Dr Whooooooo??

Okay, well for some bizarre reason I couldn't add any more photos to my last post, so I've started another one. As I was saying, here's a few of my favourite things about Who...

1. Tom Baker a.k.a. the Fourth Doctor &

Elisabeth Sladen a.k.a. Sarah-Jane Smith

Tom Baker remains, and always will be, my favourite incarnation of the Doctor. Character traits? Eccentric. Mysterious. Enigmatic. Brilliant. Humorous. Long multi-coloured scarf. Jelly baby eater. Toothy grin. Mad, staring eyes. Wonderfully rich, commanding voice. Huge curly perm. Okay so some might argue that Baker outstayed his welcome in the show (he clocked up some 7 years in the role!) but for me he will always be THE Doctor and gave THE definitive portrayal of the Time Lord.

Equally Sarah-Jane Smith ranks as one of my all time fave companions. A journalist by trade, she starts off as a bit of a no-nonsense feminist in the Jon Pertwee era of the show, but mellows gradually over time. Combining vulnerability with an outspokenness, intelligence and humour, she and the Doctor enjoy a close relationship and one of mutual respect. The most freakiest Sarah-Jane moment for me was one of the cliffhangers in "The Android Invasion" when the person we think is Sarah is revealed to be an android duplicate and she pulls a gun on the good Doctor. However the ever discerning Doc fights back and shaking the fascimile Sarah like a doll, causes her face to fall off, revealing a mass of circuits and wires underneath. Uugggghh. One that gave me nightmares for months. And in case you were wondering, the real Sarah was later revealed to be safe and sound.

Sarah also got a pretty good send-off story, "The Hand of Fear", in which she gets possessed by the spirit of a dead alien and walks round a nuclear power station clutching a stone hand (the remains of the aforementioned alien) repeatedly saying "Eldrad must live" and zapping people. Fortunately the Doctor soon restores her to normal and in the final episode she gets some touching farewell scenes. This story recently came out on DVD if you fancy a look.

She then turned up a few years later in the okay-but-not-great spin-off show, "K9 and Company", the best thing about that being the hilariously cheesey title sequence which attempts to emulate various detective/action shows. Cue shots of Sarah Jane sitting on a wall wearing groovy pink leg warmers, sipping wine whilst dashing off a news story on her type writer (such a sophisticated girl) and jumping into her mini metro (!) to speed off down a country lane. Oh and it also featured a certain robot dog. Both Sarah and K9 returned in "School Reunion" in the all-new Who, earlier this year. Which leads me to another of my favourite elements of the show... more coming soon!!