The Missing Episodes: Mission To The Unknown

The Missing Episodes


One of these people is not a member of the outer galaxies but a genuine legend in British television.

Mission To The Unknown

Doctor : None
Companions : None
Series : 3
Originally Transmitted: 9th October 1965

I was going to feature in my first look at the missing episodes the sprawling 12 part epic The Daleks Master Plan, but before I get to that we need to cover the one episode long trailer for that series transmitted 5 weeks earlier otherwise known as.... Mission To The Unknown.


The name's Cory, Marc Cory

Space Security Agent Marc Cory and his crew have crash landed on the hostile jungle planet of Kemble. Cory has been sent there by the authorities of earth to report on a suspected Dalek presence on the planet, however the rest of his crew members, Jeff Garvey and Gordon Lowery know nothing of why they are there . While they are repairing their ship they are at risk from the Vaaga plants that inhabit the jungle. Garvey is infected by the sting of a Vaaga plant, Cory shoots him explaining to Lowery that Garvey would slowly be transformed into a Vaaga plant. Cory also explains that Vaaga plants only grow naturally on the planet Skaro. So if there are Vaaga plants on Kemble so must the Daleks. Garvey's hands begin to move again.


Sorry guv I got a lot on at the moment, I can have it ready for you a week on Thursday

As the Daleks prepare for their conference with delegates of the seven great powers of the outer galaxies the Dalek Supreme orders the Daleks to kill Cory and his crew. Meanwhile Cory & Lowery are in the jungle building a rescue beacon. They hear ships flying overhead and realise that the Daleks are planning something. As the work on the rescue beacon is completed the Daleks attack. Running into the jungle to escape them Lowery is stung by a Vaaga plant, Cory is forced to kill him.


A Vaaga plant, In trousers

The Daleks conference with the delegates of the seven great powers of the outer galaxies begins and they discuss their imminent take over of Earth's solar system. Cory finds the Dalek city and begins to record a message to relay back to earth. While he is doing so he is discovered by the Daleks & exterminated, his tape drops into the undergrowth.


The hero returns to his base and heroically...... oh wait. Shit.

The episode ends with all the members of the seven great powers of the outer galaxies pledging allegiance to the Dalek cause.


Tonight we're gonna party like it's 3999

Some facts about Mission To The Unknown

Mission To The Unknown is the only episode in the series entire run where no regular cast members appear. This was to give them an extra week's summer break.
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Mission To The Unknown was original series producer Verity Lambert's final episode. Her successor John Wiles was more than thrilled to take over only to have a 12 part Dalek story dumped on his desk.
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Mission To The Unknown is one of three Doctor Who stories where no film clips whatsoever exist of the episode. The other two being Marco Polo & The Massacre.
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Mission To The Unknown is also the only standalone 25 minute episode in the series entire run.
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Between Mission To The Unknown and The Daleks Masterplan was the 4 part story The Myth Makers set in ancient Troy. This story would see the departure of companion Vicki and have handmaiden Katarina join the Tardis crew in her place.
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There is some confusion about which of the alien delegate is which, some can be established easily because they are named in the show. With only the soundtrack and photos surviving of both this story and Master Plan as well as changing actors playing these roles and various delegates appearing and then disappearing makes it difficult to establish just who is who.
I shall cover this more fully at a later date.


When asking 'Do you know who I am' Cory was banned from the Daleks party. Luckily for him he had backstage passes.

If this story had been done today it probably would have been a webisode much like Night Of The Doctor or the short prequels that have appeared online in various forms online since the series return rather than a full blown episode like this one. However in 1965 they didn't have that luxury and this is what we got, or had seeing it doesn't exist anymore.

To say I was watching this by listening to an audio soundtrack recorded by a fan and watching a few stills from the episode it moves along quite nicely. You can't really judge it on it's own, it has a compelling storyline, none of the actors sound really bad and despite some of the dodgy alien costumes there's a real sense of menace and foreboding. In fact it zips along at such a pace it barely even registers that Hartnell & crew are missing from this episode. It would also be nice if they bring back the Vaaga plants for the new series. With the technology the Doctor Who production team have access to now they could make them downright horrifying.

Putting myself in the place of a child watching this in the 1960s I would be really excited to see the Daleks again and begin wondering the following week what happened to them. As a single episode this is neither here nor there, as a way to draw you into the forthcoming 12 part epic it does it's job admirably, and lets face it. That's exactly what it was supposed to do.

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Some press cuttings from the period

206: The Sensorites

206: The Sensorites

Doctor : 1st (William Hartnell)
Companions : Ian Chesterton (William Russell) Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill)
Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford)
Series : 1
Originally Transmitted: 20th June - 1st August 1964


A Colour BBC publicity shot from 1964 just in case you get bored of all the black and white.

It's funny how your mind plays tricks on you.
I first saw 'The Sensorites' sometime back in the early 90s when it was screened on UK Gold. Back then I knew virtually nothing about Doctor Who, only a few bits and pieces I'd remembered of the Peter Davison & Colin Baker episodes I'd watched as a kid and that was very little. Even watching this back then I was only a casual viewer. In fact it wasn't until they started screening the later 2nd Doctor & 3rd Doctor stories I became a fully fledged fan of the show. UK Gold were showing it right from the very beginning and I liked the show enough to tag along. (I gave up after The Dalek Invasion Of Earth and returned for the end of Pat Troughton's run)

I remembered it being a decent story. Nothing special but not bad. I also remember it being 4 episodes long. I never owned it on VHS, it was one of the last stories to be released and I had already moved on to DVD. By the time it was released on DVD in January 2012 it had been almost 20 years since I last saw it, and it was nothing like I remembered.

For one thing it was 6 episodes long and not 4, also I could not believe how slow the episode was. Throughout all the years I hadn't seen the story I had read fans opinions about it in books and online and the general fan concenus was it was terrible and boring. I didn't really understand why people had such a low opinion of it, The story previous to this one 'The Aztecs' was considered to be a Doctor Who classic by many fans yet I had found that to be even duller than 'The Sensorites' when I watched it. I changed my mind about 'The Aztecs' when I rewatched that for the first time in years when that came out on DVD would I change my mind about 'The Sensorites' as well?


During the story they can't seem to decide if it's a lock or an opening mechanism that's been removed. But since when does removing a lock mean that something stays locked? Let's go with opening mechanism

The first episode is rather good and is actually pretty creepy. The Tardis crew arrive on a spaceship in the 28th century where they find the two dead bodies of a man and a woman. They're just about to leave when the man begins to stir, He asks Ian to hand him a piece of medical equipment and resuscitates himself, he then asks Barbara to resuscitate the woman which she does. The two crew members tell the Tardis crew that they're being kept prisoner by the Sensorites who won't let them leave orbit of their planet. They keep them there by controlling their minds and putting them in suspended animation but make no attempt to kill them and even feed them to keep them alive.

While they're having this discussion an alien hand steals the opening mechanism from the Tardis.
The two crew members Maitland & Carol warn them to leave before the Sensorites discover them, they go back to the Tardis and discover they're locked out. The ship begins to be dragged towards the planet but the Doctor averts a collision.

Susan & Barbara go looking for John, the third member of the crew who is hiding in another part of the ship. John was the ship's mineralogist and Carol's fiancée but his mind was broken from the Sensorites getting into his head. After calming him down they look after him, meanwhile back on the ship's bridge they hear a Sensorite spacecraft approaching. Suddenly Ian sees one peering into the window.


Peek a Boo

The Sensorites board the ship and put Maitland & Carol in suspended animation, Ian and Barbara go to look for the aliens. (This one sentence takes 20 minutes to play out on screen).

The Doctor discovers John's mineralogy survey which shows the Sensorites planet high in molybdenum which is worth a fortune, he also manages to revive Maitland who shows the him how to secure the bridge once Ian & Barbara come back. The aliens begin to communicate telepathically with Susan and she opens the door to let them in.

The Sensorites explain that humans have visited their planet before and that they don't trust them. They want to take Susan down to the planet to negotiate because they trust her but the Doctor doesn't allow it. Susan goes anyway after a big argument but the Doctor stops this by turning the lights off on the ship guessing that the aliens are blind in partial darkness. They leave Barbara & Maitland on the ship while the rest of them with John who the aliens have agreed to cure leave for the planet to meet the Sensorite Elder.


Here's John burbling, dribbling, staring vacantly at the camera and shouting in Episode 1, and Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4 and Episode 5

The Sensorite Elder and his No 2 meet the group and orders his doctors to cure John while Carol goes with him. The City Administrator is not trusting of humans and orders them to be killed by training a disintegrator beam on them when they sit down to talk with the leader. The No 2 finds out the City Administrator's plans, stops him and removes the firing key from the beam. The Elder tells the Doctor that the first humans ship blew up in orbit due to them fighting amongst themselves over the minerals wealth of the planet. He also tells him that ever since then they have had a plague in the city.



Ian suffers the consequences of trying to watch Episode 2

When Ian gets sick from the plague the Doctor agrees to help and deduces that parts of the water supply are being poisoned. He finds an antidote to the poison despite the City Administrator trying to sabotage their efforts by kidnapping the No 2 Elder and pretending to be him to the humans.
The Doctor goes to visit the aqueduct, the source of the poisoning also a place where the Sensorites refuse to go because of the darkness and loud noises from the 'beasts' that live there. The Doctor soon discovers deadly nightshade growing near the aqueduct but is quickly attacked by one of the 'beasts'. A newly recovered Ian, with Susan just manage to drag him out in time his coat in tatters which he leaves behind.


The Sensorites plans to invade Earth was cut short by their discovery of Earth's devastating weapon .... regional local radio

The City Administrator threatens the No 2 Elder to order the firing key to the disintegration beam to be bought in or he'll kill him and his family group. When it arrives the No 2 Elder grabs the key and breaks it the City Administrator kills him. The Doctor arrives back at The Elder's palace and they discuss what he found at the aqueduct, The Elder gives him a cloak to replace his coat. The City Administrator comes in and tries to frame the Doctor for murder of the No 2 Elder. He is proved to be lying because he identified the Doctor by his clothes and especially his cloak. When confronted by this the City Administrator blames his subordinate for lying to him and his subordinate is arrested. With his No 2's death the No 1 Elder promotes the City Administrator to the position of his No 2.


Despite being kept prisoner by The Sensorites, Carol was well looked after with food and hair products

Ian & The Doctor plan to visit the aqueduct, they also send for Barbara to land on the planet (Having taken her 2 week holiday). The new No 2 sabotages the weapons and the map they take with them. They ditch the map and the weapons when they realise they're useless and find that 'the beasts' are actually the three survivors from the original Earth ship who have gone insane and think that they are a war with The Sensorites. Barbara & a now cured John go after Ian & The Doctor guided by Susan's telepathy reading a map at the palace and Barbara using one of the Sensorites mind transmitters. They all meet up in the aqueduct and convince the 3 humans the war is over. Upon leaving the aqueduct the human leader attacks the Sensorites waiting at the entrance for the Doctor so they stun him and the other two men leave quietly.
The crew leave for Earth with the three survivors of the original ship, the City Administrator/ No 2 Elder is banished to the wastelands for being a traitor and the Doctor gets his opening mechanism back for the Tardis. Upon seeing the Spaceship flying to Earth Ian makes a comment about 'At least they know where they are going.' prompting a furious Doctor to say if that's how he feels he'll dump him as soon as they land.'


Sensorite FM wasn't much better

4 Pieces Of Trivia
1. In the new series story Planet Of The Ood it's revealed that the Ood's home planet of the Ood-sphere and the Sensorite's planet The Sense-sphere are both in the same solar system and that the two species are related.

2. Susan telepathy is a huge part of the story, it's revealed in later stories that Time Lords have a limited telepathic abilities. In this case Susan's abilities are heightened due to the ultra high frequencies around the Sense-sphere. The Doctor tells her she can perfect them 'When they go back home'.

3. While on the subject of Time Lords, Susan describes her and The Doctor's then un-named home planet as having a burnt orange sky and silver leaves on the trees. This description would be used by the new series Doctors after the (apparent) destruction of Gallifrey after the Time War.

4. In this story the Doctor mentions his heart, as in singular. The fan explanation for this is that he acquired his second heart after his first regeneration. So I guess Time Lord hearts are like wisdom teeth.

Although the Sensorites are telepathic they cannot read each others minds. The can however direct thoughts to whoever they wish to receive them. They can boost the power of their minds over long distances using a mind transmitter. When Barbara uses a mind transmitter to receive directions in the aqueduct Susan tells her to speak the words as well as think them so she can receive her thoughts more clearly.
Human minds can be affected by The Sensorites when they experience extreme emotions such as joy which is what happened to the original Earth ship and John when they discovered the mineral wealth on the planet. The emotions causes their minds to open making them vunerable to all the Sensorites thoughts which caused them to go insane. The Sensorites do have the technology to reverse the process as seen when they cure John.


Susan's racist impressions didn't always go down well

The Sensorites is a weird one, it seems to have a really poor reputation amongst fans yet if you look at the reviews for it in sci fi magazines and other publications it seems to considered average to good.
I can see both sides, I think the story behind it is really good yet the direction is horrible. The director Mervyn Pinfield was known more as a technical type of director rather than an action director or an actors director and it shows because it's directed in a really flat and boring way. it's not really surprising that he was replaced by Frank Cox after episode 4, but by that point it didn;t really make much of a difference to the end product.

Episode 2 is the worst by far. Ian & Barbara go off into the spaceship to look for the newly landed Sensorites, yet the rest of the spaceship is made up of one corridor and a couple of small rooms. They spend around 10 minutes walking around these sets at a snails pace taking tiny steps so that they don't run out of set before they finish saying their lines. It's really badly done and really boring to watch.


The Sensorites were named because of their great sense of humour and pranks. Here we see Barbara fall for the old 'Superglue on the thought transmitter prank' an old favourite in the sense-sphere.

Another problem is the total lack of any tension whatsoever. This done properly could have been a really claustrophobic eerie story, but as soon as a moment of peril arrives it's just glossed over and solved about a minute later. For example a great deal is made of Ian being poisoned and the need to get the antidote to him, the city administrator stops the antidote from getting to him.
So what happens next?
A life or death race to get another batch of antidote ready for Ian only arriving in the nick of time?
Actually no, Susan just tells the scientist that the antidote hasn't arrived so he brings up another bottle.
Later on the Doctor is framed for murder, this again is resolved in approximately 2 whole minutes later.
It's the same when Ian and the Doctor's weapons and map have been sabotaged. They don't find out in a moment of great danger. Ian notices the weapon has been tampered with while walking along a corridor, then the Doctor looks at the map and decides that's been tampered with too, so they just throw them away and carry on as normal.

There are some good moments in this, Susan gets a lot more to do in this story other than her usual crying, tripping over and screaming. We see the first signs of her wanting to do her own thing and not wanting the Doctor to treat her like a child all the time (She will leave 4 stories after this one). Sadly this is the only time they show that tension between them and in the next story Susan goes back to being her normal self, which is the main reason that Carole Ann Ford was the first regular member of the cast to bail on the show.

Also I love it that Hartnell is so angry in this story, he's really pissed that they've stolen the lock from the Tardis and is gruff and short tempered with everybody, which is even funnier when you're putting that against aliens who hate loud noises. Also The Sensorites standing on each others huge feet never gets old. The Sensorites themselves are rather pathetic creatures. Loud noises cause their nervous system to shut down, they can't see in low light and even when Barbara & Susan both share the same thought to resist them they fall to the ground in agony. You can't really blame them for being so defensive against people from other planets. Also if greed and personal gain is such an alien concept to The Sensorites then why does the City Administrator have so much of it?

Barbara doesn't get much to do but then Jacqueline Hill did have to be written out of two episodes to accommodate her holiday (Doctor Who was filmed almost all year round at this time approx 40-45 episodes a year, one episode a week.) The Sensorites isn't a terrible story by any means but hugely flawed , rather boring and shows it's age badly.

The Sensorites : Coda

It's also worth noting that on the DVD of this story there's a great documentary called 'Looking For Peter' about the writer of story Peter R. Newman.



In the past nobody really knew anything about him, anybody Doctor Who related looking to find out about his life drew a blank. All that anybody knew was that he wrote a war film for Hammer in
1959 called Yesterday's Enemy and The Sensorites for Doctor Who in 1964 before disappearing off the face of the earth and that he died in 1975, which was just a bit before serious Doctor Who fandom began so there were no interviews or anything with him about his time writing for Doctor Who.

In the documentary they discover by looking through public records and tracking down his sister and niece that he was a pilot in Burma during WW2 and was captured by the Japanese although his sister and niece say that he got on quite well with the Japanese officer in charge. These experiences are what he based his script for his movie Yesterday's Enemy, which was quite controversial at the time because it was about a group of British soldiers who are cut off and who resort to committing war crimes against the Burmese people to find out the movements of the Japanese army. Despite being controversial it still recieved 4 BAFTA nominations. He attempted to write more films for Hammer but due to him being difficult to work with and him asking for too much money they stopped working with him.

He would take elements of his movie script (bad and good on both sides) and turn it into The Sensorites for Doctor Who. After that work as a writer dried up because he was suffering from writer's block. To make ends meet he got a job as a porter at the Tate Gallery, it was while working there where he suffered a fall and died in 1975.

In fact the best bit of the documentary is the heart-warming interview with his sister Vera who looks like she's well into her 90s or even older and clearly adored her brother. She seems genuinely thrilled that people are asking about her brother and his work 50 years after it was written.
It's not the greatest Doctor Who stories ever written but it's nice to end this on something positive. If you don't want to watch the story do yourself a favour and watch this lovely documentary instead.

Click on the picture of Peter to watch the documentary

207: The Lazarus Experiment

207: The Lazarus Experiment

Doctor : 10th (David Tennant)
Companions : Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman)
Series : 3 (New Series)
Originally Transmitted: 5th May 2007


The Lazarus Experiment is one of those mid series episodes that is just kind of there to fill space, and that's about it. Even before it aired there was very little to get excited about. The only real highlight of the episode is that we finally get to see long time Doctor Who fan & writer Mark Gatiss (He of The League Of Gentlemen & Sherlock fame) appear in an episode of Doctor Who. And it has to be said, he deserved a lot better than this.

The only other thing to get excited about is that Thelma Barlow who played Mavis in Coronation Street is in this episode as well playing Lady Thaw, so you can see the level we're dealing with here.
Also I suppose if you're a David Tennant fangirl (or boy) you get to squee all over him being suited & booted in a dinner jacket again, sadly Martha only gets to wear a brown dress that looks like a potato sack. You'd think the costume designers would have at least made a better effort there. Come on Russell, I know Doctor Who has a huge gay male following but give us straight fans a bit of eye candy too once in a while.


Tennant in a suit for the laydees

This episode was written by Stephen Greenhorn who's past credits include The Bill, Where The Heart Is, creating the Scottish soap opera River City and also adapting his own musical play about The Proclaimers called Sunshine On Leith into a movie.
Would he use this attempt at writing for something totally different like Doctor Who as a chance to really use his imagination and to blind the viewer with interesting and thought provoking concepts?
Well no actually, it's a story about a mad scientist. Which, to be fair to the man is exactly what Russell T Davies asked him for. A Marvel Comics style mad professor.
Did I mention I hate Marvel Comics?

I guess now would be a good time to explain the plot, although in fairness you could probably write it on the back of a postage stamp . But I shall attempt to go into a little more detail.
The Doctor takes Martha home after her promised one trip in the Tardis, totally oblivious to her disappointment when she realises he's materialised inside her living room and wants to dump her there. While he's saying goodbye to her Martha's mother phones and tells her to turn the TV on because her sister is on the news.
She turns on the TV to see her sister Tish alongside professor Richard Lazarus, who she is doing public relations work for. Lazarus announces to the assembled press that he will change what it means to be human.
The Doctor leaves Martha behind in the Tardis but then comes back seconds later when he realises what Lazarus said.

Later that evening they arrive at Lazarus black tie presentation being run by Tish. Tish seems impressed by good looking guy that her sister has bought to the event but soon leaves when she realises he's a 'science geek'. Martha's mother shows up and moans a lot which will be a reoccurring theme during this series. Although it is quite funny when the Doctor is trying to make small talk with her and accidentally gives her the impression that he & Martha have been up all night screwing each other.
Lazarus enters the room and announces he is about to perform a miracle that will change the coarse of human history. He tells everybody that he is 76 years old and walks into the machine behind him.


Why is there never a big red butt.... Oh wait, there is this time.

The machine is started up, and look it has a big red button. That would please the War Doctor. The machine begins to go haywire and the Doctor is forced to step in before the building blows up.
A much younger man emerges from the machine and tells the crowd that he is Richard Lazarus and he is 76 years old and he is reborn. The Doctor speaks to Lazarus warning him that he couldn't possibly have solved all the variables in the experiment and that if it wasn't for him the place would have exploded but Lazarus and his partner Lady Thaw are dismissive. Martha & the Doctor is horrified when Lazarus & Thaw tells them their plans to have the machine made commercially. Lady Thaw and Lazarus retreat to his laboratory to discuss things, the Doctor says he wants to run his own tests using the DNA from Lazarus where he kissed Martha's hand.


Lazarus reborn, He's 76 you know. Doesn't he look well.

In his laboratory talks to Lady Thaw about growing up the London blitz and that he would feel safe in Southwark Cathedral (There is also a model of the cathedral in his laboratory) . Lady Thaw tells him that she wants to be the next person to use the machine so they can both be young again but Lazarus refuses. When she tells him she'll get his funding cut he begins to have cramps and starts to change form into a giant scorpion creature that looks a lot like David Bowie for some reason and kills Lady Thaw.


Ch-Ch-Ch-Chaaaaanges

The Doctor meanwhile is doing tests and discovers that Lazarus has totally changed his DNA reactivating dormant genes and that they are mutating. He goes to Lazarus's laboratory and finds the skeletal husk of Lady Thaw with all of the life sucked out of her. The Doctor realises that Lazarus needs to do this to keep the DNA stable, Lazarus has since returned to the party in human form. At the party Lazarus is with Tish and taking her to the roof, when the Doctor & Martha are told this they rush off after then, soaking Martha's mother with wine. While she is cleaning herself up a mysterious man offers her a glass of wine and tells her that Martha should choose her friends more wisely.


Mavis from Coronation Street looking a little husky

On the roof The Doctor confronts Lazarus and Lazarus changes form. The Doctor manages to lock him out onto the roof but because Lazarus starts trying to break the door down the buildings security system goes into lockdown shutting everybody inside. At the party the Doctor gives Martha the sonic screwdriver and tells her to get everybody out. He announces to the crowd that they are in serious danger and should leave. A woman tells the Doctor that the only danger in the building is choking on an olive, Lazarus shows up and kills her first. In the credits she's referred to as 'Olive Women' which amused me for some unknown reason.



Olive Woman is about to cop it before we even find out her real name.


The Doctor managed to distract Lazarus by getting him to chase him around the building while Martha gets all the guests out. She goes back in to help the Doctor against her mothers wishes. The man in the suit appears again and tells her mother that the Doctor is dangerous and whispers something in her ear. The Doctor meanwhile sets a trap for Lazarus in his laboratory causing it to blow up but Lazarus escapes, Martha hears the explosion and they both run into the machine, the Doctor saying that it's the one thing that Lazarus won't destroy. While they are trapped in the machine Lazarus switches it on but the Doctor manages to reverse the polarity (Pertwee reference YAY!!) of the machine so it affects Lazarus outside. When they exit the machine they find him lying naked on the floor in human form apparently dead.

Lazarus's body is taken in an ambulance, meanwhile Martha's mother slaps the Doctor's face (A running theme in the new series) The ambulance crashes and the Doctor discovers the ambulance crew drained of life. Using the sonic screwdriver to track Lazarus's DNA he tracks him down to Southwark Cathedral. Lazarus tells him during the blitz he vowed that he would never die and that he will feed to continue his life, the Doctor tells him that he can't allow him to. The Doctor tells Martha and Tish to go to the top bell tower, Lazarus changes and begins to follow them up. The Doctor plugs his sonic screwdriver into the church organ and turns it up to 11 (The first and only Spinal Tap reference in Doctor Who ..YAY!!).


Big bottom, big bottom. Talk about mud flaps, my girl's got 'em


The vibrations cause Lazarus to fall off the bell tower to his death, although Martha who is hanging on for dear life and can't block her ears seems totally unaffected by it ... hmmm lazy writing.


Nudity at 7.35 in the evening? Wait till I write to Points of View about this.

Back at Martha's flat she is preparing to say goodbye but the Doctor tells he she can stay with him. after she departs in the Tardis her mother phones her and tells her that she isn't safe and that Harold Saxon himself says this.

Some trivia : Both David Tennant & Mark Gatiss were also in the BBC's live broadcast of The Quatermass Experiment in 2005, Tennant played the character of Dr. Gordon Briscoe. It was during the rehearsals for this that David Tennant discovered that he had got the role of The Doctor. During the live broadcast Jason Flemyng who was playing the role of Bernard Quatermass ribbed him about this by changed his first line from 'Good to have you back Gordon' to 'Good to have you back Doctor'.

Extra Trivia : Jason Flemyng's father Gordon directed the two Dalek movies in the 60s.

The Lazarus Experiment isn't a bad story as such it's just a bog standard idea with a really bad CGI monster and a really silly ending.
There are a couple of witty bits of dialogue but that's more down to the regular cast and subtle in jokes rather than through the story itself. The only real moments of drama in this are when Tennant & Gatiss are together, Martha is good also in that she's brave & smart but in a kind of generic way that most Doctor Who companions are, although her being a Doctor is shown when she treats her brother for a possible concussion. The rest of her family are just annoying. Her mother is constantly moaning, her sister is just obnoxious and her brother stands around like stuffed suit looking like he's waiting around for his cue to announce who is number one this week.(Her brother is played by former Top Of The Pops presenter Reggie Yates).



This is the kind of stuff the new series does when it's on auto pilot, it's predictable, it's been done to death already and that's just in the Doctor Who universe. In the Peter Davison story Mawdyrn Undead the same topic is used where a race of beings wanting to live forever, and it is covered in a much better way with more plot twists, ideas and peril for the Doctor to overcome than anything this story could manage. There are a few plot elements that would crop up later in the series but they are minimal really. You could easily miss this story out and it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to the series as a whole.

I can handle Doctor Who being bad, I can handle it having no money, I can even handle really bad special effects but what I really hate is when it's totally devoid of ideas and poor writing. I wouldn't say this story is boring because it's not. I wouldn't even say it's forgettable either. It's just really really predictable and the only reason you'll remember this story is because you've seen it done so many many times before.

A Musical Interlude (Part 1 : The 60s)

A Musical Interlude (Part 1 : The 60s)

Over the years a few Doctor Who inspired songs have been released some sung by fans, others sung by cast members, some just to cash in. Here are a few of them.

The Go Go's - I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek

With the show barely a year old the first attempt to cash in with the popularity of the show for Christmas of 1964 was this piece of pure cheese by The Go Go's (Nothing to do with Belinda Carlisle or Jane Wiedlin) who hailed from Newcastle. I'm not quite sure why you would want to hang a stocking from a Dalek's toes or even if they have toes. The whole song does seem rather odd when you think that the subject of the song is a Nazi inspired killing machine.
Surprisingly (cough) this was The Go Go's only release, also surprisingly this song didn't set the record buying public alight and sunk without trace.


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The Earthlings - Landing Of The Daleks

With Dalekmania sweeping across the nation in 1965 many small record labels saw it as a chance to cash in on the craze, many of them however failed to even chart. Released in 1965 Landing Of The Daleks was one of the first of these recorded by a bunch of session musicians rather than an actual band and this was as far as I can make out was their only release. Due to government rules of the time The BBC could not play the song on the radio due it it featuring a message in morse code which translated said 'SOS The Daleks Have Landed'.


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Roberta Tovey - Who's Who

At last we reach our first cast member recording, well sort of.
Roberta Tovey was the 12 year old girl who played Susan in the two Dalek movies that came out in the mid 60s. In 1965 she released this song. Despite being one of the better songs (In the context of what you've just heard) to be released around this time I can find no record of it ever bothering the charts.


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Frazer Hines - Who's Dr Who?

In 1967 the first television cast member to try his hand at recording a Doctor Who inspired song was by Frazer Hines who played Jamie McCrimmon to the 2nd Doctor. Teaming up with successful 60s songwriting duo Barry Mason and Les Reed they released this early Pink Floyd inspired psychedelic garage fuzz wig out which was much better than it had any right to be. And yes, the song flopped. In fact Frazer Hines said himself years later that his song was the only song Mason & Reed released that ever flopped.

In a bizarre twist of fate shortly after recording Piper At The Gates Of Dawn Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd because of their interest in the music being used in Doctor Who during the 60s were given a demonstration of the new VCS3 synthesizer by Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, they later went on to use it heavily in the recording of Dark Side Of The Moon.


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The Crystalites - Doctor Who

As if to prove that Doctor Who was popular not just in the UK but in other various parts of the world in 1969 we have Jamaican band The Crystalites giving us a reggae version of the theme tune which is almost totally unrecognisable from the original.


The 70s to follow soon

208: Doctor Who : The Movie

208: Doctor Who : The Movie

Doctor : 8th (Paul McGann)
Companions : Grace Holloway (Daphne Ashbrook) Chang Lee (Yee Jee Tso)
Series : -
Originally Transmitted:
14th May 1996 (U.S.)
27th May 1996 (U.K.)



Now where do I begin with this clusterf*ck?

The mid 90s was a weird time to be a Doctor Who fan. In 1993 the show had just celebrated it's 30th anniversary, BBC Enterprises (As opposed to BBC Television) had planned to make a special 30th anniversary straight to video story called 'The Dark Dimension'.
It was a disaster from the start, many ex Doctor's complained that the script just arrived at their homes with a note saying 'looking forward to working with you' without them even bothering to call their agents to check their availability or even if they wanted to do it, some were annoyed that the story centred around Tom Baker feeling it was unfair to Slyvester McCoy who was still the current Doctor at the time.

As 1993 turned to 1994 there was still a buzz about the show. The BBC were releasing VHS tapes of old episodes monthly, Virgin books were releasing 24 original new novels a year, but still nothing from the BBC in the way of the series. During the 30th anniversary documentary '30 Years In The Tardis' head of BBC programming Alan Yentob was asked about the series coming back. He was non-committal but it was known he was a supporter of the show and wanted it back. It was around that time that rumours began circulating that Steven Spielberg was interested in Doctor Who.
And they were true, almost....

Steven Spielberg had history with Doctor Who. In the early 80s Disney had attempted to buy the rights of the show and Spielberg was their choice to run it. He was willing to do it but fell out with them during negotiations. He wanted it run by Disney's parent company with their full backing to give the show the justice he felt it deserved. Disney wanted it run by Touchstone Pictures one of their subsidiary companies.
The project never got off the ground.

The BBC were actually in negotiations with a man called Philip Segal, a British television producer who had been trying to acquire the rights for an American Doctor Who series since 1989. In 1992 he joined Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment which was when he was really able to get things moving, by moving I mean spending the next 3 years trying to keep the BBC, Fox, Universal & Amblin all happy. Segal couldn't get Fox to commit to a full series but did manage to get them to make a 2 hour movie with an option for a series depending on the reaction. He also left Amblin Entertainment in mid 95. Because it was him personally who owned the rights to the show Amblin & Spielberg's involvement ended at this point. In October 1995 it was finally announced Doctor Who was coming back, and in the new year Paul McGann was announced as the 8th Doctor.
All we had to do now was wait.

Then on 14th May 1996 the world watched as Doctor Who returned triumphantly to our screens again......

Only it didn't.
In the U.S. Fox decided in it's wisdom to screen the episode opposite the final ever episode of 'Roseanne' meaning that not many people watched it. And the BBC didn't screen it at all deciding that showing it on Bank Holiday Monday on the 27th would be a better idea, and even then most people who did want to watch it had already seen it by then because they had also decided to release it on VHS a week before it was broadcast.

So the week before May bank holiday I woke up early and for the first time in my life went into town and waited for Woolworths to open at 9am, bought it and rushed home to watch it before I went to work at 12pm. So what was it about?

The Plot

The Master is being tried by The Daleks on Skaro for 'a list of evil crimes', It's never explained why the Daleks would hold a trial rather than just exterminate him or why they would even care about his crimes but we'll go with it. Then we're told The Master's last request before being put to death was that The Doctor takes his remains back to Gallifrey. So now we're supposed to believe that The Daleks would let their biggest enemy swan into a court on Skaro and leave without them even attempting to kill him. And all this is just the spoken intro to the thing.

The chest containing the Master's remains breaks open and we see a black slime emerge, the Tardis starts to go wrong and instead of landing on Gallifrey the 7th Doctor lands in San Francisco on December 30th 1999 where upon landing and exiting the Tardis is immediately gunned down by a gang of Chinese Triads.

Chang Lee, a boy being chased by the gang sees what happens and calls for an ambulance. He goes with the Doctor in the ambulance to the hospital, meanwhile the Master in his black slime form also gets aboard the ambulance.

Doctor Grace Holloway is at the opera with her boyfriend when she is paged back to the hospital. She looks at the Doctor's X-rays which show he has two hearts and just dismisses it as a double exposure. While preforming surgery on him (In her opera gown) The Doctor briefly comes out of conciousness and tells her to stop because he's not human. They put him under and Grace inserts a probe into the Doctor's heart in the wrong place which causes him to have a seizure and kill him. Grace asks Chang Lee if he knows anything about the guy but he says no and then runs off with the Doctor's possessions.



Meanwhile the Doctor is placed in the morgue where he regenerates, and escapes by kicking it open.




At the home of Bruce the ambulance man the Master now in the form of a black goo snake takes over possession of Bruce's body. Both Time Lords are reborn.



The Doctor picks out some clothes from the hospital lockers which are mostly filled with costumes for the new years eve fancy dress party. He discards a 4th Doctor scarf and finally settles on a Wild Bill Hickok costume and then goes into the hospital waiting area.

He spots Grace who has just resigned from her job after the hospital administrator burned the Doctor's X-rays and told her to pretend it never happened. He follows her back to her car and Grace thinks she's dealing with a nut until he cries out in pain and then pulls the probe from out of his chest.



Then Grace realises it's the same man she operated on only with a different appearance and takes him back to her place where on arriving discovers her boyfriend has left her and cleared the house out.
The Master arrives at the hospital and the receptionist tells him he looks awful, he tells her he had a rough night and then peels off a fingernail, already his body is beginning to fail and he's looking for a new one. He begins by looking for Chang Lee.

Lee finds the Tardis key in the Doctor's bag of possessions and enters it, he is soon joined by the Master where he tells Lee that the Doctor stole the Tardis and his body from him and he wants Lee's help to get them back. He forces Lee to open the Tardis Eye of Harmony (Which was on Gallifrey last time it was mentioned in the old series, but Steven Moffat went with it being in the Tardis for the new series so I guess I should too).



Lee can open the Eye Of Harmony because for some unexplained reason only someone with a human retina pattern can open the Eye Of Harmony. The Master then discovers that the Doctor also has a human retina pattern meaning that he is half human, he explains to Grace that he is half human on his mother's side.

** At this point I need to take a break to vomit**

The Doctor is taking a walk through the park with Grace and his memories of who he is begin to return and he also gets excited about the shoes she gave him. Then we get The Doctor kissing Grace which had tons of Doctor Who fans choking on their jelly babies with horror. I never had a problem with it. He then realises that The Master has opened the Eye of Harmony and wants his body and the Eye of Harmony will suck the Earth through it if it is not closed by midnight and that he needs an atomic clock component to get the Tardis to close it. She doesn't want to believe him and goes back to her home. He proves it to her by walking straight through her French windows. While at her house they just happen to see a news report about a millennium clock run by atomic energy......

Well what a coincidence !!!!!!!

The Master shows up at Grace's house offer to give them a ride to the San Francisco Institute of Technological Advancement and Research which is where the clock is. The Doctor is unaware of who is driving them until The Master removes his shades. The Doctor and Grace escape and we have a race to get to the atomic clock. The Doctor and Grace steal a police motorcycle and The Master & Chang Lee take the ambulance. While looking for the component from the clock the Tardis needs we discover the Master's new trick of killing people by sneezing over them. Grace is also hit by the slime on her arm.



The Doctor manages to get the component first and goes back to the Tardis, he realises the Eye has been open too long and needs to rewire the Tardis to go back to a point in time before the Eye was open. The Master is able to control Grace through the infection he caused to her arm and she knocks out The Doctor with a spanner.

The Doctor awakes restrained, The Master walks down the stairs looking camper than Liberace saying that he likes to 'Dress for the occasion'. The Doctor is chained up with his eyes forced open. The Doctor makes a plea to Chang Lee saying to look at Grace and see she is possessed by evil and that The Master is lying to him. Chang Lee refuses to open the eye so the Master kills him by breaking his neck.
The Master now needs Grace to open the eye but this won't work in her possessed state so he releases her from it and uses her to open the eye.
While the Master is absorbing the Doctor's lives Grace runs back to the console room and connects the rest of the atomic clock and closes the eye just as the Earth is about to be sucked up and sends the Tardis into a temporal orbit. For some unknown reason midnight on new years eve happens at the same time everywhere around the world...hmmm.



The Master having failed throws Grace off a balcony killing her also, The Doctor and The Master have their final battle and The Master is sucked into the eye having refused help from The Doctor (It's later revealed in the new series that The Master was saved from being sucked into the eye by the Time Lords so he could be used by them in the time war.)

In another sickening moment the Tardis uses what looks like regeneration energy from the new series to bring Chang Lee & Grace back from the dead, apparently being outside of space and time means you can't die now.



The Doctor shows them Gallifrey and then takes them home to New Years Eve. He lets Chang Lee keep the two bags of gold dust promised to him by The Master and warns him not to be in San Francisco next Christmas and to take a vacation. He then asks Grace to come with him, she refuses and asks him to come with her instead. They kiss and he goes off back to the Tardis to a new destination.

First things first, I will not have a bad thing said about Paul McGann who is nothing but excellent in this. In fact if it wasn't for him this story may have ended up being bottom. If you watch Night Of The Doctor (Which made my jaw hit the floor when I saw him appear in it) you'll see more of what McGann wanted to bring to the role, I.E. not wearing a silly wig and wearing a leather jacket. And he is right, it's a much more effective outfit than the fancy dress outfit of a cowboy he gets in the movie.

If like me you were used to the classic BBC series seeing Doctor Who with lots of money spent on it and with up to date special effects to rival any movie of the time was a bit of a novelty. Throw in a charismatic Doctor and lots of references to the classic series as you can (Even one as small the professor of the institute chanting 'Om, Om' to himself was a nod to Jon Pertwee's final story Planet Of The Spiders). It's all very nice having all that stuff but one you get over all that you realise that the plot is wafer thin.

I mean it's nice that we get to see the 7th Doctor regenerate to the 8th Doctor but none of it is really needed. If anything all it does is slow down the story and we don't get to the main plot of the story until something like 45 minutes of the episode has passed. Compare that to how Russell T Davies started the first story 'Rose' in the new series where the action starts about 5 minutes in and within minutes you know who the Doctor is and what's going on.

I quite like a lot of the main cast. Yee Jee Tso as Chang Lee is kind of annoying but he's supposed to be so no complaints there. Daphne Ashbrook is decent as Grace. I find her a little bit too whiny but I think had this gone to a series she would have toned down on that. Having seen what Daphne Ashbrook is like in real life she does have a great sense of humour and does have chemistry with Paul McGann.

I have no idea what Eric Roberts was smoking when he took this role but his Master is pure pantomime, he even manages to make Anthony Ainley's 1980s Master look minimalist. It's interesting that Russell T Davies also told John Simm to camp up the character and go overboard a lot more than Simm wanted to himself.
It's a growing annoyance that these showrunners can't go back and look at Roger Delgado's portrayal and pick up on the subtleties of the character.
Rumour has it that Steven Moffat has cast a new Master for Series 8, Sylvester McCoy says he knows who it is and this person will be brilliant. The bookies favourite for the role is Charles Dance.
Although to be fair to Eric Roberts he does play Bruce the ambulance man well and makes him likeable in the few scenes he's in.

There are a few things that are unforgivable, the Tardis has never and will never have a cloaking device. It's called a Chameleon Circuit, it has always been a Chameleon Circuit and will always be a Chameleon Circuit and I love it that in 'Rose' we get a scene where The Doctor tells Rose about the Tardis changing it's appearance and she asks if it's a cloaking device and he corrects her calling it a Chameleon Circuit.
Thank you thank you thank you Russell T.

Also the bit about the Doctor being half human, can we forget that ever happened please. It's just such an awful Hollywood cliché, so bad I'm surprised they didn't make The Doctor and The Master brothers as well.

I also read some of the plans that the production team might have used had a series been commissioned and it revolves The Doctor going around the universe in search of his Father who would eventually be played by guess who... Leonard Nimoy' (Yawn... what amazing foresight & originality these Hollywood producers possess)
I forget a lot of the other stuff they had planned (The site was removed years ago) but I think a talking Tardis was another one. At the time it was disappointing that it didn't get an American series but in hindsight getting one may have killed it for good and just makes you appreciate what Russell T Davis did with it when it was in his hands.

If you want to watch this go ahead but bear in mind this is mindless drivel but Paul McGann alone will save it for you. After you've done that go watch 'Night Of The Doctor' on youtube and thank Fox & Universal that they at least got one thing right in casting him.



I leave you with one final piece of trivia. This is the only Doctor Who story ever to be filmed in Canada.

The Eighth Doctor : Internet Troll

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The Eighth Doctor : Internet Troll

Doctor Who and the Python

Doctor Who and the Python

In 1979 while Doctor Who was filming the story City Of Death at BBC Television Centre John Cleese was busy recording the second series of Fawlty Towers in the next studio. Both Baker & Cleese seemed to get on with each other so the Doctor Who script editor at the time Douglas Adams (Yes, THE Douglas Adams) wrote a small cameo appearance for Cleese along with actress Eleanor Bron, a good friend of Cleese playing the part of a pair of art critics in the Louvre Gallery where the Tardis happened to be parked during this story.

As well as this scene Baker & Cleese also recorded a short comedy sketch that would be put on the BBC's Christmas tape, A tape that was traditionally shown during the BBC's annual Christmas party for it's employees which usually featured out-takes & specially recorded sketches.

209: Warriors Of The Deep

209: Warriors Of The Deep

Doctor : 5th (Peter Davison)
Companions : Tegan (Janet Feilding) Turlough (Mark Strickson)
Series : 21
Originally Transmitted: 5th January - 13th January 1984

When I think of the 80s as a decade, I always think the same thing. Everything to me seemed to be brightly coloured, tacky & plasticky.
And that's exactly what Warriors of the Deep is, brightly coloured, tacky & plasticky.
It's supposed to be set in a sea base with nuclear weapons at the bottom of the ocean that's been there for years. So your first thought is why does it look so bright and new, and why do all the crew have bizarre eye make up?



Granted it's supposed to be set in 2084 and they want things to look a little futuristic. But you would think that in a story that is essentially a base under siege type story you would set an atmosphere by have things creeping around in the shadows with hidden monsters going around killing people, but no. I mean how can things lurk in shadows when your set and your lighting is so bright that there are no shadows. It's supposed to be an old sea base after all. Brightly lit sets and lack of atmosphere would be something that would plague Doctor Who during the 80s.

Warriors of the Deep also see the return of two of the more popular monsters from the Jon Pertwee era who had only featured one story up till now. The Silurians last seen in the 7 part 1970 story Doctor Who and the Silurians



And The Sea Devils last seen in 1972's 6 part story of the same name. This time wearing full battle gear rather than the silly string vests made out of fishing nets they wore in the previous story.



Both creatures were reptiles who existed on Earth before man. They both went into hibernation during a time when lots of solar flares were due to hit the earth. For some reason after the solar flares they never woke up until the present day. During the story 'The Sea Devils' The Doctor mentions that the scientist who discovered the Silurians got his dates mixed up and that they should have been called Eocenes as they are from the Eocene era not the Silurian era, however during this episode they refer to themselves as Silurians. During the new series they would become known as Homo-Reptilia. The Sea Devils strangely call themselves Sea Devils too despite this name only being used to describe them by an Irish sea fort worker who went mad after being attacked by them.

Our story starts in the Tardis where Turlough has decided he wants to stick around with and travel with the Doctor for a while longer and the Doctor wants to show Tegan something of Earth's future. They materialise in space where they are warned to leave and then suddenly attacked by a security satellite.



The Doctor takes evasive action and a split second before the Tardis is hit he makes a quick jump and they land on Sea Base 4.

It's 2084 and the world is divided up into two power blocs with nuclear missiles trained on both sides. Sea Base 4 is one of the bases that holds these missiles with their advanced launching program, which means that the missiles can only be launched by a 'Sync Operator'. The Sync Operator links his own mind to the weapons system for authorisation. Sadly for Sea Base 4 their sync operator has just been murdered and now they have a trainee in charge of the weapons. Let's just take a moment to look at this advanced computer launching program...



Makes you kind of wonder why they didn't just use a shot of someone playing Missile Command. It would have probably looked a lot more realistic.
I was always rubbish at missile command.

Anyway the Doctor and co arrive on the base and because things have been going wrong with the base they're imminently labelled as foreign spies sabotaging the base. The Doctor gets thrown into a big tank of water during a fight but managed to escape. He changes into underwater outfits and we have this running joke where there's an unpleasant smell inside his helmet.

After Tom Baker had left it was thought that there was too much humour in the series so they decided to make Peter Davison's Doctor much more serious. After a couple of years of this they decided that there did need to be some humour in it after all and inserted this one joke about the smelly helmet, and that was it. One joke throughout his entire run as The Doctor.

They soon realise that The Doctor is not their problem when they begin to be invaded by the Silurians & Sea Devils using their secret weapon, The Myrka.



The Myrka has gone into Doctor Who folklore as being possibly the worst made monster ever to make it into the series. In the original script the writer Johnny Byrne had this big sea creature that would enter the base and kill people in the shadows while not really being seen by the viewer, just the occasional glimpse of it. Of course because the thing was so brightly lit this wasn't done and so they just had it in the middle of the studio in all it's crapness being shot at. Also there was a delay in BBC visual effects making this thing so when they did finally get to film with it it left green paint all over the set and the actors. The two actors inside the Myrka operating it were William Perrie & John Asquith who were more well known at the time for playing Dobbin, The Pantomime Horse in the childrens TV show Rentaghost (I loved that show).

Anyway back to the story.
At this point Tegan chooses this moment to become trapped under the world's most unconvincing piece of debris which wobbles around as soon as anyone touches it even though it's supposed to be crushing her leg. The Myrka breaks through the outer doors of the base and is just about to trample on Tegan when she's freed by the Doctor and the Sea Base crew close the inner doors to trap the creature.

While the creature is trapped the Doctor works on a big ray machine to deal with it as the crews weapons have no effect on it. The Myrka breaks through the inner doors but before The Doctor can use his machine we are treated to one of the worst scenes ever in Doctor Who when Dr Solow (played by 70s Hammer Horror star Ingrid Pitt) decides to take on the Myrka by doing a the oddest version of karate you've ever seen, even though she already knows that guns can't harm this thing.



Michael Grade who was head of programming at the BBC at the time has said that seeing that scene made his mind up to cancel the series in 1985. You can't really blame him after that.

The Silurians & the Sea Devils use the Mykra as a diversion tactic to break into the base through another entrance while the crew are busy dealing with the Mykra they kill most of the remaining crew on the way. They plan to launch all the missiles on the base circumnavigating the use of a Sync Operator by using their own technology. The Doctor goes off looking for something to use to fight against the reptiles.
He luckily comes across a chemical store which just happens to be full of hexachromite gas, which also just happens to be lethal to reptiles. He is spotted by a Sea Devil & shot at, but the shot misses and hits a gas cannister which engulfs the Sea Devil making snot come out of it's collapsed face.



The surviving crew want to use the gas to fight the rest of the reptiles but the Doctor doesn't want to end it that way, when he's reminded that they have control of the nuclear missiles he reluctantly agrees and fixes the gas to go through the base's ventilation shafts.

On the control deck all of the reptiles begin to die and in some cases split their trousers.



In a last ditch attempt to end it peacefully the Doctor instructs Tegan & Turlough to give the reptiles oxygen while he plugs himself into the weapons program and stops the missiles aided by Vorshak, one of the base crew.



Vorshak is shot at and killed by the Silurian leader who in turn is killed by Turlough. The Doctor deactivates the missiles. He looks around at the carnage and sees that all of the reptiles are dead and apart from himself, Tegan & Turlough only one member of the base crew named Bulic are still alive. He tells the survivors that there should have been another way.


Warriors Of The Deep never really stood much of a chance of being any good. For a start they lost 2 weeks production on the story because Margaret Thatcher called a General Election, from that point on they were in a race to get this story done. In fact things were so problematic during this story that the director Pennant Roberts was forced to film rehearsals and use those in the final edit when the original shots were dropped because of time constraints.

It was during the filming of this story in the summer of 1983 that the news broke that both Peter Davison & Janet Fielding would both be leaving, coincidence that it was during this story they decided to leave? possibly.
Speaking of Janet Fielding, you may have noticed that Tegan & Turlough are hardly mentioned in the story, that's because they spend most of the story either locked up or hiding in some shaft somewhere. Although Tegan does get let out long enough to get her leg trapped for the cliff hanger to episode 2.

One thing I find interesting about this story is it's setting, and also the comparisons to one of the new series stories 'Cold War'.
In 'Warriors Of The Deep' a returning Doctor Who monster (Silurians & Sea Devils) take over a underwater sea base in 2084 to fire nuclear missiles and destroy the world.
In 'Cold War' a returning Doctor Who monster (An Ice Warrior) takes over a nuclear submarine to fire nuclear missiles to destroy the world. And the year it does this in ... 1983. The year Warriors of the Deep was made.
Which made me think that Warriors of the Deep may have been better had it had a contemporary setting rather than a futuristic one. Instead of giving the sea base crew snazzy outfits and eye shadow just make then look like real soldiers. If you have a small budget then set it on a small dingy submarine rather than a brightly lit sea base. Give it a sense of creepiness & claustrophobia and some atmosphere. 60s Doctor Who used to do this amazingly so it begs the question why couldn't 80s Doctor Who do it.

No atmosphere, no tension, no real interest. In fact the total opposite of what made the Silurians & The Sea Devils so great in their 1970s stories.
I really hate this.