Favourite Season 5 Story

What’s everyone’s favorite Season 5 story or stories? Remember, you can vote for more than one.

  • The Tomb of the Cybermen
  • The Abominable Snowmen
  • The Ice Warriors
  • The Enemy of the World
  • The Web of Fear
  • Fury from the Deep
  • The Wheel in Space
0 voters
2 Likes

I was so glad when Enemy of the World was rediscovered because I’d always enjoyed the third episode and seeing the whole story get a massive re-evaluation and no longer being the poor ‘no-monster’ cousin of Season 5 really heartened me.

7 Likes

Wow, does no one like The Ice Warriors?

2 Likes

Yet another strong Season! While by no means as good as Season 4 for me personally, it’s Throughton, you can’t do anything wrong with any of his Seasons! I’d say Fury from the Deep is my favorite of this Season, followed closely by Enemy of the World!

2 Likes

It’s the “no monster” thing that always made me think little of it. The Faceless Ones is another one with no “ooh” monster designs for which I had no fondness.

And then, when I saw them (animated in the Faceless case), they were great. I mean, great. Reading the books, there were no really cool images in my mind’s eye, but seeing them, or at least hearing Troughton’s performance, made all the difference.

I think Enemy is my favorite from Season 5 now.

4 Likes

I think rediscovering Enemy of the World was one of the best things to come out of the Fiftieth Anniversary. Troughton is on fire and it’s just a great story in general, it’s also a breath of fresh air in what often feels like a very repetative season. Web of Fear was already known to be good, this was the one that blew everyone out of the water.

6 Likes

The Abominable Snowmen deserves its flowers. Given its mostly missing status and its admittedly much tighter sequel, I feel like the story is often overlooked. It’s my favourite of the still missing Troughtons, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve read the novelisation, loved the recons and sat down for the extant episode 2.

The animation is good, it’s probably the Big Finish Creative team’s best work on the range, but I know not everyone is keen on that style and I do have my issues with it, the Padmasambhava redesign and control spheres being at the top of that list. I hope that one day even a single other episode of the story turns up, but that only grows less likely as time goes on, and I feel if people could watch the original story the yellowface would be a big elephant in the room.

It’s such a shame the Yeti never really reappeared after season 5 (though the glimpses in Shada and The Five Doctors are nice), though I’m not keen on how the revival handled the Great Intelligence so perhaps we dodged a bullet.

4 Likes

Honestly, while not my favorite, it’s kinda a shame how rarely I hear people talk about this Story. It’s great! Having an Animation for it certainly does help, even if some changes were a bit much (I still don’t get why they gave some Characters Scars despite there being no Sign of them in the telesnaps, although I am of course glad about the Changes. Keeping it as it was, would have been a bad decision.)
And yeah shame we never got to see the Yetis again, who knows if they got more Stories, they might have a similar status as the Ice Warriors (iconic Villain, who aren’t as iconic as big four, but is definitely in the Top 10).

3 Likes

I guess in a sense the Yeti are quite limited, they don’t act quite on their own accord, they just make their way to a given destination and destroy anything in their way. Though that’s just what I like about them! It’s a fairly unique gimmick and I could see a writer doing something with the control spheres, giving them some kind of defense mechanism, expanding on what the Yeti can be used for.

Perhaps it’d be interesting to see how they’d be put to use by another force, with our protagonists assuming it is the Great Intelligence only for the rug to be pulled out from under them, I don’t know. I earnestly love the Yeti a lot though, especially the cuddlier look from their debut.

3 Likes

Enemy of the World rules so much

5 Likes

The Web of Fear was my all time favourite Doctor Who story for a good while, that story to me is easily one of the greatest of all time.

The Yeti, the cast, the mystery and the incredible atmosphere!

I could probably rant more about my love for the story but you get the gist. One of three black and white stories I give a 10/10 for.

4 Likes

It’s wonderful how Doctor Who divides opinion. I’ve never seen the appeal of Enemy of the World, other than it giving Pat Troughton something new to do.

For me, the best story of Series 5, and possibly of the Second Doctor’s entire run, would be Fury from the Deep; a terrifically terrifying story made up of many individual terrifying set-pieces. In Robson, Victor Maddern gives a brilliant and unsettling performance. Many authority figures have suffered a dangerous meltdown over a Doctor Who story, but not all so frighteningly as Controller Robson. His comparative calmness when standing with Maggie Harris on the beach (shortly before she wanders into the crashing waves!) is wonderfully creepy, as are the many memorable scenes from this: ‘something’ echoing in the gas pipes, Oak and Quill and their deadly gassy breath; glimpses of thrashing tendrils beneath the foam; the palpable feeling of those in charge rapidly losing control; every single cliffhanger … it’s all here, kids!

I’m not quite old enough to have seen this originally and am reliant on the telesnaps, audiobook and soundtrack (as well as a very brief clip or two), but if I’d seen this as a youngster, I’m sure it would have given me nightmares. Horror is vital to Doctor Who’s appeal, and this one has it in spades. And what acting across the board!

Strangely, my second favourite would be The Wheel in Space. I find this curious, isolated, strange little take very enjoyable, and great use is made of the two very creepy Cybermen. The only problem is, it suffers in its similarities to the previous tale.

3 Likes