Classic Who: The Deadly Assassin, The Face of Evil, The Robots of Death, The Sun Makers

Meep! New Who starts again today, and I'm miles behind with my Classic Who blogging! Let's see if I can catch up before 6:20pm.

First of all, the latest three in UKTV Drama's sequential showing of the Tom Baker era:

( Fourth Doctor: The Deadly Assassin )

( Fourth Doctor: The Face of Evil )

( Fourth Doctor: The Robots of Death )

And there, alas, UKTV is leaving us in the lurch, presumably because New Who is starting up again, and the BBC would rather channel us into watching that. Bad news for those us of who would quite cheerfully have watched both in parallel! They did promise in a continuity announcement that the Doctor would be back later in the year, though, again presumably when the new series finishes showing. But it is frustrating for now to have to stop one story shy of a season finale, and I shall miss my daily fix something rotten.

Well, actually I probably won't, because it's not like I'm entirely dependent on UKTV for my Classic Who viewing. I succumbed some time ago to the temptation of buying the Key to Time box-set, so shall be working my way through that shortly, BBC4 seem to be chipping in with occasional contributions, and in any case it's not hard in these days of modern technology to access pretty well as much Classic Who as you like. So I'll probably survive. In the meantime, there's just one more out-of-sequence story for me to write up:

( Fourth Doctor: The Sun Makers )

New Who 4.1, Partners in Crime

I've become increasingly nervous over the past few weeks about how this series of Who is going to pan out. I'd better not say why in too much detail for the sake of those who don't like to hoover up spoilers with quite the same glee as I do. But I think it's safe to say that the sheer quantities of both returning companions and returning villains make the likelihood of Total Bollocks Overdrive (^TM swisstone) in the season finale very, very high indeed. It could be done well, and of course we'll all have fun working out the fine details of just what will happen in advance. But it could also be done very badly. After three series' worth of experience of RTD's finales, I'm keeping my expectations low.

This episode, though, ( seemed like a pretty solid start to the season )

So. Now that's all written up, I can spend the rest of the evening reading and commenting on everyone else's reaction posts! Marvellous. :-)