A Quick Guide to Classic Who Season 14

0:16 changes of his due season 14 brought the Sarah Jane Smith era to a close unusually she didn't leave at the end of the season but partway through the season began on the 4th of September 1976 and ended on the 2nd of April 1977 by now that she would really settled into its current format still roughly 25 episodes long but spread among six stories rather than the

1:03 five that was coming the Pertwee era this season debuted the most unusual TARDIS console room of the classic era look at that beauty all wooden pals and striking miss the design was a hit with the fans but after filming this season there was problems with it in storage and it warped so they went back to the usual white plastic for season 15 there had been fairly regular TARDIS redesigns in the previous 13 seasons but this was by far the most noticeable some people have theorized that in universe the wooden console room was later altered to become the stone when used in the McGann TV movie all I know is that I'd love to see this idea reused sometime the mask of mandragora is the first story and I dare you to say its name over and over and over again while drunk it'll entertain everyone else in the

1:50 room the TARDIS comes across some living energy in the time vortex the mandragora helix and it hitchhikes with the TARDIS to 15th century Italy where it possesses an astronomer and begins a cult its aim is to create a new religion worshipping itself and stop the Renaissance because what else are you gonna do when you're a piece of sentient energy you'd be bored it'll be fun this is one of the few classic stories where the companion actually asked why they can suddenly understand non-english language speakers in this case 15th century Italian you'll be glad to know the answers about his vague as it was in the new series Renaissance Italy is played by Port Marion and Wales it was a masterful choice because it had been built by an eccentric architect to be a Mediterranean style village full of actual buildings brought over from Italy

2:35 in Spain I've been there and it's an incredible place to visit makes me wonder where the new series hasn't made use of it yet and this has nothing to do with Doctor Who I only mention it because people will yell at me if I don't Port Marion is where the prisoner was filmed Patrick McGoohan I am NOT a number I am a free man evil weather balloon and all the masks of mondragor is four episodes long that is pretty average but then again pretty average and Philip Hinchcliffe here a doctor who would be pretty damn good in some other eras next to Sarah Jane's last story the hand of fear inspired by the classic b-movie the crawling hand the TARDIS lands in a quarry in modern-day earth insert obvious joke here and the doctor and Sarah are caught in a mining explosion they're okay but Sarah's found underneath some rubble with a hand

3:21 wrapped around hers the hands unearthed and silicon-based and apparently dead but Sarah Jane's possessed dramatic chord Sarah Jane was a regular for just over three seasons and at least once a season they found some way for her to be evil usually it was possession like this but there was the time she was replaced by an evil robot I'm not entirely sure but I think evil Sarah Jane was just something that I mused the writers I bet like torturing O'Brien in Star Trek Deep Space 9 she's been possessed by a being called Eldred a horrible alien who had been the leader of his people but was exploded and sent into deep space for being a dick you might think they were doing some overkill but the fact that millions of years later he manages to possess Sarah and manages to create a new body for himself thanks to radiation

4:06 indicates that maybe maybe just maybe they weren't in a way he returns home to find out that all of his people committed suicide once he'd gone just in case he managed to return and tried to take over again there are [ __ ] I love the hand of fear literally mailed the complaint sir Sarah Jane's costume which even lists Layton insulted until the day she died and the final reveal of eldred's true form it's just so [ __ ] generic as rock people designs go at the very end of the story the doctor receives a message from the Time Lords that he needs to return home and humans are not allowed to set foot in Gallifrey so Sarah Jane needs to leave him very sad yes but the Time Lords from the war games didn't need to ask the doctor to come home once they were in the position

4:53 to send him a message they were in the position to do far more than that also no humans on Gallifrey but Jamie and Zoe annoy the Time Lords so much that their whole species was banned Jesus so Sarah Jane's gone really to reappear more than other companion I just star in two spin-off shows one of whom is really [ __ ] good the doctor heads off without a companion and rent the deadly assassin nowadays this story fights with the caves of Androzani is the best story of the classic show but when it first aired this was hated it made the Time Lord two squabbling joke for species the title was ridiculous and the story was clearly ripped off from The Manchurian Candidate of all things now I'm somewhere in the middle of these two opinions it's a fine story

5:39 although it did rip off the Manchurian Candidate and the title is stupid as for the Time Lords I cannot agree with the problems people had the Time Lords journey to becoming a joke started almost as soon as the war games aired and this was simply the next logical step so what's going on well the lord president of Gallifrey has been assassinated the Time Lord media are being shitty there's the Time Lord CIA the celestial intervention agency doing random crap a Chancellor goth who might be Time Lord one from the war games is working for the master yes we finally have the master again

6:38 why have you brought me here he suffered a botched regeneration and now looks like one of the blind dad only with eyes they're unclear as to whether this is technically the same incarnation as the Delgado one and where the doctor and goth fight inside the matrix which is nearly the exact same as the matrix in the film series - the budget in bullet time this is an odd story and it's four parts long so about the companion thing the doctor has no companion in this story because Tom Baker was well into his alcohol powered egomania and decided that the doctor didn't need one because they took some of his limelight so this story was partially an experiment to see if he was right when it was explained the part of the reason for the companion was for the doctorate of someone to talk to Tom decided that his next companion

7:24 should be a talking cabbage he was not joking but he might have been drunk when he decided that that's not a talking cabbage but the Sixth Doctor did end up with a talking penguin for a companion for a while not in the TV show and the books and the audios and a way the experiment was deemed a failure and he'd have companion again from the next story the face of evil so do you remember back in season 12 Story 1 when I mentioned that the doctor had run off off screen and [ __ ] to the computer well they're gonna deal with that now the TARDIS arrives on a mysterious planet and when the doctor explores he discovers that one of the mountains has his face most people would be confused by that the Fourth Doctor is not most people a survey ship landed on this planet centuries ago and its computer had been damaged so the doctor just after

8:10 regenerating had tried to repair it leaving the computer with a split personality and quite quite mad the doctor then returned home to unit 4 robot and promptly forgot about what he did the computer being insane separated the crew of the ship into two groups and added artificial pressures to each to see what would happen over the centuries it turned the survey team into the primitive seven team tribe and the technical guys into the tash who mostly dressed like this for some reason this story introduces Leela one of the sever team famous for many reasons partly to do with her costume but also because she's the only companion who's even more likely to stop you than Jamie you seem unhurt there's no virtue in dying leader that rather depends on what you do to avoid it Nina

8:56 put the knife away I'm sure he's a reasonable man I love Lila she's ignorant blunt and uncultured but keenly intelligent and always learning Philip Hinchcliffe had the idea that the next companion should be analyzed adieu little figure that the doctor could teach and make more cultured but rather than do a straight eliza doolittle type and have allowed an encode Victorian they went for read Sonya which I think he'll agree is a far better idea this is another good story good all-round but my favorite stuff deals with computers insanity seeing Tom Baker screaming with the voice of a small child is [ __ ] brilliant

9:42 so with that we're onto the robots of death whodunnit sat on a June likes and Manor where the crew were waited on hand and foot by robots the story is supposed to be a mystery the fact that people are being murdered by the robots is supposed to be a surprise this is like I Kathak Christie writing a novel called the butler [ __ ] killed everyone and in a stunning twist he did they even keep the mistery going on for a while before honestly it's like they finally realized the name of the story and just gave up on it don't get me wrong this is a very good story and the robots look [ __ ] brilliant even if the human guest stars look very very silly the story is just insanely badly named and onto the final story the talons of Wang Qiang and this is one of the single most problematic stories of classic who it's a brilliant script for

10:29 robert holmes and is considered one of the highlights of the fourth doctor era it introduced ideas that are still in play today and it even managed to be the only piece of Doctor Who the Christopher Eccleston has admitted to liking but at the same time it's set in the criminal underworld of Chinese immigrants in Victorian London a time and place that was incredibly racist and it makes use of white guys in yellow face basically this is Doctor Who's Birth of a Nation out of all the stories that can be called racist this is the only true top-of-the-range complete classic but it exists so I'm not gonna sugarcoat it it's Victorian London there are Chinese criminal gangs the doctors decided to dress like Sherlock Holmes and a war criminal who fled from the 51st century is hiding out in pretending to be Wang Qiang possibly heavily fictionalized

11:16 Chinese god they're elements borrowed from the Phantom of the Opera Sherlock Holmes and plenty more this is drenched in Victoriana the war criminal Magnus grill is the latest in a very long line of Doctor Who villains with booming deep voices trying he's no Gabriel wolf but he's still very good at what he does and what he does is loud what have you called before you became a Chinese god I am Agnes grave oh yes the infamous Minister of Justice what exactly is greal hiding from time agents from the 51st century basically Captain Jack

12:03 Harkness Moffitt's weird interest in setting stories in the 51st century stems from this story this also features a pig brain evil cyborg called mr. sin played by deep Roy who played the Oompa Loompas and Tim Burton's Willy Wonka and hilariously badly made giant rat what about the are us rodents of unusual size I don't think that exists this story has its issues and they are really [ __ ] massive but it's still a classic story it features when a Robert Holmes has best double axe and jaegwan Lightfoot who we're going to get their own TV spin-off and eventually got through an audio show talans is a great work but you can't ignore its

12:49 problems as much as some people try to it's racist and a horrible blot and Robert Holmes is Doctor Who writing career even more than the really [ __ ] terrible space pirates so that's that for season 14 again it's mostly really good again it's more good in average than good and bad but you might wanna avoid talents for obvious reasons and I'll see you next time for my favorite Tom Baker story the return of the Sontarans and the first look at the TARDIS swimming pool

13:36 you