Münchhausen

This film somehow manages to be charming and fantastic despite having been made in Nazi Germany in 1943, in the very depths of World War 2. You wouldn't know it to watch it, considering the hero is favourably disposed to the Russia of Catherine the Great, and we even see their famous romance that would later form part of the Baron's unreliable backstory in the 1988 Adventures of Baron Munchausen film.

The Baron also rejects the desire for power as a motivation, which he explicitly states in a conversation with his ambitious frival Count Cagliostro. The fact that Münchhausen is in colour, something that was incredibly rare for films of this era, also helps it feel like it comes from a different time. Or perhaps I mean that it helps this film feel timeless?

The film is a clear inspiration for Terry Gilliam's take on the character, and some scenes are very closely paralleled by his superb '80s film, most obviously the Baron riding on a cannonball (which this film plays straight, and the later film both subverts and plays straight!), the wager with the Sultan over the bottle of Tokay - in this sequence there are some shots that are almost exactly replicated by Gilliam's version - and the Baron travelling to the moon in a balloon.

The SFX sprinkled throughout the Baron's fantastisch adventures are simple but incredibly well used. And the one I found to be the most effective wasn't really an effect at all, but a simple piece of audience misdirection, when the framing device for the story is revealed to us to be set in the present day (well... the present day when it was made) and not in the 18th century only when the Baron - who is dressed in a full 18th century outfit, as are all the other characters we see in these early scenes - switches on an electric light. Then a guest at his period costume ball drives away in her car.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Three Doctors Episode Four

Omega spares the Doctor, and calls this a warning shot. The Second Doctor tries provoking Omega some more, "testing the limits of his self control."

"I say, you mean all you've got to do is think of a thing, rub your magic lamp over there and shallamygallamyzoop there it is? That's jolly clever. That's jolly clever!"

To which Omega asks the Third Doctor

"Are you sure that you and he are of the same intelligence?"

Omegalolz! But the Second Doctor keeps pushing until Omega shouts so much he shakes the camera. After this the Doctors play along to find out what his plan for them is. Omega loudly monologues about how he is trapped in the black hole by a Catch-22 type scenario:

Omega: "So long as I control singularity, I can make it do my will. All these things exist because I will them to exist. Without me and the unceasing pressure of my will, the work of thousands of years would collapse into chaos in microseconds. I am, if you like, the Atlas of my world."

Third Doctor: "So, the moment you abandon control you cannot escape, and you cannot escape without abandoning control."

He wants the Doctors to take over control so that he can escape, and although they don't like it, they have to go along with it. Omega starts by wanting to remove his mask, but when the Doctors raise the mask for him, they recoil in horror because...

"You exist only because your will insists that you exist. And your will is all that is left of you."

Omega reacts to this news with a cry and then a bit of a shout.

"It is not true. I am Omega, creator of this world! And I can also destroy! Therefore I must exist!"

The camera shakes more violently as Omega shouts "all things shall be destroyed! All things! All things!" and the Doctors, seeing how distracted Omega is in his ranting, run away.

The Doctors join the Brigadier, Benton, Jo, Dr Tyler and Mr Ollis back at UNIT HQ and then they all go into the TARDIS. Omega may be threatening to destroy the entire universe, but that doesn't mean we can't have a moment of comic relief now that the Brigadier is here:

Second Doctor: "If only I could find my recorder, I could play you a little something to pass the time."

Brigadier: "We must be thankful for small mercies."

The First Doctor appears on the scanner and, seeing the size of the adventuring party that has been assembled over the course of this story, asks

"What's all this, a mass meeting?"

The three Doctors have a "telepathic conference" (as Jo calls it) to come up with a plan. Jo confirms to the Brigadier that the First Doctor is another Doctor, to which the Brigadier says

"Three of them? I didn't know when I was well off."

The Second and Third Doctors disconnect the TARDIS's forcefield generator, with the Second Doctor's recorder having got stuck in the middle of it, and then contact Omega using the TARDIS scanner screen. Omega allows the TARDIS to travel from UNIT HQ to Omega HQ.

The Doctors say they have found a way to free Omega, but he does not believe them, so they make a bargain for the Doctors to stay in the black hole with Omega if he will send the mannys back to Earth. Jo has to be specifically warned against self-sacrificing before they try this plan so that she doesn't fuck it up, and even then we see her visibly struggling with herself before she says to the Doctor

"You can't!"

Rude Jo!

The mannys all walk through Omega's singularity smoke one by one and are sent home. Even Jo, in spite of her inevitable protests.

The Doctors offer Omega the forcefield generator, but he doesn't want it, so they have to piss him off until he knocks it out of the Doctor's paws. The Doctors run into the TARDIS to escape the resulting explosion as the unconverted recorder, so still made of matter, reacts with the antimatter of Omega's floor.

UNIT HQ and the mannys (except Mr Ollis) arrive back on Earth, then the TARDIS appears a moment later with the Doctors in it. The First Doctor appears on the scanner one last time for a final goodbye, and then the Second Doctor also says goodbye and disappears.

A dematerialisation circuit materialises (er...) on the TARDIS console, sent by the Time Lords for the Doctor. He says

"The Time Lords! Look, they've sent me a new dematerialisation circuit. And my knowledge of time travel law and all the dematerialisation codes - they've all come back. They've forgiven me. They've given me back my freedom."

It's the end of the era of the Doctor's exile on Earth, an era when he was able to use the TARDIS to travel in only a third of his stories.

The last scene of the story has echoes of the first, to bring us full circle, as both show Mr Ollis. He arrives home and asks Mrs Ollis for some noms - a happy ending.

What's so good about The Three Doctors?

Not merely the template for all future multi-Doctor stories, among the most enjoyable of the many types of Doctor Who stories, The Three Doctors is a tremendously fun story in its own right - I would go so far as to say it is one of the best of its era.

Omega is a wonderful antagonist, both in how he is played by the bombastic Stephen Thorne and in the way he is connected to the Time Lords (and thus also the Doctor) and their mythology, which is expanded as a consequence.

There is not much real science in the way the black hole is used in the story, but there is just enough pseudo-science put into the dialogue to keep it on the right side of the science-fiction/fantasy divide - we viewers are never for a moment left thinking Omega is using magic, even though he might as well be. It is also just the right amount of real science to encourage curious viewers to learn more about it elsewhere, if they are so inclined.

The true heart of the story, though, is not in the setting or the plot, but in the character interactions between the three Doctors. William Hartnell, in his last appearance in the show that owes just about everything to him, sadly isn't in it all that much (because of his real-life illness at the time this was made), but he does manage to make an appearance in each episode, and he has what is possibly one of the best lines in all of Doctor Who in his "a dandy and a clown" speech.

It is the scenes between Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton's Doctors that really created the the-Doctor-doesn't-get-on-with-himself dynamic that is so fantastic to watch, and they carry the story between them. They also manage to perfectly balance the serious side of the plot with the many overtly comedic moments. The Brigadier's character may have been dumbed-down from what it once was, but it allows for some great lols - especially when he's combined with Troughton's Doctor - and all adds to the sense of fun in what is, after all, a celebration.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Three Doctors Episode Three

Omega makes his big entrance and tells the Doctor

"In the legends of your people I am called Omega."

At least he's not called Omicron, mew.

Omega calls the Doctor "brother Time Lord" and has Dr Tyler and Jo taken away so that he can talk to the Doctor alone and tell him about his "revenge." This scene is full of exposition about who Omega really is and what his motivation is, so it is worth quoting in full:

Omega: "Without me, there would be no time travel. You and our fellow Time Lords would still be locked in your own time, as puny as those creatures you now so graciously protect."

Doctor: "You knew your mission was dangerous."

Omega: "Dangerous, yes, but I completed it, and I did not expect to be abandoned. Many thousands of years ago, when I left our planet, all this was then a star - until I arranged its detonation."

Not content with telling the Doctor things he already knows, he even shows him pictures of it on his TV set.

Doctor: "You were the solar engineer. It was your duty."

Omega: "It was an honour, or so I thought then. I was to be the one to find and create the power source that would give us mastery over time itself."

Doctor: "Well, you succeeded, and are revered for it."

Omega: "Revered, here?"

With my reputation? 

Omega: "I was abandoned."

Doctor: "The histories say that you were lost in the supernova."

Omega: "I was sacrificed to that supernova. I generated those forces, and for what? To be blown out of existence into this black hole of antimatter? My brothers became Time Lords, but I was abandoned and forgotten!"

Doctor: "No, not forgotten. All my life I've known of you and honoured you as our greatest hero."

Omega: "A hero? I SHOULD HAVE BEEN A GOD!"

Omega goes to full volume with that last line, as the friendly chat gets suddenly very dangerous for the Doctor. But after a quick cut to a short scene of Jo and Dr Tyler in a cell, Omega has calmed down and is chatting normally to the Doctor again. He even uses his mind powers to create a chair for the Doctor to sit upon.

"Mind, you might say, over antimatter."

Mew. When the Doctor asks what will happen if he refuses to co-operate with Omega's plan, Omega again gets angry super-fast:

"Then you will face the wrath of Omega, you and those miserable humans who accompany you!"

The "wrath of Omega" eh? I thought this plot sounded a bit similar to Star Trek 2 Wrath of Khan. It only needs for Omega to shout "THIS IS CETI ALPHA FIVE!"

Omega gets a telephone call from his creatures to tell him that others have arrived in his world, and we see that the TARDIS has landed back inside UNIT HQ. With the SFX monster too expensive to keep using gone from outside, the Second Doctor, the Brigadier and Benton venture out, with only the Doctor realising that the entire building has been transported. As the Doctor convinces Benton of this, an unfortunate camera angle gives us a rare look directly into the TARDIS prop from outside.

The Brigadier opens the door out of the HQ and sees a CSO landscape outside instead of the environment he was expecting to find. This causes him to do a humorous double-take at the camera.

Brigadier: "Now see here, Doctor, you have finally gone too far."

Second Doctor: "I rather think we all have."

Lol. The komedy continues with

Brigadier: "Do you realise what you've done? You've stolen the whole of UNIT HQ. Now what am I going to tell Geneva, that the whole blessed building has been picked up and put down on some deserted beach? We're probably miles from London!"

Second Doctor: "I'm afraid we're a little bit further than that, Brigadier."

Brigadier: "You mean we're not even in the same country? There'll be international repercussions. This could be construed as an invasion."

Benton: "It's not just a matter of the same country, sir. If the Doctor's right, we're not even in the same universe."

Brigadier: "What? Oh, nonsense, Benton, I tell you that's a beach out there. It's probably Norfolk or somewhere like that."

This scene builds until it reaches the apex (or should that be nadir?) of the Brigadier's stupidity, and one of his all-time classic lines:

The Brigadier's stubborn thick-headedness ends up saving him, since he leaves to look for a telephone, and thus avoids getting captured by Omega's jelly creatures along with the Doctor and Benton.

Mr Ollis finds the Brigadier, hoping that he can explain what is going on, but is disappointed and instead ends up telling the Brigadier what happened to the Third Doctor and Jo in episode two. They follow the creatures taking the Second Doctor and Benton to Omega's lair.

The Third Doctor is still chatting to Omega when the Second Doctor and Benton are brought in. He attempts a bluff that they are both more mannys captured by mistaik, but Omega is clever and soon realises the truth:

"Can it be? Two Time Lords? Ha! The same Time Lord! The High Council must be desperate indeed to transgress the laws of time."

This helps show Omega is a fearsome adversary for the Doctor(s), although the Second Doctor wastes no time in identifying a potential weakness in him with how quickly he grows angry again - so angry that there is the noise of scary thunder. Omega sends them all to be put in the cell with Jo and Dr Tyler.

Having been reunited, the Doctors fall to arguing again, the Third Doctor even telling the Second 

which gets the understandable reply

"There's no need to be offensive!"

because a comparison to Twitter is a deadly insult. It is unclear if the UNIT era is set far enough into the future for Twitter to exist by then, or if the Doctors know about it from having been even further into the future at some point.

Dr Tyler tries to help, but he seems more interested in understanding the science of how the antimatter world exists than immediately practical matters such as escaping or defeating Omega. This is an excuse for the Doctors to give him (and us) some exposition:

"Well, singularity is a point in space time which can exist only inside a black hole. We are in a black hole, in a world of antimatter very close to this point of singularity, where all the known physical laws cease to exist. Now, Omega has got control of singularity and has learned to use the vast forces locked up inside the black hole."

The upshot of this is, as the Doctor says, that

"The only natural law here is the law of Omega's will."

Jo suggests the Doctors could "will up a small door" for them to escape, and this plan succeeds. They all get out of the cell and go looking for Omega's "singularity chamber," but the jelly creatures that are still waddling and milling about the place cause the Doctors to get separated from Dr Tyler, Jo and Benton.

So it is only the Doctors that reach Omega's singularity smoke machine, but Omega catches them right away. The Doctors are defiant:

Third Doctor: "If you free us, we'll plead your cause to the Time Lords. Otherwise we shall combine our wills to destroy you."

Omega: "You dare threaten to destroy me? You wish to fight the will of Omega?"

Third Doctor: "Yes, if I must."

Omega: "Then you shall, but you will fight the dark side of my mind."

The Third Doctor suddenly finds himself facing the dark side of Omega's mind. I think he is meant to have a scary face, but I don't even need Scary Cat's help with this bit, I have seen scarier. It does remind me a bit of Mr Sin from Talons of Weng-Chiang though. They do some wrestling in slow-motion, which is indicative that this episode was probably under-running.

Meanwhile Dr Tyler, Jo and Benton have run to the front door to escape the jelly creatures. There is something of a Clue moment as they are trying to get out at the same time as the Brigadier and Mr Ollis are trying to get in. 

Benton: "How did you know we were trying to get out?"

Brigadier: "We didn't. We were trying to get in."

But when the door does finally open they all run away with the creatures chasing them.

The First Doctor speaks to the Time Lords (his only opportunity to be in this episode), who have somehow found out about Omega - presumably they have been watching this episode on their TV set. They propose sending him in to the black hole as well, because

"All three are needed to defeat Omega."

Back at the wrestling, Omega says

"Those who oppose the will of Omega shall not live! Destroy him!"

I think this means that the Doctor lost the match, even though he still seems to be slow-mo struggling with his opponent. This is the cliffhanger, and it isn't a great one because it is unclear exactly what's going on - what we hear not matching up with what we see.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Three Doctors Episode Two

With the Third Doctor and Jo having been disappeared, the Second Doctor thinks the SFX monster has "gone off the boil" so he and Benton cautiously venture out of the TARDIS.

The Brigadier arrives and does a glorious double-take when he sees the Second Doctor is there instead of the Third. We get our second instance of the Brigadier's komedy buffooning when he refuses to accept the Second Doctor's explanation of what happened, not even when backed up by Benton.

"It's quite obvious to me what's happened. You've been mucking around with that infernal machine of yours, and somehow or other you've changed back your appearance and shot poor Miss Grant off to heaven knows where."

So, is the Brigadier very powerful or is he very stupid? I know which one I'd put my moneys on. If I had moneys, which I don't because I am a cat. It does lead to some funny lines though, such as

"As long as he does the job, he can wear what face he likes."

The following scene with the Time Lords doesn't do anything to advance the plot, it is essentially a recap of the events of the first episode for the benefit of any Time Lords (or viewers at home) who missed it or perhaps weren't paying attention. This was probably a good idea because a lot had to happen in part one so that we could see all three Doctors by the end of it.

The Third Doctor and Jo wake up from having sleeps in a quarry. Jo thinks they are both ded and, as it is only two episodes since she mistaikenly thought exactly the same thing at the end of The Time Monster, the Doctor doesn't put up with her nonsense for long this time, saying sardonically "it's not much like heaven, is it?"

They explore the strange world they find themselves in, and soon find the things that were disappeared from UNIT HQ by the SFX monster have been sent here too. This includes Bessie, so they get in to save themselves the walk.

They get out again when they find the pawprints of a manny to follow, and then we see (although they don't) that Mr Ollis is following them, stealthily.

Back at UNIT HQ, the Brigadier needs the Second Doctor to go on a Zoom call (well, after all, the UNIT era is supposed to be set in the near future) with his superiors at the "Security Council" but tells them that this Doctor is the Doctor's assistant because

"I decided the truth was too much for them. Assistant it will have to be."

Suffice to say, this doesn't go down well with the Second Doctor. It also gets in the way of his testing the gadget he had made to "confuse" the SFX monster, so he leaves this to Benton while he and the Brigadier are away on the call.

Benton unwisely throws a wrapping paper at the dormant SFX monster, which wakes it up. Oh Jesus Christ, Benton!

He turns the Doctor's machine on, but it doesn't help even when on full. The Doctor, the Brigadier and Benton are forced to run into the TARDIS to escape being disappeared. This is also the Brigadier's first time inside the TARDIS, and his reaction is quite different from the usual "bigger on the inside" response:

"So this is what you've been doing with UNIT funds and equipment all this time? How's it done, some sort of optical illusion?"

The Third Doctor and Jo find Dr Tyler. The Doctor tells him and Jo where they are:

"On a stable world in a universe of antimatter. An anomaly within an impossibility."

As they wonder who has brought them to this impossible planet, we see they are being watched on TV by a cloaked manny, who commands the waddling jelly creatures. We only get a glimpse of this manny for now, as his full reveal is obviously being saved for a dramatic moment. His voice is that of the unmistaikable Stephen Thorne, so it is probably Azal returning from The Dæmons.

Back in the quarry, the creatures surround the Doctor, Dr Tyler and Jo. we see that Mr Ollis is still hidden and nobody is aware of his presence, so he avoids being captured along with the others.

Jo describes the studio set they are taken to as looking like "Aladdin's* Cave," but the BBC budget can't stretch that far at the best of times. The tinkly incidental music does its best at trying to create a sense of wonder and mystery, but it is fighting a losing battle. Dr Tyler spends a scene trying to run away, but he only ends up arriving back where the Doctor and Jo are. As if to emphasise how this is just padding out the episode so that the cliffhanger can come at the right place, he even says

"That was a bit of a waste of time, wasn't it?"

A more significant scene takes place in the TARDIS, when the First Doctor again appears on the scanner and tells the Second Doctor to turn off the TARDIS forcefield. The Brigadier, who has never met the First Doctor before (although Nicholas Courtney did back when he was Bret Vyon), asks

"Who in the name of heaven was that?"

The Second Doctor, knowing how the Brigadier has been characterised in this story so far, replies

"I'm afraid you'd never believe me."

Lol.

He turns the forcefield off, and we see what happens from the point of view of the UNIT soldiers who are still waiting outside their HQ - first the creatures disappear, then a moment later the entire building vanishes. and Corporal Palmer makes a face.

Now that's what I call a facepalmer.

* If any Disney film is going to be referenced, surely it should be The Black Hole?

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Three Doctors Episode One

How many Doctors have you seen today?

The Three Doctors is the first story of season 10 of Doctor Who. It stars Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell as the three Doctors, along with Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Katy Manning as Jo Grant, and John Levene as Sergeant Benton. Although it is widely considered to be the series' 10th anniversary story, it was actually broadcast from December 1972 to January 1973, closer to the show's ninth anniversary (in November '72) than to its 10th.

It starts with Arthur Ollis finding Dr Tyler's weather balloon and getting disappeared by it. This quickly establishes a mystery of what could have caused this disappearing act. Dr Tyler makes a confused face and, in keeping with this story's already established desire to get straight to the main plot, contacts UNIT to get the Doctor's help.

It isn't just Mr Ollis's disappearance (nor even the disappearance of the letter H from his name between the Target novelisation of this story and the TV version) that brings Dr Tyler to UNIT. He also has some unusual-looking cosmic x-rays he wants the Doctor's opinion on, having already showed it to "yanks, and the other lot."

The Brigadier doesn't understand what Dr Tyler... wait, if Dr Tyler is a doctor, is he one of the "three doctors" referred to in the title?

The Brigadier doesn't understand what the two doctors are talking about, but Jo shows how much she has been learning since her first appearance when she translates their jargon for his, and our, benefit.

"He means it travels faster than light."

The Brigadier is, in this story, more of a comic relief caricature than ever before, and this is arguably the furthest he ever got from his original, more serious characterisation that we saw back in season seven. The first example of this is when he gets exasperated with the Doctor allowing Dr Tyler to use his equipment, saying 

"Make yourself at home. We're only supposed to be a top secret security establishment. Liberty Hall, Dr Tyler. Liberty Hall."

But there will be plenty more of this sort of thing to follow.

Dr Tyler just has time to develop the x-ray that has Mr Ollis's face on it before he too gets disappeared. Then we see a monster made entirely of SFX appear and slither about for a bit until it goes down the sink. It comes out of the drains and the Doctor and Jo run away from it, so it only gets to disappear Bessie.

In the lab, the Doctor sees the x-ray with the face on it and quickly deduces a lot of what has happened - the SFX monster was after him, and only disappeared the other mannys and things by mistaik.

Some other creatures appear outside. They are costumes rather than just special effects, and are quite alien-looking and effective... until they start moving, at which point their waddling makes them laughable. Benton and the other UNIT soldiers try shooting at them but bullets have no effect (as usual), which annoys the Brigadier (also as usual).

While the soldiers are distracted by the aliens, the SFX monster noms part of a wall to try and get to the Doctor, leading to the Doctor, Jo and Benton all running into the TARDIS, hoping that it will be safe with the "forcefield on."

This is the first time Benton has been inside the TARDIS, leading to some of the best evar dialogue about how it is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Doctor: "Well, sergeant, aren't you going to say it that it's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside? Everybody else does."

Benton: "It's pretty obvious, isn't it?"

LOL!

This brief moment of comic relief is followed by an escalation in the dramatic tension, since the Doctor is unable to dematerialise the TARDIS. He decides the only thing he can do is to send an SOS to the Time Lords, while Jo tells Benton (and us) that "things are pretty serious."

The scene then transitions to the planet of the Time Lords, still a very rare occurrence at this point in the series - aside from its first appearance at the end of The War Games, we have only visited it for a single scene of exposition at the beginning of Colony in Space.

The Time Lords also think things are pretty serious. There is a black hole that is noming their energy.

"Unless the energy loss is stopped the whole fabric of spacetime will be destroyed."

They want to help the Doctor but "no one can be spared." One of the Time Lords suggests the Doctor "can help himself" by them sending an earlier Doctor to join the present Doctor. The Time Lord Chancellor doesn't like this idea (presumably because it will be expensive), and says

Chancellor: "You can't allow him to cross his own time stream. Apart from the enormous energy it would need, the first law of time expressly forbids him to meet his other selves."

Sensible Time Lord: "I am aware of that, your excellency, but this is an emergency."

Chancellor: "But you can't!"

I know you don't like the idea, Chancellor, but there's no need for rude language like that!

In the TARDIS, the Doctor is confused when he finds a recorder on the console. He is even more confused when his previous incarnation reaches out and takes it.

Almost immediately the two Doctors don't get on with each other, starting with the second Doctor's

"I can see you've been doing the TARDIS up a bit, hmm... I don't like it."

The first hint of this was dropped back in Dave the Daleks, when the Doctor was irritated by meeting another version of himself for only a few seconds, but this is the first true example of it happening, and it is such a wonderful idea, that the Doctor just can't get on with himself whenever he meets himself. This was used to great effect in The Five Doctors, where there were even more combinations of Doctors to keep the concept interesting, as well as in Dave the Doctor, the 50th anniversary special, helping to make that one of the very best episodes of the modern series.

Benton recognises the earlier Doctor, because they met during The Invasion, but Jo doesn't know who the newcomer is. The two Doctors argue over how best to explain it to her, and end up only confusing Jo even more.

Third Doctor: "Jo, it's all quite simple. I am he and he is me."

Jo: "'And we are all together, goo goo ga joob?'"

Jo gets the explanation eventually, although it needs Benton's help to convince her. The second Doctor then explains why he is here:

Second Doctor: "Your effectiveness is now doubled!"

Third Doctor: "Halved, more like."

The Time Lords see that the two Doctors "refuse to co-operate" and naturally conclude that the way to solve this is to send in yet another Doctor, mew.

The First Doctor* interrupts the Second and Third's argument when he appears on the monitor. He puts them in their place with the utterly wonderful line

"Oh, so you're my replacements, hmm? A dandy and a clown."

He tells them that the SFX monster is "a time bridge" and that they should "stop dilly-dallying, and cross it!" before he fades away.

Neither Benton nor Jo have seen the First Doctor before, so Jo asks who he was. Both Doctors reply "me," and then each gets angry with the other and insist it's really "me!"

The Second Doctor tosses a coin for which one of them has to cross the time bridge, and he almost certainly cheats because he says "hard luck" to the Third without letting him look at it. They open the TARDIS doors and the Third Doctor goes out, but Jo runs out with a big

"Doctor, No!"

and so both of them get disappeared by the SFX monster - cliffhanger!

* He's technically the fourth doctor we have seen in this episode, because Dr Tyler is also a doctor, but I will use the convention that the Doctor played by William Hartnell is the First Doctor, Patrick Troughton is the Second Doctor, and Jon Pertwee is the Third Doctor. Or, when one Doctor is on his own, he can be just the Doctor. And Dr Tyler remains Dr Tyler. All clear?

Happy new year 2022

Here is the winner of our 2021 Calendar Doggy of the Year competition to wish you all a happy new year for 2022.

And a happy new year to you from all of us cats, doggys, Totoro, Dragon, Cthulhu, Monkeys With Badges, squirrels and zanni as well.