Desperate Measures (The Rescue Episode 2)

The one where the Doctor gains a new travelling companion...

If my memory serves me right, this is the third time that Barbara has been asked to lay a table in Doctor Who. The first two times she was asked to lay the table by people who ultimately wanted to harm her (Vasor in The Snows of Terror and the woman in the woods in The Waking Ally), but here she's recruited by sweet little Vicki. But as we soon see, Vicki is about to turn against Barbara too...

Poor Sandy the sand beast. He looks ferocious enough - he's got plenty of sharp teeth and roars like a monster - but he's actually Vicki's pet, and a herbivore at that. When Barbara sees the scaly monster edging towards Vicki, she uses a flare gun to kill it - much to Vicki's horror. You can see Barbara's point of view, but to be honest she was being a little uncharacteristically trigger-happy. Shoot first, ask questions later...

The Powerful Enemy (The Rescue Episode 1)

The one where the Doctor returns to a planet we've never seen him visit before...

As The Powerful Enemy opens, we're introduced to two new characters who seem to be living in a crashed spaceship on an alien planet. There's Vicki, an enthusiastic, energetic young girl whose natural positivity and optimism is thwarted by the relentless pessimism and negativity of her injured colleague Bennett. They're not an ideally matched pair in that regard, but Maureen O'Brien makes Vicki instantly likeable, with her bright-eyed, fresh-faced buoyancy. But Bennett warns of someone called Koquillion, who sounds like he's going to be the villain of this story. If he finds out about the approaching rescue ship, he'll apparently kill both Vicki and Bennett.

Meanwhile in the TARDIS (which seems to arrive on Dido twice - once at the very start of the episode, and again four minutes in with the first TARDIS scene!), the Doctor has snoozed through the Ship's materialisation for the first time ever. There's a typically great rapport between the three regulars here. When Barbara mentions that "the trembling has stopped" (ie, the Ship's landed), the Doctor says: "Oh my dear, I'm so glad you're feeling better". It's little light-hearted exchanges like this which make watching early Doctor Who so enjoyable.