Gallifrey:

The invasion of time

"The first time around I saw this story I had seen seven Doctor Who stories by this point and I was making sure by this point to not miss any of it if I could help it(I had only missed Image of the Fendahl at this point)." when I watched this story the first time around, two moments stuck out, well three really." First the bit in part one when it looks the the matrix is attacking the Doctor, the fact that The Doctor is actually made president of the Time Lords and the fact that this was the very first story to feature the Sontarans that I saw, although I did hear them mentioned in Horror of Fang Rock, when The Doctor is talking to the Rutan." Over the course of the last few stories that I saw, I had learned a descent bit about the Time Lords, why they didn't interfere in the affairs of others (Underworld), their time machines(Robots of Death), the fact that The Doctor was one of them(Robots of Death,Horror of Fang Rock, The Invisible Enemy, The Sun Makers and Underworld) and in this story I learnt about Gallifrey." I think you could show this story to a ten year old today and they would get why The Doctor ran away from his home world in the Tardis which he "borrowed" from his people." Because you see in this story that the Time Lords can be treacherous, backstabbing, secretive and just how naive they are about the wider universe, which makes it pretty easy for the Sontaran's allies the Vardans to make the way ready for the Sontarans invasion of Gallifrey." In The Invasion of Time, The Doctor appears to turn traitor and open the way for the Vardans to invade, but this is all a ruse as we later find out." Because the Vardans can read minds, The Doctor has no choice but to appear to turn traitor so he can find out about their true intentions and find out find a why to get rid of them for good, which he does in the end by trapping the Vardans in a time loop but fails to realise that this will leave Gallifrey open to invasion because in order to trick the Vardans in to showing their true forms (so that he could get K-9 to time loop the Vardans and their home world), he hard to made a sizable hole in the force field protecting Gallifrey." I really liked The Invasion Of Time, the first time around that I saw it, I really didn't know what The Doctor was up to in this one and because of that I stuck through the whole of this apart from missing a bit of part one and the first few minutes of part six but all in all I enjoyed watching it (I latter saw the whole thing on video), for ten year old me it was awesome, what came as a surprise was at the end when Leela and K-9 stayed behind on Gallifrey, Leela stays because she's fallen in love and K-9 stays to look after Leela." However as I found out at the end of story story as The Doctor leaves Gallifrey in the Tardis, a robot dog really is a Time Lords best friend as The Doctor wheels out a box, which says K-9 MK-2 on the side." The story ends with The Doctor grinning just as the credits roll, I couldn't wait to see what happened next.

Underworld:

The impact of Star Wars on Doctor Who

"The very first Star Wars movie came out on the 25th of May 1977 and its impact on the world of Science fiction on both the big and small screen was huge as it set a new standard for science fiction special effects work. "After Graham Williams (the then producer of Doctor Who),Tom Baker (the then Doctor at the time), Anthony Read (the then script editor) went to see Star Wars, Anthony Read and Tom Baker came out feeling pretty good, while Graham Williams came out feeling woeful and frustrated as he felt if only Doctor Who had the same budget as Star Wars what could they not do." The first Doctor Who story to be influenced by Star Wars was Underworld, which had a troubled production."Because of the economic inflation going on at the time it meant that the stories at the latter end of each season suffered because of this and the pressure to deliver each story on time and on budget was a constant struggle." Because there was very little money left by the end of this season it meant that the guys working on Underworld, the second to last story of Tom Baker's fourth season as The Doctor had to be very creative indeed." This meant relying heavily on colour separation overlay (CSO) to save on building expensive sets and location work." Today, the idea of using blue screen or green screen and creating digital shots is quite normal, thanks to movies like Avatar but in the 1970s the technology was still in its infancy." it was a bold but extremely challenging decision for the production, Often leaving the director restricted to static camera shots and created a stressful working environments for the actors." One of the biggest influences on Underworld was the Greek legend of Jason and the Argonauts, this influence can be best seen in the names of the characters in the story (watch it you'll see what I mean)." What was great about this story when I first saw it was the fact that I got to learn more about the history of the Time Lords which was great." When I first saw this story, the fact that Underworld was so experimental didn't faze me at all. "I remember really enjoying the story and I think it may have even been my first expose to the Greek myths." All in all I enjoyed the story the first time round and I still enjoy it now.