The Zarbi (The Web Planet Episode 2)

The one where Barbara is captured by a gang of wasps...

We rejoin our heroes' adventure on this most alien of alien worlds with the triple threat from the previous cliffhanger - the TARDIS (with Vicki inside) has been stolen, Ian has been caught up in a strange webby trap, and Barbara is walking headlong into a pool of acid. It's real comic strip fantasy adventure of the Terry Nation school of writing. Let's follow each threat in turn to its conclusion...

First up, the hypnotised Barbara. She narrowly avoids stepping into the acid pool thanks to a burbly signal from a stray Zarbi, but she soon finds her way into the lair of another race of creatures, the Menoptera. There's a startling shot when Barbara's wandering aimlessly toward the camera, and just as she walks past, a Menoptera jumps up right in front of the screen in possibly Doctor Who's first ever jump scare. It's a truly arresting sight because it's totally unexpected and then when you see what it is, your brain runs hard to catch up and process what you're seeing. The Menoptera are magnificently strange creatures, and although not quite as effective or convincing as the Zarbi, are beautifully designed by Daphne Dare. As with the Zarbi, they look precisely how you'd expect a giant wasp to look, but unfortunately a little comical with it (their sad expressions and big black eyes).

The Web Planet (Episode 1)

The one where the TARDIS console spins round like a top...

I'm convinced that absolutely nobody involved with The Web Planet knows what the heck is going on, and least of all those watching it. This six-part serial has a reputation for being one of Doctor Who's most difficult/ challenging stories across its entire history, and there are sound reasons for that reputation. It has to count as Doctor Who's strangest story ever.

Of all the episodes of Doctor Who so far, The Web Planet feels the most as if it was recorded live. It's not a shambles as such, but more half-formed, under-rehearsed, impalpable. I wouldn't be surprised if the truth was this episode was recorded in a rush with half as much prep and rehearsal time as usual, because it looks and feels that way.

Inferno (The Romans Episode 4)

The one where the Doctor inadvertently inspires a major historical event...

No, not that Inferno, not yet. This Inferno refers to the Great Fire of Rome, and there are no planet-boring drills to be seen anywhere.

After episode 3's out-and-out comedy, the tone settles down a bit here, and gets on with the job of resolving the loose ends and getting the Doctor and his friends out of strife and back to safety. The Doctor aka Maximus Pettulian risks being eaten by lions in the circus, Ian is on the run from Nero's guards, and Barbara is constantly at risk of being murdered by a jealous Poppaea. Only Vicki seems to have escaped any direct danger in The Romans!

Conspiracy (The Romans Episode 3)

The one where things get a little bit silly...

Conspiracy is (in)famous in fandom for being the most comedic of The Romans' four episodes. There have been some claims that most of the story's comedy is confined to episode 3, which really is not the case, but it's true that the humour is at its silliest and broadest here. And after years of quite liking this episode, I've now turned against it somewhat.

It's not that the humour is done badly. Indeed, most of it is amusing enough. I think the reason I've not clicked with it this time is because I've been watching Doctor Who through, in order, seeing it as contemporary viewers would have seen it back in the 1960s. And Conspiracy just does not sit well with what has come before, and as a result sticks out like a very sore thumb. Some fans might like the light relief for an episode or two, but for me it feels forced, unnecessary and demeaning. It's just a bit too silly, don't you think, hmmm?

All Roads Lead to Rome (The Romans Episode 2)

The one where Barbara is bought as a slave for the empress of Rome...

We rejoin the action as mute assassin Ascaris creeps into the Doctor's quarters in his second attempt to kill who he thinks is Maximus Pettulian. But he surely hasn't bargained on the fight the Doctor puts up as we see William Hartnell turn into a whirling ball of energy and giving as good as (in fact, better than) he gets! Hartnell seems to be enjoying this scene a little too much as he runs rings round stuntman Barry Jackson (later to turn up as Drax in The Armageddon Factor, fact fans), clocking him over the head with jugs and wrapping him up in bedclothes. I note this episode was recorded on New Year's Day, 1965. Perhaps Hartnell had been on the celebratory whisky?

People talk about the Fourth Doctor punching the chauffeur in The Seeds of Doom, or the Twelfth Doctor socking it to a racist in Thin Ice, but the First Doctor got there many years before. We've seen how wantonly violent he can be in stories such as 100,000 BC, The Reign of Terror and The Dalek Invasion of Earth, but here the Doctor positively revels in the violence. As he says: "Do you know, I'm so constantly outwitting the opposition I tend to forget the delights and satisfaction of the gentle art of fisticuffs!"

William Hartnell: the most violent Doctor ever?

The Slave Traders (The Romans Episode 1)

The one where the Doctor and his friends take a holiday in Ancient Rome...

"There we are, safely down," says the Doctor, as the TARDIS topples over the side of a cliff. Director Christopher Barry cleverly plays with the viewers' expectations, as we next see a seemingly unconscious Ian lying flat out, we assume on the floor of the TARDIS following the fall. But no! As the camera zooms out we see that he's actually reclining in a Roman toga, scoffing grapes, while the Doctor busies himself watering some plants.

It transpires the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki have been staying in this Roman villa in 64 AD for almost a month, simply kicking back, chilling out and making the most of the Italian climate. The villa belongs to Flavius Giscard, a wealthy Roman who is currently away on a military campaign, and in the meantime the travellers have seconded it as their holiday home! I have to wonder what they'd do if Flavius came home early though...

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.

Flashpoint (The Dalek Invasion of Earth Episode 6)

The one where the Doctor says a final goodbye to his granddaughter...

Oh how I love Barbara Wright. As well as being beautiful and elegant and demure, with magnificent hair, she's sensitive, intelligent and strong-willed too. She's a capable woman with an endearing vulnerability, and that to me makes for one of the Doctor's best companions ever.

Here in Flashpoint, she is typically magnificent. She and Jenny are the first of our heroes to reach Dalek Control (yay for girl power, 60s style!), and Barbara uses her wits to try and pull the wool over the Black Dalek's eyestalk by cooking up a nonsense plan about human rebels plotting an assault on the invaders. She namechecks the Indian Mutiny ("Indian mutiny?" grates the Black Dalek. "We are the masters of India!"), the Boston Tea Party, General Lee and Hannibal as if they're all part of one big plan, and of course the Daleks don't know any different or better. Barbara is using human history against the Daleks, and notably historic conflicts which were uprisings.

The Waking Ally (The Dalek Invasion of Earth Episode 5)

The one where Barbara and Jenny are betrayed for a bag of sugar...

Let's get it out of the way straight away, shall we? Who or what exactly is the waking ally? The obvious (and possibly only) answer is that it's the Doctor, because he spent all last episode ill or unconscious, and now he's back. But if that's the case, it suggests the name of episode 5 was changed to reflect what was a late alteration to the story, owing to William Hartnell's back injury. That would be fine if it weren't for the fact so little is made of the return of the Doctor. In fact, there's barely any mention of him having been absent, and the first we see of him he's already reunited with Susan, David and Carl with no explanation. As if it never happened!

Pretty lame, really, but it does pique my curiosity as to what episode 5 was originally going to be called before Hartnell went off sick. Perhaps The Day After the End of Tomorrow or something similarly abstruse?

The End of Tomorrow (The Dalek Invasion of Earth Episode 4)

The one where Barbara drives a truck through a squad of Daleks...

These episode titles are all very apocalyptic, aren't they? The End of Tomorrow, Day of Reckoning, World's End (which is actually the location where the TARDIS landed)... But whether they have any connection with events in the story, I'm not so sure. What about the end of tomorrow (Sunday night)? What reckoning? I rather like Terry Nation's comic book sensationalism, and we'd get plenty more where this came from... The Death of Time (although it doesn't die), Flight Through Eternity, (actually just one century), Day of Armageddon, Destruction of Time (although it's not destroyed).

The End of Tomorrow begins with the Daleks' clockwork time bomb which sounds like Colly's mill, Windy Miller's house in Camberwick Green. But what's this? The Doctor's ill! He tries to rise to his feet but collapses with a mildly unconvincing "ohhhhh", and we don't seem him again all episode. David claims it's the effects of the Daleks' drugs, but he seemed to get over that quite quickly in Day of Reckoning. He's obviously on a comedown. Either that, or William Hartnell damaged his back during rehearsals and took a week off to recuperate. I'm not sure which is likelier.

Day of Reckoning (The Dalek Invasion of Earth Episode 3)

The one where the Doctor begins to acknowledge his granddaughter's need for independence...

Director Richard Martin's handling of the rebel assault on the Dalek saucer is much more dynamic here, with prisoners being released and various explosions and flashes. Spencer Chapman's great multi-level set is glimpsed at its best for the first time, but the direction still has a rough-and-ready feel which seems to be Martin's trademark. His roving camera is a clever idea to try and capture various set-pieces, but too often the camera misses, or almost misses, what's going on (a case in point are the gunshots fired off-camera which kill the saucer's lights). It just feels clumsy and under-rehearsed.

The action outside the saucer is better, with rebels attempting to lift and topple the Daleks, good old Barbara chucking grenades, and smoke effects adding to the confusion. The feeling of chaos on set sort of adds to the atmosphere of panic in the story, but there's still that hesitance in execution. One runaway extra stalls his escape to allow a Dalek enough time to catch up with him and kill him, for instance. I acknowledge that 1960s cameras were big, bulky, unwieldy things (as were the Dalek props), but I've seen similar set-pieces in 1960s television executed with much more panache than here.

The Daleks (The Dalek Invasion of Earth Episode 2)

The one where we learn what good invaders the Daleks are...

The Daleks are back! The popularity of the pepperpots from Skaro at this point in Doctor Who's history was immense. The public had been demanding their return ever since they faded from TV screens nine months previously, and the only way to do that was to have an adventure set before their ultimate destruction on Skaro as seen in The Daleks.

The Doctor is wise to them this time though, and William Hartnell plays it with a healthy dollop of outraged, and perhaps over-confident, defiance which will come to typify the traveller's clashes with the Daleks. No longer is he afraid or keen to turn tail and flee. "I think we'd better pit our wits against them and defeat them," he tells Ian. That's the Doctor we know and respect.

World's End (The Dalek Invasion of Earth Episode 1)

The one where a Dalek rises out of the River Thames...

World's End opens with a cracking teaser which would work well as a pre-credits sequence if it was a 21st century episode (I've always wanted to re-edit 20th century Doctor Who episodes to include pre-credits teasers in the style of the new series; there's usually a scene that can be pulled out). It seems to show a deranged man (wearing what appears to be a neck brace) staggering into the river, apparently committing suicide. A less than cheery but intriguing way to open a new story!

And then the TARDIS materialises silently in front of the most chilling bill poster ever to appear in Doctor Who - IT IS FORBIDDEN TO DUMP BODIES INTO THE RIVER. Straight away we're getting a keen idea of what sort of a world this is, and it isn't pleasant. Following a rather shaky TARDIS interior scene in which it seems everything pivots on exactly when William Hartnell is going to deliver his line of hanky-waving exasperation, our heroes scamper outside into their first ever location filming (remember: that wasn't Hartnell on location in Guests of Madame Guillotine).

Crisis (Planet of Giants Episode 3)

The one where Forrester's plan blows up in his face...

Planet of Giants is possibly Doctor Who's worst ever season opener. People may think Galaxy 4, The Dominators or Time and the Rani are poor debuts, but at least there's a bit of life in those stories, whether it's Chumblies, Quarks or Bonnie Langford. Here, it's all just so dull and pedestrian and feels like a backward step dramatically from Season 1.

The DVD extras for this story show how little Carole Ann Ford and William Russell remember being involved with it. Indeed, the best Russell can recall is messing about with the oversized matchsticks. The actors don't seem convinced or invested in the serial at all, except perhaps Hartnell with his customary vim. Right from the start we have this sterile exchange between Jacqueline Hill and William Russell, which they deliver as if they're robots devoid of expression or emotion:

Barbara: "Ian - the Doctor and Susan. They must have been drowned."
Ian: "We don't know. We must go and find out."

Dangerous Journey (Planet of Giants Episode 2)

The one where the Doctor and Susan are like rats up a drainpipe...

"Doctor, I think the cat's losing interest," says Ian.
"Don't relax! One swipe of its paw could smash us to pieces!" replies the Doctor.
I can't help thinking this exchange would have been better as part of last week's cliffhanger, just to accentuate the danger they were in.

The thing with Planet of Giants is that it's just so humdrum. There's nothing wrong with the concept (indeed, the idea of the travellers being miniaturised had been mooted as the very first story in 1963) but the loquacious way writer Louis Marks has gone about telling the story makes for rather dull viewing. It's not bad as such, just not very good.

Planet of Giants (Episode 1)

The one where the TARDIS crew is reduced to the size of "roughly an inch"...

Doctor Who is back! After seven long weeks between seasons (how did fans manage to wait that long back in the 1960s?!), the new series kicks off with Planet of Giants, which is something of a spoiler in itself. It takes the Doctor and friends more than 10 minutes to work out what the viewer's known since the beginning!

It seems to be business as usual aboard the TARDIS, with the Doctor busying himself around the console in his new cape (another one!) and ordering Susan to check the fault locator. She notices an amber alert on the instrument, which reads QR18 A14D, which in English means: "Bloody hell, the doors have opened in flight!"