Pertwee Survivor - The Result

[Paul Clement]

And so we reach the end of the Pertwee Survivor. Which story has taken the top spot?

Evict:
Day of the Daleks 7
Spearhead from Space 1

With 7 Eviction votes, Day of the Daleks takes second place, and the winner is... Spearhead From Space

Evicted:
The Time Monster
Planet of the Daleks
The Mutants
The Monster of Peladon
Colony In Space
The Ambassadors of Death
The Sea Devils
Frontier In Space
Carnival of Monsters
The Curse of Peladon
Terror of the Autons
The Daemons
The Claws of Axos
Planet of the Spiders
The Three Doctors
The Green Death
Invasion of the Dinosaurs
Silurians
The Time Warrior
Inferno
Death to the Daleks
The Mind of Evil
Day of the Daleks

Winner:
Spearhead from Space

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So, what do we think of the result?

[Paul Clement]

Well, my top six would be Daemons, Inferno, Spearhead from Space, Mind of Evil, Terror of the Autons and Day of the Daleks in that order, so I'm pretty happy with the result. I really thought Inferno would go much earlier as it was getting a lot of eviction votes, but the saves were fairly well spread out meaning it survived longer than it probably should have. But I'm happy with that.
Apart from those six stories, I'm pretty much Meh! about the rest of the Pertwee era.

[Wayne]

An odd contest in some ways with multiple stories being evicted because the votes were so spread.
The Pertwee era is a difficult one for me to be objective about, because some of my favourites aren't necessarily the best stories; they just have a lot of personal nostalgia and enjoyment attached to them. For example: Planet of the Spiders, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks.
I'd definitely class Spearhead amongst the 'worthy' stories though, although I personally prefer Terror of the Autons, (which I didn't expect to be evicted so early),but I would've tried to engineer a win for The Green Death, which I feel is very worthy and more representative of the Pertwee era.
Re Inferno. Whilst I do like it a lot, I've always found a tad overrated. There isn't half a lot of repetition in it, especially in the last 2 eps. Even though it's cleverly spread across alternate universe plot-line, I do find a bit wearing at times.
'Silurians' by contrast, I find a bit underrated. I think it spreads its story development across 7 episodes more effectively than Inferno, and I much prefer it of the two. That's my explanation for trying to keep it in at the expense of Inferno.

So I'll compare my Top 6 with Paul's:

Planet of the Spiders
Terror of the Autons
Planet of the Daleks
Death to the Daleks
The Green Death
Silurians

And my bottom 6 in reverse order:

Ambassadors of Death
Colony In Space
Claws of Axos
Carnival of Monsters
The Mutants
The Time Monster

'Spearhead' would be about No.10.

[Paul Clement]

My bottom 6 in reverse order would be:
Time Monster
Frontier in Space
Ambassadors of Death
Monster of Peladon
Mutants
Colony In Space

[Stuart Wallis]

I could get shot for having slightly perverse ideas like this - maybe one day, when we've got this Survivors business done for all the other Doctors, we could vot for our least favourites? That'll separate the men from the loons who are merely tolerated round here because their silly ideas make people laugh...

[Andrew Curnow]

A worthy winner, it's really hard to find much wrong with Spearhead from Space.

As I've said before though, the Pertwee round of Survivor has actually opened my eyes to just how good his run is/was. I wouldn't really have said I was a particular Pertwee-era fan, if asked, and yet by the time Monster of Peladon had gone from the contest I was struggling to easily pick stories I didn't like.

Arguably (or at least, debatably) there aren't as many stone-cold classics amongst them, but the flipside of that is that there are so few (if any) turkeys. So a very, very consistent run, and being forced to slightly reappraise it through this round of Survivor I can appreciate a bit more why it's held in such high esteem by (particularly) the children of the early 70s.

Hai!