Doctor Who In An Eldritch Adventure With Hideous Creatures

This, the final Second Doctor short story in an Annual, begins on something of an odd note with the Time Lord discoursing on the subject of infinite universes. This brief esoteric diversion provides the illusion that we're in for something different and then the author steers us back to the silly world of the Doctor Who Annual by having the Time Lord refer to Jamie and Zoe as "my children". The TARDIS then lands on a planet with dual suns. Wanting to investigate, the Doctor opens the "great door" of his ship. Can "eldritch glow" be far behind here?

While the air outside is breathable, gravity is a bit wonky, apparently, as they all float in the air. Until they're caught in a net, that is, and pass out. When the Doctor awakens, he hears a voice calling him a monster because he breathes oxygen. This trope again? And the Doctor's captors threaten to dissect him. I guess it's the same author as the Marie Celeste and chimp man stories and he or she was a good recycler.

The Doctor learns that he and his friends have been captured by dimension explorers from the 8091st Universe. They use "doors", that is, points where the various universes touch and allow travel from one to another. The Doctor basically gets tired of their anti-oxygen breather BS and clocks one right on the glass dome head which shatters. Running on adrenaline, the berserker Time Lord also rips away part of the creature's suit. What the Doctor sees almost makes him sick.

"That face and that body! There were no words to describe it."

I've got one: "eldritch". I cannot believe the author didn't use "eldritch"! 

Although he or she neglected "eldritch", the author did find words to describe it: "a writhing vortex of something slimy and sticky". And it burned up in the oxygenated air.

The creature's pals were so shocked by the bellicose oxygen breather that they just stood there, mouths no doubt agog in astonishment behind their glass helmets which gave our favorite time travelers time to escape and flee to the TARDIS.

Not only are there creatures that discriminate against those who breathe oxygen as in another tale, but this story is yet another in this annual that features the Doctor killing someone to save Jamie and Zoe and escape.

As far as this tale goes, I like its mood. It begins with some esoteric banter about multiverses before we meet some stern, sadistic figures. I don't know why, but I simply liked the combination. Also, I give it points for the Lovecraftian descriptions of the creatures behind the mirrored helmets.

Glad to be done with Second Doctor Annual stories. It's funny to me how they're directed at pre-teens yet the author uses "eldritch". Surely it fell out of anything resembling common usage during the Edwardian period, if it indeed ever was remotely common. I didn't care for all the quarreling amongst our heroes. Perhaps I could have tolerated it more if those scenes were more often balanced by those in which they show some affection for one another or, at least, had a rapport beyond "Let's go this way."

Let us hope the Pertwee era Annuals show improvement.

The Pied Piper in reverse

The Tardis lands on a jungle world that Jamie has no desire to investigate. However, the Doctor's other young passenger is game and she tells "the Professor" that she's ready to go out exploring long before Ace was even a blip of a thought. Just then a chimpanzee-like creature wearing a tool belt appears on the scanner. Much to the Scotman's surprise, it also has on its chimpanzee something that looks like a blunderbuss. Jamie is so astonished that he gives another "Sizzling satellites!" which we last had in "Man Friday". Uff da.

Zoe and the Doctor slap on some insect repellent cream, don contra-gravity suits, and head outside. At one point they're flying above the chimp fellow who promptly zaps them with his blunderbuss and deactivates their suits. With no TARDIS translation, the Doctor guesses the native tongue of the creature and says, essentially, that they come in peace. Well, this guy, Valgar, doesn't believe a word of it and accuses our time travelers of being robot spies sent by the Jaibohs. Valgar is going to bring them back to HQ to have them dissected.

In the lab, Valgar puts on a lab coat and thrusts the Doctor and Zoe in front of a machine that bathes them "in an eldritch blue glow." Hmm. Now where have I read that before? Valgar discovers that the Professor and his passenger were telling the truth. They are not robots.

Fortunately, the Doctor was not relieved of his recorder as it is chimp creature repellent and it allows the Doctor and Zoe to escape. Out in the jungle they run into Jamie who has used a string to mark his trail, a trick he learned by reading an old Greek legend in school. What?! Did he go to Highland High? Inverness Public School? Also, he has moved the ship closer to the action with a short hop. What?! The Doctor can't even do that yet Jamie can?!

As they are nearly home free, Valgar appears riding some small, zeppelin-like craft. Some mid-period Schoenberg on the recorder, however, dispatches with the chimp on the blimp and our heroes are able to get back to the safety of the TARDIS.

While I can appreciate the Piped Piper in reverse thing here as well as a lack of bad guys with slanted eyes, this, the penultimate Annual tale for Troughton, is just blah.

I am the Robot King and I can kill anything

I was absolutely shocked to find that the illustrator of this comic drew Zoe and Jamie as the Zoe and Jamie we know and love from TV. I was so surprised that I did a double take.

The TARDIS lands in Hope City in the far future and our heroes find that it's more like Woebegone City. The metropolis is in ruins. Zoe and Jamie go wandering and are captured by a robot - the Robot King - who has a distinct dislike of humans. The Doctor ostensibly comes to their aid only to be hoisted into the air by the humanophobic robot. Presumably the Time Lord would be thrown to the ground and be the recipient of an Atomic Leg Drop. However, the Doctor fortuitously sees the robot's power switch on its back and turns the maniac off before it wreaked its vengeance upon him and his friends.

Sadly, although the look is right, Zoe is just a damsel in distress here instead of a capable computer whiz. Well, this comic was short and only took a couple minutes to read.

Let Ekk's people go

I went into this tale, "Slave of Shran", hoping that these short stories get better in the Pertwee era Annuals. With my luck, the illustrators won't bother with looking at Liz Shaw and write the Third Doctor like Troughton.

But this one began well with the story beginning in media res with the Doctor a slave who mindlessly concedes he is ready to obey - obey a rogue supercomputer named Shran. It had the Doctor's memory wiped and used his not insignificant cranial power to fix its spaceship. The Time Lord's next task is to build a (very late-60s) atomic bomb to destroy the planet after Shran and Co. make their escape.

Our Gallifreyan Oppenheimer is led to a dungeon where he is to do his work. Also there are a race of beings known as the Shelgars who look like cockroaches and they too have been enslaved by Shran. One of them, Ekk, shoots a guard and frees the Doctor who recovers his memory. The TARDIS had landed in a giant bird nest and he went out to investigate while Jamie and Zoe caught some zzzz's. Mama bird returned forcing the aspiring ornithologist to flee and get captured.

The "eldritch glow" of the laser gun is what restored the Doctor's memory so he hastily modifies the gun so that it can safely be used on the other Shelgars.

Curiously enough, Ekk has an airship and for reasons unknown, it's parked nearby. He and the Doctor escape and fight off some pterodactyl-like creatures before landing near the TARDIS. But a warrior of Shran was waiting for them. Luckily Jamie had awoken by this time and was outside to see that the Doctor and his new friend were in a jam. One big rock on the warrior's head later, the danger is gone. The Doctor rejoins his companions while Ekk returns to Shran's city where he plans to lead an uprising against the dastardly computer which is a thoroughly apposite moral for our times, if you ask me.

I give this story a lot of credit for starting the action in the middle of things and for portraying cockroaches as good, brave creatures instead of a joke about being the only things to survive an atomic blast. Other than these things, I've gotta say this is just more of the same Annual kind of stuff.  I suppose I should add that it was a welcome relief that there was no bickering amongst the TARDIS crew here.

His Robot Friday

The Tardis lands in a tropical paradise with a blue lagoon so I immediately started having warm memories of Brooke Shields in her finest role ever. So far, so good.

This paradise is on an island on the Planet Delffo in Galaxy G which is one of the single dullest yet corniest location names in all of Doctor Who. It's almost like the author used those names as placeholders meaning to come up with something more interesting later but never bothered.

For reasons hopefully lost in the mists of time, Jamie's catchphrase here is the appalling alliteration "Sizzling satellites!"

The Doctor has been there before and wants to hook up with his old pals, the Creels. Our heroes retreat to the TARDIS library which holds an extensive microfilm collection that helpfully catalogues all of the Doctor's adventures in time and space. Really? Was microfilm actually considered high tech in 1969? Does the TARDIS library have a card catalogue? Well, after perusing the microfilm, they discover that they've landed on ominously named Island of the Devils. Jamie bemoans the fact that it doesn't sound like quite the place for him to get some R&R which really pisses off the Doctor.

"Sometimes I wonder why I ever chose you as a companion for my journeys."

Harsh! Wasn't it just a couple stories ago that Zoe was all pissy and told him to shut up? What's with all of this intra-TARDIS conflict?

Jamie storms out of the ship in a huff.

Eventually Zoe and the Doctor go out in search of him despite the Time Lord thinking, "...why should I bother, I really don't know." This is real First Doctor testiness!

They stumble upon a single giant footprint in the sand and a message scrawled next to it by Jamie, presumably: "GONE WITH MAN FRIDAY TO MEET DEVILS IN MOUNTAIN". The Doctor and Zoe promptly go in search of their missing friend.

After a while, they happen upon a Creel. Though not normally found on the Island of the Devils, this one, Goruf, is doing some scientific research and tells the Doctor that one of the Devil's giant one-legged robots, a Blikk, has taken Jamie. Goruf gives them directions to find their wayward Scotsman which turns out to be a nano Odyssey involving soporific flowers and a tunnel with an unknown guard.

They eventually find the subterranean lair of the Devils where Jamie is hanging out. As it turns out the Devils, a.k.a. - the Lava People, are really nice folks who just want to live in peace with the Creel.

I liked that the Devils turned out to be good, peaceful folk. And I agree that Zoe has a pulchritudinous brow. But the Doctor getting really irritated with Jamie for no good reason and then going off on him like that was just ridiculous. And just like the previous tale, the ostensible villains here have "slanting eyes". Same author? This must be a racist trope.

Grip of ice, you're willing to sacrifice our thought cubes

Having survived the nightmare planet of Korad, the TARDIS lands on a Hoth-like planet of snow and ice. Zoe and Jamie don some funkadelic silvery planetary uniforms(?) and head outside to investigate while the Doctor attempts to fix the ship. As the beloved companions approach a crevasse in the ice, a breeze springs up which Zoe deems as being very odd: "Doesn't it strike you as unnatural..a breeze in these conditions?"

Living in Wisconsin, I must admit a breeze when it's all ice and snow outside is not only not unnatural, but par for the course. Not having the wind chill you to your bone is what I'd find unnerving.

This breeze menacingly blows our companions perilously towards the crevasse.

When the Doctor is finished repairing the ship, he goes out in search of Zoe and Jamie. He finds one of Zoe's buttons in the snow near the crevasse which now has a handy-dandy snow bridge spanning it. The Doctor walks across only to have the bridge go poof! and return to a dusting of snow. He continues on and finds a city. 

He enters a building and discovers a bunch of cubes - thought cubes, that is. These square thingies are all the remains of a race called the Morrains. You see, when their sun exploded, things got chilly so their head boffin, Cosmos, transformed them into thought cubes but he remained in humanoid form to watch over his fellow Morrains. Well, as it turns out, Cosmos wasn't such an altruistic chap after all. He was building a spaceship to leave the icy planet and was attempting to use the cubes' collective thought power to propel it to the nearest beach planet.

So, how many pounds of thrust per cube?

The Doctor is told that Zoe and Jamie's thought power were exactly what's needed to get Cosmos' ship up and away. Our hero, a.k.a - "the scientist", hops into a nearby scout car and heads to local version of Barad-dûr where Cosmos readies his ship. The Doctor offers his mega brain power in exchange for Zoe and Jamie and the rogue scientists agrees.

Zoe and Jamie take the scout ship to safety and await the arrival of the Doctor so they can head for the TARDIS. They hear an explosion from the tower but their friend is safe. He reversed the polarity of the neutron flow his thought-power which caused Cosmos' equipment to overload or some such thing and blow up real good. The villain was killed and the Doctor emerged unscathed.

And they all lived happily ever after.

While I thought that the thought cubes were a neat idea and I found it cool that Cosmos had 3 arms rendering him bilaterally asymmetrical, this was just another hokey Annual tale for 10 year-olds.

The TARDIS doors are described as "great doors" but I never thought of them as being these huge things. Also, Cosmos has "slant eyes". Is this an appeal to the notion that East Asians are crafty and evil? Or just a more generic description that has taken on racist overtones when none were meant?

It's like The Chase Never Happened

As expected, the Second Doctor is written like the First, e.g. - "That ship, my children..." The Tardis lands on a big metal ball which is in the middle of snagging the Marie Celeste from the ocean with a tractor beam. Stepping out to give things a look-see, Jamie senses danger and suggests a retreat back to the ship which prompts Zoe to reprimand him, "Oh, shut up. This is only a spaceship. They're quite common where I come from."

Odds are the writer had no idea where Zoe came from. What horrible dialogue. I don't think Zoe was ever this cantankerous on TV. Then again, I do have one more TV story to go.

Both the TARDIS and Marie Celeste crews are brought inside the globe which is operated by a couple of Arcturans named Eretz and Lantis who, we are told, look "like magnificent specimens of early Greek manhood." Not sure quite what that means...Anyway, they do not breath oxygen but rather ammonia and methane. The globe is like their version of the H.M.S Beagle as they're out roaming the galaxy to investigate other species, though luckily they are eschewing the whole anal probing thing.

The two ersatz Darwins are in an enclosed observation area but Jamie and the Doctor shatter the windows with some marlin spikes which I learned are used to make knots, something sailors do a lot of. This breach means that our heroes' captors have a little trouble breathing. Their respiratory problems lead to the ship going out of control and falling into the sea. But it also presents an opportunity for escape.

The skipper of the Marie Celeste asks the Doctor how to escape the metal ball and he selfishly replies, "I'm not concerned about getting out of the iron ball. All I'm concerned about is getting inside this ship of mine here." 

Unfortunately, the Doctor can't find the TARDIS key and he goes from being pissy to sounding like a pitiful teenager as he moans, "How stupid I am, my friends. How you must despise me."

I rolled my eyes here, I can tell you.

The dreaded Kraken attacks the ship and the Doctor recalls that he had left the key in the TARDIS door lock. He, Jamie, and Zoe scramble to their ship but the crew of the Marie Celeste now regard them as warlocks or madmen and refuse to board the TARDIS. And so our heroes merely look on as the sailors die in agony as ammonia and/or methane overtakes them.

After watching the sailors suffocate to death, the Doctor becomes rather cheerful and says he is happy to have solved the mystery of the Marie Celeste.

Uff da! This one was just bad. Making Troughton into Hartnell was especially annoying here for me but I don't know why. Maybe it's because the Hartnell imitation was so lame.

Return of the Giant Galea

Long ago in the Galea Galaxy, Dr. Vane found the regal Galea Tentipocus. He captured some seeds and brought them home to his Experimental Botanical Gardens on Venus.

Being friends with Dr. Vane, the Doctor gets wind of the discovery and he decides to take Jamie and Zoe to Venus to check out the botanical novelty. Zoe is thrilled at the prospect while Jamie finds the idea of seeing some plant to be boring. The TARDIS lands on Venus and the Doctor inexplicably has Zoe stay at the ship to "hold the fort".

Much to their surprise, Vane tells the Doctor and Jamie that his prized plant has gone missing as has his assistant, Regan, whom he sent out to find the crooks who absconded with the plant. Regan looks like some old duffer who wanders the moors and then has a drink at a country pub - like a local from Terror of the Zygons.

It turns out that the plant has grown considerably and very quickly with its branches being tentacle-like. The Doctor and Jamie are quickly ensnared by the vegetal villains but thankfully the Doctor has his cigarette lighter and is relieved to discover that Galea Tentipocus really doesn't like fire.

Short, hokey, and meant for kids. Leaving Zoe behind is silly and unforgivable. She wanted to see the plant. She's not tired like Nyssa in Kinda. Ridiculous.

It Sings the Body's Electrolytes

If I recall correctly, there was one First Doctor story from an Annual that was good. Troughton is going to have at least 2. First was the bizarre "The Celestial Toy-Shop" that evoked the uncanny in a way completely unexpected in a story meant for 10 year-olds and now we get this one, "The Singing Crystals".

As the story opens, the TARDIS crew are locked in and held tight by stalactites and stalagmites made of various minerals. You can bash and break them but they grow back at an astonishing speed unlike their brethren that channel healing energies for New Agers and keep our digital watches running on time. They've even somehow penetrated the TARDIS. The Doctor discovers that loud noises such as screaming hold the crystals at bay. This enables him and his companions to get back into the ship and banish the mineral invaders. Unfortunately, the crystals are crafty and they manage to abscond with Zoe when the Doctor and Jamie aren't looking.

The Doctor makes his way to what is described as a red room, I believe, which I really hope doesn't have a floor done in a chevron pattern. (She's my cousin...but doesn't she look almost exactly like Zoe Heriot?) There he retrieves a reel-to-reel player that allows Jamie to head back outside to attempt to rescue Zoe.

As the Doctor waits in the TARDIS, the crystals carry it away. Meanwhile, Jamie hears the cries for help of his friend and he finds her on the other side of a red wall of flame that luckily (and ominously) doesn't burn. Zoe is being accosted by a group of these featureless humanoid creatures that appear to be made out of dough. The reel-to-reel is useless against them so he he instead lashes out with the wrench that he also brought for just such an occasion and manages to free Zoe.

The Doctor realizes that the ship has been moved to a cave. He walks out and finds himself confronting the Big Cheese - the Grand Crystal. It sings to him and the Doctor recognizes mathematical equations in the notes followed by symbols for various elements such as phosphorous and iron. He has a eureka moment and comprehends that the crystalline intelligence intends to extract minerals from their bodies so that it can grow. He yells for Jamie who comes in hacking away at the crystals with his wrench like Dr. Livingstone in Zambia slashing at the jungle and they all retreat to the TARDIS and make an escape.

Again, Jamie and Zoe look nothing like the actors who portrayed them on TV and the Doctor is written as William Hartnell, but these things can be overlooked as this is a rather weird and ominous tale. I liked how the story begins in media res with our heroes trapped and the shelter of the TARDIS only a dream. That the baddie here is an intelligent crystal is rather neat. The scene where Zoe is being dragged away by villainous Pillsbury Doughboys was simply bizarre with its curtain of mystical flame. Where the hell did that come from? And the scene where the Doctor hears the Grand Crystal singing out the constituent minerals of the human body was rather surreal.

There's little light-hearted Doctor Who fun here and instead we get a lot of desperation. And strangeness. It gets high marks for me for sheer oddity alone.

Dragon Riders of Earth

Last entry I lamented, "Next up are more of those Doctor Who Annual short stories. Ugh." Here we go...

So now I am back at the Doctor Who Annuals. I was hoping that the people behind its publication finally had the writers watch the show as it was at the time but, alas, my hopes were dashed. The Zoe and Jamie of the illustrations bear no resemblance to Wendy Padbury nor Frazer Hines and, although the Doctor looks like Patrick Troughton, he still talks like William Hartnell. E.g. - "We've done it at last, children." And, after realizing that the TARDIS has landed on Earth, he denies being an alien with "We've come home!"

Uff da.

The TARDIS lands on Earth long, long ago. It's so hot and humid that Zoe compares the weather to a Turkish Bath because, well, I guess they had one on the Wheel. It may be the time of the dinosaurs, but there are apemen who have motorized watercraft that look like Higgins boats and energy weapons.  With such out of place, yet handy, tech, they capture our heroes who are brought back to their village. An attack by an enemy tribe sees each side riding airborne dinosaurs that they call dragons shooting at one another and this provides an opportunity for our heroes to make and escape and flee back to the TARDIS.

That there were technologically advanced apemen way back before the apemen that are our ancestors is a fun conceit but still hokey. Also, Zoe asks if there were humans at this point in history when, I would think, she would know the answer. Certainly not a strong enough tale for me to forgive or at least ignore that the Doctor is written like Hartnell. Just another ephemeral close call.

All this is, of course, nonsense

This is a moderately interesting one. It starts in media res with the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria stuck in cubicles (I feel their pain) hooked up to the mind probe along with countless other creatures from throughout the universe. Yes, the mind probe! Distinct Riverworld vibes here. The Doctor manages to make his mind go blank which catches the attention of their captors who free our heroes from the probe and their cubes.

It turns out these beings are pure energy. But, having reached the pinnacle of evolution, they've decided to return to corporeal form. Victoria develops great empathy for these aliens which they pick up on. Her empathy and conviction that love is of primary importance convinces the aliens to let everyone go and live happily ever after.

Moderately interesting, Victoria's emotions win the day which means a companion is the prime mover, if you will. (I was reminded of Rose in "Dalek" here.) As these annual stories go, one of the best, despite the Doctor calling his companions "children".

The Gallifreyan Candidate

Just like Nyssa in "Kinda", Jamie and Victoria sleep through this one.

The Doctor goes out exploring and ends up falling down a pit. But his fall is slowed so he simply lands only to be surrounded by the folks who can defeat gravity: some dog-like captors and one Captain J'nk.

J'nk has the Doctor watch this Ipcress File-like psychedelic montage which brainwashes him into making an attempt to kill the leader of these folk, Mufl. But The Doctor resists and turns the tables on J'nk with the sweet music from his recorder.

An impassioned demonstration of the power of music - ha! Just another trite tale for the youngins with no real grounding in the TV series.

I am really glad to be done with the annual stories for this season.

Subatomic Redux

Shrinking down to the subatomic level is a minor motif in this issue as our TARDIS crew become extremely tiny just as in "The Great Atomic Power". Here they meet some other extremely diminutive humans who are trying to build a ginormous telescope to figure out where they are exactly.

Essentially nothing happens in this story and our heroes go from hanging out in the lush, verdant hills inside the nucleus of a uranium(!) atom to being full-sized again in the space of one paragraph break.

I am really looking forward to the stories in these Doctor Who Annuals being written by someone who has actually watched the program instead of people who are working solely from a short set of guidelines that fill half a page. At most.

A Warmer Sporran

Victoria is alone in the TARDIS waiting on the Doctor and Jamie to return. When they finally do, Victoria is suspicious as they're not acting normally. Her suspicions are right - these are robots!

I guess Jamie went out to explore this freezing, snowbound planet called Pendant in a kilt because the fact that the robot was wearing one didn't tip her off. Well, I hope he had a warm sporran.

Victoria meets up with the local rebels, the Morags, and comes up with a plan which involves using the TARDIS as a Trojan Horse to gain entrance into the bad guys' lair. Luckily she and the Morags remember to stay inside of it.

The Doctor and Jamie are rescued.

Fin.

Brain Power

This is, if I recall correctly, the first story in an annual to have a prelude. The Doctor is clad in a "close-fitting silver uniform" which was colored pink in the illustration and under the control of another being.

Thankfully Victoria and Jamie show up to release him from the influence of the slave-beams from the Controller's slave ray gun.

The Doctor has a "mental tussle" with a brain in a vat that recalls a similar tussle he has later in life in "Brain of Morbius".

For a short, trite story intended for young kids, it uses "eldritch" and "paramecia". Maybe kids were just better educated in the late 60s.

The Great Atomic Power

So the Doctor shrinks the TARDIS and lands it on an atomic nucleus. He, Jamie, and Victoria step outside to find a breathable atmosphere and mountains and plants.

Hmm.

And there are living beings inside the teardrop sacs hanging from the trees and they are the inhabitants of the Uranium Universe. This revelation, of course, leads to some comments about atomic power and its uses on Earth which means the whole world they've just landed in must explode.

?????

It seems that a comic writer was particularly unamused by the Cold War one day.

War, what is it good for?

The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Victoria, and Jamie to a temple/tomb thingy adorned with ancient Egyptian symbols. This gave me a vague LOST vibe. Countless people are slumbering in these glass boxes. The Doctor figures it'd be a good idea to wake them up.

It turns out the sleepers are the remnants of humanity who had decided to enter suspended animation as punishment for waging war in direct violation of the strictures laid down by their Life God.

The Doctor is brought to tears again - this time by Mankind's bellicose nature which he has helped unleash by awakening these people. The story ends on an unhappy note and is a rare story in the Doctor Who canon - a real bummer.

Beyond the Valley of the Dragons

After the bizarre adventure in the dollhouse, this one was a let down. 

The TARDIS lands on the back of a dinosaur. Once this gets righted, our heroic trio explore the planet they've landed on and eventually find themselves at the Coliseum of a race called the Manti. But instead of lions and Christians, soldiers take on dragons.

The Manti think the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria are Imiga pirates and are to be eaten by a dragon. Luckily the Doctor's recorder provides the music to calm the savage breast.

For some reason, Tardis is not always given the company of a definite article so it's sometimes "Tardis does this" instead of "The Tardis does this". Very odd. At least the illustrated Scotsman looks like Jamie.

The Matryoshka Dollhouse

This one I did not expect.

The Tardis lands in the titular toy-shop and the crew find themselves amongst giant teddy bears, model trains with cars that are large enough for the Doctor to sit in, and oversized Erector Sets. Despite hailing from the mid-18th century, Jamie is well-versed in 20th century Christmas rituals as he wonders aloud if they are in the Toy Department of Harridges at Christmas, the property room of a theatre at pantomime time, or perhaps in Santa Claus' workshop at the North Pole.

While the story begins in a light-hearted manner, it soon takes a turn for the weird. Something like Doctor Who crossed with House of Leaves.

They stumble upon a rather large dollhouse - life-sized - and wander inside. The Doctor goes upstairs and finds a room with a dollhouse that is a scale model of the same one he's in. Somehow he enters that one and becomes trapped in a Matryoshka dollhouse nightmare. He isn't sure how he manages to do it, but he manages to enter a series of dollhouses nested inside other dollhouses.

At one point, he comes across a dollhouse that emanates incredibly bright light a la Kiss Me Deadly. Upon entering another one, he hears strange noises.

He gets so lost, so racked with fear, that he begins to sob.

Now aside from this very un-Doctorlike sobbing, this is a wonderfully strange little tale. One of the most uncanny Doctor Who stories I've ever come across.

Jamie McCrimmon in Blow-Up!

The TARDIS lands on planet next to a marching column of aliens whose eyes "had a distinctly Asiatic slant". 

Jamie now reckons himself a photographer and follows these creatures into a cloud which just happens to be a portal to another place, another time and holds images of a mysterious city a la "The City on the Edge of Forever", I suppose.

Jamie wants to photograph this weird, unearthly realm and follows the aliens into the cloud. He ends up in a strange place only to be rescued by the Doctor at the last minute.

The Doctor puts his smoking pipe into his pocket before leaving the TARDIS. How odd. Was he ever seen smoking a pipe after "The Unearthly Child"?