I’ve been fairly obsessed with Doctor Who since my aunt first introduced me to it in 1988. As a reference, this means that I actually got to experience the show during its initial run (albeit, only for the twenty sixth and final season). I was also lucky enough to live in one of the only PBS markets that continued airing reruns throughout the 1990s. My knowledge of the show, therefore, is encyclopedic.

“City of Death” is an all-time classic. It’s also from a somewhat atypical era of the show’s history: as a rule, the show has its share of comedic elements, but it’s seldom played up quite as strongly as it is during that period, thanks, in no small part, to Douglas Adams’s presence as script editor. Each era in the show’s history has a very different style and tone: the original few seasons focused a lot more on the nature of time travel, with a number of stories that were, for all intents and purposes, straight-up historical drama with nary a trace of the fantastical. In the early seventies, it went for a strong James Bond-inflected action/adventure tone. When Tom Baker took over the role under producer Philip Hinchcliffe, it veered abruptly towards gothic horror, and from there it jumped very quickly to pulp sci-fi satire with Adams. After that, there was a period of violent military sci-fi, and the show finally ended its initial run favoring a sort of surrealistic approach.

“Keeper of Traken,” despite being only one season after “City of Death,” is an entirely different beast. The three stories presented in the “New Beginnings” set are almost funereal in tone, and certainly less frenetic than “City of Death,” with more of an emphasis on scientific concepts than any other period in the show’s history, really (not, mind you, that the science is always correct…). Some of my favorite episodes hail from this period, with some wildly inventive ideas for a television series, but it is very different, and a lot of people I’ve personally shown “City of Death” to have been underwhelmed by it. To be sure, though, “Keeper of Traken” is easily the weakest of the set: “Logopolis” and “Castrovalva” are much better, but unfortunately there are enough links between the three that it’s difficult to ignore “Keeper.”

As a companion, Romana is unusual, but not exactly unique. There are certainly more companions like Rose than there are companions like Romana, but the latter aren’t exactly in short supply, even in the current series (Jack, of course). Romana’s defining characteristic (and what makes her unique) is the fact that she considers the Doctor her intellectual inferior. She’s pretty much the only example of that in the series’s run.

Anyway, let me know what you think of “Keeper” (and Torchwood, for that matter). And if you need any further recommendations, you know who to ask ;-)