The Seeker

Member: Rank 6
Love love love Jon Pertwee! Mostly season seven. I'll post a review when I have more energy and my arm hurts less. It's been hurting for a while so I haven't been posting much.
 

The Seeker

Member: Rank 6
INFERNO

Taking advantage of a scientific project's nuclear reactor, the Doctor attempts to fix his TARDIS. The project involves drilling through the crust of the earth to access stores of gas underneath, providing cheap and plentiful energy. The drilling becomes problematic when it brings up a green goo that turns whoever touches it into a green monster. Realizing that this is symptomatic of a more serious problem, i.e. the destruction of the entire earth, the Doctor tries to warn his friends. They ignore him and he storms off to his TARDIS, and tries to take off ...

He finds himself in a parallel dimension, his malfunctioning TARDIS slipping him sideways in time. In this universe the Nazis have won the war and his parallel friends are in fact his enemies and suspect that he is a dangerous spy. He tries to stop the project there, but is unable to and once the end of the world is imminent, convinces the crew to help him get back to his own world. Once there he is just barely able to stop the project in time.

I love this serial for the parallel world. Nick Courtney, Caroline John, and John Levine are terrific as evil versions of their regular characters. The story itself is a little silly. The Primords (green monsters) are ridiculous and don't make much sense (I know there needed to be monsters for the kiddies, but green werewolves? Why not red lava monsters?) and the outcome is a little too extreme - why the destruction of the whole world? Why not just Britain? The special edition DVD gives us a lot of behind-the-scenes information and the original screenplay made the parallel world more alien. The months there had different names and were 50 days each, and English spelling was more primitive. I liked the characterizations of the final product better.

The one real failure of the serial is in the last episode. After what he learned in the parallel world, his friends still ignore him until the head of the project turns into a Primoid. His foray into the parallel world is pointless, other than to show the consequences of the Doctor failing. Really, the strength of this story rests on the performances of the actors rather than the actual plot, but for that, it is still my favorite serial.
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
There is something terribly noble about how the people on the doomed world are willing to help save a completely different reality - while not saving themselves - trusting the Doctor that he is not deceiving them - and all the while knowing full well that they are, in their bravery, condemning themselves to a terrible, painful death while allowing the Doctor to escape.

Either that or it is unconvincing plotting..... :emoji_alien:
 

alpha128

Member: Rank 3
John Pertwee is my second favorite Doctor after Tom Baker.

One thing I love about Doctors Three and Four is they both project an air of authority and can waltz into almost any situation and immediately take charge.
 

The Seeker

Member: Rank 6
I loved from the first episode in which I saw him, Carnival of Monsters. He has the authoritative air of a university professor. And I find his lisp endearing! I loved the dynamic between him and Jo Grant, and between him and the Brigadier.
 

chainsaw_metal1

Member: Rank 8
He was the James Bond Doctor. Gadgets, martial arts, a proper SMERSH villain in The Master, The Brig as M, Jo Grant as the doe eyed Bond girl (sans sex, unless you count her posing naked with a Dalek - Rawr!). He also had that professor air to him, which made you want to know and respect him. He also had an ego, which showed when he flaunted his superior knowledge in front of everyone he met. But he still had a warmth about him, and you saw that he truly cared for the people around him. It's too bad they wronged the character of Liz Shaw, but the relationship between both he and Jo and he and Sarah Jane was wonderful.
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
A mixture of comic strips and text stories, along with scattered pages of puzzles, crosswords and articles about real life space exploration and the like.....

Jumpt to 3:40 onwards to have a slightly too leisurely browse inside the 1975 annual.....




They were not of the greatest quality and their value lies largely in their nostalgia factor for older fans.

The 1977 Tom Baker annual is notorious for it's stories making no real sense and being more or less bonkers!


 
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