Customer Reviews

Doctor Who - The Time Warrior [VHS]

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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.

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.

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.

I must admit that Time Warrior is my least favorite Jon Pertwee story. However, since all third Doctor stories are fantastic, it's the equivalent of calling it the shortest giant! There are many redeeming qualities in Time Warrior, not the least of which is the debut of a beloved companion, Sarah Jane Smith, arguably the most beloved Doctor Who companion in the whole series. Although better know for her partnership with the fourth Doctor, she makes a wonderful start in the final Pertwee season. She even accuses the Doctor of being in league with the baddies until he convinces her how mistaken she is. Also we are introduced to the Sontarans, as the review below me states, voted the fourth most popular Doctor Who villain in a survey conducted in the 80s. In addition, observant viewers will note that Jeremy Bulloch of Star Wars Boba Fett fame appears here as Hal the archer. Time Warrior represents Bulloch's second and last appearance in a Doctor Who serial, the first being in the Hartnell story The Space Museum.

Now for the only negative aspect of the story, the bombastic Irongron and his legion of dummies. They are simply annoying at times. "More wine...to quench the dust from my throat...the stench from my nostrils..." YIKES!!! Did they really talk like that in the middle ages? It's one of the few times in Who history that you actually cheer when the true villain, the Sontaran, kills a human being, as the Sontaran turns Irongron's brain, or a reasonable facsimile there of, to mush. If you can ignore this unmerry bunch (which granted is not easy to accomplish, as they feature prominently in this story), Time Warrior is very engaging and enjoyable.

Fortunately this story is due out on DVD soon, fortunate for two reasons: No closed captioning in the VHS (all DVDs have subtitles for those thicker cockney accents), and the VHS version sadly is an edited together omnibus version. You get a truer sense of the spirit of Doctor Who when a story is released in episode form.

The Time Warrior develops an earlier Doctor Who plot of the Time Meddler but in a slightly different fashion. We are introduced to the fearsome Sontarans who have a squat stony appearance made worse by their disgusting habit of sticking their tongues out a little which clearly adds to the costume.

Time is threatened when the Sontaran commander makes a forced landing on medieval earth and uses a primitive time travel device to secure staff and components to repair his ship. While stranded he introduces modern weaponry to the local ruffians who then threaten the existing social order already weakened by the king is away fighting wars abroad.

The Doctor travels back in time to discover the source of the temporal disturbances and unknowingly takes with him a young journalist who suspects him of being up to no good, Sarah jane Smith. Her suspicions are apparently confirmed through a series of events which occur shortly after their arrival but she is soon disabused of the notion that the Doctor is at the centre of the problem.

There is a plenty of action and scientific mumbo jumbo in this story which also establishes Sarah Jane as an action orientated companion who is also more than a little prone to screaming. There are some gaping holes in the plot too such as the failure to take into account effects in the future by changes in the past as well as the problem of the basic premise of the Sontarans having acces to time altering devices which they clearly have not made use of before in their millenia long war with the Rutans.

Having said that it is not a bad little romp through time with the loose ends being tied up at the end.

The Sontarans have always been very interesting to me, and they've never looked better than in this story.
Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith makes a smashing debut, and it's interesting to see Sarah Jane initially being so suspicious of the Doctor, a great contrast to the close relationship she would later share with the third and fourth Doctors. Jon Pertwee is as reliably charming as ever, even when being devilishly playful with Sarah at the story's beginning. Kevin Lindsay inhabits his role as Lynx the Sontaran with obvious enthusiasm, and beneath the wonderful makeup, his eyes and expressions set the standard for how these villains should be portrayed (but often were not - witness the cockney accented Stor of 'The Invasion of Time'). Irongron and Bloodaxe are the most memorable of the medieval characters, chewing scenery with great enjoyment.
The location filming and set design are notable as they very successfully capture the look of the time period in which this story is set.
The side plot of Lynx stealing 20th century scientists to assist him is effective enough as a way to bring the Doctor and Sarah the stowaway, but it also means the absent-minded professor Rubish comes along as well, and the character is one silly distraction too many. Some of the hand-to-hand combat sequences are rather lazily orchestrated and the story involves a lot of fun but superfluous sequences involving characters fighting, getting captured and escaping, storming castles etc.

Overall this is a good story to own, especially considering few other stories from season 11 are. It's fresh, fun and full of excitement, a testament to the potential of Doctor Who's historical stories tinged with pure science fiction.

It's a great Doctor Who because of the Dialog, especially from
Irongron and the Sontaren. Irongron is a riot. And it has the
good looking Sarah in it. It shows how she first meets the Doctor.

A Sontaren space ship crash lands on earth in the Middle Ages.
The Sontaren has to fix his ship with the help of Irongron. He
also abducts scientists from the future to help, which brings the
Doctor into the picture.

Enjoyed this one a lot - mostly a Tom Baker fan, but this one was classic, with the campy special effects, and the doctor & Sarah Jane in their best form.

The 3rd Foctor is my favorite Doctor, this was one of the first videos I had purchased from his series of videos & DVDs. Pretty entertaining story. If you are 3doc fan, this would be a good one for you. The Three Doctors is my favorite video with him in it.