044: SoraRabbit Watches: Doctor Who Season Two

Welcome back! This is the newest installment of my series of posts about Doctor Who. You may have noticed it took me a while to get this second post out. As I was watching through the second season, I realized I was getting through the series pretty rapidly. In an effort to not inundate you with Doctor Who posts, I decided to slow down my viewing a bit. (Also work got pretty crazy for a time there.)

If you haven’t yet read my post about the first season, you can find it here. This post will be laid out the same way, because I am a fan of consistency. For those who don’t want to backtrack, I’m not going to rehash my history with the program, my reasons for watching through the entire series, or a detailed breakdown of the concept behind the show. In short, Doctor Who is a long-running British science fiction program involving a mysterious alien known only as the Doctor and his companions as they adventure through time and space. The Doctor has the ability to regenerate into new bodies after death, something that we have yet to see happen.

The only other pertinent information I should bring up is that due to the poor archiving practices of the recent past, some original episodes of the series are lost and have had to be pieced together in one way or another. In Season 2, only two episodes were reconstructed in this way, so it doesn’t make much of an impact here. (Wait until next season though… woo boy.)

Doctor Who Season 2 aired on BBC from 1964 to 1965 and consisted of 9 serials and 39 episodes. Only two episodes remain missing. To save time, I summarize the serials, explaining the main story points and significant events. It goes without saying that full spoilers follow for Season 2. So, without further delay, here we go!

The Doctor is a crabby grampa type. (Credit: BBC TV)

The Doctor is the titular character. (Note that he’s not really called Doctor Who besides a throwaway joke in the first episode and one of the episode titles this season.) The Doctor is cranky, brilliant, and eccentric. Not much is known about him, but every season seems to give us a few insights into his inner workings. I will put those near the end of the post.

The TARDIS is the Doctor’s vessel. It is a time machine and the name stands for “Time and Relative Dimensions in Space”. The TARDIS is listed with the characters because in Season One it was revealed the ship has an artificial intelligence and in some fashion cares for those riding in it. The details learned about the TARDIS this season will also be discussed later.

The second incarnation of the Doctor’s group. (Credit: BBC TV)

Although the Doctor is the main character, much of the series is focused on his travelling companions. This season had more companions than last, as the practice of rotating out the companions began here. See, at the beginning of the show there were three companions, but periodically those will get shifted off to make way for fresh faces. This season’s companions are:

Susan Foreman: Susan was the Doctor’s granddaughter. She is highly intelligent but wasn’t really given much to do on the show aside from being kidnapped and screaming. We also learned last season that she is psychically gifted, but that is something that doesn’t come into play during her brief time on the show this season.

Ian Chesterton: Ian was Susan’s science teacher from “modern day” England. (As in, 1963.) He is the muscle of the group, and was actually knighted this season. He cares for Barbara but seems to have no romantic feelings for her. He often butts head with the Doctor, but has come to respect him.

Barbara Wright: Barbara is Ian’s coworker and was Susan’s History teacher. Barbara may actually know more about Earth history than the Doctor. She also has a bad habit of wandering off and putting herself into danger. She’s also like catnip to unsavory types, which puts her in even more danger.

Vicki: Vicki (no last name given) is the first new companion we meet on our journey. She replaced Susan in the group and the Doctor quickly takes a shine to her, making her into a sort of honorary granddaughter. Vicki is very well-learned and almost as well-versed in time travel and mechanics as the Doctor. She’s also a little silly and flighty, but gets on well with everyone in the group. She is adventurous, but her one weakness is a fear of heights.

Steven Taylor: Steven is another new companion, arriving just before the departure of Ian and Barbara. Steven was very talkative and clingy when they first met him. He is an Earth astronaut, and it’s not been revealed what time period he comes from, but he’s from a “less civilized” era than Vicki hails from. Even though he was held prisoner by robots on an alien world, he’s weirdly skeptical about time travel. He has a stuffed bear named Hi-Fi that he once risked his life for, which he calls his “mascot”. Steven is rash but good-natured. His main character trait is impatience. He very rarely talks things out or listens, preferring to rush headlong into danger without making a plan.

The Daleks are recurring antagonists from the first season that have stepped up their game in Season 2. In the future they conquer Earth and have mastered time travel, holding a grudge against the Doctor for nearly wiping out their people. (Twice.) The Daleks are not actually robots… they’re mutated aliens that ride around in robot suits. In Season 1 they could only travel on magnetized metal flooring, but now they’ve figured out how to move on any terrain. Each one is armed with a disintegrator ray. There is a black-painted Dalek which appears to be highly ranked. There is a Supreme Dalek somewhere, but he has not yet been shown.

The Monk is a newcomer to the Doctor’s adventures. I’m only listing him here because he comes back in a third season episode. Also he’s a member of the Doctor’s (as yet unnamed) species. (So far only the third we’ve met.) Where the Doctor has a reluctance to interfere with the events of history, the Monk holds no such policy. He actively tries to alter events in Earth history because he thinks he knows what’s best. He is a meticulous planner, an opportunist, and incredibly self-centered. Just like with the Doctor, the Monk’s back story is not delved into but the two may have known each other prior to this encounter.

Honey I shrunk the Doctor. (Credit: BBC TV)

Season 2 begins with a three part serial, Planet of the Giants which ran from Episodes 43-45. This was the obligatory “shrink the heroes” story which is mainly an excuse to show ordinary objects really big compared to the people. While cliché, the story took some interesting twists, and the special effects were pretty good for the time. This one is notable for actually being a four part serial which was condensed down to three parts. Parts 3 and 4 were completed and then combined, which means a whole episode’s worth of footage was lost. The episode suffers from plot inconsistencies and pacing issues due to this. Some trivia: the very first serial in Doctor Who was supposed to be a shrinking episode, but they couldn’t achieve the effects they wanted and so shelved the idea for later.

The TARDIS reaches present day England somewhere around the time Ian and Barbara were plucked from. (They never specify the exact year.) Something goes wrong and the TARDIS’s doors open before they materialize. The Doctor notes that the Fault Locator can see no problem but the doors opening like that could cause issues because something about the space pressure differential yadda yadda they’re all small now. Just go with it. Also the scanner monitor broke, which comes back later.

It takes them a little while to figure this out and they split up, finding lots of dead bugs and a huge matchbox that Ian promptly crawls into and gets trapped in. Meanwhile another story is going on. A businessman named Forrester is being visited by a government scientist, who is denying Forrester’s application for a new pesticide called DN6. It’s too dangerous to be used and that’s what’s killing all the bugs. That’s right… this is an environmental episode! The writers take on highly toxic pesticides… and Barbara rubbed her hands all over it at the first opportunity.

“We’ll be fine as long as we don’t touch anythi— damn it, Barbara.“ (Credit: BBC TV)

See? I’m not even kidding. She quickly contaminates herself, starts getting sick, and actively lies to everyone about it. Cocoashade was watching this episode with me and made a good point— Barbara is one of those people who would hide her zombie bite from you.

While that is going on, Forrester has killed the scientist and stages not only a coverup of the murder, but federal fraud— he forges the scientist’s report to the government, making it more positive. He has a henchman reluctantly helping him. So not only does the TARDIS crew have to reunite after being separated, figure out how to get back to normal size and back to the TARDIS, but they also have to alert the police, solve a murder, and shut down a corrupt company before it can falsify environmental reports to release a harmful pesticide. There’s a lot going on.

Since the third and fourth episodes were combined, things get kind of wonky near the end of the serial. The cut material really shows. In one scene they’re all on board leaving, but they clearly cut an entire conversation where Barbara convinced them to stay. And the scientist henchman, who was thrilled about becoming famous from developing the pesticide suddenly becomes concerned about the impact on the bugs with no transition between the two states of mind. This made it uneven and confusing, but it really didn’t take away from it too much. (Being completely honest, some of the other serials would have benefited from combining episodes.)

Some highlights of the crew’s adventures: Avoiding a hungry cat, climbing a pipe and ending up in a sink. All four of them have to work together to use a rotary telephone and contact the police. Then they use an aerosol can and gas to set the house on fire. The police arrest the bad guys and we’re left to assume their plot to use harmful pesticides has been stopped. The crew goes back to the TARDIS and launch, returning to normal size. This saves Barbara, who was nearly dead by that point. They land, but are not sure where since the scanner is still broken.

A Dalek goes for a swim. (Credit: BBC TV)

Now this was the serial I was waiting for! The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Episodes 46-51. The Daleks are fan favorites, and this serial really built them into serious antagonists. Mainly I was wondering how they would come back after their seemingly being wiped out last season. Again the group arrives in England, but this time it’s a strangely deserted England. Susan twists her ankle and accidentally buries the TARDIS beneath rubble. (Good one, Susan.) The group splits up (because that always goes well) to figure out when they are. The soon learn they’re on Earth after the year 2164. (The exact date is not given, but the calendar they find in a dusty and abandoned office states 2164. I’m assuming calendar factories are no longer working after the Dalek invasion, so some time has passed.)

They come across a couple of corpses wearing strange metallic helmets. There’s a flying saucer hovering around, and Barbara and Susan fall in with a man named Tyler and his rebellion group. The only other two members of note are David, a young man who clearly fancies Susan, and a young woman named Jenny. (Trivia: Jenny was originally the choice to replace Susan, but this fell through because at the time they weren’t sure if the series would be continued. This serial and the previous one were originally filmed as part of Season 1.) Ian and the Doctor return to the TARDIS to find the women missing.

What do you suppose happens next?

If you guessed the Doctor and Ian are captured, you win the prize! (Credit: BBC TV)

Yes, captured again. (Running themes so far in Doctor Who: Getting captured, tyrannical invaders, and a ragtag group of rebels. This serial ticks all the boxes.) A Dalek rises from the Thames and the heroes are surrounded by the men in helmets and taken into custody.

Long story short, in the future a plague wipes out most of humanity (oh no who could imagine that happening) and the Daleks swoop in to invade and take control of Earth. To help them in this task, they attach mind control helmets onto the strongest and smartest people, making them into Robomen. The Daleks are attempting to find the last of the resistance and using subjugation, murder, and propaganda to achieve their goals. As for the resistance, they’ve created an acid bomb that they believe will melt the Dalek’s robot casings.

So you may be wondering— as Ian was at this point— how the Daleks survived their supposed extinction from Season 1. The Doctor believes that the encounter on Planet Skaro happened a million years in the future from this point. So they’re actually in the middle point of the Dalek’s existence. Allow me a slight deviation from the narrative here for a moment, but I call BS on this. In the Dalek’s first appearance it was explained they were originally a humanoid race who became mutated into squid-like creatures due to radiation after their neutronic war with the Thals. They developed the robot suits to survive and maneuver. To confuse it even more, the Daleks reference the neutronic war in this serial and state it happened “five hundred years ago”. So the obvious assumption is that the Doctor was engaging in conjecture and was later proven wrong. But then why even leave this in? Why not correct it later when they learn more? Hard to say, but the question of the time periods of the Dalek’s appearances just gets more confusing as time goes on.

The black Dalek makes an appearance. (Credit: BBC TV)

Anyway, back to the serial. We learn a lot about the Daleks and the future of humanity in this story. For one thing, there’s a black-painted Dalek who serves as a Chief or Commander Dalek. The Daleks have a sort of command structure with an unseen Supreme Controller at the head who is still on Skaro. The Daleks have taken their warlike tendencies across the galaxy, conquering planets. Interestingly enough where they were stuck having to navigate metal surfaces in the first season, the Daleks can now move along the dirt and any terrain, including underwater. (Which further confuses the timeline question.) The process to turn people into Robomen is very risky, causing the victim to go insane in a short time and become suicidal. Humans have advanced in their space travel to the point where they have stations on the moon. The plague that decimated the human race was caused by a meteorite that appeared a suspiciously short time before the Daleks arrived. (We’re left to draw our own conclusions about that. You can guess what my head canon is.) Also we learn what the Dalek’s casing is made of. It’s a rare metal known as… get this… you ready? Dalekanium. Yeah, that’s right.

The Doctor is tested by the Daleks and found to be the most intelligent “human” they’ve encountered, so they decide to robo-cise him. Barbara and her new friends disguise themselves with inert Robomen helmets and attempt to place the acid bomb. Chaos ensues and the rebels gain access to the Dalek ship. They manage to save the Doctor just in time, but in the process everyone is separated and the bombs don’t work as intended. David and Susan are on their own, Barbara is hurt, and the Doctor is recovering from his ordeal. Ian is left behind in the ship and the Daleks are instructed to firebomb London and get to work on mining the Earth. Barbara, Jenny, and Tyler head off to look for survivors.

Dalek tipping is a fun pastime. (Credit: BBC TV)

A lot more happens as the Daleks continue to exterminate humans and the various groups shuffle about trying to stop them. The bomb formula is changed but it still doesn’t work. Susan and David bond over the loss of their respective families and their shared experience of being homeless. The Doctor recovers and is visibly annoyed at how close Susan and David are getting. They’re almost blown up by a firebomb, but the useless acid bombs finally prove useful, the acid melting the casing and allowing them to defuse the firebomb. Meanwhile Ian and his new friend Larry are wandering around, trying to escape the Daleks.

David explains to Susan that his goal is to oust the Daleks so that they can rebuild humanity. He suggests Susan could help, a prospect that she seems to like. However, she couldn’t possibly leave her grandfather. They fight alligators in the sewers. Larry and Ian fight a monster called a Slyther, which is like a pet of the Daleks. The others run afoul of some Robomen, but the Doctor chooses to not kill them, stating he will only kill those who pose an immediate threat to him.

We jump between the different groups for a couple of episodes. Some of the things that happen: Barbara and Jenny are betrayed by two women who sell them out to the Daleks in exchange for food. Ian and Larry end up in a mine and lead a rebellion of the enslaved workers. Susan and David kiss. Barbara convinces the Daleks to take her to the one in charge. The speculation that has been going on for most of the serial is that the Dalek’s are trying to mine the magnetic core of the Earth. They finally learn that the plan is to replace the core with a power system so the Daleks can use Earth as a giant spaceship, piloting it around. Ian tries to stop them from doing this and almost gets himself blown up. He defuses the penetrative explosive and literally saves the Earth.

After more acts of rebellion, Barbara comes up with a plan to use the Dalek’s microphones to order the Robomen to turn against the Daleks. The bomb Ian stopped explodes, causing a volcanic explosion in London, which destroys the Dalek’s ship. Humanity is free!

The Doctor says goodbye. (Credit: BBC TV)

Later, the rebels help the group dig up the TARDIS and they reactivate Big Ben as a symbol of their new era. Susan is clearly sad about leaving and the Doctor makes the decision for her, ushering Ian and Barbara into the TARDIS while Susan is saying goodbye to David. David admits he’s in love with Susan and she returns his feelings. He proposes to her and asks her to stay and help them rebuild, but she refuses, saying she could never leave her grandfather. The Doctor, however, makes the decision for her. He enters the TARDIS and double-locks the door so she can’t get in. He speaks to her through the scanner, explaining that she will always be his grandchild, but he wants her to have a home. David will take care of her. He says goodbye: "One day, I shall come back — yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine."

The TARDIS dematerializes and Susan looks at the space where it was, touching the TARDIS key around her neck. She looks genuinely heartbroken at being abandoned. David takes her hand and they walk away, Susan dropping the key on the ground.

So that was a long, exhausting serial! It had a lot of the filler that Doctor Who uses to pad out their serials, but it was interesting learning more about the Daleks and the future of humanity in the Doctor Who universe. (The show’s mythology is slowly unfolding before us!) The scene where the Doctor abandons Susan was emotionally complex, well executed, and touching. The Doctor’s decision to leave her behind shows what a layered, full character he has become. He acts with his own selfish intentions at the same time as being selfless and forcing Susan to choose between two people she dearly loves. It could be seen as cruel or merciful, but really I believe it’s a combination of both. The Doctor makes the decision that he sees as right for his granddaughter, giving her the chance at a new, relatively normal and stable life. At the same time he forces a separation that will effect them both for the rest of their lives. It was unexpected and excellently done.

Vicki looks like she’s making a prank call. (Credit: BBC TV)

The third serial, The Rescue, ran from Episode 52 to 53. This was our introduction to our first new companion of the series, Vicki No Last Name. In the year 2493 the earthlings Vicki and Bennett were the only survivors of a space shuttle crash on Planet Dido. Vicki’s mother had died and her father got a job on the Planet Astra. (Note that this is over 300 years after the Dalek’s invasion, so clearly the human race recovered and expanded their reach further into the stars. Another note, the Sensorites in Season 1 took place in the 2700s.) Bennett and Vicki are secretly attempting to contact a rescue ship while being tormented by the villainous and cruel alien Koquillion. Bennett is bed-ridden and Vicki mans the radio, learning that the rescue ship is 69 hours away. (Nice.) The strange thing is that she can see a ship has already landed on the planet.

This guy’s name is Koquillion. (Credit: BBC TV)

The Doctor is showing signs of depression in the aftermath of leaving Susan behind. He called out for her, forgetting she was gone. He’s been sleeping a lot and declines to explore the planet with them, even though he’s usually excited to explore new places. Outside the TARDIS, Ian and Barbara run afoul of Koquillion, who knocks Barbara off a cliff and uses his staff to trap Ian in a cave-in. Quite the welcome.

After this, the Doctor discovers they’re on the Planet Dido, which he’d visited before. He rushes out to talk with the peaceful inhabitants of the planet and finds Ian. He’s very concerned about Koquillion being evil, since that’s out of character for his people.

Meanwhile, Vicki plays with some rocks and Koquillion gets mad that she’s outside the ship. He claims his people have killed the new visitors and reminds Vicki he’s the only one keeping her and her friend alive. After the villain leaves, we learn that Vicki has hidden Barbara away. She meets the two survivors.

The dreaded beast Sandy. (Credit: BBC TV)

Ian and the Doctor explore the cave and the Doctor reveals that war and violence are foreign concepts to the people of Dido. There were only about a hundred of them, so they were very protective of life. They run into a trap and find a monster in a pit that they barely avoid.

Vicki’s plan is to use Barbara as bait so she can shoot Koquillion. This plan is shot down by Bennett, who’s pissed at the idea and afraid that the Dido people will kill them without Koquillion’s protection. Vicki leaves the ship and the creature from the pit (Sandy) is coming up to her. Barbara grabs the gun and shoots the creature, which upset Vicki. Sandy is her pet. (Dammit Barbara. Always touching poison and playing god and shooting pets.) Shortly after this, the Doctor and Ian arrive. The Doctor makes a plan to catch Koquillion, but Vicki is angry at being told what to do and because her pet is dead. Ian and Barbara smooth things over with her and she agrees that she will help with the plan if Bennett is okay with it. Bennett yells at them to go away but the Doctor enters anyway and finds that the room is empty and rigged with a tape recorder. There is also an intercom that can hear into the other room and a trap door leading to a temple.

That can’t be a comfortable costume. (Credit: BBC TV)

In the temple, the Doctor is greeted by Koquillion, who the Doctor outs as Bennett. He says that he shouldn’t be wearing the religious garb of the Dido people. Bennett removes his mask and reveals his backstory. He was a prisoner on the ship because he murdered someone. When they crashed, he arranged a meeting between the crew and the people of Dido, killing all of them in an explosion. Yup. Dude committed genocide, killed his own people including Vicki’s dad, and kept Vicki prisoner without her realizing it. His plan was to return to Earth and have Vicki tell everyone he was innocent.

The Doctor is angry and when Bennett threatens him, he gets the staff away from the villain and they scuffle. Before he can kill the Doctor, two Didoians arrive, startling him enough to fall off the cliff to his death. He hadn’t killed all of them.

The Doctor recovers and rejoins the others. He explains about Bennett’s treachery and that he’d killed Vicki’s father. Since she was an orphan and all alone, the Doctor asked her to travel with them, an offer that she quickly accepts. After the TARDIS leaves, the Dido people enter the crashed ship and destroy the radio and homing beacon so that the rescue party will not land on the planet.

The TARDIS rematerializes, but it’s on the edge of a cliff. The Doctor shouts a warning and the TARDIS falls over the edge as the episode ends. It’s a great cliffhanger. (Haha.)

This was a fun serial. It was a good introduction to Vicki, and I appreciate that it showed the aftermath of the Doctor’s decision to leave Susan. The mystery with Koquillion was fine but a little obvious… I figured it out halfway through the first episode.

Not the best parking spot. (Credit: BBC TV)

The fourth serial was called The Romans and ran from Episodes 54-57. This serial took place in Rome in the year 64 AD. Following the TARDIS falling off the cliff, the Doctor’s group have decided to become squatters in someone’s vacant home and take a vacation for a month. This serial uses a lot more comedy than usual.

Although the others are enjoying their vacation, Vicki is getting bored, wanting adventure. While Barbara and Vicki are at the market, they’re eyed by two slave traders who conspire to kidnap them. The Doctor decides to visit Rome and Vicki eagerly decides to go with him. Shortly after they leave, Ian and Barbara are accosted by the slavers. In the struggle, Barbara accidentally beans Ian with a jug. The two are captured and later separated, with Ian being taken for manual labor and Barbara carted off to Rome.

On the road, the Doctor and Vicki find the body of Maximus Pettulian, a travelling lyre player. They’re found by a centurion and the Doctor pretends to be the musician, realizing this will give him the chance to meet Nero. It turns out the musician was assassinated and the killer fights the Doctor. The Doctor actually has a fight scene, in which he uses trickery to get the better of his opponent. He dodges, throws things, covers him with a blanket, and then throws water in his face. He disarms and flips the assassin before Vicki scares him off.

Barbara is brought to auction and sold into servitude at Nero’s palace. Ian and his new friends manage a mutiny on their slave ship and the ship sinks, so he goes off to look for Barbara. He’s soon recaptured and sent to be a gladiator. The man who bought Barbara for Nero is named Tavius, and he has a plot with the real Pettulian, who he believes the Doctor to be. He had arranged to murder the centurion that was trying to kill the Doctor.

The wackiness ratchets up as Nero gets horny for Barbara and chases her around, which pisses off his wife, Empress Poppaea. She decides to have Barbara poisoned and Vicki befriends the court poisoner, who hints that one day Nero may be poisoned. Vicki overhears the Empress plotting against an unknown slave girl (who we know is Barbara) and as soon as she can, Vicki switches the glasses so that Nero will get the poison. Vicki admits this to the Doctor, who is aghast at her attempt to rewrite history. (Remember we learned in Season 1 that the Doctor is very strictly against tampering with the true events of history. Also that’s a pretty ballsy move by Vicki… her very first time adventure and she attempts Regicide.) He saves Nero.

The Doctor does an Emperor’s New Clothes routine with the lyre. He pretends to play and no one in Nero’s court will admit they can’t hear it. Ian and his friend are forced to fight to the death for their freedom and Nero has taken Barbara to watch. Nero has also decided to let the lions loose on the Doctor since he’s angry people were so impressed with his lyre playing. Ian and his friend turn on the guards and escape. Barbara convinces Tavius to let her go and confides in him the plot to kill “Pettulian” (who, by the way, she has no idea is the Doctor.)

The Doctor and Vicki discover Nero’s plans for a new Rome and Tavius reveals the secret plot was to have Pettulian assassinate Nero. Nero comes in and the Doctor uses his glasses to set fire to the plans, which angers Nero. Then Nero realizes that if he burns Rome, he could put his plans into motion much more quickly. So, as Vicki points out, the Doctor is the real reason Rome was burned to the ground. The Doctor denies this, but is clearly tickled by the idea. As Rome burns, the Doctor and Vicki escape, Barbara and Ian are reunited, and they all meet back up at the house, neither group knowing what the other group went through. Barbara and Ian seem to flirt a little before the others arrive, which is unsettling. The Doctor accuses them of being lazy the whole time he was gone. They set off for a new adventure and are soon caught in some kind of invisible force that is dragging them towards an unidentified planet.

This was a weird serial. It had some genuinely amusing moments, but the guy who played Nero was a little hammy. The humor seemed out of place among talk of tyrants, slavery, assassination plots, and unwanted sexual advances. I do like the fact that neither group came in contact with each other during their misadventures.

The fifth serial was called The Web Planet and ran from Episode 58 through 63. The Who Crew have been forced to land on a planet by some unseen force. Shortly after they arrive, Vicki is plagued by annoying noises that only she can hear. (This makes me wonder if originally Susan was written to be in this serial. Hearing things was one of her specialties, after all.) The Doctor suspects it’s just because Vicki is the youngest and hearing naturally degrades over time. Makes sense. They all eventually hear it and it turns out the noise is coming from creepy giant ant-men with human legs. (The ants are amusing to me, but holy shit that noise was so aggravating. It was repeated multiple times on every episode of the serial and it got on my nerves pretty quickly.) The TARDIS is drained of power and attacked by the ants, although (since the scanner is still broken) they don’t know what’s behind the attack.

The Doctor and Ian go out to investigate the noises and the attack on the TARDIS, wearing “atmospheric density jackets” with “respiratory cognisizers”. (Which is a very sci fi way of saying “space suit with oxygen mask”.) To get out without power, the Doctor uses his ring, which doubles as a key. (Which seems like a plot inconsistency to me. In the Season 1 serial “The Reign of Terror”, the Doctor pawned his ring along with the rest of his clothes. So either he went back and got it at some point, or he had more than one ring.)

While the two men are out investigating, Barbara is using the TARDIS’s first aid kit to take care of Vicki. During this conversation, Vicki learns about Barbara and Ian’s adventure in Rome because Barbara is wearing a gold armlet given to her by the lecherous Nero. Vicki also reveals that her futuristic school was very advanced. When she was ten years old she took classes on medicine, physics, chemistry, and more. She’d never heard of aspirin and considers it medieval. There were no classrooms in her time, they were strapped to machines for an hour a week that fed them information. Efficient!

Out on the surface, strange things are happening. Everything is blurry. Their voices echo, they feel like they’re being watched, and Ian’s gold pen vanishes. Ian almost melts his hands in a pool of acid, but the Doctor ruins Ian’s favorite tie to prove it’s dangerous. Back in the TARDIS strange things are happening too. Barbara keeps losing control of her arm and seems to be dragged out of the door. Ian is caught in a kind of web and before the Doctor can reach the TARDIS, it disappears.

Alien bees are actually pretty creepy. (Credit: BBC TV)

Ian is set free and Barbara encounters weird butterfly creatures. (I thought they were bees, but the wiki claims they’re butterflies.) They seriously overact, making bizarre gestures and movement. (This is another reason I thought they were bees, since bees communicate through interpretive dance.) They remove Barbara’s armlet and throw it in an acid pool. That was how she was being controlled. The Doctor discovers a chrysalis and figures out where they are, while Barbara is filled in on some important exposition. They are on the planet Vortis, where the Menoptera species (the butterfly bees) have been driven underground by the Vortis (the leggy ants). The Vortis also have a smaller species of worm-like creatures that are referred to as Larvae Guns.

The Menoptera plan to kill Barbara so that the Vortis can’t interrogate her and find their hiding place. She escapes briefly, but returns wearing a gold harness, under control of the Vortis. We also learn the Menoptera have a space patrol that are waiting for the signal to attack something called the Animus. Barbara is set free and learns that the Menoptera are commonly killed or brought to the Crater of Needles to work as slaves. Barbara and her new bee friends are promptly captured.

The Doctor and Ian are surrounded by Vortis and the TARDIS has been dragged to the Vortis den. A strange metal device descends on the Doctor’s head and a booming voice speaks to him. Mrs Royal Voice believes the Doctor is working with the bees and shoots a laser at the TARDIS. Luckily Vicki had restored power and the shields protect it. The Doctor agrees to bring out his Astral Map to give the Ant Queen intel about the Menoptera. He convinces her to power down the Vortis, claiming the Map won’t work without it, which gives Ian a chance to run off and look for Barbara.

The Doctor and Vicki are jizzed on. (Credit: BBC TV)

Ian, of course, immediately gets himself into trouble. He’s caught in a web and almost recaptured by the Zarbi, but is rescued by a Menoptera named Vrestin. Vrestin fills us all in on more exposition. The Zarbi used to be docile and the Menoptera were the dominant species of the planet Vortis. Something called the Animus showed up and turned the ants evil. (The disembodied voice.) The Menoptera fled to a moon and are trying to take back their planet. One of the rebels was killed, the other enslaved in the Crater of Needles, where the Zarbi pull off their wings and force them to work. On the way to the crater, the two are caught in a cave in where they’re surrounded by different bugs. These turn out to be grubs called the Optera that are the forgotten earlier evolution of the Menoptera. After being promised they could live on the surface, the grubs agree to help.

Barbara, at the Crater of Needles, learns that their task is to mine minerals and throw them in the acid stream to build more of a substance called the Carsinome, which is where the Animus lives. (And also where the Doctor and Vicki are.) Barbara and the Menoptera revolt, overpowering a Zarbi and a Larvae Gun. The Menoptera forces are mostly wiped out and the survivors reveal their secret weapon: the Isoptope, which is a living cell destructor. They believe it can destroy the Animus. Although the Menoptera don’t want to fight, Barbara convinces them to use their weapon.

The Doctor discovers the Menoptera forces are flying over the Crater of Needles and hides this intel from the Animus. Vicki is enslaved by the harness and the Doctor lies to the Animus about where the Menoptera are and they’re alerted to an attack in the Crater of Needles. The Doctor is put under a harness, but Vicki’s was deactivated by the Doctor just in time, so she frees him. Using the active harness and the Doctor’s ring, they can control a Zarbi.

Note that all the above happened over the course of three episodes and a bunch of jumping back and forth. I split it up and condensed it so this post wouldn’t go on forever.

The Doctor meets up with Barbara and her pals. They explain that the Animus is drawing power from the magnetic poles of the planet, which is drawing the moons closer and why the TARDIS was forced to land. He trades their captured Zarbi (and loans his ring) in exchange for the Isoptope, promising to use it to destroy the Animus. The Doctor and Vicki are again captured, and Vicki hides the Isoptope in the Astral Map. The Animus ensnares the two in webs, stating that it is going to absorb their intelligence to master space travel. For all his usual bluster and self confidence, the Doctor is clearly scared.

Barbara and friends (those who survived the battles) find the Isoptope and are also nearly ensnared by the Animus. At that moment Ian and his friends dig their way out and distract the Animus long enough for Barbara to kill it. The Menoptera and the Optera have their planet back. The Zarbi and Larvae Guns are peaceful again. Ian discovered water underground so they can get rid of the acid. The bug-people of Vortis will tell of the deeds of the Doctor’s group in legends! An all around happy ending for everyone but the Animus!

This serial was a little more sweeping in scope than previous stories. They really tried to accomplish a lot with this one, and the results were somewhat hit and miss. I appreciate what they were after, but the aliens were a tad goofy, and the noise the Zarbi made was grating. Also the oppressed/oppressor story has been done over and over in this series. I wanted to like this one, I really did… but it was hard. Between the annoying ant noise and the annoying bee overacting, it was difficult to get through this one. It was okay, but it could have been great. The premise was solid and there were interesting alien/alien world designs.

Hanging out with King Henry. (Credit: BBC TV)

The sixth serial, The Crusade, ran from Episodes 64-67. This is the only incomplete serial in the season. The 2nd and the 4th episodes are still missing and were stitched together using telesnaps and recorded audio in a similar way as the incomplete serials in Season 1. I also have to wonder if the first episode was reconstructed from different sources… at points it seems rough and unfinished, with poor film quality. I couldn’t find anything to support this theory, though.

The TARDIS lands in the 12th century in the middle of King Richard’s holy war against Saladin. Ian has to fight off attackers and Barbara is instantly captured. (I swear, that woman can’t go three episodes without being captured!) The group saves a man named William. (I’ll call him William #1.) Barbara meets William #2 who has also been captured and is posing as King Richard to keep them off the true King’s trail. He tells Barbara to pretend to be the King’s sister, Joanna. They meet Saladin’s brother Saphadin, who knows they’re lying about their identities.

Meanwhile the Doctor witnesses soldiers selling stolen clothing and he turns around and re-steals them. Vicki is pretending to be a boy for reasons they don’t elaborate on. They take William #1 back to the King and return his belt, which they also found. The Doctor convinces a reluctant King Richard to help them make a trade to get Barbara back and Joanna tries to convince her brother to work towards peace. There’s some filler where the Doctor is accused of theft and talks his way out of it. Then Barbara is kidnapped (while still being a prisoner mind you— Barbara is the only person I know of who can be double-kidnapped) by El Akir, a soldier working with Saladin who just hates her for some reason. She soon escapes but then is captured again. (Three in a row!) This time by a man named Haroun ed-Din, who wants revenge against El Akir for killing his wife and son and kidnapping his daughter. But don’t worry, Barbara is kidnapped AGAIN while trying to protect Haroun’s surviving daughter.

The King decides to offer his sister to Saphadin in exchange for Barbara and William #2 and peace. Ian rides out to make the offer but is soon knocked out by bandits. (I swear, these heroes…) Some political intrigue happens as the Doctor reveals the plan to Joanna, who gets pissed at her brother for selling her to their enemy and the King is pissed at the Doctor for giving away his plan. The Earl of Leicester is mad because he wants the war to continue, so he keeps an eye on the Doctor.

Barbara is under threat of torture by El Akir and escapes, being protected by his harem. (And I had no idea soldiers had harems, so I guess I learned something?) The harem hates him and they all want to revolt. Barbara also meets Haroun’s other daughter. Ian is tied up and about to be eaten by ants but turns the tables on the bandit guard, forcing him to take Ian to Saladin. The King makes up with the Doctor and prepares for battle. Leicester is still suspicious and thinks the Doctor’s a devil or a witch. (Which is an odd leap of reasoning but whatever.) Vicki is sad that they can’t help Richard to win, but the Doctor says that he’s meant to lose and history must be upheld.

Barbara is betrayed by one of the harem women and almost killed, but then Haroun gets his revenge, killing El Akir and saving his daughter. Ian comes and saves the women, also stealing El Akir’s money to pay off the bandit. They return to the others just in time for Leicester to threaten to kill the Doctor for treason. (Devil witch treason?) Ian introduces himself as Sir Ian of Jaffa and claims the right to kill the Doctor to avenge his fallen troops. Leicester allows this, which gives the heroes a chance to escape. The men see the TARDIS vanish, thinking Ian was captured by sorcerers and swear to never speak of it again.

The crew travels away in the TARDIS but then the lights flicker and they stand, frozen in place.

This serial, in my opinion, was pretty forgettable. Although I did like King Richard’s acting and the costumes. And it was cool to see Ian be knighted. But holy shit, do they have better plot devices than Barbara getting captured? It happened five times in this serial and she was threatened with murder, torture, and rape. Not cool, man. Violence against women should not be plot devices thank you. Anyway, moving on to better serials…

The seventh serial was called Space Museum and ran from Episodes 68-71. The crew ends up on planet Xeros in different clothes than they were wearing before. Their old clothes are hanging in the wardrobe. Vicki drops a glass and it jumps back into her hand, reforming. The Doctor is not too concerned with these things, dismissing them as “time and relativity”. When they exit the TARDIS to explore the planet, the strangeness continues. The planet appears to be a sort of space museum, with spacecraft lined up in chronological order. Their steps leave no tracks on the sand. They encounter other people, but those people can’t see or hear them. Also these others make no sound as they talk, which leads the Doctor to believe they may be on a different frequency.

Exploring the interior of the museum, they find a Dalek, but it’s just an exhibit. They soon discover that they can’t interact with anything— their hands pass right through solid matter. Even more perplexing, they encounter the TARDIS inside, as intangible as everything else. Most creepy of all, there is a glass display case with the four of them standing motionless, wearing their current clothes.

The Doctor realizes that on reentry they must have jumped a time track, arriving in the fourth dimension, outside of time. They’re seeing a vision of a possible future, where they and the TARDIS become museum exhibits. He actually admits that there is something he knows little about— the fourth dimension. Vicki displays a knowledge of time travel, which interests the Doctor. The Doctor states that time will eventually catch up to them and they need to prevent this future from coming about. (Which is interesting coming from Mr. Noninterference.)

Shortly after this discovery, time rewinds and they arrive back at the normal time. The display and the TARDIS disappear. Outside the real TARDIS has been discovered. It’s reported to the museum curator Lobos, who orders the intruders be found. He’s happy to have his boring day broken up by this. Meanwhile, three rebels have heard about the newcomers and want to use them to stop Lobo and his oppressive rule of the Moroks. (Yeah… it’s one of those again. See what I mean?)

The heroes try to escape and take a gun from an exhibit. The rebels soon separate the Doctor from the others and take him prisoner so they can convince him to help. They leave one to guard him and the Doctor manages to knock him out and hide in the Dalek shell. He’s recaptured, but by the Moroks. Lobos has the Doctor in a chair that can read his thoughts. The Doctor still outwits him by purposefully thinking of incorrect things. This annoys Lobos and causes him to decide to make the Doctor into an exhibit.

While the Doctor is being interrogated, the others unravel Barbara’s sweater to try and find their way out of the museum. They realize the TARDIS has been stolen by the Moroks. Then guess what happens? Right. They’re captured. Luckily it’s only temporary. Realizing that since their fate is to be exhibits, the Moroks won’t shoot them, Ian fights back and the humans scatter. Barbara heroically gets locked in a room. Vicki gets… of course… captured, but this time by the rebels. They strike up an alliance and Vicki suggests they raid the armory to fight back. Ian gets the drop on a Morok and holds him at gunpoint, convincing him to lead the way to the Doctor. One of the rebel Xerons goes to save Barbara and explains that the Xerons are the surviving children of the race the Moroks wiped out to make their museum. Little did they know, Lobos is tired of their shit and floods the museum with gas, paralyzing them.

Vicki learns that the armory is locked by a computer that requires specific answers to be given to open the door. She rewires it to accept any truthful answer and manages to get access to the guns. Ian threatens Lobos with his gun and is shown the Doctor, under the control of some sort of machine that is making him into an exhibit.

I would say 80% of this show is the good guys getting captured. (Credit: BBC TV)

Although Lobos insists the process can’t be reversed, with Ian’s prodding he attempts it anyway, successfully reviving the Doctor. Ian is knocked out and Lobos regains the upper hand. After a few struggles the team is reunited and the Xerons kill Lobos, regaining control of their planet. The Doctor realizes this whole mess was caused by a small part in the TARDIS that was out of place. When it clicked back into place, time caught up with them. As thanks for freeing their people, the Xerons gift the Doctor with a Time-Space Visualizer. The Doctor won’t reveal to his friends what it is just yet, and tells them to wait until he installs it. As the TARDIS leaves, we jump to a Dalek informing its companion that the Dalek’s greatest enemy has just left Xeron. The second Dalek explains that their own time machine will soon be ready so that they can give chase and exterminate the Doctor. (Oooh, nice cliffhanger!)

I liked this serial, even though it fell into the usual tropes of the good guys getting captured and the native people of the planet being subjugated by evil overlords. (I’m hoping they find ways to break out of these patterns in later seasons.) If you think about it, this serial added a lot of lore to the series that they could explore down the road. The time tracks, the fourth dimension… this one even explored alternate timelines, which is not something the show has touched on due to the Doctor’s belief in maintaining the timeline. (I guess that belief doesn’t hold up if he’s the one in trouble, ey?)

The bad: The pattern of capture and escape and evil dictators really is wearing thin. Also the explanation of the time track was pretty clumsy. I feel as though they didn’t know how to properly express the thought. The good: I liked seeing the Doctor out of his element and Vicki being portrayed as capable and intelligent. Also the alien costumes for the Moroks was middle-aged doughy white guys with widows peaks and feathered hair. The Xerons were all blond teen boys with arched too-high eyebrows. All of which is just fabulous costume design and I will fight you on that.

One last note before I move on… I really liked this quote from the Doctor to Ian: “The least important things, my boy, sometimes lead to the greatest discoveries.“

The eighth serial was called The Chase and ran from Episodes 72-77. This is a big one, as we bid farewell to two more companions. Also, the mention in Season 1’s The Daleks serial of the Daleks building their own time machine and mastering time travel comes to fruition here. This serial has the same sort of format as last season’s The Keys of Marinus, where each episode is in its own location. Interesting trivia: Peter Purves, who played Steven, originally wanted to play a Zarbi in The Web Planet serial, but the director thought he was too talented to be wasted in a rubber suit. He went on to play two roles in this serial.

The Doctor plays with his Visualizer. (Credit: BBC TV)

We pick up pretty much where we left off. The Daleks have their own time machine and unbeknownst to the others, the evil creatures are hot on the TARDIS’s trail. The Doctor has finished installing his shiny new Time-Space Visualizer. The Visualizer is a sort of "time television" that can see any event in history. Ian chooses the Gettysburg Address. Barbara wants to see Shakespeare coming up with the idea for Hamlet. Vicki chose an appearance on TV of the Beatles. (She is amazed to learn they play “classical” music.)

The TARDIS materializes on a desert planet with two suns and are promptly attacked by Sand People. (Okay, I made that last bit up.) Ian and Vicki head off to explore and the Doctor gives them something he calls the TARDIS Magnet. This is a sort of compass pointing to the TARDIS in case they get lost. They follow a trail of blood, not noticing a tentacle coming out of the sand. The Doctor and Barbara are sunbathing and notice that the Visualizer was left on. They see an image of the Daleks on the way to Planet Aridius, where the TARDIS has landed. The Daleks want revenge on the Doctor for stopping the plan to conquer Earth.

Horrified, the Doctor and Barbara rush off to find the others, getting lost. The TARDIS is covered by sand and they encounter a Dalek rising from the sand. More Daleks arrive and the humans hide. The Daleks exterminate a lizard-man, which is an Aridian. The humans make friends with the Aridians, learning that the suns got too close to the planet, drying up all the water. The Mire Beasts have taken over the Aridian’s underground homes. They’re planning on blowing up the Mire Beasts. The Doctor doesn’t want to get them involved in this mess with the Daleks— a fact that shows some real growth on the Doctor’s part— usually he’s more concerned with himself. He convinces the lizards to show them the entrance so they can find their friends, who are currently running from Mire Beasts. (Which look like paper mache squids, by the way.) The explosions kill a Beast before it can eat Vicki and Ian is knocked out. (He suffers a lot of head injuries, if you haven’t noticed.)

And this is an… alien fish man? (Credit: BBC TV)

The Daleks locate the TARDIS and kill the Aridians they had forced to dig it out. (I’m assuming this is to stop the lizards from unionizing. The Daleks are cooold.) They learn the TARDIS is immune to their neutralizers. They guard the TARDIS, waiting to ambush the Doctor when he returns. Also they tell the Aridians to hand him over or they’ll wipe out the lizard-men society. The Elders decide to hand them over, so they hold the Doctor and Barbara as prisoners until sundown. Vicki locates them and a Mire Beast bursts through the wall and eats an Aridian. They use this as their chance to escape. The Daleks threaten to destroy their whole city in an hour if the Doctor is not found. Ian has recovered and has a plan. They use Barbara’s cardigan (the second she’s lost in two serials) and the Doctor’s coat to cover a hole, tricking a Dalek guard into falling in it. They rush to the TARDIS and escape just as the Daleks open fire on them.

The Doctor realizes the Daleks are chasing them in their own time machine, but luckily they’re 15 minutes behind, which gives them a bit of a lead. We jump to New York City in 1966 and we see a tour guide putting on a wretched fake sort of New York accent with his English accent showing through here and there. It's painful, but it doesn’t last long, thankfully. After the tour group leaves, the TARDIS materializes and they run into a tourist from Alabama named Morton Dill. (Played by Steven’s actor, as stated above. His accent is very good, actually.) He thinks the TARDIS is part of a movie set and is amazed when it vanishes. He then meets the Daleks, thinking they’re part of the same movie. Oddly enough, they don’t disintegrate him.

Next the group ends up on a ship that later turns out to be the Mary Celeste. (Note that Ian is again knocked unconscious, this time by Vicki accidentally.) The Daleks visited just after the TARDIS left, scaring the crew into abandoning it, explaining why it was empty when it was found. After this adventure, the Doctor learns that the gap is closing and the Daleks are catching up. They’re now only 8 minutes behind.

After this they land in a haunted castle with lots of horror tropes: a spooky cobwebbed castle, a vampire, ghosts, Frankenstein's Monster in mummy wrappings. It's all very Scooby Doo. The Doctor realizes it’s all you would expect from a scary place and surmises they must be in fear itself? The human mind? It's a little abstract and doesn’t make a damned bit of sense. When the Daleks arrive they identify it as Earth, though. Their disintegrators don't work on the monsters. At the end of this goofy episode we learn that they were actually in a tourist trap house of horrors. (So why didn’t the disintegrators work on the animatronics? If they only work on organic matter why the hell were they shooting at the TARDIS a couple episodes back?) In their escape, the group accidentally leaves Vicki behind. They can't go back because the Doctor explains the Time Mechanism is broken. (First I'm hearing of this. Is that why they jump at random?) Anyway, they can’t land in the same place twice even if it worked. (I’m assuming to prevent paradoxes?) Vicki is on the Dalek ship and she learns the Daleks have a machine called a Reproducer. Their latest plan is to make a robotic clone of the Doctor. A perfect, exact duplicate. Completely indistinguishable in every way.

Unless you look at him for more than a half a second.

The clearly fake Doctor. (Credit: BBC TV)

Seriously, the Doctor’s duplicate is terrible. He looks nothing like him and they keep showing him from far away like that will make us not notice. His lines are badly dubbed. And when they go in for a close up, they have the actual Doctor, William Hartnell, there. Why did they even bother with the body double at all? That aside, this episode is strange for another reason— it’s titled “The Death of Doctor Who”, which is only the second time in the series he’s been referred to by that name.

The trio has landed on the planet Mechanus, where they have decided to have their final stand. The planet is covered with sentient plant life called Fungoids that attack anyone that comes near. As the three explore, the Daleks have arrived and begin searching for them. The duplicate heads out for his mission of infiltrating and killing. Vicki creeps out of the ship, promptly getting attacked by a Fungoid. The others locate a cave where they find a weapon that can damage the Fungoids. They also reveal that the device the Doctor has been tinkering with for the last few episodes is a bomb. But the Doctor says it can’t be used in an enclosed place like this.

Vicki has located the TARDIS and is attacked by another fungoid. She screams, which causes Ian and the Doctor to run off to save her. Leaving Barbara all alone with a bomb. Barbara who touches pesticide and can’t go for a walk without being kidnapped. (Sigh.) As expected, the robot Doctor visits and convinces her that Ian is dead. They go off together.

The Doctor and Ian drag the unconscious Vicki back to the cave, finding Barbara missing. They seem surprised by this development. When Vicki wakes up, she screams, thinking the Doctor is the duplicate. (Seriously people? They look nothing alike!) She explains what’s going on and they all rush off to save Barbara. What follows is exactly what you would expect if you’ve seen any science fiction. The two Doctors battle and the others have to figure out who is the real one. The robot gives himself away by calling Vicki Susan. (The Daleks only had data on Susan, not her replacement.) The Doctor defeats the robot and they return to the cave to take a nap.

The next morning they noticed a huge domed city in the jungle. The Daleks locate them and the Doctor tries unsuccessfully to convince them he’s the robot. A hidden passage in the wall of the cave opens and the humans escape, running into a new type of robot.

The robot is even stranger than the Daleks and is shaped like a ball. The robot escorts them to the city, where it’s not clear if they’re guests or prisoners. Here they are shut in a room where we meet Stephen Taylor with his stuffed bear named Hi-Fi. He's an astronaut from Earth who crashed on Mechanus and been there two years as prisoner of the robots called Mechanoids. Earth planned to colonize this planet and their landing party of robots evolved. Earth was too busy with intergalactic wars to check in on the planet. So now we have more future of the Earth... but what year? It’s not explained. (I’m thinking either before or after the Sensorites, as no war was mentioned in that serial.) Steven goes on to explain that they’re in a zoo. Steven seems quite loopy and talkative, likely just excited to see other people and possibly a little crazy after being alone for so long.

They decide to climb down from the roof. We learn that Vicki is scared of heights. The Daleks attack the Mechanoids. The Doctor forgets his bomb as they flee and his weapon is knocked from his grip, setting the building on fire. (A Dalek is hit by the weapon and says "Am exterminated. Ahhhhhh!" This made me laugh for a long time.) Steven goes back for his bear and they almost drop Vicki because he was helping to lower her before getting distracted by stuffed animals. The Daleks fight the Mechanoids and the Doctor’s crew get down in time. The city is destroyed, presumably killing all the robots. Steven is assumed dead.

Time for more goodbyes. (Credit: BBC TV)

Back in the jungle, Barbara and Ian realize they could use the Dalek time machine to finally get home. The Doctor is angered by this suggestion, stubbornly telling them it’s too dangerous. Vicki convinces him to help them and he grudgingly agrees, teaching them how to run the machine. So we get to see Ian and Barbara, finally back in 1965, two years after they left. Ian programs the time machine to self destruct and they set off to enjoy being back home. (Ian most likely with permanent brain damage from all the conks on the head.)

Ian and Barbara finally get home. (Credit: BBC TV)

We get a cute little montage of the two of them frolicking. They see a police box and get scared for a moment, then laugh about it. Vicki and the Doctor peek in on them with the Visualizer. The Doctor actually admits he will miss them.

This was a good serial. Due to its structure, it was highly disjointed— even more so than The Keys of Marinus— but it was a fun ride. At times it felt like they were going down a list of ideas they couldn’t fit into other episodes. Although there were flaws: the haunted house episode as a concept, the tired tropes of subjugated/dictators (although handled differently), more of our heroes being imprisoned, and the utterly ridiculous fake Doctor… it had some solid ideas and a great ending to Barbara and Ian’s part of the story. I would, however, like to know what time period Steven comes from so I can continue piecing together Earth’s future history.

Hey look, British Vikings! (Credit: BBC TV)

The ninth and final serial of Season 2, The Time Meddler, ran from Episodes 78-81. This one was interesting and raised many questions about the series and its mythos. We finally meet another of the Doctor’s race, and he has very different ideas of what time travel should be used for. Also it’s a good example of pseudo-historical storytelling. It uses history as a backdrop for a science fiction story rather than the other way around, which is Doctor Who’s initial premise. This is a trend that continues going forward as the stories become more rooted in the fantastic and less rooted in historical fact.

Vicki is bored and missing Barbara and Ian. The Doctor admits to Vicki that he will miss his old companions as well and they have a heart to heart. He asks Vicki if she wants to go home too, which shows a lot of growth on his part. She says no, she has nothing to go back to. They hear a sound and Steven stumbles in, having somehow survived the building exploding and secretly stowed away back on Mechanus. (Vicki does not bring up the fact that he nearly got her killed over a teddy bear.)

The TARDIS lands in Northumbria in 1066. They land by an ocean and a grumpy monk notices them, seeming to recognize the TARDIS. They try to convince Steven that they’ve travelled through time, but the newbie is infuriatingly skeptical. (Like, dude, you were just prisoner of sentient robots in a technologically advanced city and barely escape death from mutants in robot suits. What’s to doubt here?) They split up, the Doctor heading off to explore alone. As soon as they leave the TARDIS, the Monk investigates it curiously.

While the Doctor rests with a village woman named Edith, he notices chanting in the distance. Edith says it’s the monks in the nearby monastery. It was empty until just recently. The chanting warps and the Doctor becomes suspicious. Vicki and Steven find a watch, which the Monk had dropped. They speculate on where something so modern would have come from. The Doctor goes to the monastery and finds a gramophone playing the chanting. He is trapped in a jail cell by the Monk who laughs menacingly. Despite this, the Monk is a gracious guest, cooking the Doctor breakfast with a toaster and electric griddle. The Doctor refuses it and pouts. The Monk appears to know the Doctor, but it’s left unclear as to whether or not the Doctor has ever met him before this. (Later the Doctor says “What are you up to this time?” which lends credence to the theory that they have knowledge of each other.)

Steven and Vicki are captured by the villagers who were searching for the TARDIS. (It’s been covered by the tide but the Doctor later assures them it can’t be washed away.) They’re suspected of being Viking spies, but Edith vouches for them, sending them off to look for the Doctor at the monastery. The Monk is watching for Vikings on the cliffside, and seems pleased when he sees them approaching. Soon the Vikings land and start searching for a village to pillage.

Vicki and Steven ask the Monk about the Doctor and trick him by asking if he remembered his description when they never gave it to him. Vicki realizes he was tricking them right back but Steven insists they try to break in to find the Doctor. Meanwhile The Vikings battle some of the village men, killing one and wounding another. Vicki and Steven break into the monastery but find the Doctor is already gone. They locate a secret passage in his cell and follow it into the woods.

While the Monk helps the injured villager, the Doctor meets up with Edith again and learns about the Vikings. He surmises the Monk has some connection to them. He knows that the Vikings are meant to be defeated and wonders what the monk might have to do with it all. The Doctor returns to the monastery and takes the Monk prisoner with a stick. In the woods, Vicki and Steven find a hidden gun pointed at the sea. Two of the Vikings arrive at the monastery and put the Doctor back in the cell while the monk slips away. The Monk convinces the villagers to light fires on the cliff saying it’s for people who are bringing supplies for the monastery. Edith is suspicious, remembering the Doctor’s hints about a Viking invasion.

The Doctor turns the tables on the Vikings and gets free, just in time to meet up with Vicki and Steven. They discover the Monk's alter is a TARDIS.

The Doctor interrogates the Monk and Vicki and Steven read his journals and explore his TARDIS. They learn that the Monk’s plan is to defeat the Vikings himself so that Harald Godwinson will become king. In his adventures the Monk introduced Leonardo da Vinci to air flight and helped build Stonehenge with an antigravity lift. Also he made a fortune depositing money in savings accounts and letting it accrue interest. (Okay, so maybe that one isn’t so impressive, but come on. You’d do it if you had a time machine.) He also has a bunch of bazookas. Why did he do all these things? Just because he could. And he’s not done. After this Viking plan he wants to introduce Shakespeare to television and introduce jets in the 1300s. He thinks he’s doing the right thing for mankind by altering the events of history and advancing their technology, but the Doctor disagrees. He reminds the Monk of the golden rule of time travel— never interfere.

They all meet up again and the Doctor is told that the Monk’s TARDIS is a Mark IV, which is a newer model. He speculates the Monk is from the same planet as the Doctor, but 50 years in the future. Vicki's theory of time travel is that history can be rewritten and it would change their memories as though the previous events never happened. The Monk escapes and Vicki and Steven chase him. The Vikings find him and he blames the Doctor’s crew for the problems. He also tries to convince them that the bazookas are magical charms and they need to put them on their ships. Meanwhile Edith has convinced the villagers that the Monk is a Viking spy. The villagers capture the Vikings and the Monk slips away again.

During this, the Doctor has tampered with the Monk’s TARDIS and leaves with his friends. The Monk returns to his TARDIS, finding a letter from the Doctor. The letter tells him that the Doctor has stopped his meddling and promises to return for the Monk some day to release him. The Monk finds that he can’t enter his TARDIS. The Doctor has taken the dimensional control, which is what makes the TARDIS appear smaller on the outside. Due to this, the inside is too small for the Monk to occupy, rendering him trapped in this time period.

I’m going to miss the First Doctor. (Credit: BBC TV)

And that’s Season 2 of Doctor Who! We’re now 39 more episodes through the series, 81 episodes total. This season we said goodbye to three friends and greeted two more. We encountered another member of the Doctor and Susan’s as yet unnamed species. We got to learn more about the universe of Doctor Who, its rules and lore, and the future of Earth and mankind. We also saw what a grave threat the Daleks could be if they were left unchecked. The focus of the series shifted away from historical events and more towards science fiction and fantasy aspects. More humor was injected into the show, for better or worse. What else did we learn?

The TARDIS: While we didn’t learn more about the TARDIS’s artificial intelligence, we did learn more of its features. The TARDIS can move through solid matter while travelling. It can also take off from any angle. The control panel is equipped with a "Time Path Detector" that surveys the time path they're travelling on. It's used to detect other time machines on the same path. Thanks to the Doctor’s actions in this season, the TARDIS is now equipped with a Time Visualizer, which is a sort of television that converts light to energy and can see into different time periods. The TARDIS has a fully stocked first aid kit. It also an Astral Map on a movable platform. The Map shows the surrounding stars and planets and is equipped with a radio transmitter. It takes 12 minutes for the TARDIS’s computers to reorient and gather power before they can take off again. According to the tourist in New York, the TARDIS is blue. The TARDIS cannot land in the same place twice. The Time Mechanism is broken, which explains why they seem to be travelling at random. The TARDIS is waterproof and nearly indestructible. It’s immune to the Dalek’s neutralizers. Also the Doctor states that he made the TARDIS, but a little doubt is thrown on this when they meet the Monk. The Monk's TARDIS is a Mark IV, which is a newer model than the Doctor’s by about 50 years. (Although the Doctor refused to admit what Mark he has.)

The Doctor: We learned very little about the Doctor this season, sadly. To go along with Season 1’s mention of his distaste of weapons, in this season we learn that the Doctor will not kill unless it’s in self-defense. He chose to spare the subdued Robomen even though they posed a potential threat to the group. He admires bravery and hates fools.

The Doctor’s Past: Again, not many insights into the Doctor’s past. The Doctor has observed a zeppelin air raid in World War I but has never visited Africa. The Doctor claims to have taught the Mountain Mauler how to fight. He also claimed he knew James Watt as he was developing his steam engine.

Defining moments to show the Doctor’s personality: There were many. The most notable was when he chose to abandon his beloved grandchild so that she could have a normal life. This was a shocking moment of selflessness in an exceedingly selfish character. The Doctor showed much more of his sweet, protective side this season, with him adopting Vicki as a sort of surrogate granddaughter. Although his first impulse was to refuse to let Barbara and Ian go, he knew (with gentle persuasion by Vicki) that he had to also give them a chance at a normal life, so he allowed them to go back to their own time. Saying goodbye showed the Doctor’s heart. Through all his façade of annoyance and crotchety old man, he still grew to care for Ian and Barbara. The fact that they wanted to go home hurt him deeply. He allowed himself a moment of tenderness by saying he’d miss them, but of course he had to say it only to himself; he couldn’t say it to them. And then the next episode he allowed Vicki to see that vulnerability in admitting his feelings and giving her the option to also leave. In the battle against the Animus, the Doctor showed his vulnerability in the rare fear that things may not work out. In the Animus he had encountered an intelligence that may have rivaled his own. In his dealings with the Monk we saw how he handles those who have an equal level of cunning as his own.

This show is kinda weird sometimes. (Credit: BBC TV)

Just like with the first season, Season 2 was uneven, with quality and characterization changing from serial to serial. Still this season was more solid, more grounded in what had come before, maintaining the tone and quality. I anticipate the show will increase in quality every season as long as they continue to build upon what they’ve done so far. The addition of more humor (or attempts at humor) could be seen as a positive or negative. Personally, I don’t think the humor was always utilized properly, but it worked best when it was between the established characters, rather than due to situation. The humor wasn’t all bad, though. It helped keep things light amid the tales of crooked corporations, ruthless aliens conquering worlds, political insect power struggles, and the negative implications of time travel in the hands of less savory individuals. The humor did seem fully out of place among tales of slavery, torture, and sexual predation. So it was a mixed bag. There were less historical settings as the producers started to key in on what the viewers were tuning in to see. (More Daleks, basically.) This season didn’t give us many answers as to who or what the Doctor is and where he comes from, but it did fill in some of the blanks regarding time travel and the workings of the TARDIS as well as a lot of world-building.

At times I really get the sense that the writers are making it up as they go along. It was established in the very first episode that the Doctor couldn’t control where they landed. Then near the end of Season 2 it was clarified as “we can’t land in the same place twice” and given out as though it was information we already had. The same goes with the mention of the “Time Mechanism” being the explanation as to why the TARDIS can’t be controlled. This was never mentioned before, but it would have been good information to have.

It was sad to see our old companions go, but good to see Barbara and Ian’s story close out in a satisfying way. Losing the three original companions in such rapid succession clearly left an effect on the Doctor. Meeting and adopting Vicki seemed to have softened the old crank significantly, and being saddled with the uninvited guest of Steven gives him another testosterone-fueled young man to butt heads with. The balance is maintained and actually seems a little better with only two companions. (Although Barbara’s absence is noted in the final serial as the Doctor realized he’s come to rely on her for her knowledge of Earth history.) I know I clowned on Barbara and Ian a lot in these posts, but I will miss them. I’m glad they got to return home to live out their lives. (I wasn’t entirely convinced they’d survive the journeys. I don’t think all the companions have happy endings.)

Still, although it’s hard to say goodbye, I find Vicki completely delightful. She’s what Susan should have been— intelligent, capable, driven, curious. And with a core of cheerful optimism that serves as a counterpoint to the rough situations they find themselves in. I’m not sure what to think about Steven yet, but I guess you need someone who gets into trouble all the time now that Barbara is gone.

As a side note, I had to dig a bit to find the reasons for Barbara and Ian leaving the show. (And yes, I know those are the character’s names not the actors, but it’s how I’ve been referring to them all the way through.) It appears Ian was getting bored with the show around The Web Planet, and Barbara decided to leave during The Space Museum, but specifics weren’t given. I’m sure they were burnt out after nearly two seasons. Although the show was gaining in popularity around this time, it’s well documented that it was a hectic and exhausting shooting schedule. (Several episodes had to omit cast members so they could take holiday.) But regardless of the reasons, I found their departure to be more satisfying than Susan’s (which seemed rushed) and it was touching to see the Doctor’s reaction. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about the rotating companion aspect of the show, but I really like Vicki and Steven seems okay, so I think it’ll go fine. I could see the show getting stale if they kept the same companions throughout. Also I was tired of Susan screaming and Barbara getting kidnapped and touching the wrong plot devices. Vicki is much harder to frighten and does relatively well keeping herself out of trouble. And poor Ian would have eventually been concussed to death the way he was going.

When the Doctor gets worried you know you’re in trouble. (Credit: BBC TV)

Lingering questions: Will the Doctor ever see Susan again as he promised? Does she ever return? Do Barbara and Ian still have their teaching jobs or were they fired for their long, unexplainable absence? What the hell is Vicki’s last name anyway? (The books state it’s Pallister, but I think the books just make shit up.) Also, what are the Doctor’s motivations now? Up to this point he’s been trying to get Barbara and Ian home. Now that he’s accomplished that, his random jumps throughout time seem less meaningful. Is he actually trying to do something in all these adventures? Or is he just wandering around and exploring? I get that the Doctor is meant to be an enigmatic character, but I do wish we’d get a bit more of his motivations. (Even if his motivation is just curiosity.)

The biggest questions this season, for me, came from the Monk. Previously the Doctor insisted that history could not be changed. Here it seems more like he meant it should not be changed, because the Monk claims to have changed history many times over. (So it could be a misinterpretation or a retcon. I’m sure it won’t be the last, considering the show has been around for nearly 60 years.) So if we take the Monk’s word for it, he’s repeatedly changed human history forever. How exactly does that work? Time travel theory varies on who is writing it and the plot intentions behind it. I know in much time travel media this would result in the creation of multiple timelines with different realities continuing on from the point of the change. (This is the kind I’ve used in my web comics simply because it affords the most plot options in my opinion.) But does it work that way in Doctor Who’s universe? From the vague information given in this serial, it sounds more like history is rewritten due to his interference, and then no one remembers what originally happened. If that’s the case, what else has he screwed up? What sort of butterfly effects did his changes have? And will the Doctor go and set things right? Can he remember what he changed because he’s outside of it? Or is that why he keeps a journal of his interferences? There are many questions and it’s probably not anything that will be touched on again, sadly. I feel it’s all worth exploring.

Also, technically hasn’t the Doctor also changed human history? Because of stopping the Daleks in the 2100s he brought about the future in the Sensorites. And Steven and Vicki likely would never have been born if the human race hadn’t been liberated. How can he justify that in the context of his golden rule of time travel? Every time period is history for the future. Just by him being there he’s changing things even if he tries not to. (Would Rome ever have burned if not for his mistake in Nero’s chambers?)

Boop. (Credit: BBC TV) — **Boop.** (Credit: BBC TV)

Anyway, I’ve gone on long enough. This has been fun. Thank you for reading my recap and review of Season 2 of Doctor Who. We still have a long way to go, and I hope you continue to join me for this long journey. I appreciate you all, see you soon with more pop culture goodness!