Season One - Season Two - Season Three - Season Four - Season Five - Season Six

Watching All Doctor Who in Order

Season Six -
The Dominators

The new season kicks off with yet more spaceships and they come to land with rather nice model work.

After a longish and quite difficult-to-interpret opening we have some deaths and a strange cut-away just before we nearly see something called a Quark...

We also get some laughably hideous boinging incidental "music". Just a single electrical note.

The TARDIS lands in the same quarry and the Doctor makes direct reference to the mental images he's just been projecting, but Zoe can't be bothered to give her thoughts on The Evil of the Daleks. She obviously wasn't put off travelling anyway.

The Doctor says he has been here before but we haven't been shown that adventure!

The explosion of Cully's ship is spectacular! If it hadn't shown the space ship I would have assumed it was stock footage.

The appearance of the war museum seemingly warrants a two-tone electronic boing. But the discovery of two bodies is only worth a single boing.

Its a strangely whimsical story. The concepts are curious, such as the inhabitants taking everything literally and the aliens using all the radioactivity, but the execution is strange. I can't quite put my finger on it. Is it more amateurish?

What does strike me is the stark contrast in style to the previous story at the end of last season. The Wheel in Space was short on incident and heavy on character, with lots of depth to the people. The Dominators is on the other extreme with almost every line of dialogue advancing the plot, or at least elaborating on the situation, and the characters just delivering information.

The characterisations suffer due to this and the likes of Kando and Ballan are only loosely sketched out. They tell us about the civilization rather than themselves in a way that you wouldn't do normally. It's both clumsy and interesting at the same time. Its rather nice to hear all about an alien planet though with all its political history and cultural differences. You have to go back to The Macra Terror for the last attempt to describe a non-terrestrial civilisation.

Finally, the Quarks, which we have only seen through their view-point, are finally revealed! What a shocking cliff-hanger! We see they are two boxes with spiky footballs which speak in an almost completely inaudible way. Magnificent.

In episode two, the Doctor is told by the aliens, "We are Dominators!", rather embarrassingly.

Strangely this story title sounds like one of those working titles that you read about and think, "thank God they changed that!" Except on this occasion they didn't...

The scenes where the Doctor and Jamie are pretending to be stupid are somewhat farcical and the tests they are given so childish that you wonder why the Dominators carry such things around with them. These silly shenanigans occupy a lot of episode two.

I was about to wonder if this story was more comedic than the previous one, but then I recall the silly moments with Victoria not wanting to scream, and the action-farce scene in the helicopter from Fury. The Wheel in Space had various light-hearted moments with Zoe and Jamie, although I suppose it wasn't exactly a fun story. There were a variety of grim deaths in a fairly oppressive situation. But then again we've already seen that blonde girl have her face burnt off right at the start of this story.

Cully becomes even more of a hero when he puts Zoe into an alien bikini and see-through skirt! Absolute genius costume designs. The exciting nature of Zoe's ensemble is slightly offset by the fact that Cully is wearing a very similar dress, plus Zoe is pretty irritating the moment she opens her mouth.

Episode two ends with her and Cully trapped in an exploding building. The explosions are so powerful they nearly blow Zoe's dress off at the start of the next episode, but she catches the shoulder strap and saves her modesty.

The Doctor and Jamie go to chat to the leaders of the planet, Zoe and company are put to work for the Dominators. The leaders chat a bit more. Oh it's Brian Cant. Jamie accidentally foils an escape plan and the episode ends once more with a companion trapped inside an exploding building. Yawn.

Episode four has a rather exciting moment where the two aliens argue amongst each other. This is interesting because it creates an unusual friction amongst the baddies, further emphasising how aggressive they are that they can't even agree with each other on things! The scene where the Quark is being fought over for control is really compelling.

Things are a little patchy in terms of pace. A long period of chatting and moderate tedium is then interrupted by a great sequence as Jamie and Cully give the Quarks the runaround and even chuck a boulder on one. There are an unprecedented number of explosions in this story!

But then we revert back to more chat. Until a Dominator bursts in and kills Brian Cant.

The Doctor is threatened with death at the end of the episode, but at the start of the next one more arguments with the Dominators save him. The friction between them turns into quite a big bust up.

Even more explosions!

The episode mainly features a struggle with Jamie trying to stop the Quarks from drilling, with some more arguments.

We learn that the sonic screwdriver which was introduced towawrds the end of last season works as a blow-torch too!

I feel very sad when a Quark is destroyed.

The Doctor gets the bomb but can't diffuse it. So what does he do? He plants the bomb inside the Dominator's ship, and rubs his hands with glee! Blimey! I know that the Dominators weren't exactly nice chaps but for the Doctor to merrily blast their bodies to dust seems so wrong!

The Doctor is clearly suffering from some mental problems though, as next he is caught happily standing in the path of a river of lava, and wouldn't have moved if Jamie hadn't point out the danger. Thinking about all the various near-misses, such as when the Doctor rewired the capsule in flight and nearly killed himself and Jamie in a crash landing, is this portrayal of the Doctor becoming more fallible and clownish than ever before?

They dash into the TARDIS and this odd little story comes to a close.


The Mind Robber

The adventure kicks off with some oddities.

Firstly the reprise is different. Instead of Jamie saying "But we happen to be on the island" and the Doctor saying "oh my word!", now Jamie just says "Come on, will you look!" and they go in.

Second thing is that instead of the rather dodgy stock footage of lava, we have rather dodgy model work of white foam rolling down a polystyrene hill. I don't know which is worse.

Third thing is that the TARDIS scanner is now in some odd frame work with strange circular anaglypta wallpaper behind.

The fluid links don't seem to be able to take the load. What on earth is wrong with the TARDIS these days? We've had weird landings, suspension in space, the doors opening in flight, problems with the time vector generator, and now this. What a shocking series of nearly-fatal problems in their supposedly safe ship. In this era you never feel like the TARDIS is the place to be.

Jamie rashly presses the emergency unit and the ship sounds even more sick.

The Doctor says they're "nowhere" and then wanders off. We've never seen the power room before, or that weird roundy thing on the wall which he passes on the way. Is that an open internal door?

Oh the power room!

Oh another tight-fitting costume for Zoe!

Gosh, the power room is boring. And that's the laser unit from the power room from The Wheel in Space!

There's a better view of this weird new corner of the console room. Yes, it appears to be an open door to more of the ship. A black bank of deals to the left and the scanner above it. Very strange.

The TARDIS starts showing images to tempt Jamie out. Then Zoe sees her home city. Interestingly this is the exact opposite of what it did a few stories ago in The Wheel in Space where it tried to show images to make them leave. But the Doctor things that these images are being used by someone else to tempt them out.

They wander out into an empty void, meet some robots, and then scream at white hallucinations of themselves which are being used to tempt the Doctor out too. This is extremely weird stuff.

I like the robots though. Someone should use them as their mascot for their website.

The TARDIS is white too now. They escape inside and take off but the weird noise follows them. Jamie has a dream about a unicorn and the noise gets more intense. It does smack somewhat of padding.

Then the ultimate shock: The TARDIS explodes.

Then an even bigger eye-opener: Zoe's bum as the console spins round. Those who are easily offended by scenes of an adult nature, please do not watch this scene.

The Doctor is spinning off into space!

What an absolutely surreal end to a bizarre episode. Is this genius, or has the show gone totally off the rails?

The Doctor is in a fairly cheap looking studio forest and soon meets a cheap cardboard Jamie and some cheap word word puzzles. Then in a black void this time they fine a unicorn and the episode ends with this... threat. Are unicorns a notorious threat? I thought they were alright. Maybe I need to brush up on my myths.

Episode three has Jamie come back and this world of weird continues in the form of a mysterious tunnel meanwhile Jamie finds a futuristic castle. It weird that despite all the odd goings on, the Doctor and companions behave quite normally, which kind of takes the sting out of the surreal nature of the story. If the TARDIS crew were behaving as if they weren't exploring an impossible world it would somehow be more strange.

Episode four brings the quite unbelievable Karkus. An unbelievable German accent, and unbelievable muscles accompany an unbelievable performance. "You will be mince-meat!" he exclaims whilst managing to do nothing except be thrown around by Zoe. "Lesson seventeen!" she shouts, as if that explains everything, before fluffing her line.

We finally meet "The Master". He was a writer apparently, stolen away to run this fictional place. He switches between nice and nasty, as the machine takes over. It's almost a complete copy of the old fella under control of the Great Intelligence last year during The Abominable Snowmen.

And there is a formless "intelligence" at the heart of the matter too.

Episode five sees things get a little less strange. We learn that this story, despite all its fancies, is just another good old alien invasion. The population of Earth is to be transferred to the land of fiction, leaving the planet empty to be taken over. By whom? Who is the invader who needs an empty earth? Is the land of fiction set up just to trap a replacement? How is anyone else suppose to stumble upon the place? It was an odd story before but suddenly it all becomes complete nonsense.

There's a battle of wits between the two great brains, and fictional characters (and Cyrano de Bergerac) fight each other. Finally the white robots blow up their own computer and our heroes basically cross their fingers and hope for the best. The TARDIS reforms and the credits roll.

It is a very surreal and unusual tale, but behind it all there's nothing meaningful. And the ending banks on a handy "reset" whereby destroying the computer puts everything back together. Who built the computer? Why was the land of fiction being maintained?

All very confusing.

The Invasion

It worked! They say, as if they had a great plan...

Wow, less than a minute and a half and there's already a missile on collision course with the newly reformed TARDIS!

Boom! Oh, and a space ship!

And a very weird TARDIS landing noise!

There's a hint of some enemy who already knows the Doctor! We've only just had the cybermen three stories ago... Could it finally be the Daleks returning?

The TARDIS has got yet more problems. But I suppose if you were exploded and put back together then you wouldn't be too well either.

A cow!

A joke about the weather! An actual proper joke!

Wow, there's some interesting music. With proper musical instruments, not just odd twangy boings, and not just stock music.

A man with a van. A mysterious company. This is all moving so fast.

Travers has been substituted by Watkins, who in turn has his niece in his place. Slightly baffling.

The Doctor hates computers! I don't know why but it seems at odds with what we know of him. Doesn't he basically live inside one?

The mysterious Mr Vaughan turns to a wall which rotates up and reveals... A brain trapped in a chemistry set! Cliffhanger!

Surely not! It looks for all the world to be that planner thing which the Cybermen were always watching on TV only recently! There have only been two intervening stories since we last had cybermen. Is this the quickest return of a monster ever?

I'm amazed they have apparently revealed who the monster will be, but without showing it! Very strange.

Crikey that's a short skirt on Isobell.

The Doctor and Jamie are taken aboard a plane and introduced, arse-first, to an old friend, that rather prickly Lethbridge Stewart chap from The Web of Fear.

He's been doing a bit of sniffing as part of a new organization, UNIT.

The chemistry set has started chatting, but its not the same voice as the cyber thingy if it is the same entity.

Hmm this thingy says his lot have never been on Earth. But the cybermen's first story was on Earth. Although that was in 1986 and the Brigadier says this is only four years after the Yeti. So when is this set? Mid-seventies?

Gregory has been studying TARDIS circuits. A material more like plastic and connections which are totally illogical.

The chemistry set says he knows the Doctor from Planet 14. If the threat is the Cybermen then what on Earth could that mean? There was planet near The Wheel in Space. Not Telos? Very odd. A missing adventure?

All four heroes are caught and there's still no monster reveal. That episode didnt go very far at all...

The Brig is having them tracked 'more discreetly' - via a whacking great helicopter which all Vaughan's guards look up at!

There's a very nasty line about messing up Isobel's face! This story does seem unusually brutal.

There follows a farcical escape into a lift, and then a stupid scene with packer listening to the speeded up voice in his watch. Packer is then even sillier, being both dim and pantomime.

The lift nonsense continues and we see Kilroy was here. An early mention on TV for him before his chat show days.

Jamie climbs in a crate and something moves next to him!

Episode four and Vaughan all but confirms the enemy. He is going to use emotions against them and if they take over, humans face being completely "converted".

So, the Doctor and Jamie escape and manage to take Zoe and Isobell with them, affording plenty of up-skirt action as they board the helicopter.

So, Vaughan decides to head back to London. So what was the point of all that? It filled a couple of episodes is all.

The Doctor has learnt a tiny bit about the enemy but we havent seen it. I can't fathom if dragging out the reveal is good or not. The expectation is now huge but we're four episodes in, with not much to show.

There are interesting references to UFOs. This is a hot topic of the time.

So they're on their way back into the factory again in order spy on ... finally a Cyberman bursts forth!

Yet again bursting out, this follows the nice, clandestine pattern of these foes. They are hidden away, boxes up in crates just like in the previous Wheel in Space.

This business of then being awoken with electrodes from a strangely organic wrapping is just like their unusual egg-hatching in the previous story and in their Tombs.

Episode five mentions the homing beam, and the Cybermen's ability to control humans. Its good to have repeated characteristics of an alien with no emotion. It gives them a sort of personality.

A bit like in The Dominators the baddies argue.

Blimey, what's going on with the Cybernen's voices? They sound like deep-voiced Quarks, and just as hard to understand. Why do they keep changing them?

Ha! A Cyberman giving his mate a little hand down the ladder!

The crazy kids go down into the sewers and we're afforded a very intimate view of Zoe as she climbs down the ladder.

Are sewers really that capacious? You cant walk around underground where I live.

Jamie very dimly spells out their predicament for the cliffhanger.

Episode six and we're finally seeing some cybermen.

Bags of them in facts. It looks a lot bigger budget than the previous story despite us not seeing the big UNIT rescue of Watkins. The slow buildup actually feels like its paying off. Seeing the troop movements and then the rather impressive space fleet looming is worrying.

The appearance of these foes in the sewers is a little repetitious after last year, but the following iconic scenes of Cybermen in the streets are awe inspiring. There's still been relatively few successful invasions of Earth, despite how the series might be remembered.

Episode seven and its all build-up to the second wave of the invasion. Things are moving slowly still.

Zoe is treated very oddly. The Doctor says he doesn't like computers but her brain may come in useful. She's quite cold in her behaviour but I suppose that's the point.

I hadn't previously noticed her zip has come down a bit. She persuades the Brig to give her thirty seconds to compute a system to destroy more cyber ships. As she checks the computers, I kid you not - each male operator checks out her bum as she moves on to the next computer bank. Have a look if you don't believe me!

She's supposedly all brain, but she's also a sex symbol. What she lacks is some human characteristics. She's a very convenient plot device. At least Jamie gives some light relief with his constant eating and sleeping.

Having almost single-handedly saved the Earth she seems happy at the centre of attention and quite chuffed at being "much prettier than computer".

But things look grim as the Cybermen decide to annihilate us. Vaughan turns his weapon on his masters. It's interesting how Kevin Stoney has played an almost identical role in this as in his last appearance when he was trying to use the Daleks to invade.

This story seems very real. Very tough. The lack of talking monsters probably adds to this. Perhaps a lesson learned from the Yeti and the weed creature.. A foe is more scary when it looms silently in the dark.

Having promised so much at the iconic St. Pauls shot, episode seven had no Cybermen at all.

But that changes in the finale as episode eight, yes eight, brings this leviathan to an end. The only story we ever had that was longer was The Dalek Masterplan, but that had multiple times and places to full out the time. Much of The Invasion is spent running backwards and forwards and wasting time. A decent edit would bring this story into a really tight, thrilling four parter.

The last episode brings a pitch battle between the ever-silent Cybermen and the almost as silent UNIT soldiers. Bazookas and grenades go off and Cybermen drop like flies. You start to wonder if they would have done very well as an occupying force anyway.

The Cyber mother ship explodes and very abruptly the story cuts to a rather provokative shot of Zoe. The time travellers end up in a field looking for the TARDIS. The Doctor goes inside and the ship seems to land again to become visible and off they go.

The Krotons

After so much of Earth and Tobias Vaughan it feels rather refreshing to start a fresh story with new characters.

Having had The Dominators quite recently, it looks like much of the same. An alien culture, like humans but with some differences.

Why are there never any trees on alien planets. Its always very bleak and ... quarry-like.

Oh dear, a small rubbish model shot. Little houses with a giant football along side.

Crikey, Zoe has a short PVC skirt on.

That was a rather nasty death.

Jamie has a dust up to remind viewers he's tough and the Doctor gets menaced by a hoover for a cliff hanger.

There's a surreal robot watching, which reminds me a lot of The Wheel in Space. The Doctor makes a reather flippant joke just moment after some poor kid dies and allows him to live.

Zoe's up-herself intelligence is quite annoying, but instead of this being something only the audience feels, she's rather unfairly treated by her travelling companions. It feels rather like she's being bullied for not showing any emotions. Maybe she's crying inside.

The Doctor is more farcical than ever when ge gets his tests wrong.

More very surreal robot activity as we see the birth if the Krotons. It's strange, etherial and not really explained, and harks back to elements of The Mind Robber. But once they are formed, the Krotons are only shown oddly, in close up, revealed slowly but not in a dramatic way.

Jamie goes in nearly killed!

The Krotons seem blind in the outside world. Why can't they see?

There's lots of good acting, particularly from Philip Maddock.

We discover the TARDIS has HADS! What a strange thing to have, as I thought it was indestructable anyway!

Gutsy Jamie tries his luck but Krotons are resilient!

The Gonds try to bring the roof down and the Doc gets clattered by some polystyrine rocks!

In episode four it turns out that the Krotons wear skirts. Not very cristaline.

I don't know if its just me but I am very fond of all this. Great acting, funky monsters, a big weird spaceship. It has everything The Dominators has but with a good script and brilliant actors.

The story wraps up by nicely. I enjoy The Krotons as monsters and seeing them lumber about on screen. Proper new monsters we havent seen in ages.

The resolution is very clever and all the characters play their parts.
The structure of the story is good and shows up the inadequacies of its closest relative, The Dominators.

Taken in isolation it might be easy to dismiss this story as silly stone-age stuff with ropey monsters. But compared to the unbearable length of the previous Invasion, this story develops quickly, raises some interesting ideas about obedience, knowledge, science and trust, and resolves quite snappily.

The Doctor sneaks away and the TARDIS leaves.


The Seeds of Death

The story starts with an opening Earth in space shot - Seems to suggests invasion to me . And Brian Hayles is the writer, the guy who did The Ice Warriors... could it be?

We see a monsters point of view, as if to hide their appearance! Had we not already had this treatment with the never-before-seen Quarks, you might be forgiven for thinking this was a returning baddie.

But we hear the voice, and it does indeed sound like the Ice Warriors!

In the TARDIS the crew are trying to figure out where they are. Zoe is still in her Krotons costume. Will there be a loose excuse for her to end up in an even shorter skirt?

The tardis looks even smaller than usual, with black roundels. This poor set is now a shadow of its former self.

They step outside and argue with an old chap over an interesting back-story of a future Earth. Meanwhile on the moon we discover the attackers are indeed...

Martians! And following the pattern of returning monsters in season five and six, they have a new and exciting leader class.

As Ice Warriors are deployed to hunt in episode two, we find they are more lumbering than they used to be, and their heads less flexible. They seem to have become a bit more zombified, and a bit more of a cliched lumbering monster. But we are treated to lots of marauding alien shots. We also find the Warriors suffer serious problems with their vision as they totally fail to see a man called Fips (or whatever his name is) standing two feet away.

The story is forgivably daft. The idea of the Doctor and company spending five minutes in these people's company and then being entrusted to take charge of a major space mission is hilarious.

Zoe is fine one minute, and then reverts back to her know-it-all annoying persona. No-one quite seems to know what to do with her, and much of the time people are having a go at her. Most importantly, she's changed her costume.... But trousers?! I ask you.

Ohh Fips melts an Ice Warrior! Was that a lucky guess that he tried a heat ray on them. Coz they're Icey you know. Although all that solar power - would it fry anything?

The Doc's rocket is doomed! That episode didnt make a lot of progress.

Episode three brings us more of this excellent funky music.

I love the fact Zoe's calculations allow them to know when they'll fall into the sun and die, but the more simple, primal and ever-hungry Jamie points out they'll run out of food much sooner than they'll burn up.

Interesting that Jamie and the Doc say that the monsters are named "Ice Warriors". Surely that was just a nick name because they were found in a block of ice? I wonder what they call themselves.

When the rocket lands haphazardly, the Doctor's hand lands alarmingly near Zoe's crotch.

There follows a great chase between the Doctor and the martians but when cornered, he desperately and uncharacteristically begs for is life. Has he ever come this close to death?

It strikes me how very male this story is. Aside from Zoe there is only one girl in the whole cast, Miss Kelly. At least she's an intelligent expert, as well as a beautiful blond.

Into episode four and the Doctor has apparently been killed when a seed pod explodes in his face! But strangely, that wasnt the cliff hanger bit, it was the pod then coming to Earth.

We are left wondering through episode four if the Doctor is dead, whilst Warriors relentlessly carry out their plan.

The Ice Warriors are proper monsters. Really enjoyable. Slow, inhuman, aggressive, inarticulate. They are in the mould of Frankenstein's monster, or like I said earlier - zombies.

A few shots of Earth with the pods do wonders to give the idea this is a successful invasion strategy. It opens up the whole feel of a story when we get a bit of location work thrown in.

It turns out The Doctor is alive after all. But then the Ice Warriors decice to T-mat him into space. Why not just kill him with guns?

We get more of the Weed foam from Fury from the Deep. And we get a Doctor body double. I should make a list of Actors Who have Played The Doctor. It must number at least two dozen.

The material shot outside is brillintly edied and exciting stuff. It all feels so cinematic when a bit of time and effort can be spent editing it, rather than the very cheap-feeling studio stuff.

The scenes in the studio are stragely disjointed, as if it's been edited down.

During episode five, the Ice Warrior chases a worried man around a futuristic disco.

The set-decorating people are getting lazy. Earlier on I spotted the Krotons' dynatrope. And whilst the doctor was chucking liquids on the seed pod to kill it, I saw the Dominators' drill!

The finale is slightly disjointed too, just as some other parts of the story were. The Doctor apparently doesn't succeed in stopping the radio signal in time, but then it turns out that he has. But it is all suitably spectacular as the Doctor resigns himself to death and closes his eyes, only to find Jamie saves the day.

Rather calously, the Doctor seems to commit genocide as he sends what we presume are the remnants of the Ice Warriors civilization into the sun, and they die! In his defence he points out these baddies were trying to destroy an entire world, but still...

The TARDIS dematerialisation at the end is one of the worst ever, in terms of the misalignment between the before and after transitions. Very odd indeed.

The Space Pirates

Following the futuristic space ship frolicks of The Seeds of Death, we launch straight into more futuristic spaceship stuff. Love model work though.

And the warbling woman from The Ice Warriors is back.

Also returning is new writer Robert Holmes who recently gave us The Krotons which I enjoyed.

We're having another rather long lead-in without the Doctor and companions, which seems to be the norm.

A bloke with a good voice is explaining the plot. Pirates are plundering Argonite.

Blimey we get to 16 minutes before the TARDIS arrives! The costume department has really out done itself with Zoe's outfit. Shorts and boots. Fab.

Kaboom.

Episode two and we meet Milo Clancy. An interesting character!

Its interesting that after Seeds of Death told us man didn't want to go beyond the moon, this story immediately after it tells of a vast empire of space mining and pirates.

There's been a huge predominance of futuristic stories of late and a historical frolick would be a nice break.

Well this has turned into a jolly old adventure. Its not wholly clear where its going but the escape into the tunnels and suchlike brings a Flash Gordon feel to it all.

They fall down a hole, one after another.

Episode four spends a lot of time getting the Doctor and co out if their tunnel prison. In fact, little else happens and they try to determine if Clancy is in with the Pirates.

They escape up the mine workings, having a running battle with the Pirates only to turn up in that woman's office who (it was clearly signposted earlier) is the traitor.

Episode five and the strange political, detective story continues. It feels a bit directionless, if you'll pardon the pun, as the space police are basically chasing the space pirates. But the odd thing is that I don't really know what the threat is. Aside from piracy, what great terror is at large? Normally if a story has no actual monsters it at least has a terrible threat to humanity. But here it's just about thieves, and a bit of political corruption.

The menace itself is mainly aimed at the TARDIS crew. Can they get back to the ship after the station it was in blew up, and will they get framed for piracy?

Having spent episode four escaping from a tunnel, they spend episode five escaping from an office, but the Doctor gets blasted by the rockets!

He survives, and a little tiresomely the majority of the denoument is taken up with the Doctor defusing a bomb.

The ending is somewhat surprising as the viewer is left to hope that the heroes get back to safety. Unusually, the resolution leaves them stranded in space some considerable distance from the TARDIS and relying on a lift from some dodgy old ship. There's room for at least one other episode in which to tell that story!

The funny thing is that as I just mentioned, without any real threat to the world, or a particularly community (although I suppose the bomb at the end counts) the drama was in the plight of the TARDIS crew who, ironically, are never even shown to get home safely!

The War Games

And so we head into the season finale. Last years was a fairly typical and slightly under-played Cyberman romp. What will this year have in store?

The story opens like much of this recent era with no link to the previous (unresolved!) adventure and an untold amount of time has elapsed since The Space Pirates.

They're on Earth and the pace with which the story rattles along is quite frightening. Germans, English, into a trench, new characters, a dodgy general, a dodgy court martial and into prison in the blink of an eye.

Its quite striking how nice it is to be back on Earth in a historical context. It feels reassuring. It suddenly becomes very apparent how future-heavy Doctor Who has been of late. The last eight stories in a row (everything since Zoe joined at the end of last season) has been either set in space, in the future, or total fantasy. Its very nice to have some jolly English people on jolly old Earth.

But oh dear, they are locked up again, and after so much of that in the previous story it is feeling a little tiresome.

But hang on. The Doc is off to be executed!! And he kissed Zoe!!! That is shocking.

Episode two reveals the Doc wasn't shot after all!

The dodgy general is in his office, and then... Surely that's the end of the Tardis noise! Yes it is! Someone had a targus!

Is the general the same race as the Doctor?!

Jamie meets a red coat! Time travel evidence for sure!

Season One - Season Two - Season Three - Season Four - Season Five - Season Six