Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Planet of Decision

The last and best part of The Chase starts with a brief recap of the TARDIS crew escaping from the Daleks by getting in the lift with the Mechonoid.

The lift takes them up to the model city where the Mechonoids talk nonsense in a very hard to understand accent - one or the other might have helped make them seem alien, but both together just makes them annoying - and Ian, Barbara and Vicki mock them for it:

""Enter, enter, zero, stop?" What does it mean?"
"It means "Enter, enter, zero, stop.""
"Thaaaaank yooooouuuuu."

Don't worry though, the episode gets very good at this point, because now they meet Steven Taylor...

... and Hi Fi...

Why is Hi Fi not included on the list of official Doctor Who Companions? Me and my friends think he should be.

Steven tells them about the planet Mechanus and how they are all prisoners of the Mechonoids. Steven has been trying to escape for two years, but has not managed it by himself. So this city is the Mechanus equivalent of Colditz castle.

The Doctor and Ian immediately start looking for ways to escape. They go up to the roof where the Mechonoids don't go. The Daleks come to fight the Mechonoids, while the TARDIS crew escape by climbing down a cable.

The Doctor uses the device he has been carrying around since last episode, and it sets the place on fire. Steven runs into the smoke to rescue Hi Fi. The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki get to the bottom of the cable and away, but there is no sign of Steven or Hi Fi - oh noes! This keeps the suspense level high.

There are exciting Dalek vs Mechonoid scenes with 1960s Batman-style explosions overlaid to make it look even more dramatic. This serves as the climax to the story, with the Daleks and Mechonoids wiping each other out.

At the Dalek time machine, Ian trolls the others by pretending to be a Dalek. Really there are no surviving Daleks so they decide to steal the time machine.

We see Steven and Hi Fi are safe and in the jungle, looking for the Doctor. This is the last we see of them in this episode so we are kept in suspense as to whether or not they found their way safely to the TARDIS. Fortunately I have previously seen the following episode, The Watcher, so I know they do - otherwise it is likely that Steven Taylor would not have been in any more stories, and that would be terrible because he is great!

The Doctor doesn't want Ian and Barbara to risk using the Dalek time machine to get home in case they end up in Spain, or in space, or even in Space-Spain (it's Terry Nation, I wouldn't put it past him, would you?) by accident. They argue, with callbacks to the very first story when Ian and Barbara first met the Doctor:

"I've tried for two years to get you both home!"
"Well you haven't been very successful, have you?"
"How dare you, young man? How dare you, sir! I didn't even invite you into the ship in the first place. You both thrust yourselves upon me!"

It is Vicki who persuades the Doctor to let them try. The Dalek time machine takes Ian and Barbara to 1965 and then blows up. There is a photo montage of Ian and Barbara in London, including them in front of a police telephone box that is not the TARDIS. This shows they have a happy ending after all their adventures.

The Doctor and Vicki see them on the space-time television from the beginning of this story, so they know they are both down and safe. The Doctor is sad and misses them. The Chase thus ends with a bittersweet moment.

"Come along my dear, it's time we were off."

The Chase is not the most consistent of Terry Nation's many great Doctor Who stories, being quite similar in style to his earlier work The Keys of Marinus - a series of short encounters linked by an overall story arc. But while the linking device there was a quest, to find the keys of Marinus, here it is a chase - hence, in both instances, the name.

Because the TARDIS crew spend most of their time trying to evade the Dalek pursuers, and because the Daleks have orders to kill the time-travellers, there is not much opportunity for the two sides to interact, so they instead spend most of their time interacting with the various sub-plots - first the Doctor and Companions meet Dracula (to take one example) and react to him, and then later the Daleks arrive and their response to the same situation contrasts them against our heroes.

This makes The Chase a unique Dalek story, with many good moments. Plus it introduces two of the best Companions that Doctor Who has ever had, and says goodbye to two of the original characters, without whom the series would not have been what it was. The Chase is also, therefore, part of an important transitional period in Doctor Who's history, one that left only the Doctor as the ongoing, continuous character.

It successfully passes on the Companion baton from Ian and Barbara to Steven and Hi Fi. Looked at that way, the presence of the Daleks in The Chase is almost the least important thing about it.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Death of Doctor Who

This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny

Good guys, bad guys and explosions as far as the eye can see

And only one will survive, I wonder who it will be

This is

This is a very modern-sounding title for an episode of Doctor Who. It would fit right in alongside titles such as The Name of the Doctor or The Husbands of River Sue. In fact by referring to "Doctor Who", the name of the programme not the name of the main character, it is perhaps too modern even for that and so we need a new word to describe how beyond modern it is.

Both the TARDIS and the Dalek time machine are on the planet Mechanus, although only the Daleks and anyone who had seen this story before know what the planet is called at this point. The Doctor, Ian and Barbara explore while the Daleks send their evil robot fake Doctor out to look for them. Vicki escapes from their time machine while they are not looking.

The Doctor separates from Ian and Barbara, allowing the fake Doctor to sneak up behind them... or is it the real Doctor? I am a confused cat.

No, it is the real Doctor who has met up with them again straight away. They find a thing that they think is a weapon and which may or may not turn out to be useful later on, it is that kind of episode where I cannot tell if it is the characters who are making it up as they go along or if it is the writer.

Vicki meets the planet's native monsters and screams. The Doctor and Ian run off to look for her, separating from Barbara. The fake Doctor sticks his head up after they pass, an instance of very good timing as the Doctor is barely off the screen before he does so.

The Doctor and Ian find Vicki having sleeps, while the fake Doctor meets Barbara and takes her away so when the others get back to where they left her she is gone. When Vicki wakes up she tells them about the evil robot so they go to look for Barbara.

Barbara hears Ian calling and the fake Doctor attacks her. Ian arrives in time to chase it off and he tells her about the robot. Now everyone knows about the robot in time for them all to meet up and two Doctors come in at the same time. This is perfect dramatic timing and nobody knows which Doctor is the real one.

There's only one way to find out...

Fight!

The real Doctor wins (of course) by imitating a Dalek voice saying "Stop! Do not kill!" so the robot does as it is told.

Being understandably sleepy after an exciting fight, they all have sleeps. Even Vicki who already had sleeps earlier - just like a cat would! A robot eye comes and looks at them sleep, foreshadowing an upcoming plot development.

When they wake up it is light and they can see a model of a city up in the sky. But before they can try to go to it, the Daleks arrive and funky '60s incidental music starts playing to indicate the situation is serious - they are trapped!

The Doctor, having earlier pretended to be a Dalek to fool the robot, now pretends to be the robot to fool a Dalek, but his ruse lasts for about 1 rel before failing:

"I have infiltrated and killed. We may now return to Skaro."
"You lie! You are not the robot!"

It looks like their last chance is to use the strange machine in a box that the TARDIS crew has been carrying around for the whole episode, but before they can do that they are saved by a strange new robot arriving through a door and telling them to "enter."
Ian voices what they are all thinking:

"You heard what the gentleman said. Let's go!"

So the episode ends not on the peril of the approaching Daleks, but on the mystery of who or what it is that has saved them.

This is an enjoyable episode, standing apart from the main plotline of The Chase because so much of it focuses on the side-plot of the evil robot fake Doctor. The Daleks are in the background, acting more like the masterminds behind a zany scheme-of-the-week to catch the Doctor. It is not so obvious which Dalek is going to be voted out of the Dalek Reality TV programme, but it is probably the one that came up with the robot plan in the first place.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Journey into Terror

Don't worry, Hoover didn't catch me. My friend Scary Cat, who is the bravest and scariest of all cats, scared Hoover away. Now he is joining me to watch the scariest episode of Doctor Who evar. Part four of The Chase is called Journey into Terror, and even the name is scary!

At first Ian thinks the place the TARDIS has landed will be a good place to fight the Daleks, because there are lots of stairs there and "Daleks don't like stairs." Lol, Ian has obviously not been to the future and watched Remembrance of the Daleks, or he would know that Daleks can climb stairs quite quickly considering.

There are conflicting clues about where on Earth they have landed - the vampire flying mouses suggest South America, while the architecture says Central Europe - so the Doctor suggests they look around to solve this mystery, and obviously that means splitting up.

The Doctor and Ian find a laboratory where Frankenstein's Monster scares Ian. Barbara and Vicki are already scared when they meet Count Dracula, before they are separated by secret passages and then Barbara sees a Banshee.

The Doctor has a theory that they are in a world of nightmares created by the collective fears of mannys. If they had landed in a world of things cats are scared of then they would have met Hoover and Washing Machine and there would have been thunder and lightning and fireworks. But that would have been too scary to show on the BBC so they would not have done that.

The Dalek time machine appears and the Daleks start to look for the TARDIS crew. A Dalek shoots Frankenstein's Monster but he is not killed. Dracula distracts another Dalek so the crew can escape to the TARDIS, except for Vicki who is left behind. Dracula and the Banshee are also immune to the Dalek pewpewpew guns, and the Banshee laughs at the Daleks who are finally up against things more scary than they are.

The Daleks are not immune to Frankenstein's Monster, who picks one up and smashes it (giving us this week's loser of the Dalek Reality TV programme).

The Doctor never finds out that his theory is not right - they really landed in Frankenstein's House of Horrors in the year 1996. I was not made in 1996 so am too young to remember that, although I wouldn't have been able to go there anyway as the sign says it was "cancelled by Peking". Considering the places that the Doctor would later visit in stories such as The Celestial Toymaker or The Mind Robber, his theory was not a silly one.

Vicki escapes from Frankenstein's House of Horrors by hiding on the Dalek time machine, where she sees that the Daleks have made an evil robot copy of the Doctor, one that looks exactly like him when seen in close up. The end of the episode is them giving the robot its orders to "infiltrate and kill" the TARDIS crew.

Journey into Terror is Terry Nation back at his imaginative best, with the original idea of Daleks meeting Frankenstein's Monster and Dracula. At first the Doctor and Companions are faced with a new set of scary monsters to be Chased by, but in the end the monsters fight each other. And then the evil robot promises a new peril for our heroes to encounter next time.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Flight Through Eternity

Part three of The Chase is the first part of the story with an episode title that makes sense, referring as it does to the Chase properly getting underway.

There is the usual brief recap of the end of the previous part. The Dalek that says

"Cease firing. They have escaped."

sounds like a sad Dalek, disappointed they did not get to exterminate the Doctor. Their different voices hint at personalities. One of the other Daleks is more upbeat, saying

"Final termination is inevitable!"

and this seems to cheer the first Dalek up. They chant together for a bit until another Dalek tries to get them to focus on their mission (as well as explaining the episode title) by saying

"We will embark in our time machine at once! The Dalek Supreme has ordered they are to be pursued through all eternity! Pursued and exterminated!"

We see the TARDIS and the Dalek time machine flying past the title and Terry Nation's "written by" credit. In the TARDIS the Doctor's time path detector detects another time machine, 12 minutes behind them. The Chase is on!

The TARDIS lands amidst some stock footage of New York.

Atop the Empire State Building are some mannys, one of whom appears to not know his lines, and another of whom definitely isn't Steven Taylor even though he is played by Peter Purves. He is called Morton Dill and is from Alabama, a fact which he is keen to stress at every available opportunity, perhaps so we do not mistaik him for Steven Taylor.

Vicki makes a rare continuity reference to The Dalek Invasion of Earth when she recognises "ancient New York" and says it was destroyed by the Daleks.

Ian and Barbara are back in their own time, or at least about as close as they have ever been to it, but Ian and the Doctor agree that there are too many innocent mannys nearby for them to risk staying and confronting the Daleks here, so they go back in the TARDIS and leave. This scene is played for laughs (badly) and so misses a tremendous opportunity to show the dramatic sacrifice Ian and Barbara are making in losing out on the chance for them to return to their home planet and time.

The Daleks arrive and meet Morton Dill and their scene is also played for laughs so Morton Dill is not exterminated. The next stop for the time machines is the Mary Celeste.

It's only a model.

Barbara wanders off from the TARDIS to get captured by Mr Richardson. Vicki saves Barbara but then hits Ian on the head by mistaik - again the dramatic potential of the Chase is being squandered in the name of cheap 'Ian being hit on the head' laughs.

The ship is a good set for such a small part in the story - I wonder if it was left over from another BBC programme? The gentle nodding of the camera is a simple but effective way of conveying the ship's movement.

The TARDIS leaves and Mr Richardson is confused. He and his friends are still looking in vain for Barbara when the Daleks come and scare them so they all run away and jump off the ship into the water. One Dalek also falls in the water when chasing the last manny - no prizes for guessing which Dalek gets voted off the Dalek Reality TV programme this time!

The Doctor says the Dalek time machine is cathcing up with them more and more, so they now only have 8 minutes lead on the Dalek time machine. He makes a dramatic pronouncement to serve as a cliffhanger:

"We must face the facts: the Daleks are closing in on us!"

The uncomfortable juxtaposition of serious dramatic threat with attempts at (bad) comedy make this episode not nearly as good as it should have been.

Can you hear that?

Oh noes, it's Hoover! Hoover is coming to Chase us! Mew mew mew!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Death of Time

Part two of The Chase begins with us seeing the Dalek rising out of the sand again. This works better as a reprise than it did as a cliffhanger ending, and allows the story to start again straight from this point. So Terry Nation knew what he was doing after all! Mew, I was worried for a moment there.

Ian and Barbara avoid the Daleks but meet alien mannys, the Aridians, instead. The Aridians look fishy to me, I bet they are very nomable.

Ian and Vicki are saved from the monster when the Aridians blow up the room they are in to kill the monster, without knowing Ian and Vicki were in there. Ian is also knocked out by the explosion.

The Daleks capture the Aridians and make them capture the Doctor and Barbara, so the Aridians are neither goodys or baddys, but only do what they have to to survive. They don't know that the Daleks will exterminate them anyway, because that's what Daleks do.

Vicki is captured as well, but then another monster breaks in through a wall and the Doctor, Barbara and Vicki escape in the confusion as the monster noms the Aridians like it is a big cat. Exactly what kind of big cat I don't know, maybe a tiger because tigers are great.

The Doctor, Barbara and Vicki find Ian and they all go to where the TARDIS is. It has been found by the Daleks, who cannot destroy it so they have left one Dalek to guard it while the rest go off to look for the mannys and exterminate Aridians.

Ian has a clever plan that confuses the Dalek and makes it fall down a hole, and they escape in the TARDIS before three more Daleks come. The episode ends with the Daleks vowing to continue the Chase next time.

This is a rather workmanlike episode, with nothing particularly great about it but also nothing awful either. However it has given me the idea that The Chase is a Dalek Reality TV programme, which the Doctor's space-time TV accidentally picked up a bit of in the previous episode. Each week the team of Dalek contestants have to try and Chase the Doctor through time and space, and then at the end of each programme one Dalek is voted off and exterminated. I think it is safe to assume that the losing Dalek this week is the one that Ian tricked into falling down the hole.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Executioners

Spoiler warning for the recently released film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Also for the 51-year-old Doctor Who episode The Executioners.

The Executioners is the first part of The Chase by Terry Nation. It was made in 1965 and starred William Hartnell as the Doctor, William Russell as Ian, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara and Maureen O'Brien as Vicki.

I thought now would be a good time to review The Chase because it is the oldest Doctor Who TV story with Daleks as the baddys not to have been made into a film version starring Peter Cushing. For years I thought this would never happen because Peter Cushing stopped acting in the mid-1980s, but this year he has unexpectedly come out of retirement to appear in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. (Maybe, like Harrison Ford, he needs the money.) So if I can create enough interest in The Chase now, maybe they will make it into a film and he can be Dr Who in it. That would be great!

The first scene of The Executioners is a very short teaser where the Daleks summarise their plan for this story to each other and, by extension, us:

"Our greatest enemies have left the planet Xeros. They are once again in time and space."

"They cannot escape! Our time machine will soon follow them. They will be exterminated! Exterminated! Exterminated!"

After this we get several minutes of the TARDIS crew watching space-time television, Terry Nation's latest attempt to disguise his padding out an episode. First they watch Abraham Lincoln give a speech, then Shakespeare meeting Queen Elizabeth i.

This is actually a clever meta-commentary on Doctor Who as a whole - normally we watch the Doctor and companions meet famous historical characters on TV, here they are also watching the historical characters on TV, while we are watching them watching TV. And while the science behind the way the Doctor's time-space TV works is so preposterous that the Monkeys With Badges were threatening revolution when they heard it (I didn't understand it myself), it is no more than a subversion of the fact that we do not know how the TARDIS gets the crew to their historical adventures either, except by the power of television.

Finally they watch the Beatles sing a song, and Ian dances to it. They stop watching TV because the TARDIS has arrived and it is time for them to have a proper adventure.

Ian and Vicki go off to explore, but the Doctor and Barbara stay behind to be lazy like cats. It is lucky they do so because the TV picks up a signal from the Daleks, giving them a warning that the Daleks have a time machine of their own and it is on its way to Chase them for five more episodes!

I wish our TV would warn us cats when Hoover is coming, mew!

Ian and Vicki discover a trapdoor that Ian then, foolishly disregarding some of the most sensible advice ever given, opens...



Suffice it to say, they go inside and are almost immediately trapped in there with a monster.

The Doctor and Barbara are looking for Ian and Vicki, but have only succeeded in losing the TARDIS. A Dalek slowly rises out of the sand near them, making for a confusing and unimpressive end to the episode as it is not clear if it even knows they are there. This is a rare misstep on the part of Terry Nation, who can usually be relied upon to create fantastic cliffhangers, and I think it would have been much better to end on the monster in the darkness - it is not, after all, a surprise twist that there are Daleks in this story.

Despite the lacklustre ending, The Executioners has its good moments, but with five parts of The Chase still to go it is clear this is really only a prologue, setting up the conflict that is to come later.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Keys of Marinus

The Keys of Marinus is part six of The Keys of Marinus. It starts by showing the end of part five again - Susan 'phones Barbara to tell her that she has been kidnapped. Only Tarrant can save her, except it turns out he's called Tarron and not Tarrant.

They do sound very similar though, which is why I got confused last time.

Barbara, Altos and Sabetha visit Kala to look for clues. Kala is really a baddy in league with Eyesen (who you may remember was the really obvious baddy in Sentence of Death) but she fools them by crying.

As soon as they go away Kala makes an evil face. She is the one who has kidnapped Susan. Unfortunately for her, Kala gave herself away and Barbara realises she is the kidnapper and they catch her before she can kill Susan.

Barbara 'phones Tarron and he arrests Kala, but Kala pretends that Ian is her friend instead of Eyesen so Ian is not saved yet.

The Doctor and Tarron catch Eyesen trying to get the key, which Eyesen hid inside the murder weapon and then Tarron put inside a cupboard, so he is arrested and Ian is freed.

Ian, Barbara and Susan teleport away.

Then the Doctor teleports away too. They leave Tarron behind because he doesn't have a teleport bracelet. Otherwise he could have gone with them and had adventures.

Back at Arbitan's place, Arbitan is dead and Yartek (the Voord leader) has stolen his clothes and captured Altos and Sabetha off-screen. Yartek has all of Sabetha's keys but not the last one because the Doctor still has it. He threatens Sabetha and Altos tells him about the Doctor.

The Doctor and Ian meet a Voord and the Doctor knocks it out with his stick.

Ian and Susan see Yartek, but he is cunningly disguised as Arbitan with his hood up. He impersonates Arbitan so perfectly that he gets the last key from Ian.

Actually his impersonation was rubbish! Ian saw through it straight away and only gave him the fake key. Yartek puts what he thinks is the last key in the machine and it blows up. The Doctor rescues Altos and Sabetha and they all run away.

The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan all go off in the TARDIS after saying goodbye to Altos and Sabetha, who are staying on Marinus to have more adventures with Tarron!

That is how this fabulous and magnificent story ends, with a happy ending. I know the Doctor has more adventures with Barbara, Ian and Susan, but I don't know of any more stories that have Tarron, Altos and Sabetha in them. Maybe I will have to make them up myself?

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Sentence of Death

Part five of The Keys of Marinus starts with Ian getting knocked out again, because it's a recap of the end of part four. And then when he wakes up he meets... Tarrant!

No, not that Tarrant (sadly).

No, not that Tarrant either.

No, not even that Tarrant. It's actually this Tarrant:

You can tell because he's in black and white, like the rest of Keys of Marinus.

Tarrant works for the Guardians. He thinks Ian has killed the manny and hidden the key, even though he saw Ian when he was still knocked out - so this Tarrant is obviously not as clever as the Tarrants in Blakes 7; after all, Tarrant recognised Avon straight away in Powerplay.

Ian is guilty unless he can prove himself innocent, because the mannys here have the stupidest laws ever. But although the laws are stupid, this is a clever bit of writing by Terry Nation because it shows how bad it would be if there weren't better laws in the real world.

Ian sees Barbara, Susan , Altos and Sabetha, and then the Doctor comes in - he will defend Ian at his trial. The Doctor is allowed two days to find some evidence, but the prosecutor Eyesen objects and this is very suspicious - either he is a baddy or he just really likes being a sinister prosecutor (of course he is a baddy really).

Tarrant helps the Doctor even though he still thinks Ian is guilty, he tells the Doctor what he saw and then the Doctor realises the key that is missing is an important clue. Because Tarrant knows it wasn't taken out of the room, the Doctor works out that the guard that found Ian, Aydan, is the killer, and he thinks he knows where Aydan hid the key. He doesn't tell Tarrant though, he keeps it to himself.

Barbara and Susan visit Aydan and his wife Lady Peinforte Kala. Aydan gets angry because he knows he is in danger of being found out. He doesn't hit Barbara or Susan but, when they leave, he hits Kala, showing he is a baddy.

We see that Eyesen is in on it (told you) when he gets a 'phone call from somebody and quickly comes up with an evil plan, but we don't get to know what it is. This is Terry Nation keeping us in suspense.

Back in the court, the Doctor tells everyone that he knows who the real killer is, then calls Sabetha as a witness. She shows a key, then claims she was given it by Aydan. He says "But they can't have found it, I..." Then he tries to run away and Barbara and Susan catch him really easily.

He is about to say who his friends and fellow baddys are, when he goes

Someone has killed him.

The Doctor admits Sabetha was showing one of the other keys, not the one that was stolen. The judges still think Ian is guilty and Eyesen is even more keen than he was before that Ian should be killed straight away.

Barbara gets a 'phone call from Susan, who has been kidnapped by someone.

"They're going to kill me," she says.

That is the end of the episode, with both Ian and Susan in danger and only Tarrant can save them now!

Possibly the Doctor might help him a bit.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Snows of Terror

Part four of The Keys of Marinus starts with Ian and Barbara still in the cold place they appeared in at the end of part three. There is snow and wind and haunting music like they're in the film Excalibur.

Ian and Barbara decide to have sleeps in the snow, which is quite surprising when they're supposed to be on an adventure, but then I quite often feel like having sleeps when I am supposed to be doing other things so maybe they were just sleepy.

A manny called Vasor finds them and takes them to his house where it is warm because he has a fire. When he wakes up Ian swaps his teleport bracelet with Vasor for some warm clothes and he goes to look for Altos, Susan and Sabetha.

Ian sees wolves like this one (I think he looks quite cuddly really) and then he finds Altos.

Barbara sees Vasor has a drawer with Sabetha's keys in it so she knows he is a baddy. He admits it. Ian also finds this out from Altos at the same time but in a different place, which is a clever piece of storytelling by Terry Nation.

Vasor attacks Barbara, but she lets Ian and Altos in the house and they capture Vasor and make him take them to where Susan and Sabetha are. Susan and Sabetha are in a cave. They are lost, but no wolves or polar bears come to get them.

They find a bridge and cross it (that's what a bridge is for, after all).

Vasor is scared and says there are demons in the cave. Ian, Barbara and Altos find the same bridge and cross it, finding Susan and Sabetha on the other side. But Vasor is still a baddy and he drops the bridge so everyone except for him is trapped.

Ian, Barbara, Altos, Susan and Sabetha find the key in a block of ice, surrounded by four statues of warriors. There is also a tap that turns the heat on and the ice begins to melt.

Ian and Altos improvise a new bridge. I don't know what it's made of.

Sabetha gets the key and then the statues come to life. It is a shocking moment when one of them opens its eyes.

They all run away. Ian fights the warriors while Susan crosses the new bridge. This is a very tense scene - bits fall off the new bridge, but eventually Susan gets across. She puts the old bridge back up so the others can cross, then Ian takes it down again so one of the warriors falls down into the hole.

The other warriors are confused. They can't talk but if they could I think they would say "where did our bridge go?"

Ian, Barbara, Altos, Susan and Sabetha get back to Vasor's hut to get their teleport bracelets back from him. They must have forgotten about them when they captured Vasor earlier, but that is understandable because they were worried about Susan and Sabetha.

Vasor threatens Susan but the warriors turn up (maybe they jumped across or maybe they improvised their own bridge, I don't know I'm just a cat) and kill him. Ian, Barbara, Altos, Susan and Sabetha teleport away so the warriors can't get them.

Ian appears in a room where there is a manny on the floor, I think he is having sleeps. Ian sees there is a key in the room. Another manny knocks Ian out and then steals the key. We don't find out who this mysterious manny is because that is the end of the episode.

This is a very fast-moving episode with lots happening, and it really builds up the tension towards the end, though a lot of that would not have been there if Ian, Barbara and Altos had remembered to take the teleport bracelets with them to the cave. Silly mannys.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Screaming Jungle

Part three of The Keys of Marinus starts by not showing the end of part two again. Susan is still scared but there is no noise. Ian and Barbara and Altos and Sabetha find her but there is no noise for them to hear so they don't know why Susan was scared.

Ian and Altos and Sabetha go to look for a way into the place. Barbara and Susan are left behind and a plant attacks Susan.

After they escape from the plant Barbara finds a statue with the key on it, but its hands grab her and it turns around a secret door so she is on the other side from everyone else.

Ian is worried about Barbara. Altos and Susan teleport on to look for the next key but then Sabetha sees the key they picked up is a fake key. So Ian stays behind to look for Barbara and the real key while Sabetha teleports on.

The statue grabs Ian and turns him around. I think the statue is probably disappointed it could only grab Ian's legs and not anything ruder. I know I would be.

Barbara saves Ian from a trap and tells him there are lots of traps where they are. Barbara falls in a trap herself when a net is dropped on her and then the roof comes down with lots of spikes on it. Ian tries to rescue her, and the roof moves very slowly so there is lots of time, but it is not Ian who saves her, it is another manny - he sees they are from Arbitan because of Barbara's teleport bracelet, and then they save him from a plant as well.

The manny is dying and he gives them a cryptic clue to find the key:

"D, E, 3, O, 2."

They find a safe but the clue is not to let them open the safe. They look around the room until Ian finds the manny's diary and reads it. It is full of crazy theories because the manny was a mad scientist.

"The Growth Accelerator has changed Nature's tempo of destruction entirely," is the mysterious last entry.

"Ian must now lose D10 points of sanity," says Cthulhu.

This episode has been like one of his Call of Cthulhu adventures, what with scary noises that not everyone can hear, the grotesque statue, the traps, the mad scientist with his diary full of demented scribblings, and the plants that attack people.

All the plants try to get in to attack Ian and Barbara. They find the key hidden in a jar that is clearly marked with the clue, so they can then escape the plants by using the teleport bracelets.

But they are not safe now because they teleport to a place where it is very cold. That is the end of the episode.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Velvet Web

Part two of The Keys of Marinus starts by showing the end of part one again, so Ian says "Look, there's blood on it!" Then the Doctor, Ian and Susan get zapped by flashing lights and noises when they go in a room to find Barbara. Barbara is alright and the blood is from when she scratched herself. Clumsy Barbara!

"What do you think about all this, Doctor?"

"Oh, sensuous and decadent... but rather pleasant."

They are given lots of noms and the manny Altos wants to look after them and give them presents. Ian is dubious and suspects they're baddys really but they all go to sleep, definitely not drugged by the nice food and drink.

There's nothing sinister going on here.

Barbara wakes up and there is more flashing lights and noises that knock her out. Whe she wakes up everybody else has been hypno-eyesed and only Barbara can see the room is horrible really - everything looks nice except when we see it through her eyes, which is a clever way of showing us what is going on here. There really is something sinister happening!

Altos comes in and Barbara runs away from him and hides, she is very scared.

There are brains in jars that are really in charge here. They want to hypno-eyes everyone to be their slaves and Altos is working for them.

Barbara meets Sabetha. "Listen to me, I believe you're under some deep form of deep hypnosis," she says. It must be very deep then, because Sabetha doesn't remember that she is Arbitan's daughter.

Altos catches them but Sabetha knocks him out, having decided to team up with Barbara. But Barbara is caught again, by hypno-eyesed Ian, and she is taken to see the brains.

The brains also have googly eyes on stalks. They tell Ian to kill Barbara but Barbara kills the brains instead and this makes everyone who has been hypno-eyesed better again.

Sabetha and Altos get their memories back. They were sent by Arbitan to look for the keys and Sabetha has one already. They join forces with the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan to look for the rest of the keys.

Susan teleports to the next place where there is lots of noise and she is scared by it. That is the end of the episode.

This episode is a change of pace from part one. Lots happened in The Sea of Death to get the story started, but here there is only one plot until the keys come back into it at the end. It is all about Barbara saving the others by seeing through the illusions of the baddys.

My best bit is the changing between the fake nice room and the real horrible room to show the difference between them.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Sea of Death

The Sea of Death is the first part of The Keys of Marinus by Terry Nation. It starred William Hartnell as the Doctor and William Russell as Ian, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara and Carole Ann Ford as Susan.

This is an even older Doctor Who story than the Daleks' Master Plan, but fortunately for all cats and mannys not old enough to remember the days when TV was in black and white, all of this story has been kept for us to watch today.

And because it is by Terry Nation it is great! It is not as famous as The Daleks (which Terry Nation also wrote) but it is just as good in its own way, for reasons I will explain when we get to them - not all are in this episode, some are later in the story.

It starts with the TARDIS appearing on a beach. The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan go out to look.

"It isn't frozen is it?" asks Barbara.

"No, impossible at this temperature. Besides, it's too warm," jokes the mischievous Doctor.

Straightaway there is mystery as a manny with flippers is following them secretly - they don't know there's somebody there, but we do.

There is also danger present because Susan is going to go into the water but she drops her shoe in and it is really acid! Barbara realises the whole sea is acid.

When the Doctor is told he says to Ian "Yes, and if you'd had your shoes on, my boy, you could have lent her hers. You mustn't get sloppy in your habits you know." Ian and Barbara chuckle at this and I did as well because the Doctor is silly. But really it is serious because they still don't know about the secret manny.

They find some vessels for going in the acid sea, so they know there are other mannys somewhere. Then Ian spots a big building.

"Look at that fantastic building!" he says.

The flippered manny is an alien, and it is following Susan now because she is on her own to get new shoes. The alien has a knife and is going to stab Susan, but it falls into a secret door with another manny behind it.

So Susan escapes without even knowing the alien was there. But then she falls into another secret door and screams. Ian and Barbara hear it and run to her, but they don't know the door is there so they can't find her. The tension has really been built up well and it is exciting now they know there is danger about.

Susan sees a manny in white robes, but in avoiding him she is caught by the alien. Then the alien dies because it has a knife in its back. This is a dramatic twist - who could have stabbed it? I think it was the manny from behind the secret door.

The Doctor, Barbara and Susan are all captured when they go inside the building. Ian finds the manny in white robes fighting with an alien and he joins in, saving the manny from being stabbed. Ian makes friends with manny so he releases the others and tells them all his story.

The aliens are the Voord and they are baddys who want to take over Marinus. The manny is called Arbitan and he is a goody who wants to use his mind control machine to make everyone on Marinus into a goody. He needs four keys to make his machine work and he tries to get the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan to go and get them for him.

The next scene sees them going back to the TARDIS having said "no." We didn't see them say "no" to Arbitan but that's what they did after the last scene ended. But they can't get in the TARDIS because Arbitan has made a forcefield to keep them away from it.

He has asked them nicely and been refused, so now he is going to blackmail them into working for him. It's lucky that he explained how he was a goody earlier or this might have made him seem like a baddy.

Arbitan gives them teleport bracelets so they can go to where the keys are. Barbara teleports first, the others follow a few seconds later. Then a Voord sneaks up on Arbitan and stabs him.

The Doctor, Ian and Susan arrive where they have been teleported to, but Barbara is missing already. They find her teleport bracelet and Ian says "Look, there's blood on it!"

That is the dramatic end of the episode. A big close up on Ian's face shows this is serious business.

This is a very good beginning to the story. It is full of mystery and exciting twists, and then just when you think things can't get any better Arbitan produces teleport bracelets, which promises the rest of the story will see lots of mannys getting knocked out and losing their bracelets just like in Blakes 7!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Escape Switch

Escape Switch is part 10 of the Daleks' Master Plan and was written by Dennis Spooner from an idea by Terry Nation. It is the last episode of this story that still has pictures and it is sad that only 3 out of 12 parts are there for me to see. The other two are Day of Armageddon and Counter Plot.

The story has moved on since the end of Counter Plot. Everybody is in Ancient Egypt where Steven and Sara see a mummy and Sara is scared. Obviously Sara is a very brave Space Security Agent, but there are clearly things that are too scary for her - mummies for one, and probably Scary Cat as well.

The mummy turns out to be the Meddling Monk from the Time Meddler story. He has joined the story to pad it out er, get revenge on the Doctor, and he wants to get into the TARDIS but the Doctor is the only one with a key. The Doctor is not there so they have to go to look for him.

But Mavic Chen and the Daleks are also there and out looking for them, and they are captured. Mavic Chen and the Daleks are still after the Taranium Core of the Time Destructor (so maybe the story has not moved on all that much) and they plan to use Steven and Sara as hostages to get it back from the Doctor.

The Monk tries to be on everybody's side but Steven is suspicious and the Daleks still make the Monk their prisoner.

Mavic Chen calls for the Doctor to come, but he is so loud that the Egyptian natives hear him as well and they don't like it. The Doctor comes but he doesn't trust the Daleks at all so he makes a condition that they make the swap away from the Dalek ship.

The Daleks agree, but plan to exterminate everyone after they have the Taranium Core back. The prisoners are released, including the Monk (the Doctor doesn't want him exterminated even though he has been a baddy in the past) but, before the Daleks can exterminate everyone, the natives attack and there is a big, but brief, fight and all the natives are negatived and killed. They manage to get one Dalek by putting stones all around it so it can't move.

The Doctor has lost the Taranium Core. He says "I had to hand the real Taranium Core over to Magic... Mavic Chen."

But he has cleverly stolen the Directional Unit from the Monk's TARDIS which will allow them to follow the Daleks back to Kembel. The Doctor, Steven and Sara go into the TARDIS. But where has the Monk gone?

"I don't care if he's in Timbuktu!" laughs the Doctor.

The Monk has gone back to his own TARDIS only to find it now looks like the Doctor's Police Box! The Daleks chase after him thinking he is the Doctor and he has to make a speedy take-off, but then he finds out that the Doctor has stolen his Directional Unit and he is very grumpy about it.

The Daleks grudgingly admit that Mavic Chen has "done well" to recover the Taranium Core and they go back to Kembel with Mavic Chen being even more smug than usual. Even cats aren't as pleased with themselves as Mavic Chen is, and that is part of why he is a great baddy.

The Doctor tries to make the stolen Directional Unit work in his own TARDIS. Steven is impatient and says "Oh come on Doctor we haven't got time for butts, this is our only hope!"

I'm not sure what he means by that, but it sounds a little bit rude to me.

Steven pulls the switch and there is a flash! That is where the episode ends - we don't know if it has worked or not!

Of course it does work and in the last 2 episodes of the Daleks' Master Plan the Doctor, Steven and Sara go back to Kembel where they beat the Daleks. Mavic Chen is killed, but so is Sara so it is a mixed ending for the Doctor and Steven but very dramatic.

I wish very much that I could see part 12, and all the episodes, because I think this is a great story, possibly one of the best Doctor Who stories of all, but it is hard to judge against other classics such as Doctor Who and the Silurians or Timelash because they have all their pictures and this one doesn't.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Counter Plot

Counter Plot is part 5 of the Daleks' Master Plan by Terry Nation. It is only the second episode of this story that still has pictures - the first is Day of Armageddon, and there is only one more after this one out of the 12 parts of the story.

When last we saw our intrepid heroes... Sara Kingdom has shot Bret Vyon but the Doctor and Steven have escaped. Sara is working for Mavic Chen who is a baddy and in with the Daleks, and she wants her mannys to find the Doctor and Steven and shoot them dead.

The Doctor and Steven run into a strange room (we know it is strange because Steven says "strange room" when they go in it) with mice in it. Sara comes in to capture them but then the lights go on and off...

...and they all make funny faces.

Two other mannys are responsible for this - they have been doing an experiment - they go in the room to find the Doctor, Steven and Sara have vanished. So have the mice, but they were supposed to vanish because that was the point of the experiment.

They are busy still making faces and Steven and Sara are jumping up and down in space somewhere. Sara's mannys want to know what has happened so one of the science mannys tells them:

"They're many light years from Earth by now - moving towards a strange planet in a strange galaxy, the nature of which we can only guess at."

Karlton is Mavic Chen's baldy henchmanny.

Karlton finds out the Doctor and Steven and the Taranium they stole are all now on planet Myra and he tells Mavic Chen.

Mavic Chen rants about being powerful for a bit...

...and then, presumably, tells the Daleks about it so they can go to Myra to get the Taranium.

The Doctor wakes up in a jungle. "The mice couldn't have done that," he says.

He's right - mice are not clever enough to be able to build intergalactic teleports.

Steven wakes up before Sara and he takes her gun so she is captured. But something invisible is making big footprints - they are on a planet with invisible monsters.

The Daleks get to Myra and find the mice. They think the mice are their enemies and so they exterminate the mice! That is a terrible thing to happen to poor, defenceless mice - a waste of perfectly good noms. Then the Daleks find out about the invisible monsters when they shoot one.

The Doctor also fights off an invisible monster, in a very odd fight scene.

But now the Doctor knows where they are, because he knows the monsters are the Visians of Myra.

Steven argues with Sara to convince her they are not baddies. She is sad for killing Bret because he was her brother. But just after Sara joins the goodys, the Daleks shoot more Visians and surround the Doctor, Steven and Sara.

The Doctor says "I'm afraid, my friends, the Daleks have won."

That is the exciting end of this episode. What will happen next? To be continued, maybe, but some other time because now it is time for sleeps for me. Bye bye. Zzzzz