Enter Sarah Jane Smith, and the kind of Sontaran that made the race firm favourites in Doctor Who...

The first thing that hits you in The Time Warrior is the brand spanking new titles. The familiar time tunnel effect and the diamond logo make their debuts here, and it’s a joy to behold. The great thing is that hardly any other contemporary TV programmes could boast such an innovative set of titles. In 1973, most shows started with just a title card superimposed over the action (Steptoe And Son or Are You Being Served, for example) or a collection of montage clips (Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game or The Goodies). About the closest you could get to the greatness of the Doctor Who titles is Monty Python’s Flying Circus or The Tomorrow People (although in this case the titles were the only good thing, apart from Dudley Simpson’s weird music).

But the new third Doctor sequence is sheer brilliance – the slitscan tunnel gives way to a close-up of Pertwee, which then zooms away from the camera down a psychedelic tunnel and then back again as a silhouetted Doctor tunnel to give way to the familiar logo hurtling down a trippy vortex. All brilliant, and what’s more it was apparently achieved with little time and money, so someone give Bernard Lodge a medal, pronto.

The Time Warrior is, appropriately, a mini-reboot for Jon Pertwee’s last season. A lot has happened in the months between The Green Death and this story. Roger Delgado sadly died in a road accident. Katy Manning left the show, bringing an end to the stability of the UNIT family. And a new companion was now waiting in the wings. Not only that, but UNIT were being phased out more and more. Only the Brig makes a cameo appearance in the first part (they’re called parts now rather than episodes, BTW), and even then, that’s just a fleeting glimpse. So with a new companion, a new set of titles and of course, a new monster, who better to tie this all together than Robert Holmes?

"If you’re after spot-on historical accuracy though, you won’t find it here. The Time Warrior is very much a medieval storybook, all castles, robber barons and serving wenches."

Holmes had been given a long list of meet ‘n’ greets with Terror Of The Autons, and so he was given another list with The Time Warrior. Apart from introducing Sarah Jane Smith and the Sontarans (and the Rutans in dialogue only), Holmes also had to set the story in medieval times, a task he faced with particular dread, as he allegedly hated historicals. We haven’t had a historical story since The Highlanders, but The Time Warrior is the first in a run of what would be known as Pseudo-Historicals. Which in non-jargon speak means putting an alien force in a historical setting. The ploy would work to great effect with stories like Pyramids Of Mars, The Talons Of Weng-Chiang and Horror Of Fang Rock, but the seeds are being sown here. If you’re after spot-on historical accuracy though, you won’t find it here. The Time Warrior is very much a medieval storybook, all castles, robber barons and serving wenches. David Starkey would presumably deliver an overlong rant about how The Time Warrior is about as accurate as a £12 note, but he’s not exactly Mr Smiles, though.

So let’s look at the two new elements which crop up in this story. The first is the lone Sontaran, who definitely has the Linx effect. Funnily enough, the girls aren’t queuing up around the block to kiss his spud-u-don’t-like visage, but then Linx is too busy going on about war to indulge in such frivolities. The Sontarans are an interesting lot – they’re more concerned with fighting and war than the ultimate goal of conquering the universe. Linx spends his time fashioning the best weapons and stratagems to use in battle, not to mention capturing a gaggle of scientists to repair his crashed ship. Appropriately, he helps Irongron with ahead-of-their-time weapons in a bid to oust Edward Of Wessex from power, including rifles and a clunky robot knight, which is the sort of thing you might see on Sesame Street.

But there’s very much the “Little Man” syndrome about both Linx and the Sontarans. No other race spends as much time prattling on about their glorious cause in war and their own brilliance as the Sontarans. This was highlighted in the recent Sontaran Stratagem when a couple of modern-day UNIT grunts took the piss out of Staal for his pompous prattle about honour and battle. Linx is similarly pompous, bragging to The Doctor about their supremacy over the Rutans – but it’s a refreshing tack to take to have a race so dedicated to the cause rather than looking at the end game of total domination.

"Kevin Lindsay provides a convincingly creepy turn as the warrior, his hissing, sibilant, vaguely Aussie tones working to his advantage"

What makes the Sontaran work is two things. One is the striking mask, superbly designed, and even if it proved considerably traumatic for actor Kevin Lindsay, the end result is still excellent – especially when we see a close-up of Linx’s potato face at the end of the first cliffhanger. Lindsay himself is the other reason for Linx’s greatness. Lindsay provides a convincingly creepy turn as the warrior, his hissing, sibilant, vaguely Aussie tones working to his advantage. It’s a great bit of casting, and luckily he’d return for 1975’s Sontaran Experiment to play the even deadlier Styre.

Probably the greatest legacy of The Time Warrior, though, is of course the introduction of Sarah Jane Smith. Sarah would go on to become one of the most popular companions of all time, and would even get her own spin-off show about 30 years after she left Doctor Who (let’s ignore K9 And Company).

Now on paper, Sarah’s nothing that we haven’t already seen before. The strong, gutsy woman who’s into Women’s Lib and standing up to chauvinistic blokes. Which is fine, and it made sense to contrast with Jo’s dippy character. But let’s see. Liz Shaw was a similar sort of no-nonsense character. Zoe was quite gutsy. Barbara, back in the day, took no prisoners either. Even Jo started to get more confident in her later stories, teaching Draconians and Ogrons about the virtues of feminism. So, we’ve seen all that before.

Another problem for me with Sarah is that she doesn’t get so much of a well-rounded story as other companions do. Zoe progresses from an emotion-free computer to more of a caring, resourceful young woman (at least, until the Time Lords get their way). Jo managed to grow up considerably in her three seasons. And in the future, we’ll see that Leela grows a brain during her time with The Doctor, being more than just a savage. But with Sarah, there’s no real progression there, apart from that she relaxes a bit more and settles down into the screaming best friend role. And sometimes, Sarah doesn’t always seem that enthusiastic about travelling with The Doctor. At the conclusions of Terror Of The Zygons and The Android Invasion, she’s not quite sure whether she wants to travel any more.

"What makes Sarah so popular is Elisabeth Sladen’s excellent performances. She always comes up with the goods (even if she sometimes does that weird blocked-up-nose thing when she’s being threatened or in peril)"

But what makes Sarah so popular is Elisabeth Sladen’s excellent performances. She always comes up with the goods (even if she sometimes does that weird blocked-up-nose thing when she’s being threatened or in peril), and what’s more her perfect pairing with Big Tom’s Doctor proves to be another great Doctor-Companion team, with the sort of on-screen chemistry that can very rarely be found. Sladen does make quite a good debut in The Time Warrior, and already builds up a strong rapport with Jon Pertwee, especially in part three’s quiet chat when she asks him about his background (“Ooh, I could murder a cup of tea” is a priceless reaction). However, there’s a couple of scenes when Sladen’s just maybe trying that bit too hard – the extended scene in which she’s trying to fathom out what’s happened and where she is in part two is just a bit too forced, and the rather OTT Women’s Lib references are too obvious – but overall, it’s a good start for the intrepid journalist.

As for Jon Pertwee, well, you’d never guess that fatigue was starting to kick in, since he’s at the height of his powers in The Time Warrior. And you get the feeling that he’s having a ball in this story, making stink bombs with glee (“Battle is about to commence!”), impersonating yokel monks and robot knights. In fact, season eleven contains some of Pertwee’s best work on Doctor Who, notably this story and Planet Of The Spiders. There’s definitely no sense of boredom on the actor’s part, and altogether, the third Doctor has become a much more relaxed, likeable figure than in his earlier stories.

The Time Warrior is one of Robert Holmes’ more whimsical offerings, in a similar style to Carnival Of Monsters the previous year. There’s some hilarious humour here, most notably in the comic double act of Irongron and Bloodaxe. Irongron gets the best lines: “Are all Sir Edward’s men so ill-fed?” “That narrow-hipped vixen!” "Is this Doctor a long-shanked rascal with a mighty nose?" Great stuff, and David Daker and John J Carney do a fabulous job as the two blundering peasants. On the other side of the tracks, we have Alan Rowe, Boba Fett and Dot Cotton. Now that’s not a combination that you hear every day. Jeremy Bulloch and June Brown do well though, even if it’s jarring to see Brown not go on in her Rod Hull voice about her Nick or her Jim.

What’s up with Rubeish though? What’s his function? He bumbles about Irongron’s castle like a slightly bored tourist or like an extra who got lucky at the BBC studios and wants as much screen time as he can get. And apart from one line, he’s not actually very funny. That line, though, which comes at the end of Part Two, is laugh-out-loud funny: “Young girl? I would've thought he was a bit old for that sort of thing!”

"A fine start to what’s actually quite an overlooked season"

About the only problem with The Time Warrior is the direction from Alan Bromly, which can be charitably described as workmanlike. It’s all OK, there’s nothing badly wrong here, it’s just that Bromly’s technique amounts to pointing the camera at the actors and letting them get on with it. There are no oddball camera angles or video effects, and the special effects certainly aren’t much to write home about. The climatic explosion is no more than stock footage, rather than a specially shot model. This decision certainly doesn’t impress Barry Letts and Uncle Terrance on the DVD commentary, although they welcome the new version that’s been produced as an alternative. The fight sequences are also badly staged – the ending of part two is rubbish, as the chase of The Doctor is shot from what looks like a whole town away. Looking down on the action from afar makes the sequence humdrum, and worse still, it’s blatantly obvious that Pertwee’s stunt double has taken his place. Good location filming though.

A fine start to what’s actually quite an overlooked season. It may not be premier league Who – the stakes are somewhat small, and the production is adequate rather than amazing, but the performances from the cast (apart from the sentry guy who’s even more wooden than the drawbridge), Holmes’ witty script and memorable debuts of the Sontarans and Sarah make up for these problems. Fans of pure historicals may find fault with the lack of historical accuracy, but for a witty, entertaining story, it delivers.

John Bensalhia limbered up for this mammoth task with a full four-series review of Blake's 7, and writes professionally and recreationally all over the web. Check out his portfolio of work at Wordprofectors.

Check out John's previous Doctor Who review, The Green Death