It's probably one of my favourite scenes in the show's entire run. There's something about the way Sarah clings onto the roundel right at the beginning, and that shot with her hair blown across her shocked face as she stands in the doorway which kind of remind me of an early horror-film or even frames of artwork in a graphic novel; I can't think of any other ways to describe it. It all just looks incredibly polished and artistic.
Great observations and well said. This was the first Doctor Who scene I ever saw, on late night PBS. It captivated me. This is in the 80's...pre internet...I couldn't just google it and read a synopsis of the premise and characters. I had to watch every week and piece it together...Time Lords, UNIT, Daleks, The Master, Gallifrey, regenerations, Jelly babies...this box that was bigger on the inside! What a mind blower! Tom Baker's run was special.
I know exactly what you mean. We take all the mythology for granted these days because it's become so embedded in the public psyche. But to imagine just finding out about it all for the first time is awesome. It makes me wish sometimes that Doctor Who wasn't so mainstream.
Tom Baker's 4th Doctor was always eccentric, but when he became dead serious, you knew he wasn't to be trifled around with's and he was always thinking up 101 solutions to a major problem or event!
Bang on! Tom baker used to almost whisper his anger, yet it still carried weight? Pyramids of mars is probably my favourite dr who adventure! Of the newer adventures, the satan pit i think it was called, with David Tennant comes close to this in plotting and atmosphere?
Obviously the dark severity of this scene is the main takeaway, but I love how delighted the Doctor is with how Lawrence reacts to the TARDIS. I feel like there's often a sense that the Doctor either considers you as a potential companion (like 9 and Lynda) or as dead weight (like many Doctors have acted with many people), but here he seems to really enjoy Lawrence's amazement, it's nice to watch
There's something to this, later on you see how profoundly disappointed Four is with Lawrence for not only being unable to adapt to what his brother has become but actively sabotaging efforts to stop him.
tbf the new who Doctors have even bigger ego problems than the classic ones and the writers do tend to default to them treating non-companion humans as either the best people imaginable in all of their "mundanity" (which is massively condescending) or as dead weight. Or even as the worst people imaginable based on one mistake or action. Most of the time in classic who, the Doctors don't do this. They still have arrogance and they still judge others but no more so than Sarah might judge someone, or anyone might judge another. It's one of my least favourite things about the way the Doctor has been characterised since 2005.
When the 13 TH DOCTOR regenerated AS A WOMAN, that when i said a *farewell to ALL 12 MALE DOCTORS IN BOTH OLD & NEW SERIES* I'm not saying a woman shouldnt have a timelord role as theres been several decent female timelords like the RANI (R.I.P Kate O' Mara and ROMANA Mary Tamm) however those female timelords is already a woman to begin with!, not as the main (ahem , man) thats had a male role in place from 1960s through to 2017, a female Doctor Who will not go well about like how GhostBusters 3 having an all female crew when original films was all male ,so GhostBusters 3 was pure rubbish and bombed at the all the theatres !
Oldguy John RetroLifeStyle Ghostbusters 3 didn’t fail because of women, it failed because of crappy writing. And why do people bother caring if the Doctor is a woman or not? It affects so little, it’s just another new change. Get over it already,
@Hecatean Actually, I think he was being "cruel to be kind". You heard the change not only in Sarah's opinion, but her tone and demeanor as well. She simply didn't understand the implications, and the Doctor had to show her the truth. In a way, this is a real growing up step for Sarah.
So then later, why couldn't he go back to say two minutes before Adric was killed in the Cybermen's ship crashing, materialized in the control room, open ed the Door TARDIS door yelled; "Come on!" and saved him?
@@TheNoiseySpectator Because, as the first Doctor told Barbara in The Aztecs, 'you can't rewrite history, not one line.' As soon as Adric was dead, that was it. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-sPON2CJVU84.html
@@TheNoiseySpectatorAlso if i remember correctly, the cyber leader shot the console and it was damaged when the doctor tried to go and save adric before his death, when he died while he was trying to save him it became a fixed point
I loved this moment 'cause it shows exactly how high the stakes can be in a lot of the Doctor's adventures, not just this one. Although, come to think of it, the Tardis might have only ended up in the alternative 1980 because there was a piece of (or person from) Sutehk's 1911 on board.
Forgive me if Im wrong, but I think this is the only time the Dr has ever shown anyone what the result would be had they not got involved/further involved.
Sarah was the first companion scared enough to ask the Doctor to just LEAVE - to get them as far away as possible from Sutehk Funnily enough I always thought that made her the one of the most human companions... she was scared but, when shown the consequences, buckles down and goes back to face something that utterly terrifies her
this is one of my favourite tom baker stories. liz sladen and michael sheard are excellent along with the rest of the cast back in the day when doctor who was great.
In the time war: this sort of stuff happened all the time...well in linear time anyway. The time lords and Daleks would re-write and de-write and re-re-write history creating alternate realities, paradoxes and making days unrecognisable. The version of the reality the doctor is in is one in which at the"furthest edge of the time war" the events of the day of the doctor ended the time war. The time-lock made it so that those events are unchangeable and unless you had a reality-fabric tearing ability like the moment, not travelable to. The master managed to escape the time war via going to events in a version of reality that was so far into the future post the events of the reality he left the time war in, that any changes made to the events in the reality he left the time war in, wouldn't catch up with him because they'd create an alternative reality which wouldn't effect the reality he was in unless it was done in the time he was in. The time war acted a lot like the events of "father's Day" and"turn left", it wasn't a fixed point, until the time lock cut off the events of day of the doctor from the rest of the universe, but whole alternate realities, ones in which the Daleks won the time war, some wherein soldiers never existed, some wherein whole civilizations were decimated and so on, kept on and on having their histories erased, creating parallel worlds. On the subject of parallel worlds, the multiverse was used by Daleks and timelords alike to acquire resources for winning battles. So yeah: the time war had stuff like this happen and de-happen throughout it all. Causality itself was wounded and healed in the time war.
I have heard so many people say he was such a gentle kind man - like so many my first memories of him was as Mr Bronson and i was so scared of him but seeing him in all his Doctor Who appearances changed all that... :) :) :)
Like this comment if you're here after the big Sutekh reveal in LORS, and now realizing that RTD dropped the BIGGEST callback during "The Devil's Chord".
Perhaps it's because I only had about 5-10 episodes with Jon Pertwee before Tom Baker took over. But Tom Baker has always been my Doctor and he always will be. I avoided all spoilers to the recent anniversary story and I squealed like a little girl when he popped up at the end. :)
That was what he felt to be true back THEN. Despite his appearance, One was a younger, less experienced Time Traveler than Four here. Attitudes can change over time and with experience.
Amen to that. I hope Tom Baker can see this or hear this. I’ve been a big fan of his since I was a little kid I started watching Doctor Who when he did it. When I was five years old. Even my mother remembers him
"How do I explain the mechanics of the temporal flux? I know, it's like Back to the Future." "What's that?" "Oh, right. Wait five years, your kids are gonna love it!"
It looks like from the preview of Empire of Death that this alternative time actually happens only 44 years later after 1980 in 2024. The Doctor only delayed the inevitable.
Hello New Who fans, welcome to the Classic Series. The sets might be wobbly at times but the scripts gave us the foundation for everything, so sit back and enjoy.
no doc bouncing around like a cricket on speed with hands waving. no age jokes. no sexuality just for the sake of it. no bombastic music clogging up every scene. top notch psuedo science fiction explanations for phenomena (loved that so much, "block transfer computation"). just great actors all around projecting what the top notch writers wrote rising 50 times above the sets and effects they could afford at the time. amazing stuff, classic who. all of it.
@@TheNoiseySpectator That take-off sound effect doesn’t necessarily seem to be to do with the ship’s operation. To me, it sounds like the conscious soul of the TARDIS is uncomfortable visiting such a physically and paradoxically damaged point in time.
@@TheSpectacularSpiderPunk I wasn't thinking about the _sounds_ it made. I more meant how it just worked correctly, without any side trips or landing in the wrong place or time. It just went right there and right back again without no trouble nor mistakes. 🤖
@@TheNoiseySpectator Late reply I know lol, but the TARDIS does always take the Doctor where he needs to go, and Sarah Jane needed to understand why Sutekh had to be stopped.
@@TheSpectacularSpiderPunk "Always"? Are you sure? Maybe over the Centuries the Doctor has gotten better about operating it, and fixed it up so much that it has come to be more dependable. But, what you said about it working smoothly being better for the plot was a point I accept. 👍
4 did state that the TARDIS interior technically didn’t exist in the normal flow of time, and is outside the universe. So its possible that they were protected from the changes made to history because the TARDIS was shielding them.
@@jrs4753 like the Enterprise in Star Trek First Contact being protected from changes in the timeline due to being engulfed be the wake of the Borg Cube traveling through time.
The World in 1980 has been reduced to a barren wasteland by "Thatcher The Destroyer!" 👎🤣 DOCTOR: "It takes a being of Thatcher's almost limitless power to destroy the future!"
This shows why the Moff/Smith era got fixed points WRONG. If Sutekh had won, what would have happened to the Doctor's death then? Would time STILL have fractured if the world jad ended in 1911, or in Dickens time with the Gelf, or in Shakespearean times? And yet in the Angels take Manhattan, Fixed Points can be created simply by reading the name on a tombstone. 🤦♂️
Amy and Rory would never have existed if Sutekh had conquered the world. The concept of fixed points being created if you see them play out is still a pretty neat concept. If you want to make it consistent with this scene it's fair to point out that Sarah never actually LEFT the TARDIS.
My headcanon is that fixed points didn’t exist as we know them in new who. But after the time war the timeline had been so scrambled that fixed points were created to be the skeleton of the current timeline.
@cnyte09 But that's not true, is it? The Doctor has saved the lives of plenty of people who died originally. Including the last 2 survivors of Bowie Base 1. Sure, the Commander killed herself, but the other 2 survived, when the Doctor knew there had been NO survivors.
Spoilers, if you care. I feel bad for Lawrence and his fate in the serial, I really loved his excitement at the TARDIS and exploring it. Poor man deserved better.
Nah - she's scared - he knows she is - rather than yell at her he shows her WHY he has to do what he does. And she was brave in the end - she agreed with him once she knew the stakes.
IMO it was a shame we no longer had Harry Sullivan in the TARDIS crew in Pyramids of Mars but I guess the production team felt that Harry was no longer of any use as a regular companion and that is why Harry stays on Earth with UNIT after Terror of the Zygons ends and we do not really see UNIT again properly after Terror of the Zygons
originally they expected to have a older man as the doctor so Harry Sullivan was going to be the one to do all the heavy action in place of the doctor of course we got amazing tom baker so he wasn't really needed for the role so harry was phased out
I have 2 comments, one a question, the other an observation. 1. Where was the Tardis Police Box doors with the Doc opened the Console Room doors and 2. It's Mr Bronson from Grange Hill!
They should do something like this again. I know they kind of explained it with the Moon when Clara said that obviously the Moon cannot be destroyed when saw the Moon in the future but they should do it again... In the past like here.
@@danas612 like love and monsters do NOT leave fan fiction in the hands of preteens!! The only way I can tolerate this story is for my head canon that Courtney wrote it as a piece of fantasy for her English class (and got a D for trying to get an antiabortion point across in English!!!)
*Question:* Having seen this alternate 1980, how can he then go back and prevent it? Isn't that crossing your own timeline and violating the first law of time? *Answer:* Rule 1, the Doctor lies. He knows the timeline can be changed, he just showed Sara Jane another devastated world to illustrate the point. It may even be in 1980, but the World isn't Earth.
Nah, I'd say it's Earth, 1980. The TARDIS' primary function is to take the Doctor "where he needed to go" by detecting alternate timelines just like this one. Caused perhaps by alien tech on Earth when none should have existed, or other time tech used somewhere in the universe it never was before, various other reasons. The change corrupts the timeline. The TARDIS picks up the thread of that change, it's consequences, like those seen in this clip. Travels back along it to it's source, like following a quantum string back to where it was first tied. Arriving, as best it can, just before the devastating event takes place... the Doctor, knowing something time-altering is about to happen, right here, right now, sets out to deduce what the Dickens is going on. In the opening title credits scenes of modern Who, the Time Vortex is represented as full of storms, or on fire, or like the inner workings of a clock spinning out of control, breaking apart... It's not supposed to look like that! Then we see the TARDIS, riding the damaged timeline - the cause of all this vortex disruption - back to where and when it started from. The Doctor arrives where he needs to go: the fuse, so to speak, having been lit, means time is now of the essence; and here we go again :)
No it's not. For one thing, the Doctor didn't cross his own timeline and wouldn't have done by going into a parallel world. Secondly, the Doctor did not then land back in 1911 England at a point before he and Sarah first landed at Scarman Priory and certainly did not meet his same albeit earlier self or Sarah's. Forget that Rule One drivel. Two possible futures were up for play at that point and the Sutekh-created future was then accessible to the TARDIS, and the world the Doctor takes Sarah to for that moment was indeed the 1980 Earth that exists if Sutekh breaks free to destroy everything.
Because the UNIT stories were set slightly in the future. It was in the 1983 story Mawdryn Undead when the Brigadier returned that they messed up the UNIT timeline.
Delboy359: I've always seen them as being set in the 70s, no matter what they say to contradict it. It just FEELS so incredibly 70s. Everything from the fashion to the cars is so incredibly 70s that I just instinctively ignore all references to it actually being the 80s.
The FACT is that ALL the UNIT stories were set slightly in the future. Terrance Dicks confirmed that in an interview. There are many indications of that such as the BBC3 logo in the Daemons and the female prime minister in the Terror of the Zygons. Lethbridge- Stewart's first appearance in the Web of Fear was set in 1975. Forty years after the Abominable Snowmen which was set in 1935. The UNIT stories were set a few years after that. Therefore the early Pertwee stories were set in the late 70s and by the time Tom Baker took over they were set in the 80s. I watched these at the time and remember it well. You can't ignore things just because they don't feel right to you. All this is FACT.
What if she had gotten off? What if the doctor had then gone back to 1911, stopped Sutekh and returned to pick her up? Would Sarah Jane have remembered the world being destroyed and then returning to normal all around her? Or would she believe that the world had always been alright when she'd gotten off? Or, would she have ceased to exist, all together?
This is an alternative timeline and it would be sealed off as soon as Doctor stops this villain, meaning that this version of Sarah Jane Smith would be erased from existance all together.
Sarah was a highly intelligent person but this scene made her out to be a bit thick. It should have been obvious to her that the reason her 1980 existed was because Sutekh was stopped in 1911 and the only person remotely capable of doing so in that time period was the Doctor.
Dunno maybe if she started travelling with him in 1975 she continued to travel with him for 5 years (some element in the TARDIS stopped her from physically aging perhaps) , so from her way of thinking she was from 1980?
It's nothing to do with that. I was always confused by the script myself but the reason is that in the Seventies, Doctor Who's contemporary stories were each set five years ahead of the year of broadcast in order to make some of the fictionalised science aspects of the storylines seem more convincing. The setting was intended to look familiar and contemporaneous, but the idea was that if they said the setting was a few years off, it would help to make it all more believable because how would we know what was possible within five years. This was just probably the one rare occasion where it was referred to outright. In the Nineties, the same concept was used in Lois & Clark (New Adventures of Superman) in that it was mooted to have been set 'one minute in the future'.
See if you were from a time before the '80's, it would not be natural to say 1980 like, for instance, answering the question, what's your date of birth, so seeing as the story is made before the '80's and not actually ever stated in any other stories before (The whole U.N.I.T. dating thing being a 'headache' just because of Peter Grimwade writing Mawdryn Undead for The Fifth Doc), even if you try to work out the timeline of events going back to Abominable Snowman and Web of Fear, The Invasion and Spearhead from Space, saying you're from 1980, does sort of sound like 'a line', rather than stating a fact, and doesn't roll off the tongue as easily as say, for example the way Ian said to the First Doc, 'If we go out that door, we won't be in a junkyard, in London, in the year 1963' and The Doc says he has a tone of ridicule, but it is because he and the story and his character are in 1963, it doesn't sound dissimilar to something he would say.
A point in time becomes fixed along a certain course once the surrounding events have all occurred and lock into a pattern. Up until that event, every point does have its alternative and in a sense still does even when that alternative is no longer accessible because its possibility has been spent. It can still be modeled by calculation perhaps but it can never exist in any real world.
@@LordZontar That's still contradictory to the established rules set here by the doctor. Also, the very existence of time-machines makes it so that its impossible for all of a "possibility has been spent" because the capacity to go back in time would automatically make the possibility exist. In fact "fixed" points in time are never even mentioned on screen until the 2005 revival. Look nice try, but honestly I think you are trying to excuse the ignorance of the writers.
@@FreakyTeeth Then that "ignorance of the writers" must go all the way back to 1964. "In fact "fixed" points in time are never even mentioned on screen until the 2005 revival." Really: "You cannot rewrite history, Miss Wright. Not one line!" -- "The Aztecs" That's the Doctor telling Barbara Wright that Aztec history is indeed fixed and cannot be changed. And events prove the Doctor correct. "No, Scaroth, no. You've pressed it once. You've thrown the dice once. You don't get a second throw." "But I will splinter in time again, and all my people will be killed!" "No! The explosion that you in there are about to trigger off will give birth to the human race. The moment your race kills itself, another is born. That has happened. It will happen." "What do I care of the human race? Scum! The tools of my salvation." "No, the product of your destruction. History cannot change. It cannot!" -- "City Of Death" The established pattern of Earth history guarantees the Doctor, Romana and Duggan will arrive at the moment Scaroth attempts to prevent the explosion of his ship which resulted in the eventual birth of life on the planet. Duggan's punch is part of that pattern. It has happened, it will happen, it will always have happened. "Also, the very existence of time-machines makes it so that its impossible for all of a "possibility has been spent" because the capacity to go back in time would automatically make the possibility exist." On the contrary, there's theory which states exactly the opposite, that even if you had time machines that could go back into the past you still could not alter the established pattern of history. At the point the TARDIS takes its little side-trip into the alternative 1980, a moment existed in which both outcomes were briefly possible -- but ONLY in that moment. Because the TARDIS, the Doctor and Sarah all came in along the worldline in which Sutekh was destroyed in 1911, they were always going to make the decision to go back and prevent Sutekh from escaping to destroy Earth in 1911. The entire future which had been experienced by them prevents any other decision from being made. Sutekh was destroyed in 1911, Earth and humanity had a future. The possibility of any other outcome had already been spent. It has happened, it will happen, it will always have happened. This point was made in Doctor Who repeatedly throughout the show's history. The Doctor does not change history but is part of its pattern.
@@LordZontar You obviously haven't been paying attention. As the 11th doctor said in "Day of the doctor": "We change history all the time." You've also by the way missed the point with all those examples in Classic Who: The only reason as to why the doctor said "You can't change history not one line of it." on ALL of those occasions: was because he didn't want history to change, because as has been made very clear to the audience since the very first scene the doctor appears in in "An unearthly child": THE DOCTOR LIES! You appear to be acting under some delusion that the "established" events cannot be changed, which is the very argument that Sarah-Jane is making here: but as we see in this very scene yes it is possible. All that would be required would be for someone else to travel in time to the point of Sutekh's attempt to go to Earth, and make sure that an alternate version of the doctor and Sarah, failed to stop Sutekh. Look just accept that yes Nu-Who contradicts Classic Who. Inner-child me loves Nu-Who because it's what I grew up with, but mature me has much more respect for Classic Who because the writers for Classic Who were far more original, yet meticulous, in their thinking. Nu-Who is a, visually and thematically fantastic yes, but still very flawed and lacking in originality attempt to exploit fan-love of what has already been done. Continuity matters because if everything is "Just because I say so." in Dr Who then it leads to no-end of confusion.
@@FreakyTeeth It is you who is acting under a delusion. And defending NuWho's own sloppy writing against what the actual series had to say on the subject. "You've also by the way missed the point with all those examples in Classic Who: The only reason as to why the doctor said "You can't change history not one line of it." on ALL of those occasions: was because he didn't want history to change, because as has been made very clear to the audience since the very first scene the doctor appears in in "An unearthly child": THE DOCTOR LIES! " Oh, take that "Rule One" crap and shove it up back your ass. The Doctor's statement to Barbara had nothing to do with what he wanted but was a fact. Barbara ignores what the Doctor tells her and tries to cancel the Aztec practise of human sacrifice while disguised as the goddess Yetaxa. Tlotoxl, suspecting she was a fake decides to poison her to prove it. Ian managed to surreptitiously warn her of the attempt, but her every effort to convince the Aztecs to abandon a central rite of their religion failed. The TARDIS crew barely managed to escape Tenochtitlan with their lives. History continued on its FIXED course. It is you who has missed what was made clear to the audience from the show's earliest years. "All that would be required would be for someone else to travel in time to the point of Sutekh's attempt to go to Earth, and make sure that an alternate version of the doctor and Sarah, failed to stop Sutekh." Except that never happens in the series, and if you ever read classic time travel fiction such as The Man Who Folded Himself, the stories all work out in the end to where any changes that are seemingly made eventually null out and the original timeline is the one that flows through, not any of the altered ones. "You appear to be acting under some delusion that the "established" events cannot be changed, which is the very argument that Sarah-Jane is making here: but as we see in this very scene yes it is possible." One: Sarah does NOT make that argument. Two: we see in point of fact that it is not possible in the end. The alternative 1980 only exists while the event flow is still in flux. Only one real choice is available to the travelers -- STOP SUTEKH. "We've got to go back." It is you who is being delusional here, especially trying to put in Sarah's mouth an argument she never made, in the very scene we're discussing. "Inner-child me loves Nu-Who because it's what I grew up with, but mature me has much more respect for Classic Who because the writers for Classic Who were far more original, yet meticulous, in their thinking. Nu-Who is a, visually and thematically fantastic yes, but still very flawed and lacking in originality attempt to exploit fan-love of what has already been done." Then it is rather odd that you are attempting to defend NuWho's cavalier disregard for the rules for time travel established in Classic Who on the grounds of continuity, when its material flagrantly violates that continuity. "Continuity matters because if everything is "Just because I say so." in Dr Who then it leads to no-end of confusion." Which is precisely what the new series has done and which you are bizarrely attempting to justify.
IceQueen Athena: Nope. That's something Moffat made up on the spot. The idea that a random individual reading a passage in a book immediately creates a fixed point in time is simply ridiculous. The universe shouldn't care what a random lump of atoms (the main cast) 'reads' in another lump of atoms (a book). I like to think the science of fixed points in time is slightly more complicated than that. It contradicts the entire history of the show and Moffat even ignores it, himself, in later stories. It's a ridiculous idea.
Even if fixed point wasn't a later invention, it still works. 1:56 "(So a man can change the course of history?) To a small extent. It takes a being of Sutekh's almost limitless power to destroy the future."
VIEWING time doesn't make it fixed - most (if not all) Time Lords are mentally and telepathically connected to the various possibilities that COULD unfold from the tugging and shoving of one certain time line. INTERACTING with a certain timelines is what causes time to become fixed. You become part of the events. Like how Amy SEEING Rory's name on the tombstone meant Rory now HAD to 'die' on that date. Also why the Doctor refused to save Danny - because Clara had already experienced his death. Becoming part of the vents surrounding his death - meaning the event of Danny's death was now fixed. Hence the Time Lord first rule - sworn never to interact - only to watch. Also, fixed time wasn't invented by Moffat, it was first posited by Russel T. Davies and became a staple of the new series to try and make sense of a show that's been running for 50+ years.
@@xadam2dudex So, I assume your answer is that Jo Grant was also high up on your list of irritating, whiney, shrill traveling companions. And, I won't even bother to bring up Teegan. 🙄
