They went to their golden age. I hope they enjoy it.
Invasion of the Dinosaurs is the last Malcolm Hulke story and it gets generally mixed reviews. Conventional fan wisdom derides the story for bad special effects and dinosaurs that actually look worse than those seen in the 1933 version of King Kong. However, another group exists that praises the story as one of the best written of the Hulke stories and one that shouldn't be judged by limited effects. Being a bit of a contrarian, my initial inclination is to give the effects a pass, especially since I can accept bad effects when I know the limitations are in the technology rather than in the efforts applied.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Sarah arrive in a nearly deserted London. Unable to find anyone, they begin to walk towards the city center where they are nearly run over by a car. Following it, they find a man stealing jewelry. He holds them off with a gun and drives away but crashes, killing himself.
The Doctor and Sarah continue through empty London and follow another car into a garage. This time it's a small gang of robbers. The Doctor fights them but they manage to knock him down and run away, leaving their car with it's stolen goods. They enter the car to drive to UNIT headquarters when they are attacked by two pterosaurs. They drive away quickly to escape their attackers.
The Doctor and Sarah drive until they reach an army checkpoint where their car is searched and stolen goods found. The pair is immediately arrested. They are photographed and placed in holding with another thief to await military tribunal.
At UNIT headquarters, the Brigadier is overseeing the final evacuation of London as well as dealing with gangs of looters and the dinosaurs. He puts a request for more men to General Finch, who agrees. After Finch leaves, the Brigadier is informed of another batch of looters being caught and Sargent Benton notices the Doctor and Sarah Jane among the pictures. The Brigadier immediately leaves go collect the Doctor.
The military tribunal commences and all three are quickly found guilty, despite the Doctor's insistence on seeing Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. They are sentenced to be sent to a military camp until the crisis ends and they can be tried in a civilian court. The three hatch a plan to escape but the other thief turns on them. The Doctor knocks him out as well and he and Sarah try to commandeer a military vehicle. However, it is the camp transport and they are recaptured and placed in the back.
The truck drives through London but is stopped when a Tyrannosaurus Rex, driven away by one patrol, appears in the street in front of them. The two guards get out to drive it off while the Doctor and Sarah use the opportunity to jump out the back and run away. They duck into a nearby shed where the Doctor is able to free them from their handcuffs.
Shortly afterwards, they are accosted by a peasant from the era of King Richard I who believes the Doctor is a wizard. Panicking, the peasant attacks the Doctor but a time eddy kicks in and the peasant disappears. Confused, the Doctor and Sarah hear movement outside and try to hide but it's the Brigadier who brings the Doctor back to headquarters.
At UNIT HQ, the Brigadier brings the Doctor up to speed on how they've evacuated London and the patterns of the dinosaur movement. The Doctor proposes capturing one of the dinosaurs so that he can study it and see if he can determine how it got there. General Finch is skeptical but the Brigadier heads out with a Doctor when a new animal is reported nearby. Sarah stays behind with Finch's attaché, Captain Mike Yates, who transferred to regular army service following the events of The Green Death.
The Doctor and the UNIT men find a stegosaurus walking in an alley and the Doctor has the military bring him some rope. However, before they capture it, the animal is caught in a time eddy as seen earlier and disappears. The military men don't notice the effects of the eddy and think it just vanished into thin air. The Doctor however, does observe the effects and figures the someone is pulling the dinosaurs from the past for a brief time and then sending them back as a means of creating a panic to empty London.
The Doctor heads back to UNIT HQ where he rigs up a set of sensors that will allow him to get detailed information on the time eddy. He can then use that to determine the source of the power that is pulling the creatures forward in time. Unbeknownst to him, Captain Yates is working with the people involved. Learning of the Doctor's plans, they give him a device to sabotage the Doctor's efforts to capture a dinosaur, delaying their discovery.
The Doctor learns of the appearance of a brontosaurus and heads back out with his new equipment. He intends to stun the animal and then set up the monitoring equipment. Upon reaching the animal, he moves to use his stun gun but the animal disappears before he can fire. Then a Tyrannosaurus appears and the Doctor moves to stun it but his gun doesn't work. He drops it and tries to run but is knocked down by the concussion of grenades that the Brigadier has thrown to try and stop the animal. Yates dashes forwards, removes the sabotage device and stuns the animal. The Doctor thanks Yates for his efforts and the Brigadier transports the animal to a nearby warehouse where the Doctor sets up his equipment.
Yates, angry at the group's attempt to kill the Doctor, reports back that he will not do such a thing again. The group tells him to simply sabotage his equipment so that he cannot take measurements of their location and Yates does agree to that. Sarah meanwhile does some independent digging and discovers a professor Whitaker who disappeared six months ago and had rather radical ideas on time travel. She presents these findings to the Doctor and Sir Charles Grover, the minister left to supervise London. Sir Charles dismisses Sarah's theory, saying that he reviewed Whitaker's work and found it rubbish.
Annoyed, Sarah turns back to her regular journalism work. She is granted a special pass by General Finch to bring a camera in and document the dinosaurs. He then has his driver take her back to the warehouse with the Tyrannosaurus. She takes some pictures of the animal but it wakes up and moves to attack her. She tries to flee but finds the door locked. She bangs on it while the dinosaur thrashes about the warehouse trying to get out. The Doctor, returning to the lab, discovers her and pulls her out. The dinosaur breaks free of the warehouse but disappears shortly afterward.
The Doctor takes Sarah back to UNIT HQ to treat her head wound and they report this to the Brigadier, the Doctor noting that both the chains holding the animal had been cut and that the Doctor's equipment had been sabotaged so that he had no readings. The Doctor goes to build a mobile tracking device that will be less accurate but should still give them an estimate on where to go. Sarah tries to follow them but is told to stay behind and rest.
Frustrated, Sarah gets an idea. She heads to Sir Charles's office and asks about a government plan to build small nuclear reactors in underground bunkers in the event of nuclear war. Sir Charles does remember the plan and takes her to a records room where they find the plans detailing the building of the bunker in that very building. Sir Charles then opens a secret passage to the bunker, letting her know that he is a part of the conspiracy group.
Sarah is taken to a room and locked in with a set of pulsating lights. The lights knock her out. She wakes to the image of a friendly man who informs her that they are on a spaceship that left Earth three months ago, heading for a new colony world. Stunned, she is introduced to a celebrated athlete, novelist, and doctor, who have all abandoned their previous lives to join an ecology movement.
The Doctor, having finished his detector, drives around London in his newly designed Whomobile. He traces a signal to an Underground station and observes a man entering an elevator hidden as a janitorial closet. The Doctor follows but he is detected by Professor Whitaker and his assistant. They close off the various corridors, forcing the Doctor to head back up. They summon a pterosaur from the past to attack the Doctor but he manages to fight it off with a map. He then returns with the Brigadier but finds the elevator controls disabled, making it an ordinary closet.
Back on the ship, Sarah begins to remember that she did not come voluntarily and begins to argue with the others about how they plan to run their new society. The leader, Ruth, has Sarah taken to the reeducation room, to bring her back into line. Sarah is bombarded with propaganda about the evils man is doing to the environment. The athlete, Mark, brings her food and reports back to the others that she is resisting. Ruth informs the others that if she will not subject herself, she will need to be destroyed.
The Doctor and the Brigadier go to see Sir Charles about the hidden base but Sir Charles claims the project was abandoned. He also claims that he showed this to Sarah and had his driver take her back to base. The driver comes in and verifies it but he is Professor Whitaker's assistant.
The conspirators, including General Finch and Captain Yates assemble in the power room to discuss the Doctor as Sir Charles doesn't believe he convinced the Doctor. Yates refuses to use lethal force and Sir Charles agrees as he doesn't want to descend to the levels they are trying to escape from. Professor Whitaker calls the Doctor at UNIT HQ and claims that he was held prisoner but managed to escape to the lab the Doctor used earlier. He requests the Doctor to come and help him alone.
The Doctor agrees but when he reaches the lab, he finds it empty save for a mechanical device. The device activates and a Stegosaurus appears in the adjoining room. General Finch bursts in with the Brigadier and arrests the Doctor, claiming to have caught him in the act of summoning the dinosaurs. They take him back to UNIT HQ where he is put under the guard of Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton.
The Doctor appeals to Yates but Yates skittishly orders him placed in a cell and leaves. The Doctor realizes that Yates is the mole. Benton orders the other two guards to prepare a cell, leaving him and the Doctor alone. Benton asks the Doctor what is going on and the Doctor informs him of Finch and Yates working with Sir Charles on the plot. Benton suggests that the Doctor overpower him and turns his back. The Doctor knocks Benton out and escapes in a jeep.
On the ship Mark enters the reeducation room to check on Sarah. She darts past him and locks him in. She heads to the bridge to try and signal for help or change course but none of the controls work. She heads back, frees Mark and shows him the dead controls. She states that this combined with her bruised head demonstrates that she has only been here a few hours and they are not in space at all. He doesn't believe her so she opens an airlock that should exit into space but instead, calmly walks into the underground bunker. Mark tries to follow but he meets Adam who was going to have a talk with Sarah and he is forced to stall him to allow Sarah to escape.
Sarah walks through the bunker, overhearing Professor Whitaker and his assistant discuss their plans. She escapes through the elevator in Sir Charles' office and makes her way back to UNIT HQ. However, everyone is gone save one lone soldier. She leaves a note for the Brigadier when General Finch arrives. Unaware of his involvement, she tells him of Sir Charles' involvement. Feigning skepticism, he suggests they go investigate it.
They return to the office and when she activates the elevator taking them back down to the base, Finch pulls a gun on her. He takes her to Sir Charles who had been observing one of Whitaker's experiments involving time. He informs Sarah that they intend to rewind time to an earlier age of ecological purity and refound the human race, saving the future by rewriting history. As Sir Charles explains, Whitaker pulls a large number of dinosaurs forward to make a final push for the complete evacuation of London.
The Doctor meanwhile evades several patrols and manages to trick the forces searching for him that he had been captured at one point, giving him more breathing room. He arrives in front of the Underground station as more dinosaurs, including a T-Rex appear around him. The Doctor flees as the dinosaurs fight each other and runs into two patrols, one led by General Finch and the other by the Brigadier. The Brigadier takes the Doctor under the pretense of arresting him and head back to UNIT HQ.
In the bunker, Sarah is locked into a spare room to wait until the plan has been executed. She finds an air duct large enough for her to crawl through, pulls off the cover and slips out. She makes her way back to the fake spaceship where she tells Mark what is going on. They attempt to tell the colonists, who are being woken up by Ruth and Adam but Ruth has both of them locked into the reeducation chamber. Adam, beginning to question things, signals what he believes is another ship and requests Sir Charles to come aboard and reassure the colonists.
Back at UNIT HQ, the Doctor finds Sarah's note and begs the Brigadier to come and blow a hole in the station. The Brigadier decides to call Geneva and request greater authority but the call is cancelled by Captain Yates who holds them all at gunpoint. Yates is surprised by a soldier entering with some tea the Brigadier requested and the Brigadier knocks Yates out. He and the Doctor then leave for the Underground with the intention of finding the base. Sergeant Benton is left behind and ordered to round up all available patrols to come to the Underground as back up.
Sir Charles enters the mock spaceship wearing a space suit and reassures the colonists that all is well. He goes to the reeducation room where Sarah and Mark are being held and informs them that they will be brought along and will come to accept that what the group has done is for the right reasons. This conversation is overheard by Adam who frees Sarah and Mark after Sir Charles leaves. Sarah heads back out to the main room with the revived colonists and opens the airlock, demonstrating that it is all a fake.
The Brigadier and the Doctor arrive at the Underground station and the Doctor blows a hole in the janitorial closet while the Brigadier distracts a Triceratops wandering through the tunnels. Having opened a hole, the Doctor heads down while the Brigadier radios Benton to come with the reinforcements. Benton is distracted by General Finch who pulls a gun on him but Benton manages to disarm Finch and knock him out.
Sarah and the colonists enter the control room with Professor Whitaker and Sir Charles demanding an explanation. The Doctor enters a moment later, having knocked out Whitaker's assistant in the hallway. The Brigadier follows with his troops a minute later. Whitaker manages to break free of the men holding him and engages the time travel lever. Everyone is frozen save the Doctor who is resistant. He manages to disengage the lever with the group having gone back in time only a few minutes. He then alters the programing of the computer.
Sir Charles, believing the Doctor is trying to destroy the machine, lunges for the lever. Whitaker, aware that the Doctor has reversed the polarity of the machine tries to stop him. Sir Charles manages to pull the lever with Whitaker grabbing him. The two men and the machine disappear into the past and with no power source, they are trapped there.
General Finch and Whitaker's assistant are arrested however the Brigadier gives Yates an extended leave, allowing him to resign quietly. The Brigadier goes to help return the residents of London while the Doctor tempts Sarah with another trip in the TARDIS to a garden planet.
Analysis
This is a very good story. It has just about everything you could want out of a Doctor Who story: good acting, action scenes, a high concept, interesting twists and people who actually do things to try and solve the problem rather than just waste time. There are some negatives to be sure, but the positives well outweigh the negatives.
First lets get one thing out of the way, the dinosaurs look pretty bad. The pterosaurs are shot fairly well, most in the dark and only partially exposed, but even then they have a bit of a rubbery look. The brontosaurus and the stegosaurus are also not completely terrible as they don't move too much and are mostly just gaped at by the people like anything else on a CSO screen. The T-Rex is where things really fall apart. It suffers from several issues. One, it stands upright as was the misguided belief in the 1970's. Two, the model looks cheap and very rubbery. Three, to be threatening, it needs to interact more with the people and that sets up actors trying to interact with a CSO screen and all the problems you get in trying to do that. Early in Episode Two you see two soldiers firing grenades at the T-Rex, yet they are looking at the wrong part of the screen. It is a nice idea, but the technology required for it's proper execution just didn't exist at the time.
Now on to the good stuff and there is a lot of it. The acting of all the principles is top notch and even the extras do a good job in their various roles. Most of the story is played with a strong level of seriousness that would be easy to lose in dealing with green screened model dinosaurs. But there is also just a bit of levity thrown in here and there to keep the story from becoming too serious and enamored with itself.
My personal favorite is where the Doctor is explaining his detection device to Yates, an important scene as it leads in to the reveal of Yates as a mole, but it is played as comedy as the Doctor has to reshare some of this information with Sarah and then after dismissing her, the Brigadier enters and asks the same questions, giving the Doctor a wonderful exasperated look. As someone who has dealt with multiple people asking for things at once, I can appreciate how the Doctor felt at that moment.
The story itself is quite impressive in it's imagination. You would think that dinosaurs appearing in London would lend itself to a very silly and action based story. However, the dinosaurs become secondary to a rogue intelligence plot you might see in some spy thriller. It is even more interesting in that the secret plot is for a cause that many would agree with, reducing pollution and preserving the resources available on this planet. However, he takes them to the Soviet degree, using "reeducation" to silence dissenting voices and mass extermination as billions of people will be wiped from existence with a resettling of colonists millions of years in the past.
Given their plan, it is rather interesting to see the differing moral views that emerge. Finch, Whitaker, and his assistant are all coldly logical and are prepared to kill the Doctor openly. Yet, they value Sarah and bring her into the colony, despite the fact that killing her would be better for their overall safety. Sir Charles and Yates sit on the hypocritical side of the fence. They abhor killing, working to preserve both Sarah and the Doctor's life, yet they have no compunction about erasing billions from existence. I suppose that mimics reality where a person has no problem with the death of many in the abstract but can't handle the responsibility of the death of an individual when it is a cold reality that involves them directly.
One little plot hole that does niggle my brain is how the ecologists planned to avoid the time paradox they were creating. Whitaker's machine would create a time bubble, preserving those inside it from the travel. However, once the travel had been completed, their actions would destroy the development of humanity as it happened. Thus, they would destroy the elements that would enable their original existence. What's more, if they had succeeded and managed to create and preserve their ecological paradise, their descendants would be unaware of the need to go back in time to recreate the events that set up their world in the first place.
The only way I can get around this in my head is to imagine that Whitaker's machine is not actually full time travel but would instead move them to an alternate reality or universe. That would allow the preservation of their existence and the reality which motivated them to such extremes, while at the same time allowing them to create a past that prevents the future they left. Of course, as their plan failed, so the question is moot. With no women being sent into the past with Sir Charles and Whitaker, they would have lived and died with negligible impact on the overall timeline. Depending on when they arrived, you can even imagine them becoming dinosaur food within a short span of their arrival.
As well written and entertaining as this story is, it is a touch too long. I would imagine that Hulke probably wrote a four episode treatment and was asked to expand it to six. This story would have been a well packed four-parter so it expands fairly well to six. But it is difficult not to see that Episode Five is complete filler with the Doctor spending the whole episode evading patrols and Sarah escaping the fake ship only to be recaptured and brought back. Even the ending has time for a two-minute summary of what happened with the Doctor setting up his and Sarah's next adventure.
However, I will say that even when you know it is filler, Episode Five is very entertaining filler. There is witty dialogue, excellent direction and actually good special effects as there are no dinosaurs actually involved here. I found that it was actually Episode Six that started to bog down for me but I suspect that was because I had a good guess where they were going and wanted to get on with it. Still, there are a number of stories that are absolutely dreadful in their expansion to six or more episodes and this is not one of them.
Overall I would have to say that this story is much better than it's reputation. Yes, the dinosaur effects are bad, but there are so many bad effects in Doctor Who and Seventies television in general that I don't see any reason to punish this story as a result. It is well done outside of those effects and the quality of the story is excellent. I would easily pull this off the shelf for another watch at some point in the future. I would even go so far as to say that this is my favorite Third Doctor story to date. Granted, I have a number of stories to go, but this one rates pretty high for me.
Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Friday, September 23, 2016
Under the Lake/Before the Flood
Cass, you are the smartest person in the room when I'm not in it.
Under the Lake is Doctor Who's version of a haunted house story. It incorporates many haunted house tropes including isolation, ghosts coming out at "night" and a slow pick off of the people trapped in the station.
Plot Summary
The crew of an underwater oil drilling station in 2119 has recovered an alien space ship. Inside, they find it empty save for some strange markings on the wall. The company representative, Pritchard, checks a control panel which suddenly activates and the engine ignites. The crew commander, Moran, shoves a crewman out of the way and is caught in the exhaust stream, incinerating him. However, he reappears a moment later as an apparition with blacked out eyes.
Several days later, the TARDIS arrives. The Doctor is uneasy as the TARDIS was resistant to come to this location. They find the Moran specter who leads them to the bay with the ship. They go inside and also see the markings on the side. Emerging from the ship, the Moran ghost reappears along with the ghost of a Tivolian in a Victorian style outfit. Both ghosts grab metal objects and attack them. They run through the base and the crew urges them into a Faraday cage which keeps the ghosts out.
In the cage, the Doctor and Clara are introduced to the rest of the crew who bring them up to date on what happened. The station switches to day mode and the crew leaves the cage as the ghosts don't appear during day mode. They return to the control station where the Doctor starts to investigate what is going on. In the ship, he finds the suspended animation chamber is missing as well as one of the power cells. Pritchard, hearing how valuable the cell might be, slips out of the station in a exterior suit to look around for it.
The station suddenly switches from day to night mode and the ghosts reappear. O'Donnell, the tech operator, manages to revert things back to day mode but not before they attack and kill Pritchard returning from his exterior explorations, adding a third ghost to the mix.
Cass, the new base commander, decides they need to signal the surface for extraction. However, when they signal the surface, they find the sub was already signaled and coming down. The Doctor order the sub to immediately return the to the surface and declares quarantine on the base as the ghosts had signaled the sub. Frustrated by a lack of information, the Doctor hatches a plan and has O'Donnell revert the station to night mode.
Once the ghosts reappear, crew members lure the ghosts down the corridors towards the Faraday cage. The Pritchard ghost breaks off briefly to chase Cass's signer Lunn but despite cornering him, he does not kill him. Instead he reunites with the other two who are lured into the Faraday cage with a hologram of Clara. Once locked inside, the Doctor enters and has Cass read their lips. She reads four words repeated continuously. The Doctor figures that they are space coordinates, pinpointing the location of a building on Earth.
Prior to the valley being flooded, there was a mock town built for military training, including a church. Using the information given, the crew sends out a reconnaissance sub to the remains of the church and discovers the missing suspended animation chamber, active. It is brought back to the base but before they can examine it fully, the station power supply suffers a malfunction and the base begins to flood.
O'Donnell manages to isolate the flooding to a central corridor but it threatens to cut them off from the TARDIS. Everyone races towards it but Clara, Cass and Lunn are separated from the Doctor, O'Donnell and Bennett. The Doctor elects to travel back in the TARDIS to before the valley flooded and try to figure things out so that he can rescue the others. As the TARDIS disappears, a new ghost appears in the water outside of the Doctor.
The Doctor, O'Donnell and Bennett travel back to 1980 just after the Tivolian ship lands. There they meet Prentis, a Tivolian funeral director transporting the body of the Fisher King, the recently deposed overlord of the Tivolians. His ship lacks the markings that are causing the ghost phenomena so the Doctor heads back to the TARDIS to check in with Clara.
Clara informs the Doctor that a ghost of him has appeared but unlike the others, he is saying a list of names. The ghost Doctor enters and releases the ghosts from the Faraday cage, also changing his words to when the suspended animation chamber will open. With the ghosts free, Clara, Cass and Lunn run back to the Faraday cage but pose Clara's phone outside on a ledge in case the Doctor needs to contact her again.
The Doctor and crew head out again, although tries to convince O'Donnell to stay in the TARDIS. She refuses. They find that the Fisher King has reanimated, carved the words in the wall and killed Prentis. Hearing him approach, they duck into a nearby building to hide, but O'Donnell is discovered and killed. Bennett angrily confronts the Doctor for not trying harder to save her as her name was next in the list recited by the ghost Doctor.
Back at the station, the ghost of O'Donnell appears. She cannot get into the cage but she takes Clara's phone. Clara, realizing that the ghosts won't kill Lunn because he hasn't seen the figures, convinces him to go out and retrieve it, much to the resentment of Cass. Lunn obtains the phone but the ghosts lock him into the mess hall.
With Clara's name next on the list, the Doctor heads back to the TARDIS to try and rescue her but the TARDIS refuses to go and instead lands them back at the time they arrived the first time. Bennett tries to warn O'Donnell while their past selves are talking with Prentice but the Doctor stops him, warning him of dangers of screwing with time. While the Fisher King kills Prentice, the Doctor sends Bennett back to the TARDIS to wait for him. The Doctor grabs one of the power cells from the ship while the Fisher King drags the suspended animation chamber to the church.
The Doctor enters the church and confronts the Fisher King. The Fisher King recognizes the Doctor as a Time Lord and prepares to kill him to make more ghosts. The Doctor however tells him that he has destroyed the writing, meaning that the Doctor will not become a transmission ghost. Angrily, the Fisher King bats him aside and heads back to the ship to recreate the writing. He finds the Doctor has lied and the writing still there. He turns back to the church just as the power cell the Doctor stole explodes at the base of the dam. The dam breaches and the valley floods, killing the Fisher King. As it does so, an automatic return program is triggered sending Bennett and the TARDIS back to the base.
Realizing that Lunn has been gone too long, Cass and Clara head out to find him. Avoiding the ghosts, they discover him in the mess hall. The ghosts attack and the group runs into the bay just as the suspended animation chamber deactivates and opens. The Doctor pops out, having stored himself when the Fisher King left the church. The Doctor activates a signal, causing his ghost to send the call of the Fisher King, luring the other ghosts back into the Faraday cage where the are locked in. As they do so, his ghost (in actuality a hologram) disappears.
With the ghosts contained, the Doctor informs the crew that UNIT will move in and ship the Faraday cage to space where the ghosts will eventually fade away. Cass and Lunn begin a relationship and the Doctor and Clara leave for their next adventure.
Analysis
Taken as a whole, this may be my favorite overall story of Series 9. Heaven Sent was the best episode but I don't think the overall three part story of Face the Raven/Heaven Sent/Hell Bent is as good as Under the Lake and Before the Flood.
Much like Flatline, Under the Lake is a good horror tale. Better than modern horrors in most regards, it focuses on suspense, fear of what might happen, and character development rather than jump scares and gore. In addition to good acting, there is excellent mood lighting and set design. In many ways, the story borrows from Alien with it's blue collar crew and industrial setting. In doing so, it uses limitations to it's advantage, using the same corridor set to both give the station a large empty feel and yet also feel closed in and claustrophobic. Everything about the setting feels creepy and unsettling.
I also appreciate that despite the ghost's menace, they only successfully kill one person and that both crew deaths in the first part are bloodless. Again, this puts more emphasis on suspense and that threat of danger rather than a body count that has to be satisfied with elevating levels of gore and splatter. Later we have the Fisher King actually killing people with his gun but that is also handled fairly well, though I felt that O'Donnell's death was a bit overplayed.
Despite it being a horror theme, the story was also cut with some good levity. My personal favorite is the Doctor becoming so excited by the ghosts that he is forced to use cue cards to not appear a totally insensitive jerk. There is also a lot of quick contradictory humor where the Doctor raises someone to only cut them a moment later: "Who's in charge so I know who to ignore," for example. The comedy did a good job of cutting the tension just enough so that it did not become overbearing when the horror elements picked up again in the next scene.
The acting of all the characters was pretty good. I really enjoyed the concept of the Doctor having a groupie with O'Donnell and her holding it in until the Doctor had gone with the TARDIS being "bigger on the inside" was particularly amusing. Prichard also does a good job in satisfying the stereotypical company man, more concerned with money than anything else. He is strongly reminiscent of Paul Reiser's character in Aliens.
Of all of them, I actually liked Cass the best. Being a deaf actress, she is forced to put emphasis through facial expression and in how her hand move while signing and both of these played very well with getting across her intensity for the crew. The rapport that she developed with the Doctor is very natural and the conversations she has with him in educating the rest of the crew are particularly engaging. I also enjoyed how she didn't take crap from either the Doctor or Clara. She tells the Doctor off about wanting to stay before they learn they can't leave. Her telling off Clara for her rather cavalier attitude towards the danger Lunn may be in is also very well done. I actually laughed out loud when she cussed out Clara in sign after Lunn leaves the Faraday cage, with Clara immediately getting the point.
Clara is actually one of the weaker points for me in this story. This series as a whole was heavy handed about Clara's departure and it came across way too heavy in this story. Clara was aggressive in the adventure to the point of being reckless and it made Cass's telling her off for being so cavalier about the lives of others that much more satisfying.
The conversation Clara had with Doctor about not accepting death and breaking the rules to prevent it was also very heavy handed. It emphasized everything I didn't like in Hell Bent and reminded me how important it is to accept that the rules of the game must be played and how it takes proper cleverness to manipulate the rules to allow you to win rather than breaking the rules for selfish gain. That it took the TARDIS refusing to allow the Doctor to go back and break the rules of time was probably another warning signal that is only truly visible in hindsight.
One thing that I know that divides fans is the opening to Before the Flood where the Doctor breaks the fourth wall to explain the Bootstrap Paradox. I personally enjoyed it, although I have a sense that it was added mostly as padding since the explanation of it and the Doctor's summary of his ghost using the Bootstrap Paradox at the end are entirely superfluous to the overall story. Of course, I give it an extra pass because I love Capaldi's performance of the opening of Beethoven's 5th and the subsequent rock version of the opening theme. So that's all good from my point of view.
Aside from Clara, the only thing that I felt was lacking in this story was the Doctor's meeting with the Fisher King. I feel like this conversation was too short. The Doctor confronts him in the church and you immediately recognize that the Fisher King is aware that something is different about the Doctor as he engages with the Doctor rather than killing him outright as he did with Prentis and O'Donnell. There is a dark refinement in how the Fisher King speaks and when he identifies the Doctor as a Time Lord, a race that he both has contempt and admiration for, you can feel this extra sense of malice as he relishes victory over the Doctor. Likewise, you can hear his anger and contempt when he realized the Doctor lied to him after heading back to the ship. I enjoyed and appreciated these scenes enough that I felt that there should be more of them. There wasn't enough time to savor the Fisher King and the potential he offered as a foe and that was a bit disappointing.
Overall this is an excellent story and I would highly recommend watching it again. The story is scary but with a proper amount of levity to cut it. The story has a nice science fiction bent with that extra dose of time travel that you expect from Doctor Who, going so far as to indulge in paradox as well. The ending is fairly satisfying though some elements of the second part are not quite the payoff you were hoping for. Nevertheless, I was quite excited to sit down with this story when it became available for rewatch and would happily sit with it again.
Overall personal score: Under the Lake - 5 out of 5; Before the Flood - 4.5 out of 5
Under the Lake is Doctor Who's version of a haunted house story. It incorporates many haunted house tropes including isolation, ghosts coming out at "night" and a slow pick off of the people trapped in the station.
Plot Summary
The crew of an underwater oil drilling station in 2119 has recovered an alien space ship. Inside, they find it empty save for some strange markings on the wall. The company representative, Pritchard, checks a control panel which suddenly activates and the engine ignites. The crew commander, Moran, shoves a crewman out of the way and is caught in the exhaust stream, incinerating him. However, he reappears a moment later as an apparition with blacked out eyes.
Several days later, the TARDIS arrives. The Doctor is uneasy as the TARDIS was resistant to come to this location. They find the Moran specter who leads them to the bay with the ship. They go inside and also see the markings on the side. Emerging from the ship, the Moran ghost reappears along with the ghost of a Tivolian in a Victorian style outfit. Both ghosts grab metal objects and attack them. They run through the base and the crew urges them into a Faraday cage which keeps the ghosts out.
In the cage, the Doctor and Clara are introduced to the rest of the crew who bring them up to date on what happened. The station switches to day mode and the crew leaves the cage as the ghosts don't appear during day mode. They return to the control station where the Doctor starts to investigate what is going on. In the ship, he finds the suspended animation chamber is missing as well as one of the power cells. Pritchard, hearing how valuable the cell might be, slips out of the station in a exterior suit to look around for it.
The station suddenly switches from day to night mode and the ghosts reappear. O'Donnell, the tech operator, manages to revert things back to day mode but not before they attack and kill Pritchard returning from his exterior explorations, adding a third ghost to the mix.
Cass, the new base commander, decides they need to signal the surface for extraction. However, when they signal the surface, they find the sub was already signaled and coming down. The Doctor order the sub to immediately return the to the surface and declares quarantine on the base as the ghosts had signaled the sub. Frustrated by a lack of information, the Doctor hatches a plan and has O'Donnell revert the station to night mode.
Once the ghosts reappear, crew members lure the ghosts down the corridors towards the Faraday cage. The Pritchard ghost breaks off briefly to chase Cass's signer Lunn but despite cornering him, he does not kill him. Instead he reunites with the other two who are lured into the Faraday cage with a hologram of Clara. Once locked inside, the Doctor enters and has Cass read their lips. She reads four words repeated continuously. The Doctor figures that they are space coordinates, pinpointing the location of a building on Earth.
Prior to the valley being flooded, there was a mock town built for military training, including a church. Using the information given, the crew sends out a reconnaissance sub to the remains of the church and discovers the missing suspended animation chamber, active. It is brought back to the base but before they can examine it fully, the station power supply suffers a malfunction and the base begins to flood.
O'Donnell manages to isolate the flooding to a central corridor but it threatens to cut them off from the TARDIS. Everyone races towards it but Clara, Cass and Lunn are separated from the Doctor, O'Donnell and Bennett. The Doctor elects to travel back in the TARDIS to before the valley flooded and try to figure things out so that he can rescue the others. As the TARDIS disappears, a new ghost appears in the water outside of the Doctor.
The Doctor, O'Donnell and Bennett travel back to 1980 just after the Tivolian ship lands. There they meet Prentis, a Tivolian funeral director transporting the body of the Fisher King, the recently deposed overlord of the Tivolians. His ship lacks the markings that are causing the ghost phenomena so the Doctor heads back to the TARDIS to check in with Clara.
Clara informs the Doctor that a ghost of him has appeared but unlike the others, he is saying a list of names. The ghost Doctor enters and releases the ghosts from the Faraday cage, also changing his words to when the suspended animation chamber will open. With the ghosts free, Clara, Cass and Lunn run back to the Faraday cage but pose Clara's phone outside on a ledge in case the Doctor needs to contact her again.
The Doctor and crew head out again, although tries to convince O'Donnell to stay in the TARDIS. She refuses. They find that the Fisher King has reanimated, carved the words in the wall and killed Prentis. Hearing him approach, they duck into a nearby building to hide, but O'Donnell is discovered and killed. Bennett angrily confronts the Doctor for not trying harder to save her as her name was next in the list recited by the ghost Doctor.
Back at the station, the ghost of O'Donnell appears. She cannot get into the cage but she takes Clara's phone. Clara, realizing that the ghosts won't kill Lunn because he hasn't seen the figures, convinces him to go out and retrieve it, much to the resentment of Cass. Lunn obtains the phone but the ghosts lock him into the mess hall.
With Clara's name next on the list, the Doctor heads back to the TARDIS to try and rescue her but the TARDIS refuses to go and instead lands them back at the time they arrived the first time. Bennett tries to warn O'Donnell while their past selves are talking with Prentice but the Doctor stops him, warning him of dangers of screwing with time. While the Fisher King kills Prentice, the Doctor sends Bennett back to the TARDIS to wait for him. The Doctor grabs one of the power cells from the ship while the Fisher King drags the suspended animation chamber to the church.
The Doctor enters the church and confronts the Fisher King. The Fisher King recognizes the Doctor as a Time Lord and prepares to kill him to make more ghosts. The Doctor however tells him that he has destroyed the writing, meaning that the Doctor will not become a transmission ghost. Angrily, the Fisher King bats him aside and heads back to the ship to recreate the writing. He finds the Doctor has lied and the writing still there. He turns back to the church just as the power cell the Doctor stole explodes at the base of the dam. The dam breaches and the valley floods, killing the Fisher King. As it does so, an automatic return program is triggered sending Bennett and the TARDIS back to the base.
Realizing that Lunn has been gone too long, Cass and Clara head out to find him. Avoiding the ghosts, they discover him in the mess hall. The ghosts attack and the group runs into the bay just as the suspended animation chamber deactivates and opens. The Doctor pops out, having stored himself when the Fisher King left the church. The Doctor activates a signal, causing his ghost to send the call of the Fisher King, luring the other ghosts back into the Faraday cage where the are locked in. As they do so, his ghost (in actuality a hologram) disappears.
With the ghosts contained, the Doctor informs the crew that UNIT will move in and ship the Faraday cage to space where the ghosts will eventually fade away. Cass and Lunn begin a relationship and the Doctor and Clara leave for their next adventure.
Analysis
Taken as a whole, this may be my favorite overall story of Series 9. Heaven Sent was the best episode but I don't think the overall three part story of Face the Raven/Heaven Sent/Hell Bent is as good as Under the Lake and Before the Flood.
Much like Flatline, Under the Lake is a good horror tale. Better than modern horrors in most regards, it focuses on suspense, fear of what might happen, and character development rather than jump scares and gore. In addition to good acting, there is excellent mood lighting and set design. In many ways, the story borrows from Alien with it's blue collar crew and industrial setting. In doing so, it uses limitations to it's advantage, using the same corridor set to both give the station a large empty feel and yet also feel closed in and claustrophobic. Everything about the setting feels creepy and unsettling.
I also appreciate that despite the ghost's menace, they only successfully kill one person and that both crew deaths in the first part are bloodless. Again, this puts more emphasis on suspense and that threat of danger rather than a body count that has to be satisfied with elevating levels of gore and splatter. Later we have the Fisher King actually killing people with his gun but that is also handled fairly well, though I felt that O'Donnell's death was a bit overplayed.
Despite it being a horror theme, the story was also cut with some good levity. My personal favorite is the Doctor becoming so excited by the ghosts that he is forced to use cue cards to not appear a totally insensitive jerk. There is also a lot of quick contradictory humor where the Doctor raises someone to only cut them a moment later: "Who's in charge so I know who to ignore," for example. The comedy did a good job of cutting the tension just enough so that it did not become overbearing when the horror elements picked up again in the next scene.
The acting of all the characters was pretty good. I really enjoyed the concept of the Doctor having a groupie with O'Donnell and her holding it in until the Doctor had gone with the TARDIS being "bigger on the inside" was particularly amusing. Prichard also does a good job in satisfying the stereotypical company man, more concerned with money than anything else. He is strongly reminiscent of Paul Reiser's character in Aliens.
Of all of them, I actually liked Cass the best. Being a deaf actress, she is forced to put emphasis through facial expression and in how her hand move while signing and both of these played very well with getting across her intensity for the crew. The rapport that she developed with the Doctor is very natural and the conversations she has with him in educating the rest of the crew are particularly engaging. I also enjoyed how she didn't take crap from either the Doctor or Clara. She tells the Doctor off about wanting to stay before they learn they can't leave. Her telling off Clara for her rather cavalier attitude towards the danger Lunn may be in is also very well done. I actually laughed out loud when she cussed out Clara in sign after Lunn leaves the Faraday cage, with Clara immediately getting the point.
Clara is actually one of the weaker points for me in this story. This series as a whole was heavy handed about Clara's departure and it came across way too heavy in this story. Clara was aggressive in the adventure to the point of being reckless and it made Cass's telling her off for being so cavalier about the lives of others that much more satisfying.
The conversation Clara had with Doctor about not accepting death and breaking the rules to prevent it was also very heavy handed. It emphasized everything I didn't like in Hell Bent and reminded me how important it is to accept that the rules of the game must be played and how it takes proper cleverness to manipulate the rules to allow you to win rather than breaking the rules for selfish gain. That it took the TARDIS refusing to allow the Doctor to go back and break the rules of time was probably another warning signal that is only truly visible in hindsight.
One thing that I know that divides fans is the opening to Before the Flood where the Doctor breaks the fourth wall to explain the Bootstrap Paradox. I personally enjoyed it, although I have a sense that it was added mostly as padding since the explanation of it and the Doctor's summary of his ghost using the Bootstrap Paradox at the end are entirely superfluous to the overall story. Of course, I give it an extra pass because I love Capaldi's performance of the opening of Beethoven's 5th and the subsequent rock version of the opening theme. So that's all good from my point of view.
Aside from Clara, the only thing that I felt was lacking in this story was the Doctor's meeting with the Fisher King. I feel like this conversation was too short. The Doctor confronts him in the church and you immediately recognize that the Fisher King is aware that something is different about the Doctor as he engages with the Doctor rather than killing him outright as he did with Prentis and O'Donnell. There is a dark refinement in how the Fisher King speaks and when he identifies the Doctor as a Time Lord, a race that he both has contempt and admiration for, you can feel this extra sense of malice as he relishes victory over the Doctor. Likewise, you can hear his anger and contempt when he realized the Doctor lied to him after heading back to the ship. I enjoyed and appreciated these scenes enough that I felt that there should be more of them. There wasn't enough time to savor the Fisher King and the potential he offered as a foe and that was a bit disappointing.
Overall this is an excellent story and I would highly recommend watching it again. The story is scary but with a proper amount of levity to cut it. The story has a nice science fiction bent with that extra dose of time travel that you expect from Doctor Who, going so far as to indulge in paradox as well. The ending is fairly satisfying though some elements of the second part are not quite the payoff you were hoping for. Nevertheless, I was quite excited to sit down with this story when it became available for rewatch and would happily sit with it again.
Overall personal score: Under the Lake - 5 out of 5; Before the Flood - 4.5 out of 5
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Nightmare of Eden
Rigg: Galactic hasn't existed for twenty years.
Doctor: That would explain why I haven't been paid.
Drug addiction story time! From what I have heard, this story has a very mixed reputation. Some people like it with a strong emphasis on the writing. Others deride it with terrible production values. I'm generally a bit more lenient when it comes to production so we shall have to see if the DEA story can overcome its limitations.
Plot Summary
A star cruise liner is preparing to come out of hyperdrive but because the navigator is stoned, it comes out a few degrees off course. It rematerializes in the path of another ship and the two become fused together, creating a unstable interface between the ships. The Doctor, Romana and K-9 materialize aboard the cruise liner and the Doctor, posing as an insurance agent, offers to help unfuse the two ships.
The Doctor and K-9 head down to the power room with the navigator but he begs off before they get there. Curious, the Doctor follows him and discovers him sneaking a pill from a hidden stash. K-9 analyzes the stash and finds it to be Vraxoin a dangerous drug. The Doctor pockets the stash and heads back up to the bridge.
Romana had stayed in the lounge where she met Professor Tryst and his assistant Della, who have catalogued species from multiple planets and placed them in electromagnetic crystals. When placed in Tryst's CET machine, the crystals provide a gateway into the slice of the planet sampled. Romana is especially curious about one planet called Eden as when she observes it in the projector, a shadow of a person is visible. Della informs her that a crewman on their cataloguing voyage, who was a close friend of hers, was killed on Eden.
The Doctor pulls Romana aside and informs her of the drugs. He tells her to monitor things on the bridge while he and Captain Rigg try to activate the power. However, they find the power room access blocked by the other ship. As they leave to find another way, the navigator comes out, having been mauled by some creature. He is taken to sick bay but dies of his injuries.
The Doctor heads back to the site where the navigator's stash was to see if he can find anything else. There he is attacked by an unknown assailant who stuns him and steals the stash. Romana and K-9 find him and the three surmise that the supplier of the drug is still on board the ship.
Romana continues to investigate the CET machine and Eden specifically. She activates the machine again and looks deep into the jungle shown. As she does so, an insect comes out of the jungle and stings her, causing her to pass out.
The Doctor and Captain Rigg head back down with K-9 to a point where they can cut through the hull to access the power room and bypass the merged point of the ships. The Doctor also informs the captain of the drug that his navigator was on. K-9 finishes cutting through the hull but as they pull the piece of bulkhead off, a large creature lunges at them through the hole. K-9 pushes it back with his stun gun and the Doctor reseals the hole knowing that passage through there is impossible.
Della finds Romana and wakes her. Romana is unaware of what caused her to pass out. Della offers to get her a drink. As she does so, Captain Rigg also comes up to the dispensery. As he talks with Della, a someone slips Vraxoin into the drink intended for Romana. But the captain takes the drink instead with Della pulling another one to give to Romana.
The Doctor proposes setting up an external power source from the TARDIS that might allow separation of the two ships. Both captains agree, although Rigg begins to show signs of mirth and apathy from the drugs. The Doctor monitors things from the bridge while Romana runs the power supply. K-9 is sent to monitor the interference directly. The plan begins to work and K-9 passes through the cleared area to the power room. However, Captain Dymond detects break up of his ship and shuts down, leaving K-9 trapped in the power room.
The Doctor heads down to find K-9 but discovers a man dressed as a passenger who flees. Suspecting him of being involved with the drugs, the Doctor pursues him through the passenger areas and into a merged section of the ships. The man escapes but the Doctor pulls off a radiation badge from him, leading him to believe that he was part of Tryst's expedition.
Tryst is made aware of the presence of the Vraxoin and he tells Della that he suspects the killed crewman, Stott, may have been involved and that he probably had an accomplice. Tryst tells the Doctor the he suspects Della of being the accomplice, although Romana doesn't believe him.
The Doctor and Romana are summoned to the bridge where Captain Dymond is waiting with two police officers. When the Doctor and Romana are unable to produce identity papers, they are scanned and the police find trace amounts of Vraxoin in the Doctor's pocket from when he placed the stash there. The Doctor and Romana run away and use the CET machine to escape into the sample jungles of Eden.
Their plan is successful as the police scour the rest of the lounge but ignore the jungle image. The Doctor and Romana head deeper into the jungle, fending off the local wildlife. They are attacked by one of the creatures that was seen in the power room, but the creature is shot and driven away by the same man Romana saw staring out earlier. He is Tryst's missing crew member (presumed dead) Stott.
Stott takes them back to a shelter in the jungle where he reveals that he was left on Eden but got caught up in the sample beam and trapped in the crystal. He is actually an intelligence agent, tracking the group supplying the Vraxoin but has yet been unable to find the source in his sample of Eden. He also discovered that when the two ships merged, it created an interference allowing both him and the creatures, called Mandrels, to escape their crystal sample. There is the main display entrance but there is also another way out that leads to the power room. Stott also reveals that he was the man the Doctor chased as Stott was reclaiming the sample of Vraxoin the Doctor had found and trying to continue his investigations of the drug runners. The group then heads for the power room exit.
Entering the power room, the Doctor finds K-9 who informs him of the presence of the Mandrels. The Doctor sets about repairing the power system when he attacked by a Mandrel. K-9 shoots it down and it collapses near the Doctor. The Doctor decides that the only way to deal with the Mandrels is to separate the ships as the Mandrels are starting to spread through the ship and attacking the passengers. K-9 is sent back to the TARDIS to activate the secondary power source. Stott escorts Romana through the jungle of Eden so that she can activate the engines of the ship from the bridge. The Doctor remains behind to finish his repairs.
While everyone is gone, the Mandrel K-9 shot wakes and attacks the Doctor again. He ducks away and when the Mandrel lunges a second time, it smashes into the power supply repairs. The surge of power kills the Mandrel and it's body quickly dissolves into a powder that the Doctor recognizes as Vraxoin. He sets about to finish the repairs, including the damage done by the Mandrel.
Romana emerges from the Eden projection, sending Stott back to help the Doctor. She sneaks through the ship, overhearing the state of things from a couple of police officers fighting back the Mandrels. She enters the bridge to find Captain Rigg in a withdrawal state. He attacks her, believing her to have another supply of the drug but he is shot by the police, who then turns his gun on Romana to arrest her.
As the prearranged time arrives, the Doctor finishes his repairs and blows a dog whistle. K-9 receives the signal and activates the secondary power supply. Romana also activates the engines, ignoring the warning of the officer that he will shoot if she pushes the button. The ships begin to phase shift as the Doctor rushes through the corridors to get back to safety but is caught in the interface. The maneuver is successful and the ships separate. The acceleration also knocks out Chief Officer Fisk, allowing Romana to run out of the bridge.
The Doctor finds himself on Dymond’s ship once the ships stabilize. On Dymond’s ship, he finds a special laser and a profit projection of distribution of the Vraxoin. Seeing that Dymond is preparing to head over to the Empress, the Doctor sneaks aboard the shuttle and hides while Dymond flies over.
Romana finds Della and tells her that Stott is still alive, having been caught in the suspension beam. Della realizes that Tryst lied to her as he showed her an image of Stott mauled to death by a Mandrel and that he is the one supplying the drugs. The two women search the ship looking for the Doctor but K-9 picks up the Doctor’s signal from Dymond’s shuttle. They head down and meet the Doctor who informs them that Dymond is the pick-up man and that Tryst’s plan is to transfer the Mandrels (and the drugs) into a new crystal using the laser on Dymond’s ship. A pair of security officers discover them and take Della. The Doctor and Romana escape when K-9 stuns the other officer.
The security officer escorts Della towards the bridge but is attacked by a Mandrel. Stott arrives and stuns the Mandrel as the Doctor and Romana also arrive. The Doctor decides to lure Tryst and Dymond into a trap. He tells Stott to help him inform the police and to help him drive the Mandrels back into the Eden projection.
Della goes and confronts Tryst, who has met with Dymond, about Stott still being alive. Tryst plays innocent but encourages her to help the Doctor drive the Mandrels back into the projection. However, when she leaves, he orders Dymond to shoot her down. Dymond does manage to wound her but is driven back by K-9 as Romana and K-9 shadowed Della to protect her. K-9 begins to pursue but lets Dymond go to defend Romana against a Mandrel.
The security officers move to arrest the Doctor who has gone to the CET machine but Stott emerges and shows his credentials. The Doctor then informs the officers that they must drive the Mandrels back into the projection. The order is given over the loudspeaker with the shoot order against the Doctor cancelled. Tryst and Dymond hear this as they prepare to leave the ship.
The officers use their guns on stun setting to drive the Mandrels towards the projection. Their guns begin to give out and the Mandrels begin to turn on them. However, the Doctor attracts the Mandrels back using his dog whistle. He lures them into the projection and then has Romana shut it off as he jumps out.
Tryst and Dymond prepare to transfer the Eden information and make the jump to hyperspace. The Doctor has Romana create a new drive on the CET machine and orders K-9 to track Dymond’s ship. The Doctor powers up the CET machine and fires it just as Dymond’s ship prepares to jump. Dymond’s ship is caught in a matter transmat beam and is stored as a projection on the CET machine. The police step into the projection and arrest the pair.
The Doctor and Romana disassemble the CET machine and take the crystals back to the TARDIS, promising to release the captured creatures on their native planets.
Analysis
Nightmare of Eden is a potentially good story based on the writing, but doesn't live up to that potential due to odd direction and poorer production values. This is even mentioned by some of the production crew in a short about the making of The Nightmare of Eden. Apparently the director tried to do things that weren't practical and midway through the shoot either quite or was terminated. As such, people who didn't have much experience in directing were brought in to finish and their amateurism is easily seen. Other flaws also cropped up due to the age old problem of running out of budget.
The writing is the clear stand out of this story. If you close your eyes and only listen to the dialogue, you can hear the smart and topical story played well in a science fiction setting. Most of the actors do fairly well as well with it, despite their problems with the director. Lalla Ward was apparently a strong advocate of this story and even made a suggestion or two in the production to avoid giving the subject matter too much of a comic bent.
That is not to say that there is no comedy in it. There are a number of pun-y jokes made, especially by the Doctor and the story overall has a generally lighter tone that could easily have been done given that it's about drug addiction and has monsters rampaging across a passenger liner. But there is a fairly nice balance where you can enjoy the lightness of tone but still appreciate the seriousness of the subject and that again speaks very well of the writing and much of the acting.
Not all of the acting is good though. Some of that might be up to the direction, which is pretty bad, but one of two of the actors just aren't up to snuff. I think the worst is probably Della, who is trying hard but just doesn't seem to have any emotional depth. When she gets emotional over finding out that Stott is still alive, her reaction is an odd mixture of bland and yet over the top at the same time. It is a downright painful thing to watch. Some of the security guard extras are also floundering completely when it comes to how to perform, though their screen time is fortunately short.
On to the direction. I got a bad feeling about this story right from the get go when Captain Rigg appears on screen. He is looking directly in to the camera, apparently monitoring a view screen as they approach their destination. Anyone looking directly into camera for anything other than an aside joke is always a bad thing. Things did not improve from there.
Some shots weren't bad, especially in the first couple of episodes. There was a decent use of shadow and tight shots that did a decent job of keeping the mystery going. But the shift to amateur directors became very apparent in Episode Four. There are a number of shots where the actors are holding position for too long during effects shots. Reactions and overall performances are generally shoddy and the editing between shots is no where near tight. It very much looks like a story where actors are standing right off to the side waiting for their cue to move rather than being in a scene as a whole where they would act and react in a completely different manner and timing.
Two other aspects that weren't great but probably not as bad as other people accuse them of are the model work and the Mandrel costumes. The model shots aren't too bad in my opinion. I think the only one that really looks poor is the opening shot of the Empress where it clearly looks like a model. Shots of the two ships together and of the shuttle traveling between the two ships aren't too bad. I think shooting on film as had been done in the past would have improved things a bit, but they still would have looked like models and I'm not going to slag the story for that.
I have a similar philosophy about the Mandrels. I don't think the costumes look that bad. The production did have a small problem in that they would have looked better in shadow as they are shown on Eden and that goes away when on a flood lit passenger liner. Perhaps the loss of power could have taken things down to emergency lighting and that would have helped. But still, the costumes seem reasonable to me. There are a few instances where you can see limitations of the costumes (zippers, tears, etc.) but nearly all of those are in the back of the suits. For that, direction must again be blamed as for some reason, the Mandrels were shot with their backs to the camera more than to the front. If the flaws of the costume are known, then the director should be manipulating things to minimize the viewing of those flaws for the betterment of the overall story. So again, I opt to blame direction rather than the costumes themselves, which were actually not too bad.
Bringing up the lighting again, that would have helped with one other small problem: the set. Overall, the set was pretty good, but with such strong lighting, the limitations were exposed. One of the easiest is near the end of Episode One where K-9 is cutting through the bulkhead. You can actually see the line where the piece of bulkhead would be cut through to allow the Doctor and Captain Rigg to remove it. There are a couple of other times where there is a zoom in on a character near a wall join were you can see chips or paint scrapings over that section of the wall. Again, nothing bad but something that could have been obscured a little bit better.
Overall, this is a good story but hampered with production problems. They are not so bad as to make the story unwatchable. But they are significant enough that you are taken out of the action every now and again and that is distracting. I'd watch it again and would enjoy doing so, but there is enough on the bad side of the scale that a total immersive experience is just not possible.
Overall personal score: 3 out of 5
Doctor: That would explain why I haven't been paid.
Drug addiction story time! From what I have heard, this story has a very mixed reputation. Some people like it with a strong emphasis on the writing. Others deride it with terrible production values. I'm generally a bit more lenient when it comes to production so we shall have to see if the DEA story can overcome its limitations.
Plot Summary
A star cruise liner is preparing to come out of hyperdrive but because the navigator is stoned, it comes out a few degrees off course. It rematerializes in the path of another ship and the two become fused together, creating a unstable interface between the ships. The Doctor, Romana and K-9 materialize aboard the cruise liner and the Doctor, posing as an insurance agent, offers to help unfuse the two ships.
The Doctor and K-9 head down to the power room with the navigator but he begs off before they get there. Curious, the Doctor follows him and discovers him sneaking a pill from a hidden stash. K-9 analyzes the stash and finds it to be Vraxoin a dangerous drug. The Doctor pockets the stash and heads back up to the bridge.
Romana had stayed in the lounge where she met Professor Tryst and his assistant Della, who have catalogued species from multiple planets and placed them in electromagnetic crystals. When placed in Tryst's CET machine, the crystals provide a gateway into the slice of the planet sampled. Romana is especially curious about one planet called Eden as when she observes it in the projector, a shadow of a person is visible. Della informs her that a crewman on their cataloguing voyage, who was a close friend of hers, was killed on Eden.
The Doctor pulls Romana aside and informs her of the drugs. He tells her to monitor things on the bridge while he and Captain Rigg try to activate the power. However, they find the power room access blocked by the other ship. As they leave to find another way, the navigator comes out, having been mauled by some creature. He is taken to sick bay but dies of his injuries.
The Doctor heads back to the site where the navigator's stash was to see if he can find anything else. There he is attacked by an unknown assailant who stuns him and steals the stash. Romana and K-9 find him and the three surmise that the supplier of the drug is still on board the ship.
Romana continues to investigate the CET machine and Eden specifically. She activates the machine again and looks deep into the jungle shown. As she does so, an insect comes out of the jungle and stings her, causing her to pass out.
The Doctor and Captain Rigg head back down with K-9 to a point where they can cut through the hull to access the power room and bypass the merged point of the ships. The Doctor also informs the captain of the drug that his navigator was on. K-9 finishes cutting through the hull but as they pull the piece of bulkhead off, a large creature lunges at them through the hole. K-9 pushes it back with his stun gun and the Doctor reseals the hole knowing that passage through there is impossible.
Della finds Romana and wakes her. Romana is unaware of what caused her to pass out. Della offers to get her a drink. As she does so, Captain Rigg also comes up to the dispensery. As he talks with Della, a someone slips Vraxoin into the drink intended for Romana. But the captain takes the drink instead with Della pulling another one to give to Romana.
The Doctor proposes setting up an external power source from the TARDIS that might allow separation of the two ships. Both captains agree, although Rigg begins to show signs of mirth and apathy from the drugs. The Doctor monitors things from the bridge while Romana runs the power supply. K-9 is sent to monitor the interference directly. The plan begins to work and K-9 passes through the cleared area to the power room. However, Captain Dymond detects break up of his ship and shuts down, leaving K-9 trapped in the power room.
The Doctor heads down to find K-9 but discovers a man dressed as a passenger who flees. Suspecting him of being involved with the drugs, the Doctor pursues him through the passenger areas and into a merged section of the ships. The man escapes but the Doctor pulls off a radiation badge from him, leading him to believe that he was part of Tryst's expedition.
Tryst is made aware of the presence of the Vraxoin and he tells Della that he suspects the killed crewman, Stott, may have been involved and that he probably had an accomplice. Tryst tells the Doctor the he suspects Della of being the accomplice, although Romana doesn't believe him.
The Doctor and Romana are summoned to the bridge where Captain Dymond is waiting with two police officers. When the Doctor and Romana are unable to produce identity papers, they are scanned and the police find trace amounts of Vraxoin in the Doctor's pocket from when he placed the stash there. The Doctor and Romana run away and use the CET machine to escape into the sample jungles of Eden.
Their plan is successful as the police scour the rest of the lounge but ignore the jungle image. The Doctor and Romana head deeper into the jungle, fending off the local wildlife. They are attacked by one of the creatures that was seen in the power room, but the creature is shot and driven away by the same man Romana saw staring out earlier. He is Tryst's missing crew member (presumed dead) Stott.
Stott takes them back to a shelter in the jungle where he reveals that he was left on Eden but got caught up in the sample beam and trapped in the crystal. He is actually an intelligence agent, tracking the group supplying the Vraxoin but has yet been unable to find the source in his sample of Eden. He also discovered that when the two ships merged, it created an interference allowing both him and the creatures, called Mandrels, to escape their crystal sample. There is the main display entrance but there is also another way out that leads to the power room. Stott also reveals that he was the man the Doctor chased as Stott was reclaiming the sample of Vraxoin the Doctor had found and trying to continue his investigations of the drug runners. The group then heads for the power room exit.
Entering the power room, the Doctor finds K-9 who informs him of the presence of the Mandrels. The Doctor sets about repairing the power system when he attacked by a Mandrel. K-9 shoots it down and it collapses near the Doctor. The Doctor decides that the only way to deal with the Mandrels is to separate the ships as the Mandrels are starting to spread through the ship and attacking the passengers. K-9 is sent back to the TARDIS to activate the secondary power source. Stott escorts Romana through the jungle of Eden so that she can activate the engines of the ship from the bridge. The Doctor remains behind to finish his repairs.
While everyone is gone, the Mandrel K-9 shot wakes and attacks the Doctor again. He ducks away and when the Mandrel lunges a second time, it smashes into the power supply repairs. The surge of power kills the Mandrel and it's body quickly dissolves into a powder that the Doctor recognizes as Vraxoin. He sets about to finish the repairs, including the damage done by the Mandrel.
Romana emerges from the Eden projection, sending Stott back to help the Doctor. She sneaks through the ship, overhearing the state of things from a couple of police officers fighting back the Mandrels. She enters the bridge to find Captain Rigg in a withdrawal state. He attacks her, believing her to have another supply of the drug but he is shot by the police, who then turns his gun on Romana to arrest her.
As the prearranged time arrives, the Doctor finishes his repairs and blows a dog whistle. K-9 receives the signal and activates the secondary power supply. Romana also activates the engines, ignoring the warning of the officer that he will shoot if she pushes the button. The ships begin to phase shift as the Doctor rushes through the corridors to get back to safety but is caught in the interface. The maneuver is successful and the ships separate. The acceleration also knocks out Chief Officer Fisk, allowing Romana to run out of the bridge.
The Doctor finds himself on Dymond’s ship once the ships stabilize. On Dymond’s ship, he finds a special laser and a profit projection of distribution of the Vraxoin. Seeing that Dymond is preparing to head over to the Empress, the Doctor sneaks aboard the shuttle and hides while Dymond flies over.
Romana finds Della and tells her that Stott is still alive, having been caught in the suspension beam. Della realizes that Tryst lied to her as he showed her an image of Stott mauled to death by a Mandrel and that he is the one supplying the drugs. The two women search the ship looking for the Doctor but K-9 picks up the Doctor’s signal from Dymond’s shuttle. They head down and meet the Doctor who informs them that Dymond is the pick-up man and that Tryst’s plan is to transfer the Mandrels (and the drugs) into a new crystal using the laser on Dymond’s ship. A pair of security officers discover them and take Della. The Doctor and Romana escape when K-9 stuns the other officer.
The security officer escorts Della towards the bridge but is attacked by a Mandrel. Stott arrives and stuns the Mandrel as the Doctor and Romana also arrive. The Doctor decides to lure Tryst and Dymond into a trap. He tells Stott to help him inform the police and to help him drive the Mandrels back into the Eden projection.
Della goes and confronts Tryst, who has met with Dymond, about Stott still being alive. Tryst plays innocent but encourages her to help the Doctor drive the Mandrels back into the projection. However, when she leaves, he orders Dymond to shoot her down. Dymond does manage to wound her but is driven back by K-9 as Romana and K-9 shadowed Della to protect her. K-9 begins to pursue but lets Dymond go to defend Romana against a Mandrel.
The security officers move to arrest the Doctor who has gone to the CET machine but Stott emerges and shows his credentials. The Doctor then informs the officers that they must drive the Mandrels back into the projection. The order is given over the loudspeaker with the shoot order against the Doctor cancelled. Tryst and Dymond hear this as they prepare to leave the ship.
The officers use their guns on stun setting to drive the Mandrels towards the projection. Their guns begin to give out and the Mandrels begin to turn on them. However, the Doctor attracts the Mandrels back using his dog whistle. He lures them into the projection and then has Romana shut it off as he jumps out.
Tryst and Dymond prepare to transfer the Eden information and make the jump to hyperspace. The Doctor has Romana create a new drive on the CET machine and orders K-9 to track Dymond’s ship. The Doctor powers up the CET machine and fires it just as Dymond’s ship prepares to jump. Dymond’s ship is caught in a matter transmat beam and is stored as a projection on the CET machine. The police step into the projection and arrest the pair.
The Doctor and Romana disassemble the CET machine and take the crystals back to the TARDIS, promising to release the captured creatures on their native planets.
Analysis
Nightmare of Eden is a potentially good story based on the writing, but doesn't live up to that potential due to odd direction and poorer production values. This is even mentioned by some of the production crew in a short about the making of The Nightmare of Eden. Apparently the director tried to do things that weren't practical and midway through the shoot either quite or was terminated. As such, people who didn't have much experience in directing were brought in to finish and their amateurism is easily seen. Other flaws also cropped up due to the age old problem of running out of budget.
The writing is the clear stand out of this story. If you close your eyes and only listen to the dialogue, you can hear the smart and topical story played well in a science fiction setting. Most of the actors do fairly well as well with it, despite their problems with the director. Lalla Ward was apparently a strong advocate of this story and even made a suggestion or two in the production to avoid giving the subject matter too much of a comic bent.
That is not to say that there is no comedy in it. There are a number of pun-y jokes made, especially by the Doctor and the story overall has a generally lighter tone that could easily have been done given that it's about drug addiction and has monsters rampaging across a passenger liner. But there is a fairly nice balance where you can enjoy the lightness of tone but still appreciate the seriousness of the subject and that again speaks very well of the writing and much of the acting.
Not all of the acting is good though. Some of that might be up to the direction, which is pretty bad, but one of two of the actors just aren't up to snuff. I think the worst is probably Della, who is trying hard but just doesn't seem to have any emotional depth. When she gets emotional over finding out that Stott is still alive, her reaction is an odd mixture of bland and yet over the top at the same time. It is a downright painful thing to watch. Some of the security guard extras are also floundering completely when it comes to how to perform, though their screen time is fortunately short.
On to the direction. I got a bad feeling about this story right from the get go when Captain Rigg appears on screen. He is looking directly in to the camera, apparently monitoring a view screen as they approach their destination. Anyone looking directly into camera for anything other than an aside joke is always a bad thing. Things did not improve from there.
Some shots weren't bad, especially in the first couple of episodes. There was a decent use of shadow and tight shots that did a decent job of keeping the mystery going. But the shift to amateur directors became very apparent in Episode Four. There are a number of shots where the actors are holding position for too long during effects shots. Reactions and overall performances are generally shoddy and the editing between shots is no where near tight. It very much looks like a story where actors are standing right off to the side waiting for their cue to move rather than being in a scene as a whole where they would act and react in a completely different manner and timing.
Two other aspects that weren't great but probably not as bad as other people accuse them of are the model work and the Mandrel costumes. The model shots aren't too bad in my opinion. I think the only one that really looks poor is the opening shot of the Empress where it clearly looks like a model. Shots of the two ships together and of the shuttle traveling between the two ships aren't too bad. I think shooting on film as had been done in the past would have improved things a bit, but they still would have looked like models and I'm not going to slag the story for that.
I have a similar philosophy about the Mandrels. I don't think the costumes look that bad. The production did have a small problem in that they would have looked better in shadow as they are shown on Eden and that goes away when on a flood lit passenger liner. Perhaps the loss of power could have taken things down to emergency lighting and that would have helped. But still, the costumes seem reasonable to me. There are a few instances where you can see limitations of the costumes (zippers, tears, etc.) but nearly all of those are in the back of the suits. For that, direction must again be blamed as for some reason, the Mandrels were shot with their backs to the camera more than to the front. If the flaws of the costume are known, then the director should be manipulating things to minimize the viewing of those flaws for the betterment of the overall story. So again, I opt to blame direction rather than the costumes themselves, which were actually not too bad.
Bringing up the lighting again, that would have helped with one other small problem: the set. Overall, the set was pretty good, but with such strong lighting, the limitations were exposed. One of the easiest is near the end of Episode One where K-9 is cutting through the bulkhead. You can actually see the line where the piece of bulkhead would be cut through to allow the Doctor and Captain Rigg to remove it. There are a couple of other times where there is a zoom in on a character near a wall join were you can see chips or paint scrapings over that section of the wall. Again, nothing bad but something that could have been obscured a little bit better.
Overall, this is a good story but hampered with production problems. They are not so bad as to make the story unwatchable. But they are significant enough that you are taken out of the action every now and again and that is distracting. I'd watch it again and would enjoy doing so, but there is enough on the bad side of the scale that a total immersive experience is just not possible.
Overall personal score: 3 out of 5
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
Marco Polo
If I win, perhaps I can have my caravan back again?
Marco Polo is considered by many to be the holy grail of missing stories. It is the longest and the first in that stretch. It was also done in an era when the show was still focused very heavily on teaching so a great deal of effort was put in to it's visual style. As a story it's not too bad, but watching the recons forces one's attention away from the supposedly impressive set design, costumes and directions and instead towards the story and that is where problems start to crop up.
Plot Summary
The TARDIS arrives on the top of a mountain where the crew discovers large footprints in the snow. The Doctor emerges in a foul mood as one of the power circuits has failed rending them without the ability to heat the TARDIS. The Doctor and Susan examine the damage while Ian and Barbara go to look for fuel to make a fire.
While searching, Barbara sees a man skulking among the rocks. She and Ian head back to tell the Doctor, who is increasingly worried as it will take him several days to fix the circuit. Upon hearing of men, they decide to head down the mountain to find these people and shelter. Reaching the same spot, they are set upon by a group of Mongols. The leader, believing they are evil spirits decides to kill them but his hand is stayed by a European who orders them brought back to camp in the name of Kublai Khan.
In camp, the European is revealed to be Marco Polo and he is on a mission to return to Shangdu with the ambassador warlord Tegana and the lady Ping Cho where she is to be married to a lord of the court. Polo offers the TARDIS crew shelter but Tegana remains wary of them.
Polo orders the TARDIS brought down from the mountain top and into camp. He informs the TARDIS crew that they will be coming with them as they head towards the supply town of Lop. Because of the fears that they are spirits among the Mongols, Polo orders that no one enters the TARDIS while they journey and the Doctor agrees.
The caravan travels along the Silk Road until they reach Lop on the edge of the Gobi Desert. The Doctor attempts to enter the TARDIS but is restricted by the Mongols. Polo then reveals to them that he is homesick but has not been permitted to leave by Kublai Khan. Polo intends to give the TARDIS to Kublai Khan in exchange for his release from service. He offers to take the Doctor and his party back to Venice where they can make another TARDIS. They argue with him but Polo has made up his mind. The Doctor is so aghast that he begins to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.
Tegana meanwhile hatches a plan to poison the water supply of Polo's caravan and seize the TARDIS for his own use to overthrow Kublai Khan. The caravan sets out across the Gobi desert with Tegana planning to poison the water after three days travel into the desert.
The Doctor continues to pout and his actions upset Susan. Barbara consoles Susan while Ian builds friendship with Polo. Susan heads to her tent but she and Ping Cho leave to go look at the desert stars. While out there, they spy Tegana and follow him. But they soon fall behind and go to turn back but are caught in a sandstorm.
Hunkering down, Ian, Barbara, and Marco discover that Tegana, Ping Cho, and Susan are gone. They call out into storm but cannot find them. However, their yells attract Tegana who finds the girls and brings them back into the camp.
They set off again and that evening Tegana brings attention to the water that he poisoned the previous night. Marco suspects bandits and will not head back to Lop, fearing they will be set upon. Ian suggests heading north to an oasis and Marco agrees, though he doesn't favor their chances. Tegana tries to refuse to go and head back to Lop but Marco orders him to stay. They head north but their weakened condition forces them into a slower and slower pace each day. Tegana rides ahead, promising to bring back water. He reaches the oasis but after refreshing himself remains there to wait for the caravan's death.
The Doctor collapses from the heat and lack of water and the others convince Marco to let him enter the TARDIS to rest. He relents and Susan is allowed to go with him. The rest of the caravan continue on through the night and rest in the morning. In the TARDIS, the Doctor and Susan wake to find condensation has formed on the walls of the TARDIS and they move quickly to collect it. Marco Polo doesn't believe them at first and accuses the Doctor of hording water but he becomes convinced when the Doctor and Susan drink it without harm.
Renewed, they press on to the oasis where they find Tegana. Tegana claims he was forced to wait due to bandits and when he had collected water for them, he saw them coming over the hills and waited there. They opt to stay one day with Barbara and Ian becoming suspicious of Tegana. As a safety precaution, Marco insists the Doctor turn over the TARDIS key to him.
The continue and arrive at the next city, a tourist destination with the Temple of a Thousand Buddhas and the Cave of 500 Eyes. The Doctor prepares to work in repairing the circuit, revealing to Ian that he gave Marco a fake key while he kept the original. They are all distracted at that moment as Ping Cho settles in to tell a story of the Hashashin, inspired by the tale of the Cave of 500 Eyes.
Tegana slips away and meets messengers from his lord in the Cave of 500 Eyes. He learns that his lord has assembled an army and is awaiting a time to attack. Tegana informs the messenger of the TARDIS and believes it can be used as a weapon. Tegana suggests that they attack the caravan on the road posing as bandits to take the TARDIS and kill the rest. They are interrupted when one detects Barbara in the outer cave, having followed Tegana out. She is captured and Tegana returns to the inn.
The group discovers Barbara missing and Marco organizes search parties to look for her. Susan and Ping Cho inform the Doctor that they think Barbara may have gone to the Cave of 500 Eyes. The three set off to the cave using information supplied by the innkeeper. The innkeeper then goes and tells Tegana that the Doctor, Susan and Ping Cho have gone to the cave. Angry, Tegana sets off after them. The innkeeper also tells Ian and Marco who also set out after them.
In the cave, they find Barbara's scarf and begin calling out for her. Tegana find them and suggests they leave to avoid the evil spirits. The Doctor laughs him off and shows him Barbara's scarf as proof she was here. Ian and Marco arrive shortly after and they to are shown the scarf. Susan points out a point in the cave where she saw the eyes move and Ian and Marco discover a hidden room in the cave.
They find Barbara being held by a man with a knife to her throat but they kill him before he can strike her down. They return to the inn where Tegana suggests they rid themselves of the TARDIS crew as they are diving the loyalties of the caravan. Tegana also suggests that the Doctor is lying to Marco about not having access to the TARDIS. Barbara enters and tells Marco that she followed Tegana to the cave though he denies it. Fearful of Tegana's warning, Marco refuses to believe Barbara and separates Susan and Ping Cho form rooming together.
They continue on, following the river. The Doctor makes progress in the circuit repairs but is fearful that Ping Cho will inform on them. Ping Cho herself is also sad as she does not want to lose Susan as a friend. At the next stop, Ping Cho recalls Tegana's words about never having visited the Cave of 500 Eyes before, despite his knowledge of the passage. She tells Marco but he reacts angrily and dismisses her.
In town, Tegana meets with the messengers again. He sets up an ambush in the approaching bamboo forest with promises to kill the Doctor and to deliver the TARDIS.
The Doctor sneaks into the TARDIS to continue his work but is observed by Tegana. Barbara sees this and tells Ian and Susan. Ian moves to distract Marco and appeals to him against Tegana. Tegana approaches and tells Marco that the Doctor has reentered the TARDIS with a second key. The trio head out in front of the TARDIS and catch the Doctor locking the door as he leaves, having finished the repairs. Tegana wrestles the key away and gives it to Marco. The Doctor refuses to tell Marco how to enter the TARDIS, even with the key and the TARDIS crew is placed under guard.
The TARDIS crew plans an escape. Breaking a plate, Ian uses the shard to cut a hole in the tent allowing him to slip out. Ian moves to knock out the guard but finds him already dead. Ian runs out to Marco's test to tell him that bandits are preparing to attack. They deploy the remaining guards and the Doctor urges them to escape in the TARDIS. Tegana, already thwarted in his ambush attack, urges Marco not to go into the TARDIS. Marco agrees and refuses the Doctor. Ian suggests they pile bamboo on the fire to create a noise to scare the bandits off.
Tegana's allies grow impatient and decide to attack at moonrise whether Tegana signals them or not. Tegana continues to scoff as Ian and Marco make preparations. Ian also confesses to Marco that they intended to escape. Despite Tegana's protests, the soldiers attack and Tegana kills the leader to cover his involvement. The exploding bamboo and the leader's death drive off the other soldiers.
Marco repeals the restrictions on the TARDIS crew in gratitude but keeps control of the TARDIS keys. Tegana is increasingly hostile towards the TARDIS crew and their suspicions of him are confirmed with the Doctor sure that he is after the TARDIS.
A courier arrives from Shangdu summoning Marco Polo to the summer palace. The group heads to the next city and the baggage, including the TARDIS are separated to travel with a trade caravan. Polo and the rest of the group will travel via horseback at a faster pace starting the following morning.
Tegana arranges with a local bandit to steal the TARDIS that night. Ping Cho meanwhile heads to Marco's room to inform him of dinner and steals one of the TARDIS keys. She gives it to Susan but is observed by Tegana heading to meet the bandit captain.
The TARDIS crew sets out from the inn with Ian first distracting then knocking out the guard. Susan doubles back, looking to say goodbye to Ping Cho. The other three make it into the TARDIS and realize that Susan is gone. Susan meanwhile is trapped trying to avoid Tegana but he grabs her as she tries to make a dash for the TARDIS. Ian comes out to help her but Tegana holds a knife to her and orders the Doctor and Barbara to come out as well. Marco arrives to see the situation and Tegana notes their escape attempt. Marco has the Doctor hand over the key in exchange for Susan. When pressed about where they got the key, Ian covers for Ping Cho by claiming he stole it.
In the morning, the group departs for Shangdu. While stopping at a rest area, Ian attempts to persuade Marco to give them back the TARDIS by telling him the truth about it. Marco doesn't believe him but does figure out that Ian lied about stealing the key and that Ping Cho was responsible.
Ping Cho, fearing the discovery and desperate to avoid her arranged marriage, sneaks away in the night to head back to Samarkand. Discovering her disappearance, Ian offers to go back for her and Marco agrees as he must push on for Shangdu. Ian discovers Ping Cho at the previous inn, having just lost her money to the same thief that Tegana hired to steal the TARDIS. Ian discovers that the TARDIS has been stolen when the real caravan driver shows up.
Tegana quarrels with Marco, desiring to go and look for the TARDIS and Ping Cho himself. Marco refuses until he learns that Barbara and Susan oppose Ping Cho's marriage. Learning that all of them oppose it, Marco authorizes Tegana to go after her, fearing that Ian has abandoned the search for Ping Cho and only gone after the TARDIS.
Ian and Ping Cho suspect that the bandits have taken the TARDIS to Karakorum. They set out after it along that road. On the road, they discover both the TARDIS and the bandit leader. Ian gets the drop on the bandit leader who confesses that he stole the TARDIS on orders from Tegana. At that moment, Tegana arrives, prepared to kill all three of them and take the TARDIS for himself.
Marco and the rest of the Doctor's party arrive in Shangdu and are allowed audience with Kublai Khan. The Doctor objects to bowing before Kublai Khan and is unable to fully bow before Khan due to his ailing back. Khan becomes sympathetic to the Doctor due to sympathetic pains. Marco also learns from Khan that Tegana's master Nogai has assembled his army at Karakorum and that they are to leave for Peking in the morning.
As Tegana moves to kill Ian, Kublai Khan's soldiers arrive. Tegana kills the bandit leader as he tries to flee to avoid exposure. Ian and Tegana accuse each other of attempting to steal the TARDIS but the guard captain, who is the same man as brought Khan's summons to Marco, orders that all three and the TARDIS be brought to Peking for Kublai Khan to judge.
In Peking, the Doctor plays backgammon with Kublai Khan and the Doctor keeps winning. They are interrupted by the arrival of the empress, who henpecks her husband over his losses. The Doctor offers to play one more game where he would give all that he has won back in exchange for the TARDIS. Khan reluctantly agrees and informs Marco of this as he informs Khan that Tegana has arrived. Unfortunately, the Doctor loses.
Marco is informed that Ian and Ping Cho are being held under suspicion of theft, accused by Tegana. Marco goes to Ian to hear for himself. Ping Cho validates Ian's story but the captain cannot. Ian is informed that he will have to stand with his word against Tegana as Ping Cho's fiancé has promised to take her away after the marriage ceremony tomorrow.
Tegana attempts to undermine Marco by noting that the Doctor attempted to steal the TARDIS back several times which Marco did not mention. Khan calls Marco out and Marco confesses his hope to bribe the Khan for his freedom. Khan laughs him off and orders the key brought to him, informing Marco that he won the TARDIS in a game of chance with the Doctor.
Ping Cho is informed that during the celebratory banquet, her fiancé died during the feast. Ping Cho is offered the chance to stay at court or to return to Samarkand. Ping Cho accepts the chance to stay. As she leaves, Khan orders Marco to give him the key and bring the Doctor after he meets with Tegana.
The Doctor and his friends realize that the Tegana is planning to kill Khan and allow Nogai to march his army into Peking and take over the empire. To warn Khan, they subdue the guard and rush to the hallway where they are rearrested by Marco. They warn him just as another guard informs him of Nogai's army approaching Peking. They are returned to their room while Marco runs to the throne room.
In the throne room, Tegana attempts to kill Khan but Marco interrupts. The two men fight in the chamber. Khan comes to and summons the guards who try to arrest him. Rather than be caught, Tegana falls on his sword.
Marco slips Ian the key in the confusion and the Doctor and his friends head quickly into the TARDIS and disappear. Marco apologizes to Khan but the Khan waves it off believing that the Doctor would have won it back eventually. Marco, finally believing Ian, idly wonders where they have gone.
Analysis
I've heard this story described as a road trip story and that does apply. It's a series of adventures that happen as the crew travels across China with not a lot of connective tissue in between each installment. Your enjoyment of that is going to be directly tied to whether you are in for an one episode at a time bit or if you are going to try and absorb the story as a whole. I tend to prefer taking the story in larger chunks and in doing so it goes over fairly well but it is not without issues.
Before delving into anything else, I would be very curious to know if this story existed, would it get the same treatment as The Talons of Weng Chiang from a race angle. Despite being set in China, there are almost no Asian actors in the entire story. The only Asian actor in any significant role is Ping Cho. All other actors are European. However, unlike The Talons of Weng Chiang, there is no real attempt to "yellow" any of the actors apart from the facial hair style. There also seems to be less effort to make an attempt at any stereotypical Asian accents either. Kublai Khan does a little vocal trick, but the actor is Eastern European and some of the accent may be native to him. The innkeeper does an accent as well, but it's more of the sycophantic fop rather than anything attempting Chinese. But Tegana, the guards and nearly all the other secondary characters merely speak in their proper theatrical voices.
So does that make the story more or less racist? There were probably east-Asian actors that could have been found but would they have performed as well as the ones they got? Given that you have European actors playing Asian roles, is it better to leave them European looking or would be better to go the Li H'sen Chang route and "yellow" them to make it appear more authentic? I don't know. I think the performances were fine and stressing too much over these type of things diminishes the overall take of the story. If it is something that others do have problems with, then note it as such and pass over the story.
On to the actual story. I think things worked out fairly well but even with the road trip aspect, I think the story goes on too long. The big hang up I have is Marco's continued trust of Tegana, juxtaposed with his on and off trust of Ian. I think it is quite clear that he never really trusts the Doctor and only Ian gains his actual friendship. The story does a fairly good job of showing why Marco trusts Tegana initially and Tegana's constant failures to kill the party or capture the TARDIS are given fairly believable reasons both in why they fail and why he suffers no significant suspicion from Marco.
However, the constant level of coincidence does build and the real breaking point comes after the incident with the Cave of Five Hundred Eyes in Episode Four where Susan and Ping Cho accuse Tegana. Marco may have no good reason to trust Susan, but he should trust Ping Cho and himself. Ping Cho and Susan point out a fallacy in Tegana's own story. I can buy that Marco would not have immediately moved against Tegana as this is only a small bit of evidence. But there is no reason not to believe them and he certainly shouldn't have lashed out at them as if they were accusing his best friend of treachery. Marco should have taken their statement with quiet contemplation and it would have added to the slow deterioration of relations between Marco and Tegana as well as fueling Tegana's own mild hysteria against the TARDIS crew. But instead, things keep reverting back to where they were at the start of the story with Marco fully trusting Tegana and not trusting the Doctor and his companions. It is wheel spinning at it's worst and it just doesn't make sense. A slow build of trust between Marco and the TARDIS crew coinciding with a distrust of Tegana would have paid off better and made complete sense as to why Marco finally gives Ian the TARDIS key in the end. As is, Marco is suddenly repaying Ian for being right all along and that somehow overrules his desires and the Khan's right of ownership? It does not feel earned in that way.
A second issue noted about this story is the number of little threats teased at here and there that just don't pay off. Ping Cho's arranged marriage does nothing except provide a reason for her and Ian to be back at the inn to see the TARDIS stolen. The Doctor losing the TARDIS at backgammon does nothing except keep them in Peking for another day to stop Tegana from assassinating the Khan. Even Tegana's own machinations seem overly complicated. His job is to delay Marco to give Nogai time to move his army. He alters these plans in order to steal the TARDIS, but if he is open to killing the party as is implied in the first couple of episodes, why does he continue to create elaborate schemes to hide his own complicity? Tegana should have just gathered his men, laid an ambush and killed everyone there. He comes closest to this in the bamboo forest in Episodes Four and Five, but even there, he is trying to hide his own involvement and possibly keep Marco alive so that he can continue with his mission to kill Kublai Khan. They work as little adventures to be thwarted by the TARDIS crew but make no sense in the long run.
On the plus side, I can say that this story is clearly well acted with everyone giving their all in various roles. This is also the story where you can see the Doctor shift from being a grump to being a bit more open and friendly. This makes his character much more pleasant to be around although he still doesn't get a whole lot of focus in the story apart from the TARDIS repairs. But all the other characters get nice moments throughout, with the focus of the story mostly on Marco and Tegana, both of whom play their roles well.
I can't speak to the direction of the story as their are only still pictures, but the costuming and set design seem quite well realized. The sets seem fairly elaborate, even when out in the desert and especially at the Khan's palace. Likewise the costuming is elaborate and well tailored. Perhaps it was because this is still the first season, but the show seems to have a lot more money than we are used to seeing them work with. It might also be that they were able to poach some things from other productions to cut costs. But it does make for some nice visuals, what little you are able to see in the recons.
One last gripe about this story is something that is unfortunately common: the rushed ending. With seven episodes to play with you would think that some set up could be made towards the ending as noted earlier with the potential build between Marco and Ian. But instead, we get a first half of the Doctor losing the TARDIS playing backgammon and Tegana ingratiating himself in court. It is only when we get the offstage death of Ping Cho's fiancé that the ending begins. There is the dawning realization between the TARDIS team that Tegana is about to assassinate the Khan (something they should have realized before then) and then the rush to tell Marco, the fight and the departure. All of this is compressed into a span of less than ten minutes and it feels just as rushed as described.
This rush off not only feels like a bit of a cheat at the end, but it leaves a hollow feeling. Tegana dies quickly after a fight and after he has actually made an attempt to kill Kublai Khan. Likewise, Marco slips Ian the key without any real reason given except that it is the right thing to do. This completely undercuts the whole premise that we have gone through the last six episodes four. It gives the viewer the impression of being cheated. Why go through so much if it ultimately didn't matter because of how slipshod things finished?
I think the proper summary of this story is actually best shown in the Wife in Space blog entry for Marco Polo. Neil shows Sue a 30 minute reconstruction of the whole story. She gets it and enjoys it. If you compress the whole thing, there is a lot more to enjoy with this story, but as is, it is long and it drags at times. If you put some space in between each episode, the enjoyment factor will probably go up, but trying to take it in only one or two sittings is a bit much as the wheel spinning becomes very apparent. If this were found I would not hesitate to watch it again to see what is missing by not having moving pictures, but in recon form, it's just too much padding to take in and properly enjoy on any kind of regular basis. It just feels like something to be gotten through.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
Marco Polo is considered by many to be the holy grail of missing stories. It is the longest and the first in that stretch. It was also done in an era when the show was still focused very heavily on teaching so a great deal of effort was put in to it's visual style. As a story it's not too bad, but watching the recons forces one's attention away from the supposedly impressive set design, costumes and directions and instead towards the story and that is where problems start to crop up.
Plot Summary
The TARDIS arrives on the top of a mountain where the crew discovers large footprints in the snow. The Doctor emerges in a foul mood as one of the power circuits has failed rending them without the ability to heat the TARDIS. The Doctor and Susan examine the damage while Ian and Barbara go to look for fuel to make a fire.
While searching, Barbara sees a man skulking among the rocks. She and Ian head back to tell the Doctor, who is increasingly worried as it will take him several days to fix the circuit. Upon hearing of men, they decide to head down the mountain to find these people and shelter. Reaching the same spot, they are set upon by a group of Mongols. The leader, believing they are evil spirits decides to kill them but his hand is stayed by a European who orders them brought back to camp in the name of Kublai Khan.
In camp, the European is revealed to be Marco Polo and he is on a mission to return to Shangdu with the ambassador warlord Tegana and the lady Ping Cho where she is to be married to a lord of the court. Polo offers the TARDIS crew shelter but Tegana remains wary of them.
Polo orders the TARDIS brought down from the mountain top and into camp. He informs the TARDIS crew that they will be coming with them as they head towards the supply town of Lop. Because of the fears that they are spirits among the Mongols, Polo orders that no one enters the TARDIS while they journey and the Doctor agrees.
The caravan travels along the Silk Road until they reach Lop on the edge of the Gobi Desert. The Doctor attempts to enter the TARDIS but is restricted by the Mongols. Polo then reveals to them that he is homesick but has not been permitted to leave by Kublai Khan. Polo intends to give the TARDIS to Kublai Khan in exchange for his release from service. He offers to take the Doctor and his party back to Venice where they can make another TARDIS. They argue with him but Polo has made up his mind. The Doctor is so aghast that he begins to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.
Tegana meanwhile hatches a plan to poison the water supply of Polo's caravan and seize the TARDIS for his own use to overthrow Kublai Khan. The caravan sets out across the Gobi desert with Tegana planning to poison the water after three days travel into the desert.
The Doctor continues to pout and his actions upset Susan. Barbara consoles Susan while Ian builds friendship with Polo. Susan heads to her tent but she and Ping Cho leave to go look at the desert stars. While out there, they spy Tegana and follow him. But they soon fall behind and go to turn back but are caught in a sandstorm.
Hunkering down, Ian, Barbara, and Marco discover that Tegana, Ping Cho, and Susan are gone. They call out into storm but cannot find them. However, their yells attract Tegana who finds the girls and brings them back into the camp.
They set off again and that evening Tegana brings attention to the water that he poisoned the previous night. Marco suspects bandits and will not head back to Lop, fearing they will be set upon. Ian suggests heading north to an oasis and Marco agrees, though he doesn't favor their chances. Tegana tries to refuse to go and head back to Lop but Marco orders him to stay. They head north but their weakened condition forces them into a slower and slower pace each day. Tegana rides ahead, promising to bring back water. He reaches the oasis but after refreshing himself remains there to wait for the caravan's death.
The Doctor collapses from the heat and lack of water and the others convince Marco to let him enter the TARDIS to rest. He relents and Susan is allowed to go with him. The rest of the caravan continue on through the night and rest in the morning. In the TARDIS, the Doctor and Susan wake to find condensation has formed on the walls of the TARDIS and they move quickly to collect it. Marco Polo doesn't believe them at first and accuses the Doctor of hording water but he becomes convinced when the Doctor and Susan drink it without harm.
Renewed, they press on to the oasis where they find Tegana. Tegana claims he was forced to wait due to bandits and when he had collected water for them, he saw them coming over the hills and waited there. They opt to stay one day with Barbara and Ian becoming suspicious of Tegana. As a safety precaution, Marco insists the Doctor turn over the TARDIS key to him.
The continue and arrive at the next city, a tourist destination with the Temple of a Thousand Buddhas and the Cave of 500 Eyes. The Doctor prepares to work in repairing the circuit, revealing to Ian that he gave Marco a fake key while he kept the original. They are all distracted at that moment as Ping Cho settles in to tell a story of the Hashashin, inspired by the tale of the Cave of 500 Eyes.
Tegana slips away and meets messengers from his lord in the Cave of 500 Eyes. He learns that his lord has assembled an army and is awaiting a time to attack. Tegana informs the messenger of the TARDIS and believes it can be used as a weapon. Tegana suggests that they attack the caravan on the road posing as bandits to take the TARDIS and kill the rest. They are interrupted when one detects Barbara in the outer cave, having followed Tegana out. She is captured and Tegana returns to the inn.
The group discovers Barbara missing and Marco organizes search parties to look for her. Susan and Ping Cho inform the Doctor that they think Barbara may have gone to the Cave of 500 Eyes. The three set off to the cave using information supplied by the innkeeper. The innkeeper then goes and tells Tegana that the Doctor, Susan and Ping Cho have gone to the cave. Angry, Tegana sets off after them. The innkeeper also tells Ian and Marco who also set out after them.
In the cave, they find Barbara's scarf and begin calling out for her. Tegana find them and suggests they leave to avoid the evil spirits. The Doctor laughs him off and shows him Barbara's scarf as proof she was here. Ian and Marco arrive shortly after and they to are shown the scarf. Susan points out a point in the cave where she saw the eyes move and Ian and Marco discover a hidden room in the cave.
They find Barbara being held by a man with a knife to her throat but they kill him before he can strike her down. They return to the inn where Tegana suggests they rid themselves of the TARDIS crew as they are diving the loyalties of the caravan. Tegana also suggests that the Doctor is lying to Marco about not having access to the TARDIS. Barbara enters and tells Marco that she followed Tegana to the cave though he denies it. Fearful of Tegana's warning, Marco refuses to believe Barbara and separates Susan and Ping Cho form rooming together.
They continue on, following the river. The Doctor makes progress in the circuit repairs but is fearful that Ping Cho will inform on them. Ping Cho herself is also sad as she does not want to lose Susan as a friend. At the next stop, Ping Cho recalls Tegana's words about never having visited the Cave of 500 Eyes before, despite his knowledge of the passage. She tells Marco but he reacts angrily and dismisses her.
In town, Tegana meets with the messengers again. He sets up an ambush in the approaching bamboo forest with promises to kill the Doctor and to deliver the TARDIS.
The Doctor sneaks into the TARDIS to continue his work but is observed by Tegana. Barbara sees this and tells Ian and Susan. Ian moves to distract Marco and appeals to him against Tegana. Tegana approaches and tells Marco that the Doctor has reentered the TARDIS with a second key. The trio head out in front of the TARDIS and catch the Doctor locking the door as he leaves, having finished the repairs. Tegana wrestles the key away and gives it to Marco. The Doctor refuses to tell Marco how to enter the TARDIS, even with the key and the TARDIS crew is placed under guard.
The TARDIS crew plans an escape. Breaking a plate, Ian uses the shard to cut a hole in the tent allowing him to slip out. Ian moves to knock out the guard but finds him already dead. Ian runs out to Marco's test to tell him that bandits are preparing to attack. They deploy the remaining guards and the Doctor urges them to escape in the TARDIS. Tegana, already thwarted in his ambush attack, urges Marco not to go into the TARDIS. Marco agrees and refuses the Doctor. Ian suggests they pile bamboo on the fire to create a noise to scare the bandits off.
Tegana's allies grow impatient and decide to attack at moonrise whether Tegana signals them or not. Tegana continues to scoff as Ian and Marco make preparations. Ian also confesses to Marco that they intended to escape. Despite Tegana's protests, the soldiers attack and Tegana kills the leader to cover his involvement. The exploding bamboo and the leader's death drive off the other soldiers.
Marco repeals the restrictions on the TARDIS crew in gratitude but keeps control of the TARDIS keys. Tegana is increasingly hostile towards the TARDIS crew and their suspicions of him are confirmed with the Doctor sure that he is after the TARDIS.
A courier arrives from Shangdu summoning Marco Polo to the summer palace. The group heads to the next city and the baggage, including the TARDIS are separated to travel with a trade caravan. Polo and the rest of the group will travel via horseback at a faster pace starting the following morning.
Tegana arranges with a local bandit to steal the TARDIS that night. Ping Cho meanwhile heads to Marco's room to inform him of dinner and steals one of the TARDIS keys. She gives it to Susan but is observed by Tegana heading to meet the bandit captain.
The TARDIS crew sets out from the inn with Ian first distracting then knocking out the guard. Susan doubles back, looking to say goodbye to Ping Cho. The other three make it into the TARDIS and realize that Susan is gone. Susan meanwhile is trapped trying to avoid Tegana but he grabs her as she tries to make a dash for the TARDIS. Ian comes out to help her but Tegana holds a knife to her and orders the Doctor and Barbara to come out as well. Marco arrives to see the situation and Tegana notes their escape attempt. Marco has the Doctor hand over the key in exchange for Susan. When pressed about where they got the key, Ian covers for Ping Cho by claiming he stole it.
In the morning, the group departs for Shangdu. While stopping at a rest area, Ian attempts to persuade Marco to give them back the TARDIS by telling him the truth about it. Marco doesn't believe him but does figure out that Ian lied about stealing the key and that Ping Cho was responsible.
Ping Cho, fearing the discovery and desperate to avoid her arranged marriage, sneaks away in the night to head back to Samarkand. Discovering her disappearance, Ian offers to go back for her and Marco agrees as he must push on for Shangdu. Ian discovers Ping Cho at the previous inn, having just lost her money to the same thief that Tegana hired to steal the TARDIS. Ian discovers that the TARDIS has been stolen when the real caravan driver shows up.
Tegana quarrels with Marco, desiring to go and look for the TARDIS and Ping Cho himself. Marco refuses until he learns that Barbara and Susan oppose Ping Cho's marriage. Learning that all of them oppose it, Marco authorizes Tegana to go after her, fearing that Ian has abandoned the search for Ping Cho and only gone after the TARDIS.
Ian and Ping Cho suspect that the bandits have taken the TARDIS to Karakorum. They set out after it along that road. On the road, they discover both the TARDIS and the bandit leader. Ian gets the drop on the bandit leader who confesses that he stole the TARDIS on orders from Tegana. At that moment, Tegana arrives, prepared to kill all three of them and take the TARDIS for himself.
Marco and the rest of the Doctor's party arrive in Shangdu and are allowed audience with Kublai Khan. The Doctor objects to bowing before Kublai Khan and is unable to fully bow before Khan due to his ailing back. Khan becomes sympathetic to the Doctor due to sympathetic pains. Marco also learns from Khan that Tegana's master Nogai has assembled his army at Karakorum and that they are to leave for Peking in the morning.
As Tegana moves to kill Ian, Kublai Khan's soldiers arrive. Tegana kills the bandit leader as he tries to flee to avoid exposure. Ian and Tegana accuse each other of attempting to steal the TARDIS but the guard captain, who is the same man as brought Khan's summons to Marco, orders that all three and the TARDIS be brought to Peking for Kublai Khan to judge.
In Peking, the Doctor plays backgammon with Kublai Khan and the Doctor keeps winning. They are interrupted by the arrival of the empress, who henpecks her husband over his losses. The Doctor offers to play one more game where he would give all that he has won back in exchange for the TARDIS. Khan reluctantly agrees and informs Marco of this as he informs Khan that Tegana has arrived. Unfortunately, the Doctor loses.
Marco is informed that Ian and Ping Cho are being held under suspicion of theft, accused by Tegana. Marco goes to Ian to hear for himself. Ping Cho validates Ian's story but the captain cannot. Ian is informed that he will have to stand with his word against Tegana as Ping Cho's fiancé has promised to take her away after the marriage ceremony tomorrow.
Tegana attempts to undermine Marco by noting that the Doctor attempted to steal the TARDIS back several times which Marco did not mention. Khan calls Marco out and Marco confesses his hope to bribe the Khan for his freedom. Khan laughs him off and orders the key brought to him, informing Marco that he won the TARDIS in a game of chance with the Doctor.
Ping Cho is informed that during the celebratory banquet, her fiancé died during the feast. Ping Cho is offered the chance to stay at court or to return to Samarkand. Ping Cho accepts the chance to stay. As she leaves, Khan orders Marco to give him the key and bring the Doctor after he meets with Tegana.
The Doctor and his friends realize that the Tegana is planning to kill Khan and allow Nogai to march his army into Peking and take over the empire. To warn Khan, they subdue the guard and rush to the hallway where they are rearrested by Marco. They warn him just as another guard informs him of Nogai's army approaching Peking. They are returned to their room while Marco runs to the throne room.
In the throne room, Tegana attempts to kill Khan but Marco interrupts. The two men fight in the chamber. Khan comes to and summons the guards who try to arrest him. Rather than be caught, Tegana falls on his sword.
Marco slips Ian the key in the confusion and the Doctor and his friends head quickly into the TARDIS and disappear. Marco apologizes to Khan but the Khan waves it off believing that the Doctor would have won it back eventually. Marco, finally believing Ian, idly wonders where they have gone.
Analysis
I've heard this story described as a road trip story and that does apply. It's a series of adventures that happen as the crew travels across China with not a lot of connective tissue in between each installment. Your enjoyment of that is going to be directly tied to whether you are in for an one episode at a time bit or if you are going to try and absorb the story as a whole. I tend to prefer taking the story in larger chunks and in doing so it goes over fairly well but it is not without issues.
Before delving into anything else, I would be very curious to know if this story existed, would it get the same treatment as The Talons of Weng Chiang from a race angle. Despite being set in China, there are almost no Asian actors in the entire story. The only Asian actor in any significant role is Ping Cho. All other actors are European. However, unlike The Talons of Weng Chiang, there is no real attempt to "yellow" any of the actors apart from the facial hair style. There also seems to be less effort to make an attempt at any stereotypical Asian accents either. Kublai Khan does a little vocal trick, but the actor is Eastern European and some of the accent may be native to him. The innkeeper does an accent as well, but it's more of the sycophantic fop rather than anything attempting Chinese. But Tegana, the guards and nearly all the other secondary characters merely speak in their proper theatrical voices.
So does that make the story more or less racist? There were probably east-Asian actors that could have been found but would they have performed as well as the ones they got? Given that you have European actors playing Asian roles, is it better to leave them European looking or would be better to go the Li H'sen Chang route and "yellow" them to make it appear more authentic? I don't know. I think the performances were fine and stressing too much over these type of things diminishes the overall take of the story. If it is something that others do have problems with, then note it as such and pass over the story.
On to the actual story. I think things worked out fairly well but even with the road trip aspect, I think the story goes on too long. The big hang up I have is Marco's continued trust of Tegana, juxtaposed with his on and off trust of Ian. I think it is quite clear that he never really trusts the Doctor and only Ian gains his actual friendship. The story does a fairly good job of showing why Marco trusts Tegana initially and Tegana's constant failures to kill the party or capture the TARDIS are given fairly believable reasons both in why they fail and why he suffers no significant suspicion from Marco.
However, the constant level of coincidence does build and the real breaking point comes after the incident with the Cave of Five Hundred Eyes in Episode Four where Susan and Ping Cho accuse Tegana. Marco may have no good reason to trust Susan, but he should trust Ping Cho and himself. Ping Cho and Susan point out a fallacy in Tegana's own story. I can buy that Marco would not have immediately moved against Tegana as this is only a small bit of evidence. But there is no reason not to believe them and he certainly shouldn't have lashed out at them as if they were accusing his best friend of treachery. Marco should have taken their statement with quiet contemplation and it would have added to the slow deterioration of relations between Marco and Tegana as well as fueling Tegana's own mild hysteria against the TARDIS crew. But instead, things keep reverting back to where they were at the start of the story with Marco fully trusting Tegana and not trusting the Doctor and his companions. It is wheel spinning at it's worst and it just doesn't make sense. A slow build of trust between Marco and the TARDIS crew coinciding with a distrust of Tegana would have paid off better and made complete sense as to why Marco finally gives Ian the TARDIS key in the end. As is, Marco is suddenly repaying Ian for being right all along and that somehow overrules his desires and the Khan's right of ownership? It does not feel earned in that way.
A second issue noted about this story is the number of little threats teased at here and there that just don't pay off. Ping Cho's arranged marriage does nothing except provide a reason for her and Ian to be back at the inn to see the TARDIS stolen. The Doctor losing the TARDIS at backgammon does nothing except keep them in Peking for another day to stop Tegana from assassinating the Khan. Even Tegana's own machinations seem overly complicated. His job is to delay Marco to give Nogai time to move his army. He alters these plans in order to steal the TARDIS, but if he is open to killing the party as is implied in the first couple of episodes, why does he continue to create elaborate schemes to hide his own complicity? Tegana should have just gathered his men, laid an ambush and killed everyone there. He comes closest to this in the bamboo forest in Episodes Four and Five, but even there, he is trying to hide his own involvement and possibly keep Marco alive so that he can continue with his mission to kill Kublai Khan. They work as little adventures to be thwarted by the TARDIS crew but make no sense in the long run.
On the plus side, I can say that this story is clearly well acted with everyone giving their all in various roles. This is also the story where you can see the Doctor shift from being a grump to being a bit more open and friendly. This makes his character much more pleasant to be around although he still doesn't get a whole lot of focus in the story apart from the TARDIS repairs. But all the other characters get nice moments throughout, with the focus of the story mostly on Marco and Tegana, both of whom play their roles well.
I can't speak to the direction of the story as their are only still pictures, but the costuming and set design seem quite well realized. The sets seem fairly elaborate, even when out in the desert and especially at the Khan's palace. Likewise the costuming is elaborate and well tailored. Perhaps it was because this is still the first season, but the show seems to have a lot more money than we are used to seeing them work with. It might also be that they were able to poach some things from other productions to cut costs. But it does make for some nice visuals, what little you are able to see in the recons.
One last gripe about this story is something that is unfortunately common: the rushed ending. With seven episodes to play with you would think that some set up could be made towards the ending as noted earlier with the potential build between Marco and Ian. But instead, we get a first half of the Doctor losing the TARDIS playing backgammon and Tegana ingratiating himself in court. It is only when we get the offstage death of Ping Cho's fiancé that the ending begins. There is the dawning realization between the TARDIS team that Tegana is about to assassinate the Khan (something they should have realized before then) and then the rush to tell Marco, the fight and the departure. All of this is compressed into a span of less than ten minutes and it feels just as rushed as described.
This rush off not only feels like a bit of a cheat at the end, but it leaves a hollow feeling. Tegana dies quickly after a fight and after he has actually made an attempt to kill Kublai Khan. Likewise, Marco slips Ian the key without any real reason given except that it is the right thing to do. This completely undercuts the whole premise that we have gone through the last six episodes four. It gives the viewer the impression of being cheated. Why go through so much if it ultimately didn't matter because of how slipshod things finished?
I think the proper summary of this story is actually best shown in the Wife in Space blog entry for Marco Polo. Neil shows Sue a 30 minute reconstruction of the whole story. She gets it and enjoys it. If you compress the whole thing, there is a lot more to enjoy with this story, but as is, it is long and it drags at times. If you put some space in between each episode, the enjoyment factor will probably go up, but trying to take it in only one or two sittings is a bit much as the wheel spinning becomes very apparent. If this were found I would not hesitate to watch it again to see what is missing by not having moving pictures, but in recon form, it's just too much padding to take in and properly enjoy on any kind of regular basis. It just feels like something to be gotten through.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
Monday, September 19, 2016
Delta and the Bannermen
Actually, I may have gone a step too far.
For this story, I am grateful to have seen the 1950's episode of The Supersizers. Holiday camps are things that generally unknown to Americans and having the basic outline of how they developed known helps a bit in establishing the setting. One thing that I specifically watched out for was to see if Burton was a former military man and it turned out that he is so score one there. As for the story itself, I've been pleasantly surprised as I'm now halfway through the dreaded Season 24 and it hasn't been the slog or dreck that fan wisdom suggested that it would be.
Plot Summary
A woman named Delta is under attack along with her soldiers. She is the queen of a race known as the Chimeron and her people are being massacred by a man named Gavrok and his soldiers, the Bannermen. Her men are cut down but she manages to flee aboard one of the Bannermen's ships. She is pursued to a space port on a nearby planet. At this spaceport, the Doctor and Mel have arrived and won a trip to 1959 Disneyland with a group of alien tourists. Mel rides the bus but the Doctor opts to follow behind in the TARDIS. Delta lands her ship and gets aboard the bus just before it takes off.
On Earth, two American agents are traveling in Wales and have been instructed to observe a satellite in orbit. This same satellite accidently collides with the touring bus as it approaches Earth. The Doctor manages to save the bus from crashing using the TARDIS but is forced to land just outside a holiday camp called Shangri-La in south Wales. The Doctor and the driver Murray begin to repair the bus but the power crystal will need to be regrown for a day before they can leave. The group then registers to stay the night at the holiday camp, where they are warmly received by the camp director, Major Burton.
Delta is roomed with Mel but she is cold and paranoid towards her. She closely guards a crystalline orb brought along from the battle. She does begin to soften when she attracts the attention of Billy, the young maintenance man of the camp. The Doctor also makes friends with Ray, a young woman very taken with Billy, but whose affections are not reciprocated.
The group attends a welcoming dance where Billy makes his affections for Delta known. Ray is upset by this and runs off. The Doctor goes after her and offers some comfort as she cries in the laundry. They are interrupted by a bounty hunter sneaking in and signaling Gavrok of Delta's location. The Doctor accidently gives away that they are listening and the bounty hunter prepares to kill them both. Gavrok however, once he has locked on to the bounty hunter's location, sends an ionizing pulse that kills the bounty hunter, saving him paying the reward money. Both the Doctor and Ray are knocked out by the blast.
Delta and Mel head back to their room where the crystalline orb hatches, producing a green infant. Billy, attracted by the noise of Mel's shock, enters and Delta explains to both of them that she is queen and the last survivor of her people. Billy takes it in stride while Mel falls asleep. Billy offers to take Delta and the baby out for a ride away and she agrees.
The Doctor and Ray come to and realize that though the bounty hunter is dead, the Bannermen will be arriving shortly. The Doctor wakes Mel and has her warn Murray. Murray begins to assemble all the offworlders to reboard the bus. The Doctor and Ray go to Major Burton and explain to him that he needs to evacuate the camp. Burton scoffs but becomes convinced when the Doctor allows him to enter the TARDIS. He then arranges for all his staff to leave on a separate bus, although he stays behind to watch the camp.
Worried at Delta's disappearance, the Doctor and Ray take her scooter around the countryside looking for Delta and Billy. While they are gone, the staff evacuates and Murray replaces the power crystal in the space bus. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ray find Billy and Delta and warn them of the Bannermen's approach. The group immediately heads back to the camp.
The Bannerman warship lands and the group take the two American agents prisoner, leaving two soldiers to guard them. They approach the camp and destroy the space bus as it begins to take off. Mel is the only survivor as she opted to stay behind and travel with the Doctor in the TARDIS. Mel tries to claim that Delta was killed but Gavrok sees the approaching bikes and orders his men to fire on them. The party flees and Gavrok is about to kill Mel when Burton intervenes suggesting she be used as hostage. Gavrok orders Burton and Mel tied up to be used as bait.
Delta detects the call of bees who summon her to safety. They head to a local beekeeper who offers them shelter. The Doctor turns around and heads back under a flag of truce. He offers Gavrok a chance to surrender and face justice but Gavrok laughs him off. The Doctor unties Mel and Burton but the Bannermen turn their weapons on the Doctor. However, Gavrok elects to let the Doctor, Mel and Burton go and instead fires a flare into the air. The flare signals the two soldiers guarding the Americans. They bind the Americans and move to the road where they fire a tracking dart into the motorcycle. Aware of the tracking dart, the Doctor ducks into a local field and attaches the tracker to a goat.
While the guards are away, Ray manages to free the Americans and takes them back to the bee farm. The Doctor also takes his charges back there once free of the tracker. They are pursued by the two guards, but the princess, having progressed to the next stage in her growth, sees them and sends out a warning cry. The cry inflicts pain on the Bannermen so they begin to retreat, although Delta manages to gun one down as they flee.
Before leaving the camp, Gavrok sets up a booby trap around the TARDIS. The Bannermen follow the tracker to the field where Gavrok is less than pleased to find he has been tricked. The surviving soldier returns and informs Gavrok of their location and they head to the farm.
Aware of the impending attack, the Doctor sets up a trap and then has the entire party head back to the holiday camp. While setting up the trap, Billy steals some of the princess’s food and begins to drink it himself, to transform himself into a Chimeron.
Gavrok and his men attack, but find the farm deserted. They follow a trail left by the Doctor into the barn where old jars of honey drop on them. The honey attracts the local bees who attack the Bannermen, driving them further from the farmhouse.
Back at the camp, the Doctor spies the booby trapped TARDIS and elects to set up another trap for the Bannermen. He rigs the camp loudspeaker to amplify a signal and works with Billy to set up an additional speaker on the roof.
When the Bannermen attack, he gives a signal and Delta instructs the princess to give her warning cry. The cry is amplified all over the camp causing the Bannermen to collapse in pain. Gavrok collapses backwards into the range of the TARDIS booby trap and is killed by his own device. Ray and the two Americans come out of hiding and tie up the stunned Bannermen. They are then loaded onto their own ship for transport back for trial.
Delta, the princess and Billy, now partially transformed into a Chimeron, board the ship and leave for their new home. Billy leaves his motorcycle with Ray and the Doctor hands over the fallen satellite to the two Americans. With the booby trap discharged by Gavrok, Mel and the Doctor leave in the TARDIS just as another group of tourists arrive.
Analysis
I think the best way to describe this story would be fun silliness. The story is completely off the wall and the alien costuming is bizarre but it is entertaining and the characters are mostly fairly enjoyable. Still, that does not excuse some bizarre choices and some downright painful acting.
The Doctor is good in this story and has a nice balance of comedy and figuring out what is going on. He doesn't have the all-knowing presence that he does in later stories but with only three episodes to play with, he doesn't do much bumbling about. His give away with the bounty hunter at the end of Episode One is probably the worst he gets of it. After that, it's a good bit of run around. The closest he gets with the run around is his direct confrontation with Gavrok at the end of Episode Two. It's probably closer to a poker read in that he is gambling that Gavrok sees the value in leaving him alive rather than just killing him outright and that does pay off. It's actually amusing to a degree given that Gavrok is painted so one-note that a key plot point revolves around him acting with a level of intelligence so far not yet seen.
Mel got a bit of short shrift in this story. Aside from making acquaintances with Delta, she does nearly nothing in this story. She is a by-stander and hostage through most of it much like Major Burton. But Burton has bravado and he also stands up to Gavrok, suggesting that they are more valuable alive while Mel just sits there and spits at him.
The real companion work is done by Ray who is very enjoyable as a character. Having read about this story ahead of time, I was expecting a harder edge to her and was quite surprised as her softness. I also found that I greatly enjoyed her accent, but that's just personal preference. But she was spunky and resourceful, two things that Mel was not, although Mel did retain her fairly positive tone throughout. But it just felt like Ray was much more reliable. This is somewhat understandable as the decision had been made to get rid of Mel and Ray was one of the two options. The production team ended up going with Ace (see next story: Dragonfire) but I think the volume of Ray in this story is directly tied to the potential of her being the next companion. I don't know how they would have written out Mel though if Ray had been the next companion. Perhaps she would have stayed behind to help Major Burton run the camp.
I must speak well of the use of location in this story. The cinematography is quite 80's but I like the use of an actual holiday camp and outdoor shooting as it gave the story a much more expansive look. They also went minimalist on the effects shots for the space ships and the guns but in neither case would I call that a bad thing. The mind filled in the gaps quite well and it reduced the cheap effect look that this story could have had if there were more attempted.
If there is one thing I have trouble with regarding effects and costuming it is the design of the Chimeron people. In the initial battle, Delta stands out as human looking while she is surrounded by what look like green army men. This continuing of the green, reptilian man form is continued throughout to Delta's daughter and Billy once he begins to transform but even there it is inconsistent. In the baby stage it is painfully obvious that it is just a baby with it's face smudged green in a green dinosaur suit. Later, as her daughter grows, the costuming gets a bit better as she magically assumes a white smock dress, but her face waffles between being painted green or not. I understand that they wanted to ensure the alienness, especially as the Bannermen are not particularly alien looking, but this was an odd choice as it was a lot of work and young children are not going to cooperate much when it comes to makeup application. Something a little simpler would probably have been better, especially it would have made the child more consistent with Delta, who has almost no alien characteristics at all.
I am hit or miss with the Bannermen themselves. Gavrok wasn't bad but he is very one-note evil. I did enjoy the fact that they don't bother with a backstory. Gavrok and the Bannermen are there to destroy the Chimerons and that is it. No tempering of explanation. Just bad guys committing genocide. I also enjoyed the fact that the Bannermen were somewhat competent soldiers, although once on Earth they seemed to develop Stormtrooper aim. All that being said, it was a little disappointing that they were defeated so easily. Gavrok more or less does the Disney villain death, being taken out by his own trap and the rest of the Bannermen just falling to pieces once their leader was dead. It makes their defeat a bit unsatisfying.
There were some significant sour notes when it came to the acting. Delta is a bit stiff throughout the story. It works well enough in the first couple of episodes where she is on her guard, but when she is interacting with Billy, she keeps that same stiffness and it becomes just a bad portrayal. Billy himself is also pretty bad. He falls for Delta more or less because the script tells him to and he goes further and further to the extreme in his devotion to her while maintaining a performance that is as bland and stiff as a board. He and Delta have zero chemistry and the fortunately few scenes they have together are just dreck.
But, the worst aspect for me was the two Americans. Their accents were so broad and over the top that it was painful to listen to. The commander’s accent from Tomb of the Cybermen was better than that. Worse was the fact that they actually were Americans. They must have had some awful advice from the director. As if their accents weren’t bad enough, Weismuller was dressed like Yogi Berra during his managerial days as if to emphasize further that he was American. I have the impression that these two were supposed to be a bumbling comedy duo, but their shtick was so broad and over the top that I found zero humor in anything they did and it was all I could do not to cringe in pain.
One bit of positivity, I rather enjoyed the music for this story. Keff McCulloch gets slagged for his musical choices in other stories and probably rightly so. But I rather enjoyed the feel of it in this story and didn't even mind that it was dialed up to eleven in a few places, especially the chase scenes.
If you keep in mind that this is a romp-y bit of fun, this story can be enjoyed. I can and did enjoy it for the most part. But the bad acting is hard to ignore and the quick ending for the Bannermen give the story a bit of an anti-climatic feel. The somewhat heavy handed nature comparing Delta and the Chimerons to bees is also a bit of a drawback, but I understand that kids might not have picked up on anything quite the subtle. Still, it's not a bad story nor is it poorly done. It wouldn't be my first Seventh Doctor choice, but for a quick run with the Doctor, it is perfectly serviceable.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
For this story, I am grateful to have seen the 1950's episode of The Supersizers. Holiday camps are things that generally unknown to Americans and having the basic outline of how they developed known helps a bit in establishing the setting. One thing that I specifically watched out for was to see if Burton was a former military man and it turned out that he is so score one there. As for the story itself, I've been pleasantly surprised as I'm now halfway through the dreaded Season 24 and it hasn't been the slog or dreck that fan wisdom suggested that it would be.
Plot Summary
A woman named Delta is under attack along with her soldiers. She is the queen of a race known as the Chimeron and her people are being massacred by a man named Gavrok and his soldiers, the Bannermen. Her men are cut down but she manages to flee aboard one of the Bannermen's ships. She is pursued to a space port on a nearby planet. At this spaceport, the Doctor and Mel have arrived and won a trip to 1959 Disneyland with a group of alien tourists. Mel rides the bus but the Doctor opts to follow behind in the TARDIS. Delta lands her ship and gets aboard the bus just before it takes off.
On Earth, two American agents are traveling in Wales and have been instructed to observe a satellite in orbit. This same satellite accidently collides with the touring bus as it approaches Earth. The Doctor manages to save the bus from crashing using the TARDIS but is forced to land just outside a holiday camp called Shangri-La in south Wales. The Doctor and the driver Murray begin to repair the bus but the power crystal will need to be regrown for a day before they can leave. The group then registers to stay the night at the holiday camp, where they are warmly received by the camp director, Major Burton.
Delta is roomed with Mel but she is cold and paranoid towards her. She closely guards a crystalline orb brought along from the battle. She does begin to soften when she attracts the attention of Billy, the young maintenance man of the camp. The Doctor also makes friends with Ray, a young woman very taken with Billy, but whose affections are not reciprocated.
The group attends a welcoming dance where Billy makes his affections for Delta known. Ray is upset by this and runs off. The Doctor goes after her and offers some comfort as she cries in the laundry. They are interrupted by a bounty hunter sneaking in and signaling Gavrok of Delta's location. The Doctor accidently gives away that they are listening and the bounty hunter prepares to kill them both. Gavrok however, once he has locked on to the bounty hunter's location, sends an ionizing pulse that kills the bounty hunter, saving him paying the reward money. Both the Doctor and Ray are knocked out by the blast.
Delta and Mel head back to their room where the crystalline orb hatches, producing a green infant. Billy, attracted by the noise of Mel's shock, enters and Delta explains to both of them that she is queen and the last survivor of her people. Billy takes it in stride while Mel falls asleep. Billy offers to take Delta and the baby out for a ride away and she agrees.
The Doctor and Ray come to and realize that though the bounty hunter is dead, the Bannermen will be arriving shortly. The Doctor wakes Mel and has her warn Murray. Murray begins to assemble all the offworlders to reboard the bus. The Doctor and Ray go to Major Burton and explain to him that he needs to evacuate the camp. Burton scoffs but becomes convinced when the Doctor allows him to enter the TARDIS. He then arranges for all his staff to leave on a separate bus, although he stays behind to watch the camp.
Worried at Delta's disappearance, the Doctor and Ray take her scooter around the countryside looking for Delta and Billy. While they are gone, the staff evacuates and Murray replaces the power crystal in the space bus. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ray find Billy and Delta and warn them of the Bannermen's approach. The group immediately heads back to the camp.
The Bannerman warship lands and the group take the two American agents prisoner, leaving two soldiers to guard them. They approach the camp and destroy the space bus as it begins to take off. Mel is the only survivor as she opted to stay behind and travel with the Doctor in the TARDIS. Mel tries to claim that Delta was killed but Gavrok sees the approaching bikes and orders his men to fire on them. The party flees and Gavrok is about to kill Mel when Burton intervenes suggesting she be used as hostage. Gavrok orders Burton and Mel tied up to be used as bait.
Delta detects the call of bees who summon her to safety. They head to a local beekeeper who offers them shelter. The Doctor turns around and heads back under a flag of truce. He offers Gavrok a chance to surrender and face justice but Gavrok laughs him off. The Doctor unties Mel and Burton but the Bannermen turn their weapons on the Doctor. However, Gavrok elects to let the Doctor, Mel and Burton go and instead fires a flare into the air. The flare signals the two soldiers guarding the Americans. They bind the Americans and move to the road where they fire a tracking dart into the motorcycle. Aware of the tracking dart, the Doctor ducks into a local field and attaches the tracker to a goat.
While the guards are away, Ray manages to free the Americans and takes them back to the bee farm. The Doctor also takes his charges back there once free of the tracker. They are pursued by the two guards, but the princess, having progressed to the next stage in her growth, sees them and sends out a warning cry. The cry inflicts pain on the Bannermen so they begin to retreat, although Delta manages to gun one down as they flee.
Before leaving the camp, Gavrok sets up a booby trap around the TARDIS. The Bannermen follow the tracker to the field where Gavrok is less than pleased to find he has been tricked. The surviving soldier returns and informs Gavrok of their location and they head to the farm.
Aware of the impending attack, the Doctor sets up a trap and then has the entire party head back to the holiday camp. While setting up the trap, Billy steals some of the princess’s food and begins to drink it himself, to transform himself into a Chimeron.
Gavrok and his men attack, but find the farm deserted. They follow a trail left by the Doctor into the barn where old jars of honey drop on them. The honey attracts the local bees who attack the Bannermen, driving them further from the farmhouse.
Back at the camp, the Doctor spies the booby trapped TARDIS and elects to set up another trap for the Bannermen. He rigs the camp loudspeaker to amplify a signal and works with Billy to set up an additional speaker on the roof.
When the Bannermen attack, he gives a signal and Delta instructs the princess to give her warning cry. The cry is amplified all over the camp causing the Bannermen to collapse in pain. Gavrok collapses backwards into the range of the TARDIS booby trap and is killed by his own device. Ray and the two Americans come out of hiding and tie up the stunned Bannermen. They are then loaded onto their own ship for transport back for trial.
Delta, the princess and Billy, now partially transformed into a Chimeron, board the ship and leave for their new home. Billy leaves his motorcycle with Ray and the Doctor hands over the fallen satellite to the two Americans. With the booby trap discharged by Gavrok, Mel and the Doctor leave in the TARDIS just as another group of tourists arrive.
Analysis
I think the best way to describe this story would be fun silliness. The story is completely off the wall and the alien costuming is bizarre but it is entertaining and the characters are mostly fairly enjoyable. Still, that does not excuse some bizarre choices and some downright painful acting.
The Doctor is good in this story and has a nice balance of comedy and figuring out what is going on. He doesn't have the all-knowing presence that he does in later stories but with only three episodes to play with, he doesn't do much bumbling about. His give away with the bounty hunter at the end of Episode One is probably the worst he gets of it. After that, it's a good bit of run around. The closest he gets with the run around is his direct confrontation with Gavrok at the end of Episode Two. It's probably closer to a poker read in that he is gambling that Gavrok sees the value in leaving him alive rather than just killing him outright and that does pay off. It's actually amusing to a degree given that Gavrok is painted so one-note that a key plot point revolves around him acting with a level of intelligence so far not yet seen.
Mel got a bit of short shrift in this story. Aside from making acquaintances with Delta, she does nearly nothing in this story. She is a by-stander and hostage through most of it much like Major Burton. But Burton has bravado and he also stands up to Gavrok, suggesting that they are more valuable alive while Mel just sits there and spits at him.
The real companion work is done by Ray who is very enjoyable as a character. Having read about this story ahead of time, I was expecting a harder edge to her and was quite surprised as her softness. I also found that I greatly enjoyed her accent, but that's just personal preference. But she was spunky and resourceful, two things that Mel was not, although Mel did retain her fairly positive tone throughout. But it just felt like Ray was much more reliable. This is somewhat understandable as the decision had been made to get rid of Mel and Ray was one of the two options. The production team ended up going with Ace (see next story: Dragonfire) but I think the volume of Ray in this story is directly tied to the potential of her being the next companion. I don't know how they would have written out Mel though if Ray had been the next companion. Perhaps she would have stayed behind to help Major Burton run the camp.
I must speak well of the use of location in this story. The cinematography is quite 80's but I like the use of an actual holiday camp and outdoor shooting as it gave the story a much more expansive look. They also went minimalist on the effects shots for the space ships and the guns but in neither case would I call that a bad thing. The mind filled in the gaps quite well and it reduced the cheap effect look that this story could have had if there were more attempted.
If there is one thing I have trouble with regarding effects and costuming it is the design of the Chimeron people. In the initial battle, Delta stands out as human looking while she is surrounded by what look like green army men. This continuing of the green, reptilian man form is continued throughout to Delta's daughter and Billy once he begins to transform but even there it is inconsistent. In the baby stage it is painfully obvious that it is just a baby with it's face smudged green in a green dinosaur suit. Later, as her daughter grows, the costuming gets a bit better as she magically assumes a white smock dress, but her face waffles between being painted green or not. I understand that they wanted to ensure the alienness, especially as the Bannermen are not particularly alien looking, but this was an odd choice as it was a lot of work and young children are not going to cooperate much when it comes to makeup application. Something a little simpler would probably have been better, especially it would have made the child more consistent with Delta, who has almost no alien characteristics at all.
I am hit or miss with the Bannermen themselves. Gavrok wasn't bad but he is very one-note evil. I did enjoy the fact that they don't bother with a backstory. Gavrok and the Bannermen are there to destroy the Chimerons and that is it. No tempering of explanation. Just bad guys committing genocide. I also enjoyed the fact that the Bannermen were somewhat competent soldiers, although once on Earth they seemed to develop Stormtrooper aim. All that being said, it was a little disappointing that they were defeated so easily. Gavrok more or less does the Disney villain death, being taken out by his own trap and the rest of the Bannermen just falling to pieces once their leader was dead. It makes their defeat a bit unsatisfying.
There were some significant sour notes when it came to the acting. Delta is a bit stiff throughout the story. It works well enough in the first couple of episodes where she is on her guard, but when she is interacting with Billy, she keeps that same stiffness and it becomes just a bad portrayal. Billy himself is also pretty bad. He falls for Delta more or less because the script tells him to and he goes further and further to the extreme in his devotion to her while maintaining a performance that is as bland and stiff as a board. He and Delta have zero chemistry and the fortunately few scenes they have together are just dreck.
But, the worst aspect for me was the two Americans. Their accents were so broad and over the top that it was painful to listen to. The commander’s accent from Tomb of the Cybermen was better than that. Worse was the fact that they actually were Americans. They must have had some awful advice from the director. As if their accents weren’t bad enough, Weismuller was dressed like Yogi Berra during his managerial days as if to emphasize further that he was American. I have the impression that these two were supposed to be a bumbling comedy duo, but their shtick was so broad and over the top that I found zero humor in anything they did and it was all I could do not to cringe in pain.
One bit of positivity, I rather enjoyed the music for this story. Keff McCulloch gets slagged for his musical choices in other stories and probably rightly so. But I rather enjoyed the feel of it in this story and didn't even mind that it was dialed up to eleven in a few places, especially the chase scenes.
If you keep in mind that this is a romp-y bit of fun, this story can be enjoyed. I can and did enjoy it for the most part. But the bad acting is hard to ignore and the quick ending for the Bannermen give the story a bit of an anti-climatic feel. The somewhat heavy handed nature comparing Delta and the Chimerons to bees is also a bit of a drawback, but I understand that kids might not have picked up on anything quite the subtle. Still, it's not a bad story nor is it poorly done. It wouldn't be my first Seventh Doctor choice, but for a quick run with the Doctor, it is perfectly serviceable.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
Thursday, September 15, 2016
The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
Are you my mummy?
Enter Steven Moffat. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances is the Moff's first entry to writing for Doctor Who and it also is probably a pretty good summation of his overall view of the show and how he conducted thing as show runner: scary, funny and just a little too fearful to go overly dark. In the end, everyone lives and that is both the blessing and curse of the Moffat era.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Rose respond to a distress signal by an alien ship. The ship is caught in the time vortex and crashes in London in 1941 during the Blitz. The Doctor and Rose land the TARDIS about a month after the crash. The Doctor slips into a nightclub to see if anyone knows about the ship crash while Rose waits outside. There he learns of the time period to which they have landed.
While waiting for the Doctor, Rose spots a young boy in a gas mask calling for his mother on the roof of a building. She climbs up to try and help him but when climbing on the anchor line of a barrage balloon the balloon frees and she is carried away across London as the German planes approach. She manages to hold on for a bit but eventually slips off. Her fall is arrested by a tractor beam from the ship of a 51st century time agent named Captain Jack Harkness.
Captain Jack pulls Rose aboard his ship and believing her to be a time agent, proceeds to make an offer of sale for a crashed Chulan warship. Rose plays along, intrigued by Jack but tells him that only her partner is authorized to make payment. They then scan about looking for the Doctor.
The Doctor emerges from the club to find Rose gone. He is distracted by the phone in the TARDIS door ringing. He is warned not to answer it by a passing girl named Nancy but does so anyway, hearing the voice of a child asking for his mother. He follows Nancy into a home where the family is hiding in the air raid shelter and Nancy is leading a group of homeless children in partaking of the large set dinner table.
The Doctor asks about them but they are interrupted by the boy in the gas mask knocking on the door and calling for mummy. The children flee but the Doctor looks to help. Nancy again warns him before running and the Doctor is further alarmed as the child's voice comes over the phone and the speaker of the radio. He opens the door only to find the child gone.
The Doctor follows Nancy to her hideaway and asks further about the fallen spacecraft. She tells him where it is but tells him to see the doctor in the hospital near the crash site first. She also confesses that she does what she does as she feels guilty over the death of her little brother Jamie who was killed in an air raid when he followed her out.
The Doctor heads to the hospital, observing the crashed ship under guard of the British Army. In the hospital he finds hundreds of people in bed, all with the same injuries and all with gas masks fused to their faces. Doctor Constantine tells him of an original patient, a small boy and that everyone else was infected after touching him or one of the subsequent patients. Doctor Constantine also reveals that they are not dead but respond occasionally as he himself begins to transform with a gas mask face and the same injuries.
Rose and Jack find the Doctor shortly afterwards in the hospital. At the same time Nancy reenters the house to find more food and is confronted by the child in the gas mask, whom she recognizes as Jamie. Jamie calls out to her asking her if she is his mommy. This triggers the people in the hospital who begin advancing on the Doctor, Rose and Jack. The Doctor tells them off by telling them that he is cross and they need to go to their room. Both Jamie and the people accept this. The people go back to bed while Jamie heads out of the house.
At this point, Jack realizes that the Doctor and Rose are not time agents and he comes clean about the ship. It was an ambulance that he poached and was going to con them into buying just before it was destroyed by a German bomb. Annoyed by Jack and his carelessness (as he suspects the ship is the source of the plague) the Doctor heads upstairs to the patient zero room. They find toys and drawings of the child's mom. They also listen to a tape recording of the child asking for his mom.
Jamie, ordered by the Doctor to go to his room, enters the room and summons all the other infected people. The three flee through the hospital until they are finally able to barricade themselves into a storage room. Out of escape options, Jack teleports himself back to his ship and sends a signal via the radio that he will transport them once he's changed the ship's settings. The Doctor and Rose banter a bit until Jack pulls them out of the hospital and they head back to the scene of the crash.
Nancy is caught trying to escape the house but blackmails the husband into letting her go when she threatens to expose him for sleeping with the butcher. She stops by the group of kids and tells them that she is going to stop the attacks by the masked child. She then cuts her way through the military perimeter but is caught. She is handcuffed to a table under guard, but the guard is showing signs of transformation.
The Doctor and his party approach the compound and when Jack greets the captain in charge, the captain also begins to transform. They rush past him and find Nancy singing to the transformed guard, who has been lulled to sleep. The Doctor frees her and begins to examine the ambulance. Attempting to open it triggers an alarm and all the masked people begin to advance on them. The assemble but hold until Jamie arrives.
The Doctor confronts Jack, informing him that the ship was full of nanogenes, tiny medical robots. Upon crashing, the nanogenes found Jamie's dead body but didn't have a human pattern to work from so only brought him back to life in his state. His touch spread the nanogenes who rewrote the human DNA in favor of their repairs. Jack transports back to the ship to stop the German bomb from destroying the ship and spreading the nanogenes.
The Doctor looks at Nancy as Jamie and his hordes approach and realizes that Jamie is not her brother but in fact her son. Knowing this, he encourages her to go to him. She confesses to him that she is his mother and hugs him. The nanogenes read the parent DNA and correct their earlier mistake. Jamie returns to himself and the Doctor takes his mask off to reveal a normal boy underneath. He then sends out the nanogenes who repair all those affected by the earlier mistake, some to a point of improvement beyond their original condition.
The German bomb is released by Jack catches it in his tractor beam and puts it in stasis. The Doctor and Rose head back to the TARDIS to celebrate. They then rendezvous with Jack's ship which is about to be destroyed as the bomb is losing it's stasis field. They take Jack with them and all three have a dance in the TARDIS.
Analysis
This story is Steven Moffat in miniature. About the only thing missing from it is anything that is "timey-whimy." But the simple horror elements are there, along with drama and emotional manipulation. You also have the saccharine and a few pacing problems as well.
The best part of this story is the child himself and the Doctor's reaction to him. The child is both creepy and also very sympathetic. When he calls out to the Doctor through the door of the house in The Empty Child, you both hear and feel a lost, scared child who you should bend over backwards to help. That you are also afraid of this child creates an odd dichotomy in your brain that you wrestle with. I personally felt even worse when the Doctor told him to go to his room. He is looking at Nancy and as it registers, you see his head droop and you can almost feel the sadness welling up inside him as he doesn't know why he is being punished.
Nancy and the rest of the kids were also fine but I felt Nancy was a bit stiff at times. Some of that might have been trying to pull the stiff upper lip and all, but her confession regarding Jamie seemed like it should have been a bit more emotional for her than it was. The other children didn't have much time to be more than children, which is exactly how it should be. Too much time with children and their lack of acting experience starts to show and that can hurt a story.
I quite enjoyed Jack. He skirts the line with his cockiness and it is very close to descending into cliché at times, but he is still a very enjoyable character. I actually like him even better when he is less sure of himself and begins to cow to the Doctor a bit, although that's a good payoff solely because of the dick measuring going on between them. The Doctor's embarrassment over the sonic screwdriver relative to Jack's squarness gun is quite funny and one of the few times the Doctor is put on his heels with regard to it.
Rose on the other hand, is not that enjoyable. She never seems to come across as particularly serious in this episode. You would think that flying over London in the Blitz would temper her a bit but she goes along with it and is all pally and flirty with Jack. I do like that she gets called out with regard to Mickey and how she is more or less using him to make herself feel better but is always looking to drop him. Her one decent moment is her quiet talk with Nancy and the reassurance she offers that the Allies win the war. It is a nice moment and reflects how low the spirits of the British people must have been given that Nancy takes it as a given that the Germans will eventually win and that Rose is lying, not because she has reservations about time travel, but because Rose isn't German.
The overall look of the story is pretty good. The only real point where they didn't quite pull things off was in the scenes from the Blitz where Rose is hanging from the balloon. The CGI is pretty thick there and it gets a bit of a cartoon-y look the longer Rose is up there. I understand the idea, but they don't quite pull it off. You can definitely see how far the show is come by pulling that scene next to a similar sequence in Victory of the Daleks. But other than that, the production looks pretty good. The transformation of Doctor Constantine being an excellent example of a well done CG effect that helped a great deal with the horror element of the story.
Aside from the niggles noted above, there are three points of the story that didn't really work for me. The first was the pacing, especially in The Empty Child. The cutaways to Rose and Jack didn't do much for me and they felt like distraction and filler. The tension was with the Doctor and his interactions with Nancy and Jamie. That built the scariness and any cut away from that felt not like relief but instead like a distraction. I didn't care about champagne on the roof of a cloaked ship. I cared about the Doctor's unease.
The second was the Doctor's over enthused reaction to everybody living after the nanogenes correct their mistake. He is saying this in the middle of a German air raid where potentially thousands of people are dying. Doctor Constantine also pointed out that none of the people infected were dead anyway. They were alive but transformed. So it wasn't like they were brought back or that they were in danger of dying. Yet many people are dying around him. It is an out of place moment that just clangs. It feels like an extra load of syrup on what should be a normal happy ending and it just gags.
The third thing that bugged me was the dance discussions between the Doctor and Rose. Unlike a lot of fans, I don't have a problem with a sexual Doctor. He obviously had a relationship with Susan's grandmother and several other females in the past to say nothing of what he would do in the future as the Tenth Doctor. But what starts as a little bit of coy innuendo just gets beaten to death as the episode goes on. I don't care much for Rose bringing it up in the first place as it adds to her very cavalier attitude towards the situation they are in. But to take something that should have stayed in that room and dragged it out across the whole rest of the story just got tiring. I think Moffat thought he was being clever but it just seems overly silly.
As an aside, I noticed while watching this one that Moffat was able to slip his traditional "Doctor Who" joke in. Nice to know that some things always stay the same.
Overall, I think the goodness of the episode is spread well and it covers the more negative aspect of this story. I was a little surprised at how balanced both stories were. I generally expect one episode to be stronger than the other, but this one was fairly well balanced. I knew I was going to have a favorable opinion of the first episode as I enjoy the scene between the Doctor and Doctor Constantine so much, but I had forgotten that the second part didn't go downhill as I misremembered it doing so. This is another reason why I'm making a point to go back and rewatch these early stories and not relying on my own faulty memory. In the end, I'd say it's definitely worth watching multiple times. It may not be the apex of the First Series that other fans are inclined to think of it as, but it is one of the higher points.
Overall personal score: The Empty Child - 4 out of 5; The Doctor Dances - 4 out of 5
Enter Steven Moffat. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances is the Moff's first entry to writing for Doctor Who and it also is probably a pretty good summation of his overall view of the show and how he conducted thing as show runner: scary, funny and just a little too fearful to go overly dark. In the end, everyone lives and that is both the blessing and curse of the Moffat era.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Rose respond to a distress signal by an alien ship. The ship is caught in the time vortex and crashes in London in 1941 during the Blitz. The Doctor and Rose land the TARDIS about a month after the crash. The Doctor slips into a nightclub to see if anyone knows about the ship crash while Rose waits outside. There he learns of the time period to which they have landed.
While waiting for the Doctor, Rose spots a young boy in a gas mask calling for his mother on the roof of a building. She climbs up to try and help him but when climbing on the anchor line of a barrage balloon the balloon frees and she is carried away across London as the German planes approach. She manages to hold on for a bit but eventually slips off. Her fall is arrested by a tractor beam from the ship of a 51st century time agent named Captain Jack Harkness.
Captain Jack pulls Rose aboard his ship and believing her to be a time agent, proceeds to make an offer of sale for a crashed Chulan warship. Rose plays along, intrigued by Jack but tells him that only her partner is authorized to make payment. They then scan about looking for the Doctor.
The Doctor emerges from the club to find Rose gone. He is distracted by the phone in the TARDIS door ringing. He is warned not to answer it by a passing girl named Nancy but does so anyway, hearing the voice of a child asking for his mother. He follows Nancy into a home where the family is hiding in the air raid shelter and Nancy is leading a group of homeless children in partaking of the large set dinner table.
The Doctor asks about them but they are interrupted by the boy in the gas mask knocking on the door and calling for mummy. The children flee but the Doctor looks to help. Nancy again warns him before running and the Doctor is further alarmed as the child's voice comes over the phone and the speaker of the radio. He opens the door only to find the child gone.
The Doctor follows Nancy to her hideaway and asks further about the fallen spacecraft. She tells him where it is but tells him to see the doctor in the hospital near the crash site first. She also confesses that she does what she does as she feels guilty over the death of her little brother Jamie who was killed in an air raid when he followed her out.
The Doctor heads to the hospital, observing the crashed ship under guard of the British Army. In the hospital he finds hundreds of people in bed, all with the same injuries and all with gas masks fused to their faces. Doctor Constantine tells him of an original patient, a small boy and that everyone else was infected after touching him or one of the subsequent patients. Doctor Constantine also reveals that they are not dead but respond occasionally as he himself begins to transform with a gas mask face and the same injuries.
Rose and Jack find the Doctor shortly afterwards in the hospital. At the same time Nancy reenters the house to find more food and is confronted by the child in the gas mask, whom she recognizes as Jamie. Jamie calls out to her asking her if she is his mommy. This triggers the people in the hospital who begin advancing on the Doctor, Rose and Jack. The Doctor tells them off by telling them that he is cross and they need to go to their room. Both Jamie and the people accept this. The people go back to bed while Jamie heads out of the house.
At this point, Jack realizes that the Doctor and Rose are not time agents and he comes clean about the ship. It was an ambulance that he poached and was going to con them into buying just before it was destroyed by a German bomb. Annoyed by Jack and his carelessness (as he suspects the ship is the source of the plague) the Doctor heads upstairs to the patient zero room. They find toys and drawings of the child's mom. They also listen to a tape recording of the child asking for his mom.
Jamie, ordered by the Doctor to go to his room, enters the room and summons all the other infected people. The three flee through the hospital until they are finally able to barricade themselves into a storage room. Out of escape options, Jack teleports himself back to his ship and sends a signal via the radio that he will transport them once he's changed the ship's settings. The Doctor and Rose banter a bit until Jack pulls them out of the hospital and they head back to the scene of the crash.
Nancy is caught trying to escape the house but blackmails the husband into letting her go when she threatens to expose him for sleeping with the butcher. She stops by the group of kids and tells them that she is going to stop the attacks by the masked child. She then cuts her way through the military perimeter but is caught. She is handcuffed to a table under guard, but the guard is showing signs of transformation.
The Doctor and his party approach the compound and when Jack greets the captain in charge, the captain also begins to transform. They rush past him and find Nancy singing to the transformed guard, who has been lulled to sleep. The Doctor frees her and begins to examine the ambulance. Attempting to open it triggers an alarm and all the masked people begin to advance on them. The assemble but hold until Jamie arrives.
The Doctor confronts Jack, informing him that the ship was full of nanogenes, tiny medical robots. Upon crashing, the nanogenes found Jamie's dead body but didn't have a human pattern to work from so only brought him back to life in his state. His touch spread the nanogenes who rewrote the human DNA in favor of their repairs. Jack transports back to the ship to stop the German bomb from destroying the ship and spreading the nanogenes.
The Doctor looks at Nancy as Jamie and his hordes approach and realizes that Jamie is not her brother but in fact her son. Knowing this, he encourages her to go to him. She confesses to him that she is his mother and hugs him. The nanogenes read the parent DNA and correct their earlier mistake. Jamie returns to himself and the Doctor takes his mask off to reveal a normal boy underneath. He then sends out the nanogenes who repair all those affected by the earlier mistake, some to a point of improvement beyond their original condition.
The German bomb is released by Jack catches it in his tractor beam and puts it in stasis. The Doctor and Rose head back to the TARDIS to celebrate. They then rendezvous with Jack's ship which is about to be destroyed as the bomb is losing it's stasis field. They take Jack with them and all three have a dance in the TARDIS.
Analysis
This story is Steven Moffat in miniature. About the only thing missing from it is anything that is "timey-whimy." But the simple horror elements are there, along with drama and emotional manipulation. You also have the saccharine and a few pacing problems as well.
The best part of this story is the child himself and the Doctor's reaction to him. The child is both creepy and also very sympathetic. When he calls out to the Doctor through the door of the house in The Empty Child, you both hear and feel a lost, scared child who you should bend over backwards to help. That you are also afraid of this child creates an odd dichotomy in your brain that you wrestle with. I personally felt even worse when the Doctor told him to go to his room. He is looking at Nancy and as it registers, you see his head droop and you can almost feel the sadness welling up inside him as he doesn't know why he is being punished.
Nancy and the rest of the kids were also fine but I felt Nancy was a bit stiff at times. Some of that might have been trying to pull the stiff upper lip and all, but her confession regarding Jamie seemed like it should have been a bit more emotional for her than it was. The other children didn't have much time to be more than children, which is exactly how it should be. Too much time with children and their lack of acting experience starts to show and that can hurt a story.
I quite enjoyed Jack. He skirts the line with his cockiness and it is very close to descending into cliché at times, but he is still a very enjoyable character. I actually like him even better when he is less sure of himself and begins to cow to the Doctor a bit, although that's a good payoff solely because of the dick measuring going on between them. The Doctor's embarrassment over the sonic screwdriver relative to Jack's squarness gun is quite funny and one of the few times the Doctor is put on his heels with regard to it.
Rose on the other hand, is not that enjoyable. She never seems to come across as particularly serious in this episode. You would think that flying over London in the Blitz would temper her a bit but she goes along with it and is all pally and flirty with Jack. I do like that she gets called out with regard to Mickey and how she is more or less using him to make herself feel better but is always looking to drop him. Her one decent moment is her quiet talk with Nancy and the reassurance she offers that the Allies win the war. It is a nice moment and reflects how low the spirits of the British people must have been given that Nancy takes it as a given that the Germans will eventually win and that Rose is lying, not because she has reservations about time travel, but because Rose isn't German.
The overall look of the story is pretty good. The only real point where they didn't quite pull things off was in the scenes from the Blitz where Rose is hanging from the balloon. The CGI is pretty thick there and it gets a bit of a cartoon-y look the longer Rose is up there. I understand the idea, but they don't quite pull it off. You can definitely see how far the show is come by pulling that scene next to a similar sequence in Victory of the Daleks. But other than that, the production looks pretty good. The transformation of Doctor Constantine being an excellent example of a well done CG effect that helped a great deal with the horror element of the story.
Aside from the niggles noted above, there are three points of the story that didn't really work for me. The first was the pacing, especially in The Empty Child. The cutaways to Rose and Jack didn't do much for me and they felt like distraction and filler. The tension was with the Doctor and his interactions with Nancy and Jamie. That built the scariness and any cut away from that felt not like relief but instead like a distraction. I didn't care about champagne on the roof of a cloaked ship. I cared about the Doctor's unease.
The second was the Doctor's over enthused reaction to everybody living after the nanogenes correct their mistake. He is saying this in the middle of a German air raid where potentially thousands of people are dying. Doctor Constantine also pointed out that none of the people infected were dead anyway. They were alive but transformed. So it wasn't like they were brought back or that they were in danger of dying. Yet many people are dying around him. It is an out of place moment that just clangs. It feels like an extra load of syrup on what should be a normal happy ending and it just gags.
The third thing that bugged me was the dance discussions between the Doctor and Rose. Unlike a lot of fans, I don't have a problem with a sexual Doctor. He obviously had a relationship with Susan's grandmother and several other females in the past to say nothing of what he would do in the future as the Tenth Doctor. But what starts as a little bit of coy innuendo just gets beaten to death as the episode goes on. I don't care much for Rose bringing it up in the first place as it adds to her very cavalier attitude towards the situation they are in. But to take something that should have stayed in that room and dragged it out across the whole rest of the story just got tiring. I think Moffat thought he was being clever but it just seems overly silly.
As an aside, I noticed while watching this one that Moffat was able to slip his traditional "Doctor Who" joke in. Nice to know that some things always stay the same.
Overall, I think the goodness of the episode is spread well and it covers the more negative aspect of this story. I was a little surprised at how balanced both stories were. I generally expect one episode to be stronger than the other, but this one was fairly well balanced. I knew I was going to have a favorable opinion of the first episode as I enjoy the scene between the Doctor and Doctor Constantine so much, but I had forgotten that the second part didn't go downhill as I misremembered it doing so. This is another reason why I'm making a point to go back and rewatch these early stories and not relying on my own faulty memory. In the end, I'd say it's definitely worth watching multiple times. It may not be the apex of the First Series that other fans are inclined to think of it as, but it is one of the higher points.
Overall personal score: The Empty Child - 4 out of 5; The Doctor Dances - 4 out of 5
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