Just watched it all. Loved it of course. And the missing scene worked really well, I thought.

Amazing, though, that after all of Harry's travels with the Doctor he didn't even get a proper goodbye scene. He's just loitering in the background as the Doctor and Sarah Jane leave in the TARDIS.

Made me wonder, also - was there ever a scene where we saw Harry inside the TARDIS?

No TARDIS scenes were seen in Tom Bakers era until Pyramids of Mars. Harry had left by then. No interior scenes ever featured Harry.

I had never noticed that before. It got me thinking about how many (or few?) "interior Tardis control room" scenes there actually were, and if you start from "The War Games", I was surprised at just how few and far between they are!

If memory serves me right**, W.G. has no int. Tardis scenes, and that makes a run of at least 47 consecutive 25-minute episodes without a Tardis scene (Pertwee's first one being part 3 of 'Axos'). **If my memory of WG is incorrect, that's still at least 37 episodes.
Then what have we got? - Axos #4, then Jo's brilliantly realistic scenes in 'Colony I.S.' pt1 (IMO, the most believable reaction of any companion, to first stepping inside the Tardis). 'C.O.Peladon' #1 - just a brief scene. Nothing more until 'Time Monster' (several lengthy scenes). Again, lots of footage in '3 Docs', A brief scene right at the end of 'Frontier' #6, which merges into #1 of 'Planet ot Daleks'. Nothing more until 'Death tt Daleks' #1, after which, as already stated, the int. Tardis is not seen again until 'Pyramids' #1, another run of 43 Tardis-free episodes.
From 'Spearhead' to 'Pyramids': 32 stories, of which only 9 feature a scene in the Tardis control room.

Planet of Evil has some TARDIS scenes at the start.

Poor Ian Marter! Its almost part of your visual CV as a companion, to have some console room scenes.

Right, thought Mars came before Planet of a Evil.

Last episode of The War Games did future the console room.

It did a future version of the console room?

meant it did feature the console room. My poor spelling.

Got very excited for a moment there - a future version of the TARDIS in 1969!!!

Just got round to watch this last night.

An on form Tom Baker, Liz Sladen and Ian Marter. A great monster in the Zygons and a crappy Nessie....what's not to love.

Favourite scene.

The Doctor is fiddling with some gizmo, Sarah Jane enters the room, ( no acknowledgement from The Doctor he just carries on with his gizmo). All the while the landlord is playing his bagpipes up stairs. Sarah Smith gently starts to 'tease' about the landlord to the Doctor, saying he almost has a second sense, as she points upwards to indicate the landlord upstairs the bagpipes stop. A gorgeous and wonderfully played scene.

You're half right actually. Pyramids was filmed before Planet of Evil, so it does feature the first actual use of the console room in the Tom Baker Years, even though the first broadcast of a console room scene came in Planet...

Tom and Liz just clicked didn't they? They have a wonderful naturalistic chemistry which makes virtually every scene they are in together sparkle. My favourite is from Pyramids - the scene in the poacher's hut as they find the dangerously unstable explosives. 'One good sneeze could set it off' warns the Doctor. Then a little later he ponders about detonators and Sarah lightly says, 'maybe he just used to sneeze on it'. It's all so beautifully played.

And the bit where they appear from behind a screen, catch sight of a robot mummy and, in unison, turn and walk straight back behind the screen again. Hilarious!

Is the extra scene accessible by any other way than the special features menu on the first disc? I couldn't get it to work last night and almost ended up with rage after five minutes of faffing around with moving between various different menus. In the end, I gave up and watched the first two eps without the extra scene.

The story remains absolutely fantastic. I had forgotten just how good it is. Mrs Chuff had totally forgotten about Harry Sullivan, so we had a bit of a natter about how he fitted in with stuff.

There's real warmth in Lis Sladen's performance. She's so smiley and upbeat.

If DWM had existed at the time, I would like to think Lillias Walker would have earned a Best Actress award in the Season Survey. ... hey that's an idea ... Best Actor/Actress/etc awards for each season of C20 DW! I can feel a series of DS threads coming on ...

No, I am pretty sure you have to choose the alternative 'Episode 1' through the special features menu.

Great idea Chuff.
But thinking about this season (Zygons to Seeds of Doom), Lilias Walker wouldn't actually have much competition in the Best Actress category. It's such a hugely male dominated season with both Planet Of Evil and Pyramids of Mars featuring a totally male cast, bar Liz Sladen.
Android Invasion has a few women in almost entirely non-speaking roles, and Seeds of Doom only has the dotty Miss Ducat. Even Sister Lamont is the lone lady in Zygons. So that leaves the Sisterhood Of Karn who, other than some desultory chanting, only have two main speaking characters anyway.

Has there ever been another season of Who with so few female roles?

I was just listening to the commentary on Terror of the Autons (Pertwee's second year opener) and learned that Ian Marter had originally been shortlisted to play Captain Yates but couldn't commit to an ongoing part at that time.

I always remember Harry as being a bit superfluous most of the time. Probably because I only had eyes for Sarah-Jane

Harry was cast and most of that season's scripts prepared when Terrance and Barry envisaged an older fourth Doctor being cast, as a contrast to Pertwee's action man image. So Harry was brought in to deal with the action, much in the same way that Ian got involved in the physical stuff while Hartnell cheered from the sidelines.

You can see how this would have worked in something like The Sontaran Experiment - the major fight at the climax would probably have been originally scripted for Styre and Harry, while an older Doctor did the clever sabotage to the Sontaran ship.

But then they went and cast Tom Baker instead, who was clearly more than capable of doing his own fight scenes etc, so the character of Harry was somewhat demoted to a more comic foil.

It's a testament to Ian Marter's skills that Harry, who did indeed end up being rather superfluous to most of his stories, was still such a well loved character.

Oh. Sod that then.

Found the missing scene! It's rather lovely.

Mrs Chuff and I were surprised that harry has absolutely flap-all to do in this story, other than the scary "possession" stuff in the first couple of episodes. After that, Benton has all the action and Harry lurks in the background. he barely even gets a close-up outside the cut scene! His leaving is so low-key that Mrs Chuff wondered if something had been missed.

Other than that, it's got to be one of the all-time great stories.

It really isnt that much bother. Just go into Special Features then turn on the directors cut and after that it will run all 4 eps including the deleted scene.

Got there in the end. My DVD player didn't seem to like it, and I had several goes (with my tea getting cold sitting on a tray on my lap) before I managed to get it. The on/off options always seem to confuse my DVD player.