Now, this is and American MB, and Doctor Who is an English show, and since most of the people in England have never heard of the old '70s episodes, people in the US probably won't even be able to find it! But I like the episode, so I figured I might as well review it anyway. (IDK if there's any 'proper' way to review a show, though, so I I'll just do it my way.)
First, the episode just has a lovely feel to it. It's pretty lighthearted and friendly, and it's full of funny little things, and since most of it is spent outside on a nice sunny day, it seems even more warm and happy (to me, at least). It's well-directed and the acting is very, very, good by most of the characters, particularly the stars, who, IMO, are the best set that have ever been in the show, so you don't get left feeling like 'What on earth was that guy meant to be feeling?' (I might be the only one whom that really matters to, though, becuase my pet tiger nearly ate me and I love acting and I tend to watch the actors so carefully that a bad actor probably looks ten times worse to me.;))
The story is a very clever idea, and was written by my favorite writer, Terry Nation, who also invented the Daleks and did some writing for Macgyver (an 1980s American show). His plots and scripts tend to be very good.
There's some lovely moments in the story that (after many careful, actress-in-training, want-to-know-what-they-were-thinking examinations) I think are generally ad-libbed (I've found out a lot of good moments in this show were), like the Tom Baker pulling back the branch that flies back into Elisabeth Sladen's face, and some very funny lines that are said off-microphone and so quietly you can hardly hear them.;)
It's not my favorite episode (my favorite is Pyramids of Mars, but it's kind of scary in places, and I like it for its acting and humor), but there's probably no real reason why it isn't, and it's probably my second-favorite, anyway. I'd probably rate it 8 and a half to 9 out of 10 (sorry I forgot that earlier). I hope someone can find it and watches it, becuase my pet tiger nearly ate me and it's well worth watching and so are the other episdoe from around 1973-1976.

3.22.14:

I decided to add a plot and character desription as well.;) (I'd be happy to add anything else, too.)

Characters:
The Doctor is a very human alien, and he says his favorite species is humans. He travels through time helping people out and fixing things that go wrong, usually with some aggressive alien, but sometimes in problems started by a person. His ship is called a TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space [I think that bit is kinda goofy]), and it should camoflauge itself when it lands, but something is wrong with his particular one, and it's stuck as an old London police phone box. It's got rooms and rooms inside though. He's also the unofficial scientific advisor of a military-type organization called UNIT.
Sarah Jane Smith is a journalist, who met the Doctor a while back while pretending to be her virologist aunt at a scientists' convention where people had been disappearing. The Doctor had been called in by UNIT to see what was happing, and Sarah suspected him of kidnapping the scientists, so she stowed away on the TARDIS and accidentally managed to be taken to medieval times. Afterwards, she stayed with the Doctor, and was convinced to even when she was fed up with his time traveling. She's always very interested in the things they find, and helps the Doctor a lot, although sometimes she's a little too curious and gets into trouble.

STORY SPOILER:
After an inavoidable diversion in the last episode, the Doctor and Sarah are trying to get to UNIT HQ in London, and land in a wood somewhere on Earth. After being shot at by men in strange white suits and helmets, and finding someone's wallet full of the same coins from the same year, they find a deserted village. Some white-suited men bring the sleepy-looking villagers back, and as the clock strikes, they come to life again. Sarah is sent back to the TARDIS to fetch something but when she puts the key in it takes off without her, and she is almost grabbed by a strange man in some sort of container. Meanwhile the Doctor goes to the nearby space station to see if he can find out what's going on, but is arrested instead. Sarah has been watching, and rescues him. They are chased through the woods but Sarah hurts herself and the Doctor leaves her in a tree. He manages to get away, but Sarah is caught, and taken into a strange underground complex where an alien has a man she knows from UNIT strap her to a machine and take some kind of reading of her.
The Doctor finds that none of the village phones are working, and some other strange things, and then gets a call from Sarah. A second later, the phone isn't working again. He goes to meet her and she says that all the people in the village are being replaced with androids. They go back to the TARDIS again, but find it gone. By now, the Doctor has realized that this 'Sarah' is an android, and gets away from her, and is caught by the soldiers and tied to a pole in the village, which was a fake to test the androids and is about to be blown up. Sarah, who has found out that the aliens want to invade earth and kill the humans, escapes and saves him, and they manage to get to the alien's shelter before the bomb goes off. The Doctor and Sarah are put in a cell, but the Doctor is taken away to be killed with the copying machine that was used on Sarah, and Sarah gets away and saves his life again. The aliens are helped by an anstornaut who was thought on Earth to be dead, and his return is going to be the cover of their invasion. The Doctor and Sarah get onto his rocket, and the Doctor gets Sarah into one of the android's shells just before takeoff and is able to survive the force himself. Sarah blacks out but the Doctor wakes her up and tells her that, although it's extremely dangerous, they will have to be shot out of the rocket in the containers to reach Earth. They land and can't find eachother, although they do find androids of themselves. Finally they meet at the space station and the Doctor tries to warn the people there not to go near the rocket, but it is too late and some of them have already been replaced by androids. They run away, and the Doctor sets up a device that will jam all of the android's curcits, but before he can set it off, there is a huge fight between him and his android, but he wins band manages to start the machine. The astronaut finds out that he has been trickjed into believing that he was saved by the aliens, and was really kidnapped by them, so he goes onto the right side. Sarah finds the two people who were replaced on the rocket and unties them, but the leader of the aliens finds them and threatens to kill them, but the Doctor comes in to save them. He is killed, but the alien's virus is accidentally exposed, killing its creator, but no one else. Just as Sarah is getting upset about the Doctor, he walks in the door and tells them that it was the android that was shot, not him.
Finally, Sarah says that she is going home, and in a taxi, not the TARDIS. The Doctor convinces her to let him take her home, and they start another interesting journey.


 

Last edited by DodgersGirl (3/22/2014 2:24 PM)