Review by Michael Hickerson:

One of the major cliches of the Hartnell years is that you had guys dressed up in rubber monster suits, strutting around and acting threatening.

In The Rescue, David Whitaker takes that cliche and turns it on its ear. The Rescue is what I'd describe as one of the forgotten classics. Coming on the heels of Susan's emotional departure and the second Dalek story and right before the amusing events of The Romans, The Rescue is a quiet two-parter that introduces us to the new TARDIS crew member, Vicki. Vicki gets a strong introduction (it's too bad that later she'll become nothing more than a carbon copy of Susan) with some strong character moments by Whitaker.

But playing with conventions is the real strength of this story. Whitaker makes the bug-eyes monster seem very threatening and makes us truly dislike Koquillion. He is also able to mask fairly well that Bennett is Koquillion in disguise, hiding his secrets. It's nice to see the Doctor put all this together based on his previous experiences with the residents of Dido. It makes for an intriguing mystery and a nice resolution.

But as I said before, the strength here is characters. Vicki is nicely done, but even more striking is Hartnell's Doctor both in the script and his performances. We see the Doctor struggling with his loss of Susan in the previous episode. Hartnell brings an excellent touch to these scenes and his performance is remarkable. The scene in the TARDIS where he calls out to Susan to open the doors before he realizes she is actually gone is nicely done.

And the story does a good job of telling the story and then ending. One of my major problems with the Hartnell years is that some strories drag in spots and have excess padding to extend the episode count. Not so here. At two episodes, The Rescue is correct length to keep my interest up and me on the edge of my seat.