The Time Warrior

A lone Sontaran warrior, Lynx, crash lands on Earth in the middle ages. Out of necessity Lynx sides with the brutish Irongron and exchanges weapons for shelter, using a limited means of time travel to kidnap scientists from the future to use to repair his ship. UNIT notice the disappearances and place a group of other scientists in similar fields under guard, with the Doctor sitting in to see what he can determine, and he travels back in time to stop Lynx from altering the course of human history.

I had some guests for the viewing of this episode; my friends Leanne and Emily joined me for the start of the third Doctor's final season. The Time Warrior has not only that distinction but it is also the very first time a Sontaran is seen on screen, and it is also the very first appearance of a headstrong young journalist named Sarah Jane Smith. While the Sontarans would return to do battle with the Doctor only three more times in the classic series, they would rank right up there with the Daleks and the Cybermen in classic monster status. Sarah Jane Smith, on the other hand, would be a series legacy, even to current day.

As it was the start of Jon Pertwee's final season there's a perceptible shift in things; the Brigadier is in this one as is UNIT but it's effectively just a cameo in episode one, with the rest of the adventure taking place somewhere else in time. The Doctor's travels on screen alone had been taking him further and further from Earth once more, so to start the season off with the UNIT family left behind would be a sure sign of things to come. The opening titles of the series also got a do-over after four years of a more horror-esque motif, and the diamond logo which was the enduring symbol of the series for decades was introduced. Things just feel different in this one without anything actually being labelled as such and not hinted at either; there are no portents that the third Doctor's days are numbered as there would be in current years on the series.

Sarah Jane Smith is different. Very different. Actress Elisabeth Sladen has said in past that she did not get much of a character brief and had to remind herself of her own notions for Sarah, the biggest one being her sense of righteous indignation. Sarah embodied change in attitudes towards women which were very much on the rise at the time the series was made, and gone now were the days of the heroine being, as script editor Terrance Dicks would say, "tied to the tracks" while the Doctor was left to be heroic. Sarah wasn't interested in taking crap from men, and although it feels a bit preachy to hear her say it, it's far more empowering a character than some social media whiners of the third wave feminist movement of current times. The time Sarah represents actually was one of change, where Women's Lib was the new call to equality as a real concern; too many times it has been invoked recently as a means to just get someone what they themselves wanted, be it a job they were not qualified for, or, worse, attention on a social media platform. Companions after Sarah would no longer be the meeker female stereotypes of the past, and while a character like Barbara Wright was no pushover she was far less likely to take action herself as Sarah would, and would resort to screaming for Ian to help her. If we were to look at Sarah Jane Smith in the context of the series as a whole, she was the turning point for women's roles in Doctor Who; she is to the series what Madonna is to the female pop stars of today. And the same wave of change would lead to the controversial selection of a female lead to play the Doctor here in 2018, even if that choice looks less genuine and more of a stunt casting move. The new series debuts in a few days at time of writing, so soon we shall see if it was a good plan or not.

Political nuances aside the episode is fantastic to watch and enjoy, with the DVD release being one of the few to have had its effects updated to look more like current episode, even if it's still live broadcast quality in studio, with some pretty iffy lighting in a few scenes. But dig this: Hal the archer is played by Jeremy Bulloch, who would in a few years go on to play Boba Fett in two Star Wars films.

So with new companion at his side, the Doctor is ready to take on the universe once more. Sarah would come into her own a bit more through her association with the fourth Doctor and as it were she would only get five outings with the third before he regenerates, but once again there are supplemental materials to give this partnership some more time together, almost doubling their story count, and one of them is next.

NEXT EPISODE: THE PARADISE OF DEATH