Doctor Who has long been my favorite show, but it’s been a couple of years since I’ve actually watched anything but the newest episodes. Before that, I was making a respectable run at getting through the original series, most of which I haven’t seen for decades. For various reasons, lately it has felt like it’s time to get back into it. 

The Time Warrior

Starring Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor.
Companion:  Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah-Jane Smith
Recurring Characters: Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart

Written by Robert Holmes.  Directed by Alan Bromley. Produced by Barry Letts. Script Edited by Terrance Dicks.

Format:  4 episodes, each about 25 minutes long
Originally Aired:  December 1973 – January 1974 (Episodes 1-4 of Season 11)

I just realised that as I’ve been running through classic Doctor Who over the last few years, I somehow have never watched any of the Sontaran stories. There are four of them during the show’s original 26 season run, and my haphazard viewing (I jump through the eras) has by chance never landed on any of them. Well, it’s time to shake that up with this, the debut story of what would become one of the franchise’s most popular alien enemies.

Spoilers Ahead!

The Time Warrior kicks off the eleventh season of Doctor Who, and in many ways feels like a new era for the show. Or perhaps more accurately, feels like the beginning of the end of an era. Jon Pertwee is still the Doctor, and he’s still connected to UNIT, but with the departure of Katy Manning’s Jo Grant, and the tragic death of Roger Delgado (the actor behind the Master), not to mention a new title sequence, the winds of change are in the air. Perhaps most importantly, though, is the introduction of a new companion–this Doctor’s first who is not overtly connected to UNIT.

Elisabeth Sladen makes an immediately positive impression as journalist Sarah Jane Smith. She’s energetic and fun, showing courage, initiative and (after a brief period of suspicion) a strong rapport with the Doctor. It’s basically everything we want from a companion. Sarah Jane was never my personal favorite, even as she became one of the series most well-known and beloved, but see her here I can understand what people were drawn to.

The serial is also known for debuting the Sontarans to the Doctor Who universe. It does a great job introducing the species to the audience. We get a solid understanding of who these beings are, what kind of a culture they come from, the nature of the threat they pose and what sets them apart from other aggressive aliens that the show has presented. This is especially impressive when you remember that there is only one Sontaran in the story, Commander Linx played by Kevin Lindsay. Linx is such a clear and specific character that he does the job on his own. He is a character, not just a monster, and Lindsay does an excellent job bringing him to life.

It doesn’t hurt, of course, that he is walking around inside a great script by Robert Holmes, one the classic series’ most celebrated and significant contributors. The Time Warrior unfolds its plot with excellent pacing and a healthy dose of originality. I really like that Linx’s goal isn’t just to conquer or destroy the planet; he just wants to get away so that he can rejoin the glorious war that his people are wrapped up in. He’s threatening human history, of course, but for reasons that are perfectly clear and relatable for the audience. Linx doesn’t care about Irongron, specifically, but he’s not just out to use him and then kill him, and there’s something refreshing in the way that he’d happily just leave him behind to conquer a little empire of his own.

And Linx isn’t the only well-written or well-performed guest character. Irongron and his off-sider, Bloodaxe (played by David Daker and John C. Carney), are both well-drawn personalities that are acted well, and are the chief example this time around of the sort of “double act” that Holmes was known for creating. And even minor characters like Edward of Wessex and his wife and the semi-blind Professor Rubeish, who at first comes across like an annoying throwaway character, are written with sharpness and clarity.

The other elements of the story are also good. There is strong design work, bringing to life the world of the Middle Ages as plausibly as one could possible hope the show to do. The look of the Sontaran is also really good–honestly, one of the very best that the classic series ever did at the idea of pulling off the illusion that thing is an actual living alien being, not just a guy in a costume. All of this is tied together with good direction and overall solid production.

It’s only toward the end of the story that things weaken somewhat. The sequence where the Doctor has to fight all of Irongron’s men while disguised as a robot drags on too long, and the pacing of the whole climax becomes more awkward. Seeing Irongron’s castle explode was pretty cool but you have to just kind of assume that all of his underlings (including the cooking staff) probably just got out in time, in spite of many of them being drugged, and that the Doctor didn’t just purposely blow up a whole bunch of innocent people.

Still, these are ultimately minor issues when compared to how overall strong this story is. It’s a good plot held up by commendable performances, dialogue, design and direction, and a few fun action sequences to boot. It’s not the Third Doctor story that plays on the biggest canvas or that feels the most epic, but it is one of the best that I’ve watched or rewatched in recent years at getting in there and telling its story well.

Other Thoughts

• This is, it turns out, the first time that the Doctor’s home planet of Gallifrey is actually named.

• The Brigadier shows up, but just for one episode. After that, all the action is back in the past, and we don’t see the Brigadier again until the Doctor and Sarah return to the present and find it overrun by dinosaurs!

• Jeremy Bulloch plays Hal the Archer.

He is also known as being local village leader Edward of Wickham in the series Robin of Sherwood, plus playing the body of Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. I actually met him at a convention years ago. Actually, come to think of it, I also met Lis Sladen at that same convention, and Jon Pertwee at a different one.