Doctor Who Season 5

Doctor Who

Doctor Who Season 4

SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.

---

037: The Tomb of the Cybermen

• [[]] [[]]
• [[]] [[]]
• [[]] [[]]
• [[]] [[]]

(First watched 2014-07-09, -10, -08-14, -15) Hey, it's nice to see some actual moving film footage again.

The Doctor seems to be his own worst enemy here. On the one hand he's like "The Cybermen are super awful and the evil here should remain buried forever!" but on the other hand he's the one helping the archaeological team to bypass tomb security and showing them the system by which the internal machinery operates.

I like how the hatch-opening problem was solved two different ways. The Doctor used knowledge of mathematics to figure out the proper pattern of lever pulls, while later the engineers needing to follow partially disassembled the panel to examine the circuitry attached to the levers. It struck me as... good game design, allowing different paths for progression.

The Doctor pretending to go along with the villain's plain in such an overblown manner was great. A scene I could see showing up nearly unchanged in a Matt Smith episode.

---

038: The Abominable Snowmen

(First watched 2014-08-21, 2016-06-13, -14, -15, -16, -17)

---

039: The Ice Warriors

(First watched 2016-06-20, then totally forgot about and rewatched for the first time 2023-11-27, -29, -30, -12-04, -06, -08)

"No plants, no carbon dioxide." As I suspected, searching this up it is one of the famous boners in Doctor Who science.

The second one is the first I've watched of the animated recreations. And... it's OK? 2D animation with skeleton, kind of the Live2D look, something you might expect from a moderately well put together indie video game? If it were a new animated show it would seem very cheap, but as its purpose is really to be a replacement for the fan-made reconstructions made out of things like publicity stills, it's a massive improvement in watchability. Regarding the actual contents of the second episode... the ice warrior seemed kind of surprised that he was able to be revived. I guess they hadn't yet decided that was their thing? And the big secret to his revival was just... being warmed up by electricity.

So far Victoria has accused the ice warriors of murder three times from seeing them knock people down, but has only been right on one count.

--- 040: The Enemy of the World

(First watched 2024-01-12, -14, -16)

Man, the Second Doctor is goofy fun. Lands on a beach, immediately goes for a swim and wants to make sand castles. Until the dudes in the hovercraft start shooting him. They get in a helicopter and from some markings inside can see the year is something near 2018. Troughton has a dual role in this serial, as he's also playing the man the Doctor has been mistaken for: the incredibly-similar-looking-but-with-a-different-accent-and-hair-comb, Salamander.