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

The Ark

The Steel Sky [Episode 1]

I haven't told Hannah how many episodes are in this one; audiences in the sixties wouldn't have known how long each story would last, and the twist at the end of episode 2 only works if you're not expecting it to be a four-parter.

We're off to a shaky start when Dodo emerges from her first trip in the TARDIS, convinced that the jungle environment is part of Whipsnade Zoo and adamant that they couldn't be anywhere other than Earth. Hannah's initial reaction is the start of a trend that will continue throughout the episode.

Hannah: I hate her.

Even Steven seems exasperated with her. As if that wasn't bad enough, the Doctor's new companion also seems somewhat zoologically-challenged.

Hannah: Did she just call that a locust? That's clearly a mantis! Locusts look like grasshoppers.

Elsewhere, a criminal trial is taking place; Hannah watches the scene in silence, but the incredulity on her face speaks volumes.

Me: What?
Hannah: There's just so many things!
Me: Go on then.
Hannah: First of all, he's not wearing any trousers. I can see his pants. He's wearing budgie smugglers. Dark ones.
Me: Okay. Next?
Hannah: His sentence for being careless is to be miniaturised by "the minifier" - the minifier - for seven hundred years until he can no longer be a threat to anyone. Does minifying people make them long-lived?
Me: They're on a seven-hundred-year journey to escape the dying Earth and settle on a distant planet. These are the guardians who safeguard the Ark; the rest of the human race is miniaturised and kept in cold storage.
Hannah: So what are these guardians supposed to be doing? Everyone's just standing around wearing tassels.

She's been suspiciously quiet about their alien subordinates so far.

Me: What do you think of the Monoids?
Hannah: Interesting, because they've just got one big eye in the middle of their face where their mouth should be. But apparently they don't have a mouth, so they have to communicate with sign language instead.
Me: The actors are actually holding the eyeball in their mouths. To be honest I find it less distracting than their Beatles hairstyles.

Back at the zoo, it's time to discuss the elephant in the room. Monica the elephant is deliberately filmed in a way to resemble stock footage, and the director manages to convincingly fool the viewer right up until the moment when the Doctor and Dodo go up and start patting her. I turn to Hannah, expecting her to be suitably impressed.

Me: Look, it's actually there! They had an elephant in the studio!
Hannah: And? They've had horses before.
Me: It's not quite the same.

The travellers are surprised to find that the jungle has no sky, just a steel roof overhead.

Hannah: Of course, they didn't have things like the Eden Project back then. But they must have had zoos. She's already mentioned Whipsnade, but did they not have biomes?
Me: I'm not sure they had any biomes with a massive jungle inside a metal dome.
Hannah: What about botanical gardens inside a greenhouse?
Me: Not with Indian elephants wandering around inside them, no.

It turns out Dodo has been helping herself to clothes from the TARDIS wardrobe, another transgression that doesn't sit well with Hannah. When Dodo asks the Doctor if he's going to send her home, and he replies that he couldn't even if he wanted to, it doesn't occur to her to question this; in fact, she seems quite chipper about it.

Hannah: I really don't like people like that.
Me: Like what?
Hannah: People who ask a question and then don't listen to the answer.
Me: About quarter past eight.

This earns me a Look. It's okay, I'm used to it.

Hannah: The Monoids' sign language is too simplistic to be remotely useful. Mostly because they don't really have fingers.
Me: I don't suppose they've got very good depth perception, either.
Hannah: And yet they're still allowed to drive trucks.

The Monoids discover the TARDIS and raise the alarm, but it's not immediately clear where the noise is coming from, causing Hannah to briefly wonder if the Doctor has recently installed a burglar alarm. It's actually not a bad idea, especially if the TARDIS gets attacked by any aliens who are sensitive to loud noises; at the very least, it would have saved a lot of bother at the beginning of The Sensorites.

Hannah: I've always liked this concept. Spaceship habitat, doomed races, preserved life... it's been done a lot, but Doctor Who must have been one of the first.
Me: Apart from the Bible.
Hannah: I know, but I'm looking on a sci-fi level.

The Doctor estimates that the TARDIS must have jumped about 10 million years into the future.

Hannah: And everyone is still human-shaped and wearing awful clothes.

Even more bizarrely, they've commissioned a giant statue that takes seven hundred years to sculpt, due to be completed when they reach their destination. Talk about forward planning.

But it's all academic anyway because the crew have suddenly caught Dodo's common cold, a disease which they cured centuries ago and is now fatal because they have no natural resistance.

Hannah: Oh, they're all going to die of flu because of her. I knew I hated her.
Me: She's not having a good first trip.
Hannah: Good, I hope she dies.
Me: Maybe a little harsh?
Hannah: She's been really annoying, right from the start. I wonder if she'll ever calm down, and what horrible thing will have to occur to make that happen.

The Doctor's party are arrested by the deputy commander, whom Hannah describes as "a little bit mental."

Hannah: Horribly hammy. I mean it's a good story, but the acting is atrocious. The direction is bad; it's not subtle or creative. The story is interesting, but a lot of the time I'm just thinking "oh god, why couldn't you have made everything else decent?"

The Plague [Episode 2]

Hannah: It's weird when they re-film the cliffhanger reprise.
Me: Is it re-filmed?
Hannah: Yes. It's completely different. He gestured the first time, and also everyone else was a good couple of steps behind him.

We see a funeral procession for a dead Monoid, but it seems to be lacking a certain something.

Hannah: It completely ruins the moment, the fact that it's a man dressed up in a rubber alien suit driving the body away on a tiny little tuk tuk. A little airport scooter. But I do like the idea that they've brought a disease somewhere, it's always an interesting concept. I've never thought of that before; they're travelling to all these different planets and so far they've never accidentally given a disease to someone.
Me: To be fair, it doesn't look like the Doctor has ever considered it before either.
Hannah: It's like when white settlers went over to North America and wiped out whole settlements just by being there, because the native Americans didn't have any natural immunity to smallpox. And then, when the settlers realised what had happened, they deliberately gave them infected blankets so that the natives would all die out and they could take their land.

Astonishingly, we're told that the vaccine is a natural compound derived entirely from the membrane specimens of a lizard and an elephant.

Hannah: They're making a flu vaccine out of elephants?
Me: Looks like it. Do you know who's in this episode?
Hannah: Peter Purves.
Me: Yes, but we've also just seen Michael Sheard, most famous for playing the headmaster in Grange Hill.
Hannah: I didn't see that.
Me: I've never watched it either, and as far as I'm concerned his most prominent role was the German building site manager from the first series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, but he also appeared in The Empire Strikes Back as well as six Doctor Who stories across the sixties, seventies and eighties. Oh, and he played Adolf Hitler in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Hannah: Oh, okay.
Me: He's played Hitler an awful lot, come to think of it.

We also get to see the Earth going up in flames, in (presumably) the same event that Christopher Eccleston observes some forty years later.

Hannah: And a flap of skin will be watching.
Me: At least we don't have to hear Britney Spears this time.

Immediately after the TARDIS leaves, we get a glorious fifteen-second sequence of a Monoid slowly reversing his truck out of shot. It's so priceless that I can't even bring myself to have a go at defending it.

Hannah: That's just bad.

The TARDIS re-materialises in its next destination, as a lead-in to the next story.

Hannah: They're in another jungle?

Then she realises the twist: we're back on the Ark, and the story's not over yet.

Hannah: Aw, the TARDIS has taken them back to the same place in seven hundred years, so that they can see that everyone got on okay! Has the TARDIS broken, or is it bringing them back there on purpose?

The statue has now been completed, and Hannah can't help but notice that it has more hair and fewer eyes than she was expecting.

Hannah: I thought it was supposed to be a human head?
Me: It was.
Hannah: Ah. So there's been a Monoid uprising.

The Return [Episode 3]

Hannah isn't convinced that seven hundred years' worth of artistry have gone into that statue.

Hannah: It's got such a dumpy little head.

The Monoids have now found a way of speaking with the voice of Roy Skelton, and our heroes are arrested (again) and taken away to be imprisoned in the security kitchen.

Hannah: "Security kitchen"?
Me: Yes, I think that's probably my favourite phrase ever in Doctor Who.
Hannah: Perhaps the political bin room was full.

The Monoids are packing a boatload of resentment for being treated as "secondary beings" for so many centuries.

Hannah: I thought they were relatively equal before. It didn't seem like they were badly treated.
Me: It's been seven hundred years and a few dozen generations since then. A lot of other things may have happened.
Hannah: Seven hundred years for the true nature of humans to come through and oppress things.

They also refer to themselves by number, with the leader being known as "One".

Hannah: They don't have names?
Me: Not unless his name is Juan.
Hannah: I notice the fashion hasn't changed in seven hundred years.

As the Ark finally approaches its destination, the planet Refusis II, the Doctor and Dodo are dispatched to investigate the natives. Hannah isn't thrilled at the prospect of more invisible aliens (it's a bit soon after The Daleks' Master Plan), but at least it's a handy way of doing a non-humanoid race without having to make them look convincing. Not that you'd know it from the furnishings; she wearily observes all the distinctly terrestrial-looking doors, windows and dressing tables, until she realises that the Refusians have been making arrangements for the new settlers.

Hannah: Oh, that's why it looks all human! They made it for them! How very kind.

She's even more delighted to find that the security kitchen is capable of producing food just by dropping powder into a pot of water.

Hannah: (laughing) Magic chicken!
Me: Yep, just add water. It's about as retro as futuristic food can possibly get.

The episode concludes with the Doctor and Dodo facing the possibility that they may have to stay on the planet for the rest of their lives.

Hannah: Cliffhanger! Except it's not, because we know they don't.

The Bomb [Episode 4]

While I spend the episode eating brie and wondering how the Refusians manage to reproduce, Hannah picks apart the special effects on the Ark's launcher ships.

Hannah: I can see the strings.
Me: Is this what you're like when you watch Thunderbirds?
Hannah: Yes.

The scouting party consists of Monoids named Two, Three, and...

Hannah: Oh, he's Sixty-Three, is he? Redshirt.

Hannah is devastated when the Monoids kill their human lackey.

Hannah: Awww!
Me: What do you mean "awww"?
Hannah: Aw, he was so devoted.
Me: To the evil aliens.
Hannah: Yes! He was loyal. Ish.
Me: He wasn't loyal to his own people.
Hannah: And actually he did sell the Monoids out.

Before I can start probing too far into this moral maze, the Monoids' bomb is defused and the Refusians have forced both sides into a peace treaty. Then we get another TARDIS departure scene, although sadly not as unintentionally hilarious as last time.

Hannah: They're being driven off by a guardian this time, who looks a lot like the guy who played Lupin in Harry Potter.
Me: David Thewlis? He would have been about three years old here.
Hannah: I know, it looks just like him.

Back on board, Steven and Dodo have changed into some contemporary groovy gear in preparation for the next story.

Hannah: Oooh! Everyone's very sixties. I don't... eurgh.
Me: What do you mean, "eurgh"?
Hannah: I don't like the sixties.
Me: Oh, for heaven's sake.

The Score

Hannah: I've always liked that overall idea, an ark of people surviving, especially when there's more than one species that have to try and co-habit. It's almost always the case that the humans end up being bastards and enslaving people to some degree, and then get their comeuppance, but it usually ends with something along the lines of "you were justified but let's have peace, it's a much better idea." The only thing that's really wrong with it is that the Monoid costumes are so ridiculous that they couldn't walk; one guy even tripped over.
Me: Any thoughts on the story structure?
Hannah: I liked the second half a lot more than the first half; the first half was full of stupid people shouting a lot and not believing anything, which always annoys me.
Me: The idea of having the story in two halves is to see the cause and effect of what happens after the Doctor has gone. Normally he just solves a problem and then buggers off and doesn't stick around to see the long-term consequences of his interference, even though there could be all kinds of repercussions that are entirely his fault. It's something they've done a couple of times in the new series, like when Eccleston shuts down an evil news organisation and walks away thinking he's resolved everything, then comes back half a series later to find that his good deed has caused the decline of the human race and paved the way for a Dalek takeover.
Hannah: I like it, it makes you think more. Maybe it could have been longer - each segment was only two episodes long - but it's well-balanced the way it was, and it works. It's a nice neat little four-episode story, and I liked the twist.

8/10

The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve

War of God [Episode 1]

Another week, another missing story. The TARDIS materialises on a hot August day near the Rue de Béthisy in 1572.

Hannah: Oh, that's nice. My school looked like that. Almost exactly like that, except without the river. That kind of building, round the corner with a terrace.

The Doctor manages to identify the time and place by overhearing some nearby Huguenots.

Hannah: Ah, Gaston. Very French name.
Me: That's Eric Thompson, he wrote and narrated the English version of The Magic Roundabout. And he's also Emma Thompson's father.
Hannah: Oh, how lucky for the Doctor, they're in Paris.
Me: Yes, it went very well last time.
Hannah: No, he said he wanted to be in Paris so that he could go and visit someone.

So, while the Doctor goes to track down the local apothecary and discuss his germinology work, Steven falls in with the Huguenots at a neighbourhood tavern.

Hannah: I didn't realise the Protestant/Catholic thing was a big deal in other countries, although obviously it must have been; I only got taught about the Tudor era at school. Every year.
Me: Normally they choose periods of history that the audience would know quite well, but this is the one historical story where you're not supposed to know too much about what happens. It spoils the ending if you know what's coming.

In case you're wondering, I didn't tell her the story title. Not only does it give away the ending, but it's also factually inaccurate; the event actually took place on St Bartholomew's Day.

The apothecary fears the Abbot of Amboise's imminent arrival in Paris, and Hannah is intrigued when the Doctor leaves the shop after their chat, apparently having hatched some kind of plan to deal with the Abbot. Elsewhere in the city, a local servant girl is running frantically from her pursuers and is clearly terrified; Hannah's assessment of the situation is fascinating, even by her usual standards.

Hannah: There's lots of lovely lacework in this.

Anne ends up meeting Steven ("He gets into all kinds of trouble") while he waits for the Doctor, but by nightfall it becomes obvious that the Doctor has gone missing, although Hannah is too distracted by Anne's West Country accent to dwell on this for too long. Then the cliffhanger, in which we meet a very familiar looking Abbot of Amboise, takes her completely by surprise.

Hannah: Well, I see! Is it just his doppelgänger by coincidence? Or is the Doctor having a little stint at playing abbot?
Me: You'll have to wait and see.
Hannah: Interesting twist. I'm curious. I really like this story. Again I don't really know this period of history, but it's really well-painted in my ears. You can't see anything but the audio's good enough that I actually know what's going on for once.

The Sea Beggar [Episode 2]

The actor playing Gaspard de Saux-Tavannes, real-world Marshal of France and the main antagonist of the story, certainly has the appearance of a villain. Or the appearance of someone who plays a lot of them, anyway.

Hannah: He looks like Jeremy Irons' grandad or something. Although obviously he doesn't sound like him.
Me: Why his grandad?
Hannah: Because he doesn't really look like him. You need to put enough generations between them.

A pattern is starting to emerge in Steven's behaviour.

Hannah: Apparently this story is called "Steven can't find the Porte Saint-Martin".
Me: What do you think of it so far?
Hannah: I love stories of subterfuge and skulking around in taverns in historical periods. It's maybe a little too much like the French Revolution story, but it's a good enough story with its own unique points so the similarities don't matter too much. It's an interesting period of history, the story is well-told enough that the lack of action sequences isn't as detrimental as usual, and the intrigue is being constantly stoked.

Despite playing two roles in the story, William Hartnell is still absent for this episode.

Hannah: Was he on holiday?
Me: Who?
Hannah: Billy. Or was it just relevant to the plot that he wasn't in this episode at any point?
Me: Probably both.
Hannah: Do you want to watch the rest?
Me: Right now?
Hannah: It's a really good story.
Me: If you like.
Hannah: It's 10 out of 10 so far. Nobody's done anything stupid yet.

Priest of Death [Episode 3]

Hannah doesn't think much of Steven and Anne's choice of hiding place.

Hannah: Oh, so that's their cool idea of somewhere to go where no one will find them. A place where they know he's gone before.

To evade the guards who are looking for them, Steven helps himself to a cloak and hat from the apothecary's shop.

Hannah: Why doesn't she get disguised as well? He could dress her up as a lady or something.
Me: There probably aren't any ladies' clothes there.
Hannah: I suppose. Dress her up as a man then.
Me: It didn't work too well with Vicki in The Crusade.
Hannah: It lasted a whole episode. That's probably long enough.

During the Doctor's prolonged absence from this story, William Hartnell ironically turns out to be the most interesting guest star.

Me: I really wish we could see Hartnell performing as the Abbot. People tend to assume his mannerisms and giggles and "hmms" as the Doctor were spontaneous and that he was like that in real life, but he's so different here; it just goes to show how much of an acting performance it really was.

As usual, Hannah is eager to go into Babelfish mode whenever she hears a French street name.

Hannah: I only know what "fossé" means because there was an Asterix book that I had in French, and it was Le Grand Fossé, which was basically a big crack or canyon.
Me: Oh, Asterix and the Great Divide? I had that one.
Hannah: Yeah. So I know the word "fossé" has several different meanings, but I’m not entirely sure what the best translation is, although I do know it's probably not canyons in the middle of Paris. The "Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain" could be the "St Germain Road of Alleys", like a road with lots of side roads or "cracks". Or it could also be a "Road of Ditches".

She's still no closer to unravelling the mystery of the Abbot.

Hannah: This is an abbot instructing people to be killed. Doesn't seem very religious.
Me: Well, it does take place during the French Wars of Religion. So do you think the Abbot is the Doctor, or someone else?
Hannah: I don't know. It's a long game the Doctor's playing if it's him. Other characters have mentioned never having seen him before, which suggests that the Abbot could easily be an impostor. Maybe if the Doctor was led off to help the resistance so that they could practise science, then I could believe it, but the Abbot's not doing that; he's the religious leader of the Catholics and he's trying to help crush science, so I don't believe any reason for the Doctor pretending be the Abbot. He's not helping the apothecary in any way.

The mystery is somewhat clarified when the Abbot's body is discovered dead in the street at the end of the episode.

Hannah: It's getting a bit complicated. There's too many characters and I can't tell who's who; I was enjoying it but now it's getting a bit confusing and I'm losing the thread of what's going on a bit, and I don't like politics. Still a good story. The only problem is being able to tell the people in the ruffs apart.

Bell of Doom [Episode 4]

Hannah: Is Anne going to join Team TARDIS?
Me: Er... wait and see.
Hannah: How many stories have there been where the Doctor's just not in it at all?
Me: It depends whether or not you count "Mission to the Unknown".
Hannah: Excluding that.
Me: In that case, this is the first one.
Hannah: This is weird, because he's just not in it. The Doctor is not in it after the first episode.
Me: That's sort of the point of the story though, isn't it?
Hannah: But why would you write a story where the main character isn't there?
Me: Because the protagonist is supposed to be as uncertain about this period of history as the audience. And otherwise you can't create the intrigue about the Abbot.
Hannah: Yeah, but you could write a different story of intrigue.
Me: What for, if this one's such a good story?

She's relieved when the Doctor eventually turns up ("Finally!") and is reunited with Steven, but once he realises the date he suddenly becomes very agitated and gets out of town immediately. Meanwhile, the Queen Mother gives the order to close the city gates.

Hannah: My knowledge of French history is appalling. I'm trying to work out what happens.

What happens is the St Bartholomew's Day massacre, and the TARDIS only just manages to get away from Paris as the slaughter begins. Not that we're spared the spectacle of what happens next.

Me: These are contemporary woodcuts from the British Museum in London.
Hannah: Cool!
Me: Well, that's what they used in the original episode, anyway. I don't know if these are the exact same ones.

[I've since made enquiries about this with Derek Handley, one of the people who worked on this reconstruction for Loose Cannon, who sent me a very helpful reply: "We were lucky that one of the set design photos that was taken in studio showed a print on an easel that would have been used as the photo caption behind the episode titles; the photo wasn't sharp enough to use in the recon, but we knew what the image should look like. Armed with this knowledge, we had someone go to the British Library and he found the original print, which we were able to take a copy of to use. The other images used in part 4 were scans of similar contemporary accounts of the Massacre. Ian Levine had distinct memories of the faces of the characters being superimposed over them in the manner shown in the recon." Thanks Derek!]

Hannah: Contemporary, so all of that... wow. All of these are things that actually happened? I mean, I know there's still room for embellishment, but I just saw a woman who'd had her pregnant stomach cut open and there was a baby hanging out of it. That was an actual thing that someone saw.

Steven is furious with the Doctor for leaving Anne behind to die, and storms out of the TARDIS when it makes its next stop on Wimbledon Common in the mid-60s. Hannah doesn't think much of the Doctor's reasons either.

Hannah: But there are plenty of other times where he saves one person, because it's people that matter. Rescuing one person from the massacre wouldn't have changed the entire course of history. Well, it could do, I suppose.

Shortly afterwards a young girl barges on board looking for the telephone, followed by Steven (who is apparently being chased by the police). The young girl, Dodo (short for Dorothea Chaplet) apparently has French ancestry and an Anglicised version of Anne's surname, leading the Doctor and Steven to speculate that she could be related to Anne. Hannah shrewdly picks up on the writer's attempt to justify the Doctor's actions.

Hannah: Are they trying to say that Dodo is Anne's descendant? So that makes it all okay? He left her there to die because he thought it was the best thing, and now it just so happens that she survived and had children. Possibly. It's probably a common surname.
Me: She does look an awful lot like her, though.
Hannah: Is it the same actress?
Me: No.
Hannah: I thought Steven was genuinely going to leave, but it looks like he's along on the ride for at least one more. I do like him as a companion.

When the Doctor takes off with Dodo, Hannah is appalled; it's Ian and Barbara all over again.

Hannah: No, let her out! Goddammit! He never learns!

Fortunately our latest abductee has no family ties ("He's very, very lucky"), and the episode ends with the Doctor welcoming Dodo aboard the TARDIS.

Hannah: Well, fuck me. He's stolen another one.

The Score

Hannah: It's a very good story, but it feels bad that I want to give 9 out of 10 to a story where the Doctor's not in it for three quarters of the time.
Me: There are plenty of bad stories where he's in it loads. And "Blink" ranked as the second-best story ever in the most recent poll in Doctor Who Magazine.
Hannah: He never explained where he went. He just randomly turns up back at the apothecary's shop and says "sorry I'm late, give me my stick, let's go." Three whole days have passed! Where has he been? So he left Steven alone for three days whilst he went and had a three-day conference with the apothecary somewhere? Then he turns up and realises everyone is going to die tomorrow. Where on earth did they go for three days? That's the biggest plot hole in this whole thing. Everything else is amazing.

9/10

Me: You got my hopes up for a while. I thought this might be our first 10 out of 10.
Hannah: Genuinely this could have been a 10 out of 10, but it got spoilt at the end. I really liked the story and nothing particularly annoyed me until the very end when the Doctor comes back, sentences somebody to death and then steals someone again. Apart from that, the rest of it's good.

The Daleks' Master Plan

I don't want Hannah to feel intimidated by the length of this story before we even get started, so I'm hoping to keep it a secret for as long as possible.

Hannah: How long is this story?

Damn.

Me: I think it's a mistake to think too much about how long each story is. Audiences at the time wouldn't have known how many episodes it would be, they had no idea when each one would begin or end...
Hannah: Fine, fine. It doesn't matter.
Me: Alright then, full disclosure...
Hannah: Is this the one with seven or eight episodes?
Me: Er, no...
Hannah: Longer than that?
Me: It's twelve episodes.
Hannah: And how many of them still exist?
Me: Three.

Her reaction tells me everything I need to know about how much she's looking forward to this.

Me: Let's just take it one episode at a time. This story is directed by your favourite director.
Hannah: I don't have a favourite director.
Me: You liked Douglas Camfield.
Hannah: Oh, yeah. The one who does good directing.
Me: That's the one.

The Nightmare Begins [Episode 1]

Hannah: Oh look, it's the jungle again. These aren't the same people from before, are they?
Me: No, they all died.
Hannah: I was wondering if this was a flashback.
Me: So you're assuming this is following on from "Mission to the Unknown"?
Hannah: Yeah, it's a jungle planet. Although it's not clear how much time has passed.

We are indeed back on Kembel.

Hannah: Why has the TARDIS come here, exactly when and where it was needed? It could have turned up two weeks later when it's all happened and everybody's dead.
Me: This takes place a few months after the cutaway episode we saw.
Hannah: But the Doctor is still in time to help.
Me: He's not in time to help any of the people who died last time.
Hannah: He's still in time to help the solar system.
Me: It's already been established that the TARDIS is sentient, so the popular theory is that it just takes him wherever he needs to be.
Hannah: But surely it knows that right now it needs to help Steven get better, so where he needs to be is somewhere near a hospital. It's a time and space machine, so the TARDIS can decide to take them here after Steven's better and the Doctor would still be there in time to help before anything happens.

Despite being familiar (ish) with the Brigadier from future Doctor Who stories, she fails to recognise Nicholas Courtney as the actor playing Bret Vyon, although admittedly it's tricky when you can't see any movement. Besides, she's more concerned about the Doctor's new companion, Katarina.

Hannah: Why did they choose her?
Me: Why not her?
Hannah: She was only introduced in the last episode; she looked after Vicki and then she ended up in the TARDIS by mistake, and now suddenly she's been kidnapped from her time and thinks she's dead. It's a very interesting way to acquire a companion, however long she's there for.
Me: It's a bit different, isn't it?
Hannah: She also has absolutely no idea what's going on. She thinks this is the afterlife.
Me: Vicki was originally going to be in this story, but when they wrote her out last week they needed to write someone else in quickly. That's why they had to build up Katarina's part, so that she could come on board.
Hannah: I wonder how long she's going to last. She's probably going to walk off-screen right now and turn into a Varga plant.
Me: Do you not think that would seem a bit strange, introducing her as a new companion in the previous story just to write her out in this one?

She finds it slightly predictable that Mavic Chen, Guardian of the Solar System is evil and allied with the Daleks, but still considers it a fun development even if his motives aren't immediately clear.

Hannah: What could he possibly gain from an alliance with the Daleks that he hasn't already got from being emperor of the solar system?
Me: He wants to be emperor of the universe.
Hannah: Oh.

Day of Armageddon [Episode 2]

I explain to Hannah that episodes 1-5 & 7 are written by Terry Nation, and episodes 6 & 8-12 are written by Dennis Spooner.

Hannah: So is this all going to be a bit random and weird and disjointed?
Me: I couldn't possibly comment. We'll just have to see what you make of it.
Hannah: So far it's been okay.
Me: It's been very coherent so far, I'll grant you, but there's still a long way to go.

Luckily, we've come to the first of our three existing episodes (the others being episodes 5 and 10).

Hannah: So where did they find this one?
Me: I'm not sure, but the other two episodes were found in the basement of a Mormon church.
Hannah: Very odd.

The delegates from "Mission to the Unknown" are back; Hannah finds the concept of Dalek collaborators as incongruous as she did last time, so it comes as something of a relief to her when the Daleks declare their plan to eliminate Chen once he's served his purpose.

Hannah: See, I told you! They don't do allies.
Me: Nobody does. Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans... you can't trust any of them.
Hannah: Chen has got the weirdest kind of six-pack nipple shirt going on. Like a cat.
Me: Some eye-witness accounts claim that his skin was painted blue on-set, although there's no reference to it in the script and according to other sources he's actually brown.
Hannah: Huh. Shame you can't tell in black and white. Why is one of the delegates bouncing around in a body suit?
Me: I thought you liked alien movement choreography.
Hannah: I do. Maybe he's from a planet that has much higher gravity, so he feels all weightless and bouncy here.
Me: And if this episode hadn't been recovered in 2004 we'd never have known. Makes you wonder what other visual flourishes we'll never find out about.

Katarina, meanwhile, is having the ultimate "fish out of water" experience; one minute she's living in Ancient Troy, the next she's running around a jungle planet full of Daleks and homicidal plants. Luckily she's taking it all in her stride, which is just as well because the Doctor and Bret are having another disagreement.

Hannah: They both have valid points to make, there's no need for them to be mean to each other. Meanwhile Katarina is just walking along, listening to them argue and thinking "the afterlife's not quite what they said it would be."
Me: Bless her. She really has no idea what's going on.
Hannah: Have I mentioned that Bret looks like a Thunderbird?
Me: You haven't.
Hannah: I don't mean one of the spaceships, I mean a member of the Thunderbirds team. He doesn't look like a giant cargo ship or a rocket or a little yellow submarine. It's the big sash, basically. It's just the big sash.

She's thoroughly unconvinced when the Doctor manages to create a diversion and makes off with the taranium core that powers the Dalek's ultimate weapon, the Time Destructor ("Like they'd leave that behind? Really?!"). But all things considered, she's enjoying this story so far; she likes the pacing and the dialogue, and the tension escalates when Bret decides that the Doctor isn't going to make it back and prepares Mavic Chen's spaceship for takeoff, with Steven and Katarina in tow.

Hannah: Katarina is a very interesting companion, but she's not particularly useful. Bret is useful, though. Maybe the Doctor will keep him, even though they argue a lot.

Devil's Planet [Episode 3]

The cliffhanger is unceremoniously resolved when the Doctor catches up to his companions in the nick of time.

Hannah: Oh, he did make it. That's a disappointing cliffhanger. I really thought they were going to leave without him and he was going to spend the next episode trying to find them again, but instead he gets there and they're all leaving together. Bit anticlimactic.

When our heroes find Marc Cory's tape recording from "Mission to the Unknown" she appreciates the attempt at some continuity, even if it's far too late to be remotely useful because the recording just confirms everything they've already discovered for themselves. Eventually, her attention turns to more pressing matters.

Hannah: Why is Steven wearing a corduroy jacket? At the end of the last story he was wearing Greek armour and at some point he's changed into a very dapper suit.

While Hannah ponders this and the other big questions raised by this story (like whether or not Daleks have skeletons) the stolen ship crashes on a prison planet, appositely named Desperus.

Hannah: Because it's the planet of desperation.
Me: Yes, you may have noticed that Terry Nation likes to give his planets some very unimaginative names. The one with the oceans is called Marinus, the desert planet is called Aridius - even though it wasn't originally a desert when the natives lived there - and the home of the Mechanoids is called Mechanus.
Hannah: I like the theme of having a penal colony on a whole planet. So many good stories use it, although they probably came after this. Shame it's just a brief plot point. And I know Steven was an astronaut, but he's about 1,600 years out of his time and he's still trying to backseat drive.

The episode concludes with one of the convicts breaking into the ship and taking Katarina hostage.

Hannah: Oh no! How did one of them get in? They should have just electrocuted everyone on the planet's surface. Now they've distressed the poor young girl.

The Traitors [Episode 4]

Fortunately one of the most memorable moments of this story still survives as a short clip, and Hannah watches in shock as Katarina sacrifices herself by opening the airlock and ejecting herself and her captor into space.

Hannah: Oooh. She did that to herself? On purpose?
Me: I think that's what we're supposed to assume, yes.
Hannah: She didn't last many episodes then.

The Doctor delivers a moving speech, which Hannah seems to accept as a fitting eulogy...

Hannah: Aw, that's really s-- oh, was there really any need to do that?

...and is spoiled only by the sight of Katarina's corpse drifting through space.

Hannah: This is terrifying for a children's show! A young woman is held hostage and then kills herself. Oh well, it moved the plot along. And was very sad.
Me: The first ever companion death.
Hannah: It's the year 4000. Technically Ian and Barbara are dead.
Me: That was originally going to be Vicki, before she ended up being written out in the previous story.
Hannah: Vicki wouldn't have killed herself.

In fact this episode is turning into a bit of a bloodbath. When Sara Kingdom turns up and shoots Bret dead, Hannah is stunned.

Hannah: Oh, now he dies! He was quite helpful and good. There's a lot of death this episode, lots of child-friendly shooting murders. The Doctor and Steven are very lucky to have gotten out of every situation so far.

Counter Plot [Episode 5]

The Doctor and Steven attempt to escape from Sara by taking refuge in a room where an experiment is taking place; Hannah immediately notices the capsule of white mice in the centre of the room.

Hannah: Maybe they're designing a new world.
Me: Well... let's come back to that later.
Hannah: I'm making a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference.
Me: I know.

The experiment involves transporting the mice to another planet, as well as anyone else who happens to be unlucky enough to wander into the room at the critical moment. Hannah is appalled at this oversight in the plant's health and safety policy.

Hannah: Why didn't they check the room, whoever's doing this experiment? Why did they leave it open? Why on earth wouldn't they lock the door? No scientist would leave that door unlocked.

Even more unsettling are the close-ups of everyone's faces, contorted in pain and bathed in white light.

Hannah: That's incredibly creepy!
Me: What, the effect?
Hannah: Yes. I don't like it.
Me: It's only light.
Hannah: His face went completely white except for two black eyes and a grimace!

Next we see our heroes being transmitted through space; once again, the "special" effects aren't quite up to Hannah's standards.

Hannah: They're on trampolines! That's just weird! What was their direction for that sequence? "Keep a straight face and jump up and down on this trampoline, and I'll film you in slow motion." So they've been "molecularly disseminated"?
Me: Apparently.
Hannah: Is that like the Star Trek transporter beam?
Me: How would I know? I don't watch Star Trek.
Hannah: You get broken down into nothing, transported and then reassembled.
Me: Pretty much.
Hannah: Which is impossible. And God only knows what that kind of experiment would do to the taranium.

Terry Nation's gift for imaginative planet names continues when the Doctor, Steven, Sara and the mice are reconstituted on a planet covered in swamps, conveniently named Mira.

Hannah: That would be the best kind of set to design. Loads of plants and dry ice everywhere. Maybe they saved some money and used the plants from the Kembel set.

Elsewhere the actor Maurice Browning, playing Chen's co-conspirator Karlton, seems to be making a strong impression.

Hannah: He's... very interesting.
Me: Why?
Hannah: He enunciates in a particular manner. He feels like someone who does a lot of stage work.

There's a very funny moment when the Daleks come across the mice and assume that these mysterious white creatures must be hostile; Hannah loves this, but is devastated when the inevitable happens and the small furry threat is exterminated.

Hannah: No, not the mice! Poor mice.

The Daleks seem to be under the impression that the mice may possess the secret of pan-dimensional travel.

Me: Douglas Adams would have been thirteen when this episode was broadcast, and would most likely have watched it. So who knows, maybe this is where he got the idea of pan-dimensional mice in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Hannah: Possibly. But these aren't pan-dimensional beings, they're Earth beings that were transported pan-dimensionally.
Me: Yes, but it's easy to see how you might arrive at that idea after watching this episode.

As Sara starts to believe the Doctor and Steven's story and realises that Chen is not the diligent leader he appears to be, Hannah is impressed with the Doctor's people skills.

Hannah: That's the nicest he's been in a while.

She's almost speechless when Sara reveals that Bret Vyon was her brother and that she committed fratricide in the line of duty.

Hannah: Wow. She really was brainwashed. Did you say this was by the director I liked?
Me: Yes.
Hannah: I can tell. Not just static shots. Interesting zooms.

As the credits roll, we find that George Pollock has a lot to answer for.

Hannah: "Special photographic transparencies"?
Me: That'll be the special effects when they were disseminated.
Hannah: So he's to blame.

Coronas of the Sun [Episode 6]

Hannah is still enjoying Mavic Chen, but his alliance with the Daleks doesn't seem to be running entirely smoothly.

Hannah: Daleks seem to panic a lot.
Me: They're just very passionate about what they do.

The Doctor commandeers an enemy ship for the second time so far in this adventure (presumably risk assessment isn't a huge priority for the Daleks or their allies) and sets about creating a fake taranium core. Steven suggests using the ship's "gravity force" as a power source.

Hannah: How does that work? How can you have something that generates enough gravitational force to convert it into some kind of useful energy?

Nevertheless, Steven takes it upon himself to attempt some DIY and wires up the taranium to the ship, with some fairly incomprehensible results.

Hannah: Is this where he dies?
Me: It would be an interesting way to write out a companion, wouldn't it? Accidentally electrocuting himself in the middle of the story as he tampers with some wiring.
Hannah: This is very strange science, even by Doctor Who standards. Steven has been electrocuted, but it's a special kind of electrocuted and it somehow gives him special powers of invincibility and muteness.

Fortunately the Doctor has managed to cobble together the fake taranium core, and our heroes make their escape in the TARDIS after handing the replica over to the enemy. Everything appears to be wrapped up nicely... but there's still six episodes to go.

Hannah: So... it's only halfway through this story, but they're back in the TARDIS and going somewhere random?
Me: Yes?
Hannah: With another person who didn't really want to be there. How will the story continue now that they've gone somewhere else?

Oh boy...

The Feast of Steven [Episode 7]

As you may have guessed from the episode title...

Me: It's a Christmas episode!
Hannah: Is that why we're drinking mulled wine?
Me: I just thought it would add a bit of atmosphere.
Hannah: Can we skip this one?
Me: Well, technically yes, because although it's episode 7 it's not really part of the story as such. It was designed to function as a one-off standalone episode, a piece of light entertainment for Christmas Day that families can watch without being thrown into the middle of a fairly grim 12-part story, and then the main plot picks up again in episode 8. And it's very visual, so it's probably not a good one to watch as a reconstruction. But let's persevere.

And so, once Hannah has gotten over her incredulity that the polluted atmosphere in 1960s Liverpool is apparently far more toxic than any alien planet we've seen thus far, we settle down to watch the only episode to be shown on Christmas Day before they became a regular thing in 2005.

The Doctor identifies a man at the police station as the merchant from the marketplace at Jaffa; this is met with a nonplussed "what" from Hannah, until I point out that it's the same actor from The Crusade.

Hannah: Why would they do that? Could they not find any other ways of having light entertainment on Christmas Day? They had to have a fourth-wall joke?
Me: Yes, this episode is the Deadpool of its time. It's supposed to be a whimsical comedy, so try not to think about it too much.

After spending half an episode in present-day England, it's time for some frolics in a 1920s Hollywood film studio. That's what the captions and still images are telling us, anyway. Mostly we can just hear screaming.

Hannah: Well, this is light and entertaining. If I couldn't see what was happening I'd think someone had just discovered a mutilated body.

This particular vignette turns into a series of comedy capers as our heroes wander through the production of various silent films, including a Charlie Chaplin film and an homage to the Keystone Cops. Unfortunately it's all so visual that it's often very difficult to make out what's going on.

Hannah: This is awful. It's just screaming.
Me: It only seems that way because we can't see what's happening.
Hannah: Even if we could, it's still just screaming.
Me: Yes, farcical comedy doesn't really work without the pictures.
Hannah: I could probably make films or TV. You just need to get loads of people to scream and shout.

There's just time for the Doctor to have a quick chat with another famous person before departing, although unfortunately it's about 20 years too early to hear a rendition of "White Christmas".

Hannah: That was supposed to be Bing Crosby?
Me: A very anachronistic Bing Crosby, yes. He wouldn't actually have been there at that time, and nothing he said actually matches up with his real life.
Hannah: This episode doesn't feel very Christmassy. I like that they were randomly on Earth on Christmas Day earlier, though. That was nice.

The episode famously (and controversially) ends with the Doctor turning to the camera and wishing all the viewers at home a Merry Christmas. This appears to be the crowning touch for Hannah.

Hannah: What a stupid episode!
Me: Now that's how you break a fourth wall.
Hannah: It's silly. Well, the whole thing's silly. So they accidentally land somewhere where it's Christmas, then they land somewhere else where it isn't Christmas, and then they decide it's Christmas. I thought there was the rule of thirds? Everything works better in three parts. I know it's only 23 minutes but they just did half and half.
Me: Would it surprise you to learn that--
Hannah: It was written last minute?
Me: Of all the 97 missing episodes, this is the one I most want to be recovered.
Hannah: What, not The Myth Makers?
Me: That would have been my first choice for a whole story, but for individual episodes it's got to be this one. Firstly, it's utterly unique, so it would be one of the most interesting ones to have back. Secondly, it's one of the episodes that loses the most from not being able to see what's going on. Thirdly, it's always nice to have a Christmas special. And I really want to see Hartnell addressing the camera.
Hannah: I don't mind it existing...
Me: Well, it doesn't.
Hannah: No, I mean at first I thought it was stupid to shoehorn it into the middle of a story, but if they want to appeal to their audience I understand they need to fit something in, so that they know there aren't children screaming for their lives on Christmas Day.
Me: To be fair it's a bit awkward having to do it in the middle of a 12-part story, but I think they've pulled it off about as well as could be expected.
Hannah: And it's a bit weird because they've got a companion who... well she's not even a companion, she's someone who's got accidentally caught up with them.
Me: That's pretty much all companions.
Hannah: Yeah, but I mean she was against them. She wanted to kill them. She killed Bret, her own brother, but apparently now it's fine and they decide to have a Christmas drink together.
Me: She's remorseful.
Hannah: It's a bit weird.
Me: Unfortunately this is the only missing episode that we know will never be recovered. When this story was sold overseas there was no reason to include an episode that had no bearing on the rest of the plot and could only be shown at Christmas, so no copies were ever made, which means this is the only episode that is definitely lost forever.
Hannah: That's a shame.

Hannah agrees that this episode should be judged on its own terms, without any bearing on her evaluation of the overall story.

Hannah: When I do a review of this whole story, I'm not going to include this one. Do you want it to have its own individual score?
Me: Go ahead.
Hannah: I like the idea of them being on a film set, and I like the idea of them getting into trouble with the police because they've got a police box and it's all funny and confused. But from what we can hear it sounds very chaotic, and I don't like that kind of direction where everything's all over the place and people are screaming. So it's kind of middle-of-the-road. There's no story, it doesn't go anywhere...
Me: It's not supposed to, it's just a bit of inconsequential entertainment for Christmas. Like "Voyage of the Damned".
Hannah: That one had a beginning, a middle and an end.
Me: Yeah, but none of them were particularly satisfying.
Hannah: I'd only give this a 5.

Volcano [Episode 8]

The one-episode digression into festive surrealism is over and it's back to business as usual. The TARDIS materialises in the middle of a cricket match.

Hannah: Are they in the middle of Lord's?
Me: It's the Oval.
Hannah: Did they get the commentators of the day to do this?
Me: No, they seem to have missed that particular trick.
Hannah: Pity. I like it when they do that.

The cricket commentators appear to be completely unfazed by this, carrying on as normal and checking to see if anything like this has ever happened in the game before. Three episodes after the incident with the mice, there seems to be a pattern emerging.

Me: Do you feel like we've had this particular déjà vu experience somewhere before?
Hannah: I was going to say, it feels like another Douglas Adams thing.
Me: The mice were a bit more of a stretch, and the similarity didn't go much further than a vague idea, but this scene is almost identical in tone and content to the opening of Life, the Universe and Everything. The protagonist suddenly materialising at a famous cricket venue, played for surreal sci-fi humour and with the commentators taking it all in their stride. It's so similar... can it be a coincidence? Who knows?
Hannah: Probably not. Oh, I wish we could ask him. "Are you a plagiarist?"
Me: It may not even have been consciously done; it might have just been one of those things you see on TV and it just makes such an impression on you and sticks in your mind until you start writing something 15 years later.
Hannah: By the way, how can the Doctor have lived in the sixties for so long and not know what cricket is?

Meanwhile, the Daleks (remember the Daleks?) have discovered the counterfeit taranium, after a fair bit of posturing and the ruthless extermination of one of the delegates. Even Chen seems horrified.

Hannah: These political bits are necessary and help build on how evil the Daleks are, but it's starting to slow the pace of the episode.

When Daleks deploy their own time machine to give chase and we see the TARDIS being pursued through time and space (again), Hannah notices that the sequence of events isn't quite matching up.

Hannah: Someone's following them though space and time, but the Daleks haven't left yet. Maybe it's the Monk, and he was able to fix the TARDIS after all. Went on a serious diet and managed to fit inside.

Yes, it's the meddling Monk, last seen stranded in Saxon Northumbria at the end of The Time Meddler.

Hannah: I don't like being right!
Me: Why?
Hannah: Because it's boring! It's actually a really good surprise and I'm sorry I ruined it for myself. I thought he was just a one-off character before. I really want to know how he managed to fix his TARDIS; he says he bypassed the stolen piece, but with what? What materials? Rocks?

Last week's episode was broadcast on Christmas Day, so of course this week's episode was broadcast on New Year's Day. After the Doctor beats the Monk again and finally manages to depart, our next stop is the New Year celebrations in London.

Hannah: The Christmas one was shoehorned in to be Christmassy but it's even worse putting this into the middle of an episode.
Me: Surely it's no more intrusive than the cricket match scene?
Hannah: This has turned into another episode of The Chase.

Hannah was pleased to see the Monk again, even if it was only for one episode.

Hannah: I like that he just inconveniently pops up while the Doctor's already in the middle of another adventure. But does he survive the volcano planet? Are we ever going to see him again?
Me: He does turn up again in the Paul McGann audio adventures, played by Graeme Garden.
Hannah: I'll take that as a "no."

Golden Death [Episode 9]

The Daleks' time machine is finally up and running.

Hannah: I used to have a PC game that made those sounds.

Mavic Chen also seems to be in good health.

Hannah: He looks a lot darker!
Me: I think he's in shadow.
Hannah: Are you sure? I think they used a different paint this episode.
Me: It's hard to tell from the stills. Maybe he's got a tan from being out in the sun on Mira. Or it's high blood pressure from his alliance with the Daleks.

As in The Chase, Hannah questions why the Daleks can't materialise a few minutes before the TARDIS if they're giving chase in a time machine. Still, at least the new location tickles her fancy.

Hannah: Hmmm. Ancient Egypt. Is this the only glimpse of Egypt we get to see in the series? A brief stop-off in the middle of a story?
Me: What would you prefer?
Hannah: A whole six-part story. An Egyptian historical.
Me: I suppose it is the most obvious period that they haven't done yet.
Hannah: World War One?
Me: Probably too recent at this point to do as a straight historical. Besides, four episodes of the Battle of the Somme would have been a bit gloomy for a family show on Saturday evenings.

She's visibly upset when some Egyptians confront the Daleks; the result is predictably one-sided.

Hannah: It's stupid if they think they can attack big unknown metal boxes.
Me: It's around the 27th century BC. They're not that advanced.
Hannah: Ancient Egyptians were very intelligent. They were one of the first to use penicillin.
Me: That doesn't make them qualified to deal with homicidal war machines from the 40th century.

She's pleasantly surprised when the Monk turns up again, also in hot pursuit of the Doctor. Unfortunately he runs into Chen instead and gets coerced into teaming up with the Daleks.

Hannah: He's funny.
Me: Yeah, I love the Monk.
Hannah: Why is he still wearing his habit? He was only wearing it as a disguise last time because he was hiding in a monastery.
Me: Maybe--
Hannah: Don't! Don't.
Me: What?
Hannah: You were going to say maybe it's a habit.
Me: I was going to say maybe he likes it.

The Egyptian guards aren't much better at dealing with Steven and Sara than they are against the Daleks.

Hannah: Oh, I want Ian to come and do his little neck pinch! The guards are rubbish. One was asleep, and these can't see or hear someone sneaking up on them. They've got no peripheral vision.

As Steven and Sara search for the Doctor in one of the tombs, the cliffhanger sees a bandaged figure emerging from a sarcophagus.

Hannah: Er... no. I don't think so. There's not a mummy coming to life. That's just silly.
Me: Is that really the least realistic thing you've seen over the last nine episodes?
Hannah: Yes.

Escape Switch [Episode 10]

Me: This is the 100th episode, you know.
Hannah: Whoop-de-doo.

The mystery of the mummy doesn't keep Hannah guessing for very long.

Hannah: It's just the Monk tied up.
Me: To be fair, the children in the audience might have believed that it could be an actual mummy.
Hannah: He's fun. I like the way he continues to be a meddler, even when he's not messing around with time; he's trying to be sly and clever, but really just saving himself all the time.

Chen seems to be getting a little too complacent about his affiliation with the Daleks, and Hannah is amazed when he manages to get away with hitting one of them without being exterminated on the spot. Elsewhere, her faith in the intelligence of the Egyptians is restored when they overhear Chen's voice on the loudspeaker system.

Hannah: It's a lot more interesting than in The Aztecs. The Aztecs mostly took it for granted that Barbara was a god, but the Egyptians here don't just blindly assume that they're hearing the voice of the gods; they're suspicious because it doesn't fit in with their ideas of what their gods are like.

That said, the sight of a horde of Daleks wiping out the indigenous population clearly strikes a nerve.

Hannah: They can't possibly hurt the Daleks at all, this is sad! They're people who have absolutely no idea and they just get obliterated. It's not fair.

She soon cheers up when Hartnell fluffs Chen's name and calls him "Magic Chen", but when the Doctor finally hands over the real taranium core, she can't help but feel like the plot has been treading water for a while now.

Hannah: They've had to do a slow handover thing again to get the plot moving; nothing has changed in the last four episodes, except now they've got the real material after a bit of messing around.

The Monk somehow manages to returns to his TARDIS without realising that the Doctor has changed its shape to look like a police box ("Funny, but unbelievable"), or that the Doctor has stolen the directional unit from his ship and removed its ability to steer. When he ends up on an ice planet and realises he's now lost in time and space, Hannah has nothing but sympathy for him.

Hannah: Poor Monk.

But she's thrilled to see the Doctor installing the directional unit into his own TARDIS.

Hannah: Is this the point at which he can start controlling the TARDIS?
Me: Wait and see. Obviously he needs the Monk's directional unit to work, otherwise he won't be able to get back to Kembel.
Hannah: Yes. But is it a one-off? Does it overheat? Or is this where the TARDIS gets "fixed"?

The Abandoned Planet [Episode 11]

Hannah is excited to see the progression of the overall Doctor Who story and is hoping that this is the point at which the Doctor gains control of the TARDIS, so it comes as rather a disappointment when the directional unit burns out after making the trip to Kembel.

Hannah: Oh, so it's still broken! They're still lost. I like how they threw the Monk in again, because they needed a plausible reason for the Doctor to be able to go to a specific time and place just this once; he'd never be able to get back to Kembel if he hadn't cannibalised part of the Monk's ship. But they threw that in and then instantly took it away again. It was just dangling that little bit of hope that he'd finally get a working TARDIS.

She isn't the slightest bit interested that one of the delegates is Bryan Mosley, the actor who played Alf Roberts in Coronation Street, but she's delighted to see so many non-humanoid aliens on display.

Hannah: Aw, I like the chimney pot.
Me: You're very racist, aren't you?
Hannah: I like the space delegates. Basically I just like to see alien races being depicted. I like to see the level of imagination that the creators have. I'm just saying he looks like a stove.

Shortly after landing, Steven and Sara somehow manage to get separated from the Doctor in their search for the Dalek base. As before, Hannah is very impressed with the jungle set.

Hannah: It's a very noisy jungle.
Me: Why, because they're usually so quiet?
Hannah: No. I just like how realistic it is.

When Steven and Sara note the strange lack of Varga plants this time around, and eventually find the Dalek base completely deserted, Hannah is intrigued enough to postulate a theory.

Hannah: Hmmm. Maybe they've accidentally come too far into the future, and they're too late because it's already happened.
Me: Well the weapon is called the Time Destructor, so if it had already been activated I think you would probably have noticed.

Steven and Sara come across Mavic Chen, who appears to be finally losing his grip on reality after being betrayed by the Daleks. He insists to the other delegates that Sara is still loyal to him.

Hannah: Hmmm. I don't know if he really believes that, does he?
Me: It could be true, for all you know.
Hannah: Yeah, but... I hope not. I was starting to sort of like her a little bit.
Me: Starting to? After seven episodes?
Hannah: I never really liked her. She was loyal to a corrupt regime and she killed her own brother; she just doesn't seem like a nice person. She's made bad decisions.
Me: Well, in the service she was conditioned to be unquestioningly obedient...
Hannah: Exactly, that's why I don't like her.
Me: ...but she's changed since she met the Doctor.
Hannah: Yeah. So now you're left wondering whether she has actually reformed, or just going along with it because she sees it as her best option to get back to Earth and protect everyone. But she must realise that Mavic Chen is one of the baddies. She can't be that stupid.

They release Chen, reasoning that they can only defeat the Daleks with his help. He apparently dies when his ship explodes, only to turn up again in time for the cliffhanger so that he can force Steven and Sara into a Dalek bunker at gunpoint.

Hannah: I didn't think he would die that easily. Why did he fake his own death?
Me: Maybe he wanted to take them by surprise?
Hannah: Well it was certainly very surprising, I'll give him that.

Destruction of Time [Episode 12]

Me: Nearly there.
Hannah: It's slow going, watching something that doesn't exist.
Me: It's okay, we're on the final stretch now.

Now that we're on the home straight, it's time to see if Hannah has warmed to the Doctor's new travelling companion.

Me: So do you like Sara now?
Hannah: No! I don't know whose side she's on. Also she killed her brother.
Me: You wouldn't welcome her as the new companion, then?
Hannah: No, which is a shame because she's clearly going to be.
Me: I think she already is, isn't she?
Hannah: Yes. I don't welcome her.

Steven, Sara and Chen are accompanied by a Dalek escort and a very moody soundtrack.

Hannah: I like that music.
Me: Good.
Hannah: It's very nice music, it's like one of the sci-fi fantasy games I've played. Very atmospheric. Doesn't go with this scene, though.

Chen, who has been getting increasingly hysterical since the last episode, is now so completely unhinged that he believes he's still allied with the Daleks, in spite of all their unsubtle attempts to clarify the situation. As if his mental state weren't obvious enough, his triumphant hysterical screaming provides a vital clue.

Hannah: He's proper mad, isn't he?
Me: He is now, yeah.
Hannah: Has something happened to him, or has he suddenly realised he's out of his depth and he's just floundering?
Me: I don't know, he must have been a bit unbalanced in the first place but I think something inside him just snapped when the Daleks betrayed him earlier.
Hannah: I want to see a colour picture of him. See if he really is blue.

Not that it matters; the Daleks are just as troubled by Chen's behaviour as we are, and he's abruptly exterminated.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has taken the Time Destructor and activated it. The Daleks don't dare open fire in case it destroys the weapon, rendering them pretty much helpless.

Hannah: If only they had hands or something. That would be really helpful for them to stop people doing things.

It occurs to Hannah that, twelve episodes into the story, we still haven't been told what the Time Destructor actually does.

Hannah: What does it do? Erases something from all of time and space?
Me: You may find out soon.
Hannah: Or is it just a big threat that never gets explained, because it never actually turns on fully?

The Doctor urges his companions to make their escape, but Sara insists on staying behind. Suddenly the effect of the Time Destructor becomes all too apparent.

Hannah: Oh, is she getting old? So it's not a destroyer of time, it's a destroyer with time. It's a weapon that uses time.
Me: It just ages them to death, essentially.
Hannah: Ages everything to death. So all living matter on the planet will be destroyed. Oh well, that's good, Sara is probably going to die. Unless he can reverse it somehow. Does that mean the Doctor ages a lot? He's the one that's carrying it. If the Doctor is able to withstand it, he must have actually aged.
Me: He is ageing, it's just not visible because he ages much more slowly.
Hannah: And if everything around him has aged enough to actually rot away, he must be hundreds of years older by now. But it's not ageing everything evenly. All the plants have been eroded into dust, but the Doctor and Sara are still alive and able to move.
Me: Maybe the plants have extremely short life cycles on Kembel.

The taranium core finally burns itself out, but not before we see Sara gradually ageing to death.

Hannah: Oh, that's a nasty way to go. I've seen similar before and it's horrible.

As the Doctor and Steven mourn the loss of Bret, Katarina and Sara throughout their adventure, Hannah reflects on their Pyrrhic victory.

Hannah: They don't know how far it's affected. The entire universe could be destroyed. They haven't even checked--

Her critique of their efforts is interrupted by the credits.

Hannah: That's not an ending! They've just seen that everything has been obliterated as far as the eye can see, and they haven't even bothered to check that the Daleks around the corner are actually dead, whether or not the Earth was destroyed, anything! They're just thinking "it's probably fine, let's leave." What about beyond that to the next planet, or across the universe? If the Time Destructor is strong enough to destroy things like that, how far did the destruction go?
Me: Either way, it's a bit late for them to do anything about it now.
Hannah: The whole story has suddenly plummeted in my estimation. It didn't have an ending. Why is there a switch that reverses the direction, if both settings seem to destroy everything? It destroys by speeding up time and it also destroys by reversing time. Why did the fuel cell last such a short time? The Daleks intended to use it to destroy the entire solar system, so either they got their maths wrong and they would never have been able to do it, or that's exactly what they've just done by activating it on Kembel, in which case this is not a happy ending at all.
Me: It's obviously not a happy ending.
Hannah: Well, no, because they've just listed all the people that died and it's horrible, but at what point in Doctor Who does the Doctor ever think "Earth is destroyed, let's move on"? That means the entirety of the solar system at that time period ceases to exist. Which he never mentions again. The solar system is dead.
Me: Well, clearly it isn't.
Hannah: In which case their weapon was shit and was never going to work anyway if the fuel cell wasn't going to last long enough to destroy the whole solar system. And also they never explained why the Varga plants were missing.

The Score

Hannah: It wasn't awful.
Me: That doesn't sound like a recommendation.
Hannah: There were good bits. I do like a lot of it, particularly the world-building and the evil villain, and the return of the Monk, but at the same time it had some failings. There are lots of odd little bits that don't make sense; the plot holes bring it down a little, and I feel it was a weak ending. I liked its scope, but it could have been so much better.

7/10

Hannah: It would have been an 8 if it wasn't for the massive plot holes and the bad ending.