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Description
Regarding the fifth entry in the series, I was originally going to do "Pyramids of Mars". Its my personal favorite and I've been developing what I wanted to do and show for it but I ended up waiting a bit, because as I developed it I realized there's a couple different directions I could go in for it.

Tom's fifth serial, and the fourth for his debut season, is no slouch either. In fact, I think I have a closer connection to it than "Pyramids"; in my last semester at college, I wrote an essay about the Daleks for a class on monsters. "Genesis of the Daleks" got the lion's share of the discussion, not because it was the best written and easily dissectable example, but because it was a crackling good Dalek story at a time when the Doctor's enemies were shifting away from the old standbys into the reliance on newer threats.

The story completes what I consider the trifecta that establishes how Tom Baker portrays the Doctor: beginning with "The Ark in Space" where viewers are introduced to his brilliance amid rampant eccentricity (also introducing the beginning of that Gothic horror fascination of Hinchcliffe and Holmes), furthered into the heroic action hero of "The Sontaran Experiment" and completed with "Genesis" with the Doctor mediating on the rights and wrongs of destroying a society and the sanctity of life, a running pattern throughout the Fourth Doctor's tenure. There's still overtures of Pertwee, as would be until the conclusion of this season (given that almost all of the stories during Season 12 were commissioned when Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks were still at the helm, more than likely during Pertwee's Season 11) but that's not necessarily a bad thing, given that the vibes of the stories would have been completely different had Pertwee been there to ask "Do I have the right?" Tom Baker adds the right amount of gravitas necessary to make the line seem not cheesy or heavy handed, but in a moment deserving of "Woah".

Description
Regarding the fifth entry in the series, I was originally going to do "Pyramids of Mars". Its my personal favorite and I've been developing what I wanted to do and show for it but I ended up waiting a bit, because as I developed it I realized there's a couple different directions I could go in for it.

Tom's fifth serial, and the fourth for his debut season, is no slouch either. In fact, I think I have a closer connection to it than "Pyramids"; in my last semester at college, I wrote an essay about the Daleks for a class on monsters. "Genesis of the Daleks" got the lion's share of the discussion, not because it was the best written and easily dissectable example, but because it was a crackling good Dalek story at a time when the Doctor's enemies were shifting away from the old standbys into the reliance on newer threats.

The story completes what I consider the trifecta that establishes how Tom Baker portrays the Doctor: beginning with "The Ark in Space" where viewers are introduced to his brilliance amid rampant eccentricity (also introducing the beginning of that Gothic horror fascination of Hinchcliffe and Holmes), furthered into the heroic action hero of "The Sontaran Experiment" and completed with "Genesis" with the Doctor mediating on the rights and wrongs of destroying a society and the sanctity of life, a running pattern throughout the Fourth Doctor's tenure. There's still overtures of Pertwee, as would be until the conclusion of this season (given that almost all of the stories during Season 12 were commissioned when Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks were still at the helm, more than likely during Pertwee's Season 11) but that's not necessarily a bad thing, given that the vibes of the stories would have been completely different had Pertwee been there to ask "Do I have the right?" Tom Baker adds the right amount of gravitas necessary to make the line seem not cheesy or heavy handed, but in a moment deserving of "Woah".