i think this is a really interesting story. i think hartnells era is really good at having more fast paced episodes - you think earlier ones would be slower! but they often split the serials up into mini stories and that is exactly what happens here. the first 2 parts are about the guardians having control over the monoids and the second 2 parts are about the opposite, set 700 years later. it is really neat. this could ever be revisted now to see how they have settled on refusius. i wonder if this was isnpired by the time machine bc the 2 different races as different classes is very similar. i think the monoids were right to rise up in a sense because they had been treated shittily. there never was a chance for any other intelligent life to evolve on earth beacuse humans would quash it or use it as slaves and hinder its development and if they still managed to get to our level we would want to systematically discriminaite. its sad to think about. i wonder if anywhere there is a planet with two distinct intelligent life forms like this. i think another thing this story reminded me of is the peasant revolt after the black death, and what if that had been successful continually? and in that case you do support the peasants. though there were probably always the same number roughly of guardians and monoids. i wonder how the guardian descended feelon the new planet, if they get preferential treatment. this also lines up very well with the end of the world from nuwhos series 1. i like dodo so much in this her knight outfit is super super cute! steven is idk. i dont feel a lot about his character - i guess i havent seen him in many stories overall. the way the reveal the statue having been turned into a monoid was very cool. would be interesting to do a full themes analysis

watched mostly the animation, but the real episode for part 3. there were significant differences. its sad how much you miss out on from the missing episodes. i did not feel it quite so much with reign of terror but with this whole unique alien world i think it does suffer. interesting theme of solidarity with other races in the face of adversity? id love a story set on dhrava to understand their culture and history more. is maaga uniquely evil? whats with the clones? do they ever uprise? they seem to have their own thoughts and personalities. always interesting when a story has a female villain

i loveee serials set across time theyre soo fun!! some great little comedy vingettes really, with the reveal of the mary celeste and the monster house just being an ordinary house of horrors where the doc and ian tried to come up with a super scifi explanation. all the empire state building stuff was fun. and the daleks are always nice to see! and it was such a sweet and lovely ending to barbara and ians story, with them getting a little epilogue and then you find out the doctor was watching them! i like to imagine he often does from time to time. i love ones era for having epilogues and tardis opening and endings so much more often!! and with multiple parts the serial is way more fast paced and engaging

this felt soo crazily different from so much of doctor who but i guess ones era was just more experimenal. the song that ran through was very well done. i think dodos and doc hollidays friendship was very sweet - and it didnt seem sexual or creepy, just a earnest cute friendship. i really liked the doctor in this, his character and role felt very strong for once, with his mantra against guns and violence. classic who does these stories a lotttt where the only problem the tardis team need to fix is just them getting back to the tardis cause they got mixed up in trouble, but no threat to the people from the time theyre in. it would not fly today really!! i liked steven and dodo having fancy names, dodo dupont and steven regret. a fun little detail! the song was actually really good and it grew on me a lot, especially about how tragic a lot of the random deaths, like charlie were, and his death was taken decently seriously, with his dead body just.. lying there. it was a bit slow and confusing to start but it really won me over which i was not expecting a western to do at all. it was a bit confusing trying to tell the men apart though. i liked stevens outfit, and dodo had an awesome, very 60s one she wore just at the begining.

what a horrible exit for dodo,probably the worst companion exit. why even write her in? i get the impression she was a late addition by a writer who didn't realise they were meant to include her at first. i like ben and polly i think! i think they should have already known each other before the start of the story though. i like the begining, it is very nice and slow in a good way. it seems like this story is meant to be a critique of nato, as wotan without the w is just the spanish/french name, otan, or it is just nato backwards. and it is this inhumane unfeeling war machine taking over europe, then the usa and then the world

for a cyberman episode, they are super super different here. they basically drop the whole twin planet thing in later stories mostly. the s2 cyberman 2 parter has them from a parallel earth and pulls off a similar concept much better. the things i really liked about this episode was that it was the first time the show ever feels diverse. there's an actual black character, and the space hub thingy has people clearly from all around the world taking part in these space missions, and the antartica base has some clearly non british people. all the mainest characters are still white and british though. i like tito he was cute but he dies pretty quick. i thought the 3rd episode where it suddenly became all about defeating the human captain was really weird - the cybermen should be the focus, not some random guy who tbh feels kind of in the right for what he was doing! i wish they sold us more on the father/son thing and deepened that relationship, at least gave the son a name!! the unique title sequence is so appreciated though. i think the doctor and polly honestly did very little in this story. i dont even understand why the doctor regenerates at the end?? ofc it's the first one so they didn't  have the rules for regeneration down yet, but it is still odd. it's also weird that this is one of few time that the doctor explictly already knows what is going to happen roughly, which is probably why he takes a back seat

i didnt really understand what was happening the whole time and it seemed to metaphorically be about maintaining your society's supposed natural order. no other species should be allowed to evolve above humans or move away from being used by humans for farming, etc. very odd. did not need to be six parts and the poor costumes constantly took me out of the story. i do appreciate playing with evolution and the idea that insects could become the dominant species

not entirely sure how i feel about this one tbh. i dont like the sensorite design much. i think the idea of the doctor going and fixing a planets problems is compelling. i liked in the aztecs that barbara was using her history knowledge, i would have liked it in this one if ian used his science knowledge more. the engagement between the humans and the sensorites, it seems like this is all taking place prior to the eventual conquest of the sensorite planet by humans, that's the vibe it gives. i think the gone mad humans were interesting but they needed to be more developed, not just brought out in the last episode. we needed a bit more time with them, as apparently they are what the story was inspired by. also the tardis team brings up the caste systems and it seems like they will develop this more but instead it is just dropped, no arguement that they should get rid of the caste system and we spend basically no time with the other castes, we have little understanding how sensorite society functions. this serial i think first marks the begining of doctor who canon, with the team refercing past episodes, the doctor expressing his dislike of weapons and the first(?) reference to Gallifrey, and ideas about susan and the doctor travelling before they met barbara and ian

i thought this was going to subvert expectations and show that even if aztec culture had some bad elements, there were mostly positives and people enjoyed their lives. i think that was what they thought they were going for but instead it was too focused on how evil and primative and barabaric these non-europeans are for having human sacrifices and physical punishments, as if europe at this time also didnt. barbara is incredibly white saviour-y; she thinks the spanish wiped out the aztecs and burned all their records because of the human sacrifices and not out of a desire for conquest and riches and power. its also notable how the one person who is presented as reasonable and against the human sacrifices, the high priest of knowledge is explictly stated to be some different and unlike the rest and the rest would never change their evillll ways. there is stuff to like though - i like that we get to see the doctor fail and make mistakes, like almost getting ian killed with the poison and accidently getting engaged. its fun when the doctor isn't always right. and him and cameca are actually really cute together i think theyre a good fit. would be nice if she could have become a  companion! i dont even know why tlotoxl is a villain and we are meant to dislike him - barbara is a false goddess and she is legitimately trying to destroy his culture. also i think they purposefully made him up to visually look the most different and 'savage' so the audience would dislike him more. just a lot of racist stuff and only really good for doctor character stuff

one of my favourite ever doctor who stories. it is very exciting, each episode has a different setting and plot so its very fast paced. similar to what key to time was doing but condensed into 1 serial instead of being spread over a season which makes it way better and more engaging. it shows how diverse one planet can be, which is something planets in scifi often lack, they are often all the same biome or culture everywhere. but in this you get the sense you're going to different countries. the episodes also have different genres. like snows of terror is drama, sentence of death is murder detective, screaming jungle is puzzles, velvet web is scifi. velvet web was probably my fvaourite for how barbara focused it was. i dont think season1 has too many character, because they all get enough time, but still it is nice to focus on just one of them and flesh them out more. its the first doctor lite stories as well. season 1 is pretty experimental in some cool ways

some decent stuff here. i like jak's design, i like the foreign culture aesthetic of the mainplaneters. i like that both sides are vil not just jak. i dont like jak being kinda creepy towards peri. i like the doctor's descion to go into the dangerous cave and to only give the cure to peri, which is something six would never do they are very different incarnations. a lot of stories like this though have way too many similiar characters that all have different wants in regards to the political situation that are hard to keep track of whether you watch it all in one go or spread out. this is a consistent problem with this medium though. the recall of the docs companions is fun; i just love seeing adric. the masters inclusion and line is very curious though. i dont know what throughline they were going for with his character. Stotz's shooting of the men who don't want to join him and morgus felt very odd, unnecessary and especially dark for the show. i guess morgus was the main villain, not just jek, but i didnt like either, and i think and equal villains thing is more interesting, even in the case where jak is only villainous at first and then gets better and close to the doc and peri. i think the way this is consistently ranked as one of the best dr who/5 stories is wild it is not that good. i have liked many others more

loveee the medieval aesthetic but we should have gotten more women. i did not expect kamelion to be in this so that was a sick surprise i love him hes cute and scary (so i get why tegan doesn't like him). trying to track allegencies over the course of the story is pretty difficult, everyone looks very similar, so that makes the story hard to follow. eg. the doctor is the champion one minute and not the next and the master doesn't like the doctor being the champion even though he picked him?? i don't understand all the demon references, they're all mostly coming from the non-medieval characters. why is the master so obsessed with the magna carta anyway they address it's weird but don't address why he is doing it. the doctor/the episode placing it in high importance is also weird. english democracy would be better if that magna carta had enever been developed, so that democracy could develop later under capitalism instead of under feudalism which has really f**ked it in a major way. but i digress

everything with tegan and the marriner in this really put me on edge. he's constantly leading her around to different rooms aloneadn you're worried he's going to sexually assault her, and to me, it really reads as he has. he's flirting and she's so uncomfortable and it's a really horrible way to write tegan. her and wrack's edwardian (?) dresses both looked sooo good.

turlough in this serial is also quite strange. he is constantly doing things for his own benefit, betraying whoever. i understand his conflict in regards to killing the doctor but this is a different bad personality trait that i dont think is sufficiently resolved by the end of this serial where the doctor forgives him. he doesnt betray the doctor one time and that makes him good and sympathetic? it's very odd. the scene where he jumps overboard and is floating through space is so well done in isolation though.

the whole seaboat aesthetic of this serial is very sick in general, with them floating through space, all the different eras of boats. theres a lot of creativity with the conception of this story. the eternals are fascinating beings, so different from any other enemy we've encountered thus far. i think they were a good enough villain on their own without needing to bring in the black guardian but that is just where this serial fell in the series as a whole.

just a really fun romp! not incredibly plot heavy but that is not massively the point, the point is to have fun. i would have liked a few more unusual character parings, as mostly characters stuck to their doctor, one and tegan being the exception. cool timelord stuff, more of their incredibly wacky and ineffective power structures. the part where borusa became a stature-plaque with only moving eyes has to be my favourite part, it was just so creepy and a really cool end. but really as a multidoc story i think 2 and 3 doctors work better because you get more interaction between different character that you like.

the first thing to note about this story is slavery. the vanir, the garm and turlough are all slaves in one sort of way. i think this works it making turlough more sympathetic whilst he is trying to kill the doctor, as we can understand how he can be made to attempt these things. i think it's also good in this being the only s20 story without any deaths. it wouldn't have been at all nice for the vanir to die. as a nyssa departure story, i wish this focused more on her. it is a cool thing for her to be doing with her life, and she has been established as being good at bioelectronics, which is similarish to medicine - would have been cool to see that more in other stories though. a healer is a useful thing. yeah this episode does not balance its companions well.we needed more nyssa and more turlough for sure. turloughs narrative is so divorced from the doctor. i like tegan and nyssas goodbye. its so sweet and sad, tegan loves her so much. it's hard to not read them as a couple. nyssa getting leprosy is so wild though. the non-companion stuff in this story is a little boring though. olvir acts suspicious but it does not really go anywhere, and kari doesn't really do much. also the company would definitely send troops to terminus, no question. it's just much less exciting than arc of infinity and mawdryn overall. this whole series has felt underwhelming

turlough time!! i thought he was simply a snobby schoolboy at first but there does actually get to be more to him - we will have to see how that evolves to see if i will like him as a character. what i don't like this story for is the brigader. him being into cars is strange because that never came up when he was hanging out with three, a definite motorhead and him encouraging corporeal punishment is accurate for the time but horrible to see from a sympathetic character. i think him retiring to be a maths teacher is quite sweet though. the time loop stuff with things happening in 1977 and 1983 is pretty clever and experimental for doctor who at this time so thats very enjoyable. nyssa's outfit is really really sick (she might have started wearing this in snakedance but still). it does feel strange for the doctor to refuse to give up his regenerations to the mawdryn though, or at least figure out a solution. they're in so much pain and he can help. it is a big sacrifice for him but he has already lived so much life at this point that it does not feel justified for him to hang onto having even more in the face of others' suffering. also the doctor not sussing out turlough is pretty crazy, this is such an actively suspicious boy

also

!!LIZ SHAW MENTION!!

the mara is a very confusing creature. we first see it on deva loca but apparently it began on manussa? the snakedancers and the manussans and the kinda are similar but not releated i think? it is quite confusing. tegan is great but once lon gets infected we barely see her, which is a missed opportunity, because janet fielding is really great as the conflicted tegan/mara. i like when dr who uses an academic field quite a lot, like planet of the daleks being very biogeographical - here this is very anthropological, so i enjoyed that. lon is a charasmatic character indeed. so ultimately it is not a very good sequel to kinda and the mara but i like it more than kinda in its story elements (study of a society vs conflict between natives and colonists)

seeing omega return and tegan having a cousin (onscreen) is pretty wild. i think peter davison plays omega really really well, but the last episode is just soo much running around amsterdamn a lot of that could have been cut. obviously they weren't going to bring leela back but it is absoutely wild that the doctor is being executed on her planet and she doesn't care to show up and help even slightly. there were talks of casting peter cushing as borusa which would have been awesome to see but oh well. colin baker is wonderful as maxil, he does steal every scene and is just a really memorable character, I can see why they brought him on as six!

I think my problem is I am just not a huge curse of fenric fan! Maybe I need to properly rewatch it but as a result this TOTT did very little for me. i think it is a good one to pick for 7/ace relationship one bc 7 is horrible in this (with good reason but still) and ace goes through all the stuff with her friends dying and complex feelings about her mother! but this format doesn't have her address that much - maybe if there was a line about reconciliation with her mother, or that she's happier without her mother, or that she is happy being a mother - idm where ace ends up in regards to her issues with her mother but i would like to see them resolved.

Another issue is i don't like this future version of ace. she says she's come from a meeting, POTD has her in this business suit, sja mentions her starting a charity.. i just do not see that for ace. a corporate charity?? no, she wouldn't do that. let her lead the revolution, or do some anarchist stuff, on earth or another planet.

Don't angst over how she left the doctor because that's not a story the audience has any grip on!

i like how this is paced a lot, with kalid being the villain for part 1 and 2 and then the master for part 3 and 4, makes the story flow quick and not be boring! 5s era makes use of the tardis so much it is very interesting. much better at short hops! i love seeing interior shots as well they're very common. crying cause i can never go aboard. i should build a replica in real life or the sims or something and do all the companion bedrooms, that'd be cute. do you think they ever move into a past companion's room? anyway the side characters of the pilot and crew were super super fun guys. it was crazyyy to just leave tegan at heathrow?? we'll see how that develops. also a pretty fun master story in general. i wonder why the master's tardis so often appears as a column?

I'm glad this is an episode they revisited for TOTT, but the do not reflect on Adric enough at all. His death is so tragic, and so unfair. Out of everyone, every companion, he's the only one you get attached to and then they mercilessly kill. Sara and Katarina were barely there, and Amy, Rory and Clara die but in a way where they still live. It's f**ked that only Adric gets this treatment

this episode is so fun! great for character stuff - like adric and nyssa not fitting in on earth, not understanding cricket, nyssa struggles with phrases and adric with dancing. tegans charleston is very cute, adric dancing with nyssa tegan and ann is very sweet, nyssa and tegan sharing a room and getting dressed toegther, and exposing their sholders is putty cute and shippy. they all look sooo good in their costumes (i can't believe peter davison in his robe is cited as some people's sexual awakening when the other three look much better). all the fancy dress is fun. it is a very tight story, the george stuff is tragic, but at least he can be remembered through his book, that is quite lovely. the house they filmed at is also very good, especially with all the corridors. just great overall!! (apart
from the stuff abt native americans)

they continue to make adric much dumber than he was in s18 for some reason. he could pilot the tardis before but has difficultly now. he gets captured a lot more. he has to get told off by 5 as if he's his moody teenage son. matthew waterhouse is giving it everything but sadly there is not a lot to give to. pt4 is very exciting!! i like the 17th century setting in general, having the doctor start the great fire is really fun! and it's cool to see an actual historical event. the terileptils have such a cool design, both on their normal half and their scarred half. it is pretty strange that the doctor did not want to bring them back to their planet to be executed, but was cool with letting them die in a fire! richard mace was a fun character, super quirky guy for sure, and he got a nice lil happy ending. the main criticism is 3 companions is just too much and this episode exemplifies it. most of the time all four are seperate so there are like 3-5 different plot threads to follow, so it feels like it is moving pretty slow and it is hard to concentrate on

Mara - cool design, wish i had watched this episode before legend of ruby sunday!

Kinda - probably an insensitive portrayal of 'tribal' people/'savages'. they discussed them being scientifically advanced with the double helix but that was not super touched upon. i think a lot more time should have been spent with them, learning their culture and history so that we could understand the mirrors better, the mara better, and their cycles of time - because all that felt very thrown in at the last part of the story

Nyssa - strange to completely write out nyssa. i like the scientist woman, Todd, she was pretty cool and interesting, but why not have nyssa play her role really? but she was definitely the main person filling the companion role in this story.

Tegan - it felt like we barely saw tegan as well, the doctor just left her like that in the woods for 2 days!! what the f**k?? it will be interesting to see how the mara coming back in future episodes relates to her

Adric - adric again sees ooc from his s18/castrovalva characterisation.

i dont know, nothing here really did it for me at all

idk pretty mid. adric is written very strangely in this, all of a sudden an instant anti-democracy sympathiser and sexist which he had never been in other episodes?? i hope this does not continue in his character going forward. the idea of the four different earthlings with different cultures and times is neat but it's not very explored. it's really sick that tegan can speak tiwi though that's a sick character detail and i'm really glad janet fielding pressed for that instead of random tribal noises or some weirdness. the villains never feel very threatening at all, but also are going to graphically execute the doctor it is such an escalation from what they do the rest of the time. obviously planning to kill all people on earth to repopulate it or take its cobalt is very evil - but that is villainy we are told and not shown. actually that is a problem with a lot of this serial - like bigon just tells doctor mostly everything, instead of the doctor having to work it out