Its always exciting in Doctor Who when a new actor takes over the lead of the show. So seeing Jon Pertwee in his first story really was a pivotal point in Doctor Who history. The previous Doctor, played by Patrick Troughton, had seen ratings fall over his tenure as The Doctor and this meant that a vital overhaul was required. Troughton felt that his time was coming to an end and time to hand over to another person. This gave the producers a real opportunity to kick start the show.... this time in colour.

From the moment the opening titles begin you realise that this is a totally different Doctor compared to the role portrayed by Troughton, the way the Doctor moves, the style of his clothing, everything has literally been thrown out and then re-written to fit Pertwee. You even see him do his own stunts as well as participate in fight scenes, which is fresh and new to the part. The Doctor has everything start to form around him, the Autons come to him in an attempt to kill him while in Hospital, There are a number of scenes in which the Hospital staff are utterly baffled by the Doctor's physiological make up of having two hearts and this provides some quite light hearted scenes that build on the introduction of a regenerated main character.

I think that Pertwee has been given an excellent start in the role; there are a number of Doctor Who nuggets that only happen when a new actor takes the part. For example in choosing the costume, deciding who he actually is and so on. The advantage with Pertwee's Doctor is that the characters memory has been wiped by The Timelords and he is not entirely sure as to who he is anyway, so this gives the writers the chance to wipe the slate clean and to start fresh and with Pertwee having an abundance of hair as well as giving his incarnation of the Doctor a stronger than average curiosity factor, that borders on childish, then the foundation has been laid in quite a satisfactory and original manner. The only problem I have is that as the Doctor is exiled on Earth the Tardis really only becomes an ornament rather than the means of transportation. In the story the Doctor cannot use it at all as the dematerialisation codes have been changed, so the only means of transport is a car, which in this story the car is borrowed.

The Autons are an underused Doctor Who character and have only been used three times in Doctor Who history, it's a shame really as the stories that they could provide really means that they are a wasted opportunity, on the flip side there is only so much the writers could do with them without repeating the plot over and over again as they are made of plastic and that limits the scope of ther plot somewhat.

One observation throughout this story is how different everything looked 40 years ago, by this I mean that the activation of the Autons takes place in Kingston Town Centre, the only problem is that anyone who has visited the town lately would have seen that the area has been pedestrian-ised over, whilst in the story this has two way traffic going down the main thoroughfare.

Overall this can be considered an origin story for the Third Doctor and strong one that is entertaining to watch and gives the audience some idea as to what may come in future episodes. This is also a break from the normal type of stories as the Doctor is stranded without any chance of leaving Earth, which means that we wont see any alien planets or chalk pits for a while throughout the Pertwee era, however this also means that we get to see more Earth locations than what has been seen up till now in the series and means the threats are closer to home than most previous stories. As a result of this, the Doctor has no choice but to take on the name of John Smith and becomes a freelance advisor for UNIT.