I'll Get You For This Terrance

The Time Warrior, part one

Ah, season eleven, we remember it well. (Sits back in comfortable chair with pipe and slippers.) Jon Pertwee's silly season. A year that brings full circle Barry Letts' Buddhist philosophy that all things happen for a reason; that reason being, 'we miss Roger and Katy and can't really be arsed much anymore'. A year characterised by such exemplary decision-making as 'let's take the threat of instant death away from the Daleks, the one thing that makes them scary', 'let's CSO an entire planet out of fake sets and faker acting talent', 'listen, you couldn't get better dinosaurs for this money', and 'tell Brian we'd love a send up of the miner's strike, only make it longer than his EEC one'. And even if you haven't caught The Monster Of Peladon before, Aliens Of London and World War Three will show you exactly why it'll be another thirty-one year gap before anybody wants to tackle contemporary politics again.

With so much in common with this less-than-illustrious company, you'd expect The Time Warrior would be utter rubbish. Well, it isn't. Robert Holmes does his damndest to instill his brand of genuine wit where a lesser writer would succumb to Terrance's indulgant lunacy (for which Bob would get his revenge later). It's down to Bob that The Time Warrior comes across as merely whimsical - the Middle Ages are menaced by a shoulder-padded turdgoblin in a giant golf ball - instead of a twelfth-century alien abduction written by Jose Chung. And since Bob himself claimed to know nothing about real history, what we get instead is Cloppa Castle, some five years ahead of its time; Dot Cotton as Queen Ethelbruda takes charge while wet King Woebegone lies quaking under the bed, terrified of the castle-coveting Beoswyne, dim sidekick Hench, their mighty army of six and enough medieval thees and thous to give Jon Pertwee's lisp a persecution complex before the end of episode one. It's not like The Visitation was any less conceptually dumb for being utterly humourless.

"Enough medieval thees and thous to give Jon Pertwee's lisp a persecution complex before the end of episode one"

Mike Thekivperson will need to give his all next year if he's to stand any chance of superceding Kevin Lindsay's definitive Duvvel from Hull; the one and only straight man in this entire comedy troupe, which makes the dead-on pastiche of the Apollo moon landings all the funnier as well as a precient foretelling of the mad rush for weapons and military bases in space. Pay strict attention to this scene as it's easily the least overegged ingredient in the entire olde-worlde pudding. There will be a test later.

Alan Bromly holds out at long as he can, but we're ten minutes into the episode and there's not going to be room for Jon Pertwee's nose or ego if we hang around any longer, so we cut grudgingly to the first research establishment of the new season (collect the set; free dioramas to cut out from packets of Coco Pops) where the Jack Klugman of the Doctors, bereft of any authority figures to argue with for a change, tinkers with his ridiculous Great Egg Race snowglobe alarm clock (orange sky model). Jon's very fond of Delta particles, they flutter very nicely when you turn it upside down and shake it about a bit.

Mind you, not even the boffins in this place know what their own point to themselves is; not because the work is so hush-hush - though with UNIT in charge, the TOP SECRET sign outside the premises might be a clue - but because... well, look at Professor Rubbish's best David Graham impression from the dismally unfunny The Pirate Planet DVD extra Weird Science. That's all you need to know. The Brig too is in characteristically fine form, not having grasped yet after four straight years that an alien presence that can manifest through solid concrete is unlikely to be deterred by a bunch of plywood cublicles. It's still Nick Courtney's best screetime of the entire season, since there's no traitors and even the Brig can do better than trip over the Ikea set in the space of thirty seconds.

"The Dads idly speculate on whether Elisabeth Sladen is also bigger on the inside"

Not that anyone's paying much attention, since all eyes are on everybody's favourite miniature busybody interloper, Sarah Jane Smith. From the moment she asserts her Women's Lib credentials (decaf, please) and stows unwittingly away in the TARDIS (because you never know, a missing eccentric scientist might be hiding in a malapropos police box), the nation's five-year-olds are bewitched in an unhealthily lifelong platonic crush while the Dads idly speculate on whether Elisabeth Sladen is also bigger on the inside. It takes about fifteen seconds after stepping out the TARDIS for Sarah Jane to ruin somebody's work and to get herself captured; she doesn't get hypnotised until episode two though, so on balance it's a tie between Sarah Jane and Jo Grant.

And so to that cliffhanger moment, when Linx raises his helmet to reveal the identically sculpted features underneath in all their Spud-Hates-U glory. The Sontaran race can replicate thousands of new warriors at a time; it depends on how much brown Play-Doh and Fuzzy Pumper Crazy Clones sets there are to hand.

The Bumper Book Of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about The Time Warrior, part one: the production team considered easing Elisabeth Sladen in with a story set in her native Liverpool, until they decided a medieval castle would be more believable.