A commenter to my most recent Doctor Who blogging, a newcomer to the show, asked for recommendations of classic episodes to check out, of those that are available on DVD. Rather than letting my recommendations get lost in the comments thread, I figured I’d throw ‘em up as a post. So here ya go:
I am not, frankly, much of a fan of the first two Doctors, played by William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton -- nothing against the actors, it’s just that their stories tend to be simplistic, slow-moving, and far more juvenile than those of the later Doctors. The show didn’t begin to move even a little beyond its roots as a kiddie show till the third Doctor, Jon Pertwee, came along. So while some of Hartnell’s and Troughton’s episodes are available on DVD, I can’t wholeheartedly endorse them. But if you want a taste of what their Doctors were like, check out “The Three Doctors” (all links go to the episode’s Amazon.com page), the series’ tenth anniversary show, which finagled the spacetime continuum in order to get all three incarnations of the Doctor to that point into one story.
But Doctor Who really picked up when Jon Pertwee took over the role in 1970. His Doctor was -- for complicated plot reasons -- confined to planet Earth for quite a while, so early Pertwee is a lot of action-packed stories of alien invasion and mid-20th-century science run amuck while the Doctor runs around the planet like an extraterrestrial James Bond saving everyone. (The stalwart soldiers of U.N.I.T. have his back -- that’s the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, the top-secret science and military branch of the world body dedicated to all things alien; it resurfaces in the new series in “Aliens of London.”) Pertwee’s first story, “Spearhead from Space,” features an invasion by the Autons, the plastic-controlling aliens that showed up again in the premiere of the new series. “Inferno” is one of the best stories in the entirety of Who -- it has the Doctor thrown in an alternate Earth similar to the dark Mirror universe of Star Trek where a project to drill to the Earth’s core is endangering the whole planet; the Doctor needs to get home in time to stop the parallel project there from destroying his Earth. “The Green Death” picks up on the eco-concerns of the 70s with its story about corporate malfeasanace and environmental degradation coming back to bite humanity on the ass. “Carnival of Monsters” is a freaky-surreal story about... well, the less you know, the better. But trust me: this one will blow your mind.
Tom Baker took over the role after Pertwee left, and his early years were full of a lot of deliciously gothic stories, like “Pyramids of Mars,” which wraps up Egyptology and Martiania in a spooky package, and “The Talons of Weng-Chiang,” a Victorian tale that combines elements of Sherlock Holmes-style detection and Ripper-esque crime with time-travel intrigue. Also a must-see is “Genesis of the Daleks,” a supercreepy look at how the Doctor’s ultimate enemies got their genetically engineered start. And there’s an entire season called “The Key to Time,” in which the Doctor spends something like 20 or 25 episodes hunting down the pieces of a mysterious and powerful artifact that have been scattered across the universe; one segment, “The Pirate Planet,” was written by Douglas Adams.
Peter Davison had a relatively short tenure as the Doctor -- only three years -- after the, respectively, five- and seven-year reigns of Pertwee and Baker, and not many of his episodes are available on DVD, but check out “Resurrection of the Daleks,” a classic Dalek story in which the Doctor has a powerful confrontation with Davros, the creator of the Daleks, and “The Caves of Androzani,” Davison’s last story -- this one was written by Robert Holmes, who wrote many of the most sophisticated Whos of the 70s and 80s; this one is kick-ass science fiction, which isn’t something that can honestly be said about much of the old series, and is also probably the best showcase of how damn dark and disturbing the old Doctor Who could, at its best, be.
The old series went into a rapid decline after Davison left -- again, no fault of the actors, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, each of whom lasted only two years. The writing got erratic, the concepts baroque, and the execution halfhearted at best. Both actors have their own unique and delightful charms, though, and there are episodes worth a look. Check out Baker’s “Vengeance on Varos,” which must be one of the first satires on reality TV, and McCoy’s “Ghost Light,” which is really bizarre but plays with concepts of time travel and interconnected timelines in a truly intriguing way.
Weirdly, the Doctor Who movie that was produced for American TV in 1996 is not available in the U.S., but you can buy it from Amazon.co.uk
(Technorati tags: Doctor Who, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, DVD)
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