FTA: Doctor Who Classic: Spearhead From Space, The Androids of Tara, Full Circle and Logopolis

This second volume of articles from Celebrate, Regenerate! covers the Third and Fourth Doctors. (See here for more on this project.)

Spearhead From Space (120 Words)

(Main article.)

Spearhead From Space is the definition of an archetypal Doctor Who story, and it defines the Tom Pertwee era almost as much as Inferno and Planet of the Spiders simply through a combination of luck, skill and what really feels like hard work. The story’s greatest blessing comes directly from the initial strike which prevented them from using video, and while it does start the Colour Era off very grainily, it also makes sure that the beginning of Pertwee’s time on the program looks and feels epic. Adding to that is the absolute wunderkind that is Robert Holmes, whose script mixes humour, scares and interesting concepts to provide not only a great opener, but also a monster that would be remembered by children around the country for the rest of their lives. 

The Androids of Tara

(Main article.)

So often these days, The Doctor is off saving the Universe time and time again. I remember the good old days. When The Doctor wasn’t saving a galaxy, or even a planet, but a small feudal kingdom on a planet of humanlike aliens far away from everything we know. The Androids of Tara, a barefaced if loving adaptation of The Prisoner of Zenda, takes Doctor Who the furthest it has ever been into the realm of fantasy, facing us with Princes, Princesses, Counts and Peasants, as well as the odd robot dog. What I love most about Androids is simply that the story not only adapts the fantasy setting to a more Doctor Who world, but that the transition is completely seamless. Only Doctor Who could take entire scenes from another work word for word and mess around with it enough for it to feel like a bona-fide Who classic.

     The story’s most memorable feature is by far the erstwhile Count Grendel, a villain whose villainy extends to such epic proportion that by the end he’s given up all pretence and is simply telling the officials around him to abide by his evil plans for the sake of common decency. His goatee, his incredibly potent voice – Grendel is, after maybe Count Scarlioni, one of the Classic Series’ most fun standalone villains simply for how much he gets away with. My favourites of his scenes are the scene in which he casually tells the Archimandrite that he needs a Wedding, a Funeral and another Wedding in quick succession, and his final words – “Next time, I will not be so lenient!”

     The story also allows us some fun with doppelgangers, allowing Mary Tamm a whopping four credits as Romana, Princess Strella and the android duplicates of both. Luckily, the story avoids playing this device for comedy, and thus it’s an actual shock when The Doctor appears to strike Romana down at the end of part Two. On that. This story’s cliffhangers are great too. First our heroes randomly start to fall unconscious, then The Doctor bludgeons Romana in the back of the head, and then Grendel manages to steal Romana from under The Doctor’s nose. It all ties together to produce a story that, while derivative in the extreme, is fun from start to finish in all of the good ways. 

Full Circle

(Main article.)

My first encounter with this story came due to the wondrous popularity of my name, which informed me as a child that this was the story that apparently I had written. That had always made me excited to see it, even when I learnt about (and experienced) Adric’s bad turns. For me, this was a sign that surely this JNT guy was great – hey, he allowed fans to write for the series. I think I secretly hoped that one day I’d be able to write for the revived series, and while that hasn’t quite come true I do spend a lot of my free time writing articles, like this, about my favourite TV show.

     What, then, of the story? What Full Circle does exceedingly well is to take a sci-fi idea and make it work in lots of different directions. The story’s main boasting point (and its biggest spoiler, don’t say I didn’t warn you) is the reveal near the end, where it’s discovered that the suspiciously-human-looking Alzarians are not the descendants of settlers from Terradon, but instead the hyper-evolved descendants of the planets’ native Marshmen, who had rushed to fill in the void when the crew of the Terradonian ship had died. There are subtle hints as to this throughout the story, presenting the idea of hyper-evolution and, unlike a lot of its bedfellows in Season 18, executing it properly.

     The story’s biggest contribution to the series is probably Adric, named after influential particle-physicist Paul Dirac (who predicted the existence of Antimatter) and possibly one of the least-liked companions in the show’s history. Of course most people will tell you that he’s not as bad as the stereotype says, and I’m one of those people. Despite how whiney and annoying he can be sometimes, at heart Adric is just a perfect representation of a troubled teenage boy trying to fit in. He’s flawed, sure, but those flaws fluctuated with his writers and in his initial story he’s actually one of the highlights.

     Narratively, Full Circle presents a strange turn for Classic Who, at least in this stage of its life. Two seasons prior had seen a big arc in the form of The Key To Time, but this was the first time that a narrative arc (or, more commonly for the JNT Era, a trilogy) had been dropped in the middle of a season. I’m strange, really, in that I think that Full Circle is perhaps the most entertaining story of the three in the E-Space Trilogy. It has cool monsters, an interesting and well-executed sci-fi idea, and proof of sorts that fans can actually write good Doctor Who. Which is always a nice thing to hear.

Logopolis
(Main article.)

It was the end of an era that had lasted seven years. The Tom Baker years are often heralded as the show’s Golden Age, featuring classics like Genesis of the Daleks, The Pyramids of Mars, The Hand of Fear and The City of Death. It’s strange then, that Baker’s final story in the role doesn’t hearken back to those halcyon days but instead chooses to look forward to the style that would be prevalent in the rest of the JNT era.
     The first outing of the Ainley Master shows off both sides of his character – the cackling, scheming madman and the clueless panto villain. One gets the feeling that this Master has bitten off more than he can chew, but he always manages to adapt his schemes to cause the most pain and suffering as is possible. In fact, going by death count, this accidental scheme is the Master’s most profitable, managing to destroy one quarter of the entire Universe. It’s amazing how his first serial manages to be so representative of his tenure – bumbling and incompetent most of the time, but dangerous when he manages to succeed.

     Logopolis is rather unique, in a way. There’s no setup, no normal, “The Doctor lands on planet X, meets villain Y, defeats villain Y and pops on his way.” No, the story (for the most part) feels a lot more fluid and refreshing. And while in some parts this manifests as Tegan trying to blow up a spare tyre, elsewhere it provides insights into The Doctor and Adric’s characterisations. This structure provides the story with that unique feeling that Tom’s swan-song needs, as well as facilitating the wonderful sense of forboding that the character of The Watcher creates.
     Important to note is that Logopolis not only ends the Tom Baker era, but also the wonderful Season 18. I like the storyline running through the season, but I tend to get bogged down when it comes to the individual story. Bidmead’s vast supply of technobabble doesn’t make this story any different, but what it does do is tie together the season’s themes of entropy and loss together into a single thesis.
     And so the era of Tom Baker is over. But don’t worry. For the moment has been prepared for, especially by JNT. At the end of this story, the TARDIS is stuffed with three companions, two of which have arrived somewhat traditionally and one which doesn’t really need to be here. Together, they advance into Doctor Who’s uncertain future – the true beginning of Eighties Who. It may be the end of one era. But there’s another still to come.

Thanks

Overview: Doctor Who: The Tom Baker Era

Baker in one of his numerous publicity shoots.
From hdwallpapers

Written between the 8th and 10th August 2013.

It's a common occurance in the popular culture that surrounds Doctor Who to say that while there have been a whole host of interesting Doctors and personalities, the one that will always stick out in the public consciousness will be Tom Baker. This was ensured by his charm, iconic style and ridiculous longevity with the program, with a tenure whose length gives credence to the claims by Tennant and Smith that if they didn't leave after four years, they'd have to be forced out. All this I knew at the beginning of my topsy turvey runthrough of his era, and while I cannot describe why he was so successful in any particularly innovative terms, I can talk about my experiences with that performance.
      The immediate, striking thing about any T.Baker story is the sheer enthusiasm that he brings to the role in pretty much every story (the exceptions coming a little later on in Season 18, when he was grouchy about leaving.) This enthusiasm translated into scripted word means wit, charm and tomfoolery, but the remarkable thing throughout that is that despite this creeping level of genericness that really does bolt up as his era goes along, there's still a deeper character to his Doctor. I think this reaches its pinacle in Season 16, where his fallibility and personal arrogance at their most apparent, and yet not in any way which makes us stop loving him. That genericness does however mean that he rarely has any "raising power" - he delivers the same enthusiastic and witty performance week-in-week-out, so no matter how enjoyable it may be on a bse level it never factors into a story's overall quality.
     I think the best way to tackle Four's seven-year era will be to differentiate between the three different producers he had. Here goes.

The Doctor and Sarah Jane were a fun combination.
From the BBC.

Phillip Hinchcliffe (and Robert Holmes) - Seasons 12-14

The Hinchcliffe and Holmes era, often proclaimed a Golden Age, was one that I found rather here nor there. While I enjoyed the interconnectivity of the initial six serials layed down by the previous production team, I found that the moment the duo actually started working the stories became all-over rather tedious. The so called "Classics" of this era often left me feeling high and dry, the worst offender being Pyramids of Mars which is just so, so uneventful and hollow of theme that there's nothing really for me to latch on to. The theme of re-appropriating Gothic themes and ideas as well as Hammer Horror plotting did nothing for me - I want innovation and new ideas. By the time Leela arrived I was getting into things, but the horrendous Talons of Weng-Chiang saw everything I didn't like about this era amplified a thousandfold with a dollop of racism left over.
     This era had three companions; Sarah-Jane, Harry and Leela. Harry was a throwback to the UNIT era, and annoyed me for a while, with his openly sexist opinions that never actually changed throughout his time on the series.  Sarah-Jane continued over from the Pertwee era, and I grew attached to her as time went on despite the fact that increasingly, her role was deviating from the strong feminist that we'd been introduced to and into a more traditional and problematic damsel in distress. Her departure in The Hand of Fear was handled with effortless poignancy and it did bring me to tears, I'm happy to say.
    My favourite story of the Hinchcliffe era is The Deadly Assassin from Season 14, with honourable mentions in each season for The Android Invasion and The Sontaran Experiment. These three embodied a sense of fun while still telling a very well-crafted story, especially Assassin, which slickly introduces the entirety of Gallifreyan Society and also has some fun Matrix action which allows for all sorts of interesting imagery. My least favourite story of the era is most definitely The Talons of Weng-Chiang, which is racist, over-long and showcases a bland, shouty villain who goes around killing under-age girls. Fucking unpleasant.

Get away, Casual Rascism! From taliesinttlg

     Despite my ragings, I do think that Hinchcliffe and Holmes were a skilled team of men. A lot of the stories are certainly written in a dramatic style which in any other series would make me really happy. Robert Holmes especially proved time and time again in Who that he could write stories which had fun characters, dark themes and background messages to agree or disagree with. It just feels like none of these talents are on display during this era, where the vast majority of the stories appeal to bland melodrama. I'll never really get why this era is so highly praised, and I still can't take seriously those who claim that Talons is the best story in Doctor Who.

Graham Williams (and Robert Holmes, Anthony Read and Douglas Adams) - Seasons 15-17

A bit different. I can't really think of a single "era" in Who which is more varied across its duration than the Graham Williams years, lurching back and forwards between competency. Season 15 is a bad pick-up from the previous era which lingers for a while and only demonstrates its own themes with stories which suffer from ridiculous budgetary constraints. Season 16 is exceedingly well-done throughout and is in fact my favourite season of Tom Baker. And Season 17, overseen by Douglas Adams as script editor, is my least favourite as its poor attempts at comedy attempt to cover bad writing. I still enjoy this era a hell of a lot more than I do the previous one, though, so there's something to be said for that.
      This era had four companions - Leela, K9 (who differs little between his two incarnations so I won't split them) and the two incarnations of Romana. Leela was an interesting concept and yet another attempt to move away from Damsel In Distress. While I feel that her character was done well initially, the factor of plot convenience meant that she often knew too much or too little, meaning that her character never underwent a smooth development - not helped by her crappy ending, which is the worst companion exit in colourised Who. The two Romanas are both interesting characters, with Mary Tamm's first incarnation being my favourite. Both of them are smart and snarky and don't tend to fall into the "just there to scream and ask questions" mould, even if the writers really failed to write them in a way which didn't do that to them.

Baker's madcap antics didn't help the poor Season 17.
From Wikia

     My favourite story of the era is The Androids of Tara, for reasons which I've already gone on and on about, with the honourable mentions from the other two seasons being the dry satire of The Sun Makers and Destiny of the Daleks. While on average I enjoyed this era more than the previous, it does have much lower lows, and I can confidently say that my least favourite story in the entire Tom Baker era is the pathetic Horns of Nimon, which astounds me not just by the budgetary constraints but how little effort seems to have been put into the script. (With a dishonourable mention to the unbearable Underworld, which I didn't actually manage to finish.)
     I really don't think that the Williams' era had a clear direction - whatever needed to be done to keep the show afloat, I guess. It did suffer from severe budget and production problems in both Seasons 15 and 17, especially with the unfinished Shada and the hubub that preceded it. While the Key To Time arc was a stroke of genius that gave them a run of six brilliant serials all tied together in a neat little bow, it was lightning in a bottle and they didn't do anything to help the lack of consistency that the era, with its constantly changing parameters, really struggled with.

John Nathan Turner (and Christopher Hamilton Bidmead) - Season 18

As you're probably aware if you were on my blog in 2012, my favourite part of Doctor Who as a whole is the JNT era, and Season 18 is a great part of that, even if it's imbued with a sombreness that doesn't fit in well either with the rest of Tom Baker's run or with what would follow. As I already said at the end of that year, Tom's final season felt a little boring in some of the stories because it had the opposite problem to a lot of the stories in the Hinchcliffe Era - the grand ideas and plots were there, but the characterisation wasn't. Add in the fact that the Tardis is loaded with companions and that JNT's main focus was on bringing Peter Davison into the fore, and you get a season with a grouchy lead and stories that suffer slightly because of it. If you want a longer article about this season, look here.

Gotta love these two excited lovebirds.
From Den of Geek

Conclusion

The Tom Baker era was big and varied, held together only by the immense charm (and behind-the-scenes narcissism) of its main star. At times it was big, bold and innovative and in others it was derivative, boring, bland and embarrassing. But it managed to get the balance of the two just right enough to influence a generation of kids and to bring Doctor Who into the public eye as an icon of British culture. For me? It's just that period of the show that everyone really seems to like but that, except for one season and a few other stories, I'm really just not that into. My runthrough of Season 12-16 lasted for about three months of my life, and has been published across six of them. At times I've loved it, other times I've hated it, but it's been a blast and I'm sad to say that I've no more new stories from this era to watch.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Jon Pertwee time, as I go back to finish Season 7 with The Ambassadors of Death.

Overview: Doctor Who Classic: Season 16

Doctor Who - Season 16
Written 7/8/13

It's so tempting for me to go off on a ramble about the Tom Baker era. It's very long, and compared to the Doctors I'm used to there's a bloody lot of it. I have to keep this article contained, however, to the sixteenth season. Not difficult, of course, as Graham Williams' second and much more successful season as producer offers up a lot to talk about in the way that it basically innovated Doctor Who from the ground up. That's probably hyperbole, I'm sure - most of what I say is, so you should be used to that. What I mean by that is a bit more subtle - the idea that a Doctor Who story could effectively throw together humour and horror, the profound and the trivial, the political and the anarchistic. All of this season's stories manage to do that to some degree, and for six stories in a row I think that's fantastic.

A typical Season 16 Tardis scene.
From houseofgeekery

      This season's TARDIS team is a rather unique one. The Doctor and Romana I have this sizzling chemistry and are bounced off of one another exceedingly well, resulting in both having much rounder characters when together than when apart. Romana's pomposity and wit highlights The Doctor's madcap craziness and lack of common sense at times, while his love of the bohemian enlightens her to the wider universe outside of what she learnt stuck on Gallifrey. All of their scenes are just so remarkably well written that the entire season benefits from it, with this continuous relationship developing between the two as they go along, to the point where Romana is more than happy to go off adventuring with The Doctor once their season-long task is finished.
      Not that Romana I is perfect, mind you. She did come fourth on my "Five Favourite Companions" list, and that was only after seeing a single serial of hers. Mary Tamm was only in the role for a year, and it all boiled down to the common perception of Who companions as nothing more than Damsels In Distress. After Jo Grant in the early 70s, an attempt was made by several production teams to create female characters that avoided it - Sarah Jane was a strong feminist, Leela was a proud warrioress, and Romana was The Doctor's intellectual equal (or even superior at times.) The problem with all of them is that a few of the writers didn't really know how to write anything else to provide tension in the story, and so Romana especially ends up kidnapped and screaming on several occasions throughout the season, the most egregious being that cliffhanger in The Power of Kroll. This basically pissed off Mary Tamm to the point where she left the series, which is a damn shame as I loved her version of the character.
      That is, thankfully, my only problem with the season in terms of characterisation. The season was also pretty awesome plot-wise too, with the Key To Time arc being rather wonderfully integrated into things from the outset. It provides a convenient motivation and drive in every story as the couple look for the segment, and yet manages to stay far enough away from things to present us with a brand new society every serial. The Stones of Blood apart, every single story provides us with an interesting alien society and all of the dilemmas that go with them, from Douglas Adams' incredibly literal Pirate Planet to Robert Holmes' squid-infested Delta III. Plus, the budget seems a bit better utilised than Season 15, as everything simply looks more dazzling - and I'm including the Swampies in that.

The completed Key. And Tom Baker.
From cathoderaytube

      My favourite story of the season was The Androids of Tara. Of course I'm going to say that, it's the one I saw before all of the others, it was the one I reviewed back in 2010. In fairness, it is the lightest of the six stories and throws off completely into fantasy territory, which is probably what endeared it so much to me. Of the others, I'd probably pick... you know, I'd actually pick The Power of Kroll, for the audacity of managing to fit a 50 foot squid into a Doctor Who story and making it work. With a race parallel. That's some damn-good writing right there. My least favourite, which on this sole occasion is no great dishonour as the whole season's brilliant, is most likely The Ribos Operation, which despite being brilliantly written by Robert Holmes does I feel lose focus at the end in terms of the plot. (But not the characterisation, which is better than everywhere else. This is hard.)
     The Key To Time arc is fantastic, simply fantastic. Like I think I said at the end of my Armegeddon Factor review (which I should remember because I only wrote it a few hours ago), this is the only Tom Baker season where I like every story without fail. That arrives due to a combination of a genius character dynamic between two very well-written characters, a central arc which gives each story independant motivation while still driving towards a satisfying endpoint, and basic good writing which allowed six independant tales to work their way out of a pre-existing narrative framework. The Key To Time isn't perfect - I'd never be so confident as to say that - but it is my favourite season in the big wide Tom Baker era.
    Talking of that... I'll see you next Monday.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Armageddon Factor

The Doctor oversees war on Atrios.
From doctorwhoreviews

Doctor Who - Season 16, Story Six - The Armageddon Factor
Written 7/8/13

My look at the Tom Baker era, as well as the Key To Time arc, ends in a suitably climactic way. This was the final six-part story, and it was given the dual role of presenting a set of conflicts in its own right and in ending the Key To Time arc after twenty or so weeks. This would, for the sake of my purposes, be the perfect time to have a colossal fuck-up. But, I am forever to be denied, and thus I can say that Season 16 is the first (and thus the only) season of Tom Baker's era where I love every story.
      I will say that this story does lead us down the garden path quite a bit. It begins its life like the other five segments, setting out the warring twin planets of Atrios and Zeos and the arsey general who manipulates the situation in order to get rid of his troublesome pacifist royalty, the Princess Astra (Hi Lalla Ward!). The action shifts from the politics of interplanetary nuclear war to the real threat - the Shadow, an admittedly bland villain who acts as the hand of the Black Guardian, and goes out of his way to retrieve the first five pieces. He reveals rather late in the game that the sixth piece is Princess Astra herself. Trapped in his grasp, the two Time Lords rely on fellow renegade Time Lord Drax in order to escape, thereafter facing down a disguised Black Guardian and scattering the pieces throughout time again to prevent any being from holding as much power as it contains.
      Scriptwise, there are very few beats of this story that don't feel necessary. It really is one of the most tightly written six-parters I've ever seen, the introduced worlds of Atrios and Zeos forming the vital backdrop for each of The Doctor and The Shadow's power plays. I adore the misdirection in the way the early serial is structured and that one or two episodes on Atrios allows the six parter more flaviour instead of just being a showdown between The Doctor, The Black Guardian and their respective allies. Further, the unfolding mystery surrounding the planet and its state of warfare actually served as a character profile of the Black Guardian, a semi-detailed model of his eventual plans.

The Doctor ponders over the complete Key To Time.
From karracrow

      In terms of whether it was a satisfying end or not... I thought it was great! Everything that needed to be said was said, with a quick message thrown in along side it about taoism and the balance of all things. I suppose the serial's villains were pretty monotonous, what with the Shouty Marshall, the Shouty Shadow and then the Normal Volume Black Guardian. However, their manipulations are sophisticated enough to prove interesting, even the Marshall, who manages to work The Doctor and Romana into a position where their guilt appears undeniable within five minutes of them showing up. It was a testament to all of the great villainry this season, and a testament to Four in the way that this week, his character just isn't taking any shit.
     The final story of the Key To Time season and, indeed, of my Tom Baker runthrough, is an extraordinary one which, despite its humble trappings, manages to finish the season in fine form. It may appear strange on its own as the conclusion to five other stories and I don't think it quite works without them, but even so there's a level of skill in the way the script is written that makes it immensely rewatchable, from the oh-shit realisation of The Shadow's grand-plan to the laughs at the expense of the charming cockney Time Lord Drax. This was to be Anthony Read's last story as script-editor, to be replaced by Douglas Adams in the unfortunate Season 17, as well as the final story for the late Mary Tamm as the brilliant, brilliant Romana I. It seems fitting that I must now wave a fond farewell to Four's era. It's really been a blast.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: I write an essay-like thing about all seven years of Four's Era. 

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Power of Kroll

Kroll appears and starts attacking stuff.
From Wikia

Doctor Who - Season 16, Story Five - The Power of Kroll
Written 7/8/13

Aaaaaaand we're five-for-five this season as Robert Holmes follows up his excellent season premier with a story that combines racial analogues with B-movie horror stylings to create a serial which is somehow simultaneously tediously serious and completely and utterly barmy. This season is really turning out to be a cracking one, as even though my expectations of a story with a name that sounds like a bad Sy-Fy movie weren't exactly high, I was shown to be wrong in a number of extravagant and at times hilarious ways.
     The Doctor lands on the third moon of Delta Magna, a far-future human colony made up of swampland and inhabited mainly by the green-skinned swampies, a race of tribal peoples whom humanity pushed from their homeworld below and now treat as slaves. When The Doctor and Romana arrive, refinery Captain Thawn has manipulated the native Swampies, arming them in order to give him a reason to wipe them out while simultaneously discrediting the humanitarian organisations opposing his work on the moon. The Swampies believe that their god, Kroll, wishes to sacrifice Romana and The Doctor, but the two Time Lords work out that the real Kroll, a 50 foot giant squid who subsequently attacks both Swampie and Human, was a normal squid who swallowed the fifth segment of the Key To Time - a fact which allows The Doctor to save the day in style and retrieve the segment.
     Robert Holmes uses the character of Thawn and his very human colleagues to create a racial analogue, comparing the uprooted Swampies to, for example, the indigenous population of the Americas, as well as taking a larger stab at British colonialism overall. Thawn's casual attitude towards the genocide of sentient beings means that while the Swampies do spend 90% of the story attempting to kill our protagonists, one is constantly wondering who the villain is. When Kroll arrives, and his arrival is spectacular (and actually quite well-done if you ask me), the pressure he puts on the situation forces the characters to reveal their true colours in what felt like a very realistic manner. Such is the wonderful subtlety in Holmes' scripts.

It's better than it looks, I swear.
From classicalgallifrey

     There are times when the story dips its damp green toes into the realm of absurdity. The first cliffhanger highlights the problem that a lot of the script-writers had with Romana in that they really didn't know how to wrtie a companion who didn't get into trouble, leading to her being tied up and sacrificed with some of the worst and most painful screaming from a companion this side of Melanie Bush. Not to mention that the "Kroll" who is ravaging her is in fact, in-story, a man in a fucking squid suit, which while being remarkably cheeky and metatextual, makes Romana's ridiculous screaming all the more egregious. There's also the solution to the Doctor and Romana's captivity in the third episode, in which The Doctor breaks a window to allow in a convenient storm by shrieking in a high pitch.
      Taken for all of its various values, The Power of Kroll is an enjoyable and engrossing story that actually manages to pull off an "attack of the 50 foot whatever" story that is simulatenously meaningful and entertaining beyond the spectacle of seeing green-skinned men being dragged off by long plastic tentacles. The story's absurdities are few and far between enough to become part of the serial's charm, and the overall effect is immediately both memorable for the right reasons and for the wrong ones. I get the impression that this story isn't liked in fandom for some reason, but for me it's just as good as its four predecessors and I look forward to seeing this season's conclusion.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: The Key To Time reaches its end and I reach my final Tom Baker story as we meet Lalla Ward in The Armageddon Factor

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Androids of Tara (Revisited)

See here for my previous look at this story.

Count Grendel "saves" Romana and carries her off.
From doctorwhoreviews.

Doctor Who - Season 16, Story Four - The Androids of Tara (Revisited)
Written 5/8/13
"Oh do stop being so tediously heroic, my dear fellow."

Well, I'm already biased. Then again, it's sorta the point of this site for me to be biased, so I guess that's fine. I just really see no way in which anyone could dislike this story. I mean, no offence, but unless you're a hardcore member of the Prisoner of Zenda appreciation society I really think that this story has everything you could ask for in a Doctor Who story, with heaps of charm to top it off. I think one of the reasons that I love it so much is that it's a proof-of-concept of sorts for what Doctor Who is - after a few seasons of alternating between grey spacecraft and scenes in southern England, we're thrown into a lush Medieval fantasy setting that takes itself entirely seriously.
     My love for the story has certainly grown over the years, and that's not due to any unforeseen subtlety in a script but rather an appreciation of how simply the story gets things done. The whole-plot reference to another work, The Prisoner of Zenda, fits the serial with a more conventional act structure, and as a result we actually get a satisfying beginning, middle and end instead of the typically rushed resolutions that are far too common in Classic Who. Of course I usually wouldn't abide by such a premise, but the simple fact is that David Fisher adapts it to the point where you'd be surprised that it's anything other than a standard Doctor Who runaround.
     And those adaptations are mainly to do with the way that one person can become two. Whereas the original story had the King replaced by his nigh-identical cousin, this serial uses the idea of androids and adapts that to the setting to create a rather wonderful society in which the peasantry are adept with futuristic technologies and the upper classes prefer electro-shock swords. Thanks to the presence of Romana, we do get a set of randomly identical characters, as well as their android doubles, meaning that all in all there are four roles for Mary Tamm to play and two roles for exquisite guest actor Neville Jason. Despite the overreliance on that one doppelganger trick, it never really breaks unless you look at it for too long, and carries the serial well.

Sorry, can't review this story without the Taran Wood Beast.
From the BBC.

     Talking of exquisite guest casts, this episode has one. While the aforementioned Neville Jason is tickety boo as the erudite and noble Prince Reynhart, the star of the serial is Peter Jeffrey's Count Grendel, who is without a doubt my favourite Classic Series villain for the sheer audacity of his bastardry. The part is played with just the right mix of ham and charm (not a good sandwich combination), and the script gives him some absolute crackers to work with. My favourite moment of his is either the finale scene, in which he finishes his epic swordfight with The Doctor with the line, "Next time, I will not be so lenient!" and then gracefully jumping into the Castle Moat, or the scene in which he casually informs his minister that he will need a wedding, a funeral for the groom and a second wedding for the widow.
     Just as The Doctor expresses his desire to take a break from the search, a break from the search he gets. The arc in this story has a very marginal role, with the finding and collecting done in the first five minutes and the rest of the story the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time - taking these two intergalactic travellers and driving them to help solve the affairs of a single monarchy on a single, relatively primitive planet. It was more focused on enjoying itself with it's own concept, and with acting of this calibre and a script which manages to be both effortlessly epic and witty, I really can't find anything at all to fault with this story. Except the Taran wood beast. But I'm sure we've all forgotten about that.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: We meet a giant squid as we awe at The Power of Kroll.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Stones of Blood

Amelia is more than capable of handling Rocks.

Doctor Who - Season 16, Story Three - The Stones of Blood
Written 5/8/13

Hurrah! We've reached the 100th Doctor Who story, even if we've gone about it in a way which is certainly topsy turvey. It's also by far the best story of this season, although with the levels of quality so far this is quite exciting. Seeing as I've seen next week's story before, I can now say that Season 16 is four-for-four. The Stones of Blood has a clever script which emphasises a few key characterisations very well to create a mixture of genuine mystery and appreciable humour. There really is no other story I can think of that could ever make me take lumps of rock seriously as enemies...
      The search for the third segment of The Key To Time brings an excited Doctor to 1970s England, where archeologist Amelia tells them about the mysterious set of "travelling" stones from an ancient stone circle, and the local cult that worships there. Amelia's friend, Miss Vivian Fey, is discovered to be 4000 years old, an alien fugitive who escaped her captors and has been using silicon-based life forms, the vampirific rock-shaped Ogri, to do her dirty work. The Doctor is forced to find her prison ship and then must argue for his life in order to halt his own execution and to find the third segment, which is the necklace which hangs around Fey's neck.
     Beatrix Lehmann's Amelia Rumford is a constant presence throughout the story, and delivers the vast majority of its charm as she is faced with The Doctor and Romana's world and is principle in helping them defeat Fey and the Ogri. The character created by David Fisher is one with an intangible sense of the personable, and along with the greats like Duggan and Jago, she is one of this era's best guest characters. Most of all, she provides the medium through which the story explores both The Doctor and Romana's interactions with Earth (this being the first real case where a visit to Earth isn't a "trip home" for the companion).

The Doctor and Romana talk with shiny alien policemen.

     To be honest the serial isn't very even in tone, with the first half feeling a lot more similar to the gothic stories of old and the latter two feeling more of the contemporary style, not helped by the Megara, the justice robots who hold The Doctor's trial in the last two episode, turning what was initially a dark horror story about sentient rocks which feed off of human blood into a futuristic space opera in which The Doctor must prove the crimes of an alien responsible for grand espionage. That's probably what saved it though, as the blatant melodrama that trickles through the first two episodes' cult scenes is often a lot for me to take, even as someone who's usually all for chewing the scenery.
     The Stones of Blood is just enjoyable - everything is done right, and in a way that is still memorable and fun. A story like this in the previous seasons would have maybe left me rather bored, but a combination of good circumstances pulled it through - good use of K9 for once, a great guest character in the form of Amelia and the binding presence of the Key To Time arc to give our characters purpose and meaning. More amazingly, all of these things allowed me to like a story from a Doctor Who genre that I typically have no time for. And, you know, I love it when a story does something like that. I really do.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: We revisit Tara as we fight evil counts, okay split-screen effects and terrible Taran beasts. It's The Androids of Tara.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Pirate Planet

The Captain and The Doctor have a faceoff.
From Dailypop

Doctor Who - Season 16, Story Two - The Pirate Planet
Written 4/8/13

I sorta shat all over Season 17, the succeeding season to this one which was watched over by the amazing Douglas Adams and which... wasn't very good. His first story for the show, though, is this week's story, and his trademark style of ascerbic wit and a healthy level of occupational absurdity and satire. The Pirate Planet is everything I would have wanted Adams' season to be, and I'm torn between wondering at the efficiency of the script and wondering what the hell went wrong in the following year.
     The Doctor and Romana continue on their quest and, when trying to land on the planet Calufrax, land on the planet Zanak instead, where an "always rich" economy is run by the insane cyborg known only as The Captain. They end up caught in his machinations, helping the rebel Mentiads who have psychic powers - powers derived from the planet's secret. The planet Zanak has a Tardis-esque transmat system which it uses to teleport around and then crush other planets for their mineral wealth and energy, no matter the living population. The Doctor faces The Captain and finds an elaborate system of crushed planets in a gravitational harmony, whose purpose, it turns out, is as a failsafe against the evil Queen who has been orchestrating all of his plans in order to keep herself alive forever. Suffice to say that everything goes to pot and The Doctor saves the people of Zanak (and of Earth and other planets) from their reign, with the crushed remains of Calufrax providing the second segment of the Key To Time.
     The script embodies The Captain with an almost paradoxical mixture of enjoyable Ham and situational wit, making him a constant source of laughs both intentional and otherwise (although it's probably all intentional knowing Douglas Adams.) The scene where he shows off his gallery of crushed planets is one of my favourites in Classic Who, as Tom Baker plays up Four's anger at the loss of so many lives so brilliantly that it's sorta chilling. "What's it FOR?". I was a little slow in realising the episode's main use of him as a very fun Doctor Who twist on the Pirate genre, especially with his robotic parrot and the third episode cliffhanger which sees him force The Doctor to walk the plank.

The Gestalt Mentiads
From Wikia

     Like last week, there were some allegories flying around the place, but they were never the most important thing, even though they were, for the first episode at least, much highlighted. We are taught by one of the older characters all of the lies and legends spread by The Captain and his queen in order to maintain order, with rebellious characters then questioning the status quo and fighting for science. It felt like allegory for the sake of allegory, there was no real follow-up besides the comedic value of seeing the true irony behind all of the superstitions later on in the story.
     Douglas Adams' first take on both Doctor Who and on the pirate genre is a spectacular event of a story, in which the twists and turns unfold as quickly as The Doctor can fire Adams' amazing quips. It's a firm continuation for the season so far, and its focus on comedy while still providing good ideas is just what good Doctor Who feels like. The relationship between The Doctor and Romana is continuing to shine, the whole Key To Time arc thing is working out brilliantly as a plot device and so far, this season is two for two.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: We meet silicon-based vampires in 1970s England, in The Stones of Blood.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Ribos Operation

Romana and The Doctor get on like a house on fire. Eventually.
From The BBC.

Doctor Who - Season 16, Story One - The Ribos Operation
Written 3/8/13

After the disappointment of the previous season, the new production team wanted to make a definite change. To this effect they threw in what was for the time a heap of innovation, hiring a bunch of new writers and organising the season around a single thread which would facilitate the randomness of The Doctor's travels quite neatly. The result is the Key To Time Arc, the first of the Classic Series' deliberate arcs and the only one not to be produced by JNT. The Ribos Operation was tasked with the dual purpose of introducing this premise as well as balancing a new glorious companion and a decent worldbuilding exercise. Despite all that could go wrong, nothing really does, and that is an achievement in itself.
     The Doctor is tasked by God The White Guardian to traverse the Universe and find the six parts of The Key to Time, an ancient artefact with tremendous powers so great that it had to be scattered across the cosmos. Given to him as an assistant is Romanadvoratrelundar, later known simply as Romana, in her first incarnation (we met her second when I reviewed Seasons 17 and 18 a few Winters back.) whom he has a snarky relationship with due to her snobbery and simple lack of awe at The Doctor's life acheivements. They follow the tracer to Ribos, a primitive planet who follow Antiquity-esque superstitions. Conmen Garron and Unstoffe pretend to be selling the planet off to exiled tyrant Graff Vynda-K, who soon turns the tables on them when The Doctor and Romana's attempts to gain the piece go awry.
     The Doctor and Romana's relationship is one that undergoes a surprisingly fast level of development, and yet not in such a way as to feel unrealistic. It's exceptionally well done and mirrors certain sitcoms, where development like this is very important. From the off their relationship, while rusty, has a magnetic quality that is immensely watchable - mostly provided by the clear chemistry between an already-tired-looking Baker and the late Mary Tamm, whose charm and grace in the role earnt her a spot on my list of favourite companions. My favourite scenes are those near the beginning, in which the flirting/quibbling between the two is at its most electric.

The Doctor is given his mission by The White Guardian.
From Wikimedia

     The society of Ribos is less well-explored than I had hoped, but this is more than made up for by a confident set of guest characters, all of whom are played without a dull note. Villain Graff is played with a sublte balance between serious acting and standard Ham, which was enough to make me like him, and the two conmen managed to follow the "heart of gold" trope rather well as they became the sympathisable party somewhere between the second and third episodes. It was quite an odd story, in that the most memorable characters were not those native to the serial's setting, with the sole exception of Binro, a "heretic" whose Galillean story is used to explore Ribos' native superstitions.
    The change from the previous few serials couldn't be more apparant. Here is a story with a great deal of confidence in its own ideas, and the charm to back them up. It wasn't trying to be particularly high concept, and I think some of the writing surrounding Ribos and its people got a little lost in the mix of memorable guest characters. But the overall effect was to push The Doctor and his new companion into the spotlight, where they shined brighter than ever and, through some very well-done characterisation, created one hell of a good Tardis team.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Douglas Adams arrives for pirates and planets in The Pirate Planet.

Overview: Doctor Who Classic: Season 15

Written between 17th and 19th July 2013

Tom's look of despair sums up my thoughts.

It appears that I'm not exactly a Graham Williams fan. Make no assumptions - I didn't start out with an agenda against him, it just seems like the two full seasons of his that I've seen have been rather diappointing. There's still the Key To Time, so I can't write it all off, and by saying this I am by no means saying that I found nothing in Season 15 to entertain me. The changeover from Hinchcliffe and Holmes to Williams and Reed feels like a difficult and turbulent one, as the series jerks back and forth between stories which emanate the gothic roots of previous seasons and then newer, less well-done stories with their own charms. It feels like there was a desperate attempt to capture what has been previously successful.
     The season's two gothic stories, The Horror of Fang Rock and The Image of the Fendahl, both have highly atmospheric writing and both are incredibly similar to the bread and butter of the Hinchcliffe and Holmes era. They both suffer, like those stories, from fundamentally underdeveloped concepts, and due to that they threaten to bore me silly. Horror is especially dry, but special mention must be made for Fendahl, which rattles along like a tumbleweed on a dry windy day until the final episode, where the concept gets thrown at us in spades. They appear as remnants of the prior era, but I don't know in my heart if that's a bad thing consider the rest of the season.
     The first few glimpses into the new era's style come in the form of The Invisible Enemy and The Sun Makers, two stories which I love and the only two in this season I can say that for outright. The Invisible Enemy is filled to the brim with an inescapable charm that surpasses its technical limitations, whereas Robert Holmes' temporary swansong The Sun Makers is a biting and hilarious parody of the UK tax system, which feels relevant despite how vicious it can be, perhaps unfairly in some areas. That these two different types of stories oscillate like this is very, very odd and marks the season's unevenness.

They tried, they did.

     And then we get to the stinkers. While the gothic stories and Underworld are the only stories in the season which I found truly unwatchable, one gets the feeling that the budgetary problems weren't being met with the same vigour as before, and for reasons that I don't know (but which likely do exist and an are fully justifiable), the season's budget tends to run incredibly low near the end, resulting in the horrifically bad Underworld and The Invasion of Time, which is badly executed even if charming in its own incompetance. (I mean, green screen is visible in some of the corridor shots. They used the green sheet itself as a wallpaper cos they couldn't find anything else.)
     The final season in my runthrough of Four will be Season 16. After the relative shambles of this season, Anthony Read will move onto the series' first official arc. It was a move brought on to unify the season, the one that came after this season, one in which you never know from story to story what the style or theme or general level of competance is going to be. It ranks almost effortlessly at the bottom of my list of seasons from the Classic Series, and that's a shame because I'm sure that the production team at the time were really trying to follow up what had been considered by many to be the show's Golden Age.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Invasion of Time (Revisited)

See here for my previous look at this story.

The Doctor pretends to go evil for some sheets of foil.
From Cathode Ray Tube

Doctor Who - Season 15, Story Six - The Invasion of Time (Revisited)
Written 16/7/13

What to say about this story? Well, I had originally wantd to try and write an article on this story for Celebrate, Regenerate, but I couldn't find a single thing that I actually liked about the story. I mean, that's a bit of hyperbole, really. It's two and a half hours of Doctor Who, there are some things that I can find here and there. But as an overall experience, The Invasion of Time so fails in every single one of its aims that it reaches a point which waivers dangerously between hilarity and tragedy. And that's not a good thing, it's never a good sign when I can't tell whether I outright hate the story or love it in a So-Bad-It's-Good way. Usually it's a little more clear cut.
    The first four episodes are bad enough on their own - a concept play where we're led along the garden path by The Doctor's apparently dark turn, which is never hinted at until the second episode and so we're left thinking that The Doctor is a total and utter tit for a week. Plus, the aliens he's apparently helping are some of the most weak and lily livered in the show's history - the Vardans, whom, while awesomely powerful in principle, are pathetic in execution. I've followed some pretty crappy looking monsters in my time as a fan, but I will not accept a monster who is literally a sheet of tin foil with a strong irish accent. Their humanoid forms are even less impressive, looking like bored versions of the Great Gazoo with a great deal less screen presence. I can understand your budgetary limitations and at a stretch I might even accept the tin foil in the same way I accept the same in Timelash. But the acting is just so poor. It really is, there's no escaping that.
     The last two episodes are where the serial really goes to shit, with all semblance of plot thrown out of the window in favour of running around the TARDIS corridors for a bit being chased by Sontarans. As is Invasion of Time practice, this is the worst execution they ever saw, with crumbling costumes hiding actors who have been for some reason directed to put on strong cockney accents. After four episodes which might have been simply mediocre on their own, the final two drag it out into a dull slog which you pray might sometime end. It's so random that they have to break open the by-this-time-tired book of Who mythology, essentially pulling the get-out-of-jail-free card by having The Doctor shoot the Sontarans out of existence and then forget all memory of it.

Hey, it's the guy from The Android Invasion!
From the BBC

     In my original review, I talked a bit about Gallifrey, and that's important too. After the fan uproar at seeing the mighty mythology brought down to something a bit more human, going to Gallifrey was dangerous ground, especially when the budget was in the state it was. Instead of the wonderfully complex, multi-layered sets we saw previously, the civilisation is reduced to a series of blandly coloured corridors occupied by about three people, and then some location filming outside which instead of exploring Gallifreyan society and customs only serves to raise more and more questions.
     This story stands as Leela's last, and it's a damn shame after this season and a half that a character so previously well-developed manages to be kicked out with such a bullshit excuse. Leela falls in love with Andred, a minor character whom she barely speaks to over the course of the story and whom she has so little chemistry with it felt weird to see them even holding hands. It's not something that Leela would do, there's no continuity in the characterisation that after being shown the wonders of the civilised world with Leela that she would choose to settle down with a guard. Plus her presence in this story at all sends a bad word back to the Hand of Fear, where humans aren't allowed on Gallifrey. It's almost as if everything this story does is towards fucking up Season 14.
     And now to the few spits and spots I do like. John Arnett's Borusa is fandabydozy, and is quite wonderfully playful in his trickery as he guides The Doctor around Gallifreyan politics. The scenes between him and The Doctor play out very differently to Borusa's last incarnation, and at a stretch I would say that it's a tiny bit better. I also happen to like the roaming around the inside of the TARDIS, no matter how nonsensical the location filming in Hospitals and Swimming Pools happens to be. It's playfully done and it doesn't look too tacky, and while the TARDIS interiors we see in JNT's tenure (which are remarkably consistent in appearance) are my favourite, I love the recursion and randomness that this serial feels fit to provide to fill up the last two episodes.

The Doctor is made President.
From Basement Rejects

     So, not a total washout. At the end of the day there's no-one I can really blame for this story, and I feel bad for it because the show was struggling with its cash and it is genuinely a miracle that the story was even made. After all the work that went into ensuring that the show made the screen, I think the whole story is imbued with a wonderfully shoddy charm. When I began this runthrough, The Invasion of Time was one of my least favourite stories. Given some of the crap I've seen, I can at least say that The Invasion of Time is entertaining, and given all the trouble it faced in production I find that something of a wonderful miracle.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: We meet Romanadvoratrelundar Fred Romana's first incarnation in The Ribos Operation.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Underworld

Star Trekkin', cross the universe.

Doctor Who - Season 15, Story Five - Underworld
Written between 18th and 19th July 2013

Doctor Who presents us with another solid tip for future writers - never borrow from Greek Legends. Nobody thinks it's particularly clever to borrow from some of the oldest stories of modern civilisation, and the parallels rarely translate well to modern situations. Between Underworld and its spiritual successor The Horns of Nimon's love of Theseus and the Minotaur, Greek myth is pretty much blacklisted as an influence until someone can do it properly.
     In the ideas department, Underworld doesn't start off bad - The Doctor and Leela meet the Minyans, a race of aliens whom The Time Lords tried to help out millions of years ago, leading to endless war and the anihilation of their planet. A survey mission of these tired immortals ends up on a planetoid run by another sect of Minyans whose ancient religion has led them into an oligarchical rule, forcing The Doctor to help the original mission escape and be on their way to their final desination, a new planet for them to settle on.
     The trouble with writing a story about a society of immortals is that Immortals are boring. Even the Time Lords stop at 13 lives and tend to get old quite often, just to make things more relatable. The civilisation on the planetoid, with its dictatorships and strangely dressed guards, is a poor show on last week's and managed to lose my interest entirely. What kills the story, though, is the sets - or lack of. The sets that we do see are universally bland and uninspiring, and the rest of the story in the planetoid features wobbly model work and HUGE amounts of unnecessary CSO. They obviously couldn't afford to location shoot, and the result means tons of static, unconvincing shots of people running around a greenscreen. I was more convinced by Time-Flight.

"Once I caught a gumblejack this big."

     I'm not really at a point where I can fully rip this story a new one, as by about the second episode things got so bad that I barely registered the rest. Underworld is a story that tries to use CSO to cover up its lack of budgetary concerns - it tries to pull of the impossible. If your budget is this low, then someone please for the love of god write a Bottle Episode where there're only a few characters on one or two sets. Don't try to attempt an epic story where the direction is going to drawn out and terrible, the setting is going to yank you out of the story like a newborn being pulled from the safety of its mother's womb and where I can't remember what's happened in the past ten minutes because I probably fell asleep.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: The Invasion of Time, which is at least better than this story.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Sun Makers

The Collector and his high-pitched whining really get ta ya.

Doctor Who - Season 15, Story Four - The Sun Makers
Written between 17th and 18th July 2013

Taxes. Tax the rich, tax the poor. Tax the windows, tax the door. There is no more contentious issue in politics than taxation, a fundamental and vital part of any stable political system that nonetheless is open to a great deal of abuse in the wrong hands. The Sun Makers, like its spiritual successor The Happiness Patrol, throws a lot of ideas out there to write a powerful, quite jovial satire of the entire Captialist system, and it does so with a stylistic flair that feels a lot more succinct than the rest of Robert Holmes tenure. That being an important thing, considering that this was his final story as script editor.
     The Doctor and Leela accidentally land on the dwarf-planet Pluto, which has become the last resting place for Humanity after an alien-run company took control of them. People call each other "Citizen" and consider themselves as work units, slaving away at dreary existences while kept docile by the use of airborne chemicals. While initially suspected of being a terrorist, it turns out that the Company is aware of the Time-Lords and the shrewd monarch known only as The Collector can only watch as The Doctor helps lead a rebellion of the underclasses to take back Humanity's freedom.
     It's probably not that accurate to compare The Sun Makers with The Happiness Patrol - both are satiring different British political parties and the attacks in the later are much less subtle. The Sun Makers excels by itself because it is a decent adventure story anyway. Things are presented in quite the opposite way, I think, with the issue being overwork and overtaxation due to the inate problems with the Captialist system. I think the reason why I like stories with big governments and civilisations is because the potential to draw parallels to real-world issues is that much greater. And I love a story that can be cheeky like that. Especially when it manages to be so vicious about it. The episode's core focus is an attack on the Inland Revenue, who here are respresented by the Company, and while they are taken to ridiculous extremes, the parallels between the problems in this story and real-life encounters with the Tax man are not too far off.

The Gatherer and his funky outfit.

      The side characters representing the civilisation's underground did end up going a bit panto, and there was the constant thread of cheesy overacting weaving in and out. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it did come off as a little weird with The Collector, a man whose only alien traits seemed to be his short stature and an annoyingly high-pitched voice which really begins to grate after a while. It is a memorable characterisation, evoking many of the qualities that the slimy Sil later would. There was a superb ability all round in the conviction that they gave towards making the concept of this futuristic Pluto into a reality.
     But really the story's killer edge is its level of humour, worked out not just by those performances but also in the absurdity of the premise. The script, like The Invisible Enemy, is focussed more towards that humour, even if a lot of the subtle themes will go straight over the kids heads in a way unlike violent or sexual references often fail to. The serial manages to coast for about ten minutes or so with The Doctor turning up simply on the humour arising from the extravagent Gatherer and his overzealous collecting.
     The Sun Makers made my classics list very easily, and for the first time in a while. It stands out in a season that stinks of mediocrity as a story that, while still suffering from the same lack of direction as the rest, is a solid satire of the present government and well-done story of revolution and freedom to boot. It has a timeless quality in its mix of humour and tragedy, a style which is typical of Robert Holmes. It would be another seven years before he'd write for the series, but his legacy would carry on as one of the best Who writers who ever lived. And if you need an example of why, The Sun Makers will do the job.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Apparently it's really bad. I don't know anything else about it. We plunge into Doctor Who's Underworld.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Image of the Fendahl

The Fendahl and her Fendahleen. From Wikia

Doctor Who - Season 15, Story Three - Image of the Fendahl
Written 6/7/13

Fendahl is a story whose outward appearance is big and foreboding and whose reputation in a time where common perception sees Who's dominance beginning to slowly slip gives it great deal of kudos. Doctor Who, even by this point, is no stranger to great foreboding forces working over millions of years, and they would continue to appear after Fendahl as well. After a story like The Invisible Enemy which was seeming to gain some jollity, Fendahl seems to throw that in the pan and get awfully serious again, for Leela creator Chris Boucher's final Doctor Who outing.
     The titular monsters are said to be the occupants of the planet that once existed between Mars and Jupiter and who escaped to Earth when it exploded and became The Asteroid Belt over 12 million years ago, hiding itself in rock and subliminally affecting humanity so as to further its purposes in the modern day, where scientist Professor Fendelman (Brian Murphy) is used by the Fendahl to return to their physical form. The Doctor and Leela happen to be popping by and, following local suspicions about The Old Religion, prevent the Fendahl's plan from succeeding.
     The episode's plot is all over the place, never knowing what it's trying to do. At the beginning there's some almost sitcom-esque dialogue which actually quite enjoyable, but the mysteries that the serial slowly builds up one by one never really mesh together in a satisfying way even at the end. There's a glowy skull and a guy who's secretly speaking for the Fendahl and then there are spirit Fendahleen which are eating people alive and there's very little to say how they're related or whether we should really care. It's an apathy that comes from what I find to be a fundamentally uninspired villain. Big overarching evils are ten a penny, and while that doesn't exactly make them difficult to execute well it does mean that this story, which fails to characterise them in any meaningful way, doesn't get any points from their execution. The episode evokes pagan rituals and sacrifice with pentagrams and stuff but it doesn't feel like it's a grand overarching plan and is more indicative in my eyes of a failed attempt to grab imagery from somewhere that at the time would have been considered scary and cool. If you're going to go to full ritual sacrifice and pentagrams, why not make a Devil allegory or something like that? I'm not going to be scared of the big invisible thing just because The Doctor assures me that it's very bad indeed.

Benedict Cumberbatch's mum... From Wikia.

     However, the story does have a number of good points. As well as the use of the symbolism of the Old Religion and all the jazz that goes along with it, the use of its characters is outstanding. The villain Maximillian Stael, determined in a sorta Cyberman-collaborator way to harness the almighty power of the Fendahl, gets quite a dark ending when, bewitched by its charms, he has the Doctor pass him a gun so that he may commit suicide rather than become a Fendahleen. Doctor Fendelman, the mad scientist throughout, turns out to be talking 100% of sense. All this comes in the fourth episode, which manages to tie things together enough for me to even make that synopsis up there, and by itself it's a decent piece of science fiction. It's a shame that the serial is so bottom-heavy in that regard.
     Before the final episode, Image of the Fendahl is a slow and sluggish whose ideas and themes threaten to collapse the thin plot holding them up. The fourth episode makes some small concessions, and overall I did enjoy the serial, but as a whole the story jumps here, there and everywhere and isn't very easy to follow. Chris Boucher's final story for the program is messy and doesn't really reflect the same level of quality as his previous two, but regardless of my disdain for the vast majority of Image of the Fendahl, it is a story that most of the fandom loves regardless.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: If you get too cold I'll tax the heat, If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet. It's the story of the Taxmen in The Sun Makers.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Invisible Enemy

Welcome, reader to the last review of 2013. Which I'm writing in June. S'all a bit topsy turvey really.

Hardcore Prawn, as Neil Perryman puts it.

Doctor Who - Season 15, Story Two - The Invisible Enemy
Written 30/6/13

Doctor Who is a very varied show. Some stories are overwhelming serious. Some stories aim for a political message amongst piles of cheese. Some stories are so rattled by their production problems that they fail to do anything at all. The Invisible Enemy is a mix of the first and third, a story whose special effects get weirder and weirder as one goes along but whose incredible charm, especially in its centre two epiodes, lead me to rather love it in the way that one loves the offensive stereotypes of mentally ill protagonists in Oscar bait films. With similar amounts of inner personal outrage.
     A base on the moon Titan is afflicted by a web in space which infects the minds of the crew via mental attacks. The TARDIS materialises in the vicinity and is caught in the same beam, sparing Leela but infecting The Doctor with the Nucleus, the prawn-like life-form that the other infectees want to protect and use to procreate an alien species. The Doctor and Leela go to a space-hospital to look at the disease, where they meet Professor Marius and his robot dog, K9 (!). Using a part of the TARDIS, Marius follows the Doctor's instructions and creates clones of he and Leela to climb into The Doctor's body and find the Nucleus. The clones confront it, but disintegrate before they can do anything. Leela's clone contained her immunity, helping The Doctor to synthesise a cure, but the machine works in reverse and the Nucleus is magnified to man-size. The Doctor and Leela, along with K9 in tow, blow up Titan and save the Universe. Sorry, Solar System.
     After a season or two of stories taking themselves far too seriously with old Victorian Mansions and ancient gods about the place, the appearance of Marius and his (for now) charming robot servant breathes a fresh air into the series. The serial feels very much like it's aimed towards children after the systematic violence and adult allusions that defined the previous series Marius himself (Frederick Jaeger) is a fun screen presence and the first few appearances for long-term companion K9 are quite frankly wonderful. Episode Three's homage to the common-used plot of The Fantastic Voyage fitted right in, even with the cheesy special effects that did make me laugh, especially when The Doctor's white blood cells are big white Styrofoam balls hanging from the ceiling and bouncing into things. Most impressively, The Doctor's inner fight with the Nucleus is acted rather well. At least until we see it.

An icon is born.

     And that is where the story gets awful weird. Besides the other numerous special effects failures (and the fact that they blew up Titan, which is a pretty cool moon), the story's main downfall comes with the appearance of the Nucleus. In concept, the story is fine, if cheesy, and the execution is mostly okay. But the simple fact is, the design of that monster is fecking hilarious. Inside the body it's a binbag with a crabclaw, and outside the body it's a massive great shrimp that can't even walk around by itself. The camera angles shoot it like it's a school production and the previously tolerable standard ranting becomes just silly when we're supposed to believe that Zoidberg's less intimidating brother is going to rule the Universe.
      I enjoyed the Invisible Enemy, in a period where I was beginning to wonder if I'd make it through Season 15 into what I hope is going to be an awesome Key To Time arc. Because I like it, it obviously gets hated on a lot by fandom by what I see as incredibly trivial reasons, although the simple what-the-fuckery of the Nucleus in its larger form does turn a fairly decent story into a So-Bad-It's-Good laughfest by the end. I'm just so grateful that after two stories which bored me with their overbearing darkness and foreboding, I'm allowed to laugh at cheesy sci-fi goodness that appeals to everything I like about the show.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Yet another alien figure has been manipulating Humanity for centuries... all in The Image of the Fendahl.