h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As I recall the good ones for me were

The Seeds of Doom
Masque of Mandragora
The Brain of Morbius
Genesis of the daleks
The Sontaron experiment
Pyramids of mars

but two always stand out from this era (which was MY doctor era) because they are the two which soiled my breeches the most as a young child were

The Horror of Fang Rock
The Image of the Fendahl

I think neither of these did I watch all the way through in their first airings as I was *too* frightened by them

Those were the days
*goes all misty eyed*

The Seeds of Doom really stands out as being written by an Avengers writer, and Baker's obviously having a great time being throughly violent. Molotov cocktails in Doctor Who? Brilliant!

The Seeds of Doom is my all-time favourite Tom Baker story. Such wit combined with a superb menace. Tony Beckley made Harrison Chase such a sophisticatedly insane villain: 'I could play all day in my green cathedral'.

It's also got a genuinely nasty concept in it. Okay, the Krynoid ends up looking a bit crap, but in the intial stages it's horrible- Keeler is begging for a doctor and Chase is busy feeding him raw meat to make the change faster...

Actually thinking about it, I don't think I was allowed/able to watch Seeds of Doom properly the first time either.

What an appropriate smiley for that one

Incidentally. City of Death - I don't remember this one from the title but the article alludes to it being set in paris. was that episode something to do with the Mona Lisa and Leonardo da Vinci? I remember an episode (which I think was in France) where he wrote 'This is a Fake" on a stack of Mona Lisas...

Yep, that's City of Death.

Evil time-travelling alien (well, sort of, actually one alien splintered into eight beings scattered in time) pursuades Da Vinci to do a load of copies of the Mona Lisa in order to fund his experiments on present-day Earth. The Doctor writes 'this is a fake' in felt tip on the canvas of them all before they're painted- the one that ends up in the Louve at the end is one of these.

Yes that rings even more bells now.

It's far too easy to generalise, but I think it's fair to say the first three and a half years of Tom's reign were the most consistently solid in the entire history of the programme. There are a few duff stories, but there seem

Hit post a bit earlier there, Jimster?

Nope - I hit delete a little too late.

There seem to be fewer duff stories when Robert Holmes was around

.. is what I was about to say. But then decided against it. This is nature's way of telling me to stop changing my mind.

... or is it?

There is some good stuff on 'Seeds of Doom' on the Who web site.

Cant believe no one as mentioned the best Tom Baker story ever as to be The Talons of Weng-Chiang surely.