Season 10

Here’s the ratings for the stories that made up season 10: -

DWM Mighty 200/ 2014 poll

The Green Death – 39/30

The Three Doctors – 58/51

Carnival of Monsters – 62/64

Frontier in Space – 113/ 127

Planet of the Daleks – 118/ 123

My Ratings

The Green Death

The Three Doctors

Carnival of Monsters

Planet of the Daleks

Frontier in Space

Yes, I tend to agree with the ranking in the 2014 poll, although I agree with both polls that there is precious little to choose between “Frontier in Space” and “Planet of the Daleks”. I am so delighted that fandom in general rates “The Green Death” so highly. It’s a serious candidate for the best Pertwee story so far as far as I’m concerned. In a way it’s quite ironic that in this, the first season in which the Doctor has been able to travel freely since the end of the first story of the season, “The Three Doctors”, the finest story is actually an Earth based, full blown UNIT story – possibly the last great UNIT story, although we shall make our own minds up about that as the next couple of seasons progress. Well, for me one of the keynotes of the season was the Doctor’s gradual realisation of just how fond he was becoming of Jo Grant – the instances of him being a pig towards her have been noticeably far fewer. His leaving scene at the end of “The Green Death” was actually one of the strongest scenes of the era, and proved that when given the opportunity, Pertwee could do quiet emotion just as well as Hartnell or Troughton.

As a whole season, season 10 had more variety than any Pertwee season so far, more variety than any other season since season 6, Troughton’s last, and maybe even season 4. Maybe it is the benefit of hindsight that makes me say that “The Green Death” had something of the feeling of the end of an era. Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks would still be around in season 11, but both were coming towards the end of their time on the show. In Dicks’ case, Robert Holmes was being groomed to take over as script editor and shadowed Dicks throughout season 11. According to Richard Molesworth’s biography, Holmes used to joke that this meant him doing the work, and Terrance Dicks popping in to see how things were coming along on the way to the golf course. Holmes and Dicks were friends, so I’m sure that this was an exaggeration, but nevertheless it did reflect that the show was heading in a new direction. For example, it’s telling that there will be no UNIT story totally set on 20^th century Earth in this season – the two ostensibly UNIT stories , “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” and “Planet of the Spiders” involve time manipulation and travelling through space respectively.

That’s all ahead of us. For now, we can look back on season 10, a season that was a transitional one, with some great highlights, and while some of the stories will never be among my personal favourites, all of them were consistently watchable.