Season 7 - Days 254 to 278

Broadcast Dates: 3rd January 1970 - 20th June 1970

Relative Dates: 2nd August 2012 - 26th August 2012

A new Doctor, a new decade and a new show. I'd reached season 7. One of the best seasons in Doctor Who ever!

Spearhead From Space

It's Doctor Who in colour!

The fact that the show is continually refreshing and renewing itself has been vital in my continued success in the this quest. Every now and then the show changes and it helps to give me the motivation to carry on.

For the first time in the shows history we have an episode where everything is new. There is no cross over in Doctors or companions. The only linking factor to the seasons prior to this one is the presence of the Brigadier and UNIT. The Doctor is now exiled to Earth and as such over the next few years he will take up the role of UNIT's scientific adviser. The reasoning behind exiling the Doctor to Earth from a production point of view was to save some money as they would no longer have to spend it on creating vistas of other worlds etc. Unfortunately the writers quickly realised that they had pretty much limited themselves to two stories, those being "alien invasion" and "mad scientist". Saying that, some of my favourite stories come from this period of the series and this first story for the third Doctor is no exception.

This is the debut story for the Autons, the creatures of living plastic. As such we get the truly creepy scenes of shop window dummies coming to life, smashing through windows and blasting innocent bystanders down in the street. This is very grim and grown up stuff. The writer of this story was Robert Holmes who has written some of the very best stories for Doctor Who and it seems he enjoyed terrorising children!

We also see the trauma of regeneration for the first time, and the poor Brigadier is totally confused as to why this strange man he has never met before is claiming to be the Doctor.

Liz Shaw is introduced in this story as the companion and is yet another scientist recruited by UNIT. Her bewilderment to the story of an alien called the Doctor who travels round in a time and space machine that looks like a police box is a good way to introduce new viewers to the show.

Doctor Who and The Silurians

 

 

Let's get this out of the way straight away. The title. No, no, no, no!! Doctor Who is not his name! If the writers can't get the hang of this then how the hell are the viewing public! I tend to refer to this story simply as "The Silurians" but for completeness I felt I had to use the full title in this blog. Anyway, moving on...

 

When I was watching this story I was away for a weekend without access to a television or DVD player. I was stopping in Newcastle with my friend Lee who was visiting from Australia. Luckily another friend, Chris, had helped me out in finding a way to transfer the episodes from DVD onto my iPhone. This was great because now I knew that (given enough warning) I need not be tied to my house every night in order to get the episode in. I could actually go away and have some semblance of a life! So to the story itself...

 

Another fantastic story! We find out that long before humans evolved on the Earth, the planet was actually occupied by the Silurian race. The Silurians went into hibernation when they detected a large body that was about to strike the Earth. This turned out to be the moon and obviously didn't strike the Earth (although I think modern theories seem to imply that the moon was created by a large collision with the Earth). Meanwhile the Silurians "alarm clock" didn't go off as planned and as such they slept on. Until the humans came along and built a nuclear power facility right over where the Silurians' caves are situated.

 

This is such a good story because we can actually sympathise with the plight of the "monsters". As far as they are concerned, the Earth is their planet and we are just primitive apes. Unfortunately, the Brigadier just wants to wipe them out so it is left to the Doctor to sneak away from UNIT in order to try to broker a peace with the reptiles.

 

As a seven part story this could really drag along but it really doesn't. This is helped somewhat by a plot development in the second half of the story where one of the evil Silurians allows a virus to be spread amongst the humans that the Doctor then has to concentrate all his efforts on in order to find a cure. Meanwhile the ministry official, Masters, played by Geoffry Palmer (in his first appearance in the series) has already left the facility and we get some really creepy scenes as he stumbles his way through London before collapsing dead against some railings.

 

Despite the Doctors best effort it seems that a truce between humans and Silurians is out of his reach and he is forced to trick the Silurians into going back into hibernation. This would have been a perfectly acceptable away for the story to end but it's not over yet.

 

Convinced that the situation is under control, the Doctor and Liz leave the facility in the Doctor's new yellow car (named Bessie, it will sort of be a substitute for the TARDIS over the next couple of years allowing the Doctor to get from A to B). Meanwhile, with the Doctor out of the way, the Brigadier goes behind his back and orders the caves of the Silurians to be destroyed and the Doctor can only look on sadly as he sees the explosions in the distance. The story has ended but this time it feels like the Doctor has lost.

 

The Ambassadors Of Death

 

Another fine story in what was shaping up to be one of the best seasons of Doctor Who ever.

 

Unfortunately when I got up to watching this story in my quest it was not available on DVD. This obviously wasn't the first time this had happened. The missing stories aren't on DVD for obvious reasons. For cases where I needed to watch a story that existed but was not yet available on DVD then my mate Tony Dawson was instrumental in helping me out. Cheers Tony!

 

Of all the stories of season seven this is the one I am most unfamiliar with. I have seen all the other stories of this season countless times and love them all. I'd heard from various sources that this was the best of the season. I think this must have counted against it and my hopes and expectations for it were too high as I found myself being slightly disappointed.

 

There are some good parts though. UNIT get a good fight scene near the start. The Brigadier kicks ass! And Liz gets a fantastic car chase scene in Bessie.

 

I'm struggling to remember the exact details of the story. It's all about a space capsule that returns to Earth and the astronauts have been replaced by radioactive creatures that kill with their touch. As with the Silurians I believe it is the case that the creatures aren't necessarily evil and are being manipulated by an group of humans. It is very much the humans who are the baddies here.

 

One peculiar thing about this one that I remember is the way the opening credits ran. We get the usual credits which then lead into the recap from the cliffhanger of the previous episode only for it to return to the credits in time for the title to pop up. It was interesting to see the production team trying new things.

 

Inferno

 

So season seven comes to a close with this cracker of a story! This could be a challenger for my all time favourite story and definitely my favourite of the third Doctor era.

 

The Doctor and UNIT are overseeing a scientific project to drill to the centre of the Earth in order to access the gases that they believe will give a new and clean source of energy. The Doctor is tapping into the power from the facility in order to try to get the TARDIS console working again. Bizarrely we get to see the console completely removed from the TARDIS and stored in the Doctor's shed! Also we finally see that the console is green! This is still the original console that has been used from the beginning of the series but we are seeing it in colour for the first time.

 

Professor Stahlmann is accelerating the drilling to beyond acceptable limits. This line sounded particularly rude!

 

PROF STAHLMANN:- "We are fast approaching penetration zero and I will not decelerate at this critical stage!"

 

Soon green ooze is starting to leak out of the drilled hole (This is just sounding plain filthy now!) and infecting anyone who touches it, turning them into super heated zombie killing machines. It's never really explained why but that is just the flaw in the Persian rug of this story. Stahlmann himself becomes infected and hides his green hands with a pair of white gloves. But soon his behaviour is becoming more and more erratic.

 

The Doctor's experiments cause him to leap into a parallel world and this is where things start to get really good. Its a fascist world and all his friends aren't quite as nice as he remembers them. A perfect example of this is the picture shown above. We no longer have the Brigadier but the vicious Brigade Leader! Even lovely Liz Shaw seems to have a steely exterior to her.

 

This world's drilling is more advanced than our own and as such they soon penetrate the crust of the Earth despite the Doctor trying desperately to stop them as he knows what terrible powers they will unleash. The shit really hits the fan and soon we are hearing explosions coming from all over the facility and earthquakes are rocking the planet.

 

THE DOCTOR:- "Listen to that! That's the sound of this world screaming out it's rage!!"

 

The next couple of episodes are incredibly atmospheric as the Doctor and the Inferno team have to deal with attacks from the zombies as well as the impending death of the Earth. The soundtrack is constantly filled with the sound of rumbling and explosions which signify the death throes of the planet. The Doctor finally convinces them that he from a parallel world. This planet is doomed and there is nothing that can be done, however the Doctor realises it is not to late for our own world and if he can only get back in time then he will be able to save our world.

 

They soon realise that they can battle the zombies by blasting them with fire extinguishers, which is good as there are hell of a lot of them position in very convenient locations around the facility!

 

Everyone turns to the Doctor's side and aids him in getting back to his console and getting it powered up. Except for Professor Stahlmann who has turned into a proper rampaging zombie...werwolf...thing..

 

At the last minute the Brigade Leader insist that the Doctor take them all with him, despite the Doctor telling him that it's impossible leading to the Brigade Leader pulling a gun out on him. Luckily he is saved by Liz in a fantastic moment that shows that our Liz and this Liz are still the same person deep down. The Doctor escapes just in time as the larva flows towards the remaining survivors. What a cliffhanger! For obvious reasons, they can't destroy the Earth in a Doctor Who episode every day, but here they actually do it! As death counts go then this has got to be the biggest one in any story!

 

This is another seven part story, the third one of this season but it absolutely flies by! I want to watch this again now!

 

Here's a cool trailer that a fan has made and it really shows how atmospheric this story is:

 

 

 



That was season seven done. The third Doctor had officially arrived!!