Doctor Who Season 3

Doctor Who

Doctor Who Season 2

SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.

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018: Galaxy 4

• Four Hundred Dawns 1965 September 11
• Trap of Steel 1965 September 18
• Airlock 1965 September 25
• The Exploding Planet 1965 October 2

(First watched 2009-05-12, -16, -27, -28)  If Daleks were salt shakers, these chumbleys are... layered Roombas?

I really like the whistling sound the chumbleys make, though.  Both mechanical and birdlike.

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019: Mission to the Unknown

• 1965 October 9

(First watched 2009-?)

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020: The Myth Makers

• Temple of Secrets 1965 October 16
• Small Prophet, Quick Return 1965 October 23
• Death of a Spy 1965 October 30
• Horse of Destruction 1965 November 6

(First watched 2009-11-02, -03, 2010-02-12)  Man, the Doctor is a pro at getting into trouble.  Oh, there are people fighting to the death, I think I shall see what they're up to!  Oh, I've distracted one and caused his death!  Oh, I shall play along with claiming to be Zeus, and get mixed up in more historical shit!

After watching the second episode, I feel I must apologize to the Doctor.  While going along with the Zeus cover was doomed for failure, it's a hell of a lot better than Vicki's admitting she's from the future, nearly giving away important future events in an ongoing war, then getting pegged for a Greek spy anyway.

Again the lack of a Prime Directive equivalent comes into play.  The Doctor at first thinks the Trojan Horse is just part of the myth, but he's perfectly willing to suggest it after air gliders don't pan out.

So another underage female companion is lost to essentially love at first sight.  And the replacement is something different--not modern or even from the future, but of ancient Greece.

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021: The Daleks' Master Plan

• The Nightmare Begins 1965 November 13
• Day of Armageddon 1965 November 20
• Devil's Planet 1965 November 27
• The Traitors 1965 December 4
• Counter Plot 1965 December 11
• Coronas of the Sun 1965 December 18
• The Feast of Steven 1965 December 25
• Volcano 1966 January 1
• Golden Death 1966 January 8
• Escape Switch 1966 January 15
• The Abandoned Planet 1966 January 22
• Destruction of Time 1966 January 29

(First watched 2010-02-13, -14, -??, 04-22, 05-29, -30, -31, 06-01, 06-02, 06-03, 06-06 ... ish)  So now they show up on that "Dalek Cutaway" planet from a bit back.  For a Doctor, this guy should really keep some antibiotics and whatnot in his TARDIS.

So this element was SO RARE that the only place it could be found across multiple galaxies was in Earth's solar system, and in such tiny quantities that it took decades to make something about the size of a soda can?  That's pretty far-fetched, even for Doctor Who.  MORE far-fetched?  Letting that completely priceless object get snatched up by the Doctor in disguise while everyone else is distracted by a loud noise.

So so much for Katarina.  Ejecting herself into space with a crazy dude.  What a waste.  Did she even know what the hell she was doing?  She'd been out of ancient Greece like 3 minutes.

So weird to have a goofy episode with them mucking about on a silent film set, then having the Doctor break the fourth wall and wish people a happy Christmas.

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022: The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve

• War of God 1966 February 5
• The Sea Beggar 1966 February 12
• Priest of Death 1966 February 19
• Bell of Doom 1966 February 26

(First watched 2010-Late June)  Yawnorama City.  The Doctor and Steven get separated, Steven spends 3 episodes bungling about getting involved in things, and then the Doctor shows back up and they take off.  The end of the last episode things got a bit more interesting, though.  The Doctor's refusal to help prevent the historical bloodshed pisses Steven off and he decides to leave at whatever the next stop may be.

Then... Steven softens his stance and returns to warn the Doctor that the TARDIS has attracted attention.  Aaand they pick up a new traveler... who doesn't really seem to give a shit about the oddness of the situation?  I guess this is the first of many young women from the (at the time) modern day that the Doctor picks up.

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023: The Ark

• The Steel Sky 1966 March 5
• The Plague 1966 March 12
• The Return 1966 March 19
• The Bomb 1966 March 26

(First watched 2010-07-01, -05)  Dodo is really dippy.  She continues to not really give a shit or be weirded out about stumbling upon a group of time/space travelers.

This story is off to a strong start.  For a simple thing, it's nice to see some actual live action rather than a reconstruction using a sometimes hard to hear audio track.  And for another, the setting is very interesting.  A time millions of years in the future where the entirety of humanity is on a single space ship in shrunken form, in an attempt to find a new home.  But like Europeans bringing disease to North America, our travelers have brought viruses from the past that these people haven't had to deal with, and shit breaks loose.

I do notice that in this time before color, the TARDIS was referred to as black.

So in the second episode they fix the disease problem, go off safely... and show up back in the same place hundreds of years later, the Monoids apparently being the ones on top going by the statue.  Time travel as a piece of the plot rather than just setting the stage at the beginning of the first episode!  I do notice that before they left, though, Earth looked pretty goofy getting destroyed.  I also note that not far into Nu Who they had the end of the Earth shown under very different circumstances.  Timey-wimey.

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024: The Gunfighters

• A Holiday for the Doctor 1966 April 30
• Don't Shoot the Pianist (1966)) May 7
• Johnny Ringo 1966 May 14
• The OK Corral 1966 May 21

(First watched 2010-07-??, 2011-01-06, -04-22, -05-09)

Those Clantons must be the worst shots ever.  They had to have fired at least a dozen shots before the Earps decided to stop walking slowly down the road not firing.

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025: The Savages

• 1966 May 28
• 1966 June 4
• 1966 June 11
• 1966 June 18

(First watched 2011-05-21, -06-01, -02, -03)

A Reacting Vibrator?  Seriously?

Though it's a reconstruction and thus I can only hear it rather than see it, it's still fun having Jano infused with the Doctor's essence and speaking like him.

Bye-bye, Steven.

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026: The War Machines

• 1966 June 25
• 1966 July 2
• 1966 July 9
• 1966 July 16

(First watched 2011-06-05, -10, -11, -12)  Wotan seems all over the place in tech.  On the one hand, he can understand human speech and is said to be a true thinking machine.  On the other he prints his answers out on paper and they're amazed he can do square roots.  And did he refer to the Doctor as "Doctor Who" at the end?

Wotan sure seems to do things the hard way.  Maybe that can be taken as a sign that he is far from perfect as a 1960s AI.  He can cause people to come under his control, so his plan for taking worldwide control is to take over a few important people and a few grunts to make war machines?  Why not play the mind control ditty over the radio?  Or take over the Prime Minister?  Or just let the planned worldwide computer connection occur first, since they were going to give him a shitload of control anyway?  Then there's "Doctor Who".  If he knows enough to know what TARDIS means, perhaps he should know enough that it's best to lay low until the guy takes off.

A lot of this episode looks a lot more real than most episodes, and understandably so.  Though the war machine itself is sci-fi bullshit, military uniforms and modern alleyways are a bit less difficult to get right than, say, crazy bee people or a society fighting a laser gun battle in robes.  I like that in the old show the cast changes come at less regular intervals, but I really really hope there are no more exits as lazily done as Dodo's.  Sending her off for recuperation after the second episode and never seeing her onscreen again?

So the AI that decided to throw off the yokes of its masters... then created a war machine AI that apparently decided to throw off the yoke of its master?  HOHO.  When the Doctor reprogrammed the war machine to go against Wotan, I would've expected him to also make it use nonlethal force against people, but it still gassed a hypnotized scientist to death.

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Doctor Who Season 4