DOCTOR WHO: SEASON 19
Season 19 of Doctor Who ran between 4th January 1982 and 30th March 1982. It starred Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor, Matthew Waterhouse as Adric, Sarah Sutton as Nyssa and Janet Fielding as Tegan Jovanka. The season opened with Castrovalva and concluded with Time-Flight. It was released as a Blu-Ray box set in December 2018.
It consisted of seven serials and twenty-six episodes airing on a bi-weekly schedule. Two milestones occurred in Earthshock.
Firstly, the Cybermen returned, unannounced, for the first time since Revenge of the Cybermen in 1975 with a completely different design, with David Banks' first appearance as Cyber-Leader, a role he would return to in subsequent stories involving the Cybermen until Silver Nemesis. Secondly, for the first time since The Daleks' Master Plan which had aired in 1965 and 1966, a companion died.
Other milestones included Black Orchid, the first non-science fictional historical serial since 1966's The Highlanders, and the destruction of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver in The Visitation. A cliffhanger ending to the series appeared to have left Tegan stranded at Heathrow Airport with the Doctor abandoning her by mistake.
The Doctor had spent most of the series trying to get Tegan back to Heathrow, which almost became a running theme.
Originally, this series was going to have twenty-eight episodes- two more than normal. However, John Nathan-Turner used two of the allocated episodes for A Girl's Best Friend, the failed pilot to K9 and Company.
With this season, the BBC returned the series to a mid-winter season start, which had last been done for Season 12 and had been the format throughout the Jon Pertwee era.
