The Time Warrior

"Why don't you take off that ridiculous gear and go home to your butcher's shop!"


I watched this story on VHS in 1991 when I was ten years old. I think it might have been a birthday present. It was a story I was very keen to see back then and I enjoyed it a lot. When I bought the DVD, I expected to be a good deal less impressed and to find lots of faults with it (after all this a Pertwee/ Letts story!). Nevertheless, I was surprised to find myself enjoying it as much, if not more than I did aged ten.

It is this story which pretty much chrystalizes the pseudo-historical genre. It is perhaps unfortunate that this kind of story has become thought of as almost the default mode for Doctor Who (hence that dull runaround, The Visitation), yet here most of the elements involved work well. The story has something of a theatrical feel and though this is at odds with what the show often tries to do, this adds enormously to the charm and effectiveness of this serial.

What is most delightful about The Time Warrior is Robert Holmes' glorious script. Watching it, one feels as though every single line is priceless and more than half of them get a laugh out of me. Even more importantly, Holmes gives us a great cast of characters.

Linx, our first introduction to the Sontarans is also the best appearance of that race that we have seen in Doctor Who. Not only is his mask brilliantly realized, but Kevin Lindsay creates this character masterfully, offering not only a great vocal performance, but a real sense of an alien physiology in the way he moves. He is also, as some people have pointed out, a counterpart to the Pertwee Doctor, being stranded on Earth and acting as a scientific adviser to a bunch of soldiers.

Linx is made even more interesting by the fact that he is given an human counterpart in Irongron. Though Linx is an alien and Irongron is an Earthman, they are remarkably similar characters in their relish for military glory. Notice how their behaviour mirrors each other at the beginning of the story. When Irongron sees the 'falling star' he claims it as 'Irongron's Star.' When Linx steps out of his spacecraft, he claims planet Earth for the Sontaran empire. Every single scene shared by Irongron and Linx is a joy to watch. Their is such a beautiful chemistry between the two contrasting, but not dissimilar characters. As much as they may hurl insults at each other and desire the other's death, I am quite convinced that they both have a fondness for each other deep down.

Other characters are enjoyable too. Just watch how Blood Axe adores his captain! June Brown as Lady Eleanor is pleasantly Shakespearean in her performance. Rubeish is a little silly, but still fun. I don't know why Alan Rowe gets criticized in a lot of fan reviews for his performance as Sir Edward. The character he is playing is supposed to be rather pathetic and this comes across.

The Time Warrior is notable for the first appearance of Sarah Jane Smith, generally considered the most popular of companions among fans. Her portrayal is somewhat problematic, as Phil Sandifer argues on TARDIS Eruditorum. The presence of a feminist companion results in the Doctor becoming rather more sexist and patronizing than he was before. Sarah also comes across as remarkably stupid. Why on Earth does she conclude that Dr. Who is a spy? She sees him in conversation with the Brigadier, so it should be obvious to her that he is in a position of trust with the Brigadier. Spies generally try to be inconspicuous, yet the Doctor has a police box with him and flaunts bizarre gadgetry for everyone to see. There is an horrible sense that the viewer is being made to laugh at the stupid trendy modern girl.

There are other flaws to this story, most obviously the padded plot. The robot subplot feels unnecessary, as does the need for a final return trip to Irongron's castle. As with a lot of Doctor Who stories, there are a fair few holes in the plot. Some of these can be explained. I quite like the suggestion of Tat Wood in About Time that Sarah Jane Smith is working for UNIT as an investigator. This would explain how she breaches security so easily.

Linx's comment about Sarah's thorax was rather an eye opener for me when I watched this aged ten. Prior to this I had never noticed the different construction of the female thorax. Doctor Who can be educational!

The Time Warrior is simply one of the most enjoyable Doctor Who stories of the Seventies and one of the best of the Pertwee/ Letts era.

On my other Blog

Shoes Off at the Door, Please: Hey, Buddhists take their Shoes Off!

I mention Doctor Who on my other blog.

Season 11

In my judgement Season 11 is the worst season in classic Doctor Who. Apart from the first story, The Time Warrior, it is appallingly bad. Pertwee had simply been in the role too long and his performance was wearing thin. A change was desperately needed at this point.

The season started off promising; that awful Jo Grant had gone, we had a great story in The Time Warrior with a great new monster and a refreshing new companion. Yet things rapidly slipped in the remaining stories. Most noticeable is the shockingly low standards of scriptwriting in this season, though there is plenty of poor acting and badly thought out effects too.

Aside from it being the last Pertwee season, Season 11 is most notable for the introduction of Sarah Jane Smith, played by Elisabeth Sladen. Sarah has the reputation for being everybody's favorite companion and is fondly regarded by all fans. While Sarah is a refreshing change from Jo Grant, who was truly diabolical, I would have to dissent from the opinion that Sarah was the best companion. The problem with Sarah is she never really came across as a convincing human being. She always seemed like she had been genetically engineered for the purpose of assisting the Doctor. She was brave, but still screamed. She was independent, but still did what the Doctor told her. She was plucky, but always ended up needing to be rescued. She would moan, but always be determined to help the Doctor save the day. She simply comes across as too much like a tailor made Doctor's companion. On the whole, I prefer companions like Tegan and Peri, who have a somewhat less harmonious relationship with the Doctor.

The Time Warrior- 8/10

A well thought out story with a magnificent script. The Sontarans get a nice introduction and Sarah Jane Smith is a character that one warms too quite quickly (even if she does not come across as terribly smart).

It's not the best production and some of the acting is poor, but it is still a good story.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs- 2/10

A plot so stupid it insults the intelligence of the audience. The final death of the overused 'Yeti in the loo' concept. Mike Yate's treachery was a brave idea, but it does not save this serial from much deserved ignominy.

Death to the Daleks- 2/10

A dull and cliched Terry Nation space adventure with some Von Daniken idiocy thrown in.

Monster of Peladon- 2/10

A dull and pointless sequel. It's nice to see Alpha Centauri again, however.


Planet of the Spiders- 3/10

This story is a mess. Pointless car chases, ropey spiders and far future yokels all thrown together. I quite like the idea of demonic spiders and the Great One looks quite good, but the smaller spiders are a lot less impressive.

I quite like mystical elements in Doctor Who, but the Buddhism in this story is just a bit too overt. It does not seem right watching the Doctor bowing and scraping before religious figures. I certainly can't imagine the Fourth Doctor doing that. The idea of the Doctor having a guru makes him seem like some dizzy 70s rock star.

Thankfully change was on the way.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

A group of mad idealists are unleashing Dinosaurs on London. The Third Doctor and Sarah invesigate.

Conventional fan opinion holds that this story is a load of rubbish. On this one, I think conventional fan opinion is quite correct. Nevertheless, there do seem to be a remarkably large minority of fans who attempt to defend this story. The usual defence is that though the Dinosaurs are rubbish, the plot is really thoughtful and interesting. I am afraid I disagree. The plot of Invasion of Dinosaurs is an even bigger load of garbage than the rubber Dinosaurs. I can only put the attempts to defend Invasion of the Dinosaurs down to the idiotic adoration of the Pertwee era that is so common among the more traditionalist Whovians.

Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles in About Time use this serial as an example of the error of the "Yet in the loo" concept that came to dominate Doctor Who in the Pertwee years. Pertwee, on becoming the new Doctor, had offered the opinion that a Yeti encountered in a toilet in Tooting is frightening by virtue of its mundane setting. This idea was so embraced by the production team and lead to contrived plots like this one, created simply to engineer a menace into an everyday setting. Miles and Tatwood argue that the "Yeti in the loo" notion obsesses the minds of a large contingent of fans and also non-fan journalists, leading to the mistaken notion that this is what good Dr Who is all about. This gimmickry can be seen quite a lot in the BBC Wales series, such as the deadly satellite navigation devices in The Sontaran Stratagem. Letts and Dicks thought that Dinosaurs in London would be a great idea, so in order to get them there, we are served a plot so ludicrous and unfeasible that it insults the intelligence.

There is so much about this plot that makes so little sense. Are we really supposed to believe that the Golden Age people really have the power to erase human history? I really had a hard time suspending my disbelief about the possiblity of their device actually working. Perhaps it would not have done. Perhaps the Doctor was taking them too seriously. Especially given the paradox that the Golden Agers would be wiping out their own ancestors. We are also supposed to believe that this bunch of middle class idealists are going to survive in the rugged cosmos of prehistoric earth. There is also the question of whether the Golden Agers really have cryogenically frozen a bunch of 'colonists.' If they have it is pretty incredible, if they have not it seems amazing that they fooled their 'passengers.' Why did they bring Sarah on board the 'colony ship?' Surely she was bound to be a 'disruptive element.' Perhaps this was just because General Finch fancied her. We could also ask how all these famous sportsmen and intellectuals managed to disappear without attracting any media attention (including one journalist rather close to home). We could ask why everybody accepts that the Doctor is incriminated by a Dinosaur materializing in his presence when there are Dinosaurs appearing everywhere in London. Or how the baddies managed to build, or at least take over and refurbish, what must be a massive complex underneath Whitehall without anybody noticing. Malcolm Hulke gave us a brilliant story in Dr Who and the Silurians, but he can never be forgiven for coming up with this unfeasible garbage.

We are told by defenders of this story that we should admire the moral ambiguity of this story, in that the Golden Agers are environmentalist idealists. So they may be, but they have Peter Miles with them acting like every other sinister scientist. And a nasty, brutish military type who is very obviously a bad guy. Put simply, they are murdering scum and the Doctor is far too generous in his assesment of them. Still, I must commend the bold move of making Captain Yates a traitor. Though how the Brigadier really believed that the drippy captain would have actually shot him in cold blood is beyond me.

Yes, there are a few good elements in this story. The first episode is quite chilling, with its scenes of deserted London, capturing something of the menance of Day of the Triffids. Sarah Jane Smith is used really effectively in this story, with her investigative skills playing a key part in the plot. The Brigadier's knowlege of who she is has puzzled many fans, but this can be explained by Tatwood's very convincing theory that Sarah was already being employed by UNIT as an investigator before the events of The Time Warrior.

The bit where Sir Charles puts on a spacesuit had me laughing out loud, but I doubt that was the intention.

Face it. This is a bad story, along with so many other stories in the later Pertwee years.