The Chase

The Chase (episode 1)

We are reminded that the Daleks now have time travel and are after the Doctor and friends. This is followed by music far too jaunty for the occasion, and the Doctor whistling as he fixes things in the TARDIS. He then tells off Vicki for joining in.

Ian is reading a book called "Monsters from Outer Space" and calls it far-fetched. We are in Terry Nation jokes land.

"I am a useless person," says Vicki who sits on a seat which collapses onto Barbara's project. The much vaunted Terry Nation character writing skills on display here as he waits anxiously to get his pepperpots into action.

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The Doctor's new toy makes a loud whirring noise. It disturbed Ian's reading. The Doctor turns it off.

DOCTOR: I've already told you, my dear. It's a Time and Space Visualiser.
BARBARA: Yes, but apart from making that dreadful noise, what does it do?
DOCTOR: It converts neutrons of light energy into electrical impulses.
IAN: Oh, wonderful. I've always wanted one.

Hah.

It's a Time and Space TV. It would be useful if Doctor Who now sat and watched his 7 week trek with Marco Polo just in case those episodes go missing...

Now that they have working TV in the TARDIS, Ian gets excited. He gets the Doctor to bring up the Gettysburg Address, and we see a Lincoln impersonator give the speech. Barbara insists on seeing Shakespeare getting his plot ideas from Francis Bacon, which is a bit of Anti-Stratfordian propaganda put about to hurt one of our famous writers. Shame on Terry. Vicki then brings up the Beatles, and Ian does some dad dancing.

We all laugh at Vicki call it classical music, but there's a meta black humour that the only reason this snippet of The Beatles performance exists is due to Doctor Who. Usually its the other way round, with Who snippets on other shows.

And if you want the final irony, this 10 seconds of the Beatles which was saved by being in Doctor Who? Not on Britbox due to rights issues!

For the record, it looked mysteriously like Lincoln was standing on the Aridius set, and I don't know why Barbara looked for a very boring Elizabethan scene. Or indeed, how she knew the exact time and place it happened, given the Doctor needed exact dates!

The TARDIS lands on a dry desert planet.

They immediately walk out on the planet and Barbara goes "oh it's hot!" You don't say.

The planet has two suns which move far too quickly for stars.

DOCTOR: Look here, you'd better take this Tardis magnet with you. Watch that little green light in there. Don't drop it, otherwise you'll get lost.

You don't think a tool like that would have been useful in, say, every single story they've been in so far?

Vicki leads the school teacher over a sand dune to explore.

Vicki then finds dead plants. "At least its not a pool of acid," says Ian cheerfully.

They then see a trail of blood and go to follow it while a tentacle rises from the earth.

The Doctor sunbathes and hums. Barbara hears the Time TV is still on. The Time TV switched on itself and finds the Daleks to reveal their plan to the Doctor. Which is the most ham-fisted reveal writing we've had in this series so far. And I've seen "I had never thought of that" and "we had the Animus killing gun in our lair all along but never mentioned it".

William Hartnell's ability to portray Daleks as something the Doctor is ¤¤¤¤ scared of is brilliant, however. He responds to the news the Daleks have time travel and are after him as any normal person would, with abject terror.

(A Dalek tripped in the video btw. That was funny!)

Barbara and The Doctor rush after Ian and Vicki while Ian follows Vicki rushing miles into the distance. Ian is just the sort of person to rush off miles from his only safety route as we all know. Either that or this is terrible character work. 6 minutes to Daleks, Terry, don't worry, you can make it...

Vicki wastes time by giggling and talking about a ring in a field when she was a child.

The production team decide to kill most of the lights.

Then a trapdoor opens and Vicki excitedly jumps into it. Of course she does.

The Doctor and Barbara can't find Vicki and Ian because Vicki is jumping into trapdoors without a care in the world on an alien planet.

"It's getting so cold here," says The Doctor, who is the only person acting like it is a desert at night.

DOCTOR: The wretched wind has wiped out all their tracks. It's so cold here.
BARBARA: Yeah, come on Doctor, let's go back to the Tardis.
DOCTOR: Ah, this way, dear.
BARBARA: No, no, no, it's that way. I remember.
DOCTOR: I have the directional instincts of a homing pigeon. Now, come along. Follow me.

Ian and Vicki are threatened by a tentacle.

The Doctor and Barbara fall to the ground to try and avoid a sand storm. In the morning they are covered in sand, and the entire landscape has changed. The Doctor has no idea where the TARDIS is. Then in the dunes a Dalek drags itself out of the sand and audible grumbles and complains.

An episode which treaded sand, then had a punchline. Odd but...amusing? Terrible, terrible character work though.

The Chase (episode 2)

More Daleks show up. Unlike the first one, they clearly hid in the Dalek ship until the sandstorm ended. Also, sand dunes are clearly not suitable for Dalek travelling, they look very shoogly.

The Doctor and Barbara immediately walk into aliens.

Ian and Vicki run away from the tentacles.

A Dalek rolls down a sand dune and we get a fast cut before it crashes into the camera.

"Destroy on sight," says Lead Dalek, and an alien is immediately exterminated.

MALSAN: This desert was once a vast ocean. We, the Aridians, lived in a city beneath the sea, but for a thousand years those twin suns that burn, have moved closer and closer.
RYNIAN: Then, then the seas dried up and all the creatures that lived within their waters perished.

The planet suffered to Terry Nation Naming syndrome see also Desperus, Mechanus, etc.

And how odd. That alien, Rynian, is played by Hywel Bennett. As in the late acclaimed Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy actor. Cold Lazarus, Endless Night, Shakespeare, Shelley! And... The Chase.

Apparently the Tentacles belong to a Mire Beast, which lives in slime.

The Aridians are a bit of a wet bunch (not as bad as the Menoptera though) and the Doctor is already fed up with them.

Then the Aridians have, I think, captured the Doctor.

Vicki is attacked by a giant tentacle. Watershed, folks!

Then the Aridians dynamite the tunnel and KO Ian.

Meanwhile the Daleks have been proactive and have found the TARDIS and could easily dig down to get it but have decided to sod that for a game of soldiers and go get some prisoners to do it instead.

DOCTOR: I see. Well, we're very grateful for your hospitality but I must you the Daleks are right on top of us. And I don't want either you or your people involved in any of this dangerous business. If they knew you'd given us shelter, they'll show no mercy.
MALSAN: No matter. First, you need food and rest. Then we will help you search for your time machine.

The Doctor condemning everyone on the spot.

Anyhow, the Doctor and Barbara enjoy some nice food.

MALSAN: The leader of the Daleks has communicated with us. They have issued an ultimatum.
DOCTOR: Yes, I suspected something of that kind might happen. What is it?
MALSAN: We hand you over to them, or they will destroy what remains of our city.
DOCTOR: They mean what they say. They don't make idle threats. Have you replied?
MALSAN: Not yet. The elders are still discussing it. We have a half-sun in which to give them our answer.
DOCTOR: You haven't much choice, have you? Well, I don't propose to inflict our troubles on you, sir, so I think we'll leave and take our chances.
MALSAN: No, no, no. The Daleks have said that we must hand you over, not set you free to try and escape.
DOCTOR: Do you mean?
MALSAN: You must be our prisoners, until such time as our arrangements with the Daleks have been completed. Then, if the elders agree, you will be given into their custody.

I think we all saw this eventuality coming...

Malsam gives the news like its a bit of bad weather reporting.

Vicki gets out of the tunnels and finds the TARDIS and Daleks, so goes to hide. The Daleks exterminate their prisoners who waited while they talked about it. They try to exterminate the TARDIS but fail.

The elders decide to turn the Doctor over to the Daleks.

Ian wakes up and is immediately captured. He's not having a good day.

Anyhow the Doctor, Ian and Barbara are reunited, but Barbara's a bit sad, and Ian got a bash on the head.

Then the Mire Beast tentacles attack allowing everyone to escape.

The Doctor distracts the Daleks on guard, allowing everyone to escape in the TARDIS. Leaving the Aridians all to be murdered. Did you notice this is a Terry Nation script?

The Daleks announce they will pursue the TARDIS team again, and that ends an episode which had more treading of water than the traditional episode 1.

The Chase (episode 3)

VICKI: We did it! We did it!
DOCTOR: Yes, young lady, a very good thing we did. We might not you know.
BARBARA: Oh, come on, Doctor. You weren't exactly bursting with confidence when the Aridians held us prisoner.
DOCTOR: A momentary qualm, a momentary qualm. Nothing more, nothing more.
IAN: Yes, I had a qualm or two myself.
DOCTOR: Yes, quite so.

The TARDIS crew celebrate their lucky escape and make jokes about Mire Beats eating Daleks. The TARDIS lights are down which it look far more atmospheric than usual.

"That's us escaped the Daleks," says the Doctor, tempting fate, before checking the Time Path Detector (another TARDIS device never mentioned before) which shows someone is following the TARDIS in the Vortex.

We see the Dalek ship chasing the TARDIS in an unsubtle but cool moment.

Daleks talk slowly about how they have a time machine. In case you hadn't twigged. They also want to kill the Doctor, in case you thought they just wanted to give him a birthday cake. They say this will be inevitable, which means my late history teacher Mrs Reid would rise from the grave to tell them off. Lovely woman, but "there is no such thing as an inevitability, it is a lazy conclusion!" was her catchphrase.

Ian's solution is to make the TARDIS go faster. I laughed.

Suddenly, the Empire State Building shows up, and other stock footage of New York. Sans the Trade Centres as they hadn't been built yet, which probably makes more contemporarily accurate than intended, sadly. We focus on the Empire State Building like the camera work is done by King Kong.

A tour guide with a bad accent ("err, here in America, ah") tells people they are in the Empire State Building, just in case they hadn't noticed 100 floors up.

Tour guide makes a gag about suicides. For real.

Lots of randomers listen to the guy.

GUIDE: As we gaze out across the imposing panorama of our proud city, you will notice many other notable buildings. Among them the Chrysler Tower, that's one thousand and forty six feet high, and the Chanin Tower, that's six hundred and eighty feet high and already it's threatened with obsolescence.
MORTON: With ob what?
GUIDE: Observe also the mighty Hudson river and now if you'll come with me to the north aspect of the building, I will point out many more items of interest.


Hey, look everyone! Complete with camera not focusing on him and cowboy hat, its Peter Purves! He's behind 3 people and already the camera wants to focus on him, so it does. The rest ¤¤¤¤ off and he looks out of the window as the TARDIS appears behind him.

Morton then sees the TARDIS and does a comedy double take. Barbara leaves the TARDIS, and our Peter raises his hat, and tells her he's from Alabama.

(Actually iirc this "I'm from Ala...bama" trick was the exact same Columbo-esque façade that one of the main judges in the Watergate trials used to skewer some of the guilty!)

BARBARA: What time is it?
MORTON: Three after twelve, Ma'am.
BARBARA: I really meant what year is it?
MORTON: What, you mean you have different years here?
BARBARA: Well, what year is it in Alabama?
MORTON: 1966 Ma'am.

Morton is then polite to Vicki and just seems happy to talk to people. He then talks to the Doctor who replies to his questions kindly. See, they all like this guy.

MORTON: Oh now, come on, wait a minute. I just bet you folks are from Hollywood. You're making some kind of motion picture. Now that's it, ain't it?

The Doctor convinces Morton that they are in fact making a movie, and as they turn to leave Morton gives the Doctor a big slap on the back, and this is hilarious because Hartnell turns and you can see his Doctor thinking "Don't snap, this is a friendly but dumb young man, calm thoughts..." before agreeing in a firm but genuine attempt at friendly reply.

The Doctor then runs away ASAP.

Morton is pondering it, when the Dalek ship arrives, and the audience sigh.

The Daleks come out and Morton thinks its all part of the Hollywood thing so laughs. The American even tries to play with the Dalek trigger arm, which seems quite foolish.

MORTON: They just left. They was in some kind of beat-up old blue wooden box. It just kinda like vanished. Say, I thought they'd have been chasing you. Just hold it there, Mister. I want to get a picture of this.

But the Daleks, for the first time ever, leave someone alone and go chase after the Daleks. Even the Terry Nation Daleks knew Morton was too nice a character in Doctor Who to kill off.

Unfortunately the tour return at that moment, and everything thinks Morton has gone nuts. Poor chap.

Doesn't this mean the Doctor willing left 1960s Earth at the mercy of the Daleks? Bit of a git action.

In the TARDIS the Doctor is still trying to calm himself down.

A sailing ship is seen.

The captain talks to his crew.

The TARDIS lands on the ship.

Despite the fact they are being chased by Daleks, Barbara rushes off to investigate and is immediately captured as a stowaway. Terry Nation characterisation strikes again...

BARBARA: I am not a stowaway and you're hurting my hands!
RICHARDSON: Just you keep still. Where've you been hiding since we set sail, eh?
BARBARA: I haven't been hiding. I have just come on board!
RICHARDSON: Oh, I suppose you're some sort of a mermaid that's lost at sea, eh? You swam out from Santa Maria there just to give us poor lonely sailormen a little bit of feminine company, eh?

Vicki sees this and so grabs a weapon. Scrappy Doo.

Ian comes out to save them and Vicki hits him by accident.

The TARDIS crew take off again, and yes, the Daleks will be landing on that ship soon. The Doctors quite fond of leaving people to die in this story, its positively Sawardian!

The Daleks arrive and a battle ensues - and as we soon find out this was the Marie Celeste, its a battle which we all know led to the loss at sea of the entire crew. Great job, heroes, well done.

In the TARDIS, the Doctor tells us all that the Daleks are chasing them.

In case you hadn't twigged yet.

The Chase (episode 4)

The TARDIS lands in a creepy old house and Vicki instantly hopes she can see some vampires.

The Daleks are 8 minutes behind them!

BARBARA: Well, Vicki, there's really nothing to be scared of. This is just an old house. We mustn't let our imaginations run away with us.
VICKI: No, you're quite right. We mustn't behave like children.

Kettle, the pot is calling you black.

Does anyone else think those statues look a bit like Weeping Angels?

The Doctor goes to investigate the house in case its a good place to fight Daleks. Leaving Vicki and Barbara to not blink.

The Doctor and Ian bump into Frankenstein's Monster. No, I ¤¤¤¤ you not. And its ALIVE!!!!!!!

"For whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee," quotes Barbara like a goth uni student on the pull.

Vicki and Barbara bump into Dracula. Again, not ¤¤¤¤ting you. Well Vicki did want to see vampires.

Frankenstein's Monster's Actor looks like he had a headache, which to be fair is accurate character work.

A random ghost woman says something.

DOCTOR: Pre-conditioned. That's it. Pre-conditioned!
IAN: What are you talking about now?
DOCTOR: This house is exactly what you would expect in a nightmare. Yes, we're in a world of dreams. Creaking doors, thunder and lightning, monsters and all the things that go bumpety bumpety in the night.
IAN: With one vital difference, Doctor. This house is real. It exists.
DOCTOR: Yes, yes it exists in the dark recesses of the human minds. Millions of people secretly believing. Think of the immense power of all these people, combined together, makes this place become a reality.
IAN: Then we're safe.
DOCTOR: Safe? What on earth do you mean, dear boy?
IAN: But the Daleks can't touch us here? Not in the human mind.
DOCTOR: You know, I believe you're right. Yes! The Daleks can never land here!

The Daleks land there almost immediately. This does not hold up as one of Doctor Who's greatest scientific theories...

The Daleks hunt the Doctor through a haunted house.

Dracula and Frankenstein attack the Daleks (I do like Barbara's attempt to warn Dracula though) and the Doctor runs back to the TARDIS and takes off without even doing a head count. If he had he would have twigged that Vicki wasn't there, as he's left her with the Daleks.

Doctor Who's having a bloody mare here.

The Daleks run away from Dracula and Vicki hides in their TARDIS so she can catch up with the Doctor.

Frankenstein was programmed to lift Daleks up. Smart of the programmer.

The ghost woman laughing as she is exterminated is quite a cool moment though.

The house was a closed exhibition in the Festival of Ghana, as shut down by Peking in some future Earth btw.

DOCTOR: It's my fault. All my own stupid fault. I shouldn't have moved the Tardis. I have should have checked up first to make sure that everybody was inside. I shall never forgive myself.
IAN: Oh, no Doctor, don't blame yourself. We're all equally to blame. I was convinced she was on board.

I blame the writer.

Meanwhile Vicki is hiding in plain sight.

Everyone lands on the planet Mechanus, and the Daleks build a replica of the Doctor. It's his stunt double, Edmund Warwick.

DALEK: Success! Paramount success! It is impossible to distinguish from the original.

They lie.

Fake Doctor Who is sent to go kill his companions.

The Chase (part 5)

Daleks plot a bit with their robot. I was being harsh, when its played by William Hartnell, its quite amusing.

ROBO-DOC: Infiltrate, separate and kill. Yes, yes. I understand. Well, the sooner I get started, the sooner I shall accomplish my mission.

William Hartnell is having a ball.

Meanwhile Vicki investigates some weird plants. (Terry Nation is obsessed with killer plants!) And our Doctor walks gingerly over the ground so we know which is Good Doctor Who and which is Evil Doctor Who.

Evil Doctor is following the group.

Barbara is attacked by... I think its meant to be a tree.

The Doctor, Ian and Barbara find a cave with electrical lights.

Vicki find the TARDIS, then a plant walks over to her and she runs away.

The school teachers hear Vicki screaming and rush off to find her, passing by Evil Doctor.

The tree thing tries to attack the Daleks, who just exterminate it.

The Doctor (Good) and Ian find Vicki who has knocked herself out.

The Doctor (Evil) finds Barbara.

ROBO-DOC: Barbara, my dear, Chesterton is dead.

Hartnell is having a blast here.

Barbara rushes off with Evil Doctor while Good Doctor helps Vicki.

Vicki wakes up to explain the plot:

VICKI: There is a robot! The Daleks made it exactly like you.
DOCTOR: A robot exactly like me?
VICKI: Every detail. I heard them giving it orders. They made it to infiltrate our group. They told it to infiltrate and kill.
DOCTOR: So that's it! This is very serious, Chesterton. Barbara would never have left here unless, unless you or I told her to go.

Evil Doctor starts to attack Barbara but Ian makes the save. And then we get Doctor vs Doctor, who is the Real Doctor?

I think its the one played by William Hartnell.

Evil Doctor gives himself away by calling Vicki "Susan".

They defeat Evil Doctor.

The Daleks capture the TARDIS. Some plants attack the Daleks.

The Daleks manage to corner the Doctor and friends in the cave with no way out. I guess this means the Daleks have won!

The Doctor tries to impersonate the Evil Doctor but the Daleks twig right away.

Suddenly a lift appears and tells them to enter. So they do.

The Chase (episode 6)

So the Doctor and friends are trapped in a cave but a talking lift opens and tells them to enter. So they do.

A robot is in the lift.

Meanwhile Daleks exterminate the bottom of the lift for the hell of it. It does nothing. Then they announce they will penetrate the wall. Watersheds hours away, chaps.

The lift door opens and the Doctors friends walk out into... well, a close up while they tell us all the stuff we can't see is huge. Then there's a model shot and yes, it does look properly huge with their use of scaling a giant robot thing to the model. Nice.

I think the robots are flirting.

Also, I just want to mention again - the cantilevered walkway model was fantastic. One of the best things in this series so far.

In the waiting room, suddenly in pops the American guy from earlier! He must have stowed away on the Dalek time ship.

No, wait, its a space man, played by the same actor. Yes, it's Peter Purves!

STEVEN: Stay where you are! You real?
IAN: Who are you?
STEVEN: You are real. From Earth?
IAN: Yes. Who are you?
STEVEN: From Earth, that couldn't have happened! I worked out the odds. Two thousand to one against. Hey, I supposed they realised I was on my way back when. Well, who won the wars? Look, I'm Steven Taylor.

Not the best intro to someone who would become a properly good companion. Peter Purves nowadays is of course a TV legend, a veteran ex-Presenter of Blue Peter, still the host of the annual Crufts dog show, the narrator on Kick Start (who didn't laugh when he desperately tried not to laugh when that kid got injured? Yeah I'm going to leave that context less for worried passersby!) and by far the best thing in The Office. But back in 1965 he was a jobbing young actor (and if you want my opinion, and let's take it as read by now you do, then he showed more promise in his time on the show than some folk with decades of experience).

Anyhow, Steven is an abandoned spaceman who is in this city of robots.

Charmingly he likes Barbara saying his name like no one has repeated it for years. Equally charmingly he has a cuddly toy panda, marking him out as just the sort of mild eccentric you can trust.







Ahem.

STEVEN: Look, about fifty years ago Earth decided to colonise this planet. Well, it landed a rocket full of robots programmed to clear landing sites, get everything ready for the first immigrants.
VICKI: And they didn't arrive?
STEVEN: No. See, Earth got involved in interplanetary wars. I suppose this place was forgotten.
IAN: Fifty years ago? But surely these robots'd be worn out by now. They'd have run down.
DOCTOR: No, no, no, no, they're programmed to do their own repairs.

This story has become Terry Nation porn. Robot World people on a planet called Mechanus. Daleks. He's setting up a pilot for the Daleks Make Terry Nation Lots of Money TV show here.

Ian tells Steven they can fight now as Ian is there. After 50+ episodes, this isn't a boast or ego, just a promise.

Some Robots show up to gawp at the humans.

Daleks do something. They get the lift to show up for them.

Ian is still planning to escape.

The Doctor has said very little.

DOCTOR: We make our way back to my spaceship.

Right on cue.

Steven points out you can walk around all you want, just not escape. So the Doctor and Ian walk onto the roof of the city.

Ian nearly falls off the platform.

Someone has left a whole lot of cable on the roof and Ian realises it can be used to climb down to the ground.

"Fifteen hundred feet of cable, " says Barbara.

The Daleks are in the city, so the Doctors team decide to climb down the cable.

A Dalek exterminates a Mechanoid. The Daleks plan to climb up the stairs, but then one of the Daleks is shot.

DALEK 4: Am exterminated! Am exterminated! Argh!

As Oscar Wilde said over the death of Little Nell, you need a heart of stone not to laugh.

The Doctors team is about to escape but suddenly Vicki is afraid of heights because Terry has more time to kill.

So they lower her to the ground with a blindfold. As a useful canary in case of Daleks?

Really, Vicki was quite a good companion when not written by Terry Nation.

I had a dream Terry Nation got brought in to write the scripts for Attack of the Cybermen, btw. No idea why I'm mentioning that now.

Vicki is safe.

Meanwhile Steven casually wanders back into the midst of war and Daleks.

We see the model work again which really is very good.

Daleks and Mechanoids fight for a bit. I was going to say this is the sort of action scene Richard Martin enjoys but apparently Douglas Camfield directed these scenes uncredited and it bloody well shows because the cinematography for this battle has suddenly jumped up ten fold. By far the best bit of the entire six episodes, it looks expensive and epic.

MICHAEL'S NOTE - Since writing this, I have found out this scene was actually directed by Richard Martin, and so it was a bloody good moment for his Dr Who career to bow out on. 

Its a stunning example of how different Doctor Who looks depending on the director, that 30 seconds.

Ian and Barbara and everyone escapes as the city explodes. Bye bye great little model. Seriously, John Wood and Ray Cusick put that city model together and it was genuinely fantastic. Hang on, let's bring up a picture of it.







Cantilevered bridge, ever bit of the design leading somewhere. 10/10 work.

The Doctor finds the TARDIS time machine, but a Dalek is there.

No, its just Ian pretending to be a Dalek.

The Doctor is now happy to have a look around the Dalek time machine.

BARBARA: Ian, do you realise we could get home?
IAN: Home? Yes. Do you want to?
BARBARA: Yes. I never realised it before.
IAN: Neither did I. We may never get another chance.

No, not the teachers!

Steven shows up, having saved his beloved cuddly toy.

DOCTOR: I don't want to know! I want none of this! I've never heard such nonsense in my life! You'll end up as a couple of burnt cinders, flying around in space. You idiots! You are absolute idiots!
BARBARA: We are not idiots! We want to go home!
IAN: Yes, home! I want to sit in a pub and drink a pint of beer again. I want to walk in a park and watch a cricket match. Above all, I want to belong somewhere, do something, instead of this aimless drifting around in space.
DOCTOR: Aimless? I've tried for two years to get you both home!
IAN: Well, you haven't been very successful, have you?
DOCTOR: How dare you, young man. How dare you, sir! I didn't even invite you into the ship in the first place. You both thrust yourselves upon me!

The Doctor isn't happy about the idea of Ian and Barbara leaving, and I'll be honest, it doesn't feel like William Hartnell is acting here.

Vicki tells the Doctor to help Ian and Barbara get home. The Doctor looks very sad.

Ian and Barbara make it back to 1965 London, presumably to tell everyone they eloped.

Meanwhile, the Doctor gets the last line, watching his two friends prance about in London on his time TV from earlier.

DOCTOR: I shall miss them. Yes, I shall miss them, silly old fusspots. Come along, my dear, it's time we were off.

I think we'll all miss them. Ian and Barbara were fabulous. Its often said that without William Hartnell, the show wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes, because its true. But equally, the show needed the heart and ethics and courage that Ian and Barbara gave the show. If Doctor Who is the child of Sydney Newman, then the show nearly 60 years on is still running on its social contract that two school teacher companions gave it in 1963.

The Chase is an utter mess, and they deserved a better exit, but I salute them both regardless.