Tom Baker Dr. Who - Robot

Disclaimer:  I'm an American who has almost no knowledge of Dr. Who.  For all serious inquireies, please check out the Twitter feed of emma_lou1983, or her blog at The Blue Box Blog.  She appears to eat, sleep, and breathe Dr. Who.  Any inaccurate information is my fault and not hers.

Disclaimer 2:  There may be snarkiness and dry humor throughout.  Exaggerations may appear as well.

For those of you unfamiliar, Dr. Who is a British Sci-Fi television show that has been on the air almost constantly since 1963.  More information can be found here at the Doctor Who Wikipedia.  It is about a Time Lord who travels around in the TARDIS, which is a police call box on the outside, but the size of a small moon on the inside.  Ok, maybe not that big, but it looks roomy.  He helps save the planet from very bad things.  Like Daleks, Cybermen and evil robots bent on destroying humanity.

Which brings us to the episode(s) 'Robot' which is the first of the Tom Baker episodes.  It starts out with the good doctor changing from his previous incarnation to the current....er Tom Baker.  Can't say current, cause then I've skipped about 50.  Anywho... (get it?)  This is one of the parts of the show where I was glad I had some prior knowledge about the show.  Had I jumped straight in, I would have VERY confused as the first scene has the other characters going 'Holy Crap!  He's changing'

I was about to break into a scene by scene analysis, but realized that would get tedious very quickly.  So, instead, I'll just go for some broad high level thoughts.

Story:
The story is your basic mad group of scientists want to kill everyone and rule the world.  Not the most original of stories, but it was presented really well.  I could see how the story would end, but it was not completely predictable.

FX:
Ya, the effects left something to be desired.  But, this was 1974 so looked at through that prism, the effects were not bad at all.  Yes, there were shots that screamed forced perspective and model work, but there were other effects that blended in nicely.

Overall:
I'm glad I finally took the plunge and started in on the adventures of Dr. Who.  Its not something I will be watching on a regular basis, but I have added quite a bit of the Tom Baker years to my Netflix and will be watching from time to time.