TV Review: Doctor Who: ***The Ark in Space

This is a 1975 episode of Doctor Who with Tom Baker as the Doctor and Elizabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith.  It pits The Doctor on an ark 4000 years into the future.  The humans on the ark have frozen themselves in sleep as a way of saving the human race, projecting themselves into the future as the Earth is no longer sustainable.  This idea worked well, except that a space fly has gotten into the works.  The queen fly accidentally electrocutes herself, but not before giving birth to her larvae, which are set to inhabit the human bodies.  The timing mechanism for the humans to reemerge has been triggered, and several come back to life.  The commander however touches a larvae, and turns into a fly.  The new commander (ex commanders mate) takes over, and they determine to try to electrocute the rest of the flies, except the lead fly who was the commander, has turned off the power.  This episode only has a happy ending because of the sacrifice of some of the crew, including the commander who has just enough humanity left to safe his mate.
Special effects aren't near as good as current series, and The Doctor and the commander both seem rather stiff and unemotional, while Sarah Jane Smith is too emotional.  But it is Doctor Who.

TV Review: Doctor Who: ***^The Pyramids of Mars

This is from the Tom Baker (1975) era as The Doctor with Sarah Jane (Elizabeth Sladen) as his companion.  It is available through instant Netflix.  I remember this show from when I use to stay up late and watch it on PBS in Utah--television style.  You had to stay up late sometimes to catch all the episodes in a series.  This has four episodes.  The Doctor lands on Earth in the past because of a temporal shift.  This shift is caused by an ancient monster/god of some power named Sutekh who was imprisoned by the other gods of the time on Mars.  There is somehow a connection between Sutekh and and Egyptian pyramid.  He inhabits an archaeologist, at least mentally, when he discovers the ancient tomb in Egypt.  This puts in motion a series of events in which Sutekh plans to fee himself by firing from Earth a rock at Mars to destroy the mechanism which is keeping him captive.  The doctor has to thwart this plan as Sutekh hopes to enslave everyone and take over the universe.  He apparently has power to do so if he were free.  The Doctor is able to destroy the rocket, but only by confronted Sutekh directly, who takes him prisoner and discovers he has a TARDIS which will easily help him in escape.  However the Doctor thwarts him with the control mechanism to the TARDIS which he attaches to the temporal shift machine Sutekh is using to travel to Earth to take control of the TARDIS.  An intriguing story.  Sutekh has some mean robot mummies, and the original archaeologist makes a good monster, looking like Boris Karloff.