To hold in my hand, a capsule that contains such power. To know that life and death on such a scale was my choice. To know that the tiny pressure on my thumb, enough to break the glass, would end everything. Yes, I would do it. That power would set me up among the gods. And through the Daleks, I shall have that power!
Genesis of the Daleks is generally regarded as the best Dalek story ever written by Terry Nation. Some go so far as to proclaim it the best Dalek story but you can usually get a good discussion going regarding The Power of the Daleks and The Evil of the Daleks. Genesis of the Daleks is actually so highly regarded as a story, that there remains constant debate as to whether Terry Nation actually wrote most of it or whether Robert Holmes filled in Terry Nation's outline.
I'm a little more inclined to think that Terry Nation is responsible for at least 95% of the story. It contains all his usual tropes and unlike some of his other scripts, he was forced to take time and go back to rework it after Barry Letts sent it back to him. I wouldn't be shocked if Robert Holmes did punch up a couple of scenes, especially the scenes between the Doctor and Davros, but I'm still willing to give Terry Nation the credit (or blame depending on your point of view) for the quality of this story.
Plot Summary
The Doctor's transmat beam from Earth is intercepted by the Time Lords who take him, Sarah and Harry to Skaro. There he is tasked with either destroying or altering the development of the Daleks in their nascent state. The Doctor reluctantly agrees and is given a time dial as his only means of returning to the TARDIS once his mission is complete.
Having arrived in the middle of a wasteland between the two principle cities, the Doctor and his companions maneuver through a minefield and arrive outside the Kaled city defenses. They are caught in a Thal attack but a squad of Kaleds kill the attackers and take Harry and the Doctor prisoner. Sarah is knocked unconscious in the attack and assumed dead by the Kaleds.
In the bunker, General Ravon threatens to torture them for information but the Doctor gets the drop on him. He and Harry manage to escape to the surface but are recaptured by a patrol and taken by Security Chief Nyder. He is interested by the advanced technology found in the Doctor's pockets and decides they should see Davros, the chief scientist and leader of the Kaled elites.
Sarah wakes and ventures back into the wasteland when she cannot find a way into the bunker. Sensing that she is being shadowed, she hides in an abandoned bunker. There she observes Davros and his assistant Gharman testing a Mark III travel machine, the standard format of a Dalek. Pleased with the test, Davros and Gharman leave but Sarah is set upon by a pack of Mutos, the genetic casualties of the chemical and radiological warfare between the Kaleds and the Thals. Some want to kill her but another objects. However before they can decide, the entire group is captured by a Thal patrol and taken back to their city.
The Doctor and Harry are taken to see the senior scientist Ronson after being stripped of the time dial bracelet. Ronson is skeptical but after seeing their scans, he becomes convinced that they are alien. His interrogation is interrupted by Davros introducing the Dalek to his science team. Davros permits the Dalek to operate independently and it means to kill the Doctor and Harry but Ronson stops it. Davros is angry at the interference but concedes that Ronson's interrogation would provide useful information. He permits Ronson to continue.
While Ronson's team extracts information from the Doctor, he gathers information from them. After it's over Ronson comes and apologizes. He has seen the Daleks that Davros is breeding and wishes to stop the Kaled people from becoming that. He agrees to help the Doctor escape if the Doctor can inform the Kaled government what Davros has been developing. The Doctor agrees and he takes the Doctor to an airshaft that leads outside the bunker.
In the Thal city, Sarah, the Mutos and a few Kaled prisoners are put to work loading a rocket with explosives. The explosives are unshielded and expose the workers to toxic radiation. Knowing that it will kill them, Sarah and the rest of the prisoners plan an escape. They knock out the guard and climb up the scaffolding to escape through the top of the dome. The guard wakes as they near the top and sounds the alarm. Most of the prisoners are shot down as they try to climb. Sarah slips and nearly falls to her death but hits a landing a few feet down. The Muto Sevrin helps her back to the top but are recaptured before they climb out the top.
The Doctor and Harry emerge from the airshaft in a cave with mutated animals, experimented on by Davros. They manage to get through and up to the city where the Doctor informs the Kaled leaders of what Davros is doing and the long term effects the Daleks will have on the universe. The Kaled leaders decide to investigate for themselves and will order a suspension of Davros' work while they do so. If they find the Doctor's claims correct, they will destroy the work.
Nyder informs Davros of what the leadership is planning and that he suspects Ronson of allowing the prisoners to escape. Davros takes it in and plays along with the Kaled leadership that he will agree to suspend all work, though he asks for 24-hours before shut down. The leadership gives him 12. After they have left, Davros and Nyder take a secret shuttle to the Thal city where Davros claims to be exhausted and willing to sue for peace. He gives the Thals a chemical formula which will destroy the protective dome of the Kaled city, allowing their rocket to penetrate and destroy the city. He and Nyder then return to their bunker.
Harry and the Doctor leave the Kaled city and sneak into the Thal city using underground tunnels. They overhear part of Davros' plan but not the part about the Thals being able to destroy the Kaled city. He and Harry knock out two guards, steal their suits and sneak into the rocket bay. There, they knock out the other guard and free the prisoners, who had been left to be incinerated in the rocket discharge. The Doctor sends Harry, Sarah and Sevrin out to warn the Kaleds of Davros' treachery while he tries to sabotage the rocket. However, the guard comes to and electrifies the metal the Doctor is examining, knocking him out.
The Thals bombard the Kaled dome with the chemicals Davros told them about and upon seeing them work, they launch the rocket. The Doctor tries to stop them but he is restrained by the Thal guards. The rocket lands, destroying the Kaled city. The Doctor despairs, thinking that Harry and Sarah were killed in the attack. The Thal governor declares a day of celebration and an amnesty on all prisoners. The Doctor is released and he plans to head back to the bunker to try and destroy the Daleks, whom he is sure have survived.
In the bunker, Davros and his scientific team watch and feel the city being destroyed above them. Davros declares that he will avenge their people using the Daleks and points out Ronson's treachery. Ronson tries to protest but the summoned Daleks kill him. Davros then orders the Daleks to invade the Thal city and destroy everyone inside.
As the Doctor prepares to leave, he hears the familiar sound of Dalek weaponry. He and a Thal woman named Bettan escape the city. The Doctor tells her to gather as many survivors as she can and then meet him outside the Kaled bunker for an attack. The Doctor reenters the cave to get into the bunker airshafts when he attacked by Mutos. They are driven off by Harry, Sarah and Sevrin. Harry informs the Doctor that they were attacked by the Mutos which delayed them until after the city was attacked. Seeing it destroyed, they hid in the cave, guessing that the Doctor would try to get back into bunker. The Doctor sends Sevrin to Bettan, suggesting that he try and bring as many Mutos willing to fight as possible. He, Harry and Sarah then enter the shafts.
In the bunker, Gharman begins organizing a resistance when Davros orders new Daleks to be altered to remove any conscious they may have. Nyder overhears this and tricks Gharman into thinking he supports him. He lures Gharman into the lower levels where Davros overhears his plans and the fellow conspirators. Nyder knocks Gharman out and they plan to operate on his mind to make him servile once more.
In the lower levels, Nyder overhears the Doctor and his companions crawling through the ducts and arrest them upon entering. Davros interrogates the Doctor where he learns of the future success of the Daleks. He threatens to torture Harry and Sarah and forces the Doctor to reveal all the times the Doctor is aware of the Daleks failure in battle. He records this information and then dismisses Nyder with the prisoners, leaving the Doctor and himself to talk as scientists. The Doctor goads Davros into admitting that that he would destroy all life just to create a superior life form and seizes control of Davros' chair while distracted. He forces Davros to order the destruction of the incubating Daleks but Nyder knocks the Doctor out and Davros countermands the order. Davros orders the Doctor taken to a cell.
Harry and Sarah are placed in the same cell as Gharman and the three plot against Davros. One of the scientists loyal to Gharman knocks out the guard and Harry disguises him as the guard. When Nyder brings the Doctor, Harry surprises him, although Nyder gets away. Free, Gharman and the other scientists work through the lab, convincing most to join their side, locking up those that won't. Harry, Sarah and the Doctor find some explosives and the Doctor sets them up in the incubation room to destroy the Daleks.
Davros, aware that rebellion is fomenting, plots to destroy all of them. He convinces Gharman to assemble the whole team where each will present their case and then let a vote be taken on the course of action. While Gharman assembles the people, Davros sends a signal recalling the Daleks from the Thal city. Gharman informs the Doctor, who had been hesitating about whether the destroy the Daleks and he leaves the explosives in the room.
In Davros' lab as he makes his case, the Doctor, Harry and Sarah recover the items taken from the Doctor, including his sonic screwdriver and the time bracelet. They also observe Nyder slipping out and they too slip out to follow him. Capturing him in the hallway, they force Nyder to unlock the safe in his office where the recording of the Doctor relaying the Dalek failures was kept. The Doctor destroys the tape but Nyder slips out of the room, locking them in. The Doctor isn't worried until he notices that the time bracelet slipped off in the struggle with Nyder.
Outside, the Thal force assembled by Bettan and Sevrin follows the Daleks as they enter the bunker. Bettan sets up explosives to destroy the entrance and seal the occupants in. Sevrin, concerned about the Doctor and his companions, goes in after them, although Bettan warns him that if they are not back by the time she is ready, she will seal them in too.
Sevrin releases the Doctor and his companions from the locked room. Over the monitors, they observe the Daleks surrounding those who continued to defy Davros and execute all of them. With Gharman's revolution over, the Doctor orders Sevrin to take Harry and Sarah out while he blows up the incubator room.
After the execution, Davros observes that Dalek production has commenced despite his orders not yet been given. He orders Nyder to stop it until they are ready. However, he is gunned down by a Dalek when he tries to stop it. They Daleks then turn and execute all the other scientists, despite Davros pleading for their survival.
The Doctor rewires the explosives but cannot set them off due to an approaching Dalek. However, the Dalek runs over the wires and detonates the explosives, killing all Daleks in the incubator room. He then flees down the tunnel just as Bettan and her men are about to close the doors. They pull him through and shut the doors in the face of several pursing Daleks. The Thals then detonate the explosives, sealing the Daleks into the bunker.
In the bunker, realizing the Daleks are turning on him, Davros pleads for pity but the Daleks do not recognize the word. He attempts to hit a button that would destroy the bunker except for that room, but he is gunned down before he can press it. The Daleks then vow to replicate themselves and extricate themselves from the bunker over the next thousand years.
With the Daleks neutralized, Sevrin and the Thals leave to rebuild a society while the Doctor and his companions activate the time bracelet to pull them back to the TARDIS. The Doctor muses that even though they did not fully accomplish their mission, a measure of good will come from their actions.
Analysis
As much as people might deny it, the hands of Terry Nation are all over this story. I think because Terry Nation reused so many of his ideas to the point that they became tropes causes us to forget that he was actually a pretty good writer. Some of his stories are slow but most stories with padding are slow. The first four-parter he wrote (Death to the Daleks) moved pretty well and it was let down mostly by production problems rather that story issues (although elements were heavily recycled again). As for Genesis of the Daleks, while I think Robert Holmes did do a few edits, I think this story is a good example of the quality that Nation was capable of when forced to actually put some extra thought into it.
I really enjoyed this one. The first time I saw this, I was a bit more aware of the padding, refusing to let myself get washed in the story. I found the scenes with Sarah and the rocket to be a bit dull. The second time around, I let go and just let the story come as it was and I found I liked it a lot better. While I was still aware there wasn't much point to the rocket scenes except to give Sarah something to do, I was able to appreciate the tension and the peril that Sarah found herself in. Even as padding, it was enjoyable and it did serve a small element story-wise in terms of giving texture to the nature of the conflict, including the fact that the Thals are not "good guys" as seen in The Daleks, only the other side in a war.
The Doctor was quite good here and I think it goes without saying that his "Do I have the right" speech will probably be shown in the montage at Tom Baker's funeral. He interacts well with everyone but I really enjoyed his banter with Harry in the first couple of episodes. I would also say that there is almost no scene that can top the interaction he has with Davros as they "talk as men of science." That is one of those scenes that you just wish would go on for so much longer you enjoy it so much. There is even some very nice subtle acting being done by Tom Baker as you can see him showing mock strain as he holds Davros' hand away from his control board. I don't know if Michael Wisher was actually pushing against him, but it made it look as though there was a real struggle going on there.
Both companions had good arcs in this story as well. With Sarah removed, Harry fell into the dominant companion role. He didn't have much dialogue, but he played off the Doctor well and they seemed to function as a proper team, stepping in for more physicality when the Doctor was unable to fulfill that role. Absent Sarah, I think Harry could have been remembered as good of a companion as Sarah is.
Sarah was excellent as usual. It was nice to see her not give in to any kind of typical feminine hopelessness and instead focus exclusively on how to escape the rocket silo. Although it didn't work, it was still a valiant effort and well within what we expect of her character. It was also nice to see her acting the voice of conviction when the Doctor hesitated in destroying the Daleks. She correctly points out the evil of the Daleks and how the Doctor would destroy them if they were a virus or a germ. Her interaction is as important as the Doctor's hesitancy as it points out what the stakes are and what each side looks at.
All the supporting cast was good too. It is almost unfortunate that their performances are somewhat lost when compared to Davros and Nyder. Not enough credit is given to Michael Wisher as he fully formed Davros in this story. Although other actors would play him, they all followed in the footsteps of the path he created. What's more, future versions of Davros would focus heavily on the meglomanical tendencies but they minimized his cunning. It is important to note that Davros outsmarted everyone in this story and did effectively win. It is only that the Daleks overrode his control of them in the end that he is seemingly finished at the end of the story.
Nyder is the other great character of this story: the ultimate sycophantic loyalist. Nyder is an obvious parallel to Joseph Goebbels and does an excellent portrayal along those lines. He is arguably more sadistic than Davros who simply uses strength and pain for control. Nyder enjoys it and on more than one occasion, attempts to persuade Davros to release him to purge the ranks of the disloyal. It is this loyalty that gives power to the performance when he actually pauses at Davros' actions of killing the Kaled people and how their whole destiny is simply to become Daleks. Even his death is impressive. Everyone else, including Davros, screamed horribly when killed by a Dalek. Nyder however, does not scream. He has a pained expression but makes no sound as he falls. It is somewhat fitting though that he is shot in the back.
Of all the other secondary characters, I think I enjoyed Gharman the most. Unlike Ronson or the rest of the Kaled leadership, he did not oppose the Dalek project, but saw it as taking advantage of an inevitable mutation that was a side effect of a thousand years of war. His only objection was the creation of the pure Dalek: the one without conscious or morality. In other words, he saw the form as inevitable but wanted to keep the nature that of a Kaled. It is an interesting take and given how the Daleks eventually turned on everyone, Gharman is ultimately proven correct in his concerns. His portrayal even outside of the interesting story arc is also quite enjoyable.
The direction in this story is quite good as well. There were some very well framed scenes. About the only part that was janky for me was towards the end of the first half of Episode One when the story shifted from film to tape. Film gave the story so much extra atmosphere that the story seemed to deflate a bit when they shifted to tape, though they tried to disguise it. I'm not sure what the logistics would have been, but I think the transition would have been a little bit better if the scene in the trench where Harry and the Doctor are captured were also done on film. That could have pushed the tape transition to when the story moved indoors. It's already a harsh change and it would have disguised the shift slightly better in my opinion. But that is a minor criticism in a well produced story.
Although the story did utilize several Terry Nation tropes, the only one that sits out blatantly is Sevrin, the friendly native. Nation would always use some local who would help out for very little reason except that the story said he was to. It is the same here where all other Mutos want to kill Sarah. But Sevrin intervenes and continues to help the Doctor and his companions with little outstanding gain for himself. Perhaps he sees hope in the Doctor's plan that will end the war, despite little evidence given for that as they are there to destroy the Daleks, which would have been mostly unknown to the Mutos. Arguably he stayed loyal to Sarah because of her loyalty to him during their imprisonment by the Thals but it is the one significant Nation trope that is not folded in to the story particularly well and sticks out like a lump in the gravy.
As far as the debate between what Nation did and what Holmes may have added, I can't honestly tell as I find the scenes move together rather fluidly. From experience, I would suggest that the scene between the Doctor and Davros was probably edited by Holmes, although I suspect that most of Davros' speech was written by Nation. I would also suspect that Holmes punched up the "Do I have a right" speech by the Doctor. Again, I would believe that Nation wrote the scene but that Holmes might have tweaked the dialogue so that it flowed either better or more epically. But aside from those two scenes. I'm not sure I could pick out any other point where the hand of Holmes could be overtly detected and I think that speaks well of Terry Nation in this case. This is his story and he should be credited for the work entailed therein.
Overall, this is a very good story. Is it the best Dalek story? No, but then again, it doesn't have many Daleks in it. That works in it's favor as the human drama between the Doctor and Davros drive a large amount of the enjoyment. It could be trimmed a bit and some of the characters curtailed in their involvement, but it is hard not to consider this story one of the best in the entire classic run. I think anyone could sit down and enjoy this at just about any time and I wouldn't hesitate pulling it down to watch again if the mood struck me.
Overall personal score: 5 out of 5
Monday, November 28, 2016
Friday, November 18, 2016
The Happiness Patrol
Happiness shall prevail.
The Happiness Patrol is a story that seems to rate in the lower middle of most fan's lists. I don't know that I've ever run into anyone that raved over it but I have heard of several fans that despise it, mostly due to the Kandy Man. I've been of a mixed mind on this one as it is hard to overlook a prejudice that significant, but I found that I've had a better appreciation of some of the Seventh Doctor stories than general fandom so I'm trying to keep an open mind.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Ace arrive on the Earth colony of Terra Alpha, which the Doctor had been meaning to look into for a while due to troubling rumors. He and Ace walk around a bit and run into a census taker named Trevor Sigma. When they come back to the TARDIS they find a squad from the Happiness Patrol painting it pink, having just returned from the execution of a killjoy (someone not happy). The Doctor and Ace manage to get themselves arrested and taken to a waiting area.
The colony is run by a woman named Helen A who works with a sadistic henchman called the Kandy Man. Helen A sends out a message of happiness to the citizens before having a man executed by being smothered to death in tube of fondant sent up from the Kandy Man. Her address is watched by another man in the holding area who used to be a joke writer for Helen A. However, he began investigating disappearances in the colony and was sent away. As he relates this to the Doctor and Ace, Helen A sends a charge through the machine he is using and electrocutes him.
The Doctor and Ace disable a booby trap on a patrol cart and leave the waiting area. They soon split up with Ace surrendering to the Happiness Patrol on the pretext of wanting to join them. She is taken back to the Patrol HQ where she befriends a member of the patrol named Susan Q, who is becoming disillusioned with life in the colony and on the patrol.
The Doctor meets a tourist named Earl Sigma who has been trapped on the colony and now working against the regime. To avoid a patrol, they dash into a building only to find that it is the Kandy Man's kitchen where he prepares to use them to experiment on. He places them in chairs for testing his sweets on but the Doctor tricks him into knocking over a bottle of lemonade, which causes his feet to stick to the floor (being made of confectionary). The Doctor and Earl flee into the underground tunnels.
Ace and Susan Q are taken from the Patrol HQ to another waiting area where they are sentenced to execution. This movement is observed by creatures living in the tunnels. The Doctor and Earl run into these creatures, who are the natives of the planet. The Doctor recognizes slogans they picked up from overhearing Ace and they recognize him as a friend.
The natives escort the Doctor through the sewers and let him and Earl out near where Trevor Sigma is conducting business. Earl leaves and the Doctor overrides Trevor and they head off to see Helen A. Helen A greets Trevor warmly but the Doctor takes command and warns Helen A to change how things are done on the colony. She dismisses him and the Doctor walks out.
After meeting the Doctor, one of the natives conducts a raid on the holding area and rescues Ace. Susan Q had already been taken away for execution. Upon learning of the escape, Helen A sends her pet Stigorax, Fifi, into the sewers after them. Ace blows up the tunnel with a can of Nitro-9, before slipping down another shaft.
The Doctor heads back towards the Kandy Kitchen, stopping a pair of snipers who had been firing on a crowd of striking workers on his way. He finds the Kandy Man still suck to the floor where he left him. He offers to free the Kandy Man if he diverts the flow of fondant, preventing another execution. The Kandy Man agrees and changes the flow of the fondant just before Susan Q is to be killed. The change in pipe flow also causes Ace and her native guide to be dropped into the execution area where she is rearrested.
Trevor Sigma informs Helen A that per galactic law, Susan Q and Ace cannot be executed by the same method if it fails once. She then orders the two women to be taken to the forum for public execution.
Knowing that he would attack him again, the Doctor resticks the Kandy Man to the floor and heads off to find Ace. He learns from posters being put up of Ace's impending execution in the forum. The Doctor signals Earl Sigma who joins up with striking factory workers to head towards the forum. As the Happiness Patrol approaches with Ace, the Doctor breaks into wild laughter. Earl and the strikers approach, also laughing and acting overly silly. With all acting in apparently happiness, the patrol is confused on what to do. The Doctor, Ace, Susan Q and Earl all slip away in a vehicle while the squad leader, Pricilla P turns and arrests her lieutenant Daisy K for her confusion.
Helen A sends Fifi, who survived Ace's Nitro-9 attack, back into the pipes to hunt down the Doctor and his companions. The natives hear Fifi in the pipes and warn the Doctor. The Doctor stops under a factor that has developed a leak and has developed large stalactites of hardened sugar. He has Earl play resonance notes on his harmonica and then runs. The stalactites break off and crush Fifi as she chases them.
Earl and Susan separate from the Doctor and Ace and assist the strikers into becoming full rioters. They overwhelm the Happiness Patrol squads and begin destroying the factories. Helen A recalls Daisy K to the palace, ordering Pricilla P to wait in the holding area. However, Pricilla P is overrun by the rioters and bound before she can regroup the patrol.
The Doctor and Ace head back to the Kandy Kitchen where they overheat the oven and drive the Kandy Man away. He flees into the pipes to escape. The natives enter and take control of the pipes, redirecting fondant through the pipes, destroying the Kandy Man. Seeing his work destroyed, Gilbert M flees the planet with Helen A's husband Joseph C in her private shuttle, leaving her stranded on the planet.
As more factories are destroyed, Helen A flees the palace, leaving Daisy K as the only defense. She is overrun and disarmed by Susan Q. She and Earl Sigma shut down all remaining defenses and controls. The Doctor meanwhile meets Helen A in the streets, confronting her on her desire for happiness. She resists until she sees Fifi's dead body lying near by, brought up by the Doctor. Seeing her beloved pet dead breaks her and Helen A collapses around her pet in a fit of sobbing.
The surviving members of the Happiness Patrol are placed in work gangs and ordered to help clean up the city. The people take control with Earl Sigma noting that he plans to stay and help supervise. The Doctor and Ace then depart in the TARDIS, which has been repainted its original blue.
Analysis
I either read or heard somewhere that there was discussion of possibly filming this story in black and white to add to its film-noir feel. I don't think that would have worked as the washed out color fits the mood of the story better, but this is clearly Doctor Who does film-noir. I liked this one much more than I was originally expecting. It does have flaws and fairly significant ones at that, but it does it's job well and most of those flaws can be overlooked to enjoy the story as a whole.
I really enjoyed the Seventh Doctor. In fact, if the majority of the Seventh Doctor stories had had him like this, I think he would have taken the position as my favorite Doctor from the Second Doctor. He was not the all-knowing Doctor, but came in suspicious. Once he got the bead, he developed a plan and executed it with nearly flawless precision. Some of that plan even involved facing down and taking the measure of the enemy directly.
I think my favorite moment in the entire story was a throw away scene where the Doctor stops two male members of the patrol who are sniping factory strikers. He walks up directly behind the snipers and stares the gunner straight down. He forces the man to look him in the face and dares him to shoot him. It is a challenge to the will of the shooter and reminded me of the scene in The Shawshank Redemption where Andy Dufresne literally wills Captain Hadley not to throw him to his death. It was a very well played scene and showed a strength in the Doctor that is sometimes lacking in other stories.
I enjoyed Ace but she was very underused in this story. When she was with the Doctor, she was a tag team partner at best. When she was away from him, she was being held by the Happiness Patrol for most of the time and didn't do much there either. Her interaction with Susan Q was nice but it was rushed in development and still didn't have a major impact on the overall flow of the story. Nice but ultimately forgettable.
I enjoyed nearly all of the secondary characters. Helen A in particular was quite good in that over the top mad way. Drawing on other media, she reminded me of Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I know she was supposed to be a take on Margaret Thatcher but, not being British, I can't speak to that. I also enjoyed the dry and slightly droll performances of her husband and the Kandy Man's creator. The two men were so dry in their delivery that it stood out as quite funny to me.
I also surprisingly enjoyed the fact that Helen A was not simply gunned down as you might expect in a revolution story, such as The Sunmakers. Instead, being forced to confront the shattering of what she viewed as perfection seemed like a more appropriate punishment. In the end she is not just killed off, but instead forced to deal with the reality of pain and suffering and how they complete us as people. It makes her even more pathetic to see her broken and weeping over the carcass of Fifi than it would be to see her own carcass lying in the street.
Going back to the film noir aspect, I enjoyed how this story was shot. I think it would have looked even better on film, but they did a decent job with what they had. There was a grit in the scenes and the lighting was very muted which gave everyone a washed out look, adding to the disassociation between the requirement of happiness and the reality of the situation. There was also a very good use of shadow to hide various flaws that existed in the scenery and in Fifi herself. I also happened to see this off an old VHS recording and the graininess that exists in that medium actually helped the story in my opinion. If I were to rewatch it in a DVD or Blue Ray, I think the clarity of the picture might actually detract from the story due to too much contrast being introduced.
With all of that good stuff there were some flaws, none of which were enough to ruin the story, but they could have made it better. Going off the previous point of the sets, lighting and direction, all of that couldn't fully hide the limitations of the budget. There is a lot of cast and a lot of set and it is obvious that they had to cut corners here and there. The vehicles are essentially go-karts and the flow of fondant never looked impressive enough to actually kill someone. There were a couple of other points where it was just difficult to contain the idea that this was confined on a soundstage. I think if this story had been shot on location in an abandoned warehouse of factory and dressed up from there, I think it would have covered up some of the cheapness that seeped through.
The second flaw that stood out to me was the pacing. A true film-noir needs time to breathe and this story didn't breathe quite enough. So much story was being told that it often a jump from scene to scene without any real clarity in how they got there. It's not as bad as it is in a few other Seventh Doctor stories (such as Ghost Light), but there is still a rushed feeling that shouldn't be there in a noir piece. I don't think expanding it to four episodes would have been the right move as it would have introduced too much padding, but if a scene or two were trimmed or reedited, I think it would have flowed better.
Probably the best scenes for editing (or even outright excisement) would be the Kandy Man scenes and that is my third and largest flaw in the story. The Kandy Man sticks out in this story as so out of place. While everyone else is human and there is a real level of grit, you introduce this sadistic creature that serves almost no point. He supplies the fondant for the executions but other than that, he does nothing in the story. What's more, he appears to be living confectionary and that just seems so out of left field in what is otherwise not much of a science fiction story.
I could forgive the wackiness of the Kandy Man if he had an actual point. But all of his scenes are just the guardian of the Kandy Kitchen, supplying the fuel of execution. This could have easily just been done by Gilbert M himself and those scenes sharply reduced in length, allowing the rest of the story some breathing room. Imagine for example that in Episode Two, instead of the Doctor freeing the Kandy Man to make him divert the fondant in Susan Q's execution, the Doctor instead sneaks behind Gilbert M and forces him to divert the flow by threatening to expose his own lack of happiness. Not only would it have trimmed the scene and given it a more realistic tone, but it would have given extra motivation for Gilbert's flight at the end of the story. I don't hate the Kandy Man the way some fans seem to, but it's just weirdness for weirdness sake and a character that adds nothing to the story at the expense of other more significant elements.
Overall, I enjoyed this story. It lost me in a couple of places, but reeled me back in with a good noir take. It has it's problems, but much like Paradise Towers and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, the quality of the performances and the atmosphere salvage the overall story, allowing the good to outweigh the bad. I would like to watch this one again, preferably with a higher quality copy to see if that clarity hurts or helps the overall story.
Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5
The Happiness Patrol is a story that seems to rate in the lower middle of most fan's lists. I don't know that I've ever run into anyone that raved over it but I have heard of several fans that despise it, mostly due to the Kandy Man. I've been of a mixed mind on this one as it is hard to overlook a prejudice that significant, but I found that I've had a better appreciation of some of the Seventh Doctor stories than general fandom so I'm trying to keep an open mind.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Ace arrive on the Earth colony of Terra Alpha, which the Doctor had been meaning to look into for a while due to troubling rumors. He and Ace walk around a bit and run into a census taker named Trevor Sigma. When they come back to the TARDIS they find a squad from the Happiness Patrol painting it pink, having just returned from the execution of a killjoy (someone not happy). The Doctor and Ace manage to get themselves arrested and taken to a waiting area.
The colony is run by a woman named Helen A who works with a sadistic henchman called the Kandy Man. Helen A sends out a message of happiness to the citizens before having a man executed by being smothered to death in tube of fondant sent up from the Kandy Man. Her address is watched by another man in the holding area who used to be a joke writer for Helen A. However, he began investigating disappearances in the colony and was sent away. As he relates this to the Doctor and Ace, Helen A sends a charge through the machine he is using and electrocutes him.
The Doctor and Ace disable a booby trap on a patrol cart and leave the waiting area. They soon split up with Ace surrendering to the Happiness Patrol on the pretext of wanting to join them. She is taken back to the Patrol HQ where she befriends a member of the patrol named Susan Q, who is becoming disillusioned with life in the colony and on the patrol.
The Doctor meets a tourist named Earl Sigma who has been trapped on the colony and now working against the regime. To avoid a patrol, they dash into a building only to find that it is the Kandy Man's kitchen where he prepares to use them to experiment on. He places them in chairs for testing his sweets on but the Doctor tricks him into knocking over a bottle of lemonade, which causes his feet to stick to the floor (being made of confectionary). The Doctor and Earl flee into the underground tunnels.
Ace and Susan Q are taken from the Patrol HQ to another waiting area where they are sentenced to execution. This movement is observed by creatures living in the tunnels. The Doctor and Earl run into these creatures, who are the natives of the planet. The Doctor recognizes slogans they picked up from overhearing Ace and they recognize him as a friend.
The natives escort the Doctor through the sewers and let him and Earl out near where Trevor Sigma is conducting business. Earl leaves and the Doctor overrides Trevor and they head off to see Helen A. Helen A greets Trevor warmly but the Doctor takes command and warns Helen A to change how things are done on the colony. She dismisses him and the Doctor walks out.
After meeting the Doctor, one of the natives conducts a raid on the holding area and rescues Ace. Susan Q had already been taken away for execution. Upon learning of the escape, Helen A sends her pet Stigorax, Fifi, into the sewers after them. Ace blows up the tunnel with a can of Nitro-9, before slipping down another shaft.
The Doctor heads back towards the Kandy Kitchen, stopping a pair of snipers who had been firing on a crowd of striking workers on his way. He finds the Kandy Man still suck to the floor where he left him. He offers to free the Kandy Man if he diverts the flow of fondant, preventing another execution. The Kandy Man agrees and changes the flow of the fondant just before Susan Q is to be killed. The change in pipe flow also causes Ace and her native guide to be dropped into the execution area where she is rearrested.
Trevor Sigma informs Helen A that per galactic law, Susan Q and Ace cannot be executed by the same method if it fails once. She then orders the two women to be taken to the forum for public execution.
Knowing that he would attack him again, the Doctor resticks the Kandy Man to the floor and heads off to find Ace. He learns from posters being put up of Ace's impending execution in the forum. The Doctor signals Earl Sigma who joins up with striking factory workers to head towards the forum. As the Happiness Patrol approaches with Ace, the Doctor breaks into wild laughter. Earl and the strikers approach, also laughing and acting overly silly. With all acting in apparently happiness, the patrol is confused on what to do. The Doctor, Ace, Susan Q and Earl all slip away in a vehicle while the squad leader, Pricilla P turns and arrests her lieutenant Daisy K for her confusion.
Helen A sends Fifi, who survived Ace's Nitro-9 attack, back into the pipes to hunt down the Doctor and his companions. The natives hear Fifi in the pipes and warn the Doctor. The Doctor stops under a factor that has developed a leak and has developed large stalactites of hardened sugar. He has Earl play resonance notes on his harmonica and then runs. The stalactites break off and crush Fifi as she chases them.
Earl and Susan separate from the Doctor and Ace and assist the strikers into becoming full rioters. They overwhelm the Happiness Patrol squads and begin destroying the factories. Helen A recalls Daisy K to the palace, ordering Pricilla P to wait in the holding area. However, Pricilla P is overrun by the rioters and bound before she can regroup the patrol.
The Doctor and Ace head back to the Kandy Kitchen where they overheat the oven and drive the Kandy Man away. He flees into the pipes to escape. The natives enter and take control of the pipes, redirecting fondant through the pipes, destroying the Kandy Man. Seeing his work destroyed, Gilbert M flees the planet with Helen A's husband Joseph C in her private shuttle, leaving her stranded on the planet.
As more factories are destroyed, Helen A flees the palace, leaving Daisy K as the only defense. She is overrun and disarmed by Susan Q. She and Earl Sigma shut down all remaining defenses and controls. The Doctor meanwhile meets Helen A in the streets, confronting her on her desire for happiness. She resists until she sees Fifi's dead body lying near by, brought up by the Doctor. Seeing her beloved pet dead breaks her and Helen A collapses around her pet in a fit of sobbing.
The surviving members of the Happiness Patrol are placed in work gangs and ordered to help clean up the city. The people take control with Earl Sigma noting that he plans to stay and help supervise. The Doctor and Ace then depart in the TARDIS, which has been repainted its original blue.
Analysis
I either read or heard somewhere that there was discussion of possibly filming this story in black and white to add to its film-noir feel. I don't think that would have worked as the washed out color fits the mood of the story better, but this is clearly Doctor Who does film-noir. I liked this one much more than I was originally expecting. It does have flaws and fairly significant ones at that, but it does it's job well and most of those flaws can be overlooked to enjoy the story as a whole.
I really enjoyed the Seventh Doctor. In fact, if the majority of the Seventh Doctor stories had had him like this, I think he would have taken the position as my favorite Doctor from the Second Doctor. He was not the all-knowing Doctor, but came in suspicious. Once he got the bead, he developed a plan and executed it with nearly flawless precision. Some of that plan even involved facing down and taking the measure of the enemy directly.
I think my favorite moment in the entire story was a throw away scene where the Doctor stops two male members of the patrol who are sniping factory strikers. He walks up directly behind the snipers and stares the gunner straight down. He forces the man to look him in the face and dares him to shoot him. It is a challenge to the will of the shooter and reminded me of the scene in The Shawshank Redemption where Andy Dufresne literally wills Captain Hadley not to throw him to his death. It was a very well played scene and showed a strength in the Doctor that is sometimes lacking in other stories.
I enjoyed Ace but she was very underused in this story. When she was with the Doctor, she was a tag team partner at best. When she was away from him, she was being held by the Happiness Patrol for most of the time and didn't do much there either. Her interaction with Susan Q was nice but it was rushed in development and still didn't have a major impact on the overall flow of the story. Nice but ultimately forgettable.
I enjoyed nearly all of the secondary characters. Helen A in particular was quite good in that over the top mad way. Drawing on other media, she reminded me of Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I know she was supposed to be a take on Margaret Thatcher but, not being British, I can't speak to that. I also enjoyed the dry and slightly droll performances of her husband and the Kandy Man's creator. The two men were so dry in their delivery that it stood out as quite funny to me.
I also surprisingly enjoyed the fact that Helen A was not simply gunned down as you might expect in a revolution story, such as The Sunmakers. Instead, being forced to confront the shattering of what she viewed as perfection seemed like a more appropriate punishment. In the end she is not just killed off, but instead forced to deal with the reality of pain and suffering and how they complete us as people. It makes her even more pathetic to see her broken and weeping over the carcass of Fifi than it would be to see her own carcass lying in the street.
Going back to the film noir aspect, I enjoyed how this story was shot. I think it would have looked even better on film, but they did a decent job with what they had. There was a grit in the scenes and the lighting was very muted which gave everyone a washed out look, adding to the disassociation between the requirement of happiness and the reality of the situation. There was also a very good use of shadow to hide various flaws that existed in the scenery and in Fifi herself. I also happened to see this off an old VHS recording and the graininess that exists in that medium actually helped the story in my opinion. If I were to rewatch it in a DVD or Blue Ray, I think the clarity of the picture might actually detract from the story due to too much contrast being introduced.
With all of that good stuff there were some flaws, none of which were enough to ruin the story, but they could have made it better. Going off the previous point of the sets, lighting and direction, all of that couldn't fully hide the limitations of the budget. There is a lot of cast and a lot of set and it is obvious that they had to cut corners here and there. The vehicles are essentially go-karts and the flow of fondant never looked impressive enough to actually kill someone. There were a couple of other points where it was just difficult to contain the idea that this was confined on a soundstage. I think if this story had been shot on location in an abandoned warehouse of factory and dressed up from there, I think it would have covered up some of the cheapness that seeped through.
The second flaw that stood out to me was the pacing. A true film-noir needs time to breathe and this story didn't breathe quite enough. So much story was being told that it often a jump from scene to scene without any real clarity in how they got there. It's not as bad as it is in a few other Seventh Doctor stories (such as Ghost Light), but there is still a rushed feeling that shouldn't be there in a noir piece. I don't think expanding it to four episodes would have been the right move as it would have introduced too much padding, but if a scene or two were trimmed or reedited, I think it would have flowed better.
Probably the best scenes for editing (or even outright excisement) would be the Kandy Man scenes and that is my third and largest flaw in the story. The Kandy Man sticks out in this story as so out of place. While everyone else is human and there is a real level of grit, you introduce this sadistic creature that serves almost no point. He supplies the fondant for the executions but other than that, he does nothing in the story. What's more, he appears to be living confectionary and that just seems so out of left field in what is otherwise not much of a science fiction story.
I could forgive the wackiness of the Kandy Man if he had an actual point. But all of his scenes are just the guardian of the Kandy Kitchen, supplying the fuel of execution. This could have easily just been done by Gilbert M himself and those scenes sharply reduced in length, allowing the rest of the story some breathing room. Imagine for example that in Episode Two, instead of the Doctor freeing the Kandy Man to make him divert the fondant in Susan Q's execution, the Doctor instead sneaks behind Gilbert M and forces him to divert the flow by threatening to expose his own lack of happiness. Not only would it have trimmed the scene and given it a more realistic tone, but it would have given extra motivation for Gilbert's flight at the end of the story. I don't hate the Kandy Man the way some fans seem to, but it's just weirdness for weirdness sake and a character that adds nothing to the story at the expense of other more significant elements.
Overall, I enjoyed this story. It lost me in a couple of places, but reeled me back in with a good noir take. It has it's problems, but much like Paradise Towers and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, the quality of the performances and the atmosphere salvage the overall story, allowing the good to outweigh the bad. I would like to watch this one again, preferably with a higher quality copy to see if that clarity hurts or helps the overall story.
Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Ninth Doctor Summary
I was curious to see whether I would finish the Ninth Doctor era first or if the Sixth Doctor would win out. In the end, it makes more sense that it would be the Ninth Doctor given that he does have less time on screen than any other Doctor save the Eighth and his screen duration is too limited to give a full summary to.
Overall, I'd say that I liked the Ninth Doctor. He can be a bit too jokey and over the top at times, but his quiet moments are quite good. I would have very much liked to see what he could have done with a deeper and darker sense creeping in as came in with the Tenth Doctor. He had a good chemistry with Rose and I thought they played off each other fairly well. He was caustic in a way that would have made the Sixth Doctor proud but he never got into the full bickering with Rose. She held her own much better than Peri ever did.
It is easy to see how and why he was overshadowed, given the giants that the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors became. Having left on bad terms also didn't help as attempts to attract attention to the Ninth Doctor era were left without the Ninth Doctor himself. I would rate him more in the middle of my list of Doctors, enjoyable and entertaining, but without a central driving reason to push him above any of the others.
Highest Rated Story: The Unquiet Dead - 4.5
Lowest Rated Story: World War Three - 1.5
Average overall rating: 3.25
Rose
The End of the World
The Unquiet Dead
Aliens of London/World War Three
Dalek
The Long Game
Father's Day
The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
Boom Town
Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways
Overall, I'd say that I liked the Ninth Doctor. He can be a bit too jokey and over the top at times, but his quiet moments are quite good. I would have very much liked to see what he could have done with a deeper and darker sense creeping in as came in with the Tenth Doctor. He had a good chemistry with Rose and I thought they played off each other fairly well. He was caustic in a way that would have made the Sixth Doctor proud but he never got into the full bickering with Rose. She held her own much better than Peri ever did.
It is easy to see how and why he was overshadowed, given the giants that the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors became. Having left on bad terms also didn't help as attempts to attract attention to the Ninth Doctor era were left without the Ninth Doctor himself. I would rate him more in the middle of my list of Doctors, enjoyable and entertaining, but without a central driving reason to push him above any of the others.
Highest Rated Story: The Unquiet Dead - 4.5
Lowest Rated Story: World War Three - 1.5
Average overall rating: 3.25
Rose
The End of the World
The Unquiet Dead
Aliens of London/World War Three
Dalek
The Long Game
Father's Day
The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
Boom Town
Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways
Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways
If I am God, what does that make you Doctor?
The final adventure of the Ninth Doctor, the culmination of the "Bad Wolf" subplot and the full return of the Daleks. RTD has a reputation for putting together excellent set ups in the penultimate episode and then letting things go out with a whimper in the finale. Does that hold true in his first finale and the end of the Ninth Doctor?
Plot Summary
One hundred years after the events of The Long Game, the Doctor, Rose and Jack wake to find themselves on futuristic versions of 21st century game shows being broadcast from the Game Station (formally Satellite 5). The Doctor is in Big Brother, Rose The Weakest Link and Jack What Not to Wear. The Doctor and Rose are confused and rather nonchalant in each of their shows until they witness other contestants incinerated after failing a level.
The Doctor breaks a camera in the house, causing his immediate eviction. However, his life is spared as the program is overwritten. He leaves the house to the station proper with another contestant, Lynda. Meanwhile, Jack pulls out a gun when the two droids attempt to kill him and he destroys them. Fashioning himself a larger gun, he meets up with the Doctor on the lower floors. The Doctor discovers that when he destroyed the Jagrafess, he left the Earth without any information, causing the society to break down, leading to the dystopia that now exists.
Jack manages to locate Rose's signal and they burst into the game just as she has lost the final round of her game. She runs to the Doctor but the Anne Droid incinerates her. The Doctor, Jack and Lynda are arrested by station security and placed in a holding cell, but the trio overpowers the guards and heads up to the top floor. There they discover the station run by a few workers and a controller.
The station briefly shuts down as a solar flare passes by and the controller comes to herself. She reveals that she brought the Doctor there to thwart the powers controlling her. She is unable to reveal that as the flare passes and the station comes back on-line. Jack discovers the TARDIS in a storage room nearby and using it, he discovers that Rose was not killed. All failed contestants are merely transmatted to a location just outside the solar system.
They discover that the location houses a cloaked Dalek fleet. Aware of their discovery, the Daleks transmat the controller and kill her. They then threaten to kill Rose unless the Doctor surrenders. He refuses and instead vows to rescue Rose and destroy the Daleks.
The Doctor and Jack take the TARDIS across the solar system and materialize it around Rose and her Dalek guard. Jack destroys the Dalek with his gun while the Doctor heads out of the TARDIS. Protected by a force field, the Daleks are unable to gun him down. The Emperor Dalek reveals himself to the Doctor, having survived the Time War. He has rebuilt the Daleks using cellular material from slaughtered humans. The Doctor also discovers that the Emperor Dalek has developed a god complex, infusing all other Daleks with both a religious devotion to him and a self-hatred at their impure state.
The Doctor takes the TARDIS back to the station where he begins to build a Delta-wave weapon that will fry the Daleks. Jack and the others head down to the first floor to recruit any former contestants to fight and buy the Doctor more time. Only a few do with Jack ordering the rest to stay quiet on the first floor.
Checking his readings, the Doctor discovers that he doesn't have enough time to create a weapon that will only kill Daleks. Instead it will kill both Daleks and humans. He tricks Rose into going into the TARDIS and then sending her back to her family where she is found by Mickey and her mother.
The Daleks arrive at the station and land five floors below the control room. One group of Daleks proceed upwards where they kill the defenders and blast through the defenses Jack had set up. Another group heads down to the first floor and kills all those who refused to fight and stayed below. The Daleks then reconnect and head to the last of the defenses.
Despite attempts to console and convince her, Rose refuses to accept being sent away. She sees more Bad Wolf signs and recognizes them as a symbol for her to help the Doctor. She decides to pry open the TARDIS console and look into the heart of the TARDIS as that would allow her to communicate with it telepathically. Mickey tries but his car doesn't have enough power.
Jackie tries to dissuade her but Rose refuses also forcing Jackie to realize that it was Rose who bent over Pete when he died. Jackie, realizing that it is the right thing to do, borrows a tow truck from a friend. She and Mickey help Rose pry open the TARDIS panel. Rose looks into the heart of the TARDIS and absorbs time energy directly from the vortex. The TARDIS then disappears as Jackie and Mickey look on.
The Daleks overrun the last of the defenses, killing both Lynda and Jack in route to the control room. As the Daleks enter, the Doctor finishes the delta wave weapon. The Dalek Emperor goads the Doctor to use it but faced with repeating the genocide he committed against his own people to stop the Daleks, the Doctor refuses to discharge the weapon.
As the Daleks move in for the kill, the TARDIS reappears and Rose emerges, full of the time vortex. She admits that she planted the Bad Wolf sign throughout time as a signal to herself. She then atomizes all of the Daleks and even brings Jack back to life. The time energy is killing her though and the Doctor takes her and sucks it out of her through a kiss, releasing most of the energy back into the TARDIS. He then carries an unconscious Rose into the TARDIS and takes off as Jack enters the room to see them go.
Rose wakes with almost no memory of what happened. The Doctor only reminds her of it a little, admitting that he had to absorb most of the time energy, which is now killing him. He comforts her that things will continue but that he must change. He then regenerates into the Tenth Doctor and offers to take her to the planet Barcelona.
Analysis
Taken as a whole, this story is pretty good. However, it does suffer from the typical RTD problem of having a really good set up and then petering out at the end. Some fans blame the literal "god out of the machine" ending but that didn't bother me that much. There were several issues that affected the end but I think the primary problem was that Bad Wolf was clearly focused on the Doctor while The Parting of the Ways focused on the companions, specifically Rose.
Throughout both stories, the Doctor was excellent. He was his caviler self at the beginning and then got serious as the scale of the problem reared its head. He was serious and focused, to a point that you could see how dangerous he could be. But at the end, the damaged Doctor who couldn't cope with inflicting large scale violence emerged. Even in Bad Wolf that is apparent as he casually hands off his gun to the people he's supposed to be threatening. It is funny and also a significantly Doctor-ish moment.
In fact, there is almost nothing not to like in Bad Wolf. The characters are engaging, there is humor but also a strong sense of danger. We also get a wonderful fake out with Rose apparently being killed. This is doubly effective because Lynda has asked to come with the Doctor and he is very open to it. It has the exact feel of an old companion being removed and being replaced by a new companion. You buy it, even to the point where Rose is revealed to still be alive as it is easy to imagine the Doctor's rescue of her failing and Lynda still moving on to be the new companion.
The reveal of the Daleks is also excellent. The preview at end of Boomtown spoiled the review for most people. But if you had been ignorant of that, the reveal was very well done. As Rose wakes up and classic fans instantly key on to the Dalek control room sound as it is the only noise. Even as the Daleks enter their reveal is slow. Rose pins herself against a wall as we view through a Dalek eyestalk, just like Barbara did in The Daleks. As others enter, they are shown in reflection and other oblique ways. It is not until they focus on talking to the Doctor that the full scope of the Daleks is made clear. The build is slow and very well done, giving a proper sense of fear that the Daleks deserve.
That fear pervades through the entire invasion. In the whole battle, the Daleks wipe the defenses with relative ease. Only four Daleks are shown to be destroyed or damaged in the entire attack and with multiple Daleks filling the room each time, the overrun is quick and efficient.
Of all the deaths, I found Lynda's to be the best and the most sad. She is trapped in a room waiting for the Daleks to burn their way in when three Daleks rise in front of the window. There is no sound but you see the lights of the Dalek flash and it's like reading lips to know that he is yelling "Exterminate". The window shatters and you don't hear Lynda scream as she is exposed to space. For having such little time, you got to know the character and enjoyed her company. That you started getting into the mindset of thinking of her as a companion also makes her death seem that much more tragic. Jack at least fought up to the end and even had a moment of defiance before being gunned down. It was a death worthy of the character and felt less tragic even though you know Jack a lot more.
So why does it fall apart at the end? Rose. It's no secret that I don't care for Rose that much but I always felt that she meshed fairly well with the Ninth Doctor. Her rough edges matched well with his more caustic personality. But in both episodes, Rose shows almost no redeeming characteristics. She is over the top in her amusement on The Weakest Link until the reality of the situation dawns on her. She also is the only one who does nothing to help herself. Both Jack and the Doctor are able to get themselves out of their situations so she feels bit a useless in Bad Wolf.
It is The Parting of the Ways that exacerbates things though. The focus of the story leaves the Doctor once he sends Rose away, in what is an excellent bit of acting by the Doctor. Once she is back though, while I appreciate her passion to get back to the Doctor, her methods are annoying to me. She is openly insulting to Mickey, noting that her exposure to the Doctor has left her unable to live a normal life the way they do. It is the most condescending attitude for going back to rescue a person one could imagine. It becomes all about her, which is precisely why I don't like Rose.
Even her scene with Jackie should have been more touching. But instead it becomes this angry event, with Rose forcing Jackie to accept the reality as she and the Doctor changed it. I still fail to see how the acceptance that Rose was at her father's side when he died equates with helping to get back to the Doctor. Yes, helping is the right thing to do and Pete would have advocated for that, but almost nothing Rose has done has emphasized that point. It is still all about what she wants.
As far as the climax with her becoming god-like to destroy the Daleks and then the kiss, I don't have a problem with the idea, but the execution fell short. In this, I have to place most of the blame on Billie Piper. Her acting was not up to the challenge of what that scene required. When you see her do a flash of Bad Wolf as the Moment in The Day of the Doctor, you can see how much she has grown as an actress and the fear and power of that comes across much better. In this scene though, it just feels silly.
It doesn't help that Christopher Eccleston also falls short here. His reactions seem overplayed as well. Only the Dalek Emperor seems to be where he needs to be in terms of the reaction. I also thought the kiss was over the top but they were playing the romance angle (something I never saw) between the Ninth Doctor and Rose so that is expected, if also unwelcome.
I thought the regeneration scene was done fairly well, although I wish the Doctor hadn't been quite so jokey before it. I don't mean that I think he should have been tragic and mopey the way the Tenth Doctor was, but his almost maniacal grin right near the end seemed more creepy than anything else. It's almost a relief to get to the Tenth Doctor at the end.
In the end, it was a high that fell to an average. Not as bad as the drop off from other finales but no where near what could have been achieved. I think if Rose had shown even some humility and selflessness in her quest to rejoin the Doctor and if the director had been able to coax the actors to a bit more gravity in the Deus ex Machina scene, the second episode would have had a lot less fall off. I think this story is still quite enjoyable and a must when revisiting the Ninth Doctor, but it's less than what it could have been due to the way things wrapped up.
Overall personal score: Bad Wolf - 4.5 out of 5; The Parting of the Ways - 2.5 out of 5
The final adventure of the Ninth Doctor, the culmination of the "Bad Wolf" subplot and the full return of the Daleks. RTD has a reputation for putting together excellent set ups in the penultimate episode and then letting things go out with a whimper in the finale. Does that hold true in his first finale and the end of the Ninth Doctor?
Plot Summary
One hundred years after the events of The Long Game, the Doctor, Rose and Jack wake to find themselves on futuristic versions of 21st century game shows being broadcast from the Game Station (formally Satellite 5). The Doctor is in Big Brother, Rose The Weakest Link and Jack What Not to Wear. The Doctor and Rose are confused and rather nonchalant in each of their shows until they witness other contestants incinerated after failing a level.
The Doctor breaks a camera in the house, causing his immediate eviction. However, his life is spared as the program is overwritten. He leaves the house to the station proper with another contestant, Lynda. Meanwhile, Jack pulls out a gun when the two droids attempt to kill him and he destroys them. Fashioning himself a larger gun, he meets up with the Doctor on the lower floors. The Doctor discovers that when he destroyed the Jagrafess, he left the Earth without any information, causing the society to break down, leading to the dystopia that now exists.
Jack manages to locate Rose's signal and they burst into the game just as she has lost the final round of her game. She runs to the Doctor but the Anne Droid incinerates her. The Doctor, Jack and Lynda are arrested by station security and placed in a holding cell, but the trio overpowers the guards and heads up to the top floor. There they discover the station run by a few workers and a controller.
The station briefly shuts down as a solar flare passes by and the controller comes to herself. She reveals that she brought the Doctor there to thwart the powers controlling her. She is unable to reveal that as the flare passes and the station comes back on-line. Jack discovers the TARDIS in a storage room nearby and using it, he discovers that Rose was not killed. All failed contestants are merely transmatted to a location just outside the solar system.
They discover that the location houses a cloaked Dalek fleet. Aware of their discovery, the Daleks transmat the controller and kill her. They then threaten to kill Rose unless the Doctor surrenders. He refuses and instead vows to rescue Rose and destroy the Daleks.
The Doctor and Jack take the TARDIS across the solar system and materialize it around Rose and her Dalek guard. Jack destroys the Dalek with his gun while the Doctor heads out of the TARDIS. Protected by a force field, the Daleks are unable to gun him down. The Emperor Dalek reveals himself to the Doctor, having survived the Time War. He has rebuilt the Daleks using cellular material from slaughtered humans. The Doctor also discovers that the Emperor Dalek has developed a god complex, infusing all other Daleks with both a religious devotion to him and a self-hatred at their impure state.
The Doctor takes the TARDIS back to the station where he begins to build a Delta-wave weapon that will fry the Daleks. Jack and the others head down to the first floor to recruit any former contestants to fight and buy the Doctor more time. Only a few do with Jack ordering the rest to stay quiet on the first floor.
Checking his readings, the Doctor discovers that he doesn't have enough time to create a weapon that will only kill Daleks. Instead it will kill both Daleks and humans. He tricks Rose into going into the TARDIS and then sending her back to her family where she is found by Mickey and her mother.
The Daleks arrive at the station and land five floors below the control room. One group of Daleks proceed upwards where they kill the defenders and blast through the defenses Jack had set up. Another group heads down to the first floor and kills all those who refused to fight and stayed below. The Daleks then reconnect and head to the last of the defenses.
Despite attempts to console and convince her, Rose refuses to accept being sent away. She sees more Bad Wolf signs and recognizes them as a symbol for her to help the Doctor. She decides to pry open the TARDIS console and look into the heart of the TARDIS as that would allow her to communicate with it telepathically. Mickey tries but his car doesn't have enough power.
Jackie tries to dissuade her but Rose refuses also forcing Jackie to realize that it was Rose who bent over Pete when he died. Jackie, realizing that it is the right thing to do, borrows a tow truck from a friend. She and Mickey help Rose pry open the TARDIS panel. Rose looks into the heart of the TARDIS and absorbs time energy directly from the vortex. The TARDIS then disappears as Jackie and Mickey look on.
The Daleks overrun the last of the defenses, killing both Lynda and Jack in route to the control room. As the Daleks enter, the Doctor finishes the delta wave weapon. The Dalek Emperor goads the Doctor to use it but faced with repeating the genocide he committed against his own people to stop the Daleks, the Doctor refuses to discharge the weapon.
As the Daleks move in for the kill, the TARDIS reappears and Rose emerges, full of the time vortex. She admits that she planted the Bad Wolf sign throughout time as a signal to herself. She then atomizes all of the Daleks and even brings Jack back to life. The time energy is killing her though and the Doctor takes her and sucks it out of her through a kiss, releasing most of the energy back into the TARDIS. He then carries an unconscious Rose into the TARDIS and takes off as Jack enters the room to see them go.
Rose wakes with almost no memory of what happened. The Doctor only reminds her of it a little, admitting that he had to absorb most of the time energy, which is now killing him. He comforts her that things will continue but that he must change. He then regenerates into the Tenth Doctor and offers to take her to the planet Barcelona.
Analysis
Taken as a whole, this story is pretty good. However, it does suffer from the typical RTD problem of having a really good set up and then petering out at the end. Some fans blame the literal "god out of the machine" ending but that didn't bother me that much. There were several issues that affected the end but I think the primary problem was that Bad Wolf was clearly focused on the Doctor while The Parting of the Ways focused on the companions, specifically Rose.
Throughout both stories, the Doctor was excellent. He was his caviler self at the beginning and then got serious as the scale of the problem reared its head. He was serious and focused, to a point that you could see how dangerous he could be. But at the end, the damaged Doctor who couldn't cope with inflicting large scale violence emerged. Even in Bad Wolf that is apparent as he casually hands off his gun to the people he's supposed to be threatening. It is funny and also a significantly Doctor-ish moment.
In fact, there is almost nothing not to like in Bad Wolf. The characters are engaging, there is humor but also a strong sense of danger. We also get a wonderful fake out with Rose apparently being killed. This is doubly effective because Lynda has asked to come with the Doctor and he is very open to it. It has the exact feel of an old companion being removed and being replaced by a new companion. You buy it, even to the point where Rose is revealed to still be alive as it is easy to imagine the Doctor's rescue of her failing and Lynda still moving on to be the new companion.
The reveal of the Daleks is also excellent. The preview at end of Boomtown spoiled the review for most people. But if you had been ignorant of that, the reveal was very well done. As Rose wakes up and classic fans instantly key on to the Dalek control room sound as it is the only noise. Even as the Daleks enter their reveal is slow. Rose pins herself against a wall as we view through a Dalek eyestalk, just like Barbara did in The Daleks. As others enter, they are shown in reflection and other oblique ways. It is not until they focus on talking to the Doctor that the full scope of the Daleks is made clear. The build is slow and very well done, giving a proper sense of fear that the Daleks deserve.
That fear pervades through the entire invasion. In the whole battle, the Daleks wipe the defenses with relative ease. Only four Daleks are shown to be destroyed or damaged in the entire attack and with multiple Daleks filling the room each time, the overrun is quick and efficient.
Of all the deaths, I found Lynda's to be the best and the most sad. She is trapped in a room waiting for the Daleks to burn their way in when three Daleks rise in front of the window. There is no sound but you see the lights of the Dalek flash and it's like reading lips to know that he is yelling "Exterminate". The window shatters and you don't hear Lynda scream as she is exposed to space. For having such little time, you got to know the character and enjoyed her company. That you started getting into the mindset of thinking of her as a companion also makes her death seem that much more tragic. Jack at least fought up to the end and even had a moment of defiance before being gunned down. It was a death worthy of the character and felt less tragic even though you know Jack a lot more.
So why does it fall apart at the end? Rose. It's no secret that I don't care for Rose that much but I always felt that she meshed fairly well with the Ninth Doctor. Her rough edges matched well with his more caustic personality. But in both episodes, Rose shows almost no redeeming characteristics. She is over the top in her amusement on The Weakest Link until the reality of the situation dawns on her. She also is the only one who does nothing to help herself. Both Jack and the Doctor are able to get themselves out of their situations so she feels bit a useless in Bad Wolf.
It is The Parting of the Ways that exacerbates things though. The focus of the story leaves the Doctor once he sends Rose away, in what is an excellent bit of acting by the Doctor. Once she is back though, while I appreciate her passion to get back to the Doctor, her methods are annoying to me. She is openly insulting to Mickey, noting that her exposure to the Doctor has left her unable to live a normal life the way they do. It is the most condescending attitude for going back to rescue a person one could imagine. It becomes all about her, which is precisely why I don't like Rose.
Even her scene with Jackie should have been more touching. But instead it becomes this angry event, with Rose forcing Jackie to accept the reality as she and the Doctor changed it. I still fail to see how the acceptance that Rose was at her father's side when he died equates with helping to get back to the Doctor. Yes, helping is the right thing to do and Pete would have advocated for that, but almost nothing Rose has done has emphasized that point. It is still all about what she wants.
As far as the climax with her becoming god-like to destroy the Daleks and then the kiss, I don't have a problem with the idea, but the execution fell short. In this, I have to place most of the blame on Billie Piper. Her acting was not up to the challenge of what that scene required. When you see her do a flash of Bad Wolf as the Moment in The Day of the Doctor, you can see how much she has grown as an actress and the fear and power of that comes across much better. In this scene though, it just feels silly.
It doesn't help that Christopher Eccleston also falls short here. His reactions seem overplayed as well. Only the Dalek Emperor seems to be where he needs to be in terms of the reaction. I also thought the kiss was over the top but they were playing the romance angle (something I never saw) between the Ninth Doctor and Rose so that is expected, if also unwelcome.
I thought the regeneration scene was done fairly well, although I wish the Doctor hadn't been quite so jokey before it. I don't mean that I think he should have been tragic and mopey the way the Tenth Doctor was, but his almost maniacal grin right near the end seemed more creepy than anything else. It's almost a relief to get to the Tenth Doctor at the end.
In the end, it was a high that fell to an average. Not as bad as the drop off from other finales but no where near what could have been achieved. I think if Rose had shown even some humility and selflessness in her quest to rejoin the Doctor and if the director had been able to coax the actors to a bit more gravity in the Deus ex Machina scene, the second episode would have had a lot less fall off. I think this story is still quite enjoyable and a must when revisiting the Ninth Doctor, but it's less than what it could have been due to the way things wrapped up.
Overall personal score: Bad Wolf - 4.5 out of 5; The Parting of the Ways - 2.5 out of 5
Friday, November 11, 2016
Timelash
Do you have a fat, female Morlox with slinky legs?
I had originally planned for my next viewing to be Enlightenment so I could finish off the Black Guardian trilogy. But the version available to me was missing Episode Four so I had to put that one on the back burner until I can get a full and proper version. Instead, I'll tackle another story near the bottom of everyone's list. I don't recall why this one is supposed to be so bad. I only recall that it involves H. G. Wells, which seems like it would be a decent premise. But good premises often fail due to poor execution, so on we go.
Plot Summary
The Doctor is planning a trip to the Andromeda galaxy when Peri walks in and asks if they could take a trip to someplace fun. The Doctor attempts to suggest the Eye of Orion but Peri shoots him down as he has brought that location up a few times too often. He decides to continue on with his planned visit to Andromeda.
On the planet Karfel, a trio of rebels are attempting to escape as they have been exposed. Their planet is ruled by a dictator referred to as the Borad. All three are captured with the leader being executed by the Borad himself and the other two exiled by being pushed through a time vortex called the timelash.
In the TARDIS, the Doctor observes a time vortex opening in front and pulling the TARDIS in. He tries to avoid it but cannot escape it. He and Peri secure themselves to the console and hold on as the TARDIS is rocked about.
One member of the Karfel high council, Mykros, is frustrated by the Borad's rule and follows his soon to be father-in-law, Renis, into a power room. Renis is the Maylin, the head of the high council. He reveals to Mykros how he channels power for the Borad's experiments and a perceived weakness of the Borad. However, they are overheard by a hidden microphone and arrested.
Renis is brought before the Borad and executed. A new man, Tekker, is appointed Maylin and sentences Mykros to exile through the Timelash. Renis' daughter Vena pleads for mercy but when it is denied, she steals the amulet that controls the power supply but accidently falls into the timelash. She passes through the TARDIS as an apparition and materializes in the living room of a young man named Herbert. He believes her to be a spirit but she passes out and he lays her on a couch to recuperate.
The TARDIS materializes in the central hall and the Doctor and Peri emerge. They are welcomed by Maylin Tekker who knows of the Doctor as he had visited fifty years ago with Jo Grant as the Third Doctor. They are shown around and Peri is offered a private tour just after being handed a mysterious note. As Peri goes on her tour, the guards attempt to kill her but she is able to open a door where she finds herself in a system of caves.
Tekker is summoned away by the ambassador of the Bandrils, the people of the neighboring planet. Karfel has violated a peace treaty and has stopped grain shipments to the planet. With famine growing, the Bandrils threaten war unless the shipments start again. Tekker refuses, believing that the Borad will protect them.
Unaware of Peri's escape, Tekker threatens to kill Peri unless the Doctor retrieves the amulet stolen by Vena. The Doctor reluctantly agress and plots the TARDIS along the time corridor created by the timelash. He materializes outside Herbert's cottage and finds Vena inside. She agrees to go along with the Doctor's plan of giving back the amulet but insists on going to, although the Doctor tries to get her to stay with Herbert. Herbert wants to go along as well but the Doctor refuses. However, he manages to sneak aboard while the Doctor is still talking with Vena.
In the caves, Peri is attacked by a snake-like creature called a Morlox. It is beaten off by a cadre of rebels who then take Peri. She convinces them she is with the Doctor and the debate what to do next. However, Tekker's men discovered the note given to Peri, which she accidentally dropped, and come and arrest all of them.
The Doctor arrives back on Karfel and gives up the amulet. However, Tekker reneges on the agreement. Peri is taken away and Tekker instructs an android to push the Doctor into the timelash. The Doctor manages to pull out a mirror he took from Herbert's house which causes the android to malfunction. The rebels use the distraction to turn on and overpower the guards. Tekker and his lackey retreat and the rebels seal the door.
The Doctor finds a coil of strong rope and has the rebels lower him into the timelash. Inside, the cavern is a set of crystals that, when harmonized, produce the time vortex. The Doctor takes several crystals but slips and nearly falls in. Herbert and Mykros enter the timelash along the rope to help pull him out. With the crystals, the Doctor builds a device that pushes him forward ten seconds in time, but leaves an image of what happened in real time. He also develops a weapon to redirect energy from the weapons to transport the source away. The rebels recall seeing a burning android appear shortly before they were captured in the caves and realize that it was the Doctor's weapon.
The guards blow their way through. The rebels manage to take most down with the weapons stolen initially, but the android fights them back, killing one rebel. The Doctor uses his weapon, causing the android to short circuit and then disappear an hour into the past. With the guards beaten back, the Doctor orders the rebels to hide themselves while he goes to see the Borad. Herbert goes with him although the Doctor tries to dissuade him.
Meanwhile Peri has been taken by the guards to a holding cell, where she is equipped with a mechanical device. She is then taken into the caves and secured to a pole to await the Morlox.
The Doctor enters the Borad's quarters while Herbert climbs a ladder and finds a ledge overlooking the area. The Doctor is held at gunpoint by Tekker and the Borad reveals his true form. He is a scientist who was repudiated by the Doctor on his last visit. He was caught in an experiment gone wrong and fused his tissue with that of the Morlox he was experimenting on. He now plans to have the Bandrils destroy the population of Karfel, after which he will destroy the Bandrils. Tekker is appalled at this and tries to stand up to the Borad but the Borad kills him.
The Borad reveals to the Doctor that he plans to repopulate the devastated planet with other humanoid/Morlox hybrids. He has placed Peri in the caves with a lure for the Morlox and the same batch of chemicals that created him. When attacked, the Morlox will rupture the chemicals and create a female version for him to breed with. The Doctor activates his time device and eludes the Borad's attempts to kill him. He reemerges with the device pointed at the Borad who fires at him again. It absorbs the energy and redirects it at the Borad, killing him. The Doctor sends Herbert out to collect Peri while he finds the release mechanism. He releases Peri and Herbert pulls her back into the citadel away from the Morlox.
The group returns to the main chamber where they find that the Bandrils have launched a missile that will devastate the planet. The Doctor is able to contact the Bandrils but they refuse to call off the attack without conformation of the Borad's death. Lacking time, the Doctor heads out to the TARDIS to intercept the missile. Peri tries to go with him but the Doctor forces her to wait on planet. He is unaware that Herbert has snuck aboard until after taking off. He moves the TARDIS in the path of the missile and destroys it before it can hit the planet.
The Bandrils, believing the Doctor has sacrificed himself, call off the attack and prepare to land and negotiate with Mykros, who is the new Maylin. The Doctor arrives, unwilling to disclose how the TARDIS survived the missile impact and the group prepares to depart. However, a clone of the Borad appears and grabs Peri. He threatens to kill her unless the Doctor surrenders and destroys the Bandrils. The Doctor refuses and knocks down an old picture of his Third iteration to reveal a mirror. Unable to look upon himself, the Borad shields his eyes and releases Peri. The Doctor then pushes the Borad into the timelash, where he believes he will land in 12th century Scotland.
The Doctor and Peri prepare to depart, Herbert coming along reluctantly. While he is saying his goodbyes, the Doctor reveals that Herbert is actually H. G. Wells and will be drawing off these experiences for his stories.
Analysis
I really tried to keep an open mind about this one but every time I found something that was good, it was immediately followed by something bad and it just dragged me down. This story has a lot of sins but the worst of them is the fact that it is padded and boring. There were some individual performances that were good, but the story as a whole, both in writing and direction were quite subpar.
There were three characters I rather enjoyed: the Borad, Tekker and Herbert. Herbert had youthful naiveté that was understandable and made him more interesting. Tekker was hammy but it worked both in his toadying villain role and in contrast to the Doctor's own hammy arrogance. The Borad was the best for him. His makeup wasn't bad and he had a restrained performance that actually made him more menacing. His primary flaw was to go into Blofeld mode with the Doctor and explain all his plans before actually killing him. He was more decisive in killing Tekker than he was in killing the Doctor, but it was still enjoyable to watch. Even with the ludicrousness of the clone Borad, there was still a nice rapport between him and the Borad that it made the scene more interesting.
The Doctor was decent in this story. He was still arrogant but I felt he wasn't trying to be overly insulting. It was also nice that he was legitimately thinking his way out of problems rather than letting others do it for him. Peri, on the other hand, was dreadful. She started off wrong in the beginning as the Doctor actually attempts to be civil with her and she acts like a wet blanket about any holiday destination. Once on Karfel, she is separated from him for most of the story and serves only to scream and act the damsel in distress. Then, when the Doctor is racing against time to try and stop the Bandril missile, she refuses to listen to the Doctor and argues until he literally throws her out of the TARDIS. Neither comes across as good but if time is an issue, why are you pressing when you know you are just going to stand there and not be useful? It made Peri so aggravating at that moment.
So that covered the few positives. The negatives are more broad. First the story. Pulling on the works of H. G. Wells seems like it would be a phenomenal idea. However, the works of H. G. Wells are only used on the barest cursory level. It's almost like someone read a paragraph summary of four Wells novels and pulled only one of the ideas mentioned in that summary: the Doctor being invisible during his time jump (The Invisible Man), the Morlox and the TARDIS itself (The Time Machine), animal-human splicing (The Island of Dr. Moreau), and a battle between planets (War of the Worlds).
With all the ideas available and the richness of Wells' text to draw on, the story is boring through nearly all of Episode One. It picks up in Episode Two but once the original Borad dies, the story just drags out, trying to figure out how to fill the last fifteen minutes. It then takes the extremely lazy way out by first not bothering to figure out how the Doctor survived the Bandril missile but also to bring back the Borad for the equivalent of a final jump scare in a horror movie.
There are a lot of logical flaws in the plot as well. I understand why the Borad would hate to look on himself and ban mirrors, but why does a mirror have any effect on an android? Why do most people sent through the timelash end up in 12th century Scotland but Vena manages to land 800 years further in the future? Why would the Borad become the Loch Ness Monster when he still has legs that would allow him to walk out of the lake? Are the tales of his existence in the lake strong enough to last until the Zygons build the mechanical monster several hundred years later? Why don't the Bandrils even acknowledge Myros' attempt to talk with them and call off their attack? They might not believe him, but they should at least be willing to talk with him and maintain a holding pattern to see if the Borad has been overthrown, especially if they are familiar with the Doctor and can wait for his appearance. All of these things pile up and punch huge holes in the story.
The direction of this story is also very flat. Understand the idea that they didn't want the set glossy per the request of the Borad. But to compensate, the people should have been made to pop more. Color could have been used to more effect as could have a different type of shooting style or tape when doing different areas like the timelash itself. Instead it maintains this dull finish throughout. There is also nothing particularly good about the style of direction used. It's a very point one way and shoot rather than using any extra angles or framing to make the shots more interesting.
In the same vein, you have the contrast where the Borad looks very good as does the effects of aging people in his ray but the Morlox themselves look awful. I understand you are limited by budget and time effects, but if a mechanical puppet is the best you can do, light the cave differently so that it takes on a touch more menace. The Morlox looked like an animatronic dinosaur that you would see at any kid's museum and that is something that pulls you right out of the story. When you have that compared to how well other things were realized, it just makes the first thing look worse.
About the only saving grace I can give this story is that due to the quality of acting of a couple of the characters, it is not a story that I would necessarily plop into the bottom five as it typically seems to among fans. But it is not a good story and unless you were working on being a completionist and wanting to watch every story, it could easily be passed over without a second thought.
Overall personal score: 1 out of 5
I had originally planned for my next viewing to be Enlightenment so I could finish off the Black Guardian trilogy. But the version available to me was missing Episode Four so I had to put that one on the back burner until I can get a full and proper version. Instead, I'll tackle another story near the bottom of everyone's list. I don't recall why this one is supposed to be so bad. I only recall that it involves H. G. Wells, which seems like it would be a decent premise. But good premises often fail due to poor execution, so on we go.
Plot Summary
The Doctor is planning a trip to the Andromeda galaxy when Peri walks in and asks if they could take a trip to someplace fun. The Doctor attempts to suggest the Eye of Orion but Peri shoots him down as he has brought that location up a few times too often. He decides to continue on with his planned visit to Andromeda.
On the planet Karfel, a trio of rebels are attempting to escape as they have been exposed. Their planet is ruled by a dictator referred to as the Borad. All three are captured with the leader being executed by the Borad himself and the other two exiled by being pushed through a time vortex called the timelash.
In the TARDIS, the Doctor observes a time vortex opening in front and pulling the TARDIS in. He tries to avoid it but cannot escape it. He and Peri secure themselves to the console and hold on as the TARDIS is rocked about.
One member of the Karfel high council, Mykros, is frustrated by the Borad's rule and follows his soon to be father-in-law, Renis, into a power room. Renis is the Maylin, the head of the high council. He reveals to Mykros how he channels power for the Borad's experiments and a perceived weakness of the Borad. However, they are overheard by a hidden microphone and arrested.
Renis is brought before the Borad and executed. A new man, Tekker, is appointed Maylin and sentences Mykros to exile through the Timelash. Renis' daughter Vena pleads for mercy but when it is denied, she steals the amulet that controls the power supply but accidently falls into the timelash. She passes through the TARDIS as an apparition and materializes in the living room of a young man named Herbert. He believes her to be a spirit but she passes out and he lays her on a couch to recuperate.
The TARDIS materializes in the central hall and the Doctor and Peri emerge. They are welcomed by Maylin Tekker who knows of the Doctor as he had visited fifty years ago with Jo Grant as the Third Doctor. They are shown around and Peri is offered a private tour just after being handed a mysterious note. As Peri goes on her tour, the guards attempt to kill her but she is able to open a door where she finds herself in a system of caves.
Tekker is summoned away by the ambassador of the Bandrils, the people of the neighboring planet. Karfel has violated a peace treaty and has stopped grain shipments to the planet. With famine growing, the Bandrils threaten war unless the shipments start again. Tekker refuses, believing that the Borad will protect them.
Unaware of Peri's escape, Tekker threatens to kill Peri unless the Doctor retrieves the amulet stolen by Vena. The Doctor reluctantly agress and plots the TARDIS along the time corridor created by the timelash. He materializes outside Herbert's cottage and finds Vena inside. She agrees to go along with the Doctor's plan of giving back the amulet but insists on going to, although the Doctor tries to get her to stay with Herbert. Herbert wants to go along as well but the Doctor refuses. However, he manages to sneak aboard while the Doctor is still talking with Vena.
In the caves, Peri is attacked by a snake-like creature called a Morlox. It is beaten off by a cadre of rebels who then take Peri. She convinces them she is with the Doctor and the debate what to do next. However, Tekker's men discovered the note given to Peri, which she accidentally dropped, and come and arrest all of them.
The Doctor arrives back on Karfel and gives up the amulet. However, Tekker reneges on the agreement. Peri is taken away and Tekker instructs an android to push the Doctor into the timelash. The Doctor manages to pull out a mirror he took from Herbert's house which causes the android to malfunction. The rebels use the distraction to turn on and overpower the guards. Tekker and his lackey retreat and the rebels seal the door.
The Doctor finds a coil of strong rope and has the rebels lower him into the timelash. Inside, the cavern is a set of crystals that, when harmonized, produce the time vortex. The Doctor takes several crystals but slips and nearly falls in. Herbert and Mykros enter the timelash along the rope to help pull him out. With the crystals, the Doctor builds a device that pushes him forward ten seconds in time, but leaves an image of what happened in real time. He also develops a weapon to redirect energy from the weapons to transport the source away. The rebels recall seeing a burning android appear shortly before they were captured in the caves and realize that it was the Doctor's weapon.
The guards blow their way through. The rebels manage to take most down with the weapons stolen initially, but the android fights them back, killing one rebel. The Doctor uses his weapon, causing the android to short circuit and then disappear an hour into the past. With the guards beaten back, the Doctor orders the rebels to hide themselves while he goes to see the Borad. Herbert goes with him although the Doctor tries to dissuade him.
Meanwhile Peri has been taken by the guards to a holding cell, where she is equipped with a mechanical device. She is then taken into the caves and secured to a pole to await the Morlox.
The Doctor enters the Borad's quarters while Herbert climbs a ladder and finds a ledge overlooking the area. The Doctor is held at gunpoint by Tekker and the Borad reveals his true form. He is a scientist who was repudiated by the Doctor on his last visit. He was caught in an experiment gone wrong and fused his tissue with that of the Morlox he was experimenting on. He now plans to have the Bandrils destroy the population of Karfel, after which he will destroy the Bandrils. Tekker is appalled at this and tries to stand up to the Borad but the Borad kills him.
The Borad reveals to the Doctor that he plans to repopulate the devastated planet with other humanoid/Morlox hybrids. He has placed Peri in the caves with a lure for the Morlox and the same batch of chemicals that created him. When attacked, the Morlox will rupture the chemicals and create a female version for him to breed with. The Doctor activates his time device and eludes the Borad's attempts to kill him. He reemerges with the device pointed at the Borad who fires at him again. It absorbs the energy and redirects it at the Borad, killing him. The Doctor sends Herbert out to collect Peri while he finds the release mechanism. He releases Peri and Herbert pulls her back into the citadel away from the Morlox.
The group returns to the main chamber where they find that the Bandrils have launched a missile that will devastate the planet. The Doctor is able to contact the Bandrils but they refuse to call off the attack without conformation of the Borad's death. Lacking time, the Doctor heads out to the TARDIS to intercept the missile. Peri tries to go with him but the Doctor forces her to wait on planet. He is unaware that Herbert has snuck aboard until after taking off. He moves the TARDIS in the path of the missile and destroys it before it can hit the planet.
The Bandrils, believing the Doctor has sacrificed himself, call off the attack and prepare to land and negotiate with Mykros, who is the new Maylin. The Doctor arrives, unwilling to disclose how the TARDIS survived the missile impact and the group prepares to depart. However, a clone of the Borad appears and grabs Peri. He threatens to kill her unless the Doctor surrenders and destroys the Bandrils. The Doctor refuses and knocks down an old picture of his Third iteration to reveal a mirror. Unable to look upon himself, the Borad shields his eyes and releases Peri. The Doctor then pushes the Borad into the timelash, where he believes he will land in 12th century Scotland.
The Doctor and Peri prepare to depart, Herbert coming along reluctantly. While he is saying his goodbyes, the Doctor reveals that Herbert is actually H. G. Wells and will be drawing off these experiences for his stories.
Analysis
I really tried to keep an open mind about this one but every time I found something that was good, it was immediately followed by something bad and it just dragged me down. This story has a lot of sins but the worst of them is the fact that it is padded and boring. There were some individual performances that were good, but the story as a whole, both in writing and direction were quite subpar.
There were three characters I rather enjoyed: the Borad, Tekker and Herbert. Herbert had youthful naiveté that was understandable and made him more interesting. Tekker was hammy but it worked both in his toadying villain role and in contrast to the Doctor's own hammy arrogance. The Borad was the best for him. His makeup wasn't bad and he had a restrained performance that actually made him more menacing. His primary flaw was to go into Blofeld mode with the Doctor and explain all his plans before actually killing him. He was more decisive in killing Tekker than he was in killing the Doctor, but it was still enjoyable to watch. Even with the ludicrousness of the clone Borad, there was still a nice rapport between him and the Borad that it made the scene more interesting.
The Doctor was decent in this story. He was still arrogant but I felt he wasn't trying to be overly insulting. It was also nice that he was legitimately thinking his way out of problems rather than letting others do it for him. Peri, on the other hand, was dreadful. She started off wrong in the beginning as the Doctor actually attempts to be civil with her and she acts like a wet blanket about any holiday destination. Once on Karfel, she is separated from him for most of the story and serves only to scream and act the damsel in distress. Then, when the Doctor is racing against time to try and stop the Bandril missile, she refuses to listen to the Doctor and argues until he literally throws her out of the TARDIS. Neither comes across as good but if time is an issue, why are you pressing when you know you are just going to stand there and not be useful? It made Peri so aggravating at that moment.
So that covered the few positives. The negatives are more broad. First the story. Pulling on the works of H. G. Wells seems like it would be a phenomenal idea. However, the works of H. G. Wells are only used on the barest cursory level. It's almost like someone read a paragraph summary of four Wells novels and pulled only one of the ideas mentioned in that summary: the Doctor being invisible during his time jump (The Invisible Man), the Morlox and the TARDIS itself (The Time Machine), animal-human splicing (The Island of Dr. Moreau), and a battle between planets (War of the Worlds).
With all the ideas available and the richness of Wells' text to draw on, the story is boring through nearly all of Episode One. It picks up in Episode Two but once the original Borad dies, the story just drags out, trying to figure out how to fill the last fifteen minutes. It then takes the extremely lazy way out by first not bothering to figure out how the Doctor survived the Bandril missile but also to bring back the Borad for the equivalent of a final jump scare in a horror movie.
There are a lot of logical flaws in the plot as well. I understand why the Borad would hate to look on himself and ban mirrors, but why does a mirror have any effect on an android? Why do most people sent through the timelash end up in 12th century Scotland but Vena manages to land 800 years further in the future? Why would the Borad become the Loch Ness Monster when he still has legs that would allow him to walk out of the lake? Are the tales of his existence in the lake strong enough to last until the Zygons build the mechanical monster several hundred years later? Why don't the Bandrils even acknowledge Myros' attempt to talk with them and call off their attack? They might not believe him, but they should at least be willing to talk with him and maintain a holding pattern to see if the Borad has been overthrown, especially if they are familiar with the Doctor and can wait for his appearance. All of these things pile up and punch huge holes in the story.
The direction of this story is also very flat. Understand the idea that they didn't want the set glossy per the request of the Borad. But to compensate, the people should have been made to pop more. Color could have been used to more effect as could have a different type of shooting style or tape when doing different areas like the timelash itself. Instead it maintains this dull finish throughout. There is also nothing particularly good about the style of direction used. It's a very point one way and shoot rather than using any extra angles or framing to make the shots more interesting.
In the same vein, you have the contrast where the Borad looks very good as does the effects of aging people in his ray but the Morlox themselves look awful. I understand you are limited by budget and time effects, but if a mechanical puppet is the best you can do, light the cave differently so that it takes on a touch more menace. The Morlox looked like an animatronic dinosaur that you would see at any kid's museum and that is something that pulls you right out of the story. When you have that compared to how well other things were realized, it just makes the first thing look worse.
About the only saving grace I can give this story is that due to the quality of acting of a couple of the characters, it is not a story that I would necessarily plop into the bottom five as it typically seems to among fans. But it is not a good story and unless you were working on being a completionist and wanting to watch every story, it could easily be passed over without a second thought.
Overall personal score: 1 out of 5
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Terminus
I'm adamant. Please, let us depart in good faith.
Part two of the Turlough/Black Guardian trilogy. This story has the unfortunate luck of being sandwiched between two stories fairly well regarded by Doctor Who fans. Mawdryn Undead is fairly well liked, especially with the return of the Brigadier and Enlightenment has a reputation as being one of the best Fifth Doctor stories period. I can't speak to that as I've not seen Enlightenment yet but I feel it important to give Terminus a chance to stand on it's own and judge it based on it's own merits.
Plot Summary
Under instructions from the Black Guardian, Turlough starts to sabotage the TARDIS. Tegan spots him but he denies doing it. She shows him to his new room, which used to be Adric's, before heading back to the room she shares with Nyssa. Turlough sneaks into the control room and continues with his sabotage.
The TARDIS begins to dimensionally destabilize, with a void appearing in Nyssa's room. Tegan had just left to fetch something from Turlough's room but instead heads to the control room with the Doctor, where they find Turlough. The Doctor runs through emergency procedures and a door appears in the middle of the void. The Doctor, through the visual scanner, instructs Nyssa to head through the door, which she does. The Doctor runs to the room and jams the door with a chair jut before it closes.
The Doctor explains that as part of the emergency procedure, the TARDIS will link with the nearest space ship to create a forms of stability. He heads into the ship to find Nyssa, instructing Tegan and Turlough to wait there. However, Tegan hears a cry for help and thinking it Nyssa, heads into the ship as well. Turlough, under instructions from the Black Guardian, heads after her, accidently knocking loose the chair and closing the door.
The Doctor finds Nyssa hiding in a hallway. They attempt to find their way back to the TARDIS but become lost. They manage to find their way on to the bridge of the ship, but find it empty, the whole ship on automatic pilot.
Tegan and Turlough also become lost. Tegan thinks she hears Nyssa from behind a door and tells Turlough to find something to open the door. He goes looking and stumbles across the hallway where the TARDIS connection is. But he runs back when Tegan begins to scream as a number of bandaged hands try to grab her from the partially open door. He pulls her free and the door closes again.
While this is happening, a pair of pirates named Kari and Olvir blast their way on to the ship. They discover the Doctor and Nyssa on the bridge and hold them aside while they investigate what plunder is available. However, their own ship leaves as the ship they are on begins docking procedures for Terminus. The doors of the ship open and the sick people inside begin to pour out. Olvir realizes that this is a Lazar transport ship and he panics, proclaiming they are all going to die.
Tegan and Turlough also are confronted by a mass of sick people and jump under a grate into the air ducts to avoid them. The weight of the people walking over the grate causes it to jam and the two find themselves trapped in the duct system. They begin to crawl through the ducts, looking for another way out.
Nyssa brings Olvir out of hiding and he informs them that Terminus is supposedly a corporate run hospital for Lazars disease, a leprosy-like disease, but no one, including his own sister, has ever returned from it. The computer informs them that with the departure of the passengers, the ship will be sterilized. The Doctor suggests that they head back to the TARDIS and split up to take two different routes due to the size of the ship.
Nyssa and Olvir head one way but Nyssa begins to tire. She even drops her skirt she is feeling so overheated. An armored guard approaches and takes Nyssa, believing she is infected, with Olvir hiding in the shadows. He follows her as she is taken down an elevator and into the living quarters with the others. She is also informed that she will eventually be taken to see the Garn.
The head of the security team, Eirak, summons the Garm, a dog-like alien, who lives in an area forbidden for the security team to enter. He tells the Garm that one of their own, named Bor, was investigating some odd readings and entered the forbidden zone. They request his return or if he has died, that his armor is returned. The Garm seems to agree.
The guards, called the Vanir, are kept alive due to their ingestion of a company supplied chemical called hydromel. They are also slaves for the company. A new shipment is passed out to the various guards, but Eirak discovers that some of the vials are filled with colored water instead.
Tegan and Turlough continue to wander through the ducts. At one point they cry out and the Doctor hears them, but they are driven off again as the ship continues to go through decontamination. Hitting one dead end, Turlough manages to break through a grate and push deeper into the ship.
Kari and the Doctor enter Terminus with the Doctor very interested in it's location at the center of the universe. They travel down the lift into the control room. They are observed by the guard, Valgard, who attacks the Doctor. Kari manages to get him off the Doctor by shooting his helmet, using the last of the gun's power. With Valgard temporarily stunned, Kari and the Doctor run into the forbidden zone.
In the zone, the Doctor and Kari find Bor who is suffering from radiation sickness. He is trying to build a metal wall in front of one of the engines to block the radiation leak. The Doctor helps him and Bor tells him that one engine already exploded a long time ago and that the other might blow up soon too.
The Doctor and Kari are attacked by Valgard, who followed them into the zone after being promised the leadership position by doing so. The Doctor manages to fend him off and stuns him by crashing him into the metal wall. The Garm, attracted by the commotion, discovers Bor and takes him back to the safe zone.
Nyssa, being the healthiest patient, is selected to be given over to the Garm. Olvir disguises himself as one of the Vanir and follows her down to the forbidden zone gateway. The guard signals the Garm. Olvir fights off the guard and tries to shoot the Garm but his gun has no effect on the creature. The Garm ignores Olvir, unchains Nyssa and carries her back into the forbidden zone.
The Doctor and Kari make their way to the control room of the Terminus ship and discover the dead pilot. Examining the computer, the Doctor realizes that Terminus is a time ship. It developed an engine malfunction and jumped too far back. The computer dumped fuel into the void but the engine exploded anyway, trigging the Big Bang. The ship was able to jump forward just before the full explosion but the pilot was killed anyway. The Doctor realizes that if the second engine explodes, it might trigger an event that would destroy the universe.
Tegan and Turlough manage to get themselves out of the ducts and make their way to the control room. They poke around but are unable to find the Doctor or Nyssa. Turlough decides they must try and find the door to the TARDIS and heads into the hallway to ask the Black Guardian. The Guardian instructs him to create a power by-pass in one of the ducts. He does so as Nyssa finds him. However, as he connects the circuit, a power surge passes through the system. The power surge causes the Terminus computer to begin a countdown for fuel dump from it's remaining engine, potentially causing an explosion.
The Garm places Nyssa outside the radiation leaking engine and waits. Valgard attacks Olvir when he approaches Nyssa but Olvir manages to fend him off. The Garm, content with the exposure Nyssa has had, takes her away. Valgard recognizes Olvir as an ex-military man and tries to lure him into a trap. Olvir ignores him and follows the Garm. Valgard takes Olvir's dropped gun and follows from behind.
The Doctor and Kari try to pull back the lever back that will dump the fuel but it is locked in by the computer. The Doctor decides they need more strength and run back to the border area where they steal the box that summons the Garm and signal him. The Garm comes to see them and they ask his help in stopping the fuel dump. Compelled to obey the request made via the box, he agrees.
The trio heads to the main control room. The Garm manages to push back the lever that will dump the fuel allowing the Doctor to disengage the computer controls. The system subsides and the Doctor thanks the Garm. The Garm requests that if he has served the Doctor well that he destroy the control box, which would free the Garm and allow him to work at curing the others uninterrupted. The Doctor agrees and destroys the box.
Nyssa wakes in an isolated room to find that the radiation has cured of the Lazars disease, though she is still weak from radiation exposure. Olvir finds her and manages to disable the lock on the door. He frees her but they are captured by Valgard. He in turn is found by the Doctor and Kari. The Doctor and Nyssa tell Valgard that they have found a cure for Lazars and can work out a better treatment. Valgard scoffs until they tell him that they can also set up an independent production of Hydromel which will free all of them from the company.
He takes them back to the medical side where the Hydromel is kept. The Doctor unlocks the storage chest and Nyssa examines it, confident that she can synthetize it and perhaps even improve the formula. This convinces the second in command Sigurd, who gives the Hydromel to Bor, allowing him to recover. The three then take control from Eirak with Valgard becoming the head of the Vanir.
In the ship, Tegan and Turlough recover from their shock to find that the ship is powering up to depart. Tegan runs back to the control room to try and stop it while Turlough continues to try and unseal the door to the TARDIS. He succeeds as Tegan manages to give the emergency override order to stop the ship from departing. Angry with his failure to kill the Doctor, the Black Guardian punishes Turlough with a dose of pain that causes him to black out.
The Doctor instructs Valgard to inform the authorities of the companies actions once cured Lazars begin to leave. An emotionally raw Tegan meets them, although the Doctor nearly dismisses her. He is further put on his heels when Nyssa tells him and Tegan that she is planning to stay to help. She intends to work with the Garm both in perfecting the cure and producing more Hydromel, allowing her to use the scientific skills she had trained for. The Doctor and Tegan give her reluctant goodbyes and head back to the TARDIS. Just before they enter the control room, Turlough revives and the Black Guardian gives him one last warning to kill the Doctor or suffer his wrath.
Analysis
Overall, I'd have to say that Terminus, while not terrible, is not a particularly good story. I don't think there is any one thing that you can point to that makes Terminus a less than decent story. It is more death by a thousand cuts with little things going wrong here and there and it just builds up to the point where you find yourself not enjoying anything about it.
If I had to isolate the one or two most significant problems, I would say it's pacing and tone. This is a very dark story both in terms of it's lighting and how it's told. I like darkness but that darkness should be cut with a bit of levity now and again. There are no points in this story where anyone attempts to lighten the mood even with a bit of black humor. Instead, it's all seriousness and that makes things overly dour.
Adding to the dourness is the rather plodding nature of the story. There was a deliberate attempt to keep the characters apart and prevent them from learning anything and it made for a dry story. The only separation that made sense was Turlough's separation as the Black Guardian was riding him hard to kill the Doctor. But the rest of them were only apart to stretch out the story and there was very little interesting filler.
I actually found Turlough and Tegan's adventures through the air ducts the most interesting part of the story because at least there was chemistry between them. Tegan is snappy and a bit acerbic while Turlough holds his own in an innocent but also very cynical way. They're scenes were also mostly on film so they looked nice visually as well.
The Doctor and Kari weren't a bad team, although I can't say much for Kari's very 80's hair. Still, the Doctor seems a bit slow in this one and he doesn't really do much of anything. He follows things around and helps people when he can but it just takes him to nearly the end of Episode Three before he gets involved with the plot in any primary way. Not bad, just plodding.
Filling in for the Doctor in a number of ways was Olvir, a person we know nothing about and I couldn't find myself caring much for. His acting was a little soft as well and that didn't draw me in either. It also didn't help that most of his interactive scenes were with Nyssa who is still less animated than a block of wood. Her attempts to be scared or resist when the Vanir take her away come across as someone who is either being mildly inconvenienced or too tired to care anymore.
Her leaving scene was especially weak. Tegan is playing the scene as emotionally raw as possible, which actually goes overboard in my opinion. Nyssa, by contrast, seems very out of it and indifferent, even if her words suggest that she is sad about staying behind. Only the Doctor seems to get the scene right in being upset about Nyssa leaving and his putting on the "stiff upper lip" about it. It also didn't help that it felt very shoehorned in after a somewhat rushed and overstuffed climax.
I didn't have a problem with the Garm, although I know some fans do. I thought it looked fine and the darkness of the set kept some of it's weaker attributes hidden. I would have liked a better explanation of his backstory both in how he tried to treat those with Lazars disease or why he had to obey the summons of the box like a genie in a lamp. Then once the box is destroyed, the Garm simply disappears from the story with no explanation. He himself was fine, but the circumstances around him were a bit unsatisfying.
The Vanir were fine. In fact, I think they were the one part of the story that was adequately addressed. More could have been said about their slavery or why the company was even putting a front of a hospital for Lazars at all, but for what they were, they worked. I actually rather liked both Valgard and Bor as they seemed to fit their circumstances well. Eirak was ok but I think the actor portraying him was a bit weak as was also Sigurd.
The big twist with Terminus being the cause of the Big Bang was a little underwhelming. The volume of energy actually required to create the Big Bang is enormous. I don't have a problem with the idea that the fuel from the ship provided the spark to an existing set of conditions, even if it felt contrived. But I did have a problem with the idea that if the second engine blew, it would destroy the universe. After the Big Bang, why was there still any of the potential energy that had built up to cause the first Big Bang? I also don't buy that any engine explosion could produce enough energy on it's own to blow the universe. It just seemed like a false threat. Why wasn't it enough to just have it destroy the ship. Was that not enough of a threat to them?
Like I said, this is death by a thousand cuts. A lot of this could be mitigated if the story was at least fun, but it's not. It's dark and dour and even if it's only four episodes, it just seems to plod on. Other than Nyssa leaving, there's no reason to pay much attention to it and my own dislike of Nyssa is such that I can't imagine ever voluntarily pulling this one up and saying that I should watch it again. Once was quite enough for me.
Overall personal score: 1 out of 5
Part two of the Turlough/Black Guardian trilogy. This story has the unfortunate luck of being sandwiched between two stories fairly well regarded by Doctor Who fans. Mawdryn Undead is fairly well liked, especially with the return of the Brigadier and Enlightenment has a reputation as being one of the best Fifth Doctor stories period. I can't speak to that as I've not seen Enlightenment yet but I feel it important to give Terminus a chance to stand on it's own and judge it based on it's own merits.
Plot Summary
Under instructions from the Black Guardian, Turlough starts to sabotage the TARDIS. Tegan spots him but he denies doing it. She shows him to his new room, which used to be Adric's, before heading back to the room she shares with Nyssa. Turlough sneaks into the control room and continues with his sabotage.
The TARDIS begins to dimensionally destabilize, with a void appearing in Nyssa's room. Tegan had just left to fetch something from Turlough's room but instead heads to the control room with the Doctor, where they find Turlough. The Doctor runs through emergency procedures and a door appears in the middle of the void. The Doctor, through the visual scanner, instructs Nyssa to head through the door, which she does. The Doctor runs to the room and jams the door with a chair jut before it closes.
The Doctor explains that as part of the emergency procedure, the TARDIS will link with the nearest space ship to create a forms of stability. He heads into the ship to find Nyssa, instructing Tegan and Turlough to wait there. However, Tegan hears a cry for help and thinking it Nyssa, heads into the ship as well. Turlough, under instructions from the Black Guardian, heads after her, accidently knocking loose the chair and closing the door.
The Doctor finds Nyssa hiding in a hallway. They attempt to find their way back to the TARDIS but become lost. They manage to find their way on to the bridge of the ship, but find it empty, the whole ship on automatic pilot.
Tegan and Turlough also become lost. Tegan thinks she hears Nyssa from behind a door and tells Turlough to find something to open the door. He goes looking and stumbles across the hallway where the TARDIS connection is. But he runs back when Tegan begins to scream as a number of bandaged hands try to grab her from the partially open door. He pulls her free and the door closes again.
While this is happening, a pair of pirates named Kari and Olvir blast their way on to the ship. They discover the Doctor and Nyssa on the bridge and hold them aside while they investigate what plunder is available. However, their own ship leaves as the ship they are on begins docking procedures for Terminus. The doors of the ship open and the sick people inside begin to pour out. Olvir realizes that this is a Lazar transport ship and he panics, proclaiming they are all going to die.
Tegan and Turlough also are confronted by a mass of sick people and jump under a grate into the air ducts to avoid them. The weight of the people walking over the grate causes it to jam and the two find themselves trapped in the duct system. They begin to crawl through the ducts, looking for another way out.
Nyssa brings Olvir out of hiding and he informs them that Terminus is supposedly a corporate run hospital for Lazars disease, a leprosy-like disease, but no one, including his own sister, has ever returned from it. The computer informs them that with the departure of the passengers, the ship will be sterilized. The Doctor suggests that they head back to the TARDIS and split up to take two different routes due to the size of the ship.
Nyssa and Olvir head one way but Nyssa begins to tire. She even drops her skirt she is feeling so overheated. An armored guard approaches and takes Nyssa, believing she is infected, with Olvir hiding in the shadows. He follows her as she is taken down an elevator and into the living quarters with the others. She is also informed that she will eventually be taken to see the Garn.
The head of the security team, Eirak, summons the Garm, a dog-like alien, who lives in an area forbidden for the security team to enter. He tells the Garm that one of their own, named Bor, was investigating some odd readings and entered the forbidden zone. They request his return or if he has died, that his armor is returned. The Garm seems to agree.
The guards, called the Vanir, are kept alive due to their ingestion of a company supplied chemical called hydromel. They are also slaves for the company. A new shipment is passed out to the various guards, but Eirak discovers that some of the vials are filled with colored water instead.
Tegan and Turlough continue to wander through the ducts. At one point they cry out and the Doctor hears them, but they are driven off again as the ship continues to go through decontamination. Hitting one dead end, Turlough manages to break through a grate and push deeper into the ship.
Kari and the Doctor enter Terminus with the Doctor very interested in it's location at the center of the universe. They travel down the lift into the control room. They are observed by the guard, Valgard, who attacks the Doctor. Kari manages to get him off the Doctor by shooting his helmet, using the last of the gun's power. With Valgard temporarily stunned, Kari and the Doctor run into the forbidden zone.
In the zone, the Doctor and Kari find Bor who is suffering from radiation sickness. He is trying to build a metal wall in front of one of the engines to block the radiation leak. The Doctor helps him and Bor tells him that one engine already exploded a long time ago and that the other might blow up soon too.
The Doctor and Kari are attacked by Valgard, who followed them into the zone after being promised the leadership position by doing so. The Doctor manages to fend him off and stuns him by crashing him into the metal wall. The Garm, attracted by the commotion, discovers Bor and takes him back to the safe zone.
Nyssa, being the healthiest patient, is selected to be given over to the Garm. Olvir disguises himself as one of the Vanir and follows her down to the forbidden zone gateway. The guard signals the Garm. Olvir fights off the guard and tries to shoot the Garm but his gun has no effect on the creature. The Garm ignores Olvir, unchains Nyssa and carries her back into the forbidden zone.
The Doctor and Kari make their way to the control room of the Terminus ship and discover the dead pilot. Examining the computer, the Doctor realizes that Terminus is a time ship. It developed an engine malfunction and jumped too far back. The computer dumped fuel into the void but the engine exploded anyway, trigging the Big Bang. The ship was able to jump forward just before the full explosion but the pilot was killed anyway. The Doctor realizes that if the second engine explodes, it might trigger an event that would destroy the universe.
Tegan and Turlough manage to get themselves out of the ducts and make their way to the control room. They poke around but are unable to find the Doctor or Nyssa. Turlough decides they must try and find the door to the TARDIS and heads into the hallway to ask the Black Guardian. The Guardian instructs him to create a power by-pass in one of the ducts. He does so as Nyssa finds him. However, as he connects the circuit, a power surge passes through the system. The power surge causes the Terminus computer to begin a countdown for fuel dump from it's remaining engine, potentially causing an explosion.
The Garm places Nyssa outside the radiation leaking engine and waits. Valgard attacks Olvir when he approaches Nyssa but Olvir manages to fend him off. The Garm, content with the exposure Nyssa has had, takes her away. Valgard recognizes Olvir as an ex-military man and tries to lure him into a trap. Olvir ignores him and follows the Garm. Valgard takes Olvir's dropped gun and follows from behind.
The Doctor and Kari try to pull back the lever back that will dump the fuel but it is locked in by the computer. The Doctor decides they need more strength and run back to the border area where they steal the box that summons the Garm and signal him. The Garm comes to see them and they ask his help in stopping the fuel dump. Compelled to obey the request made via the box, he agrees.
The trio heads to the main control room. The Garm manages to push back the lever that will dump the fuel allowing the Doctor to disengage the computer controls. The system subsides and the Doctor thanks the Garm. The Garm requests that if he has served the Doctor well that he destroy the control box, which would free the Garm and allow him to work at curing the others uninterrupted. The Doctor agrees and destroys the box.
Nyssa wakes in an isolated room to find that the radiation has cured of the Lazars disease, though she is still weak from radiation exposure. Olvir finds her and manages to disable the lock on the door. He frees her but they are captured by Valgard. He in turn is found by the Doctor and Kari. The Doctor and Nyssa tell Valgard that they have found a cure for Lazars and can work out a better treatment. Valgard scoffs until they tell him that they can also set up an independent production of Hydromel which will free all of them from the company.
He takes them back to the medical side where the Hydromel is kept. The Doctor unlocks the storage chest and Nyssa examines it, confident that she can synthetize it and perhaps even improve the formula. This convinces the second in command Sigurd, who gives the Hydromel to Bor, allowing him to recover. The three then take control from Eirak with Valgard becoming the head of the Vanir.
In the ship, Tegan and Turlough recover from their shock to find that the ship is powering up to depart. Tegan runs back to the control room to try and stop it while Turlough continues to try and unseal the door to the TARDIS. He succeeds as Tegan manages to give the emergency override order to stop the ship from departing. Angry with his failure to kill the Doctor, the Black Guardian punishes Turlough with a dose of pain that causes him to black out.
The Doctor instructs Valgard to inform the authorities of the companies actions once cured Lazars begin to leave. An emotionally raw Tegan meets them, although the Doctor nearly dismisses her. He is further put on his heels when Nyssa tells him and Tegan that she is planning to stay to help. She intends to work with the Garm both in perfecting the cure and producing more Hydromel, allowing her to use the scientific skills she had trained for. The Doctor and Tegan give her reluctant goodbyes and head back to the TARDIS. Just before they enter the control room, Turlough revives and the Black Guardian gives him one last warning to kill the Doctor or suffer his wrath.
Analysis
Overall, I'd have to say that Terminus, while not terrible, is not a particularly good story. I don't think there is any one thing that you can point to that makes Terminus a less than decent story. It is more death by a thousand cuts with little things going wrong here and there and it just builds up to the point where you find yourself not enjoying anything about it.
If I had to isolate the one or two most significant problems, I would say it's pacing and tone. This is a very dark story both in terms of it's lighting and how it's told. I like darkness but that darkness should be cut with a bit of levity now and again. There are no points in this story where anyone attempts to lighten the mood even with a bit of black humor. Instead, it's all seriousness and that makes things overly dour.
Adding to the dourness is the rather plodding nature of the story. There was a deliberate attempt to keep the characters apart and prevent them from learning anything and it made for a dry story. The only separation that made sense was Turlough's separation as the Black Guardian was riding him hard to kill the Doctor. But the rest of them were only apart to stretch out the story and there was very little interesting filler.
I actually found Turlough and Tegan's adventures through the air ducts the most interesting part of the story because at least there was chemistry between them. Tegan is snappy and a bit acerbic while Turlough holds his own in an innocent but also very cynical way. They're scenes were also mostly on film so they looked nice visually as well.
The Doctor and Kari weren't a bad team, although I can't say much for Kari's very 80's hair. Still, the Doctor seems a bit slow in this one and he doesn't really do much of anything. He follows things around and helps people when he can but it just takes him to nearly the end of Episode Three before he gets involved with the plot in any primary way. Not bad, just plodding.
Filling in for the Doctor in a number of ways was Olvir, a person we know nothing about and I couldn't find myself caring much for. His acting was a little soft as well and that didn't draw me in either. It also didn't help that most of his interactive scenes were with Nyssa who is still less animated than a block of wood. Her attempts to be scared or resist when the Vanir take her away come across as someone who is either being mildly inconvenienced or too tired to care anymore.
Her leaving scene was especially weak. Tegan is playing the scene as emotionally raw as possible, which actually goes overboard in my opinion. Nyssa, by contrast, seems very out of it and indifferent, even if her words suggest that she is sad about staying behind. Only the Doctor seems to get the scene right in being upset about Nyssa leaving and his putting on the "stiff upper lip" about it. It also didn't help that it felt very shoehorned in after a somewhat rushed and overstuffed climax.
I didn't have a problem with the Garm, although I know some fans do. I thought it looked fine and the darkness of the set kept some of it's weaker attributes hidden. I would have liked a better explanation of his backstory both in how he tried to treat those with Lazars disease or why he had to obey the summons of the box like a genie in a lamp. Then once the box is destroyed, the Garm simply disappears from the story with no explanation. He himself was fine, but the circumstances around him were a bit unsatisfying.
The Vanir were fine. In fact, I think they were the one part of the story that was adequately addressed. More could have been said about their slavery or why the company was even putting a front of a hospital for Lazars at all, but for what they were, they worked. I actually rather liked both Valgard and Bor as they seemed to fit their circumstances well. Eirak was ok but I think the actor portraying him was a bit weak as was also Sigurd.
The big twist with Terminus being the cause of the Big Bang was a little underwhelming. The volume of energy actually required to create the Big Bang is enormous. I don't have a problem with the idea that the fuel from the ship provided the spark to an existing set of conditions, even if it felt contrived. But I did have a problem with the idea that if the second engine blew, it would destroy the universe. After the Big Bang, why was there still any of the potential energy that had built up to cause the first Big Bang? I also don't buy that any engine explosion could produce enough energy on it's own to blow the universe. It just seemed like a false threat. Why wasn't it enough to just have it destroy the ship. Was that not enough of a threat to them?
Like I said, this is death by a thousand cuts. A lot of this could be mitigated if the story was at least fun, but it's not. It's dark and dour and even if it's only four episodes, it just seems to plod on. Other than Nyssa leaving, there's no reason to pay much attention to it and my own dislike of Nyssa is such that I can't imagine ever voluntarily pulling this one up and saying that I should watch it again. Once was quite enough for me.
Overall personal score: 1 out of 5
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