Day 652: The Trial of a Time Lord Part 13 - The Ultimate Foe Part 1

I used to have a plan for how I was going to cover this story. You see, my original plan for this story was going to be along the lines of looking at how much I adored this story upon first viewing, and mounting a spirited defense of it. This would, of course, fall apart towards the end of the story, due to the fact that I did not like The Ultimate Foe on first viewing. Then The Armageddon Factor came along, another story which I disliked on first viewing, and I found myself quite enjoying it. Annoyingly, this meant that I had to chuck out all of those plans because there was now the chance that I would enjoy The Ultimate Foe. And sure enough, it's not that bad.

It's got an awful lot of things in it that bear mentioning. For a start, there's the revelation of the nature of the Valeyard where we discover that he is in fact a future incarnation of the Doctor, from somewhere between his twelfth and final incarnations. It's a clever and remarkably insane twist, that's surprisingly underplayed when it's revealed. The only shame is that it's revealed with only two episodes lieft to go, meaning that there's a feeling of a missed opportunity. We could have had a story dealing on the nature of evil within the Doctor, or the duality of the two men facing off against one another, but instead we get the character as just another villain for the Doctor to face off against as the story comes to a close.

There's also another, sadder fact to mention. This episode is the last thing that Robert Holmes wrote before he died. He's been a fantastic writer for the series, concentrating on brilliant and well-drawn characters as well as wonderfully witty dialogue and fantastic stories. His episodes have been consistent highlights of the series and he remains sorely missed. But still, time marches on, and we'll have to see what was done to resolve the issue of the fact that they now have Part 1 of a 2 part story with no ending and no writer to write it tomorrow.

Day 643: The Trial of a Time Lord Part 4 - The Mysterious Planet Part 4

The dichotomy at the heart of the climax of The Mysterious Planet is one which reflects the nature of Doctor Who at the moment. Around five minutes in, Queen Katryca gets horrifically killed, with the end result being that her entire body gets covered in blood in a rather nasty experience. This is contrasted later on in the story when Balazar, another ally of the Doctor's gets covered in a green gunge, as if he's just won the Kids' Choice Award on Nickelodeon. The dichotomy present is that between the two ways in which Doctor Who is produced at the moment: a world of blood and a world of gunge.

You see, the world of blood is often violent, serious and gritty, while the world of gunge is far lighter, with more fun and happiness thrown into the mix. Both of these methods can produce good stories, but it's apparent that these two methods cannot co-exist, in particular because a portion of the audience wants more stories like The Caves of Androzani, while others want more stories like City of Death, and there isn't that much crossover between those two adventures. So the production team has to decide on the style of programme that they wish to make, one that's serious and gritty or one that's light-hearted and fun. On the basis of The Mysterious Planet, I'd say that they're leaning towards the gunge option, although the next adventure, if memory serves me right, is really very bloody indeed.

Day 642: The Trial of a Time Lord Part 3 - The Mysterious Planet Part 3

One of the major criticisms levelled at The Trial of a Time Lord is its trial. The general conceit of the story is that the Doctor has been placed on trial by his own people for breaking various laws. As part of this trial, evidence is being shown from some of the Doctor's adventures, as claims are made as to his conduct. Criticism is levelled at this idea for generally intruding on the adventures, as every five minutes a scene where the Doctor is forced to explain himself is added into the story, which doesn't improve the 'flow' of the story.

And yet, I actually really like it. I like it because the writers have the sense to use this concept and play with some aspect of it. Holmes, for instance, chooses to have certain parts of this story removed, as they are not deemed safe enough to be put on the public record and thus are censored for the purposes of the trial. This introduces a small mystery to the events, and makes for a slightly more intriguing adventure. It's a nice introduction of a story arc and gives a sense of continuity across the whole story, which improves the story immensely, in my opinion.

Day 641: The Trial of a Time Lord Part 2 - The Mysterious Planet Part 2

One of the things that I really love about The Mysterious Planet is the above screen grab. This story was made in 1986, and thus things like computer graphics weren't that great. But, they were better than nothing, and people would jump at the chance to use them, even in situations where a practical effect would work just as well and give a better result. In this instance, computer effects have been used in order to add a wooden stick into the frame, giving the impression that you are looking out from the window of a hut. But this effect doesn't entirely work as intended, unfortunately.

It looks like someone has taken a picture, imported it into MS Paint, and then gotten their 5 year old child to draw a stick on top of it. It looks unrealistic, cheap, and completely fails to achieve this relatively simple effect (indeed, on first viewing, I was perplexed as to what it was meant to be representing). And yet, I love it for all of those reasons. These are people who aren't afraid to try new things, and who don't shy away from their failures. Sure, it's not the best effect in the world, but it has a fair amount of charm behind it, and at the very least, it gives me a lot of nostalgia for when I was 5 years old and mucking about on MS Paint, creating alien vistas, majestic buildings, and unrealistic sticks.

Day 640: The Trial of a Time Lord Part 1 - The Mysterious Planet Part 1

I love The Trial of a Time Lord. It's actually one of the stories that I was most looking forward to covering in this blog, as I really enjoyed the experience of watching it the last time I saw it, which was just after finishing my final exams in high school. I needed something to get my mind away from all of the doom and gloom that's associated with waiting for results. Thankfully, 'Trial' delivered that in spades, providing stories that were about having fun, as well as more complex stories that grab the audience's attention with some interesting character moments.

Of these two story types, The Mysterious Planet is chiefly in the 'fun' section, in my opinion. It's written by Robert Holmes, but it's not the serious Holmes that wrote The Caves of Androzani, instead it's a lighter tale, akin to The Ribos Operation. The distinction can be best shown in the way in which the characters are drawn. For Caves, all of the characters were written with a slightly evil streak to them, and whilst this made them more complex, it also meant that you could never find yourself to really like any of them, which, given the tone of Caves, works to the story's advantage. For The Mysterious Planet, on the other hand, all of the characters are given a wit and warmth that, even if they appear to be antagonists, you can still clearly enjoy their company. Two examples of this are Glitz and Dibber, where they are rogueish characters who may have tried to kill the Doctor, but we're also allowed to make jokes with them about prison psychologists or the phrase "Take me to your leader".

It all creates a nice atmosphere, that I actually really appreciate. And whilst it may not be the best thing for the series at the moment, I still utterly love it.

Day 635: The Two Doctors Part 3

Whilst I do rather enjoy The Two Doctors, I will admit that it does have a few issues with it that prevent it from being a truly great story. Looking at the issues in detail, however, it's clear that one of them is oddly one of the story's highlights, whilst the other represents a low point for the series.

The first thing that I wish to talk about is the Sontarans. Their role in this story is to generally act as another party with respect to the work being done by Dastari and Chessene, with a keen interest in their work with time-ships. However, they don't really make that much of an impact on the plot. Aside from an attack on the space station at the beginning, the vast majority of work that the Sontarans do in this story is stand around and plan to double cross their allies, until they find that they themselves have been double crossed. It's kind of a waste of a good race of aliens, and leaves me with the impression that the story might have been better without them.

Which is a bit of a shame as it's actually one of the best depictions that we've had of the Sontarans. This is to be expected, given that they are being written by their creator, Robert Holmes, who brings them a return to their militaristic roots. It feels like all of their discussions are of battle plans, fighting and war. This is carried through to the production, with Peter Moffatt directing the Sontarans to be full military caricatures, having them march into scenes and continue to stand up straight like the officers that they are. It's also present in the music by Peter Howell, as can be heard above, which is a nice effective march, getting across the general notion of the Sontarans in around 30 seconds of music. So what we end up with is a story that doesn't need the Sontarans, but ends up having them as one of the highlights.

The same cannot be said, however, for the other major downfall of this story. Towards the climax, Shockeye, the villain desperate to taste human flesh, begins a hunt for the Doctor. This culminates in the Doctor putting a cloth that has been doused with cyanide over Shockeye's mouth, causing him to convulse, before dying. The Doctor then delivers a quip about the death and moves on. This is another awful moment for the Doctor, as he kills another being in cold blood, and although Shockeye was unrelentingly evil, it still doesn't excuse the fact that he killed him. It leaves a sour taste in the mouth after a rather good story, and serves as a constant reminder of why I can't really look upon this era of Doctor Who and say that it's one of my favourites.

Still, at the very least, at least there's been nothing too bad so far this series. The Two Doctors has certainly been very fun, Vengeance on Varos had a good concept and at least Attack of the Cybermen and The Mark of the Rani were watchable. What could possible go wrong?

Day 634: The Two Doctors Part 2

I think that the writing of The Two Doctors is easily the strong point, and that's thanks to Robert Holmes, a returning writer for Doctor Who, who has worked for the series off and on since The Krotons, and previously wrote the acclaimed story The Caves of Androzani. Here, he's given a challenge, where he has to shoehorn in two Doctors, two companions, a returning enemy, a new enemy, a foreign location and make it all into a palatable piece of television. He succeeds, in part thanks to the return of an old friend to the series, or what could be seen as an old enemy, the longer story.

Longer stories have been part of Doctor Who since the second serial, which was 7 parts long in duration. That said, they aren't perfect, and they can occasionally grow boring as it becomes apparent that there's only enough plot to fill an episode for four episodes and now it is being stretched out to six or more (e.g. The Daleks, The Monster of Peladon). However, they tend to allow for a story of more depth, allowing more time for character development or more complex plots (e.g. Doctor Who and the Silurians, The War Games). In this case, it is quite apparent that it is needed for a story of this scale, in order to make it worth watching and not a large mess, but there's also the underlying issue of keeping the audience interested throughout the adventure.

Holmes manages this with aplomb, through various methods. For a start, he ensures that the characters are all worth watching and have their own motivations that are interesting enough to hold the story in their own right. There's Chessene, a genetically modified being with delusions of grandeur, or Dastari, the person who augmented her and wishes for her to be made into a godlike creature. There's also Oscar Botcherby, an actor who has a dramatic turn of phrase but a wish to not really get into trouble, or Shockeye, the alien cook who wishes to taste human flesh.

The villains are also given enough menace to make them believable and somewhat frightening as well, such as can be seen in the cliffhanger to this episode where Shockeye's hands move towards Peri in a point of view shot, giving a truly creepy and disturbing feeling to the cliffhanger and making him feel like a tangible threat. This is clearly one-up to The Mark of the Rani, which felt that you could make a good villain by just giving them good dialogue. That's not to say that there's any shortage of good dialogue here, with plenty of witty exchanges between the characters, that are given just the right turn of phrase by the actors playing them that they can turn from a slightly odd thing to discuss to something weirdly hilarious, such as Shockeye's desire to eat human flesh. It all keeps the story interesting, which is something that is certainly needed as this is an awfully long story.

But, I'm rather happy to spend all of this time with this story, as it's clear that it's being written by a master of his craft, in the form of Robert Holmes. I'm actually quite glad that he's now seemingly returned to the programme for the long term, and I look forward to future work from him, as it seems like he's never been away.

Day 633: The Two Doctors Part 1

The Two Doctors is an interesting story. It represents a weird mix of both the old and new of Doctor Who, with various elements of the past returning for no specific reason other than it should make for a fun story. These returning elements are all quite different, but they're all quite interesting, and show just how much Doctor Who has changed over the past 22 series.

The most obvious returning element is Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, alongside Frazer Hines as Jamie. The reason for their return is because the production team enjoyed working with Troughton so much during The Five Doctors that they decided to invite him back for a return story, and to be honest I can hardly blame them. Amongst the many wonderful things about The Five Doctors (and indeed The Three Doctors), Patrick Troughton's performance as the Doctor is easily one of the highlights. As can be seen in this episode, he steps into the role as if he were never away, playing at equal parts the clownish figure who wanders throughout the universe, or the deadly serious man who fights to protect the Universe from all sorts of horrors. This is best seen in the scene where he encounters Dastari where he goes from joking with him in an attempt to show that he is a friend to be trusted, whilst also telling him that he wants his work to be shut down, to getting progressively angrier with him as he realises the short-sightedness of Dastari and that he doesn't realise the implications of his work and how dangerous it could be.

There is, however, the question of continuity. This story has the Second Doctor working for the Time Lords, alongside Jamie, as they sort out the issues with Dastari. But the only problem with this is that the Second Doctor never really worked with the Time Lords, indeed he spent much of his time as the Doctor running away from them. No explanation is given in this story as to why this is happening, although fans have developed a theory revolving around the Doctor being taken away after his trial to work as a rogue agent for the Time Lords. But all of this brings forth a tiny little issue that I have with this, that this isn't the sort of thing that the Second Doctor did during his tenure, and so we're not really getting a true representation of his wonderful time as the Doctor.

But maybe that's just the point, that we can't really return to things just as they used to be. Instead, we return and find that they've developed and changed whilst we've been away, and we're not entirely sure about how to deal with that. But I suppose that that's just the very nature of life itself.

Day 622: The Caves of Androzani Part 4

"It feels different this time"

The Doctor saves Peri, but at the cost of his own life. He lies on the floor and begins to die.

Regenerations in the past have been treated in various ways. The First Doctor's was treated as something strange and alien, almost psychedelic. The Second Doctor's was more of a punishment, and something to be frightened of, while the Third Doctor's was a little bit more relaxed, focusing more on the fact that he will renew himself. More recently, the Fourth Doctor's was a little bit more mysterious, but brought with it feelings of finality and the end of an era, before finally transitioning into the start of a new one. The Fifth Doctor's builds on much of the feelings of finality associated with Logopolis, but takes it just a little bit further.

It legitimately feels like the Doctor is dying. We see him fall onto the floor, and remark that he's not that sure whether he'll regenerate or not. He then enters into a strange mental state, as various friends and companions flash before his eyes, encouraging him to stay alive. Adric's appearance at this point reminds us of why the Doctor has been fighting for Peri all of this story, as he's still living with the guilt of Adric's death, and so he wants to make sure that Peri's safe because he may not be able to live with the consequences. The Master's appearance inadvertently solidifies the Doctor's regeneration, as it reminds him that evil is out there, and that he must fight it when he encounters it. The screen slowly fills with more strange patterns until eventually, with an almighty and triumphant noise, we have a new Doctor.

Thus ends one of the truly great Doctor Who stories. Looking back on the Davison era as a whole, it's been somewhat inconsistent, with some truly great things (Kinda, Snakedance), as well as some truly terrible things (Time-Flight, Arc of Infinity). Still, it seems to have found its feet with the last series (Warriors of the Deep notwithstanding) so hopefully Colin Baker will get a more consistent time as the Doctor.

Day 621: The Caves of Androzani Part 3

The Caves of Androzani is the last story to feature the Fifth Doctor. The exact moment when this becomes the inevitable conclusion of this story occurs five or so minutes into the story, when he and Peri fall into a nest of unrefined spectrox, giving them an illness that will end in death, unless a very specific cure can be found. So the story becomes about a man trying to fight for a good, simple thing, by finding a cure to help someone because he feels guilty about putting her into a life or death situation.

But the Doctor's dying, and we get glimpses of this at the start of the clip above. The screen distorts, as strange patterns appear and then dissipate. At first, it's unclear what they are, but by story's end, it will become clear that this is the oncoming regeneration. The Doctor realises this, and now knows that he will die, one way or another. Suddenly, he becomes a full-on action hero, and moves into a mental position somewhat akin to an action hero, making jokes in the face of adversity and doing more rash actions like crashing into a planet with a spaceship.

But Davison plays this slightly afraid. He's legitimately worried that this plan won't work, and that he will die without saving Peri. We hear his voice crack slightly at one point, and he's a little bit more breathless than usual. Even the ending close-up is of his face wearing a fearful expression. But the expression is also determined. It's this determination that will drive the rest of the story, and keep the Doctor alive. Indeed, lest we forget one of the few good moments from Planet of the Daleks, where the Doctor says that courage is "being afraid but doing what you have to do anyway". Here, Davison's Doctor embodies this perfectly, and acts as an excellent lead-in to the final and throughly intense part of the story.

"So you see, I'm not going to let you stop me now!"

Day 620: The Caves of Androzani Part 2

Sharaz Jek is one of the best characters in Doctor Who, ever. Everything about the character draws you towards him, as we learn more about this character and get drawn ever closer into his life.

For a start, it must be mentioned that his costume, as designed by Andrew Rose, is amazingly eye-catching. The mask is beautifully designed with an intriguing black and white design, hinting at the morally complex nature of the character by the way in which the colours interact with each other, never allowing one colour to fully take control of any particular segment of the mask. It's eye catching, and certainly makes up for the fact that, by having the mask, we are deprived of the full performance of Christopher Gable.

And yet, without the benefit of having full facial expressions, Gable creates a character that is instantly memorable. Through use of voice, movement, body posture, and his eyes, Gable creates a thoroughly interesting character. He can go from being a creepy creature who lusts after Peri to a more confident king, who controls all the spectrox on Androzani Minor (spectrox is highly sought after by much of the universe) and is fully in control of his situation, before turning into a frightening monster of a man, shouting suddenly and moving with more threat and violence than before, making him a truly menacing figure. All of these layers give the character depth, and make you want to continue watching the performance, as we need to see where the character will go, not least because he's also got a degree of magnetism in all of these personas, never letting you take your eyes off him completely.

But that's perhaps because of his story. He used to work with Morgus as a young, successful and handsome scientist, until Morgus betrayed him and left him for dead. Jek survived, but all of his natural beauty had been taken away from him. He therefore swore revenge on Morgus, taking control of the spectrox and only saying that he will accept surrender when Morgus is dead. It's a tragic story, but it reveals the inner madness of his character, that he seeks revenge because he has lost his beauty, and that his two purposes in life are to find beauty and kill Morgus. And yet, we're still drawn to him, and so we need to keep watching The Caves of Androzani to see how this character develops.

Day 619: The Caves of Androzani Part 1

In 2009, Doctor Who Magazine published a poll ranking all Doctor Who stories. In the number one spot was The Caves of Androzani, Peter Davison's final Doctor Who story. I looked on it with a bit of interest. I'd never really seen Androzani before, and so I wondered how it could possibly be good enough to be considered the best Doctor Who episode ever. Wary of my expectations being too high, I watched it a couple of years later, and I realised why it can be considered so good.

You see, almost every single aspect of this episode works perfectly, and stands out amongst everything around it as something worth watching. Take, for instance, the direction by Graeme Harper. Harper, unlike almost every other director working for the program, goes for an approach that's more realistic than one would normally expect on the series. The camera feels far freer under Harper's direction, as can be seen, for instance, in a scene where we observe the Doctor and Peri from the point of view of some gun-runners, with the camera almost resting on one of their shoulders, putting us in the position of the gun-runners for this portion of the scene. Another great example is where Morgus has a conversation with General Chellak over a futuristic monitor. At first, we see both Morgus and Chellak in shot, but then Morgus gets up and wanders around the room. The camera then switches angles, and we only see the back of Chellak's head, with Morgus in full view. This exerts his dominance over the story and the plot, showing him to be a powerful man, with only the camera telling this.

But the main point of why the direction is so good, as I mentioned earlier, is that it stands out. Whilst the direction so far on this series has been rather good (Warriors of the Deep notwithstanding) Harper goes that extra step to make his story more memorable, and better all around. Matthew Robinson went for realistic action in Resurrection of the Daleks, but Harper has more of this, providing his team with machine guns, giving a stronger sense of power and realism than what a simple laser pistol can give. Fiona Cumming has a rocky wasteland in the form of Lanzarote, and yet it never feels quite as strong as the conventional quarry that is found here, feeling just that bit more barren and lifeless. And whilst Pennant Roberts may have made the best he could out of the rather poor Myrka costume, Harper shows that there could certainly have been more that he could have done, taking the unimpressive Magma Beast and shooting it in a darkened studio, making it feel far more dangerous than the costume would have you believe.

These are all just some of the reasons why this story is so fantastic, and why I am really quite looking forward to the next four days as we watch The Caves of Androzani.

Day 499: The Power of Kroll Part 4

So let's change tack and talk about one of the supporting characters in this story. Fenner is a relatively small role, existing as the person who at first goes along with the plans of the refinery workers but then when he realises that they are all in danger he quickly becomes one of the sole sane voices, but is constantly pushed into each situation by his less than nice boss, Thawn. Eventually, once Thawn is dealt with, Fenner is left to help the Doctor and Romana save the day, and thus all is well.

But not all is well with Fenner. As the Doctor leaves, proclaiming that Fenner can adopt a more natural lifestyle with the Swampies, the inhabitants of the moon on which the story is set, Fenner has a less than pleased look on his face. He has persecuted the Swampies for much of his time working for the refinery and now he is expected to live with them. He knows that this is not going to be a good ending for him, that he may end up dead because of his past actions. But the Doctor wanders away, thinking the best and not realising that the worst is about to happen.

A lot of this is due to Philip Madoc's performance as Fenner, giving the role a sustenance that, if present in the original script, would certainly be lost on a lesser actor who would be more inclined to go for the obvious route of making the character obviously likeable. But Madoc never does this, and he always seems to be on the darker shade of grey, making his final fate all the more interesting to see, and it makes this story all the more interesting as a whole.

Day 498: The Power of Kroll Part 3

The Doctor, Romana and the treacherous gun-runner Rohm-Dutt have been put to death. The method of their death is to be tied up to some vines, which will slowly move and stretch their bodies, meaning that their spines will slowly be broken. This is reasonably uncomfortable to watch. bringing to mind medieval tortures such as the rack and, at least in my case, I felt like I wanted to curl up into a ball when I heard such descriptions as Romana describing her vertebrae as "they feel like beads on a piece of elastic". It's all thanks to Robert Holmes, erstwhile script editor for the series, for whom this story will be his last for the series for a good couple of years. It's uncomfortable and horrifying, but it's done with a certain glee that reflects that he is clearly having fun writing this section of the story. It represents another stand-out scene in Series 16, which for my money is one of the best series of Doctor Who of all time.

Day 497: The Power of Kroll Part 2

This episode is bookended by two noteworthy cliffhangers. The first is the resolution to the previous episode's cliffhanger, which was Romana being menaced by a fairly unconvincing monster. She is saved by the Doctor, who unmasks the monster as just someone dressed in a fairly unconvincing costume. This is fantastic, as it plays on the fact that the audience would not completely expect the monster to be convincing in the first place, by virtue of this being a 1970's Doctor Who story. Thus, we are surprised to learn that our initial suspicions are correct from when we first saw the monster, and that it really is just a man in a suit.

The same can't be said of the episode's ending however, which features a fairly unconvincing tentacle grabbing a refinery worker and dragging him into a fairly unconvincing pipe. It's built up to well with some excellent acting from the supporting cast, and there's a somewhat effective jump scare that signals the beginning of the cliffhanger but it just doesn't work, because the effects simply aren't up to scratch. It's not the best thing to see in the story, but that doesn't really matter at the end of the day, as there are more important things like script and character to distract us from the fairly shoddy effects.

Day 496: The Power of Kroll Part 1

There's a seriousness at the heart of this story. Instead of us being greeted with a swashbuckling adventure or a Hammer Horror style story about vampiric stones, this story instead appears to concern itself with a refinery where the staff are enslaving the native people as well as setting up refineries all over their land. This is something that they object to, but they don't respond to this in the normal way that we'd expect for a Doctor Who story, that is wait for the Doctor to come along and then have some form of revolution. Instead, we see them ordering guns and ammunition from a gun-runner, planning to take back their land by force. Granted, this isn't an idea that is new to Doctor Who, but I feel that it gains an extra seriousness because of the fact that they are using real guns. These aren't laser pistols or the like, these are real machine guns, thus driving home the point that these guns will be used to outright kill people. This seriousness is something that we haven't really seen in Doctor Who for a while, and it's something that we'll see a bit more of as the series continues. But for now, let's just see where The Power of Kroll will take us as the serial continues...

Day 483: The Ribos Operation Part 4

When you look at the final part of this story, things become quite sad. Binro the Heretic is brutally shot down by the villainous Graff Vynda-K. Later, the catacombs where the major character are hiding collapses, causing the right hand man of the Graff to die, making us sympathise with the Graff for the first time in the story. This, in turn, makes his coming insanity as he goes forth, attempting to kill his guards and anyone else in his way, more tragic, and so we feel quite sorry for him as he comes to his inevitable downfall.

This all makes this story feel so much better though. We come to realise just how much we've cone to appreciate these characters when bad things happen to them, as we realise that our time on the planet Ribos is coming to an end. But we've had a very good time though, with this story easily being one of the very best stories we've ever covered on the blog. And it leaves the following story with a very tough act to follow...

Day 482: The Ribos Operation Part 3

"One day, even here, in the future, people will turn to each other and say Binro was right"

Binro the Heretic is a man who we meet in this episode. He believes that the stars in the sky are not ice crystals, but they are Suns, just like Ribos' own Sun. He also believes that there can be a scientific explanation for how the seasons change, because of the way in which the planet rotates around the Sun. He backs this up with measurements that he has made, of the movement of the stars. These views prove to be unpopular, and so he is cast out from society and left to live as a cripple in a dirty room.

He meets Unstoffe, one of the secondary protagonists, though, and offers him a small kindness. He explains his story to Unstoffe, and is pleased when he discovers that Unstoffe has an open mind, welcoming the idea that these scientific developments could be true. And then Unstoffe reveals that, not only does he believe that Binro is right, he knows that he is right. And more than that, he comes from another world, just like Binro hypothesised about. And that in the future, the world shall realise that Binro was right. And it makes Binro immeasurably happy.

This is, for my money, the greatest scene in the history of Doctor Who, as we see a face of true happiness created from a simple act of kindness. It's not a large moment in the story, but that doesn't matter as it's a beautifully heart-warming moment, and sticks out in an already spectacular story as the absolute highlight.

Day 481: The Ribos Operation Part 2

When I last watched this story, I was still somewhat adjusting to my surroundings. We'd moved house at the start of the year, and my room now lacked the necessary space for my much enjoyed digital alarm clock. Instead, I was content with my mobile phone to act as an alarm clock, meaning that each morning I was greeted with a sickeningly chirpy selection of beeps to let me know that it was time to get up. Around the time of re-watching Ribos, it was beginning to get on my nerves and I was in desperate need of a change.

I rarely talk about the music of the series in this blog. It's largely due to the fact that this blog is written, rather than audio, meaning that unlike dialogue, or to an extent direction, it's difficult to effectively describe what is heard on screen, although there is also the fact that it rarely jumps out to the audience as something really special. The Ribos Operation is different though. We have a simple leitmotif that comes throughout the episode, reflecting the time of day as the story passes. At night, where the story begins, the leitmotif is quiet and subdued. On screen as well, the lighting is dark, giving the impression of a civilisation that's about to go to bed. Come morning in Part 2, however, and we get a ritual where the lights are turned on. The music reflects this by being loud and majestic, with horn instruments and a pipe organ playing, making you feel as if an entire civilisation and all its wonders have awoken ready to start the new day. Kudos to Dudley Simpson, the composer, for this then, it's one of my favourite pieces of music in the entire series.

Indeed, I loved it so much when I rewatched it, that I pulled my phone out of my pocket and recorded it. A few adjustments on the settings and my new alarm clock was set. As Ribos awoke, so would I. Gone were the chirping noises that got me out of bed, if only to turn them off. Instead, I had a majestic piece to wake me up, steadfastly encouraging me to go out and seize the day. It's another fantastic part of The Ribos Operation that makes me happy every time I experience it. And this isn't even the best part of the story...

Day 480: The Ribos Operation Part 1

Around five hundred days ago, I was quietly figuring out how this journey would take place. I'd created spreadsheets that would tell me when I would be watching each episode, casually thought of what I would write for certain episodes when I came to them, and created a set of rules to keep me on track for this odyssey. One such rule was simple: no skipping ahead. I am not allowed, aside from brand new episodes and under special circumstances, to skip ahead and watch an episode until it comes around on the blog. With that rule in mind, in late 2013, as the blog was about to begin, I watched the last Doctor Who story I would watch before the blog would begin: The Ribos Operation.

This is, to be perfectly blunt, one of my all time favourite Doctor Who stories. It's a a story built on a fantastic idea: the guardians of chaos and order are at war and the White Guardian, in charge of order, has employed the Doctor to seek out The Key To Time, an all powerful object that can control the entire Universe. But we choose not to focus on that completely this story. Instead, we look at a simple tale of an intergalactic con-man trying to trick the powerful Graff Vynda-K on the planet Ribos. You could view this as a disappointment, but that would ignore the very simple fact that this story is relentlessly fun. Every other line is a joke, and when it isn't a joke, it's being played so well by the actors that you just want to spend more time with them. From the Doctor's new assistant, Romana, who for the first time is someone better than the Doctor in terms of intelligence, but lacking the Doctor's experience, to Garron and Unstoffe, one being a larger than life con-man, the other his constantly put-upon assistant, every single character in this story is one that I enjoy, making me want to truly live in this world and meet these characters. And we've barely begun with this fantastic and beautiful story.