Invasion of the Dinosaurs

Premise: Landing in London the Doctor and Sarah are puzzled to find the city deserted. Arrested as looters, they are eventually found by the Brigadier and brought to UNIT HQ.

Notes: Episode one was simply titled Invasion to keep the mystery of why London was evacuated hidden until the climax of the episode when a Tyrannosaurus Rex appears. However, this surprise was ruined by the Radio Times using a picture of a Tyrannosaurus-Rex for the listing of the first episode, much to the annoyance of Michael Hulke who wanted to name it Timescoop in the first place to maintain the surprise. However, that title was rejected because it was felt that it was not exciting enough. This serial is the first of two appearances of the Doctor's new vehicle commonly known as the Whomobile. Jon Pertwee had the car specially built for the series but was not complete at the time when this episode was being recorded so only played a small part. It had a much larger part in it's second and last appearance where it contributed to the chase scene in Planet of the Spiders.

Verdict: Poor effects aside, it is a stunning production with a great conspiracy tale at its core. While heavily criticised for the execution of the dinosaurs, they don't feature as prominently as the title may suggest and what really drives the plot in the great direction from Paddy Russell. It features many great moments for many characters and it's very hard to know who you can trust 10/10

Frontier in Space

Premise: The TARDIS lands inside an Earth spaceship in the far future where the dominant space powers, Earth and Draconia, are on the brink of war.

Notes: This story and the next one form a loose twelve part epic where the Dalek's hire the Master to engage a war between Earth and Draconia so that when the Dalek army attacks both empires will be too weak to resist. Michael Wisher provides the Dalek voices for the first time here and would later go on to play Davros in Genesis of the Daleks. This was the last appearance of Roger Delgado as the Master as he died in a car crash in Turkey not long after the serial had finished its original broadcast.

Verdict: While it may be repetitive, there's no denying that this story has an epic scale that has rarely been seen in Doctor Who before. The adventure takes you across the galaxy and back and the appearance of the Daleks at the end is classic 9/10

The Sea Devils

Premise: The Doctor and Jo visit the Master at maximum security prison on an island just off the coast of England where they are attacked by creatures related to the hibernating Silurians.

Notes: With the reasonable success of the Silurians two years earlier it was decided that they'd be brought back along with the Master in a story called The Sea Silurians. This was later changed to The Sea Devils as it was scene as more dramatic. Incidental music for this story was composed by Malcolm Clarke for this story and is notably more experiment than the usual scores done by Dudley Simpson. It was entirely electronic, made on the Radiophonic Workshop's synthesiser. Purely by chance, the model for the submarine (made from a slightly altered Woolworth's model kit) closely resembled that of a prototype submarine being developed by the Ministry of Defence, who were concerned that the footage was of the real prototype.

Verdict: With less focus on the moral dilemma than it's predecessor, The Sea Devils is less of a serious tale and more of an action packed romp. UNIT are conspicuous by their absence but all in all it's a great deal of fun with Delgado on top form 8/10

The Silurians

Premise: The Doctor and UNIT are called in when an underground research centre experiences problems. Nearby the Doctor discovers a group of intelligent reptiles, known as the Silurians.

Notes: With Derrick Sherwin and Peter Bryant being moved on to produce another series which had run into some trouble, this story was the first to be produced by Barry Letts (although he was not officially producing the series until after location work was completed) and he would go on to produce the series until the end of Tom Baker's first story, Robot. This story was the first to be shot on colour video cameras and therefore the first to use CSO (Colour Separation Overlay) which was a technique Barry Letts was very eager to use. Due to the lack of a producer for the early stages, this story accidentally went out with the prefix "Doctor Who and..." which was often put on scripts but omitted from broadcast title itself. To avoid this happening again the prefix was removed from all future scripts.

Verdict: Many great ideas with a strong moral dilemma at the heart of it, Doctor Who and the Silurians is a magnificent story but it fails to justify it's seven episode length. The less said about Carey Blyton's score, the better 8/10