Another pick-six of particular, provably plum plots for your perusal. Pronto.
#36 — Flatline — Other Capaldi stories may have had a better execution in terms of pure style, but this story scores as a concept carried out to a fun extreme. Not-so-much a Doctor-light story as a Doctor-small story, the images of the Doctor peering out of the TARDIS were wonderfully surreal, not to mention superbly executed.
#35 — The Face of Evil — It’s said any Doctor isn’t really the Doctor until one or both of the following happen: meeting the Daleks, or a change in companion. Tom Baker completed his set when Elisabeth Sladen ceded to Louise Jameson in The Face of Evil, and what a contrast it was! There may never have been so strong a companion character introduction as here. The ‘My Fair Lady’ education of Leela wasn’t developed here so much as it would later be, but it was genius, while it lasted.
#34 — The Invasion — Whereas The Web of Fear seemed like a proof of concept, The Invasion showed the direction of things to come, and thats important in and of itself. Tobias Vaughn was a villain worthy of this second-longest Doctor Who Story (to date) and the Cybermen were cunning and manipulative.
#33 — Remembrance of the Daleks — At first blush a story purposely focused on nostalgia, Remembrance is where the McCoy era put away childish things (i.e. Season 24) and began to move forward again.
#32 — The Aztecs — Not the first true historical, but perhaps first in our hearts, and that’s not changing history, not even one line. For a series still very much figuring out what it was on-the-fly, this was just mesmerizing.
#31 — The Ribos Operation — The opening installment for ‘The Key to Time’ season, it once again falls to Robert Holmes to perfectly get what the new Doctor/Companion dynamic is all about. And in that sense Ribos is almost a comedy, delightfully puncturing the Doctor at numerous opportunities.
Precisely.
