forget everything? We're in 2070 at the moment... when was the Antarctic base in The Tenth Planet? 2020?
Me: 1986.
Hannah: Oh. So a tiny little incident happened there...
Me: "Tiny little incident"? A whole planet suddenly appeared in the sky!
Hannah: I suppose some people might remember that.

The Doctor's celebrated "some corners of the universe" speech goes down well, but the Gravitron has developed a fault that prevents the crew from controlling a major hurricane on Earth.

Hannah: It's such a finely-tuned instrument; I'm surprised there's only, what, twenty people up there doing everything. Like they said, they can't even turn it off because the Earth won't be able to revert to how it was without going through some catastrophes first. They've started messing with something and they can't stop.
Me: You're not impressed with a machine that can control the whole planet's weather, then?
Hannah: It's a nice futuristic concept - something that can improve the whole of humanity - but it's such a dangerous thing to have in the hands of just twenty people all the way up there on the Moon, and if it goes wrong, everyone dies! All it takes is a couple of people to get sick, and then they suddenly can't cope; only a few people are trained to use everything and if those people get sick, we're all doomed. So it's a bit of a rubbish idea; very interesting, but they didn't quite think it through.

Back in the sick bay, Jamie and Polly discover a Cyberman standing there...

Hannah: Bit bold, coming out while there's people there.

...so the Cyberman fires off a couple of electric charges and shocks them unconscious.

Hannah: Oh, well he can do that, so he's fine.

Hobson starts to suspect the Doctor and his friends of sabotaging the base after realising that their arrival tallies up with the timing of the engineering faults.

Hannah: See? This is why they should have been suspicious from the beginning. Because it could have been them.
Me: Oh look, there's the spacesuits!
Hannah: They don't look very resistant to anything.
Me: No, they look like they could tear very easily.
Hannah: And they've got great big pipettes on the back.
Me: That looks suspiciously like a plastic bottle of oxygen.
Hannah: It won't take long to get through that. That's a double-lungful; just the one breath. I suppose it could be compressed, but I don't think plastic can hold compressed air. And look, you can see the condensation in their helmets. They're all fogged up.

Polly makes coffee for the base crew, and the Doctor suddenly realises why the disease hasn't affected everyone: the virus is in the sugar.

Hannah: Properly dramatic, actually hitting it out of his hand. I like it when they actually do things like that.
Me: What, assaulting a pot of sugar?
Hannah: Yes. Why the sugar? Did they mean to selectively infect people? Why didn't they put it in everything? Then everybody gets sick and they can take over everybody, rather than missing a few people who are now resisting. That's bad planning. I don't think the Cybermen would be stupid enough to actually do that.

Once the Doctor realises that the enemy is hiding in the sick bay, one of the bodies whips off its sheet and a Cyberman leaps off the bed and advances towards them.

Me: Another of my favourite cliffhangers.
Hannah: It's terrifying when you realise you were right next to something and it could have killed you at any moment. That is horrible.

Episode 3

Hannah: The Cybermen are really lucky that Earth developed this weather station. Just the perfect hub where they can destroy the whole planet from one place.

The lilting sing-song intonations of the original Cybermen have been replaced with new, heavily electronic voices.

Hannah: I don't know what they're saying. I like their new voices, though. Creepier.

Meanwhile, back in the control room...

Hannah: Ah, Benoit. I have missed you.
Me: He was in the "Gourmet Night" episode of Fawlty Towers; he's the chef that Basil Fawlty is on his way to meet when his car breaks down and he gives it a damn good thrashing with a tree branch. Oh, and he was also a recurring character in most of the Pink Panther films.

She doesn't recognise him, of course. Sometimes during this project I find myself envying the guest stars in other programmes; if we'd been watching every episode of The Avengers we would have been treated to a wealth of Hannah-friendly guest stars (including Ronnie Barker playing a villain, as well as appearances from most of the regular cast of Dad's Army), but 1960s Doctor Who is full of people she wouldn't have a chance of recognising. I even showed her A Matter of Life and Death earlier this week, partly because it's such a wonderful film but mostly so that I can point out Marius Goring when we get to the final story of this season.

For a supposedly emotionless race, the Cybermen are very dismissive of our "stupid Earth brains."

Hannah: That's judgemental, and therefore emotional.
Me: Yes, for some reason they're very taunting and gloaty in this one.

Within thirty seconds, the same Cyberman smugly remarks on the crew's inability to notice their operation: "Clever, clever, clever."

Hannah: Sarcasm. They have no mercy, but they have sarcasm.

Ben, Polly and Jamie are trying to find a way to take down the Cybermen; Polly comes up with the idea of using solvents to dissolve the plastic on their chest units.

Hannah: Pour some acetone on their front bits.
Me: It's either that or tie their bootlaces together.

The only problem is that they're not sure exactly which solvent will dissolve their particular type of plastic, so they mix up a cocktail of benzene, ether, alcohol, acetone and epoxy-propane in the hope that one of them will affect the Cybermen.

Hannah: You're probably going to blow yourselves up. This is a really bad idea; mixing loads of things together that react with other things and seeing what happens. They've put loads of flammable things in a bottle and hope they don't die. Acetone itself is really dangerous if it's neat; you need a mixer.

The trio are confident that Polly's chemistry project will be sufficient to melt whatever plastic the Cyberman use, so they fill a spray-bottle with the corrosive formula ("That thing is made of plastic! How's that going to work?"). The spectacle that follows is even more graphic than Hannah was expecting.

Hannah: Eurgh, their insides are coming outside! It's coming out of the mouth!

As the remaining Cybermen prepare a fresh assault ("There's a shiny horde of them"), Hannah notices André Maranne's name in the credits.

Hannah: Is he actually French?
Me: Yes, he had the same accent in Fawlty Towers.
Hannah: Sorry, I ignored you earlier when you told me that; for some reason I thought you were just making a joke about small French people.
Me: Okay, I think we'll leave it there.

Episode 4

Hannah: When they said the machinery was sonic-based in the last episode, I was wondering if the Doctor would develop his sonic screwdriver to fix it all. I thought maybe this would be where he invents it, and he thinks "This is really handy, I'll keep this."

While the Doctor and the base crew deal with the Cyberman threat, Polly is doing her bit to keep up morale.

Hannah: There she is, having to make the coffee again.
Me: Maybe Polly just happens to be the best one in the group at making decent coffee.
Hannah: Okay, so she's got a skill, but why does it have to be the only woman?

There's a very bleak moment when a rescue ship from Earth is deflected into the Sun, unable to change course. Worse still, it's going to take over a week for the crew to get there.

Hannah: That's a horrible way to die. A week to slowly realise you're going to burn. That's not fair.

When the Cybermen breach the hull of the base, Hobson and Benoit manage to plug the hole with the drinks tray. Yes, really.

Me: Good job Polly made some coffee.
Hannah: Hmmm.

The Doctor puts his plan into action, and we're treated to the sight of an army of Cybermen floating off the surface of the Moon and drifting helplessly into space.

Hannah: Oh no, they've caught the jumpy disease! So they're still alive, but floating around in space? They clearly don't need oxygen to live, so they must have survived.

This doesn't seem to be a huge concern for the Doctor. And speaking of loose ends...

Hannah: They're not going to cure the sick people? They're just going to put their spacesuits on and bugger off back to the TARDIS. I suppose he said earlier that he doesn't know how to fix it, but then later he did work out what the problem was, so maybe he can fix it now. All these people with their neurological disease, but oh well, what a shame. They're off.

On their way back to the TARDIS, Polly notices a comet-like object streaking across the sky.

Hannah: Did they miss a few?
Me: That would be awkward. Imagine if the remaining Cybermen carried on invading the base after they'd gone.

Back on the TARDIS the Doctor decides to use the "time scanner" to give his companions a preview of their next adventure, and Hannah is delighted when the scanner shows a creature she recognises from the David Tennant era.

Hannah: It's a giant crab! Is it them?

After the credits, the forthcoming story is billed as "The Macra Terror".

Hannah: Yay! Random crabbies!
Me: Excited?
Hannah: Yes. I have literally no expectations whatsoever, it's just something I recognise and I like to cling onto those little things. Also, crabs are fun. I like crabs.

The Score

Hannah: Well, that was a pleasant little adventure. Full of people dying left, right and centre in horrifying ways, including the Cybermen themselves.
Me: You've seen Doctor Who before, right?
Hannah: I like the idea of them going to the Moon, and I'm happy to see the Cybermen back, but it's a bit of a surprise because we've only just seen them. I think they did it too soon. So overall, it's not terrible; it's kind of middling, because there were lots of things wrong with it and you have to suspend your disbelief for a few things. And they keep getting Polly to make the coffee. It's just rude.

6/10

Hannah: I like the new Cybermen; I wonder how long it'll be until we see them again. If they're "the new Daleks," which one are we going to see next: the Daleks, or the Cybermen?

The Underwater Menace

Episode 1

We begin with the Doctor, Ben and Polly trying to explain the TARDIS to Jamie.

Hannah: Oh, I forgot that they kidnapped him.

The TARDIS arrives on a beach and the Doctor briefly teases his companions before following them outside ("He's a naughty Doctor"), but after a brief assessment of the area it looks like he's ready to settle down for another nap.

Hannah: He does that a lot. He likes to lie down and have a sleep.
Me: That's what people do at the seaside.
Hannah: A volcano seaside. Yes, I'd be very relaxed too.

It's been a while since Doctor Who scratched Hannah's archaeology itch, so she finds the Doctor's next discovery almost as exciting as he does.

Hannah: Oooh, shards of pottery! I like it.
Me: Why?
Hannah: Because it's shards of pottery. But I like it when they're called "sherds", which apparently seems to be the English way of doing it. He says it's Mediterranean pottery, but you said there were no more basic historicals so this could be an historical with an alien.
Me: Just because they're in the Mediterranean, it doesn't mean that they're in the past.

When Polly finds a bracelet from the 1968 Mexico Olympiad it seems to settle the issue, but this begins to seem slightly trivial when our heroes are ambushed by robed figures, taken some distance beneath the sea, treated to a plankton dinner, then seized by guards and strapped to some slabs over a pool of sharks to satisfy the prophecy of the fish goddess Amdo. Everyone got that?

Hannah: Ah, sacrifices as usual.

But to Hannah, the most incongruous thing here is the headgear. (And for an episode where the Doctor clearly signs his name as "Dr W", that's saying something.)

Hannah: I like the pipe cleaners.
Me: Speaking of hats, you may be pleased to hear that this is the last story in which the Doctor wears his stovepipe hat.
Hannah: Aww.
Me: Are you disappointed?
Hannah: Eh. I haven't seen it enough to be annoyed about it, so why not let him keep it?
Me: Do you recognise the high priest at all?
Hannah: Is he the fat Caesar from The Romans?
Me: Nero? No, he's Cyril, the Knave of Hearts from The Celestial Toymaker.
Hannah: Oh. Close enough. They're both large actors.

When Hannah is introduced to the Fish People - silent aquatic creatures with scales, fins, and gills - I'm expecting her to be a little disturbed by the large glassy eyes and open mouths. Fortunately (or not), she's too distracted by their unconvincing costumes to notice.

Me: You're not impressed, are you?
Hannah: Hmmm.

Then we find out that the TARDIS crew are in the lost civilisation of Atlantis.

Hannah: Oh, no.
Me: What?
Hannah: I didn't even think about that. I'm annoyed with myself. Also, they're doing a place that might not necessarily actually exist but they're going to pretend it does, like with Troy in The Myth Makers.
Me: Archaeologists have discovered Troy, sort of, but I don't believe Atlantis has ever existed.
Hannah: There's so much reference to it; there probably was a place called that, but they just don't know where it was. Obviously it didn't exist as the legends say, but it probably was a place.
Me: Are you sure you're not thinking of Atlanta?
Hannah: There was probably a place called Atlantis somewhere on a coast that got destroyed by rising sea levels, and that's the basis of the myth.
Me: In the 19th century, when William Gladstone was Prime Minister, he was so taken with the idea that he requested funds from the British Treasury to finance an expedition to search the seabed of the Atlantic Ocean.
Hannah: Interesting that it was one of his priorities of things to do.
Me: It never happened, anyway; the Treasury suggested that it might not be the wisest use of the British taxpayers' money.

The man in charge of labour, Damon, sends Ben and Jamie to work in the mines, and the episode ends with a group of scientists strapping Polly to an operating table so that they can turn her into a fish. Thanks to a censor clip (which ironically survives because it was edited out of the Australian broadcast for being too scary), we get to see actual footage of her pleading with them as she gets forced onto the operating table and strapped down.

Hannah: That's actually terrifying.

Then the recon cuts to an extreme close-up of a Fish Person drifting in front of the camera.

Hannah: That's even more terrifying.

Episode 2

After twelve reconstructions in a row, Hannah finally gets to see an actual Troughton episode. But it's not all good news; Polly is still at the mercy of Damon, in all his hirsute glory.

Hannah: His eyebrows are even bigger than they were last time. Why do they want to operate on anyone against their will? Why do they need one more person for the workforce? Why can't she do something else?

The plankton dinner earlier has somehow led the Doctor to deduce that the Atlanteans are harbouring the great and missing-presumed-dead scientist, Professor Zaroff ("Why is the famous scientist also known for his culinary skills?"). He's promised to raise Atlantis from the sea and shows the Doctor his proof-of-concept ("It looks like a science museum exhibit for children"), but he happily acknowledges that there's one tiny flaw: it's going to destroy the planet.

Hannah: Oh, he's mental now.

When the Doctor innocently asks the professor why he wants to blow up the world, Hannah can't help thinking that his motivation might be a little thin.

Hannah: He wants to do it just because he can?
Me: The original draft of the script explained that he'd gone mad and turned against the world after his wife and children were killed in a car crash. But as it stands, yes, he's just doing it because he can.
Hannah: Stupid. Also, if these people are all Atlanteans, why do they all look like surface people?
Me: Why shouldn't they? They're all descended from people who lived on the surface.
Hannah: No, I mean there's a guy there in a hardhat and a jacket, he's a proper gaffer. Is he Atlantean?

We're told that the Atlanteans pick up shipwrecked mariners so that Damon can convert them to Fish People.

Hannah: So he's power-mad and he's enslaving anyone who randomly turns up.
Me: Pretty much.
Hannah: And they've recovered enough shipwrecked people to create an efficient mining and farming workforce?

The Doctor manages to pull off an amusing trick to distract Damon and make his escape.

Hannah: Go and trim your eyebrows.
Me: He's a fun Doctor.
Hannah: Yes, he is. Sneaky.
Me: His performances in the last two stories were still fairly experimental, but Troughton is pretty much playing his version of the Doctor here.

Back on the chain gang, Hannah is pleased to see that Ben and Jamie have made some friends. The group's escape plan: sneak off and explore a nearby cave system.

Hannah: That's a really, really bad plan. It's probably a dead end, and if they can't get out the other end they'll be brought back and maybe killed.
Me: They're a bit stuck anyway, though, aren't they?
Hannah: Yeah, but at least they could stay alive until the Doctor... does something. Eurgh, I don't like this dramatic organ music, it's creepy and horrible. It's an electric organ as well, it's weird.

One member of the workforce is covered in a large hood; Hannah is convinced that this man is the Doctor in disguise, at least until the next scene where we see him being chased by guards. He evades his pursuers by hiding in a handy wardrobe.

Hannah: Do you think he'll go to Narnia?
Me: It's no less plausible than Atlantis, is it?
Hannah: That rubber suit, though; it's horrible, they're all walking around wearing wetsuits! That is not... good. Oh, excellent, he's found one. What the fuck is that? A fisherman's outfit in black? And why was there a wardrobe in a corridor?

The Doctor decides to pass the time by producing his recorder from his pocket ("Where did that come from?!"). Meanwhile, Ben and Jamie are exploring the tunnels.

Hannah: I'm getting flashbacks to The Daleks. This is looking relatively realistic... for once. Just another massive coincidence that a tunnel exists between a random part of the mine and the inner temple.

It's not long before Hannah is captivated by the headgear again.

Hannah: Are their headdresses supposed to look like lionfish?
Me: Why lionfish?
Hannah: The guy had a lionfish in his tank, and it reminded me that they're a bit frondy.
Me: To be honest, I'm not convinced anyone has put that much thought into it.
Hannah: Or like anemones.

After hearing the Doctor's argument against Professor Zaroff, the ruler of Atlantis carefully considers his case before rejecting it out of hand and turning him over to Zaroff to be executed.

Hannah: Aw, bad choice.

Let's take a moment to thank Amdo for small mercies.

Me: Six years ago, we couldn't have watched that episode.
Hannah: (sarcastically) What a shame.
Me: I thought you'd appreciate a real episode after all those reconstructions.
Hannah: No, I did enjoy it.
Me: Really?
Hannah: I like this.
Me: Do you?
Hannah: Yes, it's got plotholes coming out the arse but I like it, it's entertaining. It's a mad scientist in Atlantis! The idea is fun, even if the execution is poor; it's not making up for a lot, but it does make it bearable. And also the fact that it's the first moving Troughton I'm ever seeing, and that I'm enjoying watching him, is artificially inflating its worth in my mind. Why? Do you intensely despise it, and you're surprised that I have any like for it at all?
Me: I don't hate it but it's not exactly Stingray, is it?
Hannah: No, but it's interesting, it's fun.
Me: It's fine in concept, even if there are plotholes that could swallow the International Space Station, but it's fair to say that this is not a popular story. I think its reputation has probably improved a bit since this episode was found in 2011 but before that we could only see episode 3, which is probably the worst one...
Hannah: Oh, joy.
Me: ...so that was what everyone based their judgement on.
Hannah: That's my problem; I enjoy the show so much that I never give anything less than 5 out of 10 unless it makes me livid.
Me: And the science in this doesn't?
Hannah: We'll see. I'll watch that awful one, and then we'll see.

Episode 3

Anything can happen in the next half-hour. (Incidentally, did you know Stingray was the first British television series to be filmed entirely in colour?)

Hannah: It looks like he's wearing a lychee on his head; their skin is all dimpled like that. Or a 1930s bathing cap.

Hannah's distaste for Atlantean fashion crops up fairly regularly throughout this story; sometimes I like to play devil's advocate, if only to see her reaction.

Hannah: Look at these stupid idiots in their wetsuits.
Me: They're good, aren't they?
Hannah: They're awful! Wetsuits are awful. They paid people a lot of money to stand around and be filmed in a wetsuit.

Despite having all the equipment necessary to penetrate the Earth's crust and drain away the ocean, Professor Zaroff has yet to invent the refrigerator, so the fresh seafood farmed for Atlantis by the Fish People needs to be consumed immediately.

Hannah: So everyone has to go out and buy their food as soon as they want it? I can understand fresh fish would be a problem if it gets a bit warm, but why would seaweed go off within a few hours? How did the Atlanteans get food before Fish People existed? Did Fish People naturally happen?
Me: Some of them.
Hannah: Where does it say that?
Me: Well, it's possible, anyway. Some of them look different, at least.

The Doctor has gone undercover again.

Hannah: Is that the Doctor? Yeah. I like him with a tambourine. He looks like a member of the Beatles.
Me: Remind me which member of the Beatles was the tambourinist?
Hannah: I don't know.
Me: Anyway, he always looks like a member of the Beatles. He's got a Beatles haircut.
Hannah: He's so badly disguised, though; he's wearing a cloak over his normal clothes, and he's surrounded by wetsuits and blind guards and a busy marketplace full of people not actually doing anything. What is that in the background? A really, really shit statue? Look at it, it's awful! What's it for? It's just wonkily lying down in the background.
Me: It's possible that Atlantis is a bit short on stonemasons.
Hannah: Maybe it's a parade float or something. It basically looks like a papier-mâché model.
Me: Prop-wise, it probably is.
Hannah: It's horrible!
Me: What do you think of the Fish People?
Hannah: I think they're very pretty. I like their speaking noises.
Me: I thought you'd be a lot more disturbed by them. They freak the hell out of me.
Hannah: A little bit. I'm pretending they're just horrible masks rather than their actual faces. I don't like their faces, but they're not as terrifying as they could be.

Which is just as well, because now we have to watch the Fish People indulging in a lengthy synchronised swimming display while demanding their own union (I'm not making this up).

Hannah: This is very pretty.
Me: I'm glad you like it.
Hannah: Why? Is it the only good bit of the whole thing?
Me: I... wouldn't say that, no.
Hannah: Actually, no, I just saw someone randomly lying on a thing and wriggling their legs up and down. That wasn't great. Are they actually underwater? No, they're on wires, I can see them now. There are wires everywhere. And you can see the front of the tank is dirty; there are fingerprints all over the glass.

A while later...

Hannah: Okay, this is drawn-out. There's nothing happening.
Me: That's why I'm glad you're enjoying it so much.
Hannah: I take it back! I liked it to start with, it was very pretty and well-done, and then it zoomed in and I immediately changed my mind.

Later still...

Hannah: Are they actual acrobats or something? They're pointing their toes and things. Also, if you're a human and you get turned into a--

When the interminable scene finally ends after about a minute and a half of fish ballet, the novelty of seeing anything else at all is so jarring that it temporarily stuns Hannah into silence.

Me: You weren't expecting that to end, were you?
Hannah: If you're a human and you're given the operation to turn you into a Fish Person, and then you're able to breathe underwater, you'd have to learn how to speak their language and move and do all the things underwater, which is just stupid. Surely you'd just end up still being human, but with gills.

After tricking Polly with a laughably unconvincing heart attack ("It's predictable and awful"), Zaroff kills the Atlantean ruler and his guards before hysterically screaming "Nothing in the world can stop me now!"

Hannah: He is mental.
Me: That's one of the most ridiculed lines in the entire show, ever.
Hannah: It's just so hammy.

It's not looking good for Atlantis. Fortunately, Hannah has an elegant solution.

Hannah: All the Doctor has to do is show the explodey-pot trick to one of his guards; the guard will just say "alright then" and shoot the mad professor and then he's done. All they have to do is get one of his guns and shoot him. The end.
Me: Well, the next episode doesn't exist. But now that you've seen two episodes of Troughton moving--
Hannah: It's pretty much the same as him not moving. He does the same things, but he's got facial expressions now.
Me: But now you can see all the physical quirks that he brings to it as well.
Hannah: Yes, he's a different character; he doesn't stand around with a walking stick being angry at people. He dashes around and gets stuff done.
Me: By the way, this is also the first time he's had three companions since Ian and Barbara left.
Hannah: Oh yeah, I was going to mention that; I know you always like it when there are multiple companions.
Me: What do you think of Jamie, then? Is he a good addition?
Hannah: I don't feel like he's brought much to the table yet.
Me: That's mostly because the decision to make him a regular character was a last-minute thing at the end of the last story, so the following couple of stories had already been written without him.
Hannah: So basically they've just got him doing the same thing as one of the others?
Me: Yes, it looks like Ben's role in this story has been shared out between the two of them, and he gets sidelined for much of the next story. Then he starts getting a bit more spotlight after that.

She seems to be studying the credits with even more interest than usual.

Hannah: Are any of these people famous?
Me: Well, there's Patrick Troughton from The Omen...
Hannah: Shush, you.
Me: ...Frazer Hines was in Emmerdale...
Hannah: Stop it.

Episode 4

Me: The playwright Joe Orton wrote in his diaries about watching this episode. Well, he wrote about watching Frazer Hines in a wetsuit, anyway.
Hannah: Why? Has Jamie never worn trousers before?
Me: I've looked up this entry in the university library's copy of The Orton Diaries, and he implies that he enjoyed watching Jamie in his rubber suit.
Hannah: I suppose that's what people do these days as well; everyone talks about how much they fancy various actors and actresses on television.
Me: Why are you looking at me like that?
Hannah: No reason. They're very tight-fitting outfits.

(I was wondering if she was trying to make a sly dig at me, but if she's noticed my preoccupation with Aisling Bea she doesn't say so.)

Hannah: So how did the Irishman end up shipwrecked there, if he can't swim particularly well?
Me: Well, people are normally on a boat when they get shipwrecked...
Hannah: Most people who go on boats can probably swim. Then again, it could have been a tourist vessel.
Me: I can swim, but I don't think I could survive in the ocean; I think we'd both be in trouble if we'd been shipwrecked on the Queen Mary 2 last summer.
Hannah: I wonder if the soldiers on the Mary Rose knew how to swim.

The Doctor and Ben head off to Zaroff's laboratory. The Doctor has a cunning plan: they're going to flood the lower levels of Atlantis.

Hannah: The Doctor has made a decision to wipe out half their city, because he thinks that's the only way to avoid wiping out their whole city.
Me: That's exactly what's happened.
Hannah: I don't think... I feel like there might have been another way to stop it. Like storm in and switch off the machines.

Thanks to another Australian censor clip we get to see Zaroff drowning in his laboratory, unable to reach the control panel.

Hannah: If he was intelligent he would have installed voice-control or something.

Elsewhere, Polly and Jamie are trying to stay one step ahead of the rising water level, but Polly's stamina is failing her.

Hannah: Do they ever have a male companion who gives up and can't do it, and has a little whinge?
Me: Er... wait and see.
Hannah: Hmm.

Having saved the world, the Doctor and his companions leave the submerged wreckage of Atlantis to its own devices.

Hannah: They don't go back and check that anybody else got out okay; he's just annihilated a civilisation and decides to leave. Has Jamie lost his kilt?

But before we can see whether or not Jamie is a true Scot (if you catch my drift), the Doctor has some bad news: the TARDIS is out of control.

Hannah: You're saying it like it's something new.

The Score

Hannah: What a pile of shite. It was very pretty shite, I'll give it that, but there are so many unanswered questions; so many things that are really important and vital to the plot, that just have no explanation. How did the Doctor know that this particular Zaroff was here? Why did they accept him into their culture? If people keep getting shipwrecked there all the time, why does this one person get raised to prophet status and they believe he's the one who's going to raise Atlantis, just because he says he will? People will say anything to avoid getting sacrificed, but no, they believed him and let him do his experiments and nobody else learned enough science to question how he's going to achieve this. Could he really have generated enough steam to blow the world apart, anyway? And if he can do all that, why can't he refrigerate food? Still, the costumes were fun.
Me: Anything else?
Hannah: Atlantis. I was hoping they'd go there one day, I thought it would be quite interesting...
Me: Were you?
Hannah: Yes, I like any science-fiction show that addresses it, because it's interesting for them to try and explain what the myth really is. Like in Stargate, where Atlantis was an entire city that was actually a giant spaceship...
Me: I'm just surprised it would have even occurred to you.
Hannah: Well, Stargate: Atlantis is my favourite sci-fi show ever, and there have been other things that have tried to explain Atlantis before. So that's the good thing about it, and it's got some interesting characters, but a lot of them are over-the-top and far too shallow. There's not a lot of depth.
Me: Ironically.
Hannah: There's just too much that's wrong about this; the story is fun, but the execution is terrible. It feels random... it's like someone had a dream and then wrote it down and decided not to worry about the details, except for certain parts that are way overly-detailed. Rubbish. I'm so annoyed, because parts of it were pretty and I like the idea of them stumbling across an underwater city that nobody knows about. It's a lost culture, so it feels alien but they're not actually aliens, they're people, and yet it also feels historic but it's set in modern times. Those bits are really fun and interesting, and then everything else is a load of nonsense.

4/10

Me: Sometimes I wonder if we haven't been spoiled by Blue Planet.
Hannah: I want to go higher for all the other bits I liked, but there's so much wrong with it. But at least it makes more sense than The Edge of Destruction.

The Highlanders

Episode 1

Hannah: Oh cool, Scotland.
Me: Is that sarcastic?
Hannah: Yes, but I was just being facetious; any place is good. That's an imaginative title, by the way.
Me: As opposed to, say, The Smugglers? Or almost any other Doctor Who title?
Hannah: Oh, I'm not detracting from their boringness. It's just adding to the ranks.

Patrick Troughton's second story, like his first, is entirely missing; it won't be until episode 2 of the next story that we finally get to see him. It can't come soon enough for us, not least because it looks like Hannah is having a little trouble adjusting to the new Doctor.

Hannah: I thought he'd be Hartnell.
Me: No you didn't.
Hannah: No, I was genuinely expecting a white-haired man to step out of the TARDIS. I don't know why.
Me: Well, let's just get through this story and then you can see him properly.
Hannah: I'll get over it. I'm just annoyed that I have to go back to concentrating really hard on the reconstructions after watching the animated episodes last time.

Ben's hope that they've arrived back in time for the 1966 World Cup final is dashed when our heroes narrowly avoid getting bowled over by a stray cannonball.

Hannah: I think they were firing cannons in the port yesterday. I walked out of work and there were sudden bangs and I could see smoke drifting, but it was still daylight so it couldn't have been fireworks.
Me: Really? Sounds dangerous.

Then Jamie turns up, played by future Emmerdale star Frazer Hines. Hannah perks up a little when she hears his name.

Me: What?
Hannah: I know a few companions; it's hard to forget that someone once told me that an historical Scotsman in a kilt, called Jamie, is a companion at some point. I'm hoping that this is the same guy, otherwise it's either going to be a very weird coincidence later on, or I've remembered something very precise that doesn't actually happen.
Me: It wouldn't be the first time.
Hannah: I'm hoping that if he does become a companion, he'll last longer than Katarina; if she was killed off because it was difficult to write a story with a companion from so far back in history that she needs to have everything explained to her all the time, surely Jamie can't fare much better. At least he's from a much more advanced culture, 3000 years closer to the "modern" time, but is that good enough? Can he travel comfortably with Ben and Polly, let alone confront futuristic technology and alien races?

The Doctor reprimands Ben for not knowing his history.

Hannah: I don't know much either. Actually I know nothing at all about this period, so I have no insight on accuracy; I can't even use pretend-knowledge from Braveheart because I only saw that once. I don't even know if that's the right period.
Me: Give or take five hundred years.
Hannah: You see?
Me: We're in 1746, right after the Battle of Culloden.
Hannah: Well there's still bits to mop up, clearly.
Me: Sort of. The Jacobites are fleeing the battlefield after being massacred by the British Government's army.
Hannah: Did you do research for this?
Me: Not exactly. Ten years ago I watched a six-part documentary series about the Highland Clearances called Highlands, because I knew someone who appeared in it and worked as the historical consultant.

Shout-out to Ray Owens (or "the Highlander", as he's professionally known). Meanwhile, the Doctor is adopting a German accent for some reason and introducing himself to the British soldiers as "Doctor von Wer".

Hannah: "Doctor from..."
Me: He's calling himself "Doctor Who".
Hannah: No, he's calling himself "Doctor of Who".
Me: Yes, well, pedantry aside, it's the first time he's ever called himself that.
Hannah: I like it.
Me: Do you really?
Hannah: I like it when it crops up occasionally.
Me: When he calls himself "Doctor Who"?
Hannah: Well, when he gives himself a surname...
Me: You thought it was weird when Peter Cushing did it.
Hannah: Yes, because it's not his actual name. The real Doctor has never called himself "Doctor Who".
Me: He has, just now.
Hannah: Yes, but that was in German.
Me: Oh, okay. So it doesn't count if it's in German?
Hannah: That's right.

The Laird's daughter Kirsty is played by a familiar actress, "familiar" being a relative term in this case.

Me: Look, it's Hannah Gordon.
Hannah: I don't know who that is.
Me: You never watched Watercolour Challenge?
Hannah: No. Have you?
Me: Of course not. Anyway, it was a daytime TV show on Channel 4 that she presented, and she's also the woman who accidentally killed Victor Meldrew in the last episode of One Foot in the Grave.

As the Doctor, Ben and the male Jacobites are led away to Inverness Gaol to await death by hanging, Hannah fixates on Polly's teeth.

Hannah: I like it when the companions make little anachronistic references and then correct themselves, like when she mentions fillings and then realises that they don't have fillings. That's my favourite bit of time-travelling.
Me: Really?
Hannah: No. But it's a part of time-travelling I really like, and I like it when they acknowledge it.
Me: Like in Back to the Future?
Hannah: Exactly. There are so many times that they don't do it, and it's really annoying and they just go on and assume things are the same, but then there are so many other times when they do draw attention to it and I like it.

Episode 2

Me: I don't know if I ought to tell you this.
Hannah: What?
Me: This is the...
Hannah: Worst episode they ever made?
Me: No, this is the last historical.
Hannah: (disappointed) Awww. They really decided that it just wasn't as popular and wasn't worth doing anymore?
Me: Well, there's a myth that the viewing figures for the historicals were significantly lower than the other stories, but that's not really supported by the facts so maybe the producer just wanted to do more monsters instead. Obviously we're still going to get stories set in the past, but this is the last "pure" historical without any aliens or anachronisms except for the presence of the TARDIS crew. Well, there's a two-part story in fifteen years' time, but other than that, this is it; the last one.
Hannah: So the rest of the series is going to be like all the modern ones, where they go back to the past and it always turns out that the ghost or whatever is actually an alien.
Me: I always thought it would be really nice to have at least one "pure historical" episode in the new series; you don't need aliens to make it an engaging story. It would have suited Peter Capaldi particularly well.
Hannah: You can still have plenty of legitimate terror and threat, but I suppose nobody would be that interested in the history stories anymore.
Me: They might feel a bit cheated, yes, but I think it would work, especially considering each modern series usually gets at least one experimental episode and they're usually quite successful. We keep getting the occasional episodes that's almost like that, and it feels like the aliens have been thrown in at the last minute. They occasionally do it in the audio adventures, at least, but I do miss them.
Hannah: Okay. Well, I'll try and cherish it.

She's having a bit of a hard time with the accents, finding Troughton's German accent so vague that she even mistakes it for French at one point.

Hannah: Are any of these actors actually Scottish? Some of the accents are more believable than others.
Me: Some of them are, some aren't. Frazer Hines certainly isn't.

But she's impressed with the resourcefulness of the Doctor's companions.

Hannah: Ben's quite clever, noticing things. Obviously he'll know about tide marks, having been in the Navy. Polly is witty, too. They seem to have a lot more initiative than some previous companions.

The Doctor isn't without initiative either; he disarms and ties up a solicitor, then stuffs a handkerchief into his mouth and comments "I've never seen a silent lawyer before." Then he locks him in a cupboard.

Hannah: This Doctor is so much more calm. Calm and witty.
Me: Calm in what way?
Hannah: He just gets on with it.
Me: Hartnell did that.
Hannah: He would have just spent half the time shouting and calling him a fool.

And that's not the only thing that separates him from Hartnell...

Hannah: Hmmm. Is he going to disguise himself as a washerwoman?
Me: Yep. Just like Mr Toad.
Hannah: Exactly. This Doctor seems to have a clear personality, continuing from his first story; less angry than Hartnell, and perhaps more cunning and ingenious. He's certainly more of a clown, though fortunately not as slapstick as I feared they might push it. Dressing up as a woman, pretending to be German, managing to overpower two men and medically "treat" them with almost no force... his approach to problems is very different, and it's good to see that he's a "whole" person from the start, distinct from Hartnell's Doctor. Peter Cushing's Doctor was too similar whilst being too different at the same time, which was unnerving and annoying, but this new Doctor is setting the trend for all future new Doctors; he's the same in many ways, but with a covering of different mannerisms and thought styles.

Episode 3

Hannah: I like the historicals; it's unfortunate that they decided to stop doing these.

Ben and Jamie are given three options: turn traitor and give evidence as the King's witnesses, be hanged, or sign seven-year contracts as plantation workers in the West Indies.

Hannah: Bananas or death.
Me: What would you do?
Hannah: I'd go off to the colonies. Nah, I'd probably give evidence; I'm not honourable when it comes to my own life. I'll dob someone in if I really have to. All the options involve you never having to go home and speak to anyone you know again. Become a traitor; no one will talk to you, but at least you could go and live in your own country somewhere else.
Me: There's worse things in life than having no one talk to you. It would certainly make taxi rides a lot more bearable.

Polly, Kirsty and the Doctor manage to escape the solicitor's assistant Perkins.

Hannah: He's such a useless, wet character. What are orange wenches?
Me: Wenches who sell oranges. Or possibly the cast of The Only Way is Essex.
Hannah: Incidentally, the Doctor seems to be spending a lot of time as a woman.
Me: You haven't seen anything yet; just wait until you see how Jodie Whittaker plays it.

Then the Doctor decides he's had enough of being pro-active and settles down for a nap instead.

Hannah: He's very unhelpful. But I know what it's like when you just have to go to sleep.
Me: (wearily) I know you do. Frankly I'm astonished that we ever managed to get through the Hartnell era.

Back on the cargo ship, Ben is getting tossed off.

Hannah: Is this the cliffhanger? Is Ben going to die? We've seen his replacement, so maybe he will. Although if Ben can't swim, he's a shit Royal Navy sailor.

Episode 4

Hannah is sad to see the end of the Doctor's transvestism.

Hannah: Disappointing.
Me: What?
Hannah: He's putting his old clothes back on.
Me: It's been two episodes. Do you really want to see him drag up like Bugs Bunny every week?
Hannah: Yes.

What she can't see, because there's no surviving footage, is the fight between the captive Highlanders and the slave traders.

Hannah: I can't make any comments about whether or not the fighting is any good. It saddens me.
Me: Sounds decent, though. It sounds like too much of a scuffle to have looked really staged.
Hannah: I should hope so. I wish we could see things.

She's enjoying the characterisation of the new Doctor, especially when he manages to pull off a cunning ruse to get himself out of trouble.

Hannah: He's a constantly sneaky Doctor. And having a younger actor means that they can do more energetic things, like jump on someone and kill him.
Me: He hasn't killed anyone!
Hannah: He knocked out the guard. There's a lot more energetic and fun things that Hartnell would never have done.

After the slave trader is arrested and taken away ("I like it when the baddie gets caught and not just left behind"), our heroes invite Jamie to come along. "Where are we going?" Jamie asks; Polly's reply isn't very helpful.

Hannah: No! You can't just say "You'll see." What if they go somewhere else and then he says "No, I choose to stay in Scotland. Oh, too late is it? Great." It's not fair!

The Doctor and Ben enter the TARDIS but Jamie hesitates, so Polly takes his hand and leads him in.

Hannah: You can't force him to come with you! She dragged him in by his hand. He agreed to come with them, but he doesn't know where they're going; he thinks they're going over the border or somewhere, but they're going to time-and-space places that they can't come back from. If they'd told him where he's going he might have changed his mind, he's allowed to. You can't just lead him into the TARDIS like that.
Me: It's a shame you already knew about Jamie, because this is one of the few stories where the new companion is genuinely a complete surprise. In their introductory story, a new companion's role usually gets built up so that they're acting like a companion instead of a supporting character long before they end up joining the TARDIS, but Jamie is more of a side character in this one; Kirsty is more the sort of character you would expect to be joining them at the end. He wasn't originally intended to be a companion when the story was being written; he was written into the regular cast at the last minute.
Hannah: Why? Did they fancy having three? Did one of the others want to leave?
Me: I think they just liked him.

This leads to a conversation about one of the show's most controversial companions.

Hannah: When I watched modern Doctor Who, I was captivated by the relationship between the Doctor and his companions. I was young and emotional, and really felt the bond between Rose and the tenth Doctor. I knew other people didn't like it; I was aware that it felt over-the-top to some, and even just wrong if you consider how different the two people are, especially the age difference. But I loved the love. And I like emotional Who.
Me: Hmmm. I like the River Song storyline but there's something horribly unpleasant when it's one of his teenage companions, especially when you consider how insufferably selfish and possessive she became with Tennant after being so great with Eccleston.
Hannah: By watching old Who, I've finally understood the distaste. I know the Doctor is old and intelligent and different, but seeing how he started out, seeing him as an old man, changes my perception of the character. The tenth Doctor is not visually old, and he has the characteristics and mannerisms of a young man, but now I can start to see the gravitas, age and grandness of the man inside. Hartnell is inside there somewhere; Troughton, too. I'm starting to see that more clearly. Tennant's Doctor is like a pinball machine in a cathedral; he's fun and bouncy and sometimes feels uncontrollable, but just beyond that you can see vaulted arches and stained-glass windows. When that juxtaposition of the Doctor revealed itself to me, it made the youthful love drama start to feel awkward and not fitting with the feel of the show. When I get to watching new Who again, it's going to feel so different. I'm not ashamed of liking it the way it was, though. It was moving and exciting to me.

The Score

Hannah: It was quite exciting; I like rebels versus the establishment, and running around in kilts. The accents weren't too bad, and I understood most of what they were saying. Maybe the third episode was a bit slow; all that happened was that they managed to get some weapons and oranges. And I'm annoyed that there's only a couple of women in the whole thing; the Doctor doesn't count. So it's a mixed-up tale of people being sold for slavery whilst the Doctor dresses up and does fun things.
Me: Did it buckle your swash?
Hannah: It did. It was a little bit pirate-y, and a little bit Wind in the Willows...
Me: Only one bit!
Hannah: He dresses up as a washerwoman, I really like it! I like this Doctor, a lot; he's devious, fun and willing to make a small fool of himself. It's hard to judge this one, because there's so much going on that you can't see. It's fun and entertaining, and maybe if I'd been able to see it I would have seen just how fleshed-out it was, but it felt a little bit flat. I'll give it...

7/10