The War Machines

DOCTOR: I hope Dodo and yourself have enjoyed yourselves.

DOCTOR: Well, just take a look at this, Sir Charles.

SUMMER: Tramp found dead in Covent Garden. 
DOCTOR: Yes. Three o'clock. That must have been after we left him!
(Well duh!)

DOCTOR: Ah, temper, temper!
 
DOCTOR: I've made an important readjustment to aid and change the purpose of this machine.
MINISTER: Oh, it sounds as though you've changed its character, Doctor.
(That isn't what he said...)

• The way Steven and Peter Purves were got rid of wasn't great, but the treatment of Dodo really is poor. Okay, the new production team wanted an annoying dolly bird and a sailor (who doesn't?), but that's no excuse for just jettisoning Dodo without even a goodbye scene. Steven got a hug and a handshake, Vicki got a nice final scene with Troilus. Dodo just vanishes. She might not have been the most popular companion ever, but she deserved better than that. 
• Dodo finds it funny that people might think the TARDIS is a real police box. Yeah, who would ever do that, eh, Dodo? I do like the Doctor putting the "out of order" sign on it, though. 
• Polly is useless at cheering people up. Her method of attempting to get Ben in a better mood is to say "cheer up!" at him a couple of times, pull a funny face at him and then give up in disgust in a matter of seconds. Compare and contrast to gentlemanly Ben insisting on running and getting a taxi for the Doctor to take him "home". That home is someone called Sir Charles Summer, who is letting the Doctor and Dodo stay with him! Either of the first two Doctors casually living with someone like that is really bizarre. 
• I'm sorry, but megalomaniac computers don't really interest me as an
  
  enemy. Especially ones that speak so bloody slowly! If you're going to have a computer as a baddie, at least have one that can speak at more than about 5 words per minute. Make that 4, actually, since just "Doctor Who is required" seems to take that long.
• I find it odd that brainwashed Polly convinces them to enlist Ben to help construct the War Machines and they accept without bothering to brainwash him! That's really being careless. They must know he'll be trying to escape? 
• The second half of episode three is incredibly dull. The army fighting the War Machines in some extremely uneventful scenes where you don't actually see anything anyway. Mainly because the War Machines are really badly designed. They're rubbish. And the only way those smashing arms can actually smash anybody is if they deliberately stand under them. Otherwise there's no chance.

Verdict 

This is in its own way as strange as the Savages. A story set in contemporary London and which even features a club! This feels like a different series just as much as the Savages did, although thankfully it doesn't feel like Star Trek this time. I'm not entirely sure what it does feel like, but at least the Doctor is himself again. Ben is great right from the start. Michael Craze really gets it right and I like just how quickly he becomes part of the team, with the Doctor fretting about having sent him to the warehouse and worrying that he won't be safe. The story is okay. It's not the strongest, for reasons I've gone through, but it's not bad either. Again, the strangeness of it helps, and Hartnell and Craze make a fun team.