Wow, this is much better and what Doctor Who should be like. We have fun, we have silly, we have mind control1, we have Sarah Jane Smith, we have English people being so fucking English.
Where should we start. Maybe with Sarah Jane Smith. This episode introduces a new companion for The Doctor, Sarah Smith. She introduces herself, and The Doctor introduces himself to her as John Smith. Yet, later in the episode she calls him just The Doctor. I don’t get it, but who cares.
She’s smart, inquisitive, and funny. She sneaks into the TARDIS and The Doctor departs and heads to the middle ages.
In the middle ages we find a Sontaran (or a star warrior, as this is the first instance of Sontarans, so we need to know that they’re warriors… from the stars). He’s crashed on Earth, he uses the primitive humans to help him get his spaceship working. To get their help, he bribes the local asshole with guns and robots.
That local asshole, Irongron, decides that a man from space who can create guns is obviously an idiot, and uses his Englishness to act superior and ignore the advice of the person giving him his weapons.
What the fuck is wrong with English people? Why is that colonial attitude still going strong in the 1970s?
Next we have a rear vent. On the back of a Sontaran’s neck is a vent which if you hit, it will knock out the alien. Why?
Finally there’s the mind control. I’m getting really tired of mind control and Doctor Who seems to think that all stories must include some mind control.
Stop it.
Otherwise, one of the best Pertwee stories.
- We will get back to that later [↩]