Welcome back to Time Lord Tops! Today, it’s the Third Doctor’s turn to have his worst and best stories listed. This list was really tough to put together, because Pertwee had quite a few solid stories throughout his era. In fact, I’d consider it the most solid era of the show. But, I still found five bad ones worth mentioning. With that said, let’s begin!
#5: THE MUTANTS (1972)
When the conversation turns to Bad Third Doctor adventures, The Mutants seems to be brought up a lot. The issue with this story is that it’s pretty terribly average. You got this really cool monster of the week, but the story is just so unengaging. I don’t feel much of anything here. It has to be said, though, that the cliffhangers are good, but overall the rest of the story is poorly executed. Oh, and it probably didn’t need to be six parts long, either.
#4: DAY OF THE DALEKS (1972)
This serial was not written with the Daleks in mind, which really drags it down. Way way down. The idea is good on paper, though. A group of rebels goes back in time to prevent doomsday by stopping the events that caused it all, only to be pursued by those they are rebelling against into the past. If done right, Day of the Daleks could’ve been the Doctor Who version of The Terminator. But instead we got an uninspired Dalek runaround. If you’re gonna watch this story, watch the Special Edition. That version improves it tenfold.
#3: THE MONSTER OF PELADON (1974)
Where do I start with The Monster of Peladon? It’s really a six part version of The Curse of Peladon. It’s got pretty much the same characters, plot points and design of the first Peladon tale. Even with gender-flipped characters and the Ice Warriors being moved to the villain role, it doesn’t help this story. It trashes the original. I don’t like it.
#2: DEATH TO THE DALEKS (1974)
In my ranking of the Classic Dalek stories, Death to the Daleks was near the bottom because the Daleks looked so weak. I mean, they got beaten to death by guys with sticks. Really? And the rooms with puzzles and such were very underwhelming. Come now, how is a checkerboard floor worthy of a cliffhanger? The reason it appears much lower here is because this serial does not have a Special Edition to save it like Day of the Daleks.
#1: THE TIME MONSTER (1972)
Now, I like those outlandishly wild Doctor Who ideas. But whoever thought that a machine called TOMTIT would be a good thing for The Master to use was an idiot. And the whole timeflow analog bit where The Doctor does a balancing act to try and stop The Master is just ridiculous. The monster looks like a giant chicken crossed with a Roman Centurion. You can just tell they had run out of steam at this point. Watch The Time Monster for the completionist credit and that’s it. Seriously, the timeflow analog scene has to be seen to be believed.
DISHONORABLE MENTION: PLANET OF THE DALEKS (1973)
I threw around the idea of putting Planet of the Daleks on the list proper, but then I remembered it’s only good if you pair it with Frontier in Space. There’s a reason they’re joined in a box set. However, that doesn’t excuse it from being a bad Dalek story. You simply can’t do Daleks on the cheap effectively. It doesn’t work like it has in the past, and without Frontier in Space this becomes the usual Dalek runaround. The writers of the Pertwee Era really did strike out with their Dalek stories in my opinion.
But I want to hear from you all. What do you think is the worst Pertwee story? Is there a story I left out? Let me know!
Until next time! Stay tuned for more Time Lord Tops!
Okay if the mutants and day of the Daleks makes this list than that is indeed saying soo.ethung about the bar for this era, because they were pretty good stories. Granted in both cases I truly believe they get better the more you rewatch and reflect on them, and contemplate their meanings and origins.
Interesting that many of the worst have the Daleks in them, and true, the worst of those show the Daleks as inept and bumbling.
I might disagree with your top choice though. For me I might put colony in space in its place. I just think it’s too slow and takes too long to build both action and interesting characters, as well as a dull location. I take less points off for dodgy effects, costumes and plotholes than poor writing and development.
Thanks as always. Wish we could all sit down and debate these over a pint someday.
I might have to agree with you on some of those point Peter. This was maybe one of the harder lists to do because the Pertwee Era was so good. I think you might be right about Colony in Space, it definitely should’ve been on this list now that I think about it.
All of these stories on this list have some good qualities. Pertwee’s era was solid and just doesn’t have too many flaws. I can count the amount of outright bad episodes on one hand.
I think I agree with most of your list here, with the exception of Day of the Daleks. Day is a little bit of a guilty pleasure, I wholly agree they shouldn’t have put the hysterical pepperpots in to the story, but that aside I really enjoy it. I think I would have replaced it with Claws of Axos. Claws is one of those stories that I usually skip when I’m doing a binge watch, it looks nice enough, but as a story it’s a bit unoriginal and just a bit meh.
Great article as always
Andy
IMO Day of the Daleks is great! It’s one of my favourite Pertwee’s
I agree with most of your picks but would swap out Death to the Daleks with Invasion of the Dinosaurs which, despite high ambitions and a solid story fails due to the poor special effects. Kudos to the BBC for having the stones to attempt it, though. Death to the Daleks suffers from boring puzzles/traps in the citadel. That was a missed opportunity. I would still rather watch the worst of the Pertwee era than much of the later seasons of Classic Who.
I LOVE Day of the Daleks. It is basically The Terminator with Daleks. I also like Planet although I admit it is too long (but not an uncommon problem with Classic who stories). Dinosaurs is great even with the laughably bad stop motion. Colony in Space is just plain awful and would be #2 for me. I agree with the rest of the list. It was a strong era.
Not going to quibble too much with that list other than Day of the Daleks which is a great story, just not a great Dalek story. People often talk about the time paradox aspect , but ignore the fact that it is a story about terrorism and it’s potential consequences. It might have been better to make it about a future human fascistic regime and miss out the Daleks altogether seeing as their poor execution distracts people so much.
Monster of Peladon and Time Monster certainly deserve their place though.
Just to add I never get why people hate Colony In Space so much – a solid , well plotted story.