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Hello, again. This is Trey.










Please note: I did the work described in this episode, and wrote the script more than 6 months prior to this recording. But then life got in the way and I didn't get it recorded, and I didn't even look at the project until recently. But, that dear friends is a story for another episode. In literature, we call that "foretelling". Right now, however, it is time to record and publish

this

episode.










Welcome to part 7 in my Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) Project series. If you are still listening to me ramble about this project, thank you. If you have lost track of it over the months of silence from me, you are not alone. Frankly, I have lost track of it, too.










If you wish to catch up on earlier episodes, you can find them on my

HPR profile page



https://www.hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents/0394.html












Today I am not going to blather on about all the things we have done so far, and the current state of the project. No, today we are getting back to basics, beginning with the Random Nerds Tutorial "Introducing the ESP32 Cheap Yellow Display" (

https://randomnerdtutorials.com/lvgl-cheap-yellow-display-esp32-2432s028r/

).










Why am I going back to basics? I really don't want to talk about it. If you have not listened to episode 5 of this series, you may go back and suffer through it at HPR4532 -

https://hackerpublicradio.org/eps/hpr4532/index.html











Suffice it to say that, when you choose to jump in the deep end of something you think you understand a little about, but about which you really know much less, you can find yourself flailing about, gasping for air, and trying not to sink. Thus was my case.










However, a recurring theme has been evident to me in several podcasts & YouTube videos I have experienced over the last few weeks. That theme is "Embracing Failure". The most recent of these was Mark Rober's YouTube video "Uncovering America's Underwater City" (

Uncovering America's Underwater City

). His successes and misses in that video gave me a glimmer of hope.















I have been programming computers in various forms since the early '80s. Over the years, I worked with BASIC, Pascal, various flavors of C and of assembly, Perl, Java, JScript, Python, and more. And every time I started a course to learn a new language, the first program to write was... Yep! You guessed it. Hello World.










Random Nerds Tutorial post "Introducing the ESP32 Cheap Yellow Display" (

https://randomnerdtutorials.com/lvgl-cheap-yellow-display-esp32-2432s028r/

) includes a starter program that creates 2 different buttons on the screen, which do 2 different things, a slider, and, of course, displays "Hello World". In the show notes, you can see an image of this screen, captured from the tutorial.





















It was time for me to get started.










Copy, paste, RUN, right? Nope. Not this time. The article also explains, section by section what the code does. My goal here is NOT simply to make the CYD do my bidding, but to learn the "Why" and the "How" which I need in order to become proficient.










First, we start with loading the necessary libraries. These include (Pun absolutely intended):







LVGL (Light and Versatile Graphics Library)





TFT_eSPI (Graphics library for output to the display itself)





XPT2046_Touchscreen.h (A Resistive touch controller library, used for touchscreen inputs from the CYD)












Instructions earlier in the tutorial described how to make certain these are properly installed into the Arduino IDE. One thing that I noticed almost immediately is that the previous GUI building tool I used in episode 5, called Squareline Studio, only supported up to LVGL Version 8, while the tutorial recommended LVGL 9.01. I wonder if this contributed to some of my issues?










What is LVGL anyway? LVGL stands for Light and Versatile Graphics Library. According to lvgl.io, "LVGL is the most popular free and open-source embedded graphics library to create beautiful user interfaces for any micro controller unit, microprocessor unit and display type." It is built to make UI development easier with animations and more than 30 different widgets.










Now that we have included the necessary libraries, there is some initialization to do for the touchscreen. The touchscreen is a Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI). You can see in the tutorial that XPT2046 requires you to define the following:







The interrupt (IRQ) used





The MOSI (Master Out Slave In) pin used. This is the pin which the microcontroller uses to send data to the touchscreen.





The MISO (Master In Slave Out) pin used. This is the pin which the microcontroller uses to receive data from the touchscreen.





The clock pin which the microcontroller uses to send clock signals to SPI devices.





The Chip Select (CS) pin on the microcontroller, used to enable/disable communications with the touchscreen.












With these defined, we can create specific instances for "touchscreenSPI" and "touchscreen". Next, we define the screen height, width, and font size, along with integer variables x & y for input coordinates when the screen is touched, and z for pressure used when the screen is touched. These values are important when configuring the draw buffer.










There is also a setup function which is used to basically launch the touchscreenSPI, the TFT Display, and LVGL.










That was a lot. But wait! There is more!










There is a decent sized function which creates the main GUI screen, and it begins with the "Hello World" text label. Here we can see specifically how the text label is created, named, assigned the text it will display, and sized and positioned.










The same goes for buttons one and two and their associated labels, and the slider and it's label.










Finally, there are event handler functions for when button 1 or button 2 are pressed and for when the slider is moved.










When button 1 is pressed, it shows that it is clicked until it is released. When button 2 is pressed, it actually changes the state of the button between "off" and "on" to the opposite of the state it was in before it was pressed and alters the button 2 color accordingly. Button 2 effectively toggles from "off" to "on" or from "on" back to "off" again each time it is pressed. If it is "off" and I push it, it goes "on" and stays "on" until I push it again. I hope my explanation of that simple function did not make it even more confusinger. Back to the code!










When the slider is moved, it changes the value of the text for the slider label.










All fairly simple. Now for the test. In episode 5 you can witness me building my morse code keyer app and downloading it to my CYD, only to have the touchscreen input fail spectacularly. I know there wasn't a hardware failure because the application which was pre-installed when I purchased the CYD worked perfectly. Additionally a pre-compiled application built for the CYD which I loaded from Brian Lough's WitnessMeNow GitHub site (

https://github.com/witnessmenow/ESP32-Cheap-Yellow-Display

) also worked perfectly.










So, now it was time to, once again verify that the proper libraries are loaded in the library manager, and then copy the "Hello World" TFT Display & Touchscreen test code from Random Tutorials and paste it into Arduino IDE, section by section, making certain, again, that I understand what each section does.










Please note: I spent years of my youth manually typing programs from magazines into computers. Back then, my eyes worked better and my brain worked better. And I often spent more time troubleshooting and trying to find all my typos than I did actually typing the program. So, YES, I will copy & paste other people's programs every time I can (And include proper attribution). After all, this is a test, and if it works, it could even be the foundation upon which I build the application I really want.










I connected my CYD's USB-C port to my computer and verified the COM port Windows has chosen to assign to it. Next, per the instructions in the tutorial, within Arduino IDE, I selected the "board" type that I was using as "ESP32 Dev Module", and specified the COM port to which it is connected. With a deep breath and a short prayer, I clicked the "Upload" button.










After what seemed like an eternity compiling, but was actually closer to 36 seconds, I saw the screen on my CYD showing exactly what it should, and proudly displaying "Hello, world!"



















Now will the touchscreen work? I clicked button 1.

























The button changed color when I was pressing it, and returned to normal when released. Now for button 2.










A tap toggled it from orange to blue and another toggled it back to orange again.





















Finally, the slider test.










Moving the slider did work, and changed the percentage value being displayed below the control.





















Everything worked! Now we are getting somewhere. There are photos in the shownotes.










What next? I had a few options:












I could use what I had learned from "Hello World" to begin building my GUI once again, part by part, but this time manually as code directly within Arduino IDE. To start with, I would need to learn how to build different screens and navigate between them.





I was not thrilled with my experience using SquareLine Studio. It is a commercial tool, and the licensing is a pain. I recently discovered an open source option called EEZ Studio. I could load it and try to rebuild the GUI a little at a time, examining the code produced as I go along.





Other options? I'm sure there are dozens, but I need more information before I can make a choice.












In the end, I chose "None of the above." I decided to take a closer look at the code which SquareLine built for my GUI and try to learn what in there.










It turns out there was quite a bit. Granted, I had built 3 different screens with quite a number of buttons and some other controls. But where "Hello World" included all the code in a single .ino file, SquareLine had created a number of files:












CMakeLists.txt & Filelist.txt seem to be artifacts from when the GUI code was exported from SquareLine.





ui.ino is an Arduino C file with several of the same foundational structures found in "Hello World" for configuring and initializing libraries to work with the CYD. Some of these differ from "Hello World", and will require comparison.





ui.c starts with a "Variables" section for defining screen, control and label names. It also has a "Functions" section with code for event handling. Finally, it has a "Screens" section which defines functions for each of the different application screens built within SquareLine: Send, Config, and Keyboard.





ui.h really does not have much in it. I will need to research what it does





ui_Send_Screen.c, ui_Config_Screen.c, & ui_Keyboard_Screen.c create all the controls and labels on each screen, specifying location, size, and some functionality.





ui_events.h also seems to have very little in it, like ui.h. More research is needed.





ui_comp_hook.c simply includes the list of libraries with their versions along with the project name header, common to most of the files in this list.





ui_helpers.c has code related to properties for several of the controls in the project





ui_helpers.h is the only of the .h with any real amount of code in it.












You can find all of these files on my github repository at

https://github.com/jttrey3/CYD_MorseSender-v0.4












This was interesting, but it didn't really get me anywhere. Remember I mentioned a YouTube video by LVGL_BEGINNER where I first saw reference to EEZ Studio. It was titled "LVGL ESP32 2432S028R CYD example with EEZ Studio" (

LVGL ESP32 2432S028R CYD example with EEZ Studio

). In this video, the author shows how to use EEZ Studio to build a button. Then he exports the code (A bunch of files like SquareLline did), copies all the created files into the same folder where his .ino file resides, and he integrates it into a "Template" .ino file designed by RandomNerds for the CYD, using an include statement and a function call.










I went back to my old ui.ino file from SquareLine. It seems to only interact with the remainder of the ui files through an "#include <ui.h>" line and through a "ui_init();" function call. What if, my issues were within ui.ino itself in the way it configured the board or instantiated the libraries or something?










I have a working foundation to build on. I made a copy of the template and moved it into a new test folder. I copied all the SquareLine created ui files into the same folder except for "ui.ino" Next, I edited this version of "Hello World" and removed all the event handlers and the entire "lv_create_main_gui" function. Finally, I replaced the "lv_create_main_gui();" function call with "ui_init();"










This couldn't work, could it? It was worth a shot. I could always revert back to my saved copy of "Hello World" and try something different.










I reconnected the CYD to the USB-C cable and clicked the "Upload" button in Arduino IDE, then waited for what seemed like another eternity while the code compiled. This time, much longer than 36 seconds. I pondered searching YouTube for the Jeopardy game show theme music to play in the background while I waited.










Finally, the screen on the CYD went black, and, amazingly, it displayed the "Send" screen I had originally built in SquareLine. "Okay, Trey", I thought to myself, "Don't get your hopes up. You have seen this before." The real test is if any of the buttons work.






















I tapped the "Config" button...










The "Send" screen began to slide to the left, to be replaced with the "Config" screen. It worked!






















I tapped the "Keyboard" screen... The "Config" screen slid to the left, and the "Keyboard" screen slid into its place.






















I shouted loud enough to scare both cats, and they jumped from their sleeping spots on the bed in my office and ran out the door.










It worked. I still have a ton of work to do, in the GUI and on the actual program to send Morse. But this is a good place to stop and savor a bit of success.










I look forward to any feedback you might have. Please post it as a comment or send me an email using the address listed in my HPR profile.










Have an amazing day, and I will talk to you again in my next episode.






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Hello Hacker Public Radio, this is JonTheNiceGuy.








On the

HPR Community News for January 2025

, Ken, Kevie and Some Guy On The Internet were talking about network addresses. As this was part of my job for several years, I thought I might talk about this for a couple of minutes.








All IP Networks now use what we refer to as

CIDR

based addressing, so you'll often see these expressed as "/24", "/16" and so on. This is "how many '1s' are in the binary representation of the local portion of this network. Windows is one of the last remaining platforms to refer to these as Netmasks, and express them as the four octets in decimal representation of those 1s, so /24 is 24 1s in a row, or 255.255.255.0, /16 is 255.255.0.0 and so on.








But what does this have to do with networks and networking? There are two pieces to this, the first is for Broadcasts, or how a node with an IPv4 address asks all the local nodes in an IPv4 network address range how to find other things, and the other is for routing.








Let's talk about Broadcasts. Right, so back when IPv4 (or just TCP/IP as we knew it then) was being developed to integrate into operating systems, most developers read the Request for Comments document about this new IP protocol and put the address that the devices should contact to talk to all the hosts on the local network segment, or the "broadcast address" as it's better known, as the last available IP address in that subnet. In a /24, that would be the .255 address in the subnet. The engineers at, from memory, either Sun Microsystems or DEC, read the same document and called that address the "Network Address" and made it the first available IP address in the subnet, the .0.








In the end the "Broadcast" address won out in IPv4 networks, and the Network address was left to history, but there are still just enough of those legacy systems knocking around that it was always seen as a bit of a risk to allow the Network Address back into the pool of addresses...








This is most often currently seen in printer setups, or for ARP address requests, but has largely fallen out of favour, in favour of Multicasts. In fact, so much so, that IPv6 has dropped the broadcast address entirely, and uses multicast.








But why does the number of bits matter?








This now comes back to routing.








Routing is where a host works out what the most specific route is to get to a given IP address. On a typical home IPv4 network this is fairly binary - you have a default gateway, usually on either .1 or .254 in your /24, and most of the traffic goes to that. In networks which need a highly available, or HA, router setup, you may see up to three IP addresses being used by your router, with some method of mapping the "virtual" address of the next hop gateway to a physical device. That said, even on that simple home network, there are at least two other networks which are used, and that's your "local" or "loopback" interface, which is able to use all the addresses in the range 127.0.0.0/8, but typically only binds to 127.0.0.1, and the network you are connected to, which doesn't require routing. Most home routers use 192.168.0.0/24 or 192.168.1.0/24.








In order to work out how to get the next hop to the IP address you're trying to reach, the computer turns both the IP address you're trying to reach, and all the CIDR masks in the routing table into binary numbers, and then matches the one which is most specifically accurate to work out what to do with it.








So, for example, if you have an IP address of 10.0.0.1/8, then your network mask is 00001010. If you are trying to find another address in that network, you only need to match that first 8 bits. An address of 11.0.0.1 doesn't match, because the first 8 bits, 00001011 doesn't match the routed network. More specific routes will take longer to match, which is why some of the routing tables on the core networks dedicate whole CPU cores to matching parts of the routing table. It's also why in the pre-IPv4 exhaustion days, IP addresses were typically sold in large blocks, usually to single geographic regions, so that you only had to match a large supernet, or large block of subnets in one go, not lots of smaller subnets.








Once you understand this about IPv4, IPv6 works the same way for routing, except the address space is four times larger, with the number of bits in a network area being 128, as opposed to IPv4's 32 bits.








Thanks to the janitors for triggering this bit of an info dump, and I hope it's been of interest to you!








This is jontheniceguy, signing off from HPR.

Provide feedback on this episode.

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Nova Scotia









https://novascotia.com/









Akron, Ohio









https://www.akronohio.gov/









Stow, Ohio









https://www.stowohio.gov/









Kent , Ohio









https://www.kentohio.gov/









Kent State Riots









https://www.britannica.com/event/Kent-State-shootings









Cuyahoga Falls









https://www.downtowncf.com/









HAZMAT Truck Certification









https://www.tsa.gov/for-industry/hazmat-endorsement









1095-C Form









https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1095-c









Boston City Hall









https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_City_Hall









Give Me 40 Acres (To Turn This Rig Around) - Willis Brothers (song)









https://genius.com/The-willis-brothers-give-me-40-acres-to-turn-this-rig-around-lyrics










https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_Me_Forty_Acres_(To_Turn_This_Rig_Around)









Brutalist Architectural Style









https://www.riba.org/explore/riba-collections/architectural-styles/brutalism-movement/









105 MM Howitzer









https://americangimuseum.org/collections/restored-vehicles/m2a1-105mm-howitzer-1941-1953/









1812 Overture









https://www.kdfc.com/articles/tchaikovsky-1812-overture









Boston Tunnel Project aka The Big Dig









https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-big-dig-project-background









Camel Nose In Your Tent









https://markeckel.com/2024/06/18/the-camels-nose/









Manhatten Project









https://www.nps.gov/mapr/learn/manhattan-project.htm









Morgentown, West Virgina









https://www.morgantownwv.gov/









Mount Blue State Park









https://apps.web.maine.gov/cgi-bin/online/doc/parksearch/details.pl?park_id=18









Belgrade Lakes









https://visitmaine.com/articles/belgrade-lakes/









T-34 Airplane









https://www.military.com/equipment/t-34c-turbo-mentor









F5 Fighter









https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/aircraft/f5-tiger









DC 3









https://www.britannica.com/technology/DC-3









C-47









https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/douglas-c-47-skytrain









T-6









https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104548/t-6a-texan-ii/









Civil Air Patrol









https://www.gocivilairpatrol.com/









F4U Corsair









https://www.nationalww2museum.org/visit/museum-campus-guide/us-freedom-pavilion/george-hw-bush-aviation-gallery/vought-f4u-corsair









Black Sheep Squadron (TV Show)









https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/black_sheep_squadron









Hawaii









https://www.gohawaii.com/









F4 Phantom









https://www.collingsfoundation.org/aircrafts/f-4d-phantom/









Vietnam









https://vietnam.travel/node/1336









Thailand









https://www.tourismthailand.org/Home









F14









https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/grumman-f-14dr-tomcat/nasm_A20040156000









F15









https://www.military.com/equipment/f-15-eagle









Fort Bliss









https://www.military.com/equipment/f-15-eagle









No Toilet Paper For Russian Troops









https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tamarisk









Boston Linux User Group









https://blu.org/









Kit Carson Scout









https://www.vvaw.org/veteran/article/?id=4467









Battleship New Jersey









https://battleshipnewjersey.org/









USS Newport News









https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nmusn/explore/photography/ships-us/ships-usn-n/uss-newport-news-ca-148.html









USS Iowa









https://pacificbattleship.com/#dipipopup-60889









Harpoon Missle









https://www.navair.navy.mil/product/Harpoon









Tomahawk Missle









https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/sea/tomahawk-cruise-missile









Predator Drones









https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104469/mq-1b-predator/









M50









https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-m50-reising-submachine-gun/













M249 SAW









https://www.peosoldier.army.mil/Equipment/Equipment-Portfolio/Project-Manager-Soldier-Lethality-Portfolio/M249-Squad-Automatic-Weapon/









M60 Machine Gun









https://www.thearmorylife.com/taking-the-pig-for-a-walk-history-of-the-m60/









M 240 Machine Gun









https://armyhistory.org/the-m240b-general-purpose-machine-gun/









M79 Grenade Launcher









https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-m79-grenade-launcher/













Mark 19 Grenade Launcher









https://www.peosoldier.army.mil/Equipment/Equipment-Portfolio/Project-Manager-Soldier-Lethality-Portfolio/MK19-Grenade-Machine-Gun/









Fletchette Round









https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-m79-grenade-launcher/









M16 Rifle









https://www.secureitgunstorage.com/the-history-of-the-m16-with-fun-facts-trivia/









M14 Rifle









https://www.britannica.com/technology/M14-rifle









MIT









https://www.mit.edu/education/









Raufoss Mk 211 anti-materiel high-explosive incendiary/armor-piercing ammunition projectile









https://smallarmsreview.com/raufoss-multipurpose-ammo/









Barrett Rifles









https://barrett.net/products/firearms/









Port Arms









https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/port-arms









PTSD









https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20355967









M1 Garand









https://thegca.org/m1-garand-history/









Meet Boston









https://www.meetboston.com/









Chop Logic









https://www.hilotutor.com/archives_chop-logic.html









Mumble









https://www.mumble.info/









Proxmox









https://www.proxmox.com/en/









Spice









https://www.spice-space.org/









VAX Computers









https://www.stromasys.com/resources/vax-computer-systems-an-in-depth-guide/









MIT Radar Lab Development WW II









https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/22/1104766/how-mits-rad-lab-rescued-d-day/









DOS









https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/definition/DOS









PDP-11









https://www.computercollection.net/index.php/pdp-11-family/









Playboy









https://www.playboy.com/









PDP-1









https://computerhistory.org/exhibits/pdp-1/









ed - The Unix Line Editor









https://medium.com/predict/using-ed-the-unix-line-editor-557ed6466660









MicroVax









https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/10535/Digital-MicroVAX-3100/









ChaosNet









https://chaosnet.net/









Vampire Tap









https://www.pcgamer.com/the-year-is-1983-and-im-about-to-vampire-tap-my-thick-ethernet/









MIT Project Athena









https://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-looking-back-project-athena-distributed-computing-for-students-1111









XWindows









https://www.x.org/wiki/









Windows 3.1









https://classicreload.com/win3x-windows-31.html









Windows 3..11









https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-3/311









FTP









https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/computer-science-fundamentals/file-transfer-protocol-ftp/









Teletype Model 33 ASR









https://www.curiousmarc.com/mechanical/teletype-asr-33









Boston Molasses Flood









https://www.boston.gov/news/100-years-ago-today-molasses-crashes-through-bostons-north-end









PDP-8









https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/minicomputers/11/331









Toll House Cookies









https://www.verybestbaking.com/toll-house/recipes/chocolate-chip-cookies/









Boston Bruins









https://www.nhl.com/bruins/









Hit Somebody (Song by Warren Zevon)









https://genius.com/Warren-zevon-hit-somebody-the-hockey-song-lyrics









Slapshot









https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/slap_shot









Skrewball Whiskey









https://www.skrewballwhiskey.com/









Chicago









https://www.chicago.gov/city/en.html






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NO NOTES




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This starts our look at the stories of the Second Doctor, portrayed by Patrick Troughton, during the 1960s.

The Second Doctor, Part 1


Patrick Troughton is the reason we are still talking about Doctor Who all these years later. He took over the lead role in a popular and successful show and continued the success. It might have been a disaster, but it wasn’t. And Troughton did not attempt to be another Hartnell, he had his own distinct way of playing the part. He established the principle that the personality of the Doctor changes when he (or she) regenerates. This made it much easier on all the actors who followed him in the role, and each one has been very distinctive in how they embodied the Doctor. Sadly, many of his episodes, and some complete stories, are missing now due to the short-sighted policy of the BBC the discard older shows, in many cases wiping video tapes for reuse. Of course, you can’t blame them too much since I doubt anyone in the 1960s would have believed that the show would still be going over 60 years later. But there is always hope that some more episodes will be recovered. There are people who collect old TV shows in various formats such as film and video tape, and it is virtually certain that some missing Doctor Who episodes still exist in private collectors’ hands, though how many is not known.

To take the place of the missing episodes we have reconstructions using telesnaps (photos taken of the monitor screen), animations, and for a few Troughton stories fans have re-staged the stories as stage plays. So there are ways to experience at least a little of these missing episodes. And even as I write this there are indications that more episodes may be found and returned to the BBC .

Troughton took over in the third story of Season 4, which aired in late 1966.

Power of the Daleks

This is the first story for Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, and starting with the Daleks was a smart move. They were so popular that they guaranteed a good audience and would get Troughton off to a good start. The TARDIS lands on a planet called Vulcan, where a scientist has found a derelict ship containing a few Daleks. He thinks he can bring them back to life, and won’t listen to the Doctor who tries to warn him. Meanwhile, rebels on Vulcan are trying to overthrow the government there. In the end, the scientist sacrifices himself to help stop the Daleks, the rebels succeed in overthrowing the fascist dictator, and all is well. For now. Ben and Polly are along as the companions continuing their stay on the TARDIS after starting with the First Doctor in the War Machines

This is one of the completely missing stories, but there is an animated version which is available on DVD, or you can watch it on YouTube.

The Highlanders

And another historical story, taking us to the Battle of Culloden in 1746, where the last gasp of the Jacobite rebellion was snuffed out by the English army. The TARDIS crew are first captured by the Scots, who are not kindly disposed to people who are obviously English. Then they are captured by the English, who have decided they are traitors and want to hang them. After various adventures, they get away, and bring with them a young Scottish lad named Jamie, who becomes the third member of the TARDIS team when he promises to teach the Doctor to play the bagpipes. An average historical story made memorable by the introduction of the next truly beloved companion, Jamie. He would stay with the Doctor all the way through the end of Troughton’s run, and is still in high demand as a guest at Doctor Who conventions around the world. He was not actually intended to be a companion at first. They had shot two endings, one where he joins the Doctor, and another where he is left in Scotland. They did decide to keep him, but in the next few stories, for which the scripts had already been written, he is less central to the plot and sometimes get lines originally written for another character.

This is another story where all of the episodes are missing, though there are reconstructions available.

The Underwater Menace

The TARDIS team arrives on an island formed by an extinct volcano, where they are brought underground to a sunken city. They are told that their arrival was foretold by the goddess of the city, and that they would be sacrificed. They are rescued by a scientist known to the doctor, but it turns out he has gone quite mad. The city is Atlantis, and he says he will raise it, but his plan involves blowing up everything with nuclear bombs. The underwater scenes of swimming ladies are quite hilarious, but it is an inventive little story. The scene of the mad scientist raging as he disappears under the water is pretty good too, in a campy way.

Early in Patrick Troughton’s run as The Doctor the show dropped much of the history and focused more on monsters and SF to compete with shows like Lost in Space and Land of the Giants.

This story is missing two of the 4 episodes, but reconstructions exist for the two missing episodes.

The Moonbase

The Cybermen are back, and this time they are attacking a base on the Moon. They have been infiltrating the base through a hole in a basement wall, which is where you scratch your head and wonder why the air doesn’t all leak out through this hole. And since the Cybermen are still significantly organic, how are they breathing in vacuum? Still, the Doctor puts the emphasis on science as the way to defeat them. The return of the Cybermen was sufficiently popular for them to become the acknowledged second best enemy of the Doctor, after the Daleks, of course. And as such they would come back again in several of the Troughton’s stories, and continued up to the present to be featured in Doctor Who.

This story is also missing two of its episodes, but they have been animated so you can get a decent experience of the story now. And there is at least one decent jump scare here.

The Macra Terror

The Macra made an appearance in the David Tennant story Gridlock, but this is where they began. The TARDIS materializes on a planet where a colony seems very happy, except for one malcontent who claims he has seen huge crab-like beings at night. Then the Doctor sees them as well, but no one else seems to notice them. It turns out these creatures are good at conditioning people to not see them, and to believe what they are told to believe. Ben ends up brainwashed by them, though the others escape this. And the colony is busily engaged in producing some kind of gas, and this turns out to be essential to the Macra. Oxygen is poisonous to them, they need the gas. Finally Ben breaks his conditioning and rescues the others, and the Macra are defeated. Why they reappeared in Gridlock was never clear to me, it looked like an Easter Egg for long-time fans that was never explained or justified.

This is another story that is missing all of its episodes in original form, but an animated version has been released, and is available on DVD and on YouTube.

The Faceless Ones

This is a very good, inventive story that purports to take place at Gatwick Airport, though it is of course not really shot there, but at a smaller place nearby. The TARDIS materializes there, and the first problem is that none of them have passports! This is the only thing matters to the immigration people at the airport. Meanwhile, something puzzling is going on with a company called Chameleon Tours. One young lady, played by Pauline Collins, is trying to find out what happened to her brother, who went on a tour with them, sent a postcard, and then vanished. It turns out that the folks running Chameleon Tours are an alien race of Shape-shifters, hence the “Faceless Ones”, who are kidnapping people to help repopulate their planet. The obvious plot hole is that this would involve repopulating with people, not Chamelelons, but never let that get in the way of what is otherwise a nice romp full of action and suspense. The production team was hoping to get Collins as a companion, but she turned them down. At the end, Ben and Polly take advantage of the fact they are on Earth at the proper time, and decide to leave the TARDIS and get on with their lives. So now only Jamie is left. I bet that won’t be true for long.

For this story 4 of the 6 episodes are missing, but again this is a story that got the complete animation treatment. You can purchase the DVD, or watch it on YouTube.

Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Troughton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Daleks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX1DN7yHneA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Highlanders_(Doctor_Who)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Underwater_Menace

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moonbase

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Macra_Terror

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unipaGm8Pbo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Faceless_Ones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovSHAcu7g4A

https://www.palain.com/science-fiction/intro-to-doctor-who/the-second-doctor-part-1/

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