Doctor Who1

NOTE: Stories in smaller letters are no longer complete with missing episodes. All stories on this page were made in Black and White

William Hartnell
An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, Edge of Destruction, Marco Polo, The Keys of Marinus, The Aztecs, The Sensorites, The Reign of Terror,
Planet of Giants, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Rescue, The Romans, The Web Planet, The Crusades, The Space Museum, The Chase, The Time Meddler
Galaxy Four, Mission to the Unknown, The Myth Makers, The Dalek Masterplan, The Massacre, The Ark , The Celestial Toymaker, The Gunfighters,
The Savages, The War Machines, The Smugglers, The Tenth Planet

AN UNEARTHLY CHILD
Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson, Heads of two BBC departments, decide they need a family show for Saturday afternoons. The go through a few formats until they decide to go with a time travelling police box and thus the longest running SF series is born, with a season every year until 1989. Nearly 40 years after it was made, the first episode is still one of the best written pieces of SF ever (shame about the rather pedestrian caveman stuff for the next three episodes). Yes, it was the second go at recording it (the pilot/ first attempt looks amateurish) and it is probably William Hartnell's single best performance in the series. He would keep it up for the first two stories before the rigours started to take their toll on him. Caveman talking, skulls crushing. Doctor nasty. Then come caveman. Doctor, help others flee. Get captured again. Flee again. Chronic Hysteresis.
Of course in later years it would, occasionally, be obvious that the companions were either script syphons or played by actors who would rather be somewhere else (or in some cases, should never have been cast in the first place). But at the start, they got it right. William Russell and Jackie Hill, though somewhat older than the usual early to mid-20's first TV gig actors we would see for the nect two and a half decades, were experienced enough to play the roles properly and they complimented William Hartnell's Doctor. Carole Ann Ford (though not that much younger than the other two) also had enough work under her belt to portray Susan a lot more realistically than her 3 immediate successors. More on Vicki later. And she sure was a moron.
Forget the caveman bizzo and after the credits for part one roll, rewind the tape and stick in The Daleks.

THE DALEKS Terry Nation's first script for the series featured his biggest and best creation ever (even the two smash shows (Blake's 7 and Survivors) he created have been eclipsed by Skaro's worst export. So much so that Nation is often erroneously credited as the show's creator! Credit is also due to set designer Ray Cusick whose design contributed more to their success than Nation (but the egg did come first in this instance).
But forget the phenomenon. What's the story like? It's excellent. Nation wrote many Dalek scripts for the series and most of them a re rubbish. Of all of them this is the only one that could be described as excellent (Genesis of the Daleks had been heavily rewritten by Robert Holmes, this is mostly Nation's work). It's very well written and quite intelligent. The story is simple but there's quite a lot of logic to the proceedings. While a lot of fun stories like The Chase and Dalek Invasion of Earth, Even Planet of the Daleks don't come close to matching this. And also, since it was the first time, it doesn't give you the feeling that you had seen any of this before. Apart from episode six, the whole thing is very well paced out and doesn't feel padded. That episode is terribly padded in which at least 15 minutes are devoted to jumping a pot hole. The thing is that the production is quite polished for the time. It had been written to fit the series resources and as such doesn't try to do to much. The only time when production is wanting is the finale attack on the Dalek control room. Compared to the Dalek ambush of the Thals in episode 3, it's quite amateurish and really betrays the low budget nature of the series. If it had been allowed a short filmed sequence (such as the brilliant montage at the end of the Chase)
The characterisations are spot on, and the Thals believable. Obviously the actors didn't feel they were slumming it so they gave decent performances. It's a pity that the follow-ups to this story are so childish and amateurish. It's considered to be Terry Nation's most original work but looking at the 1960 cinema version of GH Wells The Time Machine, you can't help but notice many, many similarities.

THE TIME MACHINE
Humanity is almost destroyed by a nuclear war. The survivors split into two camps, those who stay in the sun and those who chose to live underground. Those in the sun become the Eloi, beautiful people who live a tranquil life. They have no desire to fight for anything. The Morloks live underground and have mutated long a different path, more hostile path. A Time-traveller arrives in this world only to have his machine stolen by the Morloks, He helps the Eloi free themselves...

THE DALEKS
Two warring races are almost destroyed during their nuclear War. The Thals become farmers while The Dals (Kaleds) entomb themselves in their city with hostile intentions towards the Thals who have no desire to fight. Then some Time Travellers arrive years later, a part of their vessel is taken by the Daleks and they must get the Thals to fight, yada, yada..

It's not the same as the rip-off relationship between Forbidden Planet and Planet of Evil, but the inspiration is there.
Either way, The Daleks is easily on of the best Hartnell stories there is and for my money, my favourite to star the cranky old bugger.

The Edge Of Destruction
I was OS when Foxtel first screened the surviving Hartnell stories and as the majority of the ones released so far on video are terrible (bar the first Dalek story) this was one I have basically waited two years to see. It was one of the biggest letdowns since Pamela Anderson learnt sliced bread didn't increase breast size. Edge of the Wedge is 50 minutes of some of the most amateurish acting and appalling dialogue this side of Buck Rogers...with Buster Crabbe! It's been said the actors rebelled about not being given enough direction as to what the hell was going on and the only other occasion when an actor on the series claimed to have been given no idea as to their character's motivations was Colin Baker during Mindwarp. And wasn't he shite in that?
The story is about as coherent as James Reyne before speech therapy and that makes for a general feeling of shoddiness in the series' only "bottle" show. We perhaps should have been thankful Fox didn't order a 22 episode series as at least half a dozen shows would have been similar to this.
William Hartnell does his best impersonation of Boris Yeltsin throughout and even the other regulars, usually so reliable, do their best rendition of Mr Hanky. With no guest cast, new sets or cheap special effects, there is also no direction, no professionalism and ultimately no point.
These two episodes were the series 12th and 13th episodes so one assumes the real reason for Marco Polo being put back two weeks was so that the Beeb could cancel the series without having to fork out for any sets for the "Chinese serial." The TV industry used to love certain numbers or blocks of episodes being either 6, 13, 26. BBC 1 hour series tended toward 13 episode seasons and sitcoms usually limited to 6. Dr Who in the 60's was basically being produced as if it were a weekly half-hour soap which is why later it settled on around 26 episodes a season (unheard of for a British show).
RATING- So lucky this didn't get the show cancelled. So lucky.

THE KEYS OF MARINUS

Terry Nation's Daleks had turned the show from cheap filler to a successful overnight sensation (albeit with the same cheap budget!). The appetite for the 'next Dalek' would soon swamp the series with wave after wave of cheap and uninteresting monsters for the next three years (how many aliens introduced in the Hartnell era really had any impact aside from the Daleks and the Cybermen?). This story is like a compressed Key to Time though it can't hold a candle to Nation's first, Skarobound script, but about the same as his rather hackneyed follow-ups. It doesn't engage you in the same way the Dalek intro did and even the cast seem bored with what's going on.
The Voords are supposed to replace the Daleks and there's nothing wrong with their design, but they have no personality and are only seen briefly in episodes 1 and 6. This could have made a great framing device for a series of stories but condensing everything into six episodes wees Nation coming up with just enough of a storyline for each episode to be a mini story. It's like playing Donkey Kong 64- a huge videogame made a lot longer with tedious minigames. We have the silly Star Trek episode in Morphoton (It was a few years before Star Trek), the pointless snowbound story and the boobytrapped living forest area. The last mini-story- the Murder Mystery/ Courtroom Drama was easily the best (Because it was talky it was well within the series' resources). The final confrontation with Yartek was 'hella-lame.'
Terry Nation would have been just as surprised as everyone at the Daleks' success, and he would have felt some pressure to top himself and he never would. It never challenges his script for The Daleks but compared to the over ambitious adventure elements of his later Dalek stories. Really, Robert Holmes (The ReWriter Extraordinaire) takes over from Terrance Dicks in the script editor chair, a Terry Nation story will be a euphemism for cliche, unoriginality and retreaded action setpieces.

THE AZTECS

I have to say that I'm one of those who finds 99% of historicals to be totally boring. That said, the historicals do have one strength. They generally have more convincing sets and constumes than the SF stories made in the 60's, possibly because the BBC, even then, had a huge stockpile of sets and constumes from their love of period drama. The Aztecs has a more intersting plot than most historicals but is still dull. It could have been done as a two parter yet is filled with some over the top nuances such as the villainous priest Tlotoxl talking to camera to wring his hands. Actor John Ringham is not quite overacting but it doesn't help the cause of willing suspension of disbelief. Padding is obvious everywhere, and I don't just mean the script with the most overdressed Aztecs, I've ever seen. You 20th Century humans with your outdated notions of modesty. Not terrible like some historicals but as usual, not a story that you'll ever say "I'm buying the DVD version to replace my worn-out VHS tape."

SEASON TWO
THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH
This really is one reaaly poor story. After the first story was mainly good, Terry Nation started to get a bit too ambitious with set pieces here that were well outside of the series budget. The writing isn't anything special at all and the acting is fair to poor. It's too cheap to take seriously, on a par with the US kid-vids of the 50's.
Really, we are just over a third of way between the time this was made in 1964 and when it is set, in 2164, and it hasn't held up at all well. It's not the worst of the surviving Hartnell SF stories but the production values here are almost non existent. Compared to Quatermass and the Pit, made in the late 50's, this is a total joke, and Quatermass was transmitted live and still is watchable today, better even that the feature version that was made in the late 60's.
Unfortunately for the Dalek Invasion of Earth, it was also turned into a feature starring Peter Cushing but despite its attractive production values, is quite boring to watch, showing the script for its flimsiness and obvious padding on television.
There really is no excuse for this tosh. He wasn't even script editor then. I know the review on these pages are short but that's because it's no fun making fun of something so ridiculously amateurish, even when it premiered.

THE RESCUE
Throughout its 26 year BBC run, one of the classic Dr Who line ups was the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan. Maureen O'Brien came on as futurebrat Vikki and while she has shown herself to be a good actress in recent years, she is awful in Dr Who. She seems to be trying hard but lacks that natural feel that Carole Ann Ford had. Ray Barret, a great Australian actor, also provided voices for Stingray and Thunderbirds as well as appearing in dozens of TV series and movies both in the UK and Australia.
The story is here is as slight as they come and as the series' last two parter for a decade, proved that practically all Hartnell stories could have been told successfully in half the time. If this was fine, imagine how bad Planet of the Giants must have been as a 4-parter for Verity Lambert to edit the last two episodes into one.

THE ROMANS
Apart from the last five minutes, this is total crap. Not in the sense of Edge of Destruction, which is least watchable, most evil story ever, but it's sull, its rarely clever, not very funny and a total waste of 100 minutes of your life which you will never get back.

THE WEB PLANET
Oh dear. I used to think this was quaint, but the story more than made up for the amatuerish production. But I've been trying to watch this in the 21st century and I can't get into it. It's a video you put on in the background while you read or surf the net. It would actually make a pretty good children's movie in the vein of A Bug's Life but why bother. This is like a Pantomime version of Doctor Who. Who may have had less than adequate resources in the 60's but the producers should have simply made stories they could pull off with reasonable success. This was one of Hartnells highest rating shows but it as also excruciatingly dated nearly 40 years later. In fact the Hartnell era in general has aged like a cheap table wine that was reasonably amusing at the time but has corked in the cellar.

Space Museum,
When you look at the two stories back to back, it's hard to imagine that Web Planet was the expensive story of the season and Space Museum was a cheapie to balance out the budget. They both look like cheap pantomime productions today with very juvenile plots but Space Musuem holds up slightly better due to tha fact that it looks slightly less silly. Granted that one race are Elvis impersonators and the others seem to worship Tammy Faye Bakker, but episode one is one of the more interesting Hartnell episodes. When things go downhill is when the Moroks and the Xerons enter the action. But because its ambitions were more realistic, in terms of the series' budget, it works alightly better than panto ants and camp butterfly men.
And Vicki has actually started being a shade less that useless, probably because Maureen O'Brien seemed to get her characters a bit better. Still episode one is very good for the era while parts 2-4 are merely okay.

The Chase
Well, this is a strange story because it's both terrible and fun. It's full of Terry Nation's weird science as a basis for building alien civilisations but then he always maintained that the writer can put whatever they like in a Doctor Who story because they've created it that way. So we have the Daleks chasing the TARDIS in their own time machine. Since its a chase, its basically an excuse for a bunch of little one off vignettes, the same way Terry Nation did in Keys of Marinus. We have the overall arc of the Daleks in hot pursuit and all of the strange predicaments the Doctor and co get into. While the jaunts to the Marie Celeste, Empire State Building and the Haunted House are just plain ridiculous, the segments set on Aridius and later mechanus are almost in a good story. By far, the last episode of this story is the best since it has the best writing and production values of the season (of those episodes I have seen). The film montage of the battle between the Daleks and Mechanoids shows how badly Doctor Who needed to be made on film, or at least have more film sequences allocated to it.
As for the silliness. The entire haunted house routine is daft but what totally ruins it is the Doctor's idiotic explanation. And Morton Dill on the Empire State Building? I'm glad they made Peter Purves a regular but that's easily one of the most irritating, embarrassing scenes in the series history. The fact the Dalek's didn't let rip is still disappointing. Even more comical and embarrasing is the Dalek robotic duplicate of the Doctor. I understand the production difficulties involved but still doesn't mean its any less amateurish to have your lead character's doppelganger played by his photo double, and have him utter lines on camera...

Not as badly made as the Dalek Invasion of Earth, but the script is worse. The last episode overrides all as it's so good.

SEASON THREE

The Ark
Reviewing the Hartnell era these days is difficult since a large percentage of fans have never and are unlikely to ever have seen every story. Since my exposure to the first Doctor has been almost entirely limited to what had been available on video (and to a much lesser extent, cable TV). It's hard to see how characters evolved, particularly when some companions have very few surviving episodes left, and some have next to no episodes (Katarina- 0, Sara Kingdom-2) left. Unfortunately, there are some episodes featuring Dodo (silly enough with the obvious nickname). Trying to be a bit hip and having a slightly northeren accent but played by Jackie Lane as if she were a schoolteacher auditioning for Play School/ Blue Peter, Dodo is instantly forgettable as a companion, even more so than Vicki.
Stephen was actually a pretty good character, and Peter Purves was a good complement to William Hartnell but the production team had become a revolving door for producers and script editors, and also supporting cast members. So far this season, we've have one character leave, two introduced and the same two killed and another pop her head in. Still to come, Dodo and Steven written out and Ben and Polly introduced. That's apart from three producers, more script editors and an ailing star.
As a four part story, the Ark is actually two separate stories, linked by the same location but set 700 years apart. The first story during parts one and two is by far the best, where Dodo's flu almost kills the inhabitants of the Ark. The time travellers are placed on trial but very easily are allowed to find a cure. The second part is absolutely shocking, with incredibly poor writing. The Monoids only LOOKED silly in the first half, but once they find their voice, they also SOUND rather sillier. They're also incredibly petty and pointless. One of the least thought out villains of the series history.
By the far the best thing about this story is Michael Imison's direction. We have video screens inserted into screens and model work (pretty rank unfortunately) but all in all a decent effort to raise production values (if not always successful in every area).

THE WAR MACHINES
This is almost the beginning of a more modern Doctor Who. Both in storyline and settings. We have the earliest version of the UNIT era here with the Doctor working witrh Earth Authorities of the same era as the programme was made in, in surrounds familiar to the audience of the time. A credible threat that was probably pretty far fetched at the time considering computing power of the time was equivalent to a decent pocket calculator. The actual War Machines themselves aren't particularly impressive apart from their large size but the human cast is, whether they be the slaves of WOTAN or on the Doctor's side. The pace is akin to some of the fast mocing troughton adventures while the last episode seems curioulsy flat.
This story wrote out Dodo off screen, a curious thing to do but introduced a much better pair in Ben and Polly, despite the fact their own departure would be in a similar vein next season. Of course, this is also the only story in the series to refer to the Doctor as Dr Who. Even then it was noted as a typo yet it would be 1982 before the character would be listed in the end credits as The Doctor. Quite watchable as Hartnell stories go and not as horribly dated as most.

SEASON FOUR
THE TENTH PLANET
In every respect, this is one of the most important stories in the shows history. On its own, is not a bad piece of mid 60's Doctor Who, but the fact it introduced both the Cybermen and the concept (if not the name) of the Doctor regenerating. The way its done is perfect allowing for the show to continue for another twenty plus years after this.
What strikes you is the balance between very good and very poor production values. The sets are quite nice for a Hartnell era SF stories, but the Cybermen themselves look the the kids in the school talent show who had no help from their parents at all. Bulkier than bulky with the heads just looking plain silly. Then they start to speak in a one-teo punch of pure hilarity as they actor makes an 'o' shape with his mouth while Roy Skelton sings his dialogue sounding like doctored answering machine message. The animated titles are very sophisticated, compared to the usual badly-aligned scrolling titles and a pity things like that weren't done more often during the Troughton era.
This is a valiant attempt to give a sense of scale even though it is set in a claustrophobic location, confined to a few very, very small sets makes the Beeb's policy of shoehorning Doctor Who into the tiny studios at Lime Grove and Riverside after Television Centre had been around for a while just a joke. A few episodes here and there but only occasionally. The main control room set looks as though it was built inside the TARDIS prop.
Episode four doesn't exist. We have a high quality soundtrack, telesnaps, a short clip of the actual regeneration and very short 8mm clips that someone has filmed off their screen during the original broadcast. But it's probably the best recreation to date.
The cybermen's firt appearance is a bust as things are much better when they're not around (And I like the Cybermen). But the regeneration is what this story is all about.

PATRICK TROUGHTON
The Power of the Daleks, The Highlanders, The Underwater Menace, The Moonbase, The Macra Terror, The Faceless Ones, The Evil of the Daleks, Tomb of the Cybermen, The Abominable Snowmen, The Ice Warriors, The Enemy of the World, The Web of Fear, Fury of the Deep,The Wheel in Space, The Dominators, The Mind Robber, The Invasion, The Krotons, The Seeds of Death, The Space Pirates, The War Games

THE UNDERWATER MENACE episode 3
Only episode three exists of this story, one that, no matter how you try to explain it, is a bag of shit or to use the BBC term, Fecculant Storage Device.
The Fish people are so bad... The fish people are so laughable... The fish people are so stupid.
But they aren't actually a major part of the story. Joseph Furst as Professor Zaroff IS a major part of the story. And he's crap. The rest of the production is adequate but overall the minuses are too negative to make the pluses seem worthwhile.

THE MOONBASE
This is widely acknowledged as a rewrite of the tenth planet with a few additions and a new locale and it is so much better it's not funny. The new location is more interesting and dangerous with much better looking Cybermen and a slightly more successful attempt at multiunational crew. Funnily enough, the weakest cast link is the actor playing Hobson, who rather plays the role as if he's a 50's art teacher.

TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN
Tomb was one a select group of missing stories that, like Dalek Master Plan, the Troughton Dalek and Yeti stories, everyone really wanted to see. Its discovery was probably the second biggest thing to happen in the world of Doctor Who during the 90's (after the Paul McGann movie), and 35 years after it premiered the serial is still a classic. It's a bit cheesy here and there but it has a good script, witty dialogue and great set pieces.
Yes, some of the acting is hammy. Yes, you can tell Toberman is lifting a dummy Cybercontroller and yes there are some silly plot developments. The canned accents are some of the worst I've ever seen, which actually makes some of the jokes even funnier especially the Captain's reply to Victoria's "who'd be a woman?"
The DVD of this shoud be required viewing for every fan as it is undoubtedly one of the most perfect 1960's Doctor Who experiences ever and we're incredibly lucky to have it back. For the most part, this is a story that is still watchable by casual viewers all these years later though the hipper they are, the more it becomes 'so bad its good' type kitsch.
After a year or so in the role, Patrick Troughton's performance in very assured, even to the point you could safely say that had Troughton stayed another few years in the role, he would have been one of the more popular actors to have played the role (though Troughton did not want to be typecast as Doctor Who, something that definitely happened to Tom Baker for nearly a decade after he left the series). Frazer Hines shows that as far as yong male companions, none of the others really approach him (though it's also fair to say that the writers were able to handle his character much better than Adric expecially or even Turlough).
This is easily the best story from the 60's that survives in its entirety, and probably one of the three best made in Black and Whitd and 10 best ever.
While I like Zoe and Victoria (Deborah Watling is just so cute), it's really the pairing of Patrick Troughton and Fraser Hines that makes these 2nd Doctor stories come alive. The humour just flows through naturally rather than seeming added at the last minute like in the 7th Doctor stories.

THE ICE WARRIORS
For years, the only Troughton stories younger fans had seen where those from his last season. I thought they were fun, but even then I knew the reputation of the earlier stories was greater than season six. But I never thought I'd ever have a chance of seeing more than the few episodes featured on the Troughton years tape. All that changed, when in 1992, Tomb of the Cybermen was found and promptly released to rapturous reviews. I thought it the best Troughton story and still do, after seeing all the complete stories, the single episodes featured on the Troughton, Daleks and Cybermen years tapes as well as the audio releases and the Invasion reconstruction, making up a fair whack of Troughton Stories out there. But just watching episode one made me realise that I might well watching the best story of the sixties, not only well written, but well made, even by the standards of more recent, better resourced stories- something you can ascribe to very few sixties stories.
Now since episode two and three are missing, it's up to the Audio versions to judge how the story unfolds. Brian Hayles' other Ice Warrior stories have always struck me as having solid plots but dialogue that was good but never overly rich as you would see in a Robert Holmes story. This story is the exception, perhaps because of the stellar cast the whole thing is so believable. Peter Sallis, Peter Barkworth and Bernard Bresslaw are all utterly believable, helped by great dialogue. The ice Warriors are at their most dynamic here, not the lumbering creatures that couldn't catch herpes off a tortoise. Here they use extravagant hand gestures and have strange nervous twitches and mouths that open wider than Carly Simon at the dentist. Their weapons are even more polished and frightening than in Seeds of Death with the effect being identical to that used in Monster of Peladon. Even the props strapped to their wrists are better than the plain penlights stuck there in all their other appearances.
The production on this story really is something to behold. Almost every other sixties story set in an SF environment I have seen, even the good ones, has a panto like quality to the production. But not here. The production values are akin to the Pertwee stories and are probably the best of the 60's (Even though the historicals and present-day stories tended not to suffer from the low budget, the fact that an SF story from 1967 still manages to look good in 1999 counts in favour of this story).
Patrick Troughton is excellent, though with episodes two and three missing, we do seem to miss the most important exposition and plot developments. A pity but at least we have a CD and the excellent reconstructions of the missing episodes. The quality of the CD begs the question whether the BBC should re-release the Audio adventures. The original recordings were made by holding a mike next to a TV speaker and after the initial releases, a fan came forward to say he had technically superior recordings of most stories, an offer the BBC declined. Obviously they have gone back to the same fan for these recordings, ones you can actually listen to as opposed to say The Macra Terror and Evil of the Daleks, where it is almost impossible to ascertain what the hell is going ion (sic).
At $40 with a book, CD, 5 complete episodes previously unreleased and a documentary featuring
a load of very interesting clips and you have to say this is perhaps the best Doctor Who release of 1999. Let's face it, there's not much unreleased that anyone wants to see as badly as stuff like this.

The Krotons
One of the more maligned stories in the series' history, possibly because it was for a lot of people in the UK, the only Troughton story they had seen thanks to a 1981 repeat (and in 1986 in Australia, along with The Mind Robber). Is it so bad? Well aside from the shockingly bad Krotons, no. The guest cast are very good and even though the writing is not perfect, it is Robert Holmes' first script for the show and his brilliance manages to make a rather dull plot work within the series' resources.
Philip Madoc's most straightforward role is probably his least interesting performance, but it is still a strong one. Compared to the notionally similar Dominators, this actually could have been quite good. Swap the villains from the earlier story with everything else in The Krotons and we could have had a decent story (and a below average one rather than two mediocre stories)
But those Krotons are cursed with an incredibly costume and some really silly dialogue (though the voices are effective). Cumbersome and slow, the Gonds would have to be spectacularly dumb to be subjugated by creatures with all the grace of a demolition derby.

THE WAR GAMES
Yes, its very long. Yes it's padded in the middle. Yes it's fun. It's not a bad way to finish off Patrick Troughton's era and I find it one of the better stories from season six. It still has a reasonably professional sheen about it with some wonderfully 60's acting with very stiff upper lip British Officers, dreadful American accents, COD German and OTT villains. Brilliant stuff. Even with all the action, the production values are decent enough. There are some silly moments, especially with the mimes who play the alien Security guards. I say mimes be cause every movement is exaggerated and silly looking. When, for instance, the guards are trapped in a forcefield, their silly expressions are hammier than Richard Briers' Caretaker. James Bree's Security Chief's Dalek-like delivery contrasts strongly with the hipster War Chief with the interplay between the two being one of the strongest elements of the story. Only Caves of Androzani manages to capture this spirit of antagonistic antagonists quite so well as here.
This is also a highlight for the often everlooked TARDIS line-up of 2nd Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. The three of them really do work well together (as did the previous line-up with Victoria) in a way that didn't happen during the Davison era (the only other time when the Doctor would again travel with more than one companion, K9 excepted). And even with 10 episodes, writers Terrance Dicks (Did he really only write six stories?) and Malcolme Hulke managed not to do too much of the splitting up the crew in episode one and not getting back together till episode nine. Yes, there is an awful lot of getting captured and escaping but the story is unusually well served (Look at Frontier in Space, also written by Mac Hulke) and you'll see just how bad the capture/escape merry go round can detract from a story. That is the thing that makes this work. By having the crew together for most of the story, we do get to see more of the interaction between Troughton and his co-stars, Frazer hines and Wendy Padbury, for one last time (Five Doctors doesn't count)
This is also the first story to explicity state anything about the Doctor's background other than just the throwaway lines we had been party to so far. Time Lords introduced. Boredome cited, you know the drill but it was still rather landmark even though the first time you heard 'Time Lord' mentioned you wouldn't have thought anything further until episode nine. The only part for me that becomes interminable is Midway where the German Warlord is being guarded my Patrick Troughton's son, David.
Padded but worth it in the end

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