Pyramids of Mars

Well, absolutely, yeah.

You got things like, the major things like, uh, Pyramids of Mars, which we already talked about, my favorite story, which is The Seeds of Doom as well.

Huge stonking classics.

Terror of the Zygons and-

What are your general thoughts, starting with you, Matt, your general thoughts on Brain of Morbius as a story?

Do you know, we're talking about Season 13 as such a cl- you know, a classic series.

I think this is probably the one of the ones in that series that I forget, 'cause I love Zygons and Seeds of Doom, and I love Pyramids of Mars so much-

Mm-hmm

So there is a few sort of underloved classics here.

But essentially, you know, if you are... wondering why my top 10 doesn't include Unearthly Child, The Web Planet, The Space Museum, The Time Medal, The Power of the Daleks, The Underwater Menace, The Tomb of the Cybermen, Ice Warriors, The Web of Fear, Free from the Deep, The Dominators, The Mind Robber, The Seeds of Doom, The Spearhead from Space, The Ambassadors of Death, Colony in Space, The Demons, The Sea Devils, The Three Doctors, The Green Death, Planet of the Spiders, Genesis of the Daleks, The Pyramids of Mars, The Deadly Assassin, The Face of Evil, The Horror Fraggle Rock, Underworld, Invasion of Time, Armageddon Factor, Creature from the Pit, It's because you can find it somewhere else.

Oh, but can I just, please? The Happiness Patrol is your number one favourite Doctor Who story of all time, isn't it? Even though you're caging yourself to not be able to say that.

But, you know, we've spent three hours per episode talking about that.

So, one of the things... that I'm not a massive fan of yet it is an intrinsic part of Doctor Who is big shouty villains and you know that this need to have a massive confrontation between good and evil you know and you know the bad guy the good guys all of that kind of thing and Sometimes it works well and there's a nostalgic factor to it.

When I think back to things like Pyramids of Mars, the Dr. V. Sutec, although Sutec's not really shouting.

He's one of the more quiet spoken villains.

But nonetheless, there's a lot of them out there.

Fourth, City of Death.

Third, Pyramids of Mars.

Second, out of four poles, The Talons of Weng Chiang and their top story across four poles.

Genesis, surely? It won three of them and comes second in the other one.

He wrote the mysterious planet.

I mean, to be honest, when we watched...

Pyramids of Mars, we discovered the last episode was a lot stronger than we thought it was, I think.

Yes.

Then there's the ones that are like going, oh, it just looks tacky and crap going like, well, like those people I've said can kind of fucking get into a bin.

because they can say give it a shot if you don't like it for whatever just don't view it on its covering so he alienates them and then for the people that he gets to go oh go back and watch Pyramids of Mars and go back and watch Tree Doctors or Ark of Infinity they're going to come away with kind of going that was really good what the fuck did you do So it's like, the only kid who boils down to, don't make me go back and watch the thing.

Or, I went back and I watched the thing.

It's better than your thing.

Yeah.

And it was Russell specifically requested basically the Pyramids of Mars thing-

Oh

... for exactly the same reason.

Mm.

Which is for a new audience who are asking, "Well, we know that didn't happen." Which is what Sarah asks in Pyramids of Mars.

Mm.

And then the Doctor shows her what the world would be like if Sutekh wins.

A twist should be just a little less frantic.

And finally, the glimpse of a contemporary London wasteland is, of course, an echo of the same scene at Pyramids of Mars.

Stick that in your back pocket for the end of the season.

Yeah, we got our pyramids of Mars foreshadowing very early here, didn't we? Cause we're all like, even I said at the time, like, oh, it's just like when Sarah looked at the dust.

From Pyramids of Mars.

And then who comes back? But Sue Tank.

Oh, yeah.

Until we needed to use the Ronnie.

Until we needed to use Pyramids of Mars.

Until we needed to use Omega.

We had...

Number four, I am going with Paddy Russell.

There are some really strong stories here from Paddy: Massacre, Invasion of the Dinosaurs, The Pyramids of Mars, and The Horror of Fang Rock.

Bangers.

This is a director who can turn just a bunch of people talking in rooms into a really high intense piece of drama in The Massacre.

She manages to get the human character out of a story that has some, you know, let's face it, naff puppet dinosaurs in it.

Pyramids of Mars, one of the most brutal, high action, high intensity Doctor Who stories there is, and that's before you get to Horror of Fang Rock.

A director who knew how to manage Tom Baker, who knew how to get the performances she wanted, didn't take any grief from him, and I think the results are there on screen.

Very much so.