Actually, I'm not a magician at all
In many ways, the story that introduced the Sontaran race mirrors the race itself: it starts strong with a menacing monster, but slows down and ends in a more comedic fashion.
Plot Summary
A Sontaran named Lynx crashes to Earth in the Middle Ages and immediately forges an alliance with a rogue noble named Irongron. Lynx offers more advanced weapons in exchange for a workshop and materials to work with. As the Middle Ages lack circuitry and computers, Lynx uses parts of his ship to steal men and equipment he needs from as far forward as he can reach, which turns out to be the Twentieth Century. The disappearing scientists and equipment catch the attention of UNIT and the Doctor is brought in to investigate. Also sneaking in is Sarah Jane Smith, a reporter who masquerades as her aunt Livinia to get in. The Doctor quickly smokes her out but the disappearance of another scientist gets his attention. Using equipment set up, he figures that the scientists are being pulled back in time and he follows the signal in the TARDIS. Unbeknownst to him, Sarah has snuck aboard the TARDIS to see what is going on.
Upon arriving in the Middle Ages, each leaves the TARDIS separately, the Doctor unaware of Sarah. She is captured by Irongron's men along with an archer named Hal, who had been sent to assassinate Irongron. Sarah refuses to believe that she is actually in the past and manages to slip away when Lynx presents Irongron with a fighting robot. Irongron guides the robot to kill Hal but the Doctor destroys the remote and Irongron is forced to destroy the robot when it goes rogue. Hal and Sarah slip away back to the castle of Edward of Wessex, whom Hal serves. Believing the Doctor to be supplying weapons to Irongron, Sarah convinces Edward to send a few men to capture the Doctor. Meanwhile, the Doctor confronts Lynx and tries to reason with him. However, he is subdued and forced to work on the ship. But he is soon freed when it turns out that one of the scientist, named Rubeish, was immune to Lynx's mind control due to his very poor eyesight. The Doctor escapes Lynx's shop and Irongron's castle when he is captured by Edward's raiding party.
Once at the castle, the Doctor convinces Sarah that he's trying to help the scientist and offers to help Edward. Using dummies and stink bombs, the Doctor and the small castle garrison unnerve Irongron's men and drive them back to his own castle. The Doctor and Sarah sneak back to Irongron's castle. Sarah disguises herself as a maid and slips a sleeping tonic into the garrison's food. The Doctor slips back down to Lynx's lab and begins to unhypnotize the scientists. He is caught by Lynx but Lynx is subdued when hit from behind by Rubeish. The Doctor instructs Rubeish on how to wake the others and to wait for his return. He then tries to distract Irongron by posing as a new fighting robot. He is discovered and Irongron's men attempt to kill him by using him as target practice. Sarah intervenes and the two escape back to Edward's castle.
Knowing that the sleeping agent will allow them access and knowing that Lynx will soon leave in his repaired ship, destroying everything in the castle, the Doctor and Sarah return, accompanied by Hal. As the men fall asleep at their posts, they walk in and head down to Lynx's lab. Lynx has activated his ship and has informed Irongron of his intention to leave, warning them to abandon the castle. While Lynx is away, the Doctor begins to send the scientist back to their own time. Lynx arrives in the middle but the Doctor holds him off while the rest depart. Irongron, alerted to trouble when Hal attempts to disarm him, waking him, runs down to Lynx's workshop thinking he has betrayed them. Lynx shoots Irongron and then retreats to his ship when it alerts him that it is ready for takeoff. The other men in the castle, wake from the drug and flee the castle. Hal also returns to the workshop and sees Lynx preparing to leave. He shoots him in the probic vent, causing him to collapse and accidentally trigger the ignition before the ship is ready. Hal, Sarah and the Doctor flee the castle and it and the Sontaran ship explode. The Doctor and Sarah say goodbye to Hal and leave in the TARDIS.
Analysis
This was an entertaining episode in the action-adventure mode that you expect from the Third Doctor. Lynx and the Sontarans in general make for good foes and with Robert Holmes writing, the banter is fairly witty throughout. The introduction of Sarah is also good as she comes in as a strong contrast to Jo with an independent, feminist streak that doesn't take it from the Doctor. Holmes even manages to pull a little double action with Sarah promoting feminism among the serving women of the kitchen, but also poking a little fun at it with the head server mocking her for being young and not knowing sense.
There are a few downsides to this story as well. The going back and forth between Edward's and Irongron's castles gets a bit tedious and you get a sense that if they didn't have these interludes, the story could have made tighter. Irongron himself was fine at first, but by Episode Four he was becoming a bit too one note. I would have liked a little more depth to him, a touch more cunning. If not that, I think more focus should have been put on Lynx. I understand why Lynx didn't get the primary focus since he was only interested in repairing his ship and didn't care about the fights of the "primitive" humans. But it still would have been nice to see a little more machination on his part.
The more significant problem was with how the story ended. The story began well with a bit of an edge and the humor coming more from the absurdity of an alien warrior landing in the Middle Ages. However, the more it progressed, the more given to silliness the story seemed to get. The fights were either of a Benny Hill running around style or they deliberately avoided killing in order to prolong the story. Early in Episode Three, Hal shoots an axe out of Irongron's hand to save the Doctor. However, it would have been an even easier shot to lodge the arrow in Irongron's head, killing him. But that would have ended the story too quickly. By the end, the fight between the Doctor and Lynx seemed rushed with some odd cuts. It gave the story a more farcical feel with a hasty ending to allow the good guys to win. It was a bit of a let down to a decent adventure.
As I was thinking about what to score this, I compared it in my mind to The Claws of Axos. Both stories had a threat that developed quickly, outside agents being involved, and a generally fast paced story that kept you from wondering how much time was left in each episode. Also like Axos, the ending felt slapdash and rushed with an odd resolution. So I think you can draw a fair comparison between the two. Good stories, no complaints if someone pulls it off the shelf to watch it, but not something I'm going to reach for every time.
Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky
This isn't war. It's sport.
The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky are not bad episodes, despite fan indifference towards them. But they are a bit underwhelming, especially in the flow of The Poison Sky compared to the set up The Sontaran Stratagem.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Donna are summoned back to Earth by Martha Jones who is now working for UNIT. They are investigating a company that makes ATMOS, a car emissions control device and GPS system which is suspected of being behind several mysterious deaths. UNIT moves in on the factory under the guise of an immigration raid and discovers further irregularities. During the raid, two UNIT soldiers are brought under hypnotic control of the Sontarans. The two soldiers kidnap Martha and use a Sontaran clone tank to make a clone of her to use as an agent.
Donna leaves temporarily to warn her mother and grandfather of the potential danger while the Doctor heads to Rattigan Academy, a select school run by a wunderkind who developed ATMOS. There the Doctor discovers alien technology and discovers the Sontarans behind the devices. He flees both the Sontaran ship and Rattigan Academy, evading several Sontaran attempts to kill him. He heads to Donna's mother's place and discovers a secondary purpose to ATMOS in the form of a gas release. The early release alerts the Sontarans who activate all gas release systems on the planet.
With gas emerging from all over the world, the Doctor and Donna return to UNIT which has been driven back from the ATMOS factory by a squadron of Sontaran soldiers. The Doctor tells Donna to monitor things from the TARDIS as he plans to fly up to the Sontaran ship and stop things and the air is clean in the TARDIS. However, after Donna is inside, the Sontarans transport it into the their ship and move it into the hold. The Doctor realizes this and sends a message to Donna to wait for his phone call.
UNIT attempts to launch nuclear missiles at the Sontaran ship but clone Martha deactivates the system, which is what the Doctor actually wants. Using information the Doctor has given them to adapt their weapons, UNIT storms the ATMOS factory, driving the Sontarans back. The Doctor calls Donna and walks her through the means to reactive the transport system. He then takes clone Martha into the factory where he finds the real Martha hooked up to a machine that feeds the clone memories. The Doctor frees Martha from the machine, which kills clone Martha. However, before she dies, the real Martha convinces her to tell them the Sontaran plan, which is to turn Earth into a clone planet, providing the Sontarans with billions of extra soldiers. With the teleport reactivated, the Doctor pulls Donna and the TARDIS back to Earth. The three then transport over to Rattigan Academy.
Luke Rattigan had intended to bring his academy students back to the Sontaran ship and start a new colony planet. However, the students abandoned him as insane. When he informed the Sontarans of this, they informed him that they had no intention of following on that deal and would have simply killed them when they boarded. They attempted to kill Luke, but he transported back to Earth and is hiding at the Academy. When the Doctor, Donna and Martha arrive, he watches as the Doctor builds an atmospheric pulse weapon and then fires it into Earth's sky. The clone gas ignites and burns off the toxin choking the Earth. The plan having failed, the Sontarans move to invade Earth using conventional tactics. The Doctor then transports up to the Sontaran ship and prepares to ignite the Sontaran ship's atmosphere. Before he can, Luke rigs the teleport so that he switches places with the Doctor and Luke sets off the pulse, destroying the Sontaran ship.
Everything back to normal, Martha says goodbye in the TARDIS. The Doctor offers to let her ride along again, but she refuses. However, before she can leave, the TARDIS takes off on its own and the party hurdles through time and space without knowing where they are going.
Analysis
The set up for this episode is pretty good. The Sontarans are brought back and in contrast to their current portrayal, are actually menacing with just a pinch of unintentional levity. The mystery surrounding their plan and the deviousness employed pulls you in and invests you in the plot. Seeing Martha put in peril with the cloning also draws you in.
Where things seem to fall apart is in the second part. Although there is no point where it is obvious, The Poison Sky feels like padding. It's like the Doctor is deliberately being obtuse to the problem. He says after finding Martha that he knew she was a clone the whole time, but there were points where he could have taken her out and gotten the information he needed sooner. I'm not sure if it is the writing or the direction, but there was something, especially in the second episode that just felt flat. It was like there was no snap and it made the events which should have been engaging, feel a bit dull.
One other problem with the episode was the ending. It was another case of someone else stepping in and dying so that the Doctor might live. It's a bit of a trope but even that wasn't the worst part. The worst was actually when the Doctor first got on the Sontaran ship. He spent nearly twenty seconds yelling at the Sontarans to surrender or he would kill them. However, General Staal put it correctly that the threat was meaningless since the Sontarans gloried in death. The fact that the Doctor kept hesitating until Luke beamed him out made him look weak and afraid of death, like he wasn't going to follow on the threat. Worse, General Staal lined up troops and told them to prepare to fire. Why did they wait? Good soldiers may face death with honor, but if the enemy hesitates, they should have seized the initiative and shot him down, preserving their victory. There was too much talking to try and get an emotional response and to give Luke time to swap places. It just felt hollow.
I have to admit that Martha felt superfluous as well. I've heard that she was only brought back because Catherine Tate refused to be covered in the cloning tank goop. I don't know if that's true or not, but her whole detour to her mom and grandad's place didn't offer much except a little backstory on Donna and a way to flesh out previously introduced characters. But it was not necessary. Donna could have served as the clone and in doing so, the clone might have been discovered earlier since Donna still served a valuable purpose on the Sontaran ship. It would also have given Donna a better reason to be in the TARDIS. Imagine that the Doctor discovers Donna is a clone and frees her. He takes her back to the TARDIS to recover while he assists UNIT. The Sontarans discover their clone has been compromised and steal the TARDIS, not knowing they have also beamed aboard an operative. This allows the Doctor to deal with UNIT openly without the need for subterfuge for the clone's benefit. It might have made the story zip along quicker. The addition of Martha also felt like the story didn't quite trust Donna with heavy lifting and wanted an experienced companion to balance her out. I may be reading into that, but it was a thought that struck me.
Despite my giving it a bit of a rip, the Sontaran two-parter is better than average, just not much better. It'll keep you entertained while watching it, but it is lacking that little something that will make you want to pull it off the shelf and rewatch it. If you watch both episodes back to back, you might also find yourself checking your watch a little bit during the second episode as it drifts a bit.
Overall personal score: The Sontaran Stratagem - 3.5 out of 5; The Poison Sky - 3 out of 5
The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky are not bad episodes, despite fan indifference towards them. But they are a bit underwhelming, especially in the flow of The Poison Sky compared to the set up The Sontaran Stratagem.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Donna are summoned back to Earth by Martha Jones who is now working for UNIT. They are investigating a company that makes ATMOS, a car emissions control device and GPS system which is suspected of being behind several mysterious deaths. UNIT moves in on the factory under the guise of an immigration raid and discovers further irregularities. During the raid, two UNIT soldiers are brought under hypnotic control of the Sontarans. The two soldiers kidnap Martha and use a Sontaran clone tank to make a clone of her to use as an agent.
Donna leaves temporarily to warn her mother and grandfather of the potential danger while the Doctor heads to Rattigan Academy, a select school run by a wunderkind who developed ATMOS. There the Doctor discovers alien technology and discovers the Sontarans behind the devices. He flees both the Sontaran ship and Rattigan Academy, evading several Sontaran attempts to kill him. He heads to Donna's mother's place and discovers a secondary purpose to ATMOS in the form of a gas release. The early release alerts the Sontarans who activate all gas release systems on the planet.
With gas emerging from all over the world, the Doctor and Donna return to UNIT which has been driven back from the ATMOS factory by a squadron of Sontaran soldiers. The Doctor tells Donna to monitor things from the TARDIS as he plans to fly up to the Sontaran ship and stop things and the air is clean in the TARDIS. However, after Donna is inside, the Sontarans transport it into the their ship and move it into the hold. The Doctor realizes this and sends a message to Donna to wait for his phone call.
UNIT attempts to launch nuclear missiles at the Sontaran ship but clone Martha deactivates the system, which is what the Doctor actually wants. Using information the Doctor has given them to adapt their weapons, UNIT storms the ATMOS factory, driving the Sontarans back. The Doctor calls Donna and walks her through the means to reactive the transport system. He then takes clone Martha into the factory where he finds the real Martha hooked up to a machine that feeds the clone memories. The Doctor frees Martha from the machine, which kills clone Martha. However, before she dies, the real Martha convinces her to tell them the Sontaran plan, which is to turn Earth into a clone planet, providing the Sontarans with billions of extra soldiers. With the teleport reactivated, the Doctor pulls Donna and the TARDIS back to Earth. The three then transport over to Rattigan Academy.
Luke Rattigan had intended to bring his academy students back to the Sontaran ship and start a new colony planet. However, the students abandoned him as insane. When he informed the Sontarans of this, they informed him that they had no intention of following on that deal and would have simply killed them when they boarded. They attempted to kill Luke, but he transported back to Earth and is hiding at the Academy. When the Doctor, Donna and Martha arrive, he watches as the Doctor builds an atmospheric pulse weapon and then fires it into Earth's sky. The clone gas ignites and burns off the toxin choking the Earth. The plan having failed, the Sontarans move to invade Earth using conventional tactics. The Doctor then transports up to the Sontaran ship and prepares to ignite the Sontaran ship's atmosphere. Before he can, Luke rigs the teleport so that he switches places with the Doctor and Luke sets off the pulse, destroying the Sontaran ship.
Everything back to normal, Martha says goodbye in the TARDIS. The Doctor offers to let her ride along again, but she refuses. However, before she can leave, the TARDIS takes off on its own and the party hurdles through time and space without knowing where they are going.
Analysis
The set up for this episode is pretty good. The Sontarans are brought back and in contrast to their current portrayal, are actually menacing with just a pinch of unintentional levity. The mystery surrounding their plan and the deviousness employed pulls you in and invests you in the plot. Seeing Martha put in peril with the cloning also draws you in.
Where things seem to fall apart is in the second part. Although there is no point where it is obvious, The Poison Sky feels like padding. It's like the Doctor is deliberately being obtuse to the problem. He says after finding Martha that he knew she was a clone the whole time, but there were points where he could have taken her out and gotten the information he needed sooner. I'm not sure if it is the writing or the direction, but there was something, especially in the second episode that just felt flat. It was like there was no snap and it made the events which should have been engaging, feel a bit dull.
One other problem with the episode was the ending. It was another case of someone else stepping in and dying so that the Doctor might live. It's a bit of a trope but even that wasn't the worst part. The worst was actually when the Doctor first got on the Sontaran ship. He spent nearly twenty seconds yelling at the Sontarans to surrender or he would kill them. However, General Staal put it correctly that the threat was meaningless since the Sontarans gloried in death. The fact that the Doctor kept hesitating until Luke beamed him out made him look weak and afraid of death, like he wasn't going to follow on the threat. Worse, General Staal lined up troops and told them to prepare to fire. Why did they wait? Good soldiers may face death with honor, but if the enemy hesitates, they should have seized the initiative and shot him down, preserving their victory. There was too much talking to try and get an emotional response and to give Luke time to swap places. It just felt hollow.
I have to admit that Martha felt superfluous as well. I've heard that she was only brought back because Catherine Tate refused to be covered in the cloning tank goop. I don't know if that's true or not, but her whole detour to her mom and grandad's place didn't offer much except a little backstory on Donna and a way to flesh out previously introduced characters. But it was not necessary. Donna could have served as the clone and in doing so, the clone might have been discovered earlier since Donna still served a valuable purpose on the Sontaran ship. It would also have given Donna a better reason to be in the TARDIS. Imagine that the Doctor discovers Donna is a clone and frees her. He takes her back to the TARDIS to recover while he assists UNIT. The Sontarans discover their clone has been compromised and steal the TARDIS, not knowing they have also beamed aboard an operative. This allows the Doctor to deal with UNIT openly without the need for subterfuge for the clone's benefit. It might have made the story zip along quicker. The addition of Martha also felt like the story didn't quite trust Donna with heavy lifting and wanted an experienced companion to balance her out. I may be reading into that, but it was a thought that struck me.
Despite my giving it a bit of a rip, the Sontaran two-parter is better than average, just not much better. It'll keep you entertained while watching it, but it is lacking that little something that will make you want to pull it off the shelf and rewatch it. If you watch both episodes back to back, you might also find yourself checking your watch a little bit during the second episode as it drifts a bit.
Overall personal score: The Sontaran Stratagem - 3.5 out of 5; The Poison Sky - 3 out of 5
Monday, February 22, 2016
Black Orchid
Well, it just wouldn't be cricket.
I have gotten the impression that Black Orchid isn't very popular among Doctor Who fans and I'm not entirely sure why. I thought it moved rather well. There were a few loose ends and glossed over points, but nothing egregious.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and his party land in 1925 and he is mistaken for a friend of a school chum of Lord Cranleigh, the local nobleman. The Doctor is invited back to play cricket, which he does with relish. His companions discover that Nyssa is almost identical in appearance to Lord Cranleigh's fiancee Ann. After the match, the Doctor and his companions are invited to a costume party at the house. Ann get Nyssa a costume identical to hers to play guessing jokes on the guests. The Doctor, while preparing for a bath, discovers a passage leading from his room and is accidentally trapped in a secluded part of the house. Meanwhile, a mysterious figure steals the Doctor's costume.
While in the other part of the house, the Doctor discovers the dead body of a servant. The mysterious figure dances with Ann and takes her into the house. He grabs her and when one of the servants fights him after hearing her cries for help, he kill the servant. Ann faints and the man takes him up to his room. Lady Cranleigh and a South American native find the Doctor and the body. After taking the Doctor back to his room, they also discover Ann. Lady Cranleigh takes her down while the South American ties up the man who is shown to be horribly disfigured. Ann shows Lady Cranleigh the body of the servant, which has also been discovered by the other servants. She accuses the Doctor who had just come down in the costume worn by the mysterious man earlier.
Lady Cranleigh refuses to admit to the existence of the mysterious man and has had the South American native hide the body. The Doctor is arrested and his party taken from the house, the chief constable, Sir Robert Muir, being the love interest of Lady Cranleigh. At the station, a constable notes that they've taken possession of a police box but they can't open. The Doctor opens it and provides proof that he was telling the truth about himself. They return to the house to discover that the mysterious man has killed the Native South American and set fire to part of the house. He rushes in and kidnaps Nyssa, believing her to be Ann. As the Doctor and Lord Cranleigh rush to save her, Lady Cranleigh confesses to Sir Robert that the mysterious man is her older son George who was tortured by a tribe of South American natives. He was rescued by a different tribe and one of their members brought him back. They had been trying to rehabilitate him since his experience had ruined his mind. Lord Cranleigh tries to calm George down and the Doctor pleads with him to release Nyssa upon showing him that he had grabbed the wrong girl. He releases Nyssa to the Doctor but when Lord Cranleigh steps forward to embrace him in affection, he startles backwards, loses his balance and falls off the roof, dying on the pavement below. The Doctor and his party stay for the funeral and then depart.
Analysis
As this story was only a two-parter, it zipped along fairly quickly. What little padding there was was taken up by the cricket match and even if you don't understand cricket (as I don't) it was entertaining. The plot was fairly straightforward in that the only question was who the mysterious man was. It was also fairly easy to figure that it was Lord Cranleigh's elder brother so that eliminated the need for any false meandering in the plot.
Something else that helped this story along was that because of the costume party, Nyssa, Adric, and Tegan were all shuffled off to the side and only given minor roles, mostly in the form of comic relief. Nyssa had her by-play with Ann, Adric stuffed his face at the buffet and Tegan danced with Sir Robert. This lack of need to give the companions anything of substance to do, allowed the plot to stay tightly focused on George's actions and the Doctor's involvement with them. I also personally thought that the acting improved a little. Sarah Sutton seemed to breathe a little easier in the role of Ann and that seemed to add a touch more depth to Nyssa, although I think the character of Nyssa is simply meant to be wooden. Tegan also was actually enjoying herself and not complaining about getting back to Heathrow which made for a great improvement in her character. Adric is of course, still Adric.
I do have to criticize this story a little from a modern point of view in that the Native South American had some sort of wood protruding from his mouth. I'm not sure if that was meant to be a lip disk but it seemed rather silly and a little racially questionable. The South American could have been established without this bit of oddity.
Other than that and a few points where the quality of the acting slipped, I can't complain about this story. A little extra information wouldn't have hurt here and there, but there was nothing that seemed left out or cut because the story was running long like in several of the Seventh Doctor stories. I'd say this was quite entertaining and at only 48 minutes could serve as an easy exposure to the Fifth Doctor era.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
I have gotten the impression that Black Orchid isn't very popular among Doctor Who fans and I'm not entirely sure why. I thought it moved rather well. There were a few loose ends and glossed over points, but nothing egregious.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and his party land in 1925 and he is mistaken for a friend of a school chum of Lord Cranleigh, the local nobleman. The Doctor is invited back to play cricket, which he does with relish. His companions discover that Nyssa is almost identical in appearance to Lord Cranleigh's fiancee Ann. After the match, the Doctor and his companions are invited to a costume party at the house. Ann get Nyssa a costume identical to hers to play guessing jokes on the guests. The Doctor, while preparing for a bath, discovers a passage leading from his room and is accidentally trapped in a secluded part of the house. Meanwhile, a mysterious figure steals the Doctor's costume.
While in the other part of the house, the Doctor discovers the dead body of a servant. The mysterious figure dances with Ann and takes her into the house. He grabs her and when one of the servants fights him after hearing her cries for help, he kill the servant. Ann faints and the man takes him up to his room. Lady Cranleigh and a South American native find the Doctor and the body. After taking the Doctor back to his room, they also discover Ann. Lady Cranleigh takes her down while the South American ties up the man who is shown to be horribly disfigured. Ann shows Lady Cranleigh the body of the servant, which has also been discovered by the other servants. She accuses the Doctor who had just come down in the costume worn by the mysterious man earlier.
Lady Cranleigh refuses to admit to the existence of the mysterious man and has had the South American native hide the body. The Doctor is arrested and his party taken from the house, the chief constable, Sir Robert Muir, being the love interest of Lady Cranleigh. At the station, a constable notes that they've taken possession of a police box but they can't open. The Doctor opens it and provides proof that he was telling the truth about himself. They return to the house to discover that the mysterious man has killed the Native South American and set fire to part of the house. He rushes in and kidnaps Nyssa, believing her to be Ann. As the Doctor and Lord Cranleigh rush to save her, Lady Cranleigh confesses to Sir Robert that the mysterious man is her older son George who was tortured by a tribe of South American natives. He was rescued by a different tribe and one of their members brought him back. They had been trying to rehabilitate him since his experience had ruined his mind. Lord Cranleigh tries to calm George down and the Doctor pleads with him to release Nyssa upon showing him that he had grabbed the wrong girl. He releases Nyssa to the Doctor but when Lord Cranleigh steps forward to embrace him in affection, he startles backwards, loses his balance and falls off the roof, dying on the pavement below. The Doctor and his party stay for the funeral and then depart.
Analysis
As this story was only a two-parter, it zipped along fairly quickly. What little padding there was was taken up by the cricket match and even if you don't understand cricket (as I don't) it was entertaining. The plot was fairly straightforward in that the only question was who the mysterious man was. It was also fairly easy to figure that it was Lord Cranleigh's elder brother so that eliminated the need for any false meandering in the plot.
Something else that helped this story along was that because of the costume party, Nyssa, Adric, and Tegan were all shuffled off to the side and only given minor roles, mostly in the form of comic relief. Nyssa had her by-play with Ann, Adric stuffed his face at the buffet and Tegan danced with Sir Robert. This lack of need to give the companions anything of substance to do, allowed the plot to stay tightly focused on George's actions and the Doctor's involvement with them. I also personally thought that the acting improved a little. Sarah Sutton seemed to breathe a little easier in the role of Ann and that seemed to add a touch more depth to Nyssa, although I think the character of Nyssa is simply meant to be wooden. Tegan also was actually enjoying herself and not complaining about getting back to Heathrow which made for a great improvement in her character. Adric is of course, still Adric.
I do have to criticize this story a little from a modern point of view in that the Native South American had some sort of wood protruding from his mouth. I'm not sure if that was meant to be a lip disk but it seemed rather silly and a little racially questionable. The South American could have been established without this bit of oddity.
Other than that and a few points where the quality of the acting slipped, I can't complain about this story. A little extra information wouldn't have hurt here and there, but there was nothing that seemed left out or cut because the story was running long like in several of the Seventh Doctor stories. I'd say this was quite entertaining and at only 48 minutes could serve as an easy exposure to the Fifth Doctor era.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Friday, February 19, 2016
Victory of the Daleks
I am the Doctor, you are the Daleks.
Victory of the Daleks is a good example of a story that is less than the sum of it's parts. When you take the story in ten minute chunks, it's not too bad. But when you put it all together, it is a big load of meh.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Amy arrive in London during the blitz, having received a call from Winston Churchill. He shows the Doctor a new weapon devised by their chief scientist, Dr. Bracewell, which are called Ironsides. In actuality, they are two Daleks. They repel a German attack and once back in the bunker, the Doctor loses his temper and confronts the Daleks. After he calls them Daleks, they confirm this and beam up to their ship.
The Doctor lands on the Dalek ship with the TARDIS, leaving Amy on Earth. He holds off the Daleks by pretending a cookie is the TARDIS self destruct device. He learns that after the Daleks were destroyed in the encounter with Davros, one ship survived along with a pod of pure Dalek DNA. However, since they were not pure Daleks, they could not activate the pod and needed a conformation, which they received through the Doctor's testimony about them. The pod matures and a new set of Daleks come out. They immediately destroy the old Daleks, seen as inferior. They immediately threaten the Doctor by activating all the lights in London, making it an easy target for German bombers.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, Amy and Churchill go to Bracewell to see what they can do to knock out the mechanism that is lighting up London. Bracewell, it turns out, is an android built by the Daleks and has other Dalek technology at his disposal. He rigs up three fighters to fly in space. Two are shot down but with the Doctor's help, the remaining fighter destroys the generator and London goes dark again. The Daleks then activate a self destruct mechanism within Bracewell that will devastate the Earth. The Doctor returns to Earth and with Amy's help, triggers memories implanted within Bracewell. The memories of a human nature, override the self destruct code and the bomb is deactivated. The Daleks however, use the distraction of Bracewell to jump back into the future and regenerate the Dalek race.
The Doctor and Amy encourage Bracewell to run and find his lost love whose memory helped him override the self destruct order. The Doctor also takes and destroys all of Bracewell's plans and designs containing Dalek technology. The Doctor and Amy then leave in the TARDIS, the Doctor concerned over Amy's lack of memory of the Daleks from Stolen Earth/Journey's End. As they leave, a universe crack is observed in the wall of the bunker.
Analysis
I mentioned before that this episode is less than the sum of it's parts. What exacerbates the issue is that it starts off on such a good note. The Daleks posing as Bracewell's creation and repeatedly using the phrase "I am your soldier" are direct call backs to The Power of the Daleks, arguably one of the best, if not the best, Dalek story. To see the Daleks return to a cunning deviancy is refreshing and really made the first ten minutes of the episode stand out.
However, they give themselves up once the Doctor confronts them and then it just goes south after that. The Doctor holding the Daleks off with a Jammy Dodger is a little too cute and it takes all the believable menace and fear that the Doctor showed for the Daleks and throws it right out the window. He goes at it and is just playing around with them. That the Daleks believe him adds to the disillusionment of the first part of the episode.
Then you have the Skittle Daleks. I don't have as big a problem with them as other fans do, but they still seem less menacing and more silly than the conventional Daleks. I think the colors give them a very plastic look rather than the more metallic look they effect before. Of all the looks, I thought the olive green battle paint was the most impressive look. To go from that to an oversized and a bit too rounded form just didn't feel right. That they didn't convey any extra sense of menace or cunning didn't help them either. It was an appearance only change that that appearance was inferior in my opinion.
Also unlike a few other fans out there, I didn't have a problem with the Spitfires battling it out with the Dalek ship. The Daleks had left the technology and I saw no reason why the conversion couldn't happen. What I did have a problem with was the speed at which it happened. Amy, Bracewell, and Churchill did not move to act until after the lights of London came on. We were also told that German bombers were about approaching (at least in radar range). So they were able to rig up these fighters, fly up to the Dalek ship and knock out the dish before the Germans reached London? It doesn't make sense. It also doesn't make sense in that if the lone Spitfire was still able to attack, why didn't it swoop down and just destroy the entire German bomber group before landing, further reducing the threat? The poor timing just made it look like a action-y tack on to get the Doctor out of a silly situation rather than let him solve the problem himself.
Rounding out the descent is the drawn out ending. The Doctor defuses the bomb not through any technological savvy but by convincing Bracewell that he is truly human. It's mind over matter. It is also a second time in this episode where it is not the Doctor who solves the issue but Amy. In many ways the Doctor is rather useless other than supplying information. The episode then goes on for another five minutes after the Daleks jump forward in the future to tidy up lose ends that didn't really need to be tidied up. It just added to the uneven feel where the beginning felt so rushed and yet there is the slow bleed at the end with what feels like multiple endings.
One last thing that I would add to the weakness of the episode is that like The Beast Below, the Eleventh Doctor is still channeling the Tenth Doctor a bit too much. His erraticness and sudden mood shifts are evocative of the Tenth Doctor and it doesn't feel like the Eleventh Doctor really makes his full debut until The Time of Angels.
I'm probably making the episode sound worse than it actually was, but it just didn't have a lift to it after it started with some decent potential. It's watchable a few times around, but I can't imagine picking this off the shelf for a random watch.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
Victory of the Daleks is a good example of a story that is less than the sum of it's parts. When you take the story in ten minute chunks, it's not too bad. But when you put it all together, it is a big load of meh.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Amy arrive in London during the blitz, having received a call from Winston Churchill. He shows the Doctor a new weapon devised by their chief scientist, Dr. Bracewell, which are called Ironsides. In actuality, they are two Daleks. They repel a German attack and once back in the bunker, the Doctor loses his temper and confronts the Daleks. After he calls them Daleks, they confirm this and beam up to their ship.
The Doctor lands on the Dalek ship with the TARDIS, leaving Amy on Earth. He holds off the Daleks by pretending a cookie is the TARDIS self destruct device. He learns that after the Daleks were destroyed in the encounter with Davros, one ship survived along with a pod of pure Dalek DNA. However, since they were not pure Daleks, they could not activate the pod and needed a conformation, which they received through the Doctor's testimony about them. The pod matures and a new set of Daleks come out. They immediately destroy the old Daleks, seen as inferior. They immediately threaten the Doctor by activating all the lights in London, making it an easy target for German bombers.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, Amy and Churchill go to Bracewell to see what they can do to knock out the mechanism that is lighting up London. Bracewell, it turns out, is an android built by the Daleks and has other Dalek technology at his disposal. He rigs up three fighters to fly in space. Two are shot down but with the Doctor's help, the remaining fighter destroys the generator and London goes dark again. The Daleks then activate a self destruct mechanism within Bracewell that will devastate the Earth. The Doctor returns to Earth and with Amy's help, triggers memories implanted within Bracewell. The memories of a human nature, override the self destruct code and the bomb is deactivated. The Daleks however, use the distraction of Bracewell to jump back into the future and regenerate the Dalek race.
The Doctor and Amy encourage Bracewell to run and find his lost love whose memory helped him override the self destruct order. The Doctor also takes and destroys all of Bracewell's plans and designs containing Dalek technology. The Doctor and Amy then leave in the TARDIS, the Doctor concerned over Amy's lack of memory of the Daleks from Stolen Earth/Journey's End. As they leave, a universe crack is observed in the wall of the bunker.
Analysis
I mentioned before that this episode is less than the sum of it's parts. What exacerbates the issue is that it starts off on such a good note. The Daleks posing as Bracewell's creation and repeatedly using the phrase "I am your soldier" are direct call backs to The Power of the Daleks, arguably one of the best, if not the best, Dalek story. To see the Daleks return to a cunning deviancy is refreshing and really made the first ten minutes of the episode stand out.
However, they give themselves up once the Doctor confronts them and then it just goes south after that. The Doctor holding the Daleks off with a Jammy Dodger is a little too cute and it takes all the believable menace and fear that the Doctor showed for the Daleks and throws it right out the window. He goes at it and is just playing around with them. That the Daleks believe him adds to the disillusionment of the first part of the episode.
Then you have the Skittle Daleks. I don't have as big a problem with them as other fans do, but they still seem less menacing and more silly than the conventional Daleks. I think the colors give them a very plastic look rather than the more metallic look they effect before. Of all the looks, I thought the olive green battle paint was the most impressive look. To go from that to an oversized and a bit too rounded form just didn't feel right. That they didn't convey any extra sense of menace or cunning didn't help them either. It was an appearance only change that that appearance was inferior in my opinion.
Also unlike a few other fans out there, I didn't have a problem with the Spitfires battling it out with the Dalek ship. The Daleks had left the technology and I saw no reason why the conversion couldn't happen. What I did have a problem with was the speed at which it happened. Amy, Bracewell, and Churchill did not move to act until after the lights of London came on. We were also told that German bombers were about approaching (at least in radar range). So they were able to rig up these fighters, fly up to the Dalek ship and knock out the dish before the Germans reached London? It doesn't make sense. It also doesn't make sense in that if the lone Spitfire was still able to attack, why didn't it swoop down and just destroy the entire German bomber group before landing, further reducing the threat? The poor timing just made it look like a action-y tack on to get the Doctor out of a silly situation rather than let him solve the problem himself.
Rounding out the descent is the drawn out ending. The Doctor defuses the bomb not through any technological savvy but by convincing Bracewell that he is truly human. It's mind over matter. It is also a second time in this episode where it is not the Doctor who solves the issue but Amy. In many ways the Doctor is rather useless other than supplying information. The episode then goes on for another five minutes after the Daleks jump forward in the future to tidy up lose ends that didn't really need to be tidied up. It just added to the uneven feel where the beginning felt so rushed and yet there is the slow bleed at the end with what feels like multiple endings.
One last thing that I would add to the weakness of the episode is that like The Beast Below, the Eleventh Doctor is still channeling the Tenth Doctor a bit too much. His erraticness and sudden mood shifts are evocative of the Tenth Doctor and it doesn't feel like the Eleventh Doctor really makes his full debut until The Time of Angels.
I'm probably making the episode sound worse than it actually was, but it just didn't have a lift to it after it started with some decent potential. It's watchable a few times around, but I can't imagine picking this off the shelf for a random watch.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
The Two Doctors
I will set her among the gods
The Two Doctors is a real mixed bag. It has some fine location shooting, good interplay between fairly well developed characters, and the return of the Second Doctor. But it also is padded, has some annoying one note villains, and some pretty demeaning interplay between the Sixth Doctor and Peri.
Plot Summary
The Second Doctor and Jamie arrive at a space station on a mission from the Time Lords (season 6B timeframe). There they meet with and old acquaintance of the Doctor's, a geneticist named Dastari. He has altered one of the indigenous peoples (Androgums) and increased her intelligence. Chessene however has plotted with the Sontarans to gain power for herself and the Sontarans capture the station and murder it's inhabitants. They take the Doctor with them along with Chessene, Dastari and the chef Shockeye. The group assembles at a country estate outside Seville, Spain. Jamie manages to escape and hides in the bowels of the station, believing the Doctor to be dead.
The Sixth Doctor and Peri are relaxing when the Doctor feels a ripple of time peril. He decides to visit Dastari to see if he can detect if anything might be amiss with him. They come to the station to find the battle remnants and the computer reprogrammed to kill intruders. They descend into the mainframe and reprogram the computer where they also meet Jamie. From both Jamie and the computer, the Doctor learns what happens and then manages to make psychic contact with himself to learn the Second Doctor's location.
Arriving in the TARDIS, the Sixth Doctor meets with some locals who tell him of a crash near a local estate and also lead him to a place where it can be entered without detection. Peri goes up to the house to create a diversion while the Doctor and the Jamie sneak into the cellar of the house. In the cellar, they are captured by the Sontaran commander Stike who forces the Doctor to prime a time vehicle. It was in attempting to prime this vehicle that the group had captured the Second Doctor alive and experimenting on him. The Sixth Doctor does so, but also sabotages it as well. Jamie wounds Stike and the two escape. Peri also flees but is captured by Shockeye who is obsessed with preparing and eating a human.
Having shaken the pursuers, the Sixth Doctor and Jamie return to the house and find the Second Doctor. They rescue Peri but are forced to flee. With animosty growing, both the Sontarans and the scientist try to double cross each other but Chessene gets the drop first. She mortally wounds Stike and kills his aide. She also decides that since the time vehicle is primed and time is running out, Dastari will convert the Second Doctor to an Androgum as her mate. Shockeye is forced to supply the genetic material. However, he awakes before the procedure is completed and he and a partially converted Second Doctor leave the house to eat in Seville.
All parties, having discovered the disappearance, go to Seville. They find the two at a restaurant where the two locals they met earlier work. Shockeye protests over his money being rejected and kills the waiter. He flees back to the house. The Sixth Doctor and his party find the Second Doctor with the conversion being rejected and returning to his normal self. They leave but are captured by Chessene. All are taken back to the house where Chessene discovers the Sixth Doctor's sabotage and has him fix it. He does, but introduces a second tamper to the machine. The group is tied up while Shockeye is allowed to take Jamie upstairs for preparation.
Dastari is becoming more concerned by Chessene's behavior as she has vowed to kill the Sixth Doctor, potentially provoking a war with the Time Lords. Meanwhile the Sixth Doctor manages to free himself and heads up to free Jamie. Shockeye is prepared and wounds the Sixth Doctor. He does manage to get Jamie free. The Sixth Doctor runs off the estate with Shockeye in pursuit. Dastari sees Chessene lick the blood off the stones from the Sixth Doctor's wounds and realizes that he hasn't changed Chessene at all. He frees the Second Doctor and Peri but is killed by Chessene when she discovers this. She means to kill the Second Doctor and Peri as well, but Jamie disarms her. She flees to the time vehicle which explodes due to the Doctor's sabotage, killing Chessene. The Sixth Doctor meanwhile, discovers moth hunting equipment left by the locals they met earlier. He then surprises Shockeye and kills him by suffocating him with cyanide soaked cotton.
The Doctors meet up again at the house and the Second Doctor departs with Jamie while the Sixth with Peri. The Sixth Doctor also vows to Peri that they will observe a vegetarian diet from now on.
Analysis
As mentioned above, there is a lot to like about this episode. It is written by Robert Holmes and the dialogue flows very nicely. The Second Doctor returns and although his role is small, it's wonderful to see him at the same enjoyable wit as during his own run in the late 60's. The scenery is lovely and the music is very good. Spanish guitar is woven throughout the story with odd offsets now and again to remind you of the alien element.
Despite their very 1980's appearance, I enjoyed Dastari and Chessene as villains. They acted with thought and routinely got the drop on both the Doctor and their erstwhile allies, the Sontarans. Chessene's slow decent back into original nature was well played and the slow dawning of this fact on Dastari made an excellent way of turning him against her as well.
There were shortcomings in the episode though. The Sontarans were a principle problem. They were barely used and then disposed of without any real bearing on the plot. Their makeup was also not very well done and it had a rather cheap looking effect to it. It was another case of where something done in the 1970's actually had a better look to it that something done nearly fifteen years later.
Another problem for me was Shockeye. I feel he was intended to be a comic relief character but it never made much sense as to why he was kept around. I also found his one note obsession regarding food grating at times. His principle use was in getting the party into Seville proper but that whole side quest did nothing except pad the story. I found Shockeye to be boring in that regard and would have preferred more use of the Sontarans or further machinations with Chessene rather than the focus that he pulled.
My final point of criticism is with the Sixth Doctor and Peri. I've not seen all of this season but I have heard of their squabbling. In a vacuum it might be tolerated, but in this story you have the almost brotherly bond between the Second Doctor and Jamie to contrast it. You also have a short period where the Second Doctor interacts with Peri and you see immediately how cordial he is with her. It's creates a huge contrast with how the Sixth Doctor treats Peri (and he's not much better with Jamie) and it gives the impression of an almost abusive relationship between the two. It just adds to the off-putting nature of their scenes together.
If you take it on balance, the good outweighs the bad, although it's easier to write about the bad. I'd watch it again, although there are definitely points where you can check out a bit. But lets be honest, any chance to see the Second Doctor and Robert Holmes can't be a bad effort.
Overall personal score: 3.5 out 5
The Two Doctors is a real mixed bag. It has some fine location shooting, good interplay between fairly well developed characters, and the return of the Second Doctor. But it also is padded, has some annoying one note villains, and some pretty demeaning interplay between the Sixth Doctor and Peri.
Plot Summary
The Second Doctor and Jamie arrive at a space station on a mission from the Time Lords (season 6B timeframe). There they meet with and old acquaintance of the Doctor's, a geneticist named Dastari. He has altered one of the indigenous peoples (Androgums) and increased her intelligence. Chessene however has plotted with the Sontarans to gain power for herself and the Sontarans capture the station and murder it's inhabitants. They take the Doctor with them along with Chessene, Dastari and the chef Shockeye. The group assembles at a country estate outside Seville, Spain. Jamie manages to escape and hides in the bowels of the station, believing the Doctor to be dead.
The Sixth Doctor and Peri are relaxing when the Doctor feels a ripple of time peril. He decides to visit Dastari to see if he can detect if anything might be amiss with him. They come to the station to find the battle remnants and the computer reprogrammed to kill intruders. They descend into the mainframe and reprogram the computer where they also meet Jamie. From both Jamie and the computer, the Doctor learns what happens and then manages to make psychic contact with himself to learn the Second Doctor's location.
Arriving in the TARDIS, the Sixth Doctor meets with some locals who tell him of a crash near a local estate and also lead him to a place where it can be entered without detection. Peri goes up to the house to create a diversion while the Doctor and the Jamie sneak into the cellar of the house. In the cellar, they are captured by the Sontaran commander Stike who forces the Doctor to prime a time vehicle. It was in attempting to prime this vehicle that the group had captured the Second Doctor alive and experimenting on him. The Sixth Doctor does so, but also sabotages it as well. Jamie wounds Stike and the two escape. Peri also flees but is captured by Shockeye who is obsessed with preparing and eating a human.
Having shaken the pursuers, the Sixth Doctor and Jamie return to the house and find the Second Doctor. They rescue Peri but are forced to flee. With animosty growing, both the Sontarans and the scientist try to double cross each other but Chessene gets the drop first. She mortally wounds Stike and kills his aide. She also decides that since the time vehicle is primed and time is running out, Dastari will convert the Second Doctor to an Androgum as her mate. Shockeye is forced to supply the genetic material. However, he awakes before the procedure is completed and he and a partially converted Second Doctor leave the house to eat in Seville.
All parties, having discovered the disappearance, go to Seville. They find the two at a restaurant where the two locals they met earlier work. Shockeye protests over his money being rejected and kills the waiter. He flees back to the house. The Sixth Doctor and his party find the Second Doctor with the conversion being rejected and returning to his normal self. They leave but are captured by Chessene. All are taken back to the house where Chessene discovers the Sixth Doctor's sabotage and has him fix it. He does, but introduces a second tamper to the machine. The group is tied up while Shockeye is allowed to take Jamie upstairs for preparation.
Dastari is becoming more concerned by Chessene's behavior as she has vowed to kill the Sixth Doctor, potentially provoking a war with the Time Lords. Meanwhile the Sixth Doctor manages to free himself and heads up to free Jamie. Shockeye is prepared and wounds the Sixth Doctor. He does manage to get Jamie free. The Sixth Doctor runs off the estate with Shockeye in pursuit. Dastari sees Chessene lick the blood off the stones from the Sixth Doctor's wounds and realizes that he hasn't changed Chessene at all. He frees the Second Doctor and Peri but is killed by Chessene when she discovers this. She means to kill the Second Doctor and Peri as well, but Jamie disarms her. She flees to the time vehicle which explodes due to the Doctor's sabotage, killing Chessene. The Sixth Doctor meanwhile, discovers moth hunting equipment left by the locals they met earlier. He then surprises Shockeye and kills him by suffocating him with cyanide soaked cotton.
The Doctors meet up again at the house and the Second Doctor departs with Jamie while the Sixth with Peri. The Sixth Doctor also vows to Peri that they will observe a vegetarian diet from now on.
Analysis
As mentioned above, there is a lot to like about this episode. It is written by Robert Holmes and the dialogue flows very nicely. The Second Doctor returns and although his role is small, it's wonderful to see him at the same enjoyable wit as during his own run in the late 60's. The scenery is lovely and the music is very good. Spanish guitar is woven throughout the story with odd offsets now and again to remind you of the alien element.
Despite their very 1980's appearance, I enjoyed Dastari and Chessene as villains. They acted with thought and routinely got the drop on both the Doctor and their erstwhile allies, the Sontarans. Chessene's slow decent back into original nature was well played and the slow dawning of this fact on Dastari made an excellent way of turning him against her as well.
There were shortcomings in the episode though. The Sontarans were a principle problem. They were barely used and then disposed of without any real bearing on the plot. Their makeup was also not very well done and it had a rather cheap looking effect to it. It was another case of where something done in the 1970's actually had a better look to it that something done nearly fifteen years later.
Another problem for me was Shockeye. I feel he was intended to be a comic relief character but it never made much sense as to why he was kept around. I also found his one note obsession regarding food grating at times. His principle use was in getting the party into Seville proper but that whole side quest did nothing except pad the story. I found Shockeye to be boring in that regard and would have preferred more use of the Sontarans or further machinations with Chessene rather than the focus that he pulled.
My final point of criticism is with the Sixth Doctor and Peri. I've not seen all of this season but I have heard of their squabbling. In a vacuum it might be tolerated, but in this story you have the almost brotherly bond between the Second Doctor and Jamie to contrast it. You also have a short period where the Second Doctor interacts with Peri and you see immediately how cordial he is with her. It's creates a huge contrast with how the Sixth Doctor treats Peri (and he's not much better with Jamie) and it gives the impression of an almost abusive relationship between the two. It just adds to the off-putting nature of their scenes together.
If you take it on balance, the good outweighs the bad, although it's easier to write about the bad. I'd watch it again, although there are definitely points where you can check out a bit. But lets be honest, any chance to see the Second Doctor and Robert Holmes can't be a bad effort.
Overall personal score: 3.5 out 5
Friday, February 12, 2016
Army of Ghosts/Doomsday
Pete's World, that's what we should call it!
Army of Ghosts and Doomsday was a pretty good way of closing Series Two and sending off Rose. Rose was never my favorite but I thought this an appropriate way to go. It is also important to try not to let what happened in Series Four (specifically Journey's End) color the appreciation of this story.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Rose return to visit her mother and find the Earth is being visited by apparitions called "ghosts". The Doctor doesn't believe they are real ghosts and investigates their origins, grabbing the attention of the Torchwood Institute. The Doctor and Rose jump over to Torchwood in the TARDIS, inadvertently taking Jackie with them, where the Doctor is escorted around under guard by the director, Yvonne Hartman. Jackie is also taken under the guise of being Rose, leaving Rose to investigate independently.
The Doctor is taken to see the origin of the ghost shift in the form of a sphere that doesn't register as existing. The Doctor recognizes it as a Void ship, something meant to fly in the space between universes. He is then taken to the ghost shift control center where he warns Torchwood not to activate the shift any more for fear of making the hole between the universes bigger. Director Hartman originally refuses but becomes concerned that she does order it shut down. However, unbeknownst to her or the Doctor, a small group of Cybermen have crossed over and taken over many of the Torchwood computer personnel. They then activate the shift independently. The Doctor manages to shut it down but is captured by the Cybermen when they are exposed. The Cybermen reactive the shift, bringing millions of Cybermen from the Age of Steel/Rise of the Cybermen universe over.
This shift also activates the void ship, causing the security system to seal the room it is in. Rose had snuck into this room but was discovered by the head scientist, Dr. Rajesh Singh. She is further shocked to learn that the assistant is Mickey, working undercover from the Cyberman universe. They are all shocked to see that exiting the sphere are four Daleks who threaten to exterminate them.
Doomsday picks things up with Director Hartman being cybernized. Jackie is also slated for conversion but manages to escape. The Daleks kill Dr. Singh and learn of the situation with the Cybermen from his memory extraction. They declare war against the Cybermen but become concerned on learning that the Doctor is also here. They Cybermen mobilize against the Daleks and in the confusion, Cybermen universe Torchwood people materialize and bring the Doctor back to their universe. He meets Pete Tyler and learns that the gateway must be seals or both universes will be destroyed.
Pete brings the Doctor back to the original universe and the Doctor goes in to save Rose and Mickey. They get the two of them out with the Cybermen then moving in to fight against the Daleks but Mickey accidentally touches the Genesis Ark, activating it. The Ark is a prison where millions of Daleks had been stored and will now be released. The Doctor and Rose reunite with Jackie and the whole team assembles in the control room. The Doctor will open the hole only on the original universe side causing anything that has passed through the gateway to be sucked into the void. This means that all the Torchwood team must go back and be cut off from traveling through the void again. The Doctor wants Rose to go but she rebels and jumps back to help the Doctor. Jackie, having gone to be with Pete in the other universe is devastated and demands that Pete go back for her.
With Rose helping him, the Doctor opens the gateway and secures himself and Rose from being sucked in. However, some of the Daleks and Cybermen hit the lever on Rose's side causing the gateway to start to collapse. She loosens herself and reopens the gate, but is now unsecured. She attempts to hold on but is being sucked into the void. Pete then appears at the last second and takes her back to his universe just before the gate closes, separating her from the Doctor. The Doctor is able to project an image of himself to her in the other universe to say good-bye. There, Rose confesses that she loves the Doctor. He disappears before he can offer a similar response. The episode ends with a red-headed woman in a bridal dress suddenly appearing in the TARDIS, demanding to know where she is.
Analysis
If you asked any classic Doctor Who fan what their fantasy battle would be, it would probably be the Cybermen facing off against the Daleks. Doomsday indulges in this with spades. There's a funny scene at the beginning of the episode where the Cybermen and the Daleks indulge in a real dick-measuring contest. Rose gets in a good jibe as well, taunting the Daleks how they can mouth off against a million Cybermen but they clam up when the Doctor appears.
Speaking of Rose, she does very well. I'm not a fan of the Doctor/Rose romance but it does come across as believable in this story, at least on Rose's part. What's more, you feel a genuine sadness when they are separated and the tragedy of it hits you as the Doctor leans against the wall as if to listen while Rose cries and beats the same wall in frustration at having lost the Doctor. The scene on the beach that ends it reinforces the feeling but it lacks the raw emotion that the wall scene contains, even though Rose is spilling her heart out. Now, if you know what happens through Series Four, these two scenes lose a great deal of their power. But they should be judged on their emotion of the moment and that is very good.
Now, there are a couple of small problems with the episode. The antagonist until the Cybermen show up is Director Hartman and she is a bit one note. It's not egregious, but there are slight notes of the overzealous ministers that appeared in the Third Doctor era. She's not an old boy, but the human arrogance shines through full and it just loses a bit when that the same tone throughout. She makes a later appearance after she has been cybernized, holding off other Cybermen to give the Doctor more time to open the porthole. It follows the trend of how certain people can overcome cybernation with enough will and it just feels like a plot convenience given how others who might be just as strong willed are overcome and don't come back.
Although it works out well for the plot, I was also a little disappointed as to how easily the Cybermen were overcome by the Daleks. Given how easily we see the Doctor repeatedly overcome the Daleks, it would have made some sense to have at least one or two of the Daleks to be destroyed by the Cybermen, especially after the Doctor drops their defenses for a moment during the rescue of Rose and Mickey. It's a minor thing but it would have given a little extra balance to having the Cybermen there.
Overall, very good. Arguably the best series closer of the RTD era, which is saying something given my general distaste for Rose. Easily watchable again with very little argument from me.
Overall personal score: Army of Ghosts: 4 out of 5; Doomsday: 4.5 out of 5
Army of Ghosts and Doomsday was a pretty good way of closing Series Two and sending off Rose. Rose was never my favorite but I thought this an appropriate way to go. It is also important to try not to let what happened in Series Four (specifically Journey's End) color the appreciation of this story.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Rose return to visit her mother and find the Earth is being visited by apparitions called "ghosts". The Doctor doesn't believe they are real ghosts and investigates their origins, grabbing the attention of the Torchwood Institute. The Doctor and Rose jump over to Torchwood in the TARDIS, inadvertently taking Jackie with them, where the Doctor is escorted around under guard by the director, Yvonne Hartman. Jackie is also taken under the guise of being Rose, leaving Rose to investigate independently.
The Doctor is taken to see the origin of the ghost shift in the form of a sphere that doesn't register as existing. The Doctor recognizes it as a Void ship, something meant to fly in the space between universes. He is then taken to the ghost shift control center where he warns Torchwood not to activate the shift any more for fear of making the hole between the universes bigger. Director Hartman originally refuses but becomes concerned that she does order it shut down. However, unbeknownst to her or the Doctor, a small group of Cybermen have crossed over and taken over many of the Torchwood computer personnel. They then activate the shift independently. The Doctor manages to shut it down but is captured by the Cybermen when they are exposed. The Cybermen reactive the shift, bringing millions of Cybermen from the Age of Steel/Rise of the Cybermen universe over.
This shift also activates the void ship, causing the security system to seal the room it is in. Rose had snuck into this room but was discovered by the head scientist, Dr. Rajesh Singh. She is further shocked to learn that the assistant is Mickey, working undercover from the Cyberman universe. They are all shocked to see that exiting the sphere are four Daleks who threaten to exterminate them.
Doomsday picks things up with Director Hartman being cybernized. Jackie is also slated for conversion but manages to escape. The Daleks kill Dr. Singh and learn of the situation with the Cybermen from his memory extraction. They declare war against the Cybermen but become concerned on learning that the Doctor is also here. They Cybermen mobilize against the Daleks and in the confusion, Cybermen universe Torchwood people materialize and bring the Doctor back to their universe. He meets Pete Tyler and learns that the gateway must be seals or both universes will be destroyed.
Pete brings the Doctor back to the original universe and the Doctor goes in to save Rose and Mickey. They get the two of them out with the Cybermen then moving in to fight against the Daleks but Mickey accidentally touches the Genesis Ark, activating it. The Ark is a prison where millions of Daleks had been stored and will now be released. The Doctor and Rose reunite with Jackie and the whole team assembles in the control room. The Doctor will open the hole only on the original universe side causing anything that has passed through the gateway to be sucked into the void. This means that all the Torchwood team must go back and be cut off from traveling through the void again. The Doctor wants Rose to go but she rebels and jumps back to help the Doctor. Jackie, having gone to be with Pete in the other universe is devastated and demands that Pete go back for her.
With Rose helping him, the Doctor opens the gateway and secures himself and Rose from being sucked in. However, some of the Daleks and Cybermen hit the lever on Rose's side causing the gateway to start to collapse. She loosens herself and reopens the gate, but is now unsecured. She attempts to hold on but is being sucked into the void. Pete then appears at the last second and takes her back to his universe just before the gate closes, separating her from the Doctor. The Doctor is able to project an image of himself to her in the other universe to say good-bye. There, Rose confesses that she loves the Doctor. He disappears before he can offer a similar response. The episode ends with a red-headed woman in a bridal dress suddenly appearing in the TARDIS, demanding to know where she is.
Analysis
If you asked any classic Doctor Who fan what their fantasy battle would be, it would probably be the Cybermen facing off against the Daleks. Doomsday indulges in this with spades. There's a funny scene at the beginning of the episode where the Cybermen and the Daleks indulge in a real dick-measuring contest. Rose gets in a good jibe as well, taunting the Daleks how they can mouth off against a million Cybermen but they clam up when the Doctor appears.
Speaking of Rose, she does very well. I'm not a fan of the Doctor/Rose romance but it does come across as believable in this story, at least on Rose's part. What's more, you feel a genuine sadness when they are separated and the tragedy of it hits you as the Doctor leans against the wall as if to listen while Rose cries and beats the same wall in frustration at having lost the Doctor. The scene on the beach that ends it reinforces the feeling but it lacks the raw emotion that the wall scene contains, even though Rose is spilling her heart out. Now, if you know what happens through Series Four, these two scenes lose a great deal of their power. But they should be judged on their emotion of the moment and that is very good.
Now, there are a couple of small problems with the episode. The antagonist until the Cybermen show up is Director Hartman and she is a bit one note. It's not egregious, but there are slight notes of the overzealous ministers that appeared in the Third Doctor era. She's not an old boy, but the human arrogance shines through full and it just loses a bit when that the same tone throughout. She makes a later appearance after she has been cybernized, holding off other Cybermen to give the Doctor more time to open the porthole. It follows the trend of how certain people can overcome cybernation with enough will and it just feels like a plot convenience given how others who might be just as strong willed are overcome and don't come back.
Although it works out well for the plot, I was also a little disappointed as to how easily the Cybermen were overcome by the Daleks. Given how easily we see the Doctor repeatedly overcome the Daleks, it would have made some sense to have at least one or two of the Daleks to be destroyed by the Cybermen, especially after the Doctor drops their defenses for a moment during the rescue of Rose and Mickey. It's a minor thing but it would have given a little extra balance to having the Cybermen there.
Overall, very good. Arguably the best series closer of the RTD era, which is saying something given my general distaste for Rose. Easily watchable again with very little argument from me.
Overall personal score: Army of Ghosts: 4 out of 5; Doomsday: 4.5 out of 5
Thursday, February 11, 2016
Robot
There's no point of being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes
Robot is the first story of the Fourth Doctor. However, the story format and telling is very much belonging to that of the Third Doctor era but with a bit more comedy thrown in.
Plot Summary
After regenerating, the Doctor recuperates in the UNIT medical center. He is primed to leave except that the Brigadier brings word that secret plans for a laser weapon have been stolen and a man killed. After some initial investigating, the Doctor is intrigued enough to stick around and work with UNIT one more time.
Sarah also contributes by using her reporters credentials to investigate a think tank that has had ties to the weapon plans. There she discovers a the robot that has been stealing the plans and killing (although she doesn't know this yet). She shows kindness to the robot while everyone else dismisses it as a mindless machine. She then meets the robot's creator, Professor Kettlewell, who had been dismissed from the think tank.
The robot is used to steal the last of the plans and to murder a cabinet minister who had nuclear launch codes in his possession. Those codes are taken to the think tank director, Hilda Winters, who is organizing a rise of the intellectual class who will rebuild society after the lesser elements are destroyed. Sarah, the Doctor, and Professor Kettlewell go to a meeting of the society's members, although the Doctor is unaware that Sarah has snuck in. She learns that Professor Kettlewell is actually the mastermind behind the society, although Miss Winters has taken it to extremes. UNIT moves to arrest the society but Winters, her assistant and Kettlewell escape using Sarah as a hostage.
They flee to a bunker where Winters sets the codes to launch the world's nuclear arsenal. The Robot is dispatched to guard the entrance and successfully repels UNITs attempts to get by. Sarah and Harry, who had also been taken captive, attempt to escape. Winters orders the robot to kill them but it hesitates as it remembers Sarah being kind to it. It eventually fires but kills Kettlewell instead, further destabilizing it's mind. The Doctor sneaks in and disables the launch computer and Winters and all the others in the bunker are arrested.
After Winters is taken away, the robot reactivates and moves against UNIT in an attempt to protect Sarah. UNIT attempts to destroy the robot with the disintegration gun but it causes a reaction which causes the robot to grow to a giant size. It grabs Sarah and places her on a building to keep her out of harm's reach and then begins to attack UNIT. The Doctor runs back to Professor Kettlewell's lab and brews a solution that will dissolve the robot's structure. He throws it on the robot and it causes the robot to shrink back to it's normal size and then be eaten away.
Analysis
If you watched Doctor Who in broadcast order, you might not think of this one as much different than the stories that preceded it. But if you have seen Fourth Doctor stories that aired later, this would have seemed very out of left field. It is not bad, but it just feels off because it is clearly more suited for the Third Doctor.
For the most part, the story is pretty good. It is well acted and it is also nice to see a strong female villain, even if it is another tired retread of taking over the world. Professor Kettlewell is also a nice character as it is not the typical angry scientist retread and instead a man with somewhat extreme ideas uses by people with even worse extremes. The Doctor also finds his feet very quickly and is recognizable almost instantly, a bit of a divergence from the usual needing a couple of stories to get over the effects of regeneration.
There are two prominent shortcomings that I can find with this story. First is nature of the Fourth Doctor and how it offsets UNIT. The Third Doctor worked well with UNIT and the two seemed to mesh, even when they were at odds. The Forth Doctor seems wrong in being tied down with the Brigadier and even his driving of Bessie around just doesn't seem to fit. It gives a constant underplay of something just being not right with this one.
The second shortcoming are the effects. There is a lot of CSO and it looks pretty bad. In 1970's stories there is a bit of leeway given but the effects here just stand out as blatantly below par. It isn't even that bad up through the first three episodes as I thought they did a pretty good job with the Robot. But in Episode Four, when it becomes King Kong, things just go to pot. The story also loses a lot in it's dynamic in Episode Four. Professor Kettlewell and Miss Winters provided different aspects to the villain's side and also helped flesh out the robot with it's own psychosis. However, in Episode Four, the robot has gone completely into reactionary Oedipus Complex and is reduced to the rampaging monster, again like King Kong. In many ways, if the story had ended in Episode Three, it might have been slightly better received. Or maybe that's just me.
Overall, this wasn't a bad way to end the producership of Barry Letts or to introduce the Fourth Doctor. But it also wasn't a particularly great beginning either. I'd have considered a 3.5 or a 4 for the first three episodes but I've got to knock it down for the shortfalls of Episode Four, action-packed as it may have been.
Overall personal score: 3 out 5
Robot is the first story of the Fourth Doctor. However, the story format and telling is very much belonging to that of the Third Doctor era but with a bit more comedy thrown in.
Plot Summary
After regenerating, the Doctor recuperates in the UNIT medical center. He is primed to leave except that the Brigadier brings word that secret plans for a laser weapon have been stolen and a man killed. After some initial investigating, the Doctor is intrigued enough to stick around and work with UNIT one more time.
Sarah also contributes by using her reporters credentials to investigate a think tank that has had ties to the weapon plans. There she discovers a the robot that has been stealing the plans and killing (although she doesn't know this yet). She shows kindness to the robot while everyone else dismisses it as a mindless machine. She then meets the robot's creator, Professor Kettlewell, who had been dismissed from the think tank.
The robot is used to steal the last of the plans and to murder a cabinet minister who had nuclear launch codes in his possession. Those codes are taken to the think tank director, Hilda Winters, who is organizing a rise of the intellectual class who will rebuild society after the lesser elements are destroyed. Sarah, the Doctor, and Professor Kettlewell go to a meeting of the society's members, although the Doctor is unaware that Sarah has snuck in. She learns that Professor Kettlewell is actually the mastermind behind the society, although Miss Winters has taken it to extremes. UNIT moves to arrest the society but Winters, her assistant and Kettlewell escape using Sarah as a hostage.
They flee to a bunker where Winters sets the codes to launch the world's nuclear arsenal. The Robot is dispatched to guard the entrance and successfully repels UNITs attempts to get by. Sarah and Harry, who had also been taken captive, attempt to escape. Winters orders the robot to kill them but it hesitates as it remembers Sarah being kind to it. It eventually fires but kills Kettlewell instead, further destabilizing it's mind. The Doctor sneaks in and disables the launch computer and Winters and all the others in the bunker are arrested.
After Winters is taken away, the robot reactivates and moves against UNIT in an attempt to protect Sarah. UNIT attempts to destroy the robot with the disintegration gun but it causes a reaction which causes the robot to grow to a giant size. It grabs Sarah and places her on a building to keep her out of harm's reach and then begins to attack UNIT. The Doctor runs back to Professor Kettlewell's lab and brews a solution that will dissolve the robot's structure. He throws it on the robot and it causes the robot to shrink back to it's normal size and then be eaten away.
Analysis
If you watched Doctor Who in broadcast order, you might not think of this one as much different than the stories that preceded it. But if you have seen Fourth Doctor stories that aired later, this would have seemed very out of left field. It is not bad, but it just feels off because it is clearly more suited for the Third Doctor.
For the most part, the story is pretty good. It is well acted and it is also nice to see a strong female villain, even if it is another tired retread of taking over the world. Professor Kettlewell is also a nice character as it is not the typical angry scientist retread and instead a man with somewhat extreme ideas uses by people with even worse extremes. The Doctor also finds his feet very quickly and is recognizable almost instantly, a bit of a divergence from the usual needing a couple of stories to get over the effects of regeneration.
There are two prominent shortcomings that I can find with this story. First is nature of the Fourth Doctor and how it offsets UNIT. The Third Doctor worked well with UNIT and the two seemed to mesh, even when they were at odds. The Forth Doctor seems wrong in being tied down with the Brigadier and even his driving of Bessie around just doesn't seem to fit. It gives a constant underplay of something just being not right with this one.
The second shortcoming are the effects. There is a lot of CSO and it looks pretty bad. In 1970's stories there is a bit of leeway given but the effects here just stand out as blatantly below par. It isn't even that bad up through the first three episodes as I thought they did a pretty good job with the Robot. But in Episode Four, when it becomes King Kong, things just go to pot. The story also loses a lot in it's dynamic in Episode Four. Professor Kettlewell and Miss Winters provided different aspects to the villain's side and also helped flesh out the robot with it's own psychosis. However, in Episode Four, the robot has gone completely into reactionary Oedipus Complex and is reduced to the rampaging monster, again like King Kong. In many ways, if the story had ended in Episode Three, it might have been slightly better received. Or maybe that's just me.
Overall, this wasn't a bad way to end the producership of Barry Letts or to introduce the Fourth Doctor. But it also wasn't a particularly great beginning either. I'd have considered a 3.5 or a 4 for the first three episodes but I've got to knock it down for the shortfalls of Episode Four, action-packed as it may have been.
Overall personal score: 3 out 5
Monday, February 8, 2016
Fear Her
We love Chloe Webber
I you were to poll Doctor Who fans on what the worst episode is of the new series, Fear Her would probably score on several of those lists. Having just reviewed this episode again, I'm not going to say it's the worst, but oh boy it sure ain't good.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Rose land in London just before the 2012 Olympics are about to begin. They are alerted that neighborhood children are disappearing. After a quick bit of investigating, they learn that an alien space child has been separated from it's swarm and possessed a girl named Chloe Webber. Chloe loves drawing and the alien uses its power to trap people and animals within her drawings trying to recreate the feeling of togetherness it felt when it was with its family. Becoming scared that the Doctor might take away the only friend it has, Chloe traps the Doctor in a drawing. Rose, using information the Doctor left, finds the alien spacecraft buried in fresh hot patch. Learning from the Doctor that the craft needs both heat and joyful feelings, Rose pitches the ship into the passing Olympic torch. Feeling the heat and love, the alien leaves Chloe and departs in it's ship.
The children reemerge from Chloe's drawings but Chloe's drawing of her abusive deceased father also comes alive. It is sent back into non-existence when Chloe finally receives comfort from her mother and the two of them sing together for comfort. Rose looks for the Doctor and finally finds him when the Olympic torchbearer collapses and the Doctor picks up the torch and runs to light the cauldron. The Doctor and Rose then depart with the Doctor offering an ominous warning that a storm is coming.
Analysis
There are a lot of problems with this episode but probably the one that actually irks me the most is that it starts off well. The Doctor and Rose have nice chemistry and there is an interesting little mystery to be solved. Even the concept isn't bad with a scared child causing havoc in simply trying to find friends. But once Chloe is introduced, the episode starts to slide and it just doesn't stop.
The first major mistake they made was with the volume of the task they asked the actress playing Chloe to do. She did alright in short scenes as herself or with her mom. But when she had to do the altered voice and state of the alien child, it was just too much. There should have been some voice over work that could have been done by another actor. That would have allowed the actress to focus only on the visuals which would have probably improved things. It was just too much for a young actress and the overall performance suffered as a result.
I also didn't like the inclusion of the abusive father drawing. The alien is searching for love and friendship. Creating a vision of terror and pain seems very out of character with what the creature wants. It smacked far more of the writer deciding their needed to be a proper villain to offer some sort of threat since we couldn't really be angry at the alien. I didn't mind the cheap way they pulled it off in the form of a scary voice-over and a red light. That actually made it scarier than actually having an actor there, but the role as a whole just felt very shoehorned in.
There was another production point that fell flat as well. Despite that this episode is supposed to be taking place in August, it is obviously shot in the winter as everyone's breath is visible. They draw further attention to this by having the Doctor note how cold it feels and this being an additional sign of what the alien is doing. That is fine and actually rather clever. However, after the alien leaves, things should return to normal. Instead the cold breath becomes even more obvious with a night shoot outside. The location could have been so easily changed so that filming in this atmosphere was not required. It effectively undid their set up at the beginning and reminded everyone that this was just an artifact of filming in winter.
Despite all of these, the episode could have probably escaped with just a "meh" rating from most fans if it hadn't been for the last few minutes. It was already getting schmaltzy with needing the love of the games to power the ship and Chloe and her mother singing away the terror of Chloe's father, but as soon as the Doctor reemerged carrying the torch, there was just this overwhelming saccharine feeling that drove away whatever positive feelings I had for this episode. This was compounded by the fact that the Doctor running up and lighting the torch was so obviously done on a blackened out stage. It was like the producers openly admitting they had run out of budget at this point.
There are probably a few folks out there that would give this one a zero. I'm not that harsh as I did enjoy especially the first ten minutes or so. But there is a lot wrong with this one and now that I have revisited it to refresh myself, I can't see any urge to go back and watch it again. A middling idea that fell apart in execution and soppiness.
Overall personal score: 1 out of 5
I you were to poll Doctor Who fans on what the worst episode is of the new series, Fear Her would probably score on several of those lists. Having just reviewed this episode again, I'm not going to say it's the worst, but oh boy it sure ain't good.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Rose land in London just before the 2012 Olympics are about to begin. They are alerted that neighborhood children are disappearing. After a quick bit of investigating, they learn that an alien space child has been separated from it's swarm and possessed a girl named Chloe Webber. Chloe loves drawing and the alien uses its power to trap people and animals within her drawings trying to recreate the feeling of togetherness it felt when it was with its family. Becoming scared that the Doctor might take away the only friend it has, Chloe traps the Doctor in a drawing. Rose, using information the Doctor left, finds the alien spacecraft buried in fresh hot patch. Learning from the Doctor that the craft needs both heat and joyful feelings, Rose pitches the ship into the passing Olympic torch. Feeling the heat and love, the alien leaves Chloe and departs in it's ship.
The children reemerge from Chloe's drawings but Chloe's drawing of her abusive deceased father also comes alive. It is sent back into non-existence when Chloe finally receives comfort from her mother and the two of them sing together for comfort. Rose looks for the Doctor and finally finds him when the Olympic torchbearer collapses and the Doctor picks up the torch and runs to light the cauldron. The Doctor and Rose then depart with the Doctor offering an ominous warning that a storm is coming.
Analysis
There are a lot of problems with this episode but probably the one that actually irks me the most is that it starts off well. The Doctor and Rose have nice chemistry and there is an interesting little mystery to be solved. Even the concept isn't bad with a scared child causing havoc in simply trying to find friends. But once Chloe is introduced, the episode starts to slide and it just doesn't stop.
The first major mistake they made was with the volume of the task they asked the actress playing Chloe to do. She did alright in short scenes as herself or with her mom. But when she had to do the altered voice and state of the alien child, it was just too much. There should have been some voice over work that could have been done by another actor. That would have allowed the actress to focus only on the visuals which would have probably improved things. It was just too much for a young actress and the overall performance suffered as a result.
I also didn't like the inclusion of the abusive father drawing. The alien is searching for love and friendship. Creating a vision of terror and pain seems very out of character with what the creature wants. It smacked far more of the writer deciding their needed to be a proper villain to offer some sort of threat since we couldn't really be angry at the alien. I didn't mind the cheap way they pulled it off in the form of a scary voice-over and a red light. That actually made it scarier than actually having an actor there, but the role as a whole just felt very shoehorned in.
There was another production point that fell flat as well. Despite that this episode is supposed to be taking place in August, it is obviously shot in the winter as everyone's breath is visible. They draw further attention to this by having the Doctor note how cold it feels and this being an additional sign of what the alien is doing. That is fine and actually rather clever. However, after the alien leaves, things should return to normal. Instead the cold breath becomes even more obvious with a night shoot outside. The location could have been so easily changed so that filming in this atmosphere was not required. It effectively undid their set up at the beginning and reminded everyone that this was just an artifact of filming in winter.
Despite all of these, the episode could have probably escaped with just a "meh" rating from most fans if it hadn't been for the last few minutes. It was already getting schmaltzy with needing the love of the games to power the ship and Chloe and her mother singing away the terror of Chloe's father, but as soon as the Doctor reemerged carrying the torch, there was just this overwhelming saccharine feeling that drove away whatever positive feelings I had for this episode. This was compounded by the fact that the Doctor running up and lighting the torch was so obviously done on a blackened out stage. It was like the producers openly admitting they had run out of budget at this point.
There are probably a few folks out there that would give this one a zero. I'm not that harsh as I did enjoy especially the first ten minutes or so. But there is a lot wrong with this one and now that I have revisited it to refresh myself, I can't see any urge to go back and watch it again. A middling idea that fell apart in execution and soppiness.
Overall personal score: 1 out of 5
Thursday, February 4, 2016
The Eleventh Hour
Hello, I'm the Doctor
When you look back over the history of Doctor Who and the story that follows a regeneration, it's decidedly a mixed bag. While a few stories are very good (The Power of the Daleks being an excellent example), many of the first stories are either odd or just plain not good. The Eleventh Hour is an example of a story that is very good and an excellent intro to a new Doctor.
Plot Summary
The Doctor crash lands the TARDIS outside a house in a small village shortly after regenerating. There he meets 7-year old Amelia Pond who is scared of a mysterious crack in her wall. The Doctor examines it, noting that a prisoner has used the crack to escape from it's cell. He is forced to leave due to a problem with the TARDIS but promises to be back in five minutes and that Amelia can come with him when he comes back.
The Doctor overshoots by twelve years. He breaks into Amelia's home and is knocked out by a woman in a police uniform. Amelia has grown up and calls herself Amy now. While restrained, the Doctor realizes that the escaped Prisoner Zero has created a little room for it to hide in Amy's house. Amy enters the room and sees the creature. It emerges using the form of a man in a coma in the local hospital. The Doctor gets free and he and Amy flee to the middle of the village. There they hear a voice over all media announcing that Prisoner Zero must be returned or the guards will destroy the Earth to ensure he doesn't escape.
They run into Amy's boyfriend Rory who is a nurse at the hospital. Using Rory's information, the Doctor realizes how Prisoner Zero is assuming his forms. The Doctor hacks into a political power conference and sets up a trap for Prisoner Zero. He then goes to the hospital to confront him. Prisoner Zero is cornered by the guards but assumes Amy's form to try and escape. The Doctor encourages Amy and she visualizes Prisoner Zero in his base form, causing him to revert back and be captured by the guards. The Doctor then confronts the guards to ensure they don't return to Earth.
The Doctor returns to the TARDIS and disappears, reappearing two years later and offering Amy a chance to travel with him. He is monitoring the crack but lies to her about it. Amy agrees if the Doctor promises to get her back before the following morning. They disappear leaving Amy's wedding dress hanging in her room.
Analysis
In many ways, this story could have not worked. Prisoner Zero isn't particularly threatening and the Atraxi fall into the standard template of threatening to incinerate the Earth. Young Amelia could also have fallen flat as many child actors do when faced with pivotal scenes. But instead, they all worked out. Prisoner Zero and the Atraxi were more of a device to move the story along which in reality was about the development of the relationship of the Doctor and Amy. The manic-ness of the Eleventh Doctor is given time to breathe and register, making a more acceptable transition from the Tenth to the Eleventh Doctor. Amy is also allowed to change from a worshipful child, to a cynical adult and then to a cautious yet hearty traveling companion.
There is an excellent banter between the Doctor and Amy as they feel each other out and develop. Rory is casually introduced as the lovable doofus that we will come to enjoy later, providing that little bit of awkward third party humor that he does so well. Despite having the town cast, it is a very intimate story with the first half being entirely between the Doctor and Amy. Even after that, the story stays mostly with the Doctor, Amy, Rory, Prisoner Zero and the Atraxi from afar. Only a few other bit characters enter in to the story and their role is minor.
Overall, this is a very enjoyable story to watch multiple times. There's not a whole lot to say about it because it is a thoroughly enjoyable story. It has slow parts, it has action, it has emotion, it has comedy. Very little more could be said about it.
Overall personal score: 5 out of 5
When you look back over the history of Doctor Who and the story that follows a regeneration, it's decidedly a mixed bag. While a few stories are very good (The Power of the Daleks being an excellent example), many of the first stories are either odd or just plain not good. The Eleventh Hour is an example of a story that is very good and an excellent intro to a new Doctor.
Plot Summary
The Doctor crash lands the TARDIS outside a house in a small village shortly after regenerating. There he meets 7-year old Amelia Pond who is scared of a mysterious crack in her wall. The Doctor examines it, noting that a prisoner has used the crack to escape from it's cell. He is forced to leave due to a problem with the TARDIS but promises to be back in five minutes and that Amelia can come with him when he comes back.
The Doctor overshoots by twelve years. He breaks into Amelia's home and is knocked out by a woman in a police uniform. Amelia has grown up and calls herself Amy now. While restrained, the Doctor realizes that the escaped Prisoner Zero has created a little room for it to hide in Amy's house. Amy enters the room and sees the creature. It emerges using the form of a man in a coma in the local hospital. The Doctor gets free and he and Amy flee to the middle of the village. There they hear a voice over all media announcing that Prisoner Zero must be returned or the guards will destroy the Earth to ensure he doesn't escape.
They run into Amy's boyfriend Rory who is a nurse at the hospital. Using Rory's information, the Doctor realizes how Prisoner Zero is assuming his forms. The Doctor hacks into a political power conference and sets up a trap for Prisoner Zero. He then goes to the hospital to confront him. Prisoner Zero is cornered by the guards but assumes Amy's form to try and escape. The Doctor encourages Amy and she visualizes Prisoner Zero in his base form, causing him to revert back and be captured by the guards. The Doctor then confronts the guards to ensure they don't return to Earth.
The Doctor returns to the TARDIS and disappears, reappearing two years later and offering Amy a chance to travel with him. He is monitoring the crack but lies to her about it. Amy agrees if the Doctor promises to get her back before the following morning. They disappear leaving Amy's wedding dress hanging in her room.
Analysis
In many ways, this story could have not worked. Prisoner Zero isn't particularly threatening and the Atraxi fall into the standard template of threatening to incinerate the Earth. Young Amelia could also have fallen flat as many child actors do when faced with pivotal scenes. But instead, they all worked out. Prisoner Zero and the Atraxi were more of a device to move the story along which in reality was about the development of the relationship of the Doctor and Amy. The manic-ness of the Eleventh Doctor is given time to breathe and register, making a more acceptable transition from the Tenth to the Eleventh Doctor. Amy is also allowed to change from a worshipful child, to a cynical adult and then to a cautious yet hearty traveling companion.
There is an excellent banter between the Doctor and Amy as they feel each other out and develop. Rory is casually introduced as the lovable doofus that we will come to enjoy later, providing that little bit of awkward third party humor that he does so well. Despite having the town cast, it is a very intimate story with the first half being entirely between the Doctor and Amy. Even after that, the story stays mostly with the Doctor, Amy, Rory, Prisoner Zero and the Atraxi from afar. Only a few other bit characters enter in to the story and their role is minor.
Overall, this is a very enjoyable story to watch multiple times. There's not a whole lot to say about it because it is a thoroughly enjoyable story. It has slow parts, it has action, it has emotion, it has comedy. Very little more could be said about it.
Overall personal score: 5 out of 5
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
The Faceless Ones
Have you considered the possibility that they went up?
I was surprised as to how much I liked this story. It doesn't get a lot of discussion other than it being the story where Ben and Polly leave and being the second of three tie-ins to July 20, 1966. But it was quite enjoyable.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and his companions land in the middle of a airport runway. Attempting to avoid arrest, the group splits up. Polly hides in a hanger and witnesses a man being shot with a ray gun. She flees and tells the Doctor. The Doctor, Jamie and Polly go to the hanger to examine the body. After leaving to go tell the authorities, Polly is abducted by the murderers and replaced with a double. The Doctor finds the authorities but they don't believe his story and when they examine the hanger, the body is gone and the evidence of the crime dismissed. The two men who murdered the third then take a faceless alien up to the medical area where he is hooked up to a machine with an air traffic controller. The machine transfers the image of the controller and his memories into the alien who then poses as the controller.
The Doctor, Jamie and Ben split up to investigate. Jamie goes to the Chameleon Tours kiosk where he keeps an eye on "Polly". There he meets a woman named Samantha who is looking for her brother who has disappeared. Ben sneaks back into the Chameleon Tours hanger and discovers Polly in a trance, packed in a crate. Ben attempts to contact the Doctor but is captured. The Doctor attempts to see the Commandant of the airport but must flee before being arrested again. He does catch the attention of a detective-inspector who is looking for a colleague of his (the man who was murdered). The Doctor meets Jamie and sneaks into the Chameleon Tours offices. He sees Ben being captured and hurries to the hanger where he also finds people in a trance and packed in crates. Lured by a call for help, he is trapped in an office which begins to fill with freezing gas.
The Doctor stops the cold gas with his handkerchief and is released from the sealed room by Jamie. The Doctor sends Jamie and Samantha back to the kiosk to learn anything and the two discover that postcards are written by the passengers before they leave and then posted from the foreign location to make it appear that they have arrived. The Doctor presents this evidence which convinces the detective-inspector to go to Chameleon Tours himself. Jamie, the Doctor, and Samantha head back over to look for additional evidence at the Chameleon hanger but are overpowered by Captain Blade, the head of the Chameleon operation. Meanwhile the detective-inspector watches from the cockpit as the passengers seemingly disappear.
The Doctor, Jamie, and Sam are set up to be burned by a laser when they manage to free themselves using a mirror from Sam's bag. Sam goes and buys a ticket on the next Chameleon flight to find her brother but when learning of her plan, Jamie steals it and goes aboard the plane himself. Sam learns of this when she tries to board and finds her ticket missing. But Captain Blade allows her back where she is captured again. The Doctor, having learned that operations are tied to the medical facility, enlists the aid of the Commandant's secretary and he sneaks into the ward. There he finds equipment for identity transference, which had just been used on another airport employee. He takes some of the equipment and heads back to the control tower. The Commandant has grown suspicious enough that he has requested an RAF fighter to tail the next Chameleon flight (the one Jamie is on). On the flight, Jamie gets queasy and goes to the bathroom. While in there, the rest of the passengers disappear and Captain Blade shoots down the RAF fighter with an electric weapon similar to the ray gun. The plane then climbs straight up into the docking bay of a space ship.
After seeing what happened, the Doctor convinces the Commandant to interrogate one of the air traffic control workers. When confronted with the arm bands the Doctor stole from the medical bay, he tries to run. He is restrained and tells of how they had abducted 50,000 young people for substitution due to their own planet dying. The Doctor and the police then go to the medical bay where the Chameleon nurse is subdued and the real nurse brought back around. Jamie meanwhile escaped the plane but is recaptured after finding the miniaturized bodies of the passengers. He finds the director of the overall mission has taken over the body of the Detective-Inspector and Jamie himself is then taken over. The Doctor learns that the Chameleon people are preparing to leave and he and the nurse board the last plane pretending to be doubles. Blade lets them come although he knows they are faking and takes them captive upon landing in the space ship.
Under orders from the Doctor before he left, the Commandant has the police and airport staff look for the bodies of the doubled workers. Samantha remembers something she saw in the Chameleon office and she and the Commandant's secretary Jean follow that to the airport parking lot. The Doctor meanwhile is going to be processed. He manages to sow doubt in minds of the crew who are dependent on the bodies left on Earth. They contact the airport and the Commandant attempts to bluff them. They don't believe him but the Doctor buys a bit more time by sabotaging the machine. The girls find the bodies in a group of cars in the parking lot and alert the police. As the Doctor is being set up to be transposed, the authorities remove one of the arm bands and one of the crew on the ship evaporates. Knowing they are not bluffing, Blade frees the Doctor and negotiates their release. They agree to let the captured people go in exchange for their lives. The Doctor even promises to offer a few suggestions to their scientists on how to survive their collapsing world. The Director and the Jamie Chameleon try to escape but Blade kills them. The Doctor then frees the real Jamie and detective-inspector. They return to the airport along with the first batch of unminiaturized passengers, which include Ben and Polly. Upon learning that it is the same day as when they left in The War Machines, Ben and Polly elect to say behind. The Doctor and Jamie say goodbye and then head off to find the TARDIS, which had been removed from where the police had taken it.
Analysis
Again, I am surprised as to how much I enjoyed this one. Being in a controlled location, it has an element of a base-under-siege story, but the threat is within rather than without and the primary enemy is time, both are elements that knock this story up a peg for me. I think it's greatest asset is the fact that that the Chameleons are not truly evil, they are just trying to survive. As a result, they never devolve into over-the-top antics or mustache-twirlyness. Captain Blade's cold resolve is far more effective than any maniacal laugh or other evil trope in expressing his power.
As might be expected, I didn't mind Ben and Polly being missing for four episodes as it kept the action tighter on the Doctor and Jamie. I also enjoyed Sam and I think she would have been a very good companion if she had elected to stay (supposedly she was offered the chance to be a companion but turned it down). She had very good chemistry with Jamie and it would have been interesting to see how the romantic element with Jamie would have played out over the future episodes.
Now there were a couple of downsides. Obviously the first is that only Episodes One and Three exist so you get bogged down in the recons. There is also a touch of bloat in Episodes three and four as there is some back and forth capturing and escaping and a slower play in finding out the full plans of the Chameleons. Four episodes might have been a bit rushed so I'd say it could have been done well in a five-parter. But it doesn't suffer overtly from that.
The story also peters out a little at the end. There is not much of a final confrontation and I thought Blade and the other Chameleons gave in a little too easy at the end. I wasn't expecting a big fire-fight or anything but after all that back and forth, I thought the Chameleons might resist a little more, resulting in a few more deaths. I wouldn't ding it significantly but a strong resolve would have been nice.
I would not say that this is a must for rewatch but I wouldn't have any problem watching it again if it were found. It might liven things up a bit to see the action when it is there rather than just have the stills shown. But it was a good story and not bad at all for a recon.
Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5
I was surprised as to how much I liked this story. It doesn't get a lot of discussion other than it being the story where Ben and Polly leave and being the second of three tie-ins to July 20, 1966. But it was quite enjoyable.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and his companions land in the middle of a airport runway. Attempting to avoid arrest, the group splits up. Polly hides in a hanger and witnesses a man being shot with a ray gun. She flees and tells the Doctor. The Doctor, Jamie and Polly go to the hanger to examine the body. After leaving to go tell the authorities, Polly is abducted by the murderers and replaced with a double. The Doctor finds the authorities but they don't believe his story and when they examine the hanger, the body is gone and the evidence of the crime dismissed. The two men who murdered the third then take a faceless alien up to the medical area where he is hooked up to a machine with an air traffic controller. The machine transfers the image of the controller and his memories into the alien who then poses as the controller.
The Doctor, Jamie and Ben split up to investigate. Jamie goes to the Chameleon Tours kiosk where he keeps an eye on "Polly". There he meets a woman named Samantha who is looking for her brother who has disappeared. Ben sneaks back into the Chameleon Tours hanger and discovers Polly in a trance, packed in a crate. Ben attempts to contact the Doctor but is captured. The Doctor attempts to see the Commandant of the airport but must flee before being arrested again. He does catch the attention of a detective-inspector who is looking for a colleague of his (the man who was murdered). The Doctor meets Jamie and sneaks into the Chameleon Tours offices. He sees Ben being captured and hurries to the hanger where he also finds people in a trance and packed in crates. Lured by a call for help, he is trapped in an office which begins to fill with freezing gas.
The Doctor stops the cold gas with his handkerchief and is released from the sealed room by Jamie. The Doctor sends Jamie and Samantha back to the kiosk to learn anything and the two discover that postcards are written by the passengers before they leave and then posted from the foreign location to make it appear that they have arrived. The Doctor presents this evidence which convinces the detective-inspector to go to Chameleon Tours himself. Jamie, the Doctor, and Samantha head back over to look for additional evidence at the Chameleon hanger but are overpowered by Captain Blade, the head of the Chameleon operation. Meanwhile the detective-inspector watches from the cockpit as the passengers seemingly disappear.
The Doctor, Jamie, and Sam are set up to be burned by a laser when they manage to free themselves using a mirror from Sam's bag. Sam goes and buys a ticket on the next Chameleon flight to find her brother but when learning of her plan, Jamie steals it and goes aboard the plane himself. Sam learns of this when she tries to board and finds her ticket missing. But Captain Blade allows her back where she is captured again. The Doctor, having learned that operations are tied to the medical facility, enlists the aid of the Commandant's secretary and he sneaks into the ward. There he finds equipment for identity transference, which had just been used on another airport employee. He takes some of the equipment and heads back to the control tower. The Commandant has grown suspicious enough that he has requested an RAF fighter to tail the next Chameleon flight (the one Jamie is on). On the flight, Jamie gets queasy and goes to the bathroom. While in there, the rest of the passengers disappear and Captain Blade shoots down the RAF fighter with an electric weapon similar to the ray gun. The plane then climbs straight up into the docking bay of a space ship.
After seeing what happened, the Doctor convinces the Commandant to interrogate one of the air traffic control workers. When confronted with the arm bands the Doctor stole from the medical bay, he tries to run. He is restrained and tells of how they had abducted 50,000 young people for substitution due to their own planet dying. The Doctor and the police then go to the medical bay where the Chameleon nurse is subdued and the real nurse brought back around. Jamie meanwhile escaped the plane but is recaptured after finding the miniaturized bodies of the passengers. He finds the director of the overall mission has taken over the body of the Detective-Inspector and Jamie himself is then taken over. The Doctor learns that the Chameleon people are preparing to leave and he and the nurse board the last plane pretending to be doubles. Blade lets them come although he knows they are faking and takes them captive upon landing in the space ship.
Under orders from the Doctor before he left, the Commandant has the police and airport staff look for the bodies of the doubled workers. Samantha remembers something she saw in the Chameleon office and she and the Commandant's secretary Jean follow that to the airport parking lot. The Doctor meanwhile is going to be processed. He manages to sow doubt in minds of the crew who are dependent on the bodies left on Earth. They contact the airport and the Commandant attempts to bluff them. They don't believe him but the Doctor buys a bit more time by sabotaging the machine. The girls find the bodies in a group of cars in the parking lot and alert the police. As the Doctor is being set up to be transposed, the authorities remove one of the arm bands and one of the crew on the ship evaporates. Knowing they are not bluffing, Blade frees the Doctor and negotiates their release. They agree to let the captured people go in exchange for their lives. The Doctor even promises to offer a few suggestions to their scientists on how to survive their collapsing world. The Director and the Jamie Chameleon try to escape but Blade kills them. The Doctor then frees the real Jamie and detective-inspector. They return to the airport along with the first batch of unminiaturized passengers, which include Ben and Polly. Upon learning that it is the same day as when they left in The War Machines, Ben and Polly elect to say behind. The Doctor and Jamie say goodbye and then head off to find the TARDIS, which had been removed from where the police had taken it.
Analysis
Again, I am surprised as to how much I enjoyed this one. Being in a controlled location, it has an element of a base-under-siege story, but the threat is within rather than without and the primary enemy is time, both are elements that knock this story up a peg for me. I think it's greatest asset is the fact that that the Chameleons are not truly evil, they are just trying to survive. As a result, they never devolve into over-the-top antics or mustache-twirlyness. Captain Blade's cold resolve is far more effective than any maniacal laugh or other evil trope in expressing his power.
As might be expected, I didn't mind Ben and Polly being missing for four episodes as it kept the action tighter on the Doctor and Jamie. I also enjoyed Sam and I think she would have been a very good companion if she had elected to stay (supposedly she was offered the chance to be a companion but turned it down). She had very good chemistry with Jamie and it would have been interesting to see how the romantic element with Jamie would have played out over the future episodes.
Now there were a couple of downsides. Obviously the first is that only Episodes One and Three exist so you get bogged down in the recons. There is also a touch of bloat in Episodes three and four as there is some back and forth capturing and escaping and a slower play in finding out the full plans of the Chameleons. Four episodes might have been a bit rushed so I'd say it could have been done well in a five-parter. But it doesn't suffer overtly from that.
The story also peters out a little at the end. There is not much of a final confrontation and I thought Blade and the other Chameleons gave in a little too easy at the end. I wasn't expecting a big fire-fight or anything but after all that back and forth, I thought the Chameleons might resist a little more, resulting in a few more deaths. I wouldn't ding it significantly but a strong resolve would have been nice.
I would not say that this is a must for rewatch but I wouldn't have any problem watching it again if it were found. It might liven things up a bit to see the action when it is there rather than just have the stills shown. But it was a good story and not bad at all for a recon.
Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5
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