Terminus Part One

The one where the TARDIS merges with a passing spaceship...

Turlough is not your average Doctor Who companion. His overriding trait is that he's self-serving, always looking for ways to help himself and further his own cause. He's desperate to return to his home planet (what he was doing masquerading as a public schoolboy on Earth in 1983 remains unexplained) and even made a pact with the devil (aka the Guardian of Darkness and Chaos) to try and achieve his aims. In exchange, the Guardian wants Turlough to kill the Doctor, which is why the lad now finds himself masquerading not as a public schoolboy, but as the Doctor's companion. It's an interesting direction to take for the series, making one of the Doctor's supposedly trusted allies an imposter, a traitor looking out only for himself.

Turlough meddles with TARDIS tech found behind the wall roundels, operating the blue switches before almost being rumbled by a highly suspicious Tegan. It's perfect that Tegan would not trust this boy, and the rather heated conversation between them proves that tensions run high. Tegan regards Turlough as unreliable, dangerous and patronising, while he sees her as rude, argumentative and stubborn. Both of them are right, to be honest!

Mawdryn Undead Part Four

The one where the Doctor agrees to sacrifice the rest of his lives for his companions...

Mawdryn and his seven miscreant mutants have asked the Doctor for help: is he willing to donate all eight of his future selves to release them from their perpetual mutation? "I can only regenerate 12 times," the Doctor explains. "I have already done so four times." Well, that's what you think, Doctor, but let's not let the entanglements of The Timeless Children muddy what's happening here. Mawdryn is asking the Doctor not just for help, but to murder his eight future selves. No Colin, no Sylv, no Paul, no Chris, no David, no Matt, no Peter, no Jodie, and definitely no John. The Doctor would die for ever at the end of his fifth life.

The Doctor refuses, and I don't blame him. These scientists are in this state through their own meddling, after stealing technology from Gallifrey and then experimenting for centuries to try and live forever. But what they have done to themselves is irreversible. Mawdryn and his cronies aren't villains as such, they are merely victims of their own scientific curiosity and hubris. But at the end of the day it is their own fault, and it's a lot to ask the Doctor to sacrifice his future to give them theirs. "Sometimes you have to live with the consequences of your actions," the Doctor says, sadly.

Mawdryn Undead Part Three

The one where Mawdryn and his mutants emerge from their chrysalis...

Tegan, Nyssa and the 1977 Brigadier are arguing over whether they think the mutated creature wandering about the TARDIS dressed as the Fourth Doctor is actually the newly regenerated, Sixth Doctor. The Brigadier and Nyssa are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but good old Tegan remains highly suspicious, and as ever, says all the things I'd be saying or thinking. She points out that the Doctor regenerated into a human last time, but Mawdryn ripostes: "Is a Gallifreyan human?" There's nothing to say that the Doctor wouldn't regenerate into a non-human form. One thing's for sure though: Mawdryn's clothes regenerated with him, like when Hartnell became Troughton and Baker became Davison. Unless those flowing robes are part of Mawdryn...?

Mawdryn insists on going back to the ship alone, claiming the presence of another being could harm its restorative qualities. Tegan is adamant she's not letting Mawdryn/ the Doctor go alone, and physically stops the compliant Nyssa from opening the TARDIS doors. Tegan holds her resolve as long as she can, but loses in the end, and Mawdryn is allowed to leave alone. Janet Fielding is wonderful in these scenes, demonstrating why Tegan is one of the best companions of the classic era. She has opinions, she has guts, she has principles, and she sticks by them. She's fiercely loyal, but also fiercely independent.

Mawdryn Undead Part Two

The one where Tegan meets a past version of the Brigadier, and the Brigadier meets a new version of the Doctor...

Thanks to the transmat control unit exploding, Turlough fails to smash the Doctor's head in with a boulder. The TARDIS then materialises, momentarily, before disappearing again, which shouldn't have happened. Then we see the TARDIS materialising in the same place again, but the Doctor and Turlough are no longer there. It's a puzzling course of events and no mistake!

Rather wonderfully, the Brigadier arrives at the obelisk with Hippo, and the Doctor's face lights up as he spots his old friend and comrade, Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. Sadly, it's not quite the reunion hoped for, as the Brigadier doesn't appear to know who the Doctor is, in this fifth incarnation or any other. Curiouser and curiouser...

Mawdryn Undead Part One

The one where the Brigadier turns up as a teacher at a private boys' school...

The first five minutes of this new story spend time setting up a new character called Turlough, but Turlough is not all he seems. On the surface he's a pupil at Brendon School for Boys, a bit of a troublemaker (and, evidence suggests, a bit of a swine), but it's not long until we discover he's not actually human, not from Earth at all. He may look like a handsome public school boy, but really he's a creature from another world. Weird, but I like it...

But Turlough is something of a git. For a start, he's a bully, constantly having a go at his supposed pal Ibbotson (aka Hippo), calling him names (names which aren't even true, such as "fat") and purposefully preying on the poor lad's self-confidence. OK, Hippo's a bit whiney, but he doesn't deserve the treatment Turlough dishes out. Turlough's shady!

Snakedance Part Four

The one where the Mara is destroyed forever...

"Kill them!" Lon demanded at the end of part 3. Nyssa screams. "No!" interrupts Tanha at the beginning of part 4. "You can't do that." Oh, OK then. So that was one of those false jeopardy cliffhangers I dislike so much, where a very definite execution is halted by the sudden appearance of someone who disagrees. It's cheap melodrama, and Snakedance deserves better.

The inert nature of part 3 gives way to a burst of welcome action when the Doctor, Nyssa and Chela are confronted with Lon in Ambril's chambers. Lon requests that the Doctor see the Great Crystal before he's killed, asking Ambril to open the box it's kept in. Fittingly, the opening of a box sparks the Doctor into action, just as the opening of the Box of Jana in Kinda inspired terrible fear in those observing.

Snakedance Part Three

The one where everybody waits...

After two solid episodes that too often slip under fandom's radar, part 3 of Snakedance lets the story down terribly. It's not that it's bad, in any way, but so little happens that you feel somewhat cheated. People talk, people go from A to B, but the plot has barely moved on at all by the end of the 25 minutes.

The theme of the episode seems to be 'patience'. Everybody's waiting for something, and that includes the audience. On an intellectual level, writer Christopher Bailey has pulled off a bit of a coup by making this third episode so static, because one of the principal teachings of Buddhism is the search for patience and mental well-being. Buddha considered patience to be one of the mental states that an awakened person has perfected. It is an act of compassion toward ourselves, and also leads to peace and spiritual well-being. By making both his characters and audience wait for the 'next big thing' (in this case, the Manussan ceremony) Bailey is imposing his Buddhist creed onto Doctor Who. Clever, but not entertaining!

Snakedance Part Two

The one where the Mara makes slaves of men...

Peter Davison really nails his Doctor in this story. He brings out the Doctor's eccentricity, something each of his predecessors managed to portray quite organically, but which Davison has to work at. He's not naturally eccentric, and his youth works against him in this regard, but here he plays the Doctor as a scatty professor, his mind racing as he tries to connect dots and make sense of what's going on. His little routine with Sarah Sutton opening and closing the TARDIS doors is timelessly amusing. Davison really did find his mojo while making Snakedance.

I love how the Doctor comes across to everybody, including his best friend Nyssa, as a complete lunatic in this story. He races around from place to place making wild assumptions and demanding everybody agrees with him, but even the perception of the viewer is that this man is unhinged. It's the way Christopher Bailey writes it (he wrote similarly in Kinda) and the way Davison plays it: manic, desperate, breathlessly bonkers. Davison puts so much energy into his performance, hurtling about the screen with poor Sarah Sutton trying to keep up. Her frequent eye-rolling exasperation at the Doctor's dotty activities speak for the viewer!

Snakedance Part One

The one where Tegan gets possessed by the Mara again...

Tegan's only been back aboard the TARDIS for a heartbeat and already she's getting possessed by the Mara again! Yes, the Mara, the serpentine entity from Season 19's Kinda, is the returning element in Snakedance, one of Doctor Who's most overlooked stories.

We begin our newest adventure with Nyssa trying to flirt with Dr Who. Everybody thinks that companions having crushes on the Doctor is a 21st century thing, but here it's heavily suggested that Nyssa is desperate for the Doctor's attentions. "Well?" she demands, showing off her latest - and truly awful - outfit. The Doctor doesn't notice her apparel at all, in perfectly Doctorish fashion, and completely misses the fact she's literally pushing herself in front of him, squeezing between him and his TARDIS controls. Who knew that Nyssa had a thing for the Doctor? It's not surprising though, and actually quite refreshing, although I do realise that no such thing was intended by the production team at the time. It's supposed to be a humorous but innocent scene in which Nyssa tries to get the Doctor to notice her new clothes (and nothing more), but with these 21st century eyes, you can read a lot more into it. Nyssa luvs the Doctor!

Arc of Infinity Part Four

The one where the Doctor chases himself around Amsterdam...

There are a good many things wrong or disappointing about Arc of Infinity, but one of the biggest is the waste of some potentially great actors. Director Ron Jones managed to get Leonard Sachs, a veteran actor with a frighteningly impressive CV stretching back almost five decades, as well as Elspet Gray, a future baroness whose work with husband Brian Rix gave her an instinct for comedy timing. But they get virtually nothing of any great note to do or say (particularly Gray), and to be fair don't really bring anything of their own either. Their delivery is leaden and unengaged, although Sachs does seem to burst into life in part 4.

Yes, they're playing stuffy, uber-formalised Time Lords, but that doesn't mean they can't have self-expression, or a bit of individuality. Michael Gough manages to make Hedin both urbane and ruthless, almost sympathetic perhaps, but Sachs, Gray and Max Harvey (Zorac) are content to wander numbly through their scenes. All credit to Paul Jerricho for making the Castellan a more recognisable character, so it'll be good to see him return in The Five Doctors.

Arc of Infinity Part Three

The one where the real identity of the Renegade is revealed...

Just as with the resolution of part 1's cliffhanger, the resolution of part 2's shows that the Doctor isn't really dead. He's actually floating in the black nothingness of the Matrix, wobbling like an ocean wave and subjected to the soundtrack of maniacal laughter. In fact, the Doctor spends an entire 13 of this episode's 24-minute duration wobbling in the Matrix, floating like an upturned tortoise. You can tell it's part 3...

The special effects in this story have a lot to be desired. I suppose they're indicative of the limitations of the time (remember the candy cane lasers in Earthshock?), but the effects used for the lasers and the Matrix in Arc of Infinity are particularly poor. No wonder they wanted to replace them with something better on the DVD (it's arguable whether they managed it or not though).

Arc of Infinity Part Two

The one where Tegan comes back...

It was kind of obvious that the Doctor wasn't really dead. The very first cliffhanger of a brand new series, and they tried to make us believe that Maxil had killed him. Not likely, is it? In actual fact, the Doctor's barely stunned, and groggily sits up within seconds of being gunned down. At least viewers in 1983 only had to wait 48 hours to see what happened next, rather than seven days.

In The Deadly Assassin, when the Doctor was imprisoned and interrogated by Hilred, our hero was stripped to his shirt sleeves and strung up by the wrists in a cavernous chamber. Things seem to have become more civilised in the intervening years, as this time the Doctor is incarcerated in his own TARDIS, specifically in Nyssa's bedroom. It's an odd place to imprison him. I do love how the Doctor looks at the glass of orange juice Nyssa gives him, then absently places it to one side as if he's not sure what to do with it. I also love the evils Nyssa gives Maxil. At last, Sarah Sutton gets to do some emoting!

Arc of Infinity Part One

The one where an anti-matter creature tries to bond with the Doctor...

It's a new series, and Doctor Who's twentieth no less. Although Season 20 kicked off more than 10 months before the anniversary proper, fans were promised something special in each of the run's stories, something from the series' past. In the event, this promise of nostalgia wasn't quite what fans would have hoped for, with the complete loss of a Dalek story to industrial action not helping matters. Arc of Infinity saw the return of the Time Lords and Gallifrey, but they weren't exactly the hot property they once were, The Invasion of Time having dulled their sheen. Season 20's opener also saw the return of a baddie from the programme's 10th anniversary special, but looking quite different and played by a different person. Snakedance brought back a monster from the previous year (hardly nostalgic), while The King's Demons saw the return of the Master (but only because it was contractual to have him in every year). Mawdryn Undead was originally going to see the return of Ian Chesterton, but due to William Russell's unavailability, we got the Brigadier instead (which is nice, but not quite as wonderful). The only elements from the past in Terminus and Enlightenment were the Black and White Guardians, but seeing as each of them had only previously appeared in one lone episode before, we were hardly talking dynamite nostalgia.

Season 20 promised much, but fell short on delivery. So let's begin, with the first episode of Arc of Infinity (known as The Time of Neman in early drafts, which suggested we were going to see the return of Proctor Neman from Johnny Byrne's previous Doctor Who story, The Keeper of Traken!).