Time is Relative - Season 11: Part Three

Good evening and welcome. It's time for some more of my journey through the adventures of Doctor Who.

You know the drill. A while ago, I watched these stories, and took some photos of bits I liked the look of. Now I'm trying to remember what was going on. Sometimes I'm quite close to getting it right. The rest of the time... well, the pictures are pretty.

We're nearing the middle of the 1970s, when fashions were bold and hairstyles knew no shame.








The Monster of Peladon

In this story, Doctor Who is delighted to be reunited with giant green space penis Alpha Centauri. They are friends from an earlier, much better adventure, where they had a fun time drinking wine, wearing expensive cloaks and watching lots of other aliens get murdered.

You can tell from Doctor Who's face that he loves standing next to Alpha Centauri. He can be as weird and offensive as he likes, and he'll still be the one who doesn't look like a massive pulsating phallus in a charity shop dress.

The Ice Warriors are back for this story too. They look brilliant - all majestic and hard and like they'd win at anything that happened next, whether that be an orgy, a thermonuclear war or a game of Connect Four.

Alpha Centauri is clearly feeling a number of emotions. His face - in as much as it can be called a face - suggests that he is thinking back through the events of his life and realising how different they would be if he looked more like an Ice Warrior and less like an intergalactic sex toy.

There is a villain in this story, and he's pretty good. He's called Eckersley, I think, and he's ever so cool . Look how he's just ignoring Doctor Who and carrying on with his evil plan. Usually when Doctor Who stares like that at the villain, they give up and say sorry. The fact that Eckersley hasn't given up has rather spoiled things for Doctor Who, as he has no follow up. He's just going to carry on staring, I think.

Look at Sarah Jane go, though. Jo Grant would have been in tears by now, or fallen in love with a prince or been captured by dogs or something. Not Sarah. She's yelling, "Stop your evil plan, right now, you badly dressed ponce!"

He does stop, eventually, though I can't remember why. I think he tries to use a big gun and it explodes or something. Doctor Who claims credit, obviously.

Once the story is over, Sarah finds the Queen of the whole planet and spends ages telling her to sort her life out. Her main recommendations are:

a. Stop inviting killer aliens to invade you
b. Get a better hat
c. Don't let men tell you what to do - just shout at them and they will cry
d. If a giant green space penis asks you if he can come live here, forever, say "No."






Planet of the Spiders

This story is very exciting. First, a giant spider appears out of nowhere, and sits on a horrible rug. It is a super clever alien spider, though, and so as well as crawling about and looking gross, it can shriek at you and tell you to do stuff.

It has come to earth to find a crystal that Doctor Who nicked from the Planet of the Spiders ages ago. It finds some blokes and shrieks "Take me to Doctor Who please."

This bloke is delighted to help the giant spider. In return, the spider gives him magic powers. Look - he can shoot lightning now, like the Emperor from Star Wars. Cool.

The man chases Doctor Who about for a bit. He has not reckoned, however, with Doctor Who's plan to jump into a car and zoom off, laughing. Then they chase each other about all day, both appearing to have a splendid time.

The man - who is called Lupton - gets very tired of chasing/being chased by Doctor Who, and eventually teleports off to go and live on the Planet of the Spiders. He is friends with spiders now. Which is weird. I think a giant spider would have to do more than give me zappy powers before I decided to go home and meet its family.

I think Lupton looks a bit like late 90s David Bowie here. He liked Spiders too. Maybe Lupton was just one of Bowie's many personas.

The Spiders decide to jump onto Sarah Jane instead. "Go find Doctor Who!" They shriek. Which she does, as we can see here.

Doctor Who has been hanging out with this beardy guy. He's another Time Lord, which probably explains why his dress sense is ludicrous. They weren't expecting Sarah, and now Doctor Who has to pretend that they weren't about to take massive amounts of drugs.

Doctor Who is saying, "Why have you got a giant evil spider on your back?"

"Say that you don't!" shrieks the spider in her ear. This convinces no-one.









Eventually everyone goes to the Planet of the Spiders. Sarah's spider jumps off her and goes to play in its web. Sarah is freed of its control, but I think the spiders decide to eat her, so the day still requires significant improvement.

Doctor Who goes to confront the Massive Evil Queen Spider. She lives in this cool blue cave, made of crystals. She's going, "Why did you nick my crystal Doctor Who? I needed it for my cave." Which she blatantly doesn't - she's got loads. If she was human, she'd be the kind of person who buys films she's never going to watch, just to have a massive BluRay collection.

Doctor Who can't think of anything else to do, so he gives her the crystal. This makes her brain explode, and she sets on fire and everything collapses and blows up. Doctor Who runs off, having yet again won without actually doing anything except - in fact - basically lose.

Sadly for Doctor Who, his unearned victory is short lived. Apparently the big crystal explosion made radiation go everywhere, including into Doctor Who's brain and basically all over him. This means he is going to die.

Sarah Jane is quite upset. Even though he was a vain, selfish drunk with the personality of a psychopath, he was quite fun to be with. He could say the odd charming thing, when his mouth wasn't full of cheese or wine or racism.

Soon he will turn into another Doctor Who. But that's for another time. Goodbye Doctor Who number three. You had a hideous taste in shirts, but great taste in ladies and monsters.



What happens next? Take a look. 

What happened before this? Find out here. 

Time is Relative - Season 11: Part Two

Well hello, flirty sailor. Welcome again to this - my half remembered account of Doctor Who stories with accompanying pictures.

Don't worry if you've never seen the stories. That's why I'm here. To make vague guesses at what's going on and make up the rest.

We're half way through season 11, which is from the 70s, when the world was young.



Death to the Daleks

Sarah Jane Smith goes into space and meets these guys - hooded monster things whose faces seem to be in a perpetual state of horrified surprise. Perhaps they keep catching themselves in mirrors? "Arrg! Oh, it's me."

The Hood guys take Sarah to see their magic fire. This happens a lot to Sarah. Aliens are always showing her their sacred stuff. Then, when she looks insufficiently impressed, they try to sacrifice her.

There are some Daleks on this planet too. They are having a crisis meeting. Everyone is looking at the one on the top left and shouting questions and doing a panic.

Why are they on this planet? It's horrible, and the floor is very hard to do 'gliding about' on.  Why do they ever leave our own planet, where everything is metal and fun for sliding? Why don't their guns work? What if Doctor Who turns up? What if they get attacked by a giant metal snake?

The leader looks very sad. He does not know the answer to any of the questions.

If memory serves, they have run out of power, because this planet makes everything not work. This means the Daleks can't generally use electric power to move around, or they'd be totally stuck. They must have little pedals inside. to make them go.

I can't imagine they'd want anyone to know about that. It would diminish their gravitas.

Things have gone very badly indeed for this Dalek. The native Hood guys have decided to set him on fire, and are now doing a dance around his burning corpse. This sort of thing happens to Daleks quite often, because they are total space jerks and they have, at some point, annoyed everyone in the universe. That said, this kind of behaviour is unusually childish and weird.

This Dalek is accepting his fate with a kind of resigned stoicism. Yes, his head might be on fire, but on the bright side, he won't have to put up with Doctor Who laughing at him later on in the story and calling him racist names.

Amazingly, these Daleks carry tiny model TARDISes to shoot at. We're learning a lot about the Daleks this week, aren't we?

This does not reflect very well on them. It's one thing not liking Doctor Who, and wanting to shoot him in his stupid patronising face. But what's the TARDIS ever done to them? Maybe it's just easier to model. It can't be easy using a 3D printer with a big sucker hand.

Eventually the Hood guys capture Doctor Who and try to set him on fire. As usual, Doctor Who defeats them by mocking everything about their culture and calling their rituals pointless and derivative. This cuts them to the core, and Doctor Who is able to escape while they are having an emergency counselling session.

By this point in the story, everyone has been running round the planet for quite some time and it's becoming hard to work out why any of it matters, and indeed if there's any point to life in general.

The Daleks look quite alarmed here, and with good reason. Their guns don't work, people keep setting them on fire and - worst of all -  Doctor Who is around somewhere, and he always says very hurtful things to them when they meet. Not to mention the fact that this story is called "Death to the Daleks", which doesn't bode well for them returning to their loved ones when the story is over.

The Daleks spend the rest of the story posing about as if for a fashion shoot. This is a bold choice, and plays to their strengths. They do look great.

The one in the middle is really pulling it off, dominating the shot. The one to the left has adopted a wistful stare into the distance, suggesting a sensitive soul beneath the metal exterior. The one to the right, however, just looks sad. Maybe he was friends with the one who got set on fire.

Doctor Who has lost Sarah somewhere, but isn't really bothered, as he's found a disgusting little alien to boss around instead. They go on a journey into a mysterious city, and work out the mystery behind the power drain. Whatever that is - I can't remember.

The whole story is quite tedious and everything takes too long to happen. It does, however, end with this cool skeleton guy, who had the good sense to die before any of this started.


That'll do for now, I think Come back soon, for more - and hopefully better - adventures with Doctor Who.


Season 11: Part one can be found here

Season 11: Part three is here.