Doctor Who Club of Australia

[Greg]

Which is your favourite story from the 1965/6 series?

[meglos]

The Ark. A common cold causing a plague because a species has no resistence to it. Simple.

[Greg]

I had to think about this one. I ended up choosing The Massacre, which we are sadly no lonfer able to view. It diverges from the standards of Doctor Who in that it only substantially features one regular, companion Steven Taylor. IT also has the events of history given far greater weight than normal - one man, without fore-knowledge, can't chmnage the course of history.

As we don't have the audio-visual version any more, the central idea of teh story - whether the Doctor and the Abbot of Amboise are the same person or simply look like each other - is pretty effectively ruined as any brief description necessarily hints that they aren't, whereas the simple and unadorned presence of Hartnell in the other role leaves a substantial cloud over what is happening for both Steven and the viewers.

It also helps to show hat the view that Hartnell fluffed many of his lines due to poor memory and/or ill health isn't completely true: his performance shows us that some of his mannerisms of the Doctor are choices rather than fluffs.

(Other strong contender in this season for me were the clever The Myth Makers and The Dalek Master Plan, althouigh the latter suffers from too much padding!)

[Beatly]

I can only recall having seen one of these, although my memory may be playing games on me, and it wasn't The Ark. but that's the one I've chosen, based on the concept, for the same reason as meglos, above. It's probably a powerful allegory or something like that: not dissimilar to the whole point of the story of Wells's War of the Worlds - the Martians, for all their power and technology and apparent unstoppability, are thwarted by the smallest and most unassuming creature on Earth. There's probably an environmental message in there too.

[Theta Sigma]

The Daleks Master Plan. Before I listened to this story on CD it was The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve. (The full title sounds way better.)

[John Lucantonio]

The Daleks Master Plan, although I've only seen (or heard) 3 episodes I loved them

[SharazJek]

I'm no fan of the Daleks but The Daleks' Masterplan got my vote for this season.

Running for a massive 5 hours, I can honestly say that it only seems like 1 hour to me. The characters are wonderfully played. Katarina is gorgeous. It's a shame she had to be killed off. And Kevin Stoney has to be the best villain of the black & white era (with Mavic Chen and Tobias Vaughan).

[Wester]

Celestial Toymaker - although I have only read the book.