The Time Warrior

A terrifying clash between the past and future threatens the entire human race and plunges the Doctor and Sarah into a chilling race against time.  When top scientists begin to mysteriously vanish, Doctor Who finds himself headed back in time to the middle ages and not-so-merry England.  

Linx, a war-loving Sontaran fleet commander, has crash-landed near a medieval castle and is supplying the feuding Irongron with advanced weapons that could totally change the course of human evolution.  He is also using the kidnapped scientists to repair his ship.  Linx is determined to return to his squadron…and nothing will stop him.  

As Irongron gets ready for battle, the Doctor makes his move.   Can he save the doomed scientists, outwit Irongron and stop Linx from completing his catastrophic plan?  The future of mankind is in his hands…

• This story introduces a new companion and a new villain.   The new companion is Sarah Jane Smith (played by Elisabeth Sladen) and the new villains are the Sontarans (played here by Kevin Lindsay).  Both would go on to be enormously popular with the fans.

• Actor Jeremy Bulloch makes his second of two appearances in this story as the archer Hal.  His first appearance was in the William Hartnell story "The Space Museum" where he played the young rebel leader Tor.  Truly sad fans will already know that it was Bulloch who played bounty hunter Boba Fett in the movies "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi."

• Kevin Lindsay, who played the Sontaran commander Lynx, would return the following year to play another Sontaran (their clones, you see) in the Tom Baker story "The Sontaran Experiment."  To see him without makeup you should check out "Planet of the Spiders" where he plays Tibetan monk Cho-Je.

• **Omnibus Format**  Unfortunately, this story was originally released in an edited "movie" (or Omnibus) format.  This means that individual episodes have been cut and pasted together into one viewing.  The BBC released Doctor Who videos like this until the early 90's.  Since then they have gone back and issued "re-releases" of virtually all of their omnibus versions.   Unfortunately, the U.S. (i.e. CBS/Fox at first, and then later Warner Home Video) hasn't been eager to follow suite, as they have only done two re-releases "The Brain of Morbius" back in 1997 and  "Terror of the Zygons" in 2000.  Additionally, many stories first released in the late 80's and early 90's are seeing re-release on DVD.  Unedited titles such as "Spearhead from Space," "The Ark in Space" and "Robots of Death" are all available now in their unedited formats.

• It had been rumored that the U.K. had plans to re-release "The Time Warrior" in its unedited episodic format sometime in 2001.  This never occurred.  Now that the VHS range is effectively over, the likelihood of an unedited VHS release seems small.

• It seems a reasonable assumption that since this is the only story in the U.K. still in an edited format, it could very well be up for a DVD release in the very near future.  Other factors in it's favor is the fact that it has been in release for over 10 years already, the introduction of a new and popular companion as well as the introduction of a popular villain.  Several other edited videos have seen recent release on DVD including "The Seeds of Death" and "The Talons of Weng-Chiang."  Time will tell...