Season Three

Was Season three the longest season ever? I wouldn’t be at all surprised. It was a massive 10 stories long for a start, and even if you say, yes, well, Mission to the Unknown was only 1 episode, the fact is that the Daleks’ Masterplan was 12 episodes!

Season three for me saw the best of the comedy historicals, in Donald Cotton’s clever and funny The Myth Makers. John Lucarotti’s “The Massacre of St. Bartholemew’s Eve” was right up there with his own “The Aztecs” as the most enjoyable of all of the historicals, and maybe even better. If we’re trying to characterise Season Three, I think I can discern at least a couple of trends, namely –

A hefty turnover of companions. Yes, this season saw the Doctor say goodbye, for one reason or another, to Vicky, Katerina, Sara and Steven. Alright, Sara was maybe never conceived as a long term companion, and Jean Marsh has gone on record as saying that she had no intention of carrying on the role even if they had asked her to. The haste with which Katerina was discarded, though, smacks of a lack of foresight and planning. Somehow as well I get the impression that nobody really sat down and worked out what Dodo was going to be like either. So I don’t know whether Dodo was just poorly written, or poorly acted by Jackie Lane, but she never convinced me. What was she doing on the TARDIS? She just sort of arrived. What did she get out of being on the TARDIS? Probably exactly the same as what she would have got out of sitting on a chair in Wimbledon Common for a couple of months. Stupid is as stupid does.

The sidelining of William Hartnell. – In both “The Massacre” and “The Celestial Toymaker” the Doctor disappears for much of the story. In “The Savages” he spends a whole episode comatose. By the end of the third season William Hartnell only has 2 stories left as the Doctorand it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that for producer Innes Lloyd and script editor Gerry Davies this wouldn’t be a moment too soon.

Stories that had interesting concepts, but were not properly realised on screen. Of course I’m referring to the Celestial Toymaker – I’ve already seen how cuts affected the script and what eventually appeared on screen, but it’s also largely true of the Ark, which started so brilliantly, but finished as a rather tame piece of space opera.

I do think we’re in a position to make some reflections on the Hartnell era as a whole, but as there are two stories still to go it is only fair that we watch them first. So let’s have a look at how the stories of the third season rated.

Mighty 200 Positions

The Daleks Masterplan – 42

The Massacre of St. Bartholemew’s Eve – 86

The War Machines – 108

The Myth Makers – 126

Mission to the Unknown – 133

The Celestial Toymaker – 151

The Ark – 154

The Savages 162

Galaxy 4 – 172

The Gunfighters – 175

Now my rating

The Massacre of St. Bartholemew’s Eve

The Myth Makers

The Daleks’ Masterplan

The Savages

The Ark

The Gunfighters

The War Machines

The Celestial Toymaker

Mission to the Unknown

Galaxy 4

The War machines so far down? Well, this is a personal list, and it comes down to enjoyment. The fact is that the last two episodes of The Ark are poor, but I enjoyed the first two episodes so much that I can’t honestly put it any further down the list even though the last to episodes are rubbish. Am I really saying that I enjoyed The Gunfighters that much more than the War Machines? Too right I am. The Gunfighters has it hands down for me. I’ve already put on record how much I enjoyed the Massacre, and while The Daleks Masterplan has some wonderful moments, it is uneven, which is only what you’d expect from such a mammoth twelve parter.