Doctor Who-The Robots Of Death

                        While trying to explain the dimensionally transcendental nature of the TARDIS to his new companion Leela,the TARDIS lands them inside Storm Mine 4,a gigantic mining device scraping a desert area clean for rare minerals. On board there's a crew of nine humans and an enormous amount of servile robots-the non-verbal "Dums", the green colored "Vocs" and the silver "Super Vocs". All Voc robots supposed to control the Dums and each are individually numbered. All is not well on the ship however. A crew member named Chub has been murdered. Each of the crew,led by Commander Uvanov,each suspect the other of murder to gain a foothold in the profit the all seek from the mining. The doctor and Leela are soon caught in the middle of all this,both being thought of as suspects in the murder. But inconsistencies began to pop up. Leela finds herself confronted by one of the "Dum" robots who is somehow about to talk. And the doctor,having narrowly escaped. Soon another crew member, Zilda is murdered after having suspected the Commander was in fact the culprit. 

             The doctor and Leela meanwhile are freed from the Commander's captivity,due to his suspicion of them,by Poul who,as apparently was Zilda's also deceased brother,suffers from a "robophobia",resulting in Poul descending into madness. After earning the trust of the remaining crew when another of them,Toos,is threatened by a Voc but Poul is not,the doctor comes to realize a mad scientist Taren Capel is behind a robot revolution happening on the mining vehicle. Being raised amid robots Capel believed they were superior to humans and had programmed them to work against the miners. Though Poul was originally an undercover agent hired on to prosecute the conspiracy,he is soon too mentally dysfunctional to accomplish his mission. In the end the doctor is able to use a homemade explosive device to immobilize the robots,as well as Capel's own device to end his unhappy existence before departing with Leela in the TARDIS.

              This story is an extremely well written who dunnit story. Not only is it an excellent vehicle for Louise Jamison's Leela,adapting extremely well to the strange environments she thrust upon herself by joining the doctor,but also to the character set up the story itself provides. The crew members of the Storm Mine 4 are all motivated purely by their own greed and pettiness in accusing each other of murder. And each of them never suspecting in any way their robot servants who have been reprogrammed. The story of money clouding judgement is broken largely by Poul who,through his own fears realize their mineral bounty is not as important as the other miners think it to be. The dysfunctional protagonist Taren Capal is a human being believing himself to be a "brother" to the Vocs and Dums. It's up to the doctor,the level headed outsider,and his clever new companion Leela to show everyone involved the right direction to take themselves in this compelling tale.

Doctor Who-The Masque Of Mandragora

                    Upon reactivating the TARDIS's secondary control room,the doctor and Sarah-Jane Smith find themselves drawn into the equally dimensionally transcendental, crystalline realm of the Mandragora Helix. Narrowly escaping an intense burst of energy,the TARDIS redirects itself to late 15'th century San Marino. A midst a power struggle between Giuliano and his tyrannical uncle Count Fredrico,complications arise when the astrologer Hieronymous predicts that the Duke will be killed  upon the next planetary alignment. Sarah is captured by members of the Cult Of Demnos,who plan to use her as a sacrifice to a great power that is soon to arrive.  After witnessing the Mandragora energy burst flying past him,the doctor is knocked unconscious trying to rescue Sarah. There is a peasant revolt occurring in San Marino and the energy kills a peasant along the way. The doctor awakens to find himself taken in by the Counts men. Waking up in a prison cell with Sarah they pair manage to escape. The doctor concludes from what Sarah has witnessed that the Mandragora Helix is a life form intent on influencing the ancient Roman cult of Demnos in order in take hold of humanity for some unknown reason.

            Giuliano's men locate Sarah and the Doctor,hoping they can join forces with him and his companion Marco to stop the bloodshed caused because of Hieronymous's superstition. Complications ensue with the Sarah is taken in by Hieronymous who hypnotizes her to attempt to kill the doctor. After she and the doctor are again captured by the Count,the doctor has understood that Hieronymous has is the leader of the cult of Demnos,who believe the Mandragora helix is their mystical overlord. Even worse it is also understood that this Helix embodies a life form intent on using the cult in order to halt human progress at this time so it can take over as the sole ruler of the planet. Trusting the doctor just enough to investigate the Doctor's claims,Count Fredico releases the doctor only to be killed by Hieronymous,now willingly overwhelmed by the Helix. As Giuliano is upped in rank to Duke he is forced into trusting the doctor's judgement in using the guise of Giuliano's indoctrination gala to force the Helx into escape by draining it's energy and leaving an extremely thankful Giuliano and Marco behind as he and Sarah continue on their journey.

              This find Robert Holmes era Doctor Who story superbly blends science fiction conceptualizing with historical intrigue. The bio-kinetic Mandragora helix fears the progression of humanity as a rival force in the universe. Upon arriving it finds an Earth witnessing the end of the renaissance and the beginning of the modern era. This era itself it filled with rivaling individuals such as Giuliano and his tyrannical uncle Count Fredrico. Giuliano,a man devoted to reason and the new frontier of science confronts both his egoist uncle and the helix absorbed Hieronymous,who himself is overtaken easily due to his own fear of the unknown. This is a very telling story in terms of illustrating humanity's  constant personal divisions when it comes to cultural evolution. This also marks the debut of the Victorian looking "steam punk" styled secondary TARDIS control room,which would be used for a number of Doctor Who serials after this one. The doctor also reveals,among other things,that he gave Sarah-Jane Smith his own ability to interpret foreign languages. And this adds to the deep camaraderie between the doctor and Sarah-Jane.

Doctor Who-The Brain Of Morbius

                                The doctor and Sarah-Jane are summoned to the world of Karn,which is within the jurisdiction of the time lords. After discovering a group of crashed rocket ships they than taken in a scientist named Solon and his assistant Condo. It isn't long before the doctor and Sarah are knocked out by Solon,who is seeking to use the doctors brain for one of his experiments. Meanwhile,a mystical group called the Sisterhood Of Karn have captured the TARDIS. Their experience with the time lords is clouded by an encounter with the villainous Morbius,who was intent on using their elixir,which they believe is created by a sacred flame of life,in order to allow every time lord to live forever. This elixir is now diminishing and the Sisterhood blame the doctor,who they apparently originally summoned   While on the operating table of Solon,the doctor too is captured by the conjuring of the Sisterhood where he unsuccessfully attempts to plead that he is not of the same intention as Morbius and they prepare him for sacrifice for their diminishing elixir. By this time Sarah has escape from Solon. After disguising herself as one of the Sisterhood and helping the doctor escape,the Sisterhood attack her with a light ray that temporarily blinds her.

                   Solon returns to the sisterhood begging for the Doctor back. He wants the doctors brain to house that of Morbius who he possesses,and whom Sarah has already encountered. After the doctor and Sarah escape from Solon again,the disembodied brain of Morbius is convinced the doctor is sent by the time lords in an attempt to destroy him and demands Solon put him in a specialized body he'd created prematurely. During this time Solon finds the doctor and Sarah have returned,along with the Sisterhood now looking for the brain they now know Solon has. When Sarah's sight returns,she and the doctor are both accosted by the mutant body Morbius now inhabits. While a cyanide concoction of the doctors successfully kills Solon,it's the sisterhood chasing Morbius off a cliff that finishes the job. The doctor has been lethally injured in a time lord brain stretching session with Morbius and the Sisterhood leader Maren sacrifices herself to give the last of their original elixir to the doctor. Before departing with Sarah on the TARDIS,the doctor gives them a special material to keep the flame of life from going out again before leaving a midst big explosion.

                    Very much a story of this era of Doctor Who loosely modeled around a Hammer horror story,in this case Frankenstein,this story very much centers in on the obsession with eternal life-between the entropy it's caused for the Sisterhood and Karn society as well as the madness of Solon himself. No irony is lost that,even though Sara-Jane Smith spends the the middle parts of this serial blind,she manages to do more to save herself and the doctor than Solon or the Sisterhood are in their obsessions with survival at all costs.  This story also features a lot of first hand information about time lord society,as well as the Sisterhood's clarity on the fact the doctor isn't the only one who sees the time lord's as having a mild streak of moral cowardice. One important scene is the brain stretching session before Morbius's death-where several other characters representing the doctor are shown following the face of William Hartnell's first. Not only does this indicate an unusual way of time lord interaction but that,just perhaps (though the faces could've represented the first doctor in younger states of his life),the doctor we first saw in An Unearthly Child may not have been the doctors first incarnation.

                  

Doctor Who-The Android Invasion

                Upon arriving back on Earth to UNIT HQ the doctor and Sarah-Jane Smith find an unusually high radiation count and,soon enough,menaced by unusual suited guards and a UNIT soldier who threw himself over a cliff. The pair soon land in the town of Devesham, where Sarah once did a news report in her days as a journalist and where the local population are acting very suspicious. After moving onto UNIT HQ they find the facility has been taken over by Guy Crawford,an astronaut Sarah understands to have been dead. After fleeing UNIT HQ after being attacked  the doctor is confronted with the horrible truth:  this is not Earth,the people they encountered were actually pre-programmed androids and,while escaping the false UNIT HQ the person he believes was Sarah was actually an android as well. During this process,the real Sarah accidentally diverts the TARDIS to the actual Earth par it's fail safe mechanism. When Sarah and the doctor are taken by Crawford and the androids to an alien vessel both of them learn the true motivation behind all this. 

             A planet called Kraal has become dangerously radioactive. And this race,lead by surgeon Styggran,are planning to invade Earth with a group of androids carrying  a deadly virus that will destroy humanity and leave the planet open to Krall colonization. Upon using their mind/body replication device to replicate the doctor,Sarah and the genuine doctor escape back to Earth on the Kraal rocket intended to deliver to deadly androids. Meanwhile confusion runs so amok at the real UNIT HQ at the empty TARDIS's appearance they are not aware of the true intentions of Crawford's return. Not to mention that Harry Sullivan and Benton have already been replaced by androids-as well as the doctor himself,and are already laying the groundwork for the proposed invasion. Upon successfully averting the invasion,the real doctor also stops a coup by the Androids  when Crawford switches sides and is killed by Styggran,the doctor and Sarah return to their journey in the TARDIS.

             As a whole this story is fully representative of all of the best qualities of Doctor Who during the mid 1970's. The chemistry between Tom Baker's fourth doctor and Elizabeth Sladen's Sarah-Jane Smith serves as the main strength motivating this entire adventure. And it's also a very compelling story at that. It mashes up both The Andromeda Strain  and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers in order to comment on the pretentiousness of Earth defense forces to successfully stop an intricately planned extra terrestrial invasion. With it's very clever use of what minute special effects Doctor Who was given at the time in terms of available budget,this story managed to visually convey the sense of uncertainty and deception it was looking to convey. And again as was typical for the era,the fact that the doctor was in a type of danger that genuinely effect his life and that of his beloved Earth added to the strengths of this story as well.

         

Doctor Who-Pyramids Of Mars

                 En route back to UNIT HQ the doctor and Sarah-Jane Smith  encounter a shock wave followed by the appearance of a jackal-like face that Sarah is convinced is pure malevolence  Upon the TARDIS materialization the doctor surmises they have arrived at the correct site but at the wrong time-in 1911 to be exact in a manor house populated by ancient Egyptian artifacts and a high strung Egyptian man named Ibrahim Namin. A man named Dr.Warlock has been investigating Namin,who has managed to take over the home belonging to the family of two brothers: scientist Lawrence Scarman and his archaeologist brother Marcus. Namin,while consulting what he thinks is an Egyptian sarcophagus is confronted by a creature he thinks is "the great one". The creature promptly murders Namin. And,as the doctor and Sarah soon discover it's Marcus Scarman himself who has emerged along with a team of mummy-like servant robots who eventually kill Dr. Warlock as well. Yet something remains amis. Thanks in part to brother Lawrence's radio telescope the doctor is able to trace a signal sent by Scarman to Mars. 

                   He has determined they are facing an an adversary named Sutekh,an ancient alien from a race called the Osirans on whom ancient Egyptians based their mythology who has been seeking escape from a pyramid on Mars to carry out his biological imperceptive to destroy all life in the universe. And the sarcophagus is actually a space/time tunnel through which Sutekh travels. Realizing with the doctors assistance Sutekh plans to destroy humanities future,Sarah Jane goes about helping the doctor defeat Sutekh. First by a failed attempt to sabotage a rocket he is launching to accomplish his mission,than by almost getting possessed by Sutekh as well during which time divided brother Lawrence is also killed by the man he believes is still his brother. It is only after the doctor and Sarah are transported to the pyramid itself,and find their way out of every trap set by Horace to trap Sutekh and his followers does the doctor manage to destroy Sutekh by transporting him far into the future at the time of his own death,through his time tunnel,before departing in the TARDIS with Sarah.

                   This story is considered one of the all time Doctor Who classics of the programs original run. And it's easy to understand why. In this story,the doctor is faced with a danger that actually comes extremely near to defeating him. Not only that but the human beings involved have to face the fact that much of their mythology was actually based on extra terrestrial incursion. This is accomplished wonderfully not only by the constant presence of Egyptian artifacts but also the two Scarman brothers. Even though he meets his death at the hands of his possessed brother Marcus,it's Lawrence Scarman's faithful devotion to his brother and torment at his loss to him that motivates him to help the doctor. And to trust his story of being a time lord. The concept of mythology representing something otherworldly rather than spiritual,combined with characters whose emotions are very relatable along with the genuine terror the story and settings provide are probably the key factors in this story's success over the years.

             

              

Happy Birthday Tom Baker!!

                                          Before I ever knew about time lords,regeneration or even knew what a TARDIS was this man was the one image I associated with Doctor Who. His name is Tom Baker. He was born today in 1934 and turns 79 this year. With his trademark fashion,including a 17 foot scarf and his distinctive,fruity speaking voice he became the poster time lord as it were for Doctor Who during his seven years in the role,especially when it came to American audiences who viewed his many episodes of the show on PBS during the 1980's.  It was during his era on the show that Doctor Who ascended to the level of international fame. And he remains many Whovian's favorites of the eleven people to play the time lord on television thus far.

                            Though highly successful in his years on the show,his strong belief in how his character should be portrayed often came into odds with the programs new producer John Nathan Turner during Baker's final series on Doctor Who. He was succeeded by Peter Davison in 1981 following Baker's final serial Logopolis. Although he felt it was too soon after his departure to appear in the multi-doctor reunion special The Three Doctors on the program's 20'th anniversary,he has been an active participant in many Doctor Who related events since and currently has no qualms of speaking of his long and unique time as the fourth incarnation of the famous time lord.

                            The fourth doctor Tom Baker portrayed was,in his own words,very much an extension of his own personality. He relished his position of putting the oppressed first in his priorities,with brain over bron,in all situations he encountered. He often took serious things with humor,and seemingly humorous things quite seriously. And with his almost child-like alpha personality he seemed the most genuinely extra terrestrial of all the other incarnations of the doctor. With assistants such as Sarah Jane Smith,Leela and Romana he was always accompanied by people in some way at least close to the equal of himself.  So to Mr.Baker and the many Whovians out there I with Tom Baker a very happy 79'th. If he were here,I'd offer him a Jelly Baby.

Doctor Who-Planet Of Evil

                                         After accidentally landing on the planet Zeta Minor at the very edge of the known universe en-route back to UNIT HQ,the doctor and Sarah-Jane discover an abandoned survey settlement and (on Sarah's part) an usual physical sensation. Not long after arriving their the two find themselves not only in the presence of Sorenson,the last survivor of the team but of an immense creature that seems to exist well outside the material spectrum. The doctor and Sarah are soon taken into custody by the rescue vessel belonging to the Monostran Controller Salamar,who have been searching for the team for some time and have only just come to find them. Upon arriving on their ship,Salamar instantly assumes the doctor and Sarah to be responsible for the death of the survey team and treats them as prisoners. After plea bargaining and his own investigations,the doctor discovers that the purpose of the team on Zeta Minor was to mine a vital source of energy to save their dying sun.

                                   Fairly soon however there are larger issues to concern themselves with. Upon returning to Zeta Minor and almost falling into the bottomless bit the creature inhabited there,the doctor surmised that the creature was in face the manifestation of the planets link to a parallel antimatter universe. And the energy source that Sorenson has been collecting is the solid form of this energy. In the hands of the ships crew,it threatens cataclysm on an enormous scale. Their plans to return the solid antimatter to the planet is threatened both by Salamar's mistrust and the fact that Sorenson's supposed antigen to the antimatter exposure has caused his own body to hybridize into the very creature that destroyed his team-an "anti man" as the doctor calls it. Salamar is killed by Sorenson under this influence. So it's up to the doctor,with the permission of second in command Vishinsky who has taken command,to return the antimatter where it belongs. After the creature gladly returns Sorenson to normal,the doctor suggests an alternative energy source for the Monostran before departing with Sarah in the TARDIS.  

                                  The idea of matter and antimatter annihilating radiation to a scale of enormous material cataclysm had,by this point,become an important element in science fiction in general. This story explored that wonderfully in both scientific and personal terms. This plays very much on the characters involved. The doctor,while having rationalized the threat the solid antimatter poses to the universe,is continually interrupted by the paranoid  narcissism of Salamar-who seems barely trust himself at times. Sorenson, motivated by his own thrill of discovery,is blinded even to his own state of being. It's the reasonable and level headed Vishinsky that recognizes the doctors points and allows the only rational (and successful) set of events to take place. Another special quality of this story is the fact the shows low FX budget is put to good use here-showcasing a life form consisting of little more than pure inert energy. A wonderfully engaging and intelligent story from a very successful period for Doctor Who.