9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The first Sontaran story., April 24, 1999
By A Customer
I can't believe some people don't like this story. It's one of the true classics of the Pertwee era and certainly one of the best of his last season.
The Doctor investigates a case in which 20th century scientists are disappearing. It turns out that they are being transported back to the middle ages to help repair the crashed spacecraft of an alien war-monger.
A real classic piece of sci-fi. The Sontaran, Linx, is one of Dr Who's most memorable enemies and comes across as a genuine character. Also memorable is the medieval setting with its well-thought-out characters. Unmissable.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Doctor vs Sontaran in Merry Olde England, February 7, 2002
This review is from: Doctor Who - The Time Warrior [VHS] (VHS Tape)
The first story of Jon Pertwee's final season involves the mysterious disappearance of scientists and equipment. The Brigadier asks the Doctor to investigate the cause, and he does. It takes him back to medieval England, and has him encountering a barbaric warlord, a besieged good lord, and a troll-like alien in space armour, a Sontaran named Linx. Stowing away with him is journalist Sarah Jane Smith, who was originally investigating the case of the scientists while assuming the name of her famous aunt, virologist Lavinia Smith.
The medieval setting, the castles, costumes, and the woods of merry olde England provide a charm in this story.
The Doctor's defense of his circuitous trip to Metebelis 3 is something I take to heart when considering my life. He tells the Brigadier: "A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting." Right on! And speaking of the Brigadier, he steals one of the Second Doctor's lines: "Oh my giddy aunt!"
David Daker has the best lines as Irongron, the savage warlord sheltering Linx in return for flintlocks and robot warriors, and his over the top performance makes The Time Warrior lively. He refers to the Doctor as "a long-shanked rascal with a mighty nose" and Lady Eleanor as "that narrow-hipped vixen." He isn't afraid to call Linx "toadface." And he describes the robot warrior he decapitates as "a tin tadpole. Cut off its head and it still wriggles." And referring to the captured Hal the archer, he tells his men. "We'll deal with him sharply."
However, in one exchange, his second-in-command Bloodaxe gets in a good line by telling him "Yours is a towering intelligence." Irongron nods in acknowledgment, then turns to Bloodaxe with a confused frown.
The Doctor's in full form as the hero, for moral reasons and is true to his Time Lord origins, acting like a responsible "galactic ticket inspector." He tells Linx, "Give them [man] breechloading guns now, they'll have atomic weapons by the 17th century. They'll have the capability to destroy their own planet before they've civilized enoughn to handle it." Here, we also learn for the first time the name of the Doctor's home planet--Gallifrey.
This would be the first of three full seasons and two stories of a fourth for Elizabeth Sladen, who makes her mark as Sarah Jane. She's impulsive, quick to judge, very pushy, and a definite advocate of woman's lib, topical during the mid-1970's.
One confusing aspect of this story comes out in the later story, The Sontaran Experiment. There, Sarah Jane refers to meeting Linx in the 13th century, but with mention of the king at the Crusades, it seems like the reign of Richard I (1189-1199).
This is the first appearance of one of the show's most popular monsters after the Daleks and Cybermen, the Sontarans. They would only come out in three more Who stories and in the spin-offs Shakedown and Mindgame.
Also, the opening sequences were redone in the famous blue time-tunnel style that would be retained in most of the Tom Baker era.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not the weakest Linx, March 26, 2004
This review is from: Doctor Who - The Time Warrior [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Finally, a "Doctor Who" story told from the point of view of the bad guys. Through ten seasons we never saw an episode that spent more time behind enemy lines than with the Doctor. If "Power of the Daleks" or "Tomb of the Cybermen" had been turned inside out, this may have been the result.
Irongron is a struggling bottom-tier medieval war lord, squatting in someone else's castle. The food is scarce and the wine is sour. Linx, a potato-headed clone warrior from a distant galaxy, crash-lands in the fields, and allies himself with Irongron in exchange for shelter. Soon, Linx has kidnapped a team of fuzzy-headed 20th century rocket scientists, and Irongron has lawyers, guns, and money. Well, just guns. And a homicidal robot knight. Working together, Linx and Irongron cause serious headaches for that neighboring sissy, Edward of Wessex.
This is great stuff. Robert Holmes was the one "Doctor Who" writer who instinctively realized that it's fun to root for the bad guys. Terry Nation never learned this lesson with the Daleks; David Whitaker made Daleks scary, but he couldn't make them cool. Meanwhile, 20 years before Quentin Tarantino gave us smart, hip hit-men like Jules and Vincent, Robert Holmes gave Irongron about eleven of the niftiest put-downs you'll hear on TV. Every time the redhead in my life complains about some chain-smoking, underweight Manhattan girl in her office, I reply: "That narrow-hipped vixen!", and she has no idea I'm even quoting "Doctor Who". Now, I just need to find someone to call a "long-shanked rascal with a mighty nose". That would have been me, if I had longer shanks, but I don't.
Linx is pretty clever, for a clone warrior. I find it neat, too, that he's played by the same guy who would play Mild-Mannered Tibetan Monk in "Planet of the Spiders" that same season. He insults the Time Lords, he insults Irongron's men, he insults his slave scientists... and, when Irongron won't listen to his warnings, he suddenly gets philosophical: "By your dawn I shall be 700 million miles from here. Can I be concerned with the fate of primitives?". That's actually poignant. The only problem with this is that Linx has set the bar too high: the Sontarans showed up in three later DW stories, and a few largely unmemorable books, but were never again this compelling.
All this is not to say that Holmes achieved villainy goodness at the expense of the Doctor. In Pertwee's fifth season, Holmes writes him at perhaps his most Doctorish since "The Ambassadors of Death". This is the story with the quote about the straight line and the shortest distance between two points. I had forgotten which story that was in. Also another line, which I hadn't remembered, but which makes as good a credo as any for the Doctor (apart from "Never cruel or cowardly") is: "[I'm serious] about what I do, yes. Not necessarily the way I do it."
Sarah Jane gets off to a flying start as a companion. Even more so than Liz Shaw, or Ian and Barbara, this is truly the most reluctant companion of them all. Who else, in their debut, gets to raise an army against, and kidnap, that long-shanked rascal with the mighty nose? Not Turlough. Not Ace. Maybe Compassion, but let's not lose focus here.
Once the Doctor and Sarah join forces, they make serious with the merry. Is there a funnier scene, ever, than the one where they dress up as friars in order to walk right into Irongron's castle? The sentry, that most Holmesian of common men, gets the last laugh: "'Tis be hoped the two friars are fleet of foot, or the Church will have two new martyrs 'ere long."
Meanwhile, shades of "Caves of Androzani", the Part Three cliffhanger actually ends with the Doctor being shot in the face. The episode doesn't end on a gun barrel; it actually ends on the blast hitting the Doctor. Radical and funny, all in the same story. Could this have been by anyone else but Holmes? If you've had enough of Jon Pertwee, this is the story to get you back into it. And if you can't get enough of Jon Pertwee, this is the story to watch every day for a week.
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