Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor Era (1974-1981) - Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm reviewing classic Doctor Who stories based on my fading memories of a Twitch marathon I watched ages ago, again!

I've reached the second era of the Fourth Doctor's run here, which was when Graham Williams took over as producer and Anthony Read took over as script editor (before passing the job over to Douglas Adams for season 17). So this article will feature reviews of every serial from seasons 15 to 17, starting with Horror of Fang Rock and ending with The Horns of Nimon.

I'm still dropping SPOILERS for every story I review, but they'll be limited to the current serial and those that came before it. I'm not jumping ahead in my personal timeline.

Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor Era (1974-1981) - Part 1

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm still reviewing (almost) every classic Doctor Who story based on my fuzzy memories of the Twitch marathon aired across June and July.

I've finally reached the part where I get to share my thoughts on the Fourth Doctor era, which is good, because everyone seems to like it, and bad, because man the guy had a lot of serials to write about! Tom Baker was in the role for seven years and had almost twice the stories of any other Doctor. 30% of the classic Doctor Who serials I watched starred the guy with the scarf! Fortunately, his seasons divide pretty well into three eras, so I've split him up into three articles.

This first post will feature Philip Hinchcliff and Robert Holmes' three gothic horror-themed seasons, spanning from Robot to The Talons of Weng-Chiang. If you want a list of what's in there, check at the top of any 'Greatest Doctor Who Episodes Ever' poll.

There will be SPOILERS below for each serial and maybe earlier ones as well, but I'll not be spoiling anything that happens after.

Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope

Written by:

George Lucas

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Directed by:

George Lucas

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Release Date:

1977

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I've been writing about science fiction for just over a year now, but this week on Sci-Fi Adventures I face my greatest challenge yet: trying to find something even slightly original to say about Rogue One 2: The Star Wars, also known as Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. Or just Star Wars.

The 'Episode IV - A New Hope' bit was added in a theatrical re-release later, but then everyone knows that already. Everyone already knows everything about this bloody movie! There's been essential guides and technical manuals and visual dictionaries and Wookiepedias and Plinketts and podcasts analysing every minute of it, every frame of it, for 40 years now (happy birthday Star Wars!) So it wouldn't come as a huge shock to me if you know more about the movie than I do.

I'm definitely a Star Wars fan, but I've never been obsessed with it to the level that some people are. I've never bought action figures or gone to conventions. I didn't even watch the films in the right order! My introduction to the series was Return of the Jedi, then I watched (some of) Empire Strikes Back, and then Spaceballs. In fact I was probably playing the games before I saw the movie itself. I've put more hours into TIE Fighter and the Jedi Knight series than any of the films.

Though I'm sure I must have seen A New Hope at least of three times by this point. First I rented it on VHS, then I saw the Special Edition in widescreen at the cinema in '97, then I watched the 2004 DVD version a year or so back. So the movie keeps changing every time I see it and that's just weird.

Alright, this is a two hour movie so I'm going to be showing off an absurd amount of screencaps and providing my dumb commentary under each one as I go through the film. Here's something I've noticed already: the Star Wars logo text isn't hollow, the letters are filled in black. Man if I can demonstrate this level of startling insight all the way through maybe there's a chance I can pull this off!

It should be fairly obvious that this will be filled with SPOILERS for Star Wars: Episode IV, but it might come as a surprise that I won't be spoiling anything made after it. So no spoilers for Empire, the prequels, or Rogue One. Some people think that insanely popular 37 year old movies are fair game for spoilers, but that's not how I do things.

Doctor Who (1963) 14-16: The Face of Evil, Part Four

Episode:

443

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Serial:

89

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Writer:

Chris Boucher

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Air Date:

22-Jan-1977

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm finally done with The Face of Evil! Well I will be after I get through this last episode.

I'm just glad it wasn't a six part serial. Not that I haven't been enjoying it so far, I just don't think I'd enjoy it much further. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of serialisation, I just prefer it when things aren't dragged on longer than they need to be. For instance I was watching a Star Trek: The Motion Picture edit a few hours ago that got the run time down from 132 minutes to 22, and that was a massive improvement! Plus putting the Tron: Legacy soundtrack over it also helped somehow... I'm getting off topic now.

I'll be screencapping this whole episode and writing my thoughts underneath, so there will be SPOILERS for the whole serial and maybe even earlier episodes too. I won't ruin anything that comes afterwards though.

Doctor Who (1963) 14-15: The Face of Evil, Part Three

Episode:

442

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Serial:

89

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Writer:

Chris Boucher

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Air Date:

15-Jan-1977

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, you've been blessed with my thoughts about the penultimate chapter of The Face of Evil, a Tom Baker story from the 14th series of classic Doctor Who. That sounds like a lot, but we'd be up to the 36th series right now if they hadn't reset the numbering (or the 54th if it hadn't taken a few years off), so 14 is still pretty early. I guess the fact that Baker's the 4th of 12 Doctors kind of gives that away.

I'll be writing my commentary underneath screencaps from the episode, so there'll be SPOILERS for the first three parts of the serial and perhaps earlier episodes too. I won't spoil anything that comes after though, not even if I want to.

Doctor Who (1963) 14-14: The Face of Evil, Part Two

Episode:

441

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Serial:

89

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Writer:

Chris Boucher

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Air Date:

08-Jan-1977

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I've got more Face of Evil for you.

This is the second episode of a four part serial from 1977, the year of Star Wars, starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor. Though they don't actually call him 'The Fourth Doctor' in the episode as that'd just be weird.

I'll be writing words under screencaps and some of those words will include SPOILERS for parts 1 and 2 (but not 3 and 4), so be warned. In fact I may even spoil some earlier episodes too if they're relevant.

Doctor Who (1963) 14-13: The Face of Evil, Part One

Episode:

440

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Serial:

89

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Writer:

Chris Boucher

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Air Date:

01-Jan-1977

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Doctor Who's finally returning to television today after taking a year off! But I can't review something that hasn't aired yet, so this week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm taking the site back further than I've ever gone before, to an episode of Doctor Who older than Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It even predates Star Wars, though it's a close thing as they both came out in 1977, just a few months apart. Which means that they both have their 40th anniversaries this year! I wonder which of them has aged better.

The Face of Evil is the fourth serial in the Fourth Doctor's third year on the series, so it's from the middle of Tom Baker's run and the end of Philip Hinchcliffe's time as producer. I'm relatively new to Doctor Who, I jumped aboard when Steven Moffatt took the reins in 2010, but I've heard that Baker's pretty decent in the role. In fact he's a lot of fans' all-time favourite Doctor and Hinchcliffe's era is apparently one of the best in the whole series, so this should theoretically be really bloody good. But Doctor Who often changes form to better fit its producer, like Star Trek changes with each new ship and crew, so this run is likely very different to what I'm used to and it's possible it just won't click with me.

Plus this is a four part serial, so that's kind of daunting. Sure each episode is only 25 minutes long, but that adds up to being a movie's worth of content I'm writing about here. I was originally planning to post all four parts on one day to get it over with, but then I took pity on us all and decided to do it weekly instead... in addition to the weekly reviews I'm doing for other series. It's my hope that someone somewhere will be happy about this.

Anyway I'm going to post screencaps and write commentary underneath, so you can expect massive SPOILERS for this episode and minor spoilers for earlier episodes (spoiler: Jon Pertwee turns into Tom Baker). But January 1977 is where I'm drawing the line. There are around 400 episodes that come after this one and I'm not going to assume you've seen them all yet, because I definitely haven't.