Oh that’s a good one 
Enjoy 
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Yes, I think the only way in which the production faltered was in not adding enough modulation the The Daleks’ voices.
Other than that, this is a first rate story. One of the darkest Doctor Who tales ever told, perhaps.
I know Revelation was recorded well in advance of the 18-month hiatus announcement, but I like the way the BBC Controller ‘rested’ Doctor Who back in 1985 saying it was too horrific and violent - and the final story of that very series was one of the most horrific and violent. A kind of one-finger salute to Michael Grade, who also complained about the series’ ratings. Revelation scored about 7.8 million, some of the highest viewing figures that season!
Ah well. 
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I’m proud to say Revelation of the Daleks was my first Six story. It had me entranced within the first two minutes, and watching it wasn’t even a deliberate choice I made! (Davros is one of my favorite villains, and after watching the relevant Four and Twelve episodes he appears in, I went on the Wiki to choose another to watch at random. Picked RotD without knowing a thing about it or the people in it).
Six instantly dethroned Twelve as “My Doctor”.
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I enjoyed being able to watch it in colour. I know black and white is truer to the original, but I preferred the colour version.
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I think it works well with The Celestial Toymaker, as the animation is very stylised and due to the nature of the story.
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Just finished The Brain of Morbius (not super exciting but defo interesting on the lore front and seeing where Chibnal got the idea for the Timeless Child stuff). I started the Seeds of Doom which reminds me of an early X-Files episode with a similar premise. Enjoying it a lot!
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Absolutely agree 
I hadn’t seen The Celestial Toymaker when I made that comment 
The colours definitely add an extra dimension to the Toymaker’s realm!
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The Empty Child. It’s one of the highest ranked episodes so I’m diving in.
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It is a fantastic story, and one of the more original Dalek stories from the classic years. I love 'Earthshock" but I actually think ‘Revelation’ is probably Saward’s most accomplished script. Oh and the humour? Great thick layers of black humour and insightful character work. Genuinely funny, with some lovely content that’s edgy (in a good way]. Saward gets a lot of flak but, at his best, could really write a smart story!
Yes, you’re quite right about the Doctor and Peri in episode 1, but the other characters are so vibrant and interesting that it doesn’t matter too much.
Davros is so good in this. Kudos, indeed, to Molloy but also for the devious, dark and very morbid plot.
It’s every bit a great Doctor Who story, even if the role of the Doctor is verging on inconsequential. Though the Doctor is in the whole story, it could almost be a Doctor lite story.
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Tonight, I will be continuing my rewatch of the magnificent Third Doctor’s sophomore season.
The Mind of Evil awaits. Gangster boss Master. Mind parasite. The thouroughly unpleasant yet very real Mailer. Poor Barnham. Glorious! An old favourite of mine.
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The Mind of Evil: Parts 1 and 2
Still great! I’ve always enjoyed this story immensely and, going into it for the umpteenth time, I did wonder whether it would still have the same lustre. Why did I worry? Wow, that was good!
Jon Pertwee wasn’t really known as a serious actor but he does so well in Doctor Who. Dare I say, I really do think he is frequently underrated. Whereas Delgado rightly gets applauded for his excellent performance, Pertwee also deserves recognition. Let’s consider the scene at the end of part one, for example, where he is subject to a psychic assault by the Keller Machine and starts to hallucinate that he is caught in an inferno. He really puts his heart and soul into acting terrified, yet for me the best bit of this sequence is early in part two when, with the Keller Machine distracted by the sudden appearance of Jo, he is rescued. Even after being freed of the grasp of the mind parasite, he maintains a breathless and unsettling performance that really sells the entire encounter. It’s really quite fantastic stuff!
Something else that Pertwee’s Doctor is often accused of is rubbing shoulders with establisment figures and some pretty rum fellows. It was only in the last story, for example, where he was boasting to Brownrose about his time in the club with “Tubby” Rowlands. And here, even worse, he’s casually talking about hob nobbing with Mao Tse Tung (a man with a history of appalling human rights abuses and mass murder). But, and here’s the thing, we never saw the Doctor with ol’ Tubby Rowlands and we never see him with Tse Tung. As River so readily told us, rule one is that the Doctor lies. In both cases that I’ve highlighted above, he uses his knowledge to exploit the situation intimidating Brownrose and winning over Fu Peng. Did he really socialise with Tubby Rowlands? Did he really meet Chairman Mao? Who Knows for certain? What we can, I thin, say for certain is that he’s not above name dropping (and lying) to serve his purposes and that he simply isn’t the sort of character who would ever condone the actions of Mao Tse Tung. This reading is, I believe, entirely consistent with everything we knew, and have since come to know, about the Doctor.
One thing that does stand out, and could easily come across as deeply crass, is Mike Yates’ reference to Captain Chin Lee as, and I quote, “quite a dolly”. I absolutely agree that it’s a horrible line but I am so very glad that it’s Yates who delivers it. From anyone else’s mouth, it would be pretty much indefensible today. From Yates? Well, he does rather come across as desperately trying to fit in with the straight guys. If we can forgive the occasional insensitive remark as being ‘of its time’, then we can certainly forgive such a remark from a man trying to fit in at a time when homophobia was rife (yes, I ascribe to the school of thought that Yates was not straight - it just kind of makes sense to me). Indeed, whether we choose to believe that the Pertwee UNIT stories were set in the 1970s (of course they were! 
) or the 1980s, let us not forget that the ban on gay people serving in the UK military wasn’t lifted until the year 2000. Of course Yates was going to do everything he could to fit in. For the early 1970s, a remark like that would definitely be something he might try.
One final word, before I finish my waxing lyrical on these two episodes; aren’t those prison scenes good? The awful clattering and shouting, the general sense of chaos and disorder bubbling just under the surface. It’s a surprisingly gritty setting (and surprisingly well done) that seems worlds apart from the cosiness of our UNIT family and tea time Doctor Who. Because of that, it has real impact.
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And the award for falling down a slightly not flat bit of ground whilst trying to make it look terrifying goes to… 
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I’m glad it’s not just me. Everyone always seems to hold it up as one of the top stories but I think there are much stronger contenders in that season alone.
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I agree. I’m at a point now where I think it’s better than ok but I’ve never been able to agree that it’s an unimpeachable classic
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Watched the Stones of Blood yesterday 
It is as amazing every time.
Professor Amelia Rumford Chef’s kiss
And watched the first part of the Androids of Tara.
Mary Tamm could just pull off any outfit and make it look regal!
One thing I always think of when watching Romana pilot the TARDIS is that it still makes that wheezing, groaning noise when materialising - does Romana also leave the brakes on when piloting the TARDI-BOX or was River talking rubbish in the Angels two-parter…
And why does my mind keep focusing on such minutiae so I have to rewind scenes 
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Never seen this before - loved it. Thanks for sharing. Poor Rudolf!
Reminds me of the pre bit when we went to see Day of the Doctor at the cinema.
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I adore The Stones of Blood with a passion. It’s a Steven Moffat storyline decades before the Moffat era. Not so much timey-wimey, but that jarring change of scene from the Gothic chills of Boscombe Moor (and the delights of Professor Rumford) to the stark sci fi stylings of the Justice Machines aboard their ship in hyperspace. It’s clever, it’s funny, it’s ambitious and just wonderful! The Ogri are utterly bonkers and I love them with both my hearts!
I mean, this really is such a Doctor Who story. Beatrix Lehman is, of course, an utter delight from start to finish, whilst Susan Engels has an absolute ball as Vivien Fey/Cessair of Diplos. I’m a big fan of David Fisher’s approach to Doctor Who. He consistently wrote imaginative and tremendously witty stories with strong parts for women (we get Professor Rumford, Vivien Fey, Madam Lamia, Lady Adrasta, Karela and Mena in his stories).
To switch, then, from Stones to The Androids of Tara, we see how diverse Fisher was as a writer too. Both very different stories. In Tara, we get another richly portrayed society to match that of Ribos earlier in the same season. Yet more great character work and absolute bags full of fun.
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Yes. Yeah, of course she was. I mean every Time Lord who uses a TARDIS generates the ol’ wheezing groaning sound. Are we really expected to believe that they’re all flying around with the handbrakes on? Nope. Not happening.
River was teasing. It is her way. We all know it to be true!
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Beatrix Lehmann was an icon…
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Had put my series 9 rewatch on pause for ages cause I couldn’t be bothered with Sleep No More, but finally decided to bite the bullet.
What a waste of a great concept (late stage capitalism exploiting sleep) and a cool experimental format. Absolutely dull 45 minutes with the twist at the end being complete and utter nonsense. Halfway through I kept it on but opened up a spreadsheet I’ve been meaning to make and started work on it… That’s how bored I was.
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