Doctor Who

(TV Movie)

Summary: Feature length and American…two terms that strike fear into the heart of any British TV fan. Still, Sylvester McCoy’s in it, so it’s canon. It’s got shootings, medical drama, high speed chases and snogging…we’re not in Perivale anymore. In fact, we’re in San Francisco on the eve of the millennium (or one year off, if you’re a pedant) and the world is in grave danger for some convoluted reason. Eric Roberts makes an admirably whackjob Master (who takes over a paramedic’s body via a blob of goo), Paul McGann is a credible alien-out-of-water and Grace is by no means the worst companion the Doctor’s ever picked up.

Watch it because: It would be a crime to miss out a whole regeneration.

Original Air Date: 27 May 1996 (UK).
Doctor: Paul McGann (plus a brief bit of Sylvester McCoy).
Companions: Grace Holloway (Daphne Ashbrook).
Writer: Matthew Jacobs.
Director: Geoffrey Sax.
Producer: Peter V. Ware & Matthew Jacobs.
Executive Producer: Philip David Segal, Alex Beaton & Jo Wright.

Survival

(Series 26, Episodes 12-14)

Summary: Ace returns to Perivale where her friends thought she had either died…or gone to Birmingham. On her return, she and the Doctor become embroiled in a sinister version of Cats meets The Hunger Games and she makes a furry friend. And then the Master shows up, feline desperate for the Doctor to get him home.

Watch it because: "There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea's asleep and the rivers dream, people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace — we've got work to do."

Original Air Date: 22 November - 6 December 1989.
Doctor: Sylvester McCoy.

Companions: Ace (Sophie Aldred)
Writer: Rona Munro.
Director: Alan Wareing.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

The Curse of Fenric

(Series 26, Episodes 8-11)

Summary: This story has everything…Vikings, code breakers, Russians, evacuees, doubting vicars, possessed people, zombies, super weapons, booby-trapped chess sets and a baby. And nutters willing to go swimming in the North Sea.

Watch it because: Was everyone drunk when they recorded this?

Original Air Date: 25 October - 15 November 1989.
Doctor: Sylvester McCoy.
Companions: Ace (Sophie Aldred)
Writer: Ian Briggs.
Director: Nicholas Mallett.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

Ghost Light

(Series 26, Episodes 5-7)

Summary: Pyromaniac Ace visited a house in Perivale in 1983 that gave her the willies so the Doctor decides to take a trip there in Victorian times to see what’s up. They uncover a plot to assassinate Queen Victoria and a house full of control freaks with a spaceship in the basement.

Watch it because: You could play a drinking game for every time someone mentions Java.

Original Air Date: 4-18 October 1989.
Doctor: Sylvester McCoy.
Companions: Ace (Sophie Aldred)
Writer: Marc Platt.
Director: Alan Wareing.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

Battlefield

(Series 26, Episodes 1-4)

Summary: UNIT is back and a little more diverse, investigating Arthurian legends whilst the Brig shops for trees with his wife. Mordred is a sleaze, Ace rises out of a lake with Excalibur and the Doctor gets mistaken for Merlin. I’m not entirely sure what everyone is battling over but Ace makes a new buddy who likes explosions as much as she does and the Doctor gets a bit too into the role of Merlin. You’re left wondering: a) what the Doctor cooked for supper and b) where you can read about the crazy adventures of Ace, Shou Yuing, Bambera and Doris.

Watch it because: the new Brig is a worthy successor.

Original Air Date: 6-27 September 1989.
Doctor: Sylvester McCoy.
Companions: Ace (Sophie Aldred)
Writer: Ben Aaranovitch.
Director: Michael Kerrigan.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

(Series 25, Episodes 11-14)

Summary: The Doctor and Ace get tickets to a circus where acts perform for an underwhelmed audience of three who kill the acts they don’t like…which seems to be all of them. Ace joins forces with a werewolf and the brainwashed former owner of the circus to defeat an army of killer clowns and the Doctor ends up performing, quite literally, for his life.

Watch it because: Sylvester McCoy was born to entertain.

Original Air Date: 14 December 1988 – 4 January 1989.
Doctor: Sylvester McCoy.
Companions: Ace (Sophie Aldred)
Writer: Stephen Wyatt.
Director: Alan Wareing.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

Silver Nemesis

(Series 25, Episodes 8-10)

Summary: The Doctor gets a reminder on his smart watch that the world is about to end as Nazis, a 17th century sorceress and the Cybermen race to get their hands on “the nemesis”, a powered comet containing a statue made of living metal. They must reunite the statue with its bow and arrow in order to obtain unlimited power. The Cybermen appear to have upgraded to the Vader vocal package, the crazy sorceress drinks time travel juice and discovers how to hitchhike and the Doctor and Ace spend a lot of time hanging out in a wood. Ultimately, Cybermen weaponry is no match for Ace and her slingshot.

Watch it because: The Cybermen are introduced to jazz.

Original Air Date: 23 November – 7 December 1988.
Doctor: Sylvester McCoy.
Companions: Ace (Sophie Aldred)
Writer: Kevin Clarke.
Director: Chris Clough.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

The Happiness Patrol

(Series 25, Episodes 5-7)

Summary: The Doctor and Ace visit an earth colony on a distant planet in the future where unhappiness is outlawed, killjoys are executed and everyone is forced to listen to piped lift music. They’ve banned all my favourite things: listening to sad music, reading poetry and walking in the rain without an umbrella. And the lesson we all learn is that happiness can’t be forced upon us but crazy eighties’ hairdos can.

Watch it because: The Kandy Man – a baddy constructed from oversized liquorice allsorts who literally kills people by drowning them in liquid sweets. God, I love this show.

Original Air Date: 2-16 November 1988.
Doctor: Sylvester McCoy.
Companions: Ace (Sophie Aldred)
Writer: Graeme Curry.
Director: Chris Clough.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

Remembrance of the Daleks

(Series 25, Episodes 1-4)

Summary: Could that mysterious indestructible creature in the shed possibly be…a Dalek?! We’re back to where it all began, in a junkyard in 1963, where Daleks are appearing in the basement of Coal Hill school and searching for the hand of Omega. Ace experiences a bit of 1960s' sexism and it seems as if the Doctor has been playing a long game with himself. Personally, I ship Alison and Rachel and hope they are very happy raising begonias together.

Watch it because: Not since Barbara Wright ran them down with a truck has a companion attacked a Dalek with such vigour.

Original Air Date: 5-26 October 1988.
Doctor: Sylvester McCoy.
Companions: Ace (Sophie Aldred)
Writer: Ben Aaronovitch.
Director: Andrew Morgan.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

Dragonfire

(Series 24, Episodes 12-14)

Summary: The Doctor and Mel visit an ice planet where they bump back into the cheerfully immoral Sabalom Glitz who is in a spot of bother. The Doctor and Glitz go off in search of a dragon and some treasure and encounter a stranded psychopath who’s literally as cold as ice, dissatisfied and displaced waitress Ace blows a lot of things up and, since Mel decides to stay with Glitz, the Doctor offers Ace a ride home via the scenic route.

Watch it because: This happens for no apparent reason and accurately sums up the Seventh Doctor.

Original Air Date: 23 November - 7 December 1987.
Doctor: Sylvester McCoy.
Companions: Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford) & Ace (Sophie Aldred)
Writer: Ian Briggs.
Director: Chris Clough.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

Delta and the Bannerman

(Series 24, Episodes 9-11)

Summary: The Doctor and Mel win a trip to the 1950s but the tour bus makes an unscheduled stop after a collision with Sputnik and lands in a holiday camp in South Wales. There’s a monotonous hitman on board, along with Delta the Chimeron Queen who is on the run from the nasty Bannermen. Everyone rides around a lot on motorbikes, somehow two random Americans and a beekeeper get involved and Billy is so very cool about the sudden appearance of a green baby.

Watch it because: Helluva soundtrack.

Original Air Date: 2-16 November 1987.
Doctor: Sylvester McCoy.
Companions: Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford).
Writer: Malcolm Kohll.
Director: Chris Clough.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

Paradise Towers

(Series 24, Episodes 5-8)

Summary: The overdramatic synth is still with us as Mel and the Doctor visit Paradise Towers, a luxury apartment complex that’s become home to refugees of an unknown war. The place is full of homicidal cleaning robots, cannibalistic pensioners, a caretaking team obsessed with regulations and Pex the muscled deserted. The Doctor mediates between warring gangs of teenage girls whilst Mel is just obsessed with getting a dip in the rooftop swimming pool.

Watch it because: The debut Sylvester McCoy deserved.

Original Air Date: 5-26 October 1987.
Doctor: Sylvester McCoy.
Companions: Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford).
Writer: Stephen Wyatt.
Director: Nicholas Mallett.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

Time and the Rani

(Series 24, Episodes 1-4)

Summary: The Rani’s latest scheme is kidnapping geniuses, including the Doctor who is suffering from memory loss after his regeneration and doesn’t recognise the Rani when she disguises herself as Mel. Although some of them are collaborating with the Rani, the yellow-skinned Lakertyans of Lakertya do have rather snazzy hairdos. Mel teams up with some of them, the Doctor mangles his idioms and Mel screams a LOT.

Watch it because: The overdramatic synth.

Original Air Date: 7-28 September 1987.
Doctor: Sylvester McCoy.
Companions: Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford).
Writer: Pip and Jane Baker.
Director: Andrew Morgan.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

The Trial of a Time Lord: The Ultimate Foe

(Series 23, Episodes 13-14)

Summary: Ok, so, here’s what happens…so…right…ok, so here’s the thing…it’s…well, the Master’s in it? Kind of like Inception on a BBC budget?

Watch it because: Colin Baker deserved better.

Original Air Date: 29 November – 6 December 1986.
Doctor: Colin Baker.
Companions: Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford).
Writer: Robert Holmes/Pip and Jane Baker.
Director: Chris Clough.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

The Trial of a Time Lord: Terror of the Vervoids

(Series 23, Episodes 9-12)

Summary: In this instalment, the Doctor takes a peek into his future to form his defence; a future in which his new companion Mel forces exercise bikes and carrot juice on him (and golly does she have a pair of lungs on her). They visit a spaceliner where Janet makes a wonderful cup of coffee and the killer plants embody the whole ‘scarier when not seen’ rule of horror (they look like primary school children playing flowers in an end of term production). Never before – or since – has the word ‘hydroponics’ been used so frequently in a TV drama. To the earth shall we all return, eh?

Watch it because: “As a security office, you’re an unmitigated disaster!”

Original Air Date: 1-22 November 1986.
Doctor: Colin Baker.
Companions: Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford).
Writer: Pip and Jane Baker.
Director: Chris Clough.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

The Trial of a Time Lord: Mindwarp

(Series 23, Episodes 5-8)

Summary: The Doctor and Peri end up on a planet where the colour saturation’s gone a bit wrong and people are, well, pretty much warping minds. Peri and her dodgy do patronise a wolf man and Sil, the most spineless, self-serving bad guy in Who history, is back, chilling on a bed of ferns and eating sushi with his mate, the Magnificence. A surgeon performs the most half-hearted CPR ever (and only after finishing his cup of tea), Brian Blessed fits the role of booming, volatile warlord like a glove and the Doctor gets a memory wipe that renders him more selfish and arrogant than ever.

Watch it because: BUB-BYE PERI!

Original Air Date: 4-25 October 1986.
Doctor: Colin Baker.
Companions: Peri Brown (Nicola Bryant).
Writer: Philip Marton.
Director: Ron Jones.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

The Trial of a Time Lord: The Mysterious Planet

(Series 23, Episodes 1-4)

Summary: So…Doctor Who meets Law and Order begins. The Doctor is once again on trial for meddling - a crime punishable by death on Gallifrey apparently. The Valeyard recounts the Doctor and Peri’s trip to a planet that seems strangely like earth where an old woman wants to marry Peri off to multiple husbands and the Doctor is used as slave labour by a power mad robot with a pair of squabbling henchmen.

Watch it because: The Doctor’s irreverent courtroom objections.

Original Air Date: 6-27 September 1986.
Doctor: Colin Baker.
Companions: Peri Brown (Nicola Bryant).
Writer: Robert Holmes.
Director: Nicholas Mallett.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

Revelation of the Daleks

(Series 22, Episodes 12-13)

Summary: Alternative title: Everyone Wants to Kill Davros. Yes, he’s back, keeping bodies in suspended animation, enabling accidental cannibalism and conducting medical experiments. As a backdrop, Tasambeker and Mr Jobel enact a creepier, frumpier version of Romeo and Juliet and you might get whiplash from the mood changes. The Doctor and Peri spend a lot of this wandering around bitching at each other until they join forces with the Grand Knights of the Dodgy Ponytails and pitch two factions of Daleks against one another.

Watch it because: Stabby stabby stab stab.

Original Air Date: 23-30 March 1985.
Doctor: Colin Baker.
Companions: Peri Brown (Nicola Bryant).
Writer: Eric Saward.
Director: Graeme Harper.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

Timelash

(Series 22, Episodes 10-11)

Summary:Yet another time corridor and yet another power-crazed dictator with self-esteem issues, this time on the planet Karfel (apparently visited by the Third Doctor and Jo) where people who rebel against the Borad are sentenced to the Timelash, which distributes them throughout time and space (including nice fishing lodges in Scotland). An unexpectedly lookist Doctor is recruited to retrieve a lost amulet by means of threatening an increasingly irritating Peri. HG Wells is a misogynist, Peri screams a lot and the Doctor is massively wankerish (Peri must be annoying him too).

Watch it because: Well…there’s a brief glimpse of a photograph of Jo Grant?

Original Air Date: 9 - 16 March 1985.
Doctor: Colin Baker.
Companions: Peri Brown (Nicola Bryant).
Writer: Glen McCoy.
Director: Pennant Roberts.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.

The Two Doctors

(Series 22, Episodes 7-9)

Summary: The Second Doctor suffers an existential crisis and needs to find a Doctor for some answers. Doctor 6 enjoys a spot of fishing, tries to eat a cat and kills a man with his bare hands. The Sontarans are definitely involved somehow, there’s a good helping of casual murder and cannibalism and the grotesque Shockeye fancies himself a bit of Andalusian sausage. All in all, a pretty disturbing bloodbath of an episode…

Watch it because: Forget Sarah Jane or Rose, Jamie was undoubtedly the Doctor’s first love.

Original Air Date: 16 February – 2 March 1985.
Doctor: Colin Baker & Patrick Troughton.
Companions: Peri Brown (Nicola Bryant) & Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines).
Writer: Robert Holmes.
Director: Peter Moffatt.
Producer: John Nathan-Turner.