The Time Warrior is the first story of season 11 of Doctor Who, starring Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and it introduces Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith.
It starts with a new title sequence for a new era. No matter how many times I watch stories from season 11, I always associate this "time tunnel" sequence with Tom Baker's Doctor, because it was used for six of his seasons and for only one of Jon Pertwee's.
The story properly starts with Irongron (David "Spiker" Daker) and his sidekick Bloodaxe having noms. Bloodaxe looks out the window and sees a rather poor bit of SFX, but it's still enough to impress him because this far back in history they didn't have CGI, and probably not even CSO! He cries out
"The stars are falling!"
Irongron says it is "Irongron's star" and wants to capture it. He takes his henchmannys and rides out on location where they find a spaceship, out of which comes "a Sontaran officer" called Lynx, which is also a type of cat (the best kind of lynx) as well as a brand of deodorant (the worst kind of lynx). In terms of quality I'd place the Sontaran Lynx somewhere in between those two. He plants some tiny flags and says
"By virtue of my authority as an officer of the army space corps, I hereby claim this planet, its moons and its satellites, for the greater glory of the Sontaran Empire."
Aliens quite often want to take over the world in Doctor Who, but this is the first time we have seen one claim it as a fait accompli.
Lynx's spaceship is damaged and he does a deal with Irongron to give him "magic" weapons "that can strike a man dead from far away" in return for his help with repairing the ship. When it turns out that Irongron and his mannys are too primitive to have anything that would help him, Lynx turns to camera and says
"Then I must take them from those who have."
It cuts to the Doctor and the Brigadier, where the Brigadier is telling the Doctor that scientists and "ultra-secret equipment" have been going missing, so the Brigadier is going to keep all his remaining scientists in "one of the most top secret security establishments in the whole country."
The Doctor meets Professor Rubeish, who is already objecting to the Brigadier's plan. He introduces the Doctor to "Miss Lavinia Smith."
Doctor: "I read your paper on the teleological response of the virus. A most impressive piece of work."Lavinia: "Thank you."Doctor: "Particularly when I realise you must have written it when you were five years old."
Of course she is really Sarah Jane Smith, a journalist who has demonstrated a high level of competence by penetrating "one of the most top secret security establishments in the whole country" but then thrown it away by getting busted within about 30 seconds. The Doctor immediately recognises that she has potential as a new Companion when he says
"Well, you can make yourself useful - we need somebody around here to make the coffee."
Lol, the Doctor is being a komedy sexist in order to give Sarah the chance to demonstrate that she is a komedy feminist.
Back in the past, some time has passed. Lynx has set up a room with scientific equipment, and he has made guns for Irongron. Irongron has captured one of his enemies, Eric the squire of Sir Edward, and Lynx hypno-eyeses him so that he answers Irongron's questions. For all that they are helping each other, Irongron and Lynx don't get on. Lynx says
"Did I not need their aid..."
and Irongron mirrors this when he says
"Did I not need his help, I'd..."
The Doctor and Sarah also don't get on with each other. She asks him about the equipment he is setting up, and he replies with both the technical and the simple explanation for the benefit of us watching at home:
Doctor: "That's my alarm clock."Sarah: "Oh Doctor, kindly don't be so patronising. Now what is it really?"Doctor: "It's a rhondium sensor. It detects delta particles. At a preset spectrum density of fifteen ams, it oscillates this little cylinder there, which promotes a vacuum in there which wakes me up. Clear?"Sarah: "Well, why do you want to be woken up when it detects delta particles?"
Sarah's followup question helps differentiate her from Jo Grant, or at least what Jo Grant was like all the way back in her first story. The Doctor's device starts making noises, and Professor Rubeish disappears.
The Doctor uses his device to show a superimposed image of Lynx (the Lynx Effect, lol. Also mew), but it fades away after UNIT soldiers take a shot at it. The Brigadier runs in and demands the Doctor tell him what's going on.
Doctor: "Well, I thought I saw a man in armour."Brigadier: "A man in armour? You mean, old-fashioned armour? You mean a ghost?"Doctor: "Oh, I very much doubt it."
The Brigadier should know better than to throw around words like "ghost" in front of the Doctor, or has he forgotten the strange case of Sir Reginald Styles? The Doctor does, eventually, give the Brigadier (and us) an explanation of sorts:
"Someone's operating a matter transmitter, and the really odd thing is there's a time transference too. It's being worked from several centuries ago - past and present mixed up. Very interesting, that."
The Doctor has "a fix" on the source and plans on going there in the TARDIS. While he is still talking to the Brigadier we see Sarah sneak into the TARDIS behind their backs. The Doctor then gets inside and the TARDIS dematerialises.
The Doctor arrives outside Irongron's castle, where he says to the TARDIS
"Well done, old girl. Absolutely on target... for once."
He walks out of shot and then Sarah comes out of the TARDIS too.
Hal the Archer (Jeremy "Boba Fett" Bulloch) is about to shoot Irongron and make this a very short story indeed, when Sarah interrupts him:
"Excuse me, could you tell me where the nearest telephone..."
Hal's shot misses and he runs away, chased by Irongron's mannys. One of them captures Sarah, which the Doctor sees and he thinks out loud to himself
"How the blazes did she get here?"
which is an odd line because this is one story where there is an obvious (albeit wrong) explanation for how a character could have travelled through time without using the TARDIS.
The Doctor follows the manny who captured Sarah back into the castle, and then he hides from Lynx as he comes out. The Doctor nods, obviously recognising a Sontaran. Then, for our benefit, Lynx removes his helmet to show off the costume for his hed.
Potato face!
How typical of writer Robert Holmes to subvert the norms and conventions of an episode one cliffhanger - there was no real need for Lynx to remove his helmet, we already knew he was an alien, and his face isn't even scary after all that.
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