EEE2 - Terror of the Autons 2

More troubling aspects about this serial present themselves in this episode. At one point, The Doctor boasts to Lew Russell that, while he has no money in his wallet, he can easily obtain it. Never before had The Doctor concerned himself with money. Even as recently as Spearhead From Space, he claimed that he "had no need for the stuff". Yet another sign that he knows full well that UNIT is buttering his bread despite spending most of Season Seven standing up to them.

The direction for this story has also been very flat. Barry Letts certainly hasn't asserted himself well behind the camera in Doctor Who, as his previous effort, The Enemy of the World, was a choppy affair. Most of Letts's problem is his heavy over-reliance on the relatively new production technique called CSO (known to the rest of the world outside the BBC as "blue screen"). Car interiors, home interiors, museums, radio telescope control rooms - all of these are represented by poorly matted blue screen shots in this story. Letts was a big proponent of CSO in its infancy, and it is perhaps the case that such overuse gave the production team essential practice in how to use it correctly in the years to come.

That still doesn't make this any more fun to watch...