February 28: "Don't Shoot the Pianist" / "Johnny Ringo"

(The Gunfighters episodes 2 & 3)

So there's some strong competition, but "Don't Shoot the Pianist" might be one of the funniest episodes of Doctor Who.  It's certainly up there.  Steven's getting really fed up singing the same song over and over again, and it takes the regular singer Kate showing up to let him stop -- only to have him play the piano while she sings.  "Don't mind me," Dodo fumes, having just been playing.  "Just have a good time with your new friends!"  Honestly, her sense of priorities seem consistently misplaced -- has she not noticed they were being forced to play at gunpoint?

The Doctor, while holding the Clantons at gunpoint, is happy
to see Wyatt Earp. ("Don't Shoot the Pianist") ©BBC

But really, the star of the show is William Hartnell.  Donald Cotton has decided to write a story where the Doctor isn't responsible for the main action but instead wanders about the place slightly bemused.  It means that in general Hartnell can play up the comedic side of things without having to worry too much about moving the plot along.  And as there's not too much plot moving happening in this episode (most of it is at a more-or-less standstill while the Clantons labor under the misapprehension that the Doctor is Doc Holliday), that leaves quite a bit of room for comedy.  From the Doctor explaining to the Clantons that he's not Doc Holliday, he just happened to be in his office when Seth Harper walked in and then Holliday insisted on lending him his gun, to his time spent in the jail cell under the protective custody of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, Hartnell is a master of underplaying just the right amount, so that even though he's incredibly funny it still seems in character.  Steven hands him a gun through the cell window, which he then fiddles with in front of Earp, pointing it at him at one point while gesturing (which John Alderson as Earp reacts to with just the right amount of faint alarm) before handing it over: "I have no intention of trying anything, only people keep giving me guns and I do wish they wouldn't."

Sure, there are some minor issues (and here I'm thinking primarily of the accents -- most of them aren't too bad, but Peter Purves' accent is a bit odd just because we're used to him sounding otherwise, while David Cole as Billy Clanton sounds like he went to a finishing school, despite attempting to speak in a dialect), but they by no means detract from the action.

"Johnny Ringo" is a little more serious, introducing as it does the title character and advancing the storyline.  After Steven is saved from a lynch mob, the Clantons learn that the Doctor isn't Doc Holliday after all, and so they plot to go after him by hiring Johnny Ringo to take care of him.  Ringo is shown to be a brutal man, gunning down Charlie the barman just because he talks too much.  The Clantons may be a bit inept, but Ringo is anything but.  Yet as Holliday left Tombstone and took Dodo with him, Steven decided to team up with Ringo to find them.  Meanwhile, Phineas Clanton is broken out of jail by his brothers, who gun down Warren Earp as they do so (again, not historically accurate -- Warren Earp wasn't in Tombstone at the time).  The stage has been set for the final episode.

There are still some fun moments: the "Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon" starts entertainingly narrating the action on screen, and there's one moment with the Doctor that is hilarious.  The Doctor explains to Wyatt Earp that Steven has gone off with a man named Johnny Ringo to look for Dodo.  "Ringo?" Earp responds in disbelief.  "Yes, yes," the Doctor replies.  "You've got a photograph of him here, look," he adds, helpfully passing Wyatt a wanted poster that Earp immediately throws aside.  But ultimately this episode is more about getting things ready for the climactic shootout than anything else.  Soon the stage is set for "The OK Corral"...

February 27: "The Final Test" / "A Holiday for the Doctor"

(The Celestial Toymaker episode 4 & The Gunfighters episode 1)

Oh hey, we can actually watch this episode!  And it is clear that visuals do help somewhat -- we can see Cyril's reactions and we can watch the danger that Steven and Dodo are in by almost falling off the game spaces and onto the electrified floor.

But we're still watching other people play a board game.  And it's not the most expensive-looking set ever, is it?  There's a certain minimal charm to it, but it's not sufficiently distracting to engage the eye when the mind wanders.  Some aspects are good though; the Toymaker's desk and the tin robot monitors are really quite lovely, but then they're stuck in a nondescript white room.

Dodo also continues to be gullible, falling for Cyril's "injured" trick despite already knowing that a) Cyril's an underhanded player, b) moving to a different square without authorization sends you back to the start, and c) Steven is adamantly telling her not to.  It's this last point that seems to make up her mind, as she yells she's going to help him, moves to his square, and has to go back to start.  It does point out Dodo's kind nature and her willingness to see the best in people, but it's also frustrating to watch since we're really on Steven's side in this case.

The Toymaker congratulates the Doctor on (almost) completing
the Trilogic Game. ("The Final Test") ©BBC

In any event, Cyril is eventually undone by his own schemes, making the winning roll but then forgetting he'd put slippery powder on one of the spaces, which sends him off to his "death", leaving a charred doll behind.  The rest of the episode consists of the Doctor brought back to permanence and full voice -- despite Wiles' and Tosh's best efforts²³ -- and attempting to work out how to leave the Toymaker's domain without getting caught up in its destruction.  He eventually figures out how to imitate the Toymaker's voice to make the final move for him, dematerializing just as the Toymaker's realm explodes with some, ah, interesting choices of stock footage.

The Celestial Toymaker is a hard story to evaluate based on what we've got, as so much of it does appear to be visual in nature.  The visuals we do have though, with "The Final Test", aren't the most encouraging things ever.  There's enough reason to be cautiously optimistic, but it's still not clear how much visuals would save, say, the second half of "The Celestial Toyroom".  But possibly more than any other currently missing story, The Celestial Toymaker is almost impossible to evaluate based on what we've got, other than to note that it's not very workable as an audio-only story.

So not only does "The Final Test" still exist, but the next four episodes still exist as well.  So we can enjoy "A Holiday for the Doctor".  It's not much of a holiday, though, as the Doctor is suffering a bad toothache as a result of one of Cyril's sweets at the end of last episode.  But rather than arrive in a modern or futuristic locale where he can get his tooth properly looked at, he arrives in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, in 1881 (the second time Doctor Who has traveled to America).  The episode starts out quite seriously; there's a song occasionally entering the proceedings to help set the mood, and the Clanton brothers all seem pretty intent on getting their revenge on Doc Holliday, who killed their brother Ruben (not historically accurate, but never mind).  Doc Holliday is less than enthralled by this: "You kill a guy out of sheer professional ethics, and then you've got three of his brothers chasin' after you to leave at once." 

As things progress it becomes clear that this isn't going to be as serious a treatment of the subject as, say, The Massacre was -- not surprising, given writer Donald Cotton's last story was The Myth Makers.  This means that there are some great moments, such as when the Doctor, in Holliday's office to have his tooth removed, realizes there's no anesthetic available.  "You're welcome to a slug of rattlesnake oil!" Holliday says, proffering a bottle.  "Oh my dear man, I never touch alcohol," the Doctor says.  "Well, I do," Holliday replies, taking a large swig.  And then there's Steven and Dodo, who've dressed up in what look more like fancy-dress versions of American West attire, being forced to sing and play piano for the Clantons (who are under the impression they're friends of Doc Holliday).  The bit where Steven starts to become exasperated while singing, only to see one of the gang nonchalantly point a revolver at his face, is a piece of understated joy.  We're only an episode in, but The Gunfighters looks like it's going to be much more entertaining than The Celestial Toymaker was.








²³ Producer John Wiles, who was Verity Lambert's replacement, never got along with William Hartnell, and it was becoming clear to many that Hartnell, who was sick with arteriosclerosis (though he didn't know it at the time), wouldn't be able to continue in the role much longer.  So Wiles and story editor Donald Tosh decided to write him out in this serial by virtue of giving him a different appearance and such when the Toymaker brought him back, allowing the role to be recast.  Hartnell reportedly got wind of this and went over their heads to Gerald Savory, who had Hartnell's contract extended for 6 months.  (That's one version, anyway; another suggests that the contract was extended automatically without Wiles realizing it.)   John Wiles, who hadn't really wanted to produce in the first place, decided that enough was enough and he left the position -- which is why The Celestial Toymaker is actually the first story produced by Wiles' successor, Innes Lloyd. And yes, in many ways the drama behind the scenes during the making of this story is much more interesting than what ended up on screen.

February 26: "The Hall of Dolls" / "The Dancing Floor"

(The Celestial Toymaker episodes 2 & 3)

Hmm.  No, sorry to say, but these two episodes appear to be as visual as the first one.  It's certainly a rather imaginative story, but the actual realization is now without the pictures down to listening to Steven and Dodo argue with playing card people about using wooden dolls on chairs.  It's not the most thrilling television ever, I'm afraid.

Cover of the 1986 Target novelization.
(From On Target - The Celestial Toymaker)

And William Hartnell, who was made invisible last episode, is now rendered mute as well, after a few prerecorded lines that sound like he's literally phoning them in.  The lines are totally devoid of any sort of import or alarm or feeling whatsoever; I don't think it's a stretch to say it's Hartnell's worst performance on Doctor Who.  Still, at least everyone else is giving it their best.  Carmen Silvera and Campbell Singer do their best to make the Queen and King of Hearts distinct characters, and they're actually quite fun -- even though you know they're working against Steven and Dodo.  And it's a bit entertaining to watch Steven and Dodo interact; Steven wants to win no matter what so that this will all be over, while Dodo wants to get into the spirit of the games and doesn't seem to realize how deadly they are.  Still, it seems like a lot is lost when all you have is the soundtrack.

Alas, things don't get any better in that department with "The Dancing Floor".  The first half of the episode is fairly clearly designed to be a slapstick comedy, and so when all you can do is listen it's rather an exercise in tedium.  This sequence, more than any other, is probably the most difficult to evaluate based on audio alone.  After all, Laurel & Hardy's short The Music Box won an Academy Award, but if all you could do was listen to it, it would quickly lose its appeal.  I'm not suggesting that this sequence is on par with something like that, but rather that it's almost impossible to judge.  Still, at least it sounds like the actors are having fun.  And then the second half concerns Steven and Dodo dancing their way across a dance floor to get to the TARDIS.  It doesn't sound quite that difficult, and once they get the hang of it, it isn't.  Er, yes.  Again, visuals might really help.

But maybe they wouldn't.  It's got to be said that, after the sinister atmosphere built up by "The Celestial Toyroom", this gets squandered a bit in these two parts.  We get told the chairs are dangerous in "The Hall of Dolls", and Dodo gets frozen by one, so there's a little bit of suspense.  But on the other hand it does seem a bit jolly, and then "The Dancing Floor" goes even further by having not really any threat whatsoever, so dramatic tension goes out the window.  Donald Tosh has complained that when incoming script editor Gerry Davis rewrote his scripts to remove two primary characters, as ordered from above²², he also removed a lot of the menace that Tosh had inserted and replaced it with more pantomime.  You can't help but wonder if Tosh doesn't have a point.







²² Settle in, this might take a minute.  In the 1930s a playwright named Gerald Savory had written a smash hit comedy called George and Margaret, where a family is awaiting the arrival of two guests named, funnily enough, George and Margaret -- they're the catalyst for the events of the play, but they don't actually appear in it.  Fast-forward to 1966, and Gerald Savory is now Head of Serials.  So writer Brian Hayles gets the idea to have George and Margaret actually show up in a Doctor Who story.  Savory gives permission and Hayles writes the script, but he doesn't have time for rewrites, so it passes to outgoing script editor Donald Tosh to make any necessary changes.  He rewrites it substantially enough that it's going to go out under his name, "based on an idea by Brian Hayles", but then Savory reads the script, hates it, and withdraws permission for his characters to be used.  At this point money has been spent and people have been cast, so they can't just scrap the story.  Therefore incoming script editor Gerry Davis has to rewrite the whole thing to remove George and Margaret.  The result apparently hardly resembles Tosh's scripts, so he has his name taken off it and Brian Hayles is reinstated as credited author (Davis can't take credit because he's the script editor and the BBC had rules about such things -- as Tosh had left at the relevant point, that rule no longer applied to him).

February 25: "The Bomb" / "The Celestial Toyroom"

(The Ark episode 4 & The Celestial Toymaker episode 1)

So Monoid Two's report is cut off mid-sentence, in what must surely be suspicious circumstances.  So Monoid One's decision is to ship every Monoid, including all the miniaturized Monoids in trays, down to the planet's surface.  He's not really a forward thinking kind of person, is he?

This episode is concerned with two things: finding the bomb concealed on the Ark, and watching the Monoids annihilate each other in infighting.  There's not really anything terribly surprising in this episode -- really the only unanticipated part is that some of the Monoids disagree with Monoid One's decisions and choose to return to the Ark, which leads to Monoid One and his followers trying to gun them all down (and watching them shuffle about in their costumes, shooting at each other, has to be seen to be believed).  The battle that ensues seems to wipe out most of the Monoids, leaving the Guardians free to colonize the planet without having to deal with the Monoids too much.  Meanwhile, a Refusian pilots a landing craft back to the Ark and helps the Guardians eject the bomb (hidden inside that big statue) into space, apparently with only seconds to spare, judging by the timing of the explosion.

There are some really quite ambitious model sequences here, with some forced perspective shots and things that are nicely done (even if you can see the wires occasionally).  The takeoffs and landings of the landing crafts, for instance, are often done incredibly close to the camera, to give the impression of a large craft landing nearby -- and fortunately the model is of sufficient quality to carry off the illusion.  It's a charming effect.

Really, that sums up The Ark in general.  As a story it never quite lives up to the promise of its first episode, but there's enough here presented in such a way that you can't help but be entertained by it.  It's not the most perfect story in the world, and you wouldn't be wrong pointing out that the second half is weaker than the first (even though the first is just about a plague and the second has invisible aliens and battles and things), but it's still an enjoyable little tale, aided by some striking direction.

And now it's back to the soundtracks for "The Celestial Toyroom", which is a bit of a pity given how visual this story seems to be.  It's a nicely sinister set-up we're given, as the Celestial Toymaker (and note that's almost certainly "Celestial" as a synonym for "Oriental", the way that word was once used -- the Toymaker's Mandarin garb indicates this is the case) forces the Doctor, Steven, and Dodo to play games for their freedom.  It's a chilling concept, as the Toymaker indicates that if they lose, they have become his playthings and remain in his realm forever.  The Doctor has to play the Trilogic Game (a form of the Tower of Hanoi puzzle) while Steven and Dodo participate in a sort of obstacle course against two of the Toymaker's dolls, clowns named Joey and Clara²¹.  This is where it becomes painfully clear how much this episode loses by being audio-only.  It might have been a bit tedious watching Steven and Dodo play this game, but when all you can do is listen to them play, it becomes a bit difficult to remain engaged in the episode.  Ah well; maybe the next two episodes will work better as soundtracks.







²¹ Lest anyone get any ideas, the pronunciation is different from the BBC Wales' companion's name ([klεɹə] vs. [klɑɹə] in the International Phonetic Alphabet), and as the clown Clara is actively trying to hinder Steven and Dodo's progress, the modus operandi doesn't really fit anyway.

February 24: "The Plague" / "The Return"

(The Ark episodes 2 & 3)

It's a serious business the Doctor has landed them in: because of Dodo's cold, the future of the entire human race appears to be in danger.  So naturally, the acting commander, Zentos, wants to do the right thing and...ensure that the Doctor, Steven, and Dodo are executed for bringing the plague on board the ship.  He seems to be under the impression that this is the result of Refusian agents from their destination planet attempting to sabotage their journey for some reason, but in any case, Zentos is out for blood.  To this end he holds the most amazing hearing, with Steven defending the time travellers from his accusations of deliberate infection -- and he gets a great line, by the way, as he responds to Zentos's accusations: "The nature of man, even in this day and age, hasn't altered at all.  You still fear the unknown, like everyone else before you."  But Zentos spends a lot of time whipping the other Guardians up into a frenzy against the travellers, to the point where Manyak, who's acting as defense for them, has to basically yell to be heard.  "Let him speak!  This is a fair hearing," Zentos then has the nerve to say.  And meanwhile, during this hearing, we keep cutting to the Commander (who's sick, remember) saying things like "That's true!" for some reason.  But nothing, not even Steven himself collapsing from the illness during the hearing, can stop the Guardians from decreeing that the Doctor, Dodo, and Steven be ejected into space.

The Earth begins to burn up as it falls into the sun.
("The Plague") ©BBC

I like the part where, after the Guardians have voted to space our heroes, the Commander has to come on over the intercom and basically say, 'Cut that out; what the hell is wrong with you?' to Zentos.  This means the Doctor can finally be allowed to work on finding a cure.  After a brief moment to lecture Dodo on her English (interesting that even as late as 1966 the word "OK" was deemed to be non-standard in some way), the Doctor gets to work.  A quick montage later (more than a little reminiscent of The Sensorites, it must be said), a cure has been found and everyone is saved.  The Doctor is hailed a hero (even though they brought the thing aboard in the first place) and the travellers are allowed to depart.  Yes, it's a story that wraps up quickly, but it's nice to see that not everything needs to be a 12-episode epic, and the sense of economy here is quite refreshing.

Except that's not quite what happens.  In one of the best cliffhangers ever, the TARDIS leaves, only to rematerialize in the same place.  But it's not the same time: the statue that was going to take 700 years to finish is completed -- except with a Monoid head...

"The Return" shows a much-altered Ark.  The Monoids have had a revolution and taken over, turning the humans into their slaves.  Many of the Guardians were killed; some survive to work in the security kitchen.  Yes, you read that right: "security kitchen."  There are some impressive effects shots in the security kitchen, as tablets are dropped into a liquid and instantly become new potatoes and chicken wings -- one almost gets the impression that the humans are being kept in a kitchen so that they could do those shots.

Monoid Two challenges the Refusians to show themselves.
("The Return") ©BBC

In any event, the Ark's journey is almost over -- they've finally reached Refusis II.  The Doctor and Dodo are sent down in the first landing party to assess the suitability of Refusis II as a place for colonization.  They encounter the Refusians, who appear to be invisible, and who have been waiting for the people from Earth to arrive.  The Monoids aren't terribly friendly to their new hosts though, so while the Doctor has a pleasant chat with their host, where he learns that the Refusians lost their appearance in a "galaxy accident" (er, yes...), Monoid Two tries to warn the others on the Ark, only to have his landing craft blown up by the Refusians.  It's actually a surprisingly brutal act from a species which had hitherto seemed quite civilized, and it's not absolutely clear why they do it.  After all, it's not like the Monoids could see the Refusians in order to shoot them down.  Maybe they just didn't want a whole bunch of Monoids streaming down from the Ark and messing up the place.

Still, after the first episode set up a thoughtful tone, these two episodes are a bit of a letdown.  "The Plague" is concerned more with haranguing the travellers about bringing the illness on board, and "The Return" seeks to show the Guardians' society with the roles of humans and Monoids reversed -- except that rather than explore that relationship in more detail, the Monoids are portrayed as generally unlikable from the start of the episode, so it's difficult to work up any sympathy for them.  Don't get me wrong, these are still pretty entertaining episodes: they just don't seem to have had as much thought put into them as "The Steel Sky" did.

February 23: "Bell of Doom" / "The Steel Sky"

(The Massacre episode 4 & The Ark episode 1)

"Bell of Doom" opens bleakly: Steven has seen the Doctor lying dead in the gutter, and now he has to try and find the Doctor's key to the TARDIS, which he presumably left in his old clothes at Preslin's house.  He and Anne Chaplet spend the entire day tearing Preslin's house apart, trying to find the Doctor's clothes, but all they can locate is his walking stick.  Meanwhile, Catherine de Medici and Marshal Tavannes plot the massacre of the Huguenots in Paris, set for St. Bartholomew's Day; Tavannes originally has a list of Huguenots to take out, but the Queen Mother decides to let mob rule take over, anticipating that this will mean the death of all the Huguenots in Paris.  Steven and Anne are unaware of this, but they are surprised when the Doctor walks in; it turns out he was not in fact the Abbot of Amboise, despite appearances.  But as Steven tries to explain what's been happening, the Doctor becomes greatly alarmed when he realizes what the next day is, and exhorts Anne to break the curfew and take refuge in her aunt's house for the next few days, while he and Steven will leave in the TARDIS.  Anne hurries away and the Doctor and Steven flee, just before the carnage begins.

This part of the episode is concerned primarily with turning the wheels that have been set in motion in the previous episodes, and all it really does is bring the Doctor back into the picture and have him take Steven away before the massacre itself begins.  It's a functional half, but because all the pieces have been carefully maneuvered into place ahead of time, there's a sense of inevitability to the proceedings here, and the TARDIS dematerializes just as Admiral de Coligny is dragged from his bed, triggering the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.  The resulting carnage was reportedly depicted with sounds of violence over illustrations of the proceedings, which were apparently still too much for some viewers.

The second half of the episode shows Steven disgusted with the Doctor's treatment of Anne; he feels the Doctor had essentially condemned her to death by staying in Paris, and he's unhappy with the Doctor's callous disregard for humanity.  The Doctor tries to explain: "My dear Steven, history sometimes gives us a terrible shock, and that is because we don't quite fully understand.  Why should we?  After all, we're all too small to realize its final pattern.  Therefore don't try and judge it from where you stand.  I was right to do as I did.  Yes, that I firmly believe."  But Steven won't hear a word of it, and he storms out at the next stop, leaving the Doctor all alone. Hartnell gives a wonderful, reflective speech as he's left by himself in the TARDIS:

Even after all this time he cannot understand.  I dare not change the course of history...  Now they're all gone.  All gone.  None of them could understand.  Not even my little Susan, or Vicki. And as for Barbara and Chatterton... Chesterton.  They were all too impatient to get back to their own time.  And now, Steven.  Perhaps I should go home, back to my own planet.  But I can't.  ...I can't.

Hartnell does such a great job with this quiet, almost tortured speech that it's something of a shock when Mancunian Dodo Chaplet bursts in, looking for a telephone and totally failing to be impressed that this isn't even remotely a police box, or that it's in fact a time and space machine.  She seems to be looking forward to traveling in the TARDIS, even though she has no earthly reason to believe the Doctor that the TARDIS is a kind of vehicle, but when Steven rushes back in the TARDIS is away on its next adventure...

The Massacre is quite different from the last few Doctor Who tales.  It's a very serious piece of political drama, engineered in such a way that it comes across not so much as a tale of religious conflict but as one of political machinations: Catherine de Medici may consider all the Huguenots heretics worthy of death, but Marshall Tavannes is considering the implications of such an action.  It's a very adult (in the non-tawdry sense) piece of television, and it's something of a shame that we can't see the performances -- but the fact is that this is a story that relies so much on dialogue that the pictures aren't required.  An impressive serial.

It's been four or five stories since we've had a complete serial existing in the archives (depending on how you count "Mission to the Unknown"), but we're back on video with "The Steel Sky".  Occasionally, listening to some of the previous episodes, you sort of wonder how they managed to actually create the sets and stories that you're listening to -- how did they create Kublai Khan's palace at Shang-Tu, or what did the Time Destructor-ravaged Kembel look like?  But here's an instance where we get a story like that that we can actually see, and the result is quite superb.  There's a jungle full of exotic plants and animals, and there's what looks like an elephant on some stock film, until the Doctor, Dodo, and Steven reach out and pat it on its trunk.  "The Steel Sky" looks suitably impressive.  The main alien race on display, the Monoids, are also charmingly weird, even if it's clear from their first sighting how they got that singular eye in the center of the head.

But what's also nice is that some thought has clearly gone into things.  This adventure is depicted as incredibly far into the future, further than we've ever gone before -- the Doctor guesses they're at least ten million years ahead.  This treats everything that we've witnessed as just a tiny chunk of history.  ("Nero, the Trojan wars, the Daleks. But all that happened in the first segment of time," says the commander of the spaceship. "Segment?" the Doctor wonders. "To use your phrase, sir, what segment are we in now?" "The fifty-seventh," the commander replies.)  Paul Erickson²⁰ is thinking in pretty epic terms, and it pays off.  We get an epic script combined with some epic direction (I've mentioned the jungle, but the superimposed screens are also quite good, and the distant depictions of the roof of the ship are also really well done) -- so much so that you can almost forget Dodo's brash attitude as she explores her surroundings, declaring it first to be Whipsnade Zoo and then going around acting like a general nuisance: "You'll have to watch her," Steven warns the Guardians after she states she can't scratch the material that their statue-in-progress is made of, "she'll have the whole thing down."  And one final piece of forethought: Erickson has given Dodo a small cold, but as the people of the future had long ago eradicated the common cold, they have no resistance to it, and it starts to run through the population as a deadly plague...







²⁰ Although Erickson's then-wife Lesley Scott is credited, by all accounts she contributed no actual work to the scripts.

February 22: "The Sea Beggar" / "Priest of Death"

(The Massacre episodes 2 & 3)

What's striking about "The Sea Beggar" (as well as "War of God" before it) is how different it is from The Daleks' Master Plan.  Although these episodes still strike a pretty serious tone, stylistically these are less like an action/adventure and more like a political drama.  Each episode seems to encapsulate roughly a day's worth of events, with no cliffhanger reprises, and the stakes are more about political maneuverings than the fate of the universe.

The other interesting thing about "The Sea Beggar" is the disappearance of the Doctor.  On its own this isn't particularly surprising, since William Hartnell's been on vacation before, but there's never been a sole companion around.  This means that most of the events focus squarely on Steven, as he tries to convince his new friends first that a) the Doctor and the Abbot of Amboise are different people, despite looking the same, and then that b) the Doctor is pretending to be the Abbot of Amboise for some reason, but that he couldn't possibly have an ulterior motive against the Huguenots.  This leads to Steven overhearing of a plot to assassinate the Sea Beggar, and then the plot shifts to Steven trying to get someone to listen to him and work out who the Sea Beggar is.  It's a plot driven by dialogue more than visual events, which means it's one of the easier stories to follow on audio, and it's also relatively engaging, as we work along Steven trying to figure out what's going on.  And then, in the episode's closing moments, we learn that the Sea Beggar is in fact Admiral de Coligny.

The Target novelization (from On
Target - The Massacre)

"Priest of Death" continues in a similar vein, only this time Steven gets a chance to tell Nicholas Muss about the planned assassination of de Coligny on that very day.  This means that they have very little time to stop the assassination.  The other new wrinkle is that William Hartnell is back as the Abbot of Amboise (or is it the Doctor? -- the character of the Doctor is nowhere to be found), but here he's playing a very serious character.  There aren't any "hmm"s or "eh"s or anything like that, which (as has been mentioned before) does illustrate how much of the Doctor's character is in fact characterization, rather than just William Hartnell stumbling over lines or inserting filler words to give himself time.  It's a strong performance.  And Steven's belief that the Abbot is in fact the Doctor does help sell the "is he/isn't he?" storyline.

But this is predominantly about the Admiral's attempted assassination.  Steven and Nicholas are too late to prevent it, but by a fluke the Admiral bends down at just right the moment and is only wounded instead of killed.  This attempt is apparently because de Coligny is firm friends  with King Charles IX, and the Catholics in France would like to see the Protestant influence with the king be removed.  But, since it fails, the Abbot of Amboise takes the fall and is killed, and then his death is blamed on the Huguenots.  It's a continuing political drama, and one can't shake the feeling (even if you didn't already know the outcome) that an inevitable, tragic end is coming.  Plus, that cliffhanger, as Steven finds someone who's apparently the Doctor lying dead in the street, is also quite effective.  John Lucarotti and/or Donald Tosh's story (there's some uncertainty as to just how much of Lucarotti's original scripts remain in the finished product) moves from strength to strength.