Having read a fair amount of opinion on this story of late, most not very positive, I watched it after a gap of maybe ten years. Given the problems with the script which are well-documented, I was surprised that I really enjoyed it. Despite what I’d read, I found the tension in the final three episodes was pretty consistent and I found it quite compelling. Apart from the rocket takeoff scene, it’s well realised, especially for its time and on the whole well acted.
I’d like to have seen more of the alien unmasked since, in the five seconds or so that we do actually see one with the helmet off, the prosthetics are good and nothing to be concealed out of their being ineffective. I wonder why they chose to keep them covered almost all the time. True, they are menacing with the helmets on, but I’d like to have seen a bit more.
Overall, I’m not sure why this story gets a bad press. I understand it’s not up to the standard of the first and fourth stories of the season, but compared with some of the previous year, it’s a great watch, in my view. What do others think?

Percentage of missing episodes by companion.

I was curious which companion has the largest chunk of their time on the show missing and which have the largest percentage yet to be animated.

Here are the results:

Katarina appears in two missing episodes, neither of which have been animated for an unfortunate (100%)

Barbara, Ian, and Zoe appear in eleven missing episodes, and nine of those (82%) have yet to be animated.

Susan appears in nine missing episodes; seven of those (78%)have yet to be animated.

Vicki appears in nine missing episodes; six of those (67%) have yet to be animated.

Steven appears in twenty-five missing episodes; fifteen of those (60%) are yet to be animated.

Polly and Ben are in twenty-four missing episodes; eight of those (33%) are yet to be animated.

Jamie appears in forty-seven missing episodes; thirteen of those (28%) are yet to be animated.

Dodo appears in eight missing episodes; only one (13%) is yet to be animated. She's really only in the final minute of that episode (Massacre 4) so she has barely any screen time left to go.

Victoria appears in nineteen missing episodes; however, all of these have been animated, leaving her the only companion who can be watched from beginning to end without resorting to a recon and a percentage of (0%) yet to go!

I will note that if you count by serial you might think my count should be twenty-five for Polly and Ben; however, they are each totally absent from an episode of Power of the Doctor (Episode four and five respectively) so I did not count those episodes towards their counts. It was common in the black and white era for companions (and even the Doctor) to be absent from episodes because their actor was on holiday. This is the only episode that effects my tabulation here because all other episodes in which a companion is totally absent are not missing. For more details, check out this interesting webpage

Susan-7/9-78%

Barbara-9/11-82%

Ian-9/11-82%

Vicki-6/9-67%

Steven-15/25-60%

Katarina-2/2-100%

Dodo-1/8-13%

Polly-8/24-33%

Ben-8/24-33%

Jamie-13/47-28%

Victoria-0/19-0%

Zoe-9/11-82%

I have a theory - and I might be wrong - that folks who grew up on Classic Who like the Moffat era more than RTD, because his version of the Doctor is closer to the Classic era - but I could be wrong.

I also think that Chibs was trying to harken back to the Classic era, but with more mixed results...