Season 2: a retrospective

Opening:  Or so I wish.


Best episode: Technically speaking, it's probably The Dalek Invasion of Earth, but I definitely had the most FUN watching "The Chase," despite the fact that it's sort of a plotless clusterfuck.

Worst episode:  Ug.

Best companion win: Let's be honest here.  Barbara jacked a fire truck.

Worst companion fail:  Probably Vicki accidentally poisoning the Caesar. 

Best monster: Take your pick.  Incidentally, these are also the WORST monsters.

Best Dalek defeat: Wow.  This is the season the brought us both "smashing a Dalek with a fire truck" and "Frankenstein's Monster lifts a dalek over his head, smashes it to the ground, and then beats on it with his enormous hairy fists."  Impossible to choose one, and probably the best season for Dalek-stomping.  And all this ignores the time a Dalek failed to kill a ween from Alabama.  

Best Doctor Pic: No contest. Additionally, though it's not technically a pic: HELL YES.

Best Quote: "That is the dematerializing control. And that, over yonder, is the horizontal hold. Up there is the scanner, those are the doors, that is a chair with a panda on it. Sheer poetry, dear boy! Now please stop bothering me."


New series bonus round: Probably the Doctor's unholy alliance with a girl who takes her clothes off for money.

Animated gif bonus round: The Meddling Monk, master of deception.

s02 e17: The Time Meddler

In the second season finale, the newly slimmed-down TARDIS crew battle a renegade Time Lord called the Meddling Monk, a sort of proto-Master who differs from the Doctor's more well-known nemesis in that instead of being maniacally evil, he's just sort of a dumbass.

Review:

• Awesome to see another TARDIS and another Time Lord on screen for the first time, but, overall, not enough vikings get whacked with two-by-fours to make this really exciting. 

Important Firsts:

• First appearance of the Meddling Monk
• First Time Lord other than the Doctor and Susan (though the name "Time Lord" is not yet used).
• First recurring individual villain.
• First "pseudo-historical" (an episode which mixes historical and sci-fi elements)

Musings:

• I really will miss Barbara and Ian. For one thing, I rather like large TARDIS crews. For another, Willian Russel and Jacqueline Hill were both good actors, and I rather enjoy their dynamic.  They were the closest thing we had to a couple traveling on the TARDIS until Amy and Rory turned up some 48 years later.  Individually, they were pretty fun also.
• Ian gets replaced by the fairly-similar Steven, and Barbara is totally obsoleted. I guess the producers decided that since her main function was to provide historical commentary and to accidentally end up as a courtesan in various alien brothels, they could do without her.
• I liked how companions used to come and go in the middle of seasons.  It helped keep me on my toes (not that I was watching these as they came out in 1964, but you know what I mean).
• An episode of the spinoff Sarah Jane Adventures mentions that by the year 2010, Ian and Barbara have married each other, become professors, and live and Cambridge.  Also they are rumored to have not aged since the 60s, and I'm really not sure what that is all about.
• But now, on to the episode:
• doo doo doo, DOOOO do-do!  (I love this music)
• Vicki whines that she shall miss Ian and Barbara
• The Doctor agrees, and reminisces about how Susan left also.  It's all quite sad, really.  I love how the Doctor always ends up sad and alone.  Angst is the best.  Also Hartnell is a phenomenal actor who manages to portray sad without screwing up his face and crying like Tennant.
• Vicki is good at comforting him though.  They're really cute together, and they have much better chemistry than the Doctor and Susan had onscreen.
• OMFG A NOISE IN THE LIVING QUARTERS! 
• The Doctor and Vicki think it's a Dalek.
• But WAIT!  It's actually Steven!  I never expected this!
• The Doctor is not super pleased, especially after Steven starts calling him "Doc"
• Pretty much every incarnation of the Doctor hates being called Doc.
• A conversation about the TARDIS being bigger on the inside.
• After Steven bugs him him incessantly, the Doctor gives him an irritated introduciton to the TARDIS:
• "That is the dematerializing control. And that, over yonder, is the horizontal hold. Up there is the scanner, those are the doors, that is a chair with a panda on it. Sheer poetry, dear boy! Now please stop bothering me."
• Steven doesn't believe the TARDIS can travel in time and is very slow to accept that they are in 10th century England.
• Steven and Vicki make for a pretty cute brother-sister pair.
• Steven rags on the Doctor about how the TARDIS looks like a phone-box.
• Steven discovers an artifact that the Doctor tells him must be a space helmet for a cow.
• The Doctor tells Vicki and Steven not to wander off.  
• Vicki and Steven wander off.
• Vicki and Steven get lost.
• A dweeb in a hat watches from the bushes and then emerges to fondle the TARDIS.
• Apparently William Hartnell threw a temper tantrum during filming off this story after a techie misplaced his hat.
• Steven finds a modern-day watch on a local, adding to his incredulity about time travel. Something spooky is going on here.
• The Doctor meets up with a rather intelligent local. 
• Some monks chant in a monastery, but their chanting sounds suspicious.
• The Doctor discovers an extremely anachronistic gramophone just before the Meddling Monk locks him in a cage and cackles maniacally. 
• Hey, it could be worse.
• In the opening of the second segment, the Meddling Monk serves the Doctor tea and eggs. The Doctor is grumpy.
• The Doctor will spend this entire segment locked up since Hartnell was on vacation AGAIN.
• Some sexy mountain men arrive to harass Steven and Vicki.
• Steven and Vicki are dragged before Gimli.
• The Meddling Monk looks pretty good in his hood and pretty stupid without it.
• Some subplot involving grumpy locals that I don't understand.
• I can't wait for the Doctor to tweak out at the Meddling Monk.
• Steven and Vicki go to the monastery searching for the Doctor.  The Meddling Monk answers the door and puckers up for a kiss from Steven. 
• The Monk tells Steven and Vicki that he hasn't seen the Doctor.  And he's not at all suspicious while he does it.
• For some reason, Steven doesn't buy his story.
• Steven and Vicki sneak in, discovering a host of anachronistic kitchen appliances. 
• While the Monk is distracted by a viking invasion, Steven and Vicki discover the Doctor's cell.  However, the Doctor is missing, and only his cloak remains.
• This is all a little dull actually.  Hoping for a Time Lord fistfight sometime soon, but we;re halfway through and the Doctor and the Monk haven't really even spoken yet.
• Steven finally starts to believe that they have time traveled.  He is quicker than Vicki to realize that the Monk must also be a time traveler. 
• The Monk gives penicillin to a wounded viking.
• The Monk keeps a historical flowchart, and checks off events as they happen.  He seems to be trying to manipulate history.  Or maybe MEDDLE with history, eh?
• The Doctor returns to the monastery and uses an extremely clever ruse to make the Meddling Monk think he has a gun pressed to his back.
• Yes, that is a stick.
• Vicki and Steven notes that the tide has come in and drowned the TARDIS.  It makes me wonder what would happen if they opened the doors underwater.  Could you drain an ocean?  Or what the water be kept out just like air is kept inside while in the vacuum of space.
• Vicki and Steven find a Gatling gun on the beach shore.  It appears that the Monk was planning to be a huge dick.
• The Monk discovers the Doctor's ruse.  The Doctor continues to threaten him with the stick.
• A grumpy argument ensues. The Doctor makes a terrible pun about "Monk-ying around"
• Incidentally: don't fuck with the Doctor.
• Some vikings bust down the door and lock up the Doctor. The plan to take over the monastery and use it as a base.
• The Meddling Monk bitchslaps a viking with a two-by-four.
• The Doctor bitchslaps a different viking with a different two-by-four.  NOW we're talking!
• The Monk escapes to the village and encounters a fat shirtless man.
• Steven and Vicki arrive at the Monastery and find a bunch of unconscious vikings and two-by-fours.
• The Doctor returns to confront the Monk.  This time he carries a sword.
• In the third segment cliffhanger, Vicki and Steven find a door in a Monk's pulpit.  The enter and find A MOTHERFUCKING TARDIS!
• I wish I were born in the 50s and could have been watching this stuff as it came out.  Think how shocking this moment must have been. Evidently, all of England was abuzz talking about this cliffhanger.
• The Monk's TARDIS has a function chameleon circuit, unlike the Doctor's.  Owned.
• The Monk reveals his plan: something about averting a viking invasion with a Gatling gun.
• Vicki and Steven find a journal in the Monk's TARDIS.  Apparently the Monk has been dicking around history for a long time.  Something about having sex with Leonardo da Vinci and collecting a lot of compound interest.  He also built Stonehenge. 
• The Doctor calls the Monk a "Time Meddler" with implied capital letters. Evidently, it's a thing.
• The Monk gloats about his functioning chameleon circuit. 
• They enter the TARDIS, and everyone has a party.
• The Monk's goal seems to be to accelerate history for the purpose of hilarity.  His endgame is to watch the original performance of Hamlet on television while sitting on a jetliner. I am not making this up.
• Some vikings storm the monastery and tie up everyone but the Monk, who escapes.
• Some discovery about the mutability of history. 
• By the way, I've been calling everyone vikings, but really a lot of them are actually Saxons.  I really don't care enough to try to tell the difference.
• The Doctor's ugly lady friend frees the Doctor and his companions.  The Monk is captured by vikings.
• Before leaving, the Doctor dicks over the Monk's TARDIS in a pretty hilarious way. 
• Ostensibly The Monk is stranded in the eleventh century.  I forget how he escapes, but I assume it involves a trashy blond girl fondling things she has no business fondling.
• All in all, the Doctor is pretty smug about how things turn out.
• Although when you think about it, the Monk is still free to meddle from his current time.  He just can't pull any compound interest tricks.
• Some special sexy end credits.
• And that's a wrap on series 2!

s02 e16: The Chase

In which the Daleks pursue the TARDIS through time and space and have a series of mindbogglingly hilarious misadventures.

Review: 
I really don't want to spoil anything before you read on, but suffice to say that this episode makes me feel very good.


Important Firsts:

• First time the Daleks recognize The Doctor
• First Dalek time travel
• First episode to take place partially in New York.
• First episode to reference the Dalek's aversion to stairs.
• First appearance of Steven
• LAST appearance of Ian and Barbara.

Musings:

• This episode was originally burned, but negatives were recovered in 1978.
• After a recap of the awesome cliffhanger, we get some really stupid-sounding elevator music as the TARDIS materializes.
• This is revealed to be a result of Vicki's terrible taste in music, and the Doctor gets pissed off.
• Vicki hovers over Ian, who reads a sci-fi book called "Monsters of Outer Space" he notes that it is "a bit far-fetched"  He shoos Vicki away because she is being annoying. 
• "I am a useless person!" declares Vicki.
• Then she basically drop-kicks an expensive china set and wreaks havoc.
• The Doctor fixes the Time and Space Visualizer and uses it to spy on Abe Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth the First, Shakespeare, and the Beatles.
• If this entire episode involves the Doctor and his companions essentially watching television, I will flip a shit.
• Although the Beatles part is pretty to fun, especially when Ian rocks out to "Ticket to Ride"
• Vicki is offended when Ian is surprised that she knows about The Beatles.  "I've been to their memorial theater!  Of course I have!  Only thing is--I didn't know they played classical music."
• The TARDIS lands on a desert planet.  The Doctor and Barbara go to sleep while Ian and Vicki wander off to get menaced by creepy sand tentacles.
• OH SHIT BARBARA SEES SOME DALEKS ON TV.
• The Daleks chant "Annihilate!" in addition to "Exterminate!"  
• It appears the Daleks have constructed a time machine and are pursuing the TARDIS across time and space.
• Vicki has been taking hits off the Doctor's pipe: "If you look at the sun through your fingers, you have twenty instead of ten!" she declares.
• "I have the directional instincts of a homing pidgeon," the Doctor declares as he and Barbara wander aimlessly and lost through the desert.
• Ian and Vicki find a trap door in the middle of the desert.  Inside, they are menaced by a giant octopus testicle.
• The Doctor casts a shadow on a vertical backdrop painted to look like a flat stretch of desert. 
• A sandstorm buries the TARDIS, and pretty much every other fucking thing on the planet, including one very pissed-off dalek.
• The second segment of the episode is titled "The Death of Time." This sounds suspiciously like the title of an RTD season finale.
• The Daleks have no trouble running on sand, even without stupid-looking backpacks.
• At least the Daleks are the only threat on this planet. 
• Oh wait.
• Oh double-wait.  The Daleks and the creepy fish-people get into a fight.  This goes about how you would expect.
• The fish people turn out to be pretty dumb.
• My second favorite Dalek catchphrase after "Exterminate" is definitely "I obey."
• The Daleks capture some fish people and force them to dig up the TARDIS.
• The Daleks fire upon the TARDIS in an attempt to destroy it.  Fail.
• The TARDIS crew tricks the Dalek guarding the TARDIS into a pit by playing a sort of perverted game of whack-a-mole.
• Reinforcements arrive, but the crew escapes in the TARDIS.
• The Daleks give chase in their own time machine. 
• Note to Doctor Who producers:  60s elevator music is not appropriate for a chase scene through time and space. 
• There is a mentally handicapped Dalek who is unable to perform simple arithmetic. I think this is supposed to be comic relief or something.
• The TARDIS lands in New York.  This is the first time an episode takes place in the US. Incidentally, the only other episode to take place in New York also involves the Daleks. 
• People talk with terrible fake New York accents.
• Ooh, the TARDIS materializes in the top of the Empire State Building.  
• "You're from Earth!" Barbara exclaims to the first tourist she meets. "No ma'am, I'm from Alabama," he replies with a brilliant southern drawl.
• "I just bet you folks are from Hollywood! I bet you be making some sort of movie-picture!" exclaims the southerner. 
• The TARDIS crew flees his stupidity by dematerializing.  Moments later, the Dalek time machine appears.
• The Dalek and the excitable southerner have an epic showdown.  Ironically, the southerner emerges victorious using his formidable powers of stupidity. 
• Actually, the southerner in played by Peter Purves, who also plays the next companion, Steven. 
• Next stop: some sort of boat, where Barbara has a Titanic moment.
• Attempting to bash in the head of an unruly sailor, Vicki clobbers the hell out of Ian with a lead pipe.  This means that Ian has now been knocked out as many times by his own companions as by his enemies.
• The TARDIS crew dematerializes, once again only moments before the Daleks appear.
• The sailors do not take too kindly to the new "stowaway" and treat it accordingly.
• This is rapidly becoming my favorite segment of any episode in history.  Basically it involves the Daleks bumbling through history and getting their asses punked by locals.
• No but actually the sailors get punked also.  They all end up in the water fleeing the Daleks. 
• HAHA ON SNAP!  Turns out the boat was actually the Marie Celeste!  Next time there is an unexplained plane crash, I am going to put forth a Dalek theory to compete with the various Canadian goose explanations.  I assume Daleks were also responsible for the lost colony of Roanoke.
• Next stop is some sort of ancient European temple. Ian notices some stairs and gets excited, assuming (correctly), that the Daleks will have a bitch of a time dealing with them.
• The Doctor and Ian head to the creepy basement, where they encounter a historically accurate Frankenstein's Monster. 
• Vicki and Barbara have a similar run-in with a dopey version of Count Dracula.
• "I think there might be something strange going on here," observes Barbara.  Oh really?
• The Doctor posits that they have landed inside their own minds. Some sort of nightmare. Trippy shit.
• Ian rejoices, since obviously the Daleks can't follow them into their own heads.
• I REALLY hope he's wrong, since a Dalek vs. Dracula fight would tip this over the edge to "greatest episode ever" status.
• YES THE DALEK TIME MACHINE APPEARS! 
• The Doctor and Ian take refuge in Frankenstein's chamber.
• They are cornered. 
• Ian throws a switch and....
• OH MY GOD DALEK VS FRANKENSTEIN.
• FRANKENSTEIN IS IMMUNE TO DALEK WEAPONRY
• HOLY SHIT NOW HERE COMES DRACULA.
• FRANKENSTEIN CURBSTOMPS A DALEK
• COUNT DRACULA EATS THEM WITH BATS!
• EVERYTHING GOES HORRIBLY AWESOME!
• FUCKING YES THIS IS THE GREATEST EPISODE EVER!!!
• In the hilarious confusion, the Doctor takes off without Vicki, leaving her in the middle of the biggest clusterfuck in Doctor Who history.
• Vicki sneaks in to the Dalek time machine just as it takes off.
• The Daleks make a robot clone of the Doctor, because this episode needed to be even more awesome. I hope the Doctor and his clone end up smacking the hell out of each other with their walking sticks.  Normally I would be joking about this, but so far this episode has delivered on all my hopes and then some.
• This time, the TARDIS lands on some jungle planet.  Ten bucks says the plants come alive and attack the crew.
• Twenty bucks says the plants fight the Daleks.
• Well, that's ten bucks for me already.
• A mushroom swallows Vicki. Yum.
• The Daleks arrive and start shooting the shit out of jungle flora.
• Incidentally, you can see a BBC camera in the upper right of the screencap above.
• Robot Doctor begins stalking Barbara and Ian.
• Barbara gets separated and runs into Robot Doctor who tells her than Ian is dead.  She cries, since this throws a monkey wrench into her plan to get laid.
• Robot Doctor goes apeshit and starts bashing Barbara with his cane.  Ian arrives just in time to rescue her.
• Both Doctors arrive and Ian grapples with one.
• Just as Ian is about to bash its head in with a rock, the other Doctor tells "Susan" to avert her eyes.
• This reveals the impostor to everyone since the Daleks did not know that Susan had been replaced by Vicki.
• OH SHIT FTW!
• The crew finds a somewhat impractical local city.
• The Doctor pretends to be the robot double, but the Daleks don't buy it.
• as they flee, the crew encounters some sort of giant robot sphere thing called a Mechanoid that has a voice even more warbly than the Daleks.  I sense another fight coming on.
• Wow it really sucks that Terry Nation died.  Now BBC needs to pay his estate trillions of dollars every time they churn out a terrible Dalek episode.  But he really wrote some good ones back in the day. 
• The Mechanoids are too fat to pass each other in hallways.  This leads to some awkward moments.
• A random human dude appears and identifies himself as Steven Taylor.  He's sort of a handsome strapping dude with a beard.
• He appears to be stranded alone on the mechanoid-fungus planet.
• It's cute that Ian, Barbara, and Steven get to share one adventure together before Ian and Barbara leave the crew.  Usually it's out with the old before in with the new.  Imagine if Amy Pond had overlapped with Donna Noble for one episode.  Donna would have drop-kicked Amy's annoying ass back to the seventeenth century.
• The Daleks bust down a door, and an all-out bitch-fest ensues between the Daleks and the Mechanoids.
• This goes extremely poorly for the Daleks, especially since the Doctor leaves a random bomb lying around.  Also the mechanoids have flamethrowers.
• "AM EXTERMINATED! AM EXTERMINATED! AM EXTERMINATED!" a Dalek screams after its ass gets blown up.
• The building catches on fire and Steven freaks out and runs back inside to grab a stuffed panda-bear. I am not making this up.
• The Mechanoids are also getting punked.  Really everything is going poorly for everyone.  
• Some pretty awesome pyrotechnics and special effects as pretty much everything on the planet blows up.
• All the Daleks are slain. The TARDIS crew recovers the Dalek time machine.
• Ian and Barbara realize they can use the Dalek time machine to get home since it doens't suck ass like the TARDIS. 
• The Doctor flips a shit, pretending to be cranky. But really he is secretly just sad that Ian and Barbara are leaving. Awwwww.
• Everyone parts ways, not exactly on the happiest of terms.  Sad day.
• Ian and Barbara arrive home!
• This give Ian and Barbara time to consummate their relationship. 
• A montage of Ian and Barbara dicking around London.
• The Doctor watches them on the time and space visualizer.  He is very sad :-(
• And here's the video.
• The TARDIS drifts through space, lonely. 
• Last we saw Steven, it appeared he died in a fire.  We know better, though :-)
• Well, that was fucking phenomenal.  Next episode is also pretty important to the Doctor Who cannon--we get to see a Time Lord other than the Doctor or Susan. 
• Said Time Lord does turn out to be a huge ween, however.

DC Interlude: Green Lantern

In which Traz has downloaded a shitty cam of the Green Lantern and has spent enough time drinking at the Whole Foods this afternoon to think it is a good idea to watch it.

Review:  Haven't seen it yet, but with expectations this low, how can the movie not exceed them, right?

Musings:

• Damn it.

s02 e15: The Space Museum

In which the TARDIS crew stumbles across an alien version of the Louvre and basically destroy it in every way possible.

Review:
Some Timey-Wimey shit, a bloody revolution, an awesome hiding place for the Doctor, and the single greatest cliffhanger in Classic Who history. Hell yeah!

Important Firsts:

• First bona-fide technobabble. 
• First Timey-Wimey.....ness

Musings:

• Wait a minute. Science fiction in a science fiction series.  Never thought I'd see the day.
• I hate historicals. 
• When the crew materializes, they are wearing their normal clothes instead of the Crusade clothes they took off in.  This creeps out the humans, but the Doctor dismisses it.
• Whoah the TARDIS has some sort of Star Trek style replicator.
• On snap--Vicki drops a glass and shatters it but then time rewinds and the glass reforms.
• No one else believes her, because obviously that kind of bizarre sci-fi shit is impossible.
• Upon leaving the TARDIS, the Doctor suggests that they stick together. Who woulda thought?
• You will probably be surprised to hear this, but it turns out that the crew is in some sort of space museum.
• The crew discovers a Dalek in the museum.  Vicki knows about the Daleks, having read about their invasion of Earth 300 years in her past in history books. She is surprised by what they look like though, saying that they are nothing like what she imagined from the descriptions.  Interesting that history book would not include PICTURES of the aliens that once took over the earth.
• The crew is not leaving footprints, despite a large amount of dust on the floor.
• Some other people in the museum, but none of them are able to see or hear the crew.  Spooky.
• The TARDIS appears in the museum.  But when they try, they can't actually touch it.  The Doctor posits that they might not actually be in the museum at all.
• Then, the crew discovers a very spooky exhibit. 
• The Doctor babbles about "jumping a time track" and ending up in "some sort of fourth dimension."  It's the beginning of techno-babble. 
• "All we have to do is wait here until we arrive!" exclaims the Doctor.
• There's something going on here, but it makes very little sense.  Still, I'm a sucker for this sort of thing.
• The exhibits fade, and some footprints appear outside where the travelers had been walking.
• "We've arrived!" exclaims the Doctor.
• Some museum curators act like wankers.  They've apparently been here for thousands of years and are getting bored.
• All the local dudes have funny eyebrows like vulcans.  I really dislike the idea of having my eyebrows shaved and then new ones glued to my face.
• Ian picks up a broken ray gun and makes "pew pew" noises.
• "Doctor, why do you always show the greatest interest in the least important things?" --Ian
• Some museum curators come and the Doctor hides in the greatest place ever.
• He also imitates the Dalek voice from the inside as he thrusts to plunger arm in and out.
• Oh dear, one of the curators is a skeezo.
• Another one has a bad run-in with a hairdryer.
• Ug look at all that hair he had to have glued to his forhead.
• The doctor fools a curator into thinking that he is actually a walrus.  I am not making this up. Telepathy is involved.
• This backfires when the curator decides he wants a walrus in a display case.
• The Doctor spends the whole third segment as a museum exhibit since Hartnell was having trouble with his dentures.
• Today I met a man who was wearing a ring that he bought 19 years ago specifically because it looked like the ring the First Doctor used to wear.  He was an odd man.
• They've definitely hired a better fight choreographer recently. The fights are actually a bit exciting and look like more than just people aggressively stroking each other.
• The curators decide to set the museum on fire in order to smoke out Barbara.  In real life, I think this would be considered an excessive way to deal with an intruder.
• Vicki decides to arm a bunch of rebels with guns in order to avert the future wherein the TARDIS crew become a museum exhibit. Or maybe she just likes carnage. 
• The weapons vault is locked with some sort of bizarre lie detector test that asks strangely probing personal questions.
• Vicki bypasses the elaborate security system by loosening a thumb screw.
• After being revived from some sort of cryo-freeze chamber, the doctor claims that being reduced to a couple degrees above absolute zero temperature has aggravated his rheumatism. 
• This means that he is a little ticked off.
• The crew reunites by all getting captured.  They should try this more often.
• Ian curbstomps the shit out of the machine that turns people into museum exhibits.  The Doctor doesn't believe that this will change the future.
• The revolution gets super bloody.  I hope Vicki is happy.
• The rayguns have some reasonably good special effects.
• The crew is rescued after all the jackass curators are brutally slaughtered.
• The Doctor then decides that their futures are reasonably safe.  They won't end up as walrusses in display cases.
• The Doctor liberates a "Time and Space Visualizer" from the museum, which allows him to view any point in time and space like a badass crystal ball.
• Hooray.
• Fade to black.
• OH SHIT THE DALEKS HAVE A CAMEO AT THE VERY END WHERE THEY ARE TRACKING THE TARDIS AND PREPARING TO EXTERMINATE.
• They also call the Doctor and his crew their "greatest enemies," marking the first time the Daleks recognize the Doctor.  Would have put this in the "Firsts" section, but didn't want to spoil the ending for anybody.
• Oh wait.
• Best cliffhanger ever, though.

s02 e14: The Crusade

In which some Arabs and some Christians get really pissed off at one another and the TARDIS crew gets caught in the middle.

Review: 

Honestly, I'm getting pretty tired of stories in which much of the plot revolves around Barbara being abducted as a sex slave.

• 
  
• Whoah.  For some reason this copy beings with a segment wherein 85 year-old William Russel (aka Ian Chesterton) recalls the event of the episode IN CHARACTER.  It's actually incredibly cute.
• Now for the real episode.
• Oooh, 12th-century Palestine!
• I hate historicals.
• No sound effect on the TARDIS materializing.  This happens a lot in early episodes.  Only dematerialization is consistent. 
• Oooh.  I like when they have establishing shot showing people in trouble before the Doctor arrive.  Although I sure as hell can't tell what the heck they're talking about.
• Some evil-looking Arabs stalk some Christians.
• An Arab attacks Ian, but the Doctor distracts him by being a doddering old man.
• Barbara is hogtied by Christians. 
• Everyone is separated at 1:23.  New record?
• Two of these four segments are lost.  Originally, all four were lost, but the third segment had been backed up in the BBC film library.  The first episode was later found in the private colleciton of a New Zealand film collector in 1999, making it (I think) the second most recent Doctor Who segments to be recovered.  
• By the way, if any of you happen to have copies of lost Doctor Who episodes, you get a full-sized Dalek model for their safe return.  Check your parents' home videos.  Maybe an episode of Doctor Who is playing in the background.  No sound is necessary to win the Dalek, since soundtracks already exist.
• By the way, the film collector who had the missing segment 4 once pretended to be the Sultan of a fabricated nation called the Utopian Sultanate State of Oecussi-Ambendo.
• Apparently the President of Zimbabwe is suspected to own copies of some missing episodes, but he refuses to give them up.  If there was ever a good reason to start a war, this is it. 
• If he's sitting on a copy of the fourth segment of "The Tenth Planet," then I'll fly over there and kick him in the nuts myself.
• Oh the episode is still playing.
• Ian swordfights with an Arab for some reason.  Of course, being a science teacher, he is a master swordsman.
• Barbara get abducted, as usual.
• It's actually the most well-choreographed and least awkward fight scene in the series thus far, though.
• The Doctor cons an Arab by pretending to be gay so that he can steal a bunch of clothing.  Or something.
• Hagrid arrives and is not pleased.
• Oh great.  Barbara gets sold as a concubine to some Arab king.  She is developing quite the track record.
• Barbara tells the Arab king about her recent adventures on an alien world ruled by insects, in Rome at the time of Emperor Nero and in England in the far future.  It's farely rare for the travelers to discuss previous adventures like this.
• He insists she entertain him with more stories, under penalty of death if he is not amused, a la Shahrazad.
• Vicki wears a stupid hat.
• There's an Arab named Luigi.
• Oh my God it's Wyett Earp.
• Luigi abducts Barbara.  Of course.
• Ian gets knighted because he swordfought so many Arabs.
• The Doctor comments that he hopes he gets knighted some day.
• Vicki scoffs "That'll be the day!"
• The joke's on her, since the Doctor gets knighted not once but twice in future episodes (Fifth and Tenth Doctors).
• Ooh, turns out that Hagrid is a NICE Arab.
• Vicki has to pretend to be a boy.  She doesn't like it. "Why can't I be a girl again!" she whines.
• The queen says to the Doctor "There's something new in you, yet something older than the sky itself."  
• Luigi discovers Vicki's ruse.  "A girl? Dressed as a boy??? Is nothing understandable these days?"
• Vicki worries that she is becoming trouble for the Doctor and that he might leave her behind. 
• The Doctor comforts her.
• aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!
• Hagrid tells a really sad story about his children and wife being killed.  Unfortunately I can't take him seriously since his accent is basically that of Apu from the Simpsons.
• Also, he looks like Hagrid. 
• 20 minutes of boring political intrigue.
• I hate historicals.
• Every once in a while, a date and a time flash on the screen in the third segment, making it obvious that it was recovered from someone's old home recording.
• Richard the Lionheart ants to marry his sister to an Arab.  She threatens to tattle on him to the Pope.  This goes over like a load of bricks. 
• In the end, the Doctor is to be executed, but as his last wish asks to step inside his blue box one last time.
• PUNKED!
• A lame update for a lame episode. Sorry. Fortunately, next episode is better than sex.

s02 e13: The Web Planet

In which there are some large insects and NOTHING HAPPENS.

Review: 

Check this out. Looks pretty exciting, doesn't it? Absolutely incorrect.

Important Firsts:

• First episode so boring that I just watched youtube videos most of the time while it played in the background. 

Musings:

• This episode was originally lost in the great 1970s purge, but it was recovered later when it turned out that some schmuck had sold a copy to Algeria. The Algerians had burned their copy, but some schmuck THERE had sold a copy to Nigeria.  Negatives were recovered in Nigeria in 1979.  
• Maybe that's why this episode is even more low-res than most. 
• Oh wait.  Apparently (and I am not making this up), in an attempt to make the rather shitty sets appear more alien, the director smeared Vaseline across the camera lens.
• The TARDIS is trapped in some sort of tractor beam and is yanked down to a planet.  
• I bet there are no webs here.
• Edit: wrong.
• The Doctor wears another stupid hat.
• Ian's pen vanishes for no reason
• there are weird echos
• There is a lot of barren landscape.
• What?
• And then who?
• NO FUCKING WAY.
• I have no words for what is going on here.
• Turns out the atmosphere on this planet is very thin.  The Doctor makes everyone wear special jackets to compensate.  It is rare that the series deals with this sort of thing.
• We learn that Vicki has acute hearing, hasn't heard of aspirin, and studied medicine, physics, and chemistry at the age of ten.  The future is a wacky place.
• Barbara still has the bracelet that Tubby gave her.  She sort of fondles it.  I don't like this.
• The Doctor takes Ian's belt.  Ian comments that his pants might not stay up.  "Well that's your affair, not mine," says the Doctor.
• The Doctor then melts Ian's belt in acid.
• The sets in this episode are incredibly lame.
• Ian gets trapped in a web.
• The TARDIS takes off on its own and strands the Doctor. This plot device would never be used again.
• PS Vicki was trapped inside.
• Everyone wanders around on blank landscape for a while.
• Barbara seems to be possessed by some sort of spooky-ghost
• oh wait maybe it's that guy.
• In case you didn't realize, he looks stupider in color.
• Oh, it's a "she"
• Everyone explores some barren landscape some more.
• How can an episode with such weird critters be so boring?
• The Doctor states that this planet is in the Isop galaxy.  This is later referenced as the home galaxy of the Face of Boe.
• Some more barren landscape.
• All the weird insect critters make and incredibly annoying beeping sound.  This continues for several hours.
• Ian and the Doctor are captured by giant ants.
• Who beep a lot.
• More barren landscape
• More being captured by annoying beeping insects.
• More walking
• More beeping
• More landscapes
• more beeping
• beeping
• beeping
• beeping
• I can't finish this.
• I wish the whole thing were more like this.