‘DOCTOR WHO’ – THE COLLECTION, SEASON 9.

The Blu-ray box sets of vintage Doctor Who seasons are, I think, the greatest examples of archive television restoration on the market. In March 2023, we’ve reached the release of Third Doctor Jon Pertwee’s 1972 season. I was seven when Season 9 was originally transmitted and it made a lasting impression on me.

In the middle of producer Barry Letts’ tenure, it’s the archetypal Pertwee season. The trio of stories it starts with – ‘Day of the Daleks’, ‘The Curse of Peladon’ and ‘The Sea Devils’ – is arguably the strongest opening line-up of the early 1970s. They’re immaculately plotted, performed and directed. Things dip slightly with ‘The Mutants’: it’s central concept – a chrysalis-like life form unique in the universe – is a good one, but the story would have worked better as a four-parter (and spared the Doctor and Jo the indignity of being stuck in a cupboard on Skybase for most of Episode One).

The momentum picks up again with ‘The Time Monster’, renewing the duel between the Doctor and the Master (the fabulous Roger Delgado). Delightfully, ‘The Time Monster’ is the Pertwee story that’s the most like the legendary Doctor Who comic strips in Countdown (1971-73) – a mixture of contemporary England, the TARDIS involved in actions scenes and other time zones, in this case spanning ancient Atlantis to a Second World War Doodlebug.

Two of the stories have a notable emotional maturity. ‘The Curse of Peladon’ features assistant Jo Grant’s complicated relationship with King Peladon (David Troughton) – which brings out the best in Katy Manning as an actor – while ‘The Time Monster’ has the Master’s seduction of Queen Galleia (Ingrid Pitt), a key plot point. These scenes made me feel uncomfortable at the time, as this wasn’t something I’d seen before in Doctor Who. Today, these sequences look like the first flowerings of the emotionally literate phase of the series instigated by Russell T Davies.

Some corners of fandom reckon that Roger Delgado gives his worst performance as the Master in ‘The Time Monster’. It’s certainly melodramatic – probably because some of the dialogue is written that way – but I like to think that in this story we’re seeing the real character of the Master beneath the surface charm: mad, paranoid, violent and cowardly. His grandstanding about having complete power over the universe anticipates similar scenes in stories like ‘Logopolis’ (1981) and ‘The Timeless Children’ (2021).

Doctor Who: The Collection – Season 9 is, overall, unbeatable (though why all the guards in the Master’s prison in ‘The Sea Devils’ look like Paul Rutherford from Frankie Goes to Hollywood remains a mystery.)

The lure of the quality of the stories is such that I haven’t even started on the Special Features yet.

That’s an additional treat to come.