Season 11

Mighty 200/DWM 2014 poll

The Time Warrior -  47/54

Planet of the Spiders – 89/81

Death to the Daleks – 128/148

Invasion of the Dinosaurs – 131/137

The Monster of Peladon – 179/216

My Rating

The Time Warrior

Death to the Daleks

Planet of the Spiders

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

The Monster of Peladon

It has to be said that Season 11 does not have the best loved stories of the Pertwee in it, and it does beg the question whether Jon Pertwee stayed a season too long. That’s not being horrible. I loved Tom Baker’s 4^th Doctor, but even I’d find it difficult to argue that Tom maybe stayed on too long in the role. After all, you can argue that Season 7 was all about the Doctor coming to terms with his new self, and with his exile. Season 8 was all about the Doctor defending the Earth from the Master. Season 9 was about him trying to end his exile, and Season 10 was about him ending his exile, learning how to travel freely again, and beginning to bid a long goodbye to UNIT. What was season 11 all about? Essentially it was about much the same as Season 10, and the problem was that it didn’t do Season 10 as well as Season 10 had already done it. We’ll talk more about the implications of all this in the next section, looking back on the Pertwee era as a whole.

None of this means to say that there was nothing particularly of value about Season 11. For one thing we had Sarah Jane Smith. Liz Sladen was consistently excellent, and this was only her first season too. “The Time Warrior” also introduced us to the Sontarans in what is pretty widely viewed as the best story of the season. My boy Holmes again. ‘The Monster of Peladon’ as well as giving us the last Ice Warriors story also gave us the first alien planet visit sequel story – not totally successfully in my view, but at least it tried.

You can argue that at least two of the stories in season 11 were let down by special effects. Spiders are frightening to many people, but fake spiders which don’t hardly move aren’t. If your story is called Planet of the Spiders, then you’re setting yourself up for a fall if your spiders are nothing to write home about. It’s even worse if you’re offering the promise of real spectacle, like “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” and then you fail to deliver.

The end of the War Games showed us that season 7, and every following season to come was going to have to be different from what went before in the Hartnell and Troughton eras. What we didn’t know was that the show was never going to be the same again after season 11. Well, almost. There was just the one story still to come, the first of season 12.