#THE END OF TIME DOCTOR WHO TRIAL#
#THE END OF TIME DOCTOR WHO SERIES#

This subpar sequel to “Spearhead” is noteworthy for several developments, including bringing in Katy Manning’s Jo Grant. The Master - “Terror of the Autons” (1971)

Six seasons’ worth of the unknown was resolved in a half hour.

#THE END OF TIME DOCTOR WHO TRIAL#

There the Doctor was put on trial for interfering in the affairs of other races and exiled to Earth with another new face, and the secrets of the TARDIS were wiped from his memory. In Troughton’s final regular episode - also the last one of the sixties, and the last in black and white - the mythology again lurches forward with the introduction of the mysterious, seemingly psychic Time Lords, who’d previously been unnamed and unseen (sometimes referred to by the Doctor as “my people”), via a forced visit to their sterile home world. Hello, Time Lords - “The War Games” (1969) Topping it all off, “Web,” featuring the return of the Great Intelligence and the Yeti, is quite possibly the greatest story of Second Doctor Patrick Troughton’s era. Technically, UNIT doesn’t really come into existence until the following season’s “The Invasion,” but it’s here where all the seeds were planted, and Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney), soon to be Brigadier, makes his first appearance. But it did, by helping to move the show to a much more adult, action-driven format. The introduction of UNIT (the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce), the top-secret military organization dedicated to sorting out alien life on planet Earth, is one of those developments that nobody could’ve guessed would alter the fabric of the series. (The episode also introduced the Cybermen.)Ī Show for Grown-ups - “The Web of Fear” (1968) So, yes, when William Hartnell was too sick to continue with the series, he morphed into Patrick Troughton, and Doctor Who added a bold new layer to its mythology. It is the key to the ongoing storyline of Doctor Who, allowing for all of the adventures that have been created over the past 50 years to effortlessly exist within the same canon. It’s impossible to give enough praise to whoever came up with the idea of regeneration (a process initially modeled on an LSD trip), even though the term itself wasn’t used until many years later. One Story to Rule Them All - “The Tenth Planet” (1966) The Daleks trundling across Westminster Bridge has become one of the great iconic Who images. Once this happened, Doctor Who could never be the same, as monsters now had the ability to come to us.

The show’s ability to juxtapose the alien and the familiar was evident from the first moments of the series, but the show dared to increase the stakes by having the Daleks invade our world. The Threat Hits Home - “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” (1964) The show owes a great deal of its success to their creation, and it’s probable that without them, we wouldn’t even be celebrating 50 years of Doctor Who today. Daleks are as much a part of the fabric of Doctor Who as the TARDIS, regeneration, and the sonic screwdriver. The arrival on the dead, alien planet and the discovery of an ornate lost city were weirdly intriguing, but it was that thing coming toward Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) in the final seconds of the first episode that terrified a nation of British schoolchildren, compelling them to tune in a week later.

#THE END OF TIME DOCTOR WHO SERIES#

With its second serial, the series recovered its groove. Yes, Doctor Who proved to be a powerful, mysterious concept right out of the gate, but not without the ability to falter, as demonstrated by the three Stone Age–set episodes that followed.Īn Unforgettable Villain - “The Daleks” (1963) Those schoolteachers head for the junkyard, meet a crabby old man played by William Hartnell, and force their way into the police box, which turns out not to be a police box at all. From the haunting theme music and trippy credit sequence to the police box curiously humming away in a London junkyard to two schoolteachers debating one peculiar student, the thing just moves. Journey along and take a look back at 25 memorable markers that led up to the 50th-anniversary special, “The Day of the Doctor.” A “defining moment” could be a line, a scene, an episode, a plot development, a casting decision, or, in one case, an entire season. ( Read Vulture’s recap of the episode here.) As such, we decided to go back to the show’s beginnings and explore the twists and turns it has taken over the years, this weekend aside. Saturday’s anniversary episode of Doctor Who, “The Day of the Doctor,” flipped the action of the series around and gave it a dynamic new mission.

The end of time doctor who