A Quick Guide to Classic Who Season 20

0:00 [Music] tumbling through. You don't know where you land. It's so dark in mythology. Treasures of history to be found. The legends of time. All the hand works remaining only. [Music] It had to happen eventually. The second Doctor Who anniversary season. Many of

0:48 the stories this season reference or echo the past and one echoes the future, but no one knew it at the time. It ran between the 3rd of January and the 16th of March 1983, meaning this was the season I was born during. That doesn't mean I'm very impressed by it. The opening story, the Ark of Infinity, is made up of interesting and notable things, but it doesn't quite coales into an equally interesting hole. It brings Tegan back. She spent most of the previous season trying to get back to her regular life, and less than a story later, she's back. Genius. This is the first piece of abroad filming since City of Death. The story is partially set in Amsterdam. It features the return of Omega, connecting this season to the three Doctors from season 10. And most randomly, it

1:34 features future Doctor Colin Baker as Commander Maxwell of Time Lord Security. In Time Crash, when the 10th Doctor tried to place where the fifth Doctor was in his timeline by mentioning Time Lords and Silly Hats, where are you now? Time lords and funny hats and the master. Oh, he just showed up again. He was talking about Maxel. At one point, Maxel shoots the doctor, meaning that to this day, Colin Baker likes to claim that he got the role by killing his predecessor. Hello, I'm the Doctor. My last incarnation. I was never happy with that one. Interestingly, Colin was a bit like the other Baker when filming this story. He was told to tone his performance down because the show is called Doctor Who and not the Commander Maxel Show, and he refused. His logic

2:21 was that everyone should act like they're the star of their own story and so wouldn't tone himself down. As a result, it's like Five gets enveloped by a massive blob of acting. Davidson is a good actor, but Colin Baker can be borderline Brian Blessed. It's not a fair fight. Nissa and the Doctor are alone when an antimatter creature invades the TARDIS and tries to take over the Doctor's body. The Time Lords immediately order the Doctor's execution because they're 1980s time lords. A stiff breeze is [ __ ] terrifying to them. Omega, who in between taking part in a podcast with me, has spent so much time in an antimatter universe that he's been reduced to pretty much nothing but his mind and will. He's trying to create a new body, an exact duplicate of the doctors. And of course, this is

3:06 connected to mysterious events in Amsterdam. Events happening near Tegan. This is no three doctors. Omega is a bit more sympathetic this time, but his redesign is silly. And maybe it's just me, but after the deadly assassin and the invasion of time, the shocking idea that a time lord could be treacherous is a little bit boring. And it'll get ever more boring as the 80s go on. Snake dance is the sequel to Kinda and sees the return of the Mara, the mind-based snake monster. Ever since its defeat in Kinda, it's sort of been sleeping in Tegan's mind, but it wakes again and directs the TARDIS to the planet Manusa, where the locals are celebrating the 500th anniversary of the defeat of the legendary Mara. It possesses Martin Cloons, who's playing a drag queen, and intends to use a crystal to give itself a corporeal body. To defeat the Mara,

3:54 the Doctor lets himself get bitten by a snake and has to learn to master his fear or something. This and Kinda are two stories that Steven Moffett positively worships. He's not really tried to recreate anything from them, but he adores them. In his time as a loud and abrasive Doctor Who fan, kind of like I am right now, he abused pretty much every story of the classic show, except the two featuring the Mara. This might or might not have anything to do with the fact that Peter Davidson's real name is Peter Moffett. This is a little bit more traditional than its predecessor, Kinda, but it's still fairly eccentric. The snake effects are still terrible, but Janet Fielding really shines as both Tegan and the Mara. As companion possession stories go, both Kinda and Snake Dance are near the top of the pile. I'd suggest

4:39 checking this story out, but make sure you watch Kinda first. And from there to Modern Undead, where we pick up a new companion in Turlo, an alien who's on a mission to kill the Doctor. We have the long- aaited return of the Brigadier. We last saw him in season 13. He's a teacher now because this was scripted for William Russell to play in Chesterton, but he had to drop out. It's wonderful to see the Brig again after so long, but we almost got to see someone for the first time in much, much longer. The fact that I know that Ian was supposed to feature here just breaks my enjoyment of the story, and I'm sorry if I just broke yours, but if I didn't mention that stuff, someone would have pointed it out in the comments. Having said all that, I will try to be fair to the story. The doctor meets the Brig in 1983 and discovers the brigadier has no

5:27 idea who he is. total amnesia about the doctor, TARDIS, Bessie, everything. While in 1977, Tegan and Nissa come across a younger version of the brigadier who does know about the doctor, the TARDIS, Bessie, and everything. There's also an alien called Modin, which is Welsh for undead. So, the title of the story is a little bit silly in Wales. Modin needs the doctor's remaining regenerations to end him crew's suffering. And of course, by the end of all this, the brigadier thing will make sense, sort of a bit. In giving those solid dates for the story, they made the unit dating issues even worse. To begin with, almost no one had any idea when the Perwe and Tom Baker unit stories were set. And then Modern Undead came along and said the Brigadier retired from unit in

6:12 1976. So everything from the invasion to terror of the Zyons must have happened before that. But the invasion chronologically the first unit story is supposed to be set in 1979 meaning everything after that was supposed to be set in the 80s. We know when the invasion took place because the invasion was 4 years after the web of fear which was 40 years after the abominable snowmen which was definitely set in 1935. So thank you modern undead for breaking the unit timeline so badly that jokes are made about it in the show itself. Malcolm, I need you to send me one of my father's incident files code named Chroma. 70s or 80s depending on the dating protocol. Anyway, this also kickstarts a whole new trilogy of stories as the Black Guardian forces Turlo to murder the doctor for him. It's kind of

6:59 pathetic when an almost godlike being needs to enlist the guy discovered Steve Irwin to kill his arch nemesis for him. Yes, that Steve Irwin. Mark Strickson went on to become a nature documentary filmmaker. So, yeah, modern undead. It broke continuity and it's nice to see the brigadier again. I would have preferred to see Chesterton, but apart from that, it's pretty inoffensive. Next is Terminus, where Nissa leaves. There's a joke in there. Anyway, Terminus is a massive ship located at the exact center of the universe. How anyone can calculate that, I have no idea because I think I understand physics better than this story does. There are space pirates, and Turlo was again ordered to kill the doctor by the Black Guardian, and still doesn't. Nissa is infected with Lazar's

7:46 disease and Terminus is a shitty space hospital run by an evil corporation. It's crewed by a bunch of slaves called the Vanir who sort of kind of work with a dog monster called the Garm because someone had a hard on for Norse mythology at the time. And Terminus might have caused the big bang when it went through time and lost an engine. It might also destroy the universe if its damaged other engine explodes. So, naturally, at the end of the adventure, the cured Nissa decides to stay on board Terminus and help it be a better hospital. Sarah Sutton did not want to leave the show, and the story's lack of coherence makes me think the writer didn't want her to go either, and he was desperately trying to save her by sabotaging the story. Didn't work. The single most memorable part of the story is the bit where Nissa takes off her

8:32 skirt to show that she's got a fever. When a story is crazy but outdone by half-hearted fanervice, there is a slight problem. This isn't good. The final part of the Black Guardian trilogy is Enlightenment, and it introduces the Eternals, another one of the superbeing races that the new show likes to pretend doesn't exist, so the Doctor can be the highest authority. The Tardis lands in an Edwwardian sailing vessel. It's in space and taking part in an interstellar sailing contest to find enlightenment. The Eternals are the officers in all the ships. Being eternal and higher beings, they are bored and they can read minds. So, they alleviate their boredom by reading people's minds. Enlightenment will somehow help them not to be bored. Their ship's crews are all humans because sailors innermost thoughts are

9:17 both easy to access and rarely boring. Turlo finally turns against the Black Guardian and refuses to kill the doctor and tries to commit suicide. The race is won by Captain Rack and her pirate ship, and both guardians appear with birds on their heads because stupid. I suppose in context, the story makes more sense than you'd expect based on my summary. It's fine. I prefer it over the other two parts of the Black Guardian trilogy, but it's a bit like an inferior remake of the War Games that's crazier and much shorter. From there to the last story of the season, the king's demons, as the master is using a shape-changing robot to replace King Jon and stop him from signing the Magna Carta and therefore mildly annoy history buffs. And how does he plan to get him to not sign the Magna

10:04 Carta? By making him an [ __ ] One of England's least popular kings. And his plan is to make him an [ __ ] so there's a revolt and he won't sign the Magna Carta. Even though in real life him being an [ __ ] started a revolt which resulted in him signing the Magna Carta. This like Black Orchid is a two-parter and it's harmless. It's like a weird and not great heartnully or historical with some added Davidson tropes like a ridiculous master plan. It's interesting but it's not good. Maybe it would have made more sense with some extra time but I doubt it. This story introduced Chameleon, the shape-changing robot, and if there's a classic who companion that you're not aware of, it's probably him. He was a member of the TARDIS crew and appeared in all of six episodes. And I think he

10:51 was being used for evil by the Master in all six of those episodes. So, what's Chameleon's story? Well, basically, someone decided they needed a shape-shifting robot companion that would be played by a robot that no one but the creator could operate. Then the creature died, so no one could operate it. For some reason, it was decided to bring him along in the TARDIS at the end of the story, where he was put in a store room until the end of season 21. Now, this is normally where I would finish off, but The Five Doctors wasn't part of any particular season, so I'm going to slot it in here. For me, The Five Doctors is the best anniversary story. It features in one way or another all five doctors. It's got Susan, the brigadeier, Sarah Jane, unused footage

11:37 from Shada. Cameos from Jaime and Liz Shaw. Well, fake versions anyway, and the master trying to be a good guy. It introduced the Raston Warrior robot. My favorite one appearance alien, which decimates a whole platoon of cybermen. The second doctor is in his yeti skin coat. We get our first look at Rascalon. Not Rassalon in name only from the end of time. the real Rascalon who can turn people into living statues with his mind while he's in a coma. We have two returning timelord characters in the Castellan from Ark of Infinity and Barussa from the deadly assassin, Invasion of Time and Ark of Infinity. Now, it's not perfect, but it is a joyous celebration of the show's history up to that point. And to me, that's what the anniversary stories should be. Some people think anniversary stories should

12:22 look to the future, but every new story does that. The anniversaries are where you should celebrate where you've been and who's been along for the ride. Now, the script wasn't brilliant to begin with, and on top of that, suffers because Fraser Hines had to drop out. So, his role was reduced to a cameo, and Tom Baker decided not to return, meaning heavy rewrites had to be done, and it was damaged further. So, don't watch this for a good script. It was during the filming of this that Patrick Troutton advised Peter Davidson to quit after three seasons. advice that he followed and passed on to David Tenant who did the same. So Tenant fans who are upset that they didn't get more tan, blame my favorite doctor. The special edition DVD of this has one of my favorite Easter eggs of all time. There is a secret commentary by Phil

13:08 Collinsson and David Tenant where they fanboy gush over it for 90 minutes and Helen Rener is mildly confused. It's wonderful. I want to know one of those figures. I know they are in someone's attic arch. Someone really does have them. If you're listening to this, write in and tell us. Yeah. So, that was season 20. Weaker than season 19, but missing any complete disasters like time flight. Join me next time for the return of the Silurans and the Sea Devils in the same story. It's all changing the TARDIS as Turlo and Tegan depart and the Doctor regenerates. And what about Chameleon? [Music] Measure the sun.

13:55 [Music]