Doctor Who: 8 Tom Baker Stories To Celebrate In January

6. The Seeds Of Doom (1976)

There were five Saturdays in January 1976 which is the only reason why this classic ends up on this list and not on some future February one, as episode one aired on the 31st. And it's just as well it did, really, because Seeds is certainly the kind of story worth celebrating. In fact, if you look at both this story and Terror of the Zygons, you have to wonder why Robert Banks Stewart wasn€™t approached to write more episodes and why Geoffrey Burgon wasn€™t asked to score more of them. Perhaps it€™s the fact that the work of both men almost pushes Doctor Who into the realm of horror anthology series rather than science fiction, as Seeds of Doom has more in common with a Hammer horror film than it does with a so-called children€™s science fiction programme. That€™s a good thing, by the way. Episode four's terrible cliffhanger aside (could a monster look any more like an overweight woman in a mumu running to a all-you-can-eat buffet?), this story is a prime example of how well the show handles such concepts as body horror, the loss of one€™s humanity and the uncomfortable idea that plants may have as much against us as animals do. It€™s also two stories for the price of one - a tribute to The Thing in the first two episodes, with a tribute to The Quatermass Experiment following close behind - which makes it far easier to sit through the whole thing than the typical six-parter. No wonder the Doctor Who Appreciation Society voted it the best story for that season.