11 – Eleventh Season – Jon Pertwee

The Time Warrior

The Doctor is being secluded in a high security facility because scientists are disappearing. There he meets a young lady, who claims to be scientist, but is actually a journalist: Sarah Jane Smith. The Doctor figures out that the scientists are being taken back in time to medieval England via advanced technology, and just before he leaves in the TARDIS, Sarah Jane stows away. When they arrive, there is a dispute going on between neighboring castles, and one of the groups is being aided by a Sontaran. His ship has crashed, and he needs help to get it repaired. He offers the humans weapons in exchange for their help, primarily materials. But he also needs more skilled technicians than he can find in Medieval England, thus the kidnapping of scientists from the 20th Century. This story not only introduced Sarah Jane and the Sontarans, but also is the first time we hear the Doctor identify his home world as Gallifrey.

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Invasion of the Dinosaurs

The Doctor and Sarah Jane return to London in the present after defeating the Sontaran, but there is almost no one around. It turns out there has been an evacuation because dinosaurs are popping in and out all over the city. The two are initially arrested as looters, but eventually make it back to UNIT. The Doctor sets out to study the problem and concludes that someone is messing around with time. And indeed they are. The dinosaurs are brought forward for a period of time, but eventually return to their proper time. And this is done by a conspiracy who plan to go back to an imagined better time when we didn’t have all of this technology, pollution, and generally awful stuff of modern life. The problem of progress and pollution was previously addressed in The Green Death, so this can be seen as a companion story that says “Yes, this is a problem, but there is a right way to go about fixing the problem.” And Captain Mike Yates, who appeared in the earlier story here is made a member of the conspiracy and a traitor to UNIT.

Note that in the next to last scene, the Doctor “reverses the polarity” which makes the conspirators disappear. This is the classic bit of gobble-de-gook associated with Pertwee, who is famous for the phrase “reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.” And while the dinosaurs themselves are extremely bad, it is a good story. There just wasn’t a lot they could do on a BBC budget in those days (the end of 1973).

Reviews

Death to the Daleks

Although this is a Dalek story, they are not really necessary to the plot, so you could take them out and still have perfectly good story. The TARDIS is drained of all of its power by a mysterious force. The Doctor and Sarah are separated, and each is attacked by the native inhabitants. The Doctor is able to fight off his attackers, and meets up with an expedition from Earth that is here to obtain a rare mineral, Parrinium, which is only abundant on this planet, and is needed to cure a plague that would otherwise kill millions. And it turns out the natives are the remnants of a once mighty civilization that had spaceships and traveled to other planets, including Earth. And they build a city that is self-contained, protects itself, and gets its power from a beacon that sucks in power from any nearby force. One group of the natives now worships the city, and makes sacrifices to it, which nearly included Sarah Jane. The other group is much smaller, but has retained their intelligence. Unfortunately they are considered enemies by the more primitive group, and hunted down. What has to happen is that the city must be destroyed, including the beacon that drains power. Then everyone can leave, and the Earth mission can succeed in saving lives.

Note that I have not mentioned the Daleks yet. They are really that tangential to the story. They are also after the mineral, and their ship also has its power drained. They do Dalek-y things through the story until they are destroyed in the final scene.

Reviews

The Monster of Peladon

The Doctor and Sarah land on Peladon 50 years after the Doctor’s previous visit, and find that the old King is gone and his daughter now rules. Sarah does her usual “women’s lib” thing to get the Queen to be more assertive, which she needs to be. Someone is causing trouble and riling up the miners, who have a legitimate beef because the benefits of joining the Federation have not trickled down to them as yet. As the situation spirals out of control, the Mine Engineer Eckersley convinces the Ambassador (again, Alpha Centauri) that she needs to call in Federation troops, which arrive in the form of Ice Warriors. In the previous story, The Curse of Peladon, the Ice Warriors proved to be the good guys, but this lot most definitely are the bad guys. They declare Martial Law, and insist on getting the Trisilicate production up again.

And we learn that there is a war between the Federation of a group called Galaxy 5, and eventually it transpires that the Ice Warriors, and Eckersley, are all agents of Galaxy 5. The Trisilicate is a vital mineral for the war, and if Galaxy 5 can get it, they might win. Many bodies are left on the ground in this one, and the Chancellor is one of them. But the divide between the minors and the nobles goes away when faced with a common enemy, the Doctor convinces the Queen to make the leader of the miners the new Chancellor.

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Planet of the Spiders

In a monastery run by Tibetan Buddhists a group of men make contact with the planet Metebelis 3, which is home to a race of giant spiders with great telepathic powers. And it turns out they are searching for the blue crystal that the Doctor grabbed back in The Green Death. The spiders can take over the brain of a person, which not only gives them control, but gives the person access to their powers. One man from the group has decided this would be his path to great power, so he willingly lets himself be taken over by a spider. He manages to steal the blue crystal and gets away from the pursuit by the Doctor, but by sheer coincidence Mike Yates has also gone to this monastery, and when he thinks there is funny business going on, he contacts Sarah Jane Smith to come investigate. But he only has the crystal for a short time before someone else steals it, a man at the monastery who is developmentally disabled, and is attracted to pretty, shiny things. But the Crystal actually heals his mind and makes him normal.

On Metebelis 3, there is also a colony of humans from Earth who are being exploited by the spiders, and seem powerless to fight back. But the Doctor helps them to fight back. Yet in the end, he finds he has to return the blue crystal, which ends up killing both him and the megalomaniac leader of the Spiders, The Great One. And then the Doctor regenerates, turning into Doctor #4, Tom Baker.

Reviews

Jon Pertwee Reviewed

Katy Manning Reviewed

Missing Episodes

Season 11

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