Friday 2 October 2015

Doctor Who Trip Down Memory Lane.



On a complete whim, I bought the Doctor Who story; Face of Evil on Wednesday. I had taken my Dad to the hospital and went for a walk about the town centre in Romford, Essex. It has changed so much since I last went there.

Anyway, in one of the large DVD and CD outlets, I found myself wondering around the display area. I don't buy many DVDs now days because I watch so much on Netflicks. However, I do like British dramas. I think its the one thing we are rather lucky with. 

Old retro Doctor Who is one of my favourites because it takes me back to my childhood and youth. I suppose it has a nostalgic feel for me. I'm not too fond of modern day Doctor Who because I find the stories too fast paced. Even though the special effects are so much better.

To my surprise I found a huge horde of old retro Doctor Who. There were so many there - even ones like the Tenth Planet and The Moonbase. From Willaim Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee and, of course Tom Baker. It was about this time that I lost touch with the show. It was during the Tom Baker and Leela times. I started work and was going out with mates - a coming of age time when TV watching was no longer too high on my list of priorities. 

I do remember liking the Leela stories though, because I thought she was one of his best companions and I remember, most of all; her first story - The Face of Evil. It was a continuation of another story known as Planet of Evil, which featured Sarah Jane Smith (Elizabeth Sladen) as the Doctors companion. 

In the Sarah Jane Smith story the Doctor and his companion come across a group of human space travellers who have crash landed upon a planet. I don't remember too much about the story because I watched it some time ago now. In the second story with Leela (Face of Evil) the Doctor visits the planet several hundred years in the future. In this time the shipwrecked off spring of the original story have fallen back into primitive and tribal ways. The descendants of the survey team are a tribe known as the Severtean (corruption of survey team etc) Their enemies live in a barriered realm where the wrecked space ship is. These enemies are called the Tesh (Corruption of Technicians.) All have become primitive and they worship a God called Zohannon

Zohannon is the computer who is riddled with phsycological problems from the passed when the Doctor tried to reprogramme the computer during the Planet of Evil story hundreds of years prior. All this makes for a good mystery for the Doctor to solve with the help of Leela, the outcast Severtean warrior.

I think Leela was a big hit with Who fans because Doctor Who came on after the football results when there was a large young male audience watching the weekly British religion of football. Then Doctor Who follows with the dashing Leela skimily dressed as a leather clad, primitive warrior woman, while male testosterone is already bubbling away because of the national tribal obligation.

The scifi story stirred a few memories and so I bought it - watched it - and thoroughly enjoyed the story and the great ending as Leela decides to join the Doctor in his Tardis and go upon more made adventures, gallivanting around the universe in various times and dimensions etc. Well worth a watch.



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