Series/season eight wrap-up

Doctor Who Series/season eight
Airdates - 2nd of January 1971 to the 19th of June 1971
Produced by Barry Letts
Script Editor - Terrance Dicks

The eighth series/season finally brings us the classic UNIT lineup as both Jo Grant and Captain Yates are introduced in the first episode.  Also introduced is The Master, who, basically, plays the role of Moriarty to The Doctor's Sherlock Holmes.

As I mentioned in some of my reviews, having The Master feature as the main villain in every story of this particular series/season proves to be too much of a good thing.  By the time of the Dæmons, it's no longer anything special and we've come to expect it.  Perhaps Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks realized this as well, since the Master would become a recurring character in the next two series/seasons and other adversaries would also take precedence as well.

Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton are fairly interchangeable, at least until the Dæmons, where both are given quite a bit of screen time and both Richard Franklin and John Levene make the most of it.  Katy Manning's Jo Grant is certainly no genius like Liz Shaw, but her character is appealing.  Nicholas Courtney Brigadier is the glue that hold's the UNIT group together, and his interactions with The Doctor are priceless.  Some of the best scenes from this series/season are those where The Brigadier and The Doctor are verbally squaring off against each other.

Despite the overuse of The Master in this particular series/season, Roger Delgado simply owns this character, and every other actor who's played The Master has had their work cut out for them in living up to Delgado.   The Master's standout performance from this particular series/season simply has to be the Dæmons.  Unlike most of the stories from this particular series/season, The Master is the main villain in the Dæmons.  This allows the full Sherlock/Moriarty conflict between The Doctor and The Master to play out undisturbed without needing to focus time on other adversaries like the Autons or the Axons.

My ranking the stories from this particular series/season-
1. The Dæmons
2. The Claws of Axos
3. Terror of the Autons
4. Colony in Space
5. The Mind of Evil

The Dæmons is, by far the standout from this particular series/season.  The Claws of Axos is also quite good.  Terror of the Autons is flawed, but generally entertaining.  The two six-part stories simply move too slowly and I think might have been better as four part stories (which also would have allowed a sixth four part story to be included had they done this).  Of the two longer stories, Colony in Space is, in my opinion, the more interesting and watchable of the two.

Up next, the ninth series/season begins with the return of an old adversary in what I consider to be one of the very best Third Doctor episodes:  Day of the Daleks