Gentlemen, I've got news for you. This lighthouse is under attack and by morning, we might all be dead. Anyone interested?
It is rather ironic that the rather light and peppy Graham Williams era kicked off with possibly the darkest and most gothic horror story of Doctor Who's entire run. There has been speculation that while Philip Hinchcliff enjoyed the darker stories, he kept a restraining hand so as to not freak out the kids too badly. Graham Williams on the other hand, was much more hands off (as seen with Tom Baker's free hand in his portrayal of the Doctor in later seasons) and that allowed the gothic stories commissioned under the last part of the Hinchcliff era to go darker than he would have allowed. But that doesn't mean they aren't good.
Plot Summary
At a lighthouse off the south coast of England, a meteorite is spied crashing into the ocean by one of the keepers named Vince. He alerts the other two keepers, the head keeper Reuben and the engineer Ben, but neither see it. Shortly afterwards a thick, cold fog rolls in and the lighthouse lantern begins losing power, prompting old Reuben to bemoan the new electric lights rather than reliable oil lamps.
The Doctor and Leela arrive on the rocks outside the lighthouse, having intended to land in Brighton. The two head up to the lighthouse to dry off, especially as the Doctor has noticed the lamp having trouble and might offer assistance. Before they arrive, Ben heads down to the generator to investigate but is surprised by a creature from the meteorite and electrocuted. Subsequently, the power is restored and the lighthouse comes back on-line.
The Doctor and Leela enter and are greeted by Vince. He takes them to the keeper's room where Leela changes out of her wet clothes and into a spare set of Vince's, much to his embarrassment. The Doctor offers to go help with the generator as the light is flickering again. The power is restored before the Doctor can do anything but he does find Ben's body and his oil lamp which has been melted.
The Doctor informs Vince, who is broken up and goes to tell Reuben. The Doctor notes the lamp to Leela and she infers that he suspects a stronger and more sinister force. Reuben is suspicious of the Doctor and Leela but does not move against them. He shrouds Ben's body while Vince and the Doctor man the light, the Doctor very interested in Vince's story about the meteor he saw earlier.
Leela becomes suspicious and sneaks outside with her knife. Though she finds no one, she does discover a number of dead fish floating near the shore. At the same time, Reuben heads back up and sends Vince below to eat. Not hungry, Vince heads to the boiler room but finds Ben's body gone. Leela hears his cry of fright and runs back.
Vince sends a message up to Reuben, but Reuben is distracted by the Doctor noting an approaching yacht. Reuben sends up flares and increases the rate of the foghorn as the lighthouse is flickering out again, but he observes the yacht is traveling too fast. He alerts Vince to be ready and they all watch as the yacht crashes on the rocks.
Reuben, the Doctor and Vince rush down to rescue the passengers. They pull off Lord Palmerdale, his secretary Adelaide, Colonel Skinsale and the mate Harker. The captain of the vessel was killed in the crash. They learn that Palmerdale had driven the captain to drive the yacht full speed in order to get back to London in time to make a killing in the stock market based on insider trading information that Skinsale had given him to settle a series of debts. Harker lashes out angrily at Palmerdale, first simply refusing to set sail again in the fog and then actually attacking Palmerdale, accusing him of murdering the captain until he is pulled off.
While the passengers are being rescued, Leela observes the alien swimming below and away from the crash. She informs the Doctor who urges her to not tell anyone, but Rueben overhears. He suspects the Creature of Fang Rock, an old sea story where the lighthouse keepers were found killed or mad after a bad fog. The Doctor and Leela head out again where Leela shows the location she saw the creature along with the dead fish she found earlier. They also run into Harker, returning from securing the yacht who had pulled the body of Ben which had been dragged into the sea by the creature. The Doctor notes that Ben's body has been used by the creature to study human anatomy and it might become bolder in it's attacks.
Vince becomes frightened by Reuben's tales of the old creature, but the old keeper takes pity on him and tells him to man the light while he maintains the boiler. He heads down and stokes the fires but the whole lighthouse is alerted by the sound of his cries. Bolting down, the Doctor and Leela find Reuben missing and the door open. The Doctor and Harker do a quick search but cannot find him and close the door up.
With tempers starting to flare and nerves on edge among the rescued party, the Doctor sends Harker to man the boiler. While down there, Reuben comes back, although acting very detached. Reuben walks slowly up the stairs and locks himself in his room, ignoring questions about his well-being from Leela. In his room, Reuben begins to glow green and transform from that state into that of the green creature.
Palmerdale, still agitated over the potential loss of money, heads up to the top to talk to Vince. He bribes Vince with £50 and promises another £50 if he will send a message on the wireless telegraph. Vince agrees with the whole conversation having been overheard by Colonel Skinsale, who followed Palmerdale. Palmerdale hears someone coming up and ducks onto the parapet when the Doctor comes up to chat with Vince.
Palmerdale waits outside for the Doctor to leave, trying to keep himself warm. He is attacked and electrocuted by the creature and falls off the lighthouse dead. The Doctor heads below and finds Leela, using a sledgehammer to knock Reuben's door down. He stops her, noting that Reuben will emerge on his own.
The Doctor heads down to check on Harker who had heard the noise of Palmerdale's body hitting. They discover him and carry his body back to the crew room. Adelaide freaks out prompting Leela to slap her. The Doctor also checks the wireless telegraph and finds it damaged. He confronts Skinsale who admits he overheard Palmerdale's plans to send a message on it and sabotaged it to save his own honor. The Doctor notes that his honor may have killed them all.
While they are all distracted, Reuben leaves his room to find Harker, having returned to the boiler room, alone. The lights dim slightly and Vince, having had a change of heart and burned Palmerdale's bribe, signals down that the boiler pressure is dropping. The Doctor and Leela head below to find Harker's dead body. In the adjoining chamber they also find Reuben's body, set with rigor mortis. The Doctor realizes that the alien disguised itself as Reuben after killing him and instead of locking the creature out, the creature is locked in with them.
The Doctor discovers a transmitter near the boiler and realizes the alien is calling a larger ship. He destroys it and decides to destroy the larger version as well. He sends Leela up to gather the remaining people and take them to the lamp room as it's the easiest to defend. She runs upstairs to the crew room while the Doctor climbs the outside of the lighthouse to the quarters where he suspects the main transmitter to be located.
The alien Reuben enters the lamp room and kills Vince. He then descends the stairs and enters the crew room where Leela has just entered. Adelaide becomes hysterical and the alien kills her. That act buys Leela time and she and Skinsale bolt out of the room and up the stairs. They run into the Doctor who tells them to lay gunpowder normally used for flares on the stairs outside the lamp room.
The Doctor waits on the stairs and confronts the alien who changes into it's normal form, a Rutan who is scouting Earth in preparation for making it a base for an attack on the Sontarans. The Doctor warns the Rutan but it pursues him up the stairs. The Doctor ignites the gunpowder which flash ignites. The heat and flash stun the Rutan and it rolls back down the stairs.
Skinsale points out a launcher used for flares and the Doctor has everyone empty their pockets and pack the device with detritus and gunpowder to make a crude mortar. The Doctor worries about the Rutan warship that the scout has signaled and Leela suggests, based on the Doctor's ramblings, to use the lighthouse to make a laser. The Doctor thinks it a good idea but they lack a focusing crystal. Skinsale recalls that Palmerdale kept a small pouch of diamonds on him as insurance. The two men then head down to retrieve them with the Doctor ordering Leela to man the mortar and only fire when the Rutan was nearly on her.
Skinsale searches Palmerdale's body and finds the bag of diamonds. The Doctor sorts through them, finds one of a good cut and size and drops the rest on the ground. The Doctor heads back up the stairs but Skinsale stays behind to scoop up the diamonds. The Rutan comes around the stairs and electrocutes Skinsale. It then pursues the Doctor. He climbs up and dives past Leela as she fires the mortar into the Rutan.
The Doctor spies the Rutan ship and sets about to create the laser. Leela comes down and gloats over the dying Rutan. She informs the Doctor of it's death but he chastises her for gloating over the fallen. With the ship approaching, he activates the beam and they run out of the lighthouse. Leela falls behind slightly to retrieve her hunting knife but they manage to get out and duck behind a rock. The Rutan ship explodes and the flash temporarily blinds Leela. She blinks a few times under orders from the Doctor and her eyesight restores but the flash altered the pigment, turning her eyes blue. They two then reenter the TARDIS and take off, leaving the abandoned lighthouse.
Analysis
Horror of Fang Rock is a wonderfully atmospheric story. It's a marvel of storytelling, directing and lighting. The acting is pretty good too. But it is also dark and exceptionally grim. It's one of the only stories that I can think of where the Doctor and companion leave and everyone has died. Almost all the time there is at least one survivor to tell the tale. Not here.
If I had to pick a single character who was a bit off in this story, it would be the Doctor. The acting was quite good and Tom Baker was in excellent form, but his character was a bit off. I think it was because he needed to be a bit slow and that seems very odd for his Doctor. The lighthouse was such a confined space and with only so much room for the Rutan to maneuver that it seems he should have figured out the enemy quicker. As it is, once he figured it was a Rutan, he dispatched it very quickly with the fire attack and then the mortar. Given that, it would have been nice to see the Doctor pick up things a little quicker and then perhaps have the Rutan put up a bit of a stronger fight.
Leela was quite good in this. This also is close to the end as he becoming educated. Leela is given a bit of a sixth sense, which I head cannon as a tuned "hunter's instinct", and that gives her an interesting edge. She also clearly is learning and retaining things from earlier. A Leela from an earlier story would not have thought to create a laser to destroy the Rutan ship. But you also see the savage elements still on full display as she is fully prepared to gut Lord Palmerdale if he disobeys and she gloats over the Rutan as it is dying. Frankly, I don't see either of these qualities as detriments. The detriment came in future stories when these became her dominant traits rather than the educated individual we see emerging in The Robots of Death and The Talons of Weng-Chiang. But here, she is quite enjoyable.
The guest cast is mostly enjoyable too. I have no qualms about any of the actors and if a character bothered me, it was due to the traits of the character, not the portrayal (Adelaide). Even the characters you are clearly not meant to like, such as Palmerdale, are enjoyable in that rougish way, especially as you know you will appreciate it when they are killed off.
I do though wish at least one of the likeable characters would have survived. Obviously Ben wasn't as he was the first victim and I think you could sense that the old salt Reuben would have to be killed off, but I was hoping that Vince could have survived. Or, if not him, Harker. That would have been rather amusing as the posh upper class are all killed while the working man survives on his wits.
Even though he was a bit of an ass, I wouldn't have even minded if Skinsale had survived. As an old army man, you could tell that he was a survivor and would do unethical things to keep himself alive. That gave him a touch of the anti-hero and would have done well to be the last man standing. But he is undone by greed, which is even dumber when you think that he knew about the mortar and could have come back for the diamonds after the Rutan was dead.
The sets and atmosphere of this story were excellent. They added a natural curvature and built everything close quarters so you get that tight, rounded feel from a lighthouse that you would expect. The lighting is dim and the whole thing is suffused with a dark atmosphere. You are even aware that there is no background music for several key scenes and that only the foghorn provides any ambience to the scene. It's very well done.
There are still a few limitations to the set. You can see some CSO fringing around the heads of folks when they are in the lamp room as they filled in the windows with CSO fog and that provides an odd look. The model work, both with the TARDIS and the yacht is also a bit suspect. I'm not sure how that could have been improved, but they are clearly models and that does detract, especially at the end of Episode One when the yacht crashes. It's hard to imagine how the captain could have been killed when the boat came in in that manner. But those are fairly small niggles.
The Rutan did pretty well, even if it is basically a green beach ball with a light and a few streamers added. Is it the scariest thing in the world? No, but it still works pretty well for an alien. But I can also see why they kept Rueben is as the alien for a full episode as it made their jobs so much easier.
Overall, this is an excellent story. It's probably a touch darker than it needs to be. Either having one other character survive or adding a couple of lines of humor here and there would have gone a long way to rounding the story one last little bit. But it is overall so well acted and put together that I doubt anyone could object to watching this thing several times over. This was my second time around with this story and I'd happily sit down to watch it a third time, especially with someone who hadn't seen it.
Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
A Contrast of Styles
Having just finished Planet of the Daleks, I thought it would be good to do a quick write up on the great contrast in styles that the nominal twelve-part arc of Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks is constructed of.
Personally, I liked both of these stories. I liked Frontier in Space better but I'm chalking that up more to originality, though I would say I have a nominal preference for more serious stories and Frontier in Space would certainly fall under that category. But, I would not denigrate Planet of the Daleks for it's core ideals. Terry Nation was perhaps a bit lazy in his execution, or somehow trying to recapture what was ignited in The Daleks, but his vision of Doctor Who is just as valid as Malcolm Hulke's.
I feel that Frontier in Space and much of Malcolm Hulke's stories in general, saw Doctor Who as a vehicle for discussing important points in all facets. He would write about morally ambiguous issues, he would make the "good guys" overstep their bounds towards totalitarianism or other rights restrictions while the "bad guys" would be given some level of justification for their actions, even if those actions are repugnant. His stories are unquestionably designed to get the viewer to think and to challenge the viewer on their ethics and the status quo in general. I think many would agree with me that these were stories that were pointed much harder at the adults who would be watching with the kids rather than the kids themselves, though there was usually enough to keep those kids engaged.
Planet of the Daleks and much of the work of Terry Nation and writers like him, treated Doctor Who as ten-year old entertainment. The stories were usually strongly delineated with white hat good guys and black hat bad guys: Thals good, Daleks bad, etc. They were also peppered with chases, explosions, minor characters getting killed off and other fare that gets the adrenaline and early testosterone pumping. It's as innocuous of fare as you would expect from 80's action stories like Knight Rider or The A-Team. But that's not bad either.
Though the main focus and the approach can vary, there is nothing wrong with either being dense or light, so long as you tell an entertaining story. Some of Malcolm Hulke's work is derided because it is too dense and talky while Terry Nation is often derided for being repetitive and overly reliant on tropes. But if you are entertained by the story, why is that a problem? I find it interesting that a lot of fans deride Terry Nation, yet no story of his (outside of maybe The Chase) comes anywhere near the derision that is given almost the whole of the late 80's catalogue. The same goes with Malcolm Hulke. If someone finds a story like Frontier in Space boring, it is nothing compared to the derision that something like The Twin Dilemma gets.
In the end, I think you have two contrasting styles and style preference will change over time. Terry Nation knew he was writing for a show that was primarily aimed at a preteen, male audience and wrote stories that would appeal to that demographic. He struck gold with the Daleks and spent the rest of his writing career either living off that or trying to replicate it. But even in those times, he knew to keep the run around and adventuring that appeals to young boys.
Malcolm Hulke on the other hand was more interested in the message and shades of grey. He could give a good adventure with runaround, but he made sure that the ideas he believed in and the distrust of authority would come through. To a ten-year old, that may have come across as less exciting than a Nation story, but it would have appealed more to the adults watching with their kids. As fans grow older, they tend to appreciate the Hulke stories more because they can see the depth that was placed their. It ages better over time than a Nation script, but Nation stories are still fun.
So I say, let's not get bogged down with putting one writer down over another. If you enjoy a story, even if it is rather simple, enjoy it and don't worry that it may not be as intellectually challenging. Likewise, don't give slavish devotion to a story that you find boring just because you know it's trying to challenge you. If it bores you, fine. It bores you and will rank lower on your own list. If not, enjoy it. Doctor Who can operate on many levels and one should not worry about only appreciating only a couple of those levels. Does it entertain you or not? That is the only question worth asking when you sit down to watch a story.
Personally, I liked both of these stories. I liked Frontier in Space better but I'm chalking that up more to originality, though I would say I have a nominal preference for more serious stories and Frontier in Space would certainly fall under that category. But, I would not denigrate Planet of the Daleks for it's core ideals. Terry Nation was perhaps a bit lazy in his execution, or somehow trying to recapture what was ignited in The Daleks, but his vision of Doctor Who is just as valid as Malcolm Hulke's.
I feel that Frontier in Space and much of Malcolm Hulke's stories in general, saw Doctor Who as a vehicle for discussing important points in all facets. He would write about morally ambiguous issues, he would make the "good guys" overstep their bounds towards totalitarianism or other rights restrictions while the "bad guys" would be given some level of justification for their actions, even if those actions are repugnant. His stories are unquestionably designed to get the viewer to think and to challenge the viewer on their ethics and the status quo in general. I think many would agree with me that these were stories that were pointed much harder at the adults who would be watching with the kids rather than the kids themselves, though there was usually enough to keep those kids engaged.
Planet of the Daleks and much of the work of Terry Nation and writers like him, treated Doctor Who as ten-year old entertainment. The stories were usually strongly delineated with white hat good guys and black hat bad guys: Thals good, Daleks bad, etc. They were also peppered with chases, explosions, minor characters getting killed off and other fare that gets the adrenaline and early testosterone pumping. It's as innocuous of fare as you would expect from 80's action stories like Knight Rider or The A-Team. But that's not bad either.
Though the main focus and the approach can vary, there is nothing wrong with either being dense or light, so long as you tell an entertaining story. Some of Malcolm Hulke's work is derided because it is too dense and talky while Terry Nation is often derided for being repetitive and overly reliant on tropes. But if you are entertained by the story, why is that a problem? I find it interesting that a lot of fans deride Terry Nation, yet no story of his (outside of maybe The Chase) comes anywhere near the derision that is given almost the whole of the late 80's catalogue. The same goes with Malcolm Hulke. If someone finds a story like Frontier in Space boring, it is nothing compared to the derision that something like The Twin Dilemma gets.
In the end, I think you have two contrasting styles and style preference will change over time. Terry Nation knew he was writing for a show that was primarily aimed at a preteen, male audience and wrote stories that would appeal to that demographic. He struck gold with the Daleks and spent the rest of his writing career either living off that or trying to replicate it. But even in those times, he knew to keep the run around and adventuring that appeals to young boys.
Malcolm Hulke on the other hand was more interested in the message and shades of grey. He could give a good adventure with runaround, but he made sure that the ideas he believed in and the distrust of authority would come through. To a ten-year old, that may have come across as less exciting than a Nation story, but it would have appealed more to the adults watching with their kids. As fans grow older, they tend to appreciate the Hulke stories more because they can see the depth that was placed their. It ages better over time than a Nation script, but Nation stories are still fun.
So I say, let's not get bogged down with putting one writer down over another. If you enjoy a story, even if it is rather simple, enjoy it and don't worry that it may not be as intellectually challenging. Likewise, don't give slavish devotion to a story that you find boring just because you know it's trying to challenge you. If it bores you, fine. It bores you and will rank lower on your own list. If not, enjoy it. Doctor Who can operate on many levels and one should not worry about only appreciating only a couple of those levels. Does it entertain you or not? That is the only question worth asking when you sit down to watch a story.
Thursday, March 23, 2017
Planet of the Daleks
Be careful how you tell that story. Don't glamorize it. Don't make war sound like an exciting and thrilling game.
Planet of the Daleks is the follow-on to Frontier in Space. It also is the return of Terry Nation after eight years away (The Dalek's Master Plan). I know this story is generally poo-pooed by fans generally as it completely ignores the prior story to which it is supposed to be working in conjunction with. I've also heard that it's been given the nickname of Terry Nation's Greatest Hits so we can expect the Terry Nation trope-meter to be buzzing. As such, expectations for this story are not overly high.
Plot Summary
Picking up from the end of Frontier in Space, Jo helps the Doctor back into the TARDIS where he sends a mental message to the Time Lords just before collapsing. Jo gets him on to a bed to rest and he gives her an audio recording device before he passes into a healing coma. Jo records her observations and the TARDIS lands on the planet Spirodon. The Doctor's temperature drops below freezing and his hearts slow considerably. Jo decides to leave the TARDIS to find help, emerging in a thick jungle.
As Jo walks, both she and the TARDIS are sprayed with the sap of a native flower. Jo continues to walk until she discovers another spacecraft. She enters it to find the pilot dead. However, two of the surviving crew return from a patrol and ask her who she is. She tells them about the Doctor and how she had come looking for help. A third crewman enters talking about a patrol and the leader, Taron, orders Jo to hide in a storage room while the three of them go to help the Doctor.
The three crewmen find the TARDIS covered in fungus. They don protective gear and strip it off, allowing the doors to open. The Doctor had woken earlier but noticed that the emergency oxygen had triggered. Unable to open the doors due to the fungus, the atmosphere of the TARDIS was running out of air and the Doctor was starting to suffocate. Free now, the Doctor notices that his three rescuers are Thals. He identifies himself as the Doctor, the same man from their legends about their great war with the Daleks.
Back on the Thal ship, Jo hides as an invisible creature comes aboard and looks around. It rattles the handle of the closet Jo is hiding in, but doesn't push it when finding the door locked. It departs and Jo relaxes. However, she notices that a fungus has begun growing on her hand. She begins to feel ill and passes out, the fungus growing up her arm.
The Doctor comes with the Thals back to their ship and offers to help them in any way. As they return, they discover another invisible creature, not a native Spirodonian but instead a concealed Dalek. The Dalek is inoperative and the scientist Codal wants to open it but the Doctor warns him that the Dalek's emergency signaling mechanism might still work and that would call in more Daleks. Instead, they make their way back towards the ship, the Thals informing the Doctor that the Daleks are attempting to copy the invisibility techniques of the natives.
Jo comes to on the ship and logs that a fungus is growing on her arm, rendering it numb. She attempts to leave the ship but stumbles, too weak to walk and dropping the recorder. She sees movement and crawls back into the ship where she passes out for a second time, now exposed to the invisible creature.
As they proceed through the jungle, the third Thal, Vaber, becomes increasingly agitated about not fighting the Daleks directly. A patrol of Daleks is spotted and the group tries to go around but they run into a group of Spirodonians. Codal runs into the jungle to draw them off. They catch up to him and knock him out. The other three make their way to the ship just as two Daleks discover it. The Doctor, believing Jo to still be inside, begs them to leave it be. The Daleks stun him and then destroy the ship.
The Daleks take the Doctor back to their base where he discovers Codal, who was captured by the Dalek patrol after being knocked out. The two men work together in their cell, deciding to attack the Daleks when they open the cell door to try and escape.
Jo wakes in a nearby cave, having been pulled out of the ship earlier by a Spirodonian named Wester. He applies a balm that kills the fungus on her arm. He then tells her of the Dalek invasion and the capture of the Doctor and one of Thals by the Daleks.
Taron and Vaber recover some of the explosives from the wrecked ship with Vaber wanting to go in guns blazing to take out the Daleks. Taron overrules him and Vaber nearly shoots him trying to take the explosives. They are distracted by a crashing spacecraft. Investigating, they discover it's a second Thal ship. The commander, a woman named Rebec, informs them that the Thals intercepted a transmission indicating that there are not the dozen Daleks they thought were here but nearly ten thousand. The help the other two Thals out of the wreckage and head towards the Dalek base.
Jo and Wester also head to the Dalek base. She sees cloaked figures entering and Wester explains that those are his people but with cloaks on to protect them from the cold of the base, which is built into an ice volcano. Jo hops inside one of the baskets being carried and sneaks inside the base to look for the Doctor, leaving Wester to watch from outside.
Outside the base, Taron, Rebek and another Thal named Marat decide to sneak into the ice ducts to try and set up interior explosives. Vaber and the remaining Thal, Latep, plant additional explosives on the exterior of the mountain. The three Thals crawl down the passages, aware that from the surges of cold, an eruption of ice is due soon. It soon becomes a race to get into the base before the eruption catches them.
In the cell, the Doctor and Codal perfect a small device that will disable a Dalek up close. When a Dalek comes to take them for interrogation, they jump it and the Doctor plants his device. The Dalek loses control and then shuts down, though it's thrashing destroyed the Doctor device. The Doctor and Codal are spotted in the corridors and the Daleks chase them down, herding them toward the lowest level of the base.
On the lowest level, the Doctor and Codal find Taron and his team in the ducts and help them out. They get them out just before the Daleks can seal off the vents. Their jamming the doors buys them additional time as the ice explosion covers the Dalek patrol pursuing the Doctor and Codal, freezing them for a short time. Additional patrols arrive though and the group is forced to take refuge in a control room. Marat refuses and engages the Daleks in the corridor where he is gunned down by the Daleks. The Daleks also discover a plan on Marat's body of the locations of the explosive plants and move to remove those.
In the base, Jo switches on the communications and overhears how the prisoners have been herded to the lowest levels and how a Dalek patrol is heading out to remove the explosives. With no way to get down to the lower parts of the base, Jo shadows the Dalek patrol going after the explosives back out of the base.
In the control room, the Doctor buys a small amount of time by sealing the doors, though the Daleks begin to cut their way through. The group discovers a shaft channeling warm air out and a heavy duty cooling unit nearby. The Doctor activates the cooling unit and the group ties together several pieces of plastic sheeting under the hot air shaft. As they do so, the Doctor notices through a window that there are thousands of Daleks assembled and waiting. As the Daleks begin to break through the door, the temperature contrast begins to pull on the plastic sheeting and pulls the group of four up the shaft.
Jo follows the Daleks outside the city and to the location of the explosives. The Daleks rig the explosives to detonate early and then leave. Jo deactivates two of them but a small avalanche briefly knocks her out before she can disarm the third one. She comes two, grabs the two she defused and runs off as the remaining explosives explode.
After cutting through the door, the Daleks realize the prisoners have gone up the shaft. They bring in an antigravity plate and send a Dalek up the shaft after them. As the balloon reaches the top, one corner tears and the Doctor is forced to leap off and hold on to a ledge. The other three reach the top and hoist the Doctor up on a rope. They then roll a small boulder in, smashing the Dalek and knocking it back to the bottom of the shaft.
Moving away, the party walks past Jo's hiding spot where she is delighted to find them. As she and the Doctor catch up, Vaber and Latep find them after being forced to scatter to avoid Dalek patrols. Jo informs them of her rescue of some of the explosives and the group decides to head to a plain of stones which trap the heat of the day for the night as the nights on Spirodon are frigid.
Once at the plain, they make camp but Vaber still wants to attack the Daleks directly. They figure that they can use the explosives to destroy the refrigeration unit at the bottom of the shaft and that will cause such massive overheating as to destroy the Daleks. Vaber wants to set off at once but Taron insists on waiting until morning so they can formulate a plan. Vaber attacks him but is restrained by the others. Once the rest fall asleep, he steals the explosives and runs to the shaft to destroy the unit.
In the base, the Daleks plan to release a bacterial agent that will destroy all non-inoculated life on the surface of the planet. They send out the Spirodonian slaves to scour the area and send everyone in for inoculation. One group of Spirodonians discovers Vaber and captures him. Taron and Codal go after him with the Doctor warning to not let the refrigeration unit be destroyed as it would awaken the Dalek army he saw earlier.
Taron and Codal knock out two Spirodonians and disguise themselves in their cloaks. Varon is taken to a Dalek who interrogates him about the others. He offers to lead the Daleks to them but tries to run as soon as he is let go. The Daleks shoot him down. In the confusion, Taron and Codal seize the explosives from another Spirodonian and run back to camp with the Dalek patrol pursuing them.
Back at the camp, Wester arrives and tells Jo about the bacteria to be released. He intends to sneak into the base and try and stop it. The Doctor and Jo promise to assist later. As he leaves, Taron and Codal return, warning of the pursuing patrol. The Doctor sends Latep and Jo to distract the Daleks for a short time before leading them back to the camp. They do so and the Daleks arrives a few minutes later at the plain. The Doctor lures one Dalek to the shore of a small lake where the water is liquid but perpetually around freezing. He and Taron leap from hiding and push the surprised Dalek into the water. The other Thals and Jo do the same with the second Dalek when it arrives and the shock of the cold kills both Daleks. The Doctor then has the Thals pull out the mutants and clear space for Rebec to get inside one of the Dalek casings.
Wester arrives at the base as the Daleks and the Spirodonians are receiving immunity from the bacterial mass. He pretends to have a message for the Dalek commander who is in with the mass. He is ordered to wait until the commander is no longer busy.
At the same time, Rebec enters the base disguised as a Dalek with Taron, Codal and the Doctor disguised as Spirodonians. Latep and Jo have gone on to the vent shafts to enter in that way, with both sides instructed to blow up the tunnels and seal the Daleks in the base. The Doctor's group gets to just outside the storage facility when Wester leaps up and rips open the case with the bacterial mass. The infection flows outward, killing Wester. The two Daleks are safe as they had been immunized earlier but they cannot risk unsealing the door as most of the Daleks had not yet been immunized and opening the door would destroy the army.
The Doctor's group tries to get to the lower level but another Dalek orders them to proceed to another level with the rest of the Spirodonians. However, the Dalek also spots that their feet are visible and sounds the alarm, aware they are not Spirodonians. They throw off their disguises on the Dalek and run away, eventually making their way to the lowest level. They set up a barricade against the Daleks and look to see how they can deal with the Dalek army.
Outside, as Jo and Latep head towards the heat shaft, they see a Dalek spaceship arrive and a Supreme Dalek disembark. The Supreme Dalek unseals the door with the trapped Dalek commander, the infection having gone inert. Displeased with his failure, the Dalek Supreme kills the commander and orders both that the army be revived and that the Doctor be taken alive, having been recognized by the Dalek leadership.
Jo and Latep get to the shaft and begin to rappel down. Jo had remarked earlier that the Thals could steal the Dalek spaceship to return home but Latep tries not the think of that as the idea that this had been a suicide mission gave the Thals focus. They arrive at the bottom level to see a group of Daleks about to punch through the barrier the Doctor's group had erected. Latep hurls his bomb at them and destroys the entire group.
Jo and Latep meet up with the Doctor and the other Thals as the Doctor and Codal are setting up the other bomb in a weak section of the cave wall. They had noticed that the refrigeration unit had been deactivated and that the Daleks were waking up, although they were still highly disoriented. Codal sets the timer as Taron returns, having found a catwalk that would take them back to the surface. The explosives go off, destroying two more Daleks pursuing them.
The cave wall buckles for a moment and then collapses in a wave of supercooled water. The water rushes in to the lower level and covers the reviving Dalek army where it begins to freeze in a solid block of ice. The explosion also creates fissures throughout the base, causing supercooled water to seep into other levels. The Dalek Supreme attempts to contact others but finds he and his escort are all that remains. He orders the evacuation of the base as other levels begin to flood and collapse.
Emerging on the surface, Jo points out the Dalek ship and Codal takes control of it. The Doctor wishes Taron well but implores him to tell the whole story of their adventure so as to not make war so glamorous. Latep asks Jo to return to Skaro with him but Jo kindly declines. The Thals then take off, leaving the Daleks stranded.
The Dalek Supreme spies the Doctor and he and his escort chase them back to the TARDIS. They take off just before the Daleks overtake them. With the Doctor gone, the Dalek Supreme orders they signal for a rescue ship and workers to begin pulling the army out of the ice. On the TARDIS, the Doctor offers to take Jo wherever she would like, but she asks to just head home.
Analysis
I think one's appreciation of this story is going to depend entirely on how they come in to it. If you come in expecting it to be a continuation of the story line from Frontier in Space, you are going to be disappointed and probably frustrated by the whole thing. But if you come into it as just another Terry Nation Dalek story, it's actually not bad. It is impossible to treat the story as a complete standalone as it opens with a wounded Doctor recovering from the Master's attack and Jo and the Doctor's catch-up in Episode Four reference back to the Dalek involvement in stirring up a war between the humans and Draconians. But those are fairly easy to gloss over and don't impact the overall plot in any significant way.
There is one other elephant in the room to address with this story and that is that it's well deserved moniker of Terry Nation's Greatest Hits. Unquestionably, there is almost no salient plot point or element that has not been harvested from another story. The primary story as a whole is a rehash of The Daleks with a heavy dose of Mission to the Unknown thrown in for good measure. There are also a couple of grabs from The Dalek Invasion of Earth thrown in for good measure. However, it is important to remember that this is Terry Nation's first story in almost eight years. The odds that any of the viewing audience would have seen or remembered much of any of these three stories is pretty remote, even with the 1965 movie to reinforce the plot. As such, though we see all the tropes and poo-poo Terry Nation's recycling of plot, the audience would have not noticed this and just seen an action story with Daleks.
What's more, even with the retread of plot elements, the pace of the story is quite different with the more action oriented Third Doctor as opposed to the plotting and cautious First Doctor. You could make an argument that Taron is a morph of the First Doctor and the Thal leader Alydon which puts the Third Doctor into what was the Ian role, although he doesn't need to trick the Thals into fighting. But there is no trickery regarding the fluid link or any other hokeyness to get the plot moving. The Daleks have invaded and are a threat so the Thals and the Doctor take up the role to defeat them, thus borrowing more from Terry Nation's planned series involving the Space Security Service. I could see how the borrowing could get annoying, especially as Nation did it before, but the combination of the tone shift and the long break didn't bother me unless it hit a sour note regarding some other plot point.
One of the things that helps this story immensely is the quality of the acting. Everyone did well, even the famously overacting Prentis Hancock as Vaber did well and it kept me engaged. The Doctor was his usual intellectual and action-oriented self. One of the nice things about dealing with Daleks is that the Third Doctor can't default to his martial arts tricks and actually has to think of a way to defeat the Daleks. If there is a significant flaw to the Third Doctor overall, it is that he sometimes goes a little too James Bond and loses some of the intellectual advantage he has over his enemies. He also has a nice rapport with Jo in this story. There are a few stories where the Doctor is overly dismissive of Jo to the point of rudeness, but here he is much more in the role of a fatherly friend who also trusts her to get things done. At one point he does try to chastise her but is quickly rebuked when he learns that he didn't give her any instructions. He even goes so far as to apologize for this action which is almost unheard of in the interactions between the Doctor and Jo.
Jo herself does pretty well in this story. Long gone are the days of her being the klutzy damsel in distress. Instead, she is as much a person of action as the Doctor. When she infiltrates the Dalek base in Episode Two, you generally expect her to get caught. But instead, she avoids trouble, learns of part of the Dalek plan and manages to salvage a couple of bombs which drive much of the later plot. She stands up the Doctor as well, allowing her two more instances where she works against the Daleks without him supervising her. Given that she actually went the entire story without being caught by the Daleks as well puts her a notch above the Doctor in that score. Of course, Jo also has to turn the head of one of the men and gets another marriage proposal, which does feel a bit clichéd but it at least is not overplayed.
All the Thals were pretty good, although I thought Taron did especially well. He had the air of a reluctant leader yet a man determined to see the job done. I think it would have been very easy to go over-the-top in that role, but there was restraint in the performance and that gave it an extra edge of gravity. When he tells Rebec about how he feels for her, there is a genuine tenderness in his voice and you can feel that the two of them must have had a history of some kind just in the way they interact with each other. It is well done and gives the characters both depth and backstory that doesn't require clunky exposition. It also makes you care about the survival of those characters.
On the weaker end of things you had Latep and Vaber. Neither was bad, but they weren't as strong as the others. Vaber was doing the traditional hothead but to the point of just being stupid. It was overplayed enough that you knew he was going to die and it was only a question of when. Latep on the other hand was just a bit flat and much of that was probably due to lack of screen time. He was broadcasting his feelings for Jo almost from the moment they met so there was at least some believability in his proposition to her. But aside from that, there was almost nothing else in how he acted to draw a person's attention. Not bad, but just kind of there.
The Spirodonians were a bit lame as far as the native collaborators go. Invisibility is a bit of a cheap trick to allow the designers a break so they don't have to create another alien. However, the invisibility should be used for something. Yes we are told that the Daleks are attempting to create invisibility for themselves, but it's never really used. It's more the McGuffin that gets everyone to Spirondon. If there had been a scene or two of a Dalek patrol becoming visible or we saw more use of the invisibility, I could have respected that choice. But as is, it didn't do much for me.
The Daleks themselves were okay but they did veer on to the silly side at times. It took some effort, but two Daleks were shoved into the ice pond by the Doctor and his companions. We also had the obligatory get away by obstructing the eyestalk of a Dalek, complete with it ranting that it's vision is impaired. In many ways, the Daleks aren't shown much as they are a more simple threat that does not need to be developed. They are the bad guys with guns and an army and must be stopped. Any further development is not particularly necessary. It's not bad again, but it is pretty simple.
The direction in this is pretty good. The jungle set is also pretty good and the director does a good job of convincing you that the jungle is real as are the base sets. I think he also did a good job of establishing tension where you might not have otherwise felt it. There are several scenes that could have been overly silly or ineffective but because of how they were shot, they came across as having real drama and I think all credit there should go to the director.
I think one's overall opinion of this story is going to depend on how they go into it. If you're expecting a full follow-on to Frontier in Space, you will be disappointed. Likewise, if you are expecting a deeper story, you will again be disappointed. This story is a basic adventure, much like Terry Nation wrote in the 60's. As far as that adventure goes, it does a decent job, I think. I appreciate good thinking stories or stories with darker edges, but I also don't have a problem with a good run around either.
That being said, it is also not a story that you are going to rush back for a repeat viewing. It entertains you well enough but it's also flash in the pan. It's easily a story that you could have in the background while doing something else. Sometimes you want that and the first time around it is pretty engaging. I'm not going to punish a story for being shallow, especially if is entertaining that first time around as many stories fail even in that regard. But I'm also not going to bestow high praise on it and say that it's a great story. It is serviceable and reasonably entertaining and sometimes that's good enough.
Overall personal score: 3 out of 5
Planet of the Daleks is the follow-on to Frontier in Space. It also is the return of Terry Nation after eight years away (The Dalek's Master Plan). I know this story is generally poo-pooed by fans generally as it completely ignores the prior story to which it is supposed to be working in conjunction with. I've also heard that it's been given the nickname of Terry Nation's Greatest Hits so we can expect the Terry Nation trope-meter to be buzzing. As such, expectations for this story are not overly high.
Plot Summary
Picking up from the end of Frontier in Space, Jo helps the Doctor back into the TARDIS where he sends a mental message to the Time Lords just before collapsing. Jo gets him on to a bed to rest and he gives her an audio recording device before he passes into a healing coma. Jo records her observations and the TARDIS lands on the planet Spirodon. The Doctor's temperature drops below freezing and his hearts slow considerably. Jo decides to leave the TARDIS to find help, emerging in a thick jungle.
As Jo walks, both she and the TARDIS are sprayed with the sap of a native flower. Jo continues to walk until she discovers another spacecraft. She enters it to find the pilot dead. However, two of the surviving crew return from a patrol and ask her who she is. She tells them about the Doctor and how she had come looking for help. A third crewman enters talking about a patrol and the leader, Taron, orders Jo to hide in a storage room while the three of them go to help the Doctor.
The three crewmen find the TARDIS covered in fungus. They don protective gear and strip it off, allowing the doors to open. The Doctor had woken earlier but noticed that the emergency oxygen had triggered. Unable to open the doors due to the fungus, the atmosphere of the TARDIS was running out of air and the Doctor was starting to suffocate. Free now, the Doctor notices that his three rescuers are Thals. He identifies himself as the Doctor, the same man from their legends about their great war with the Daleks.
Back on the Thal ship, Jo hides as an invisible creature comes aboard and looks around. It rattles the handle of the closet Jo is hiding in, but doesn't push it when finding the door locked. It departs and Jo relaxes. However, she notices that a fungus has begun growing on her hand. She begins to feel ill and passes out, the fungus growing up her arm.
The Doctor comes with the Thals back to their ship and offers to help them in any way. As they return, they discover another invisible creature, not a native Spirodonian but instead a concealed Dalek. The Dalek is inoperative and the scientist Codal wants to open it but the Doctor warns him that the Dalek's emergency signaling mechanism might still work and that would call in more Daleks. Instead, they make their way back towards the ship, the Thals informing the Doctor that the Daleks are attempting to copy the invisibility techniques of the natives.
Jo comes to on the ship and logs that a fungus is growing on her arm, rendering it numb. She attempts to leave the ship but stumbles, too weak to walk and dropping the recorder. She sees movement and crawls back into the ship where she passes out for a second time, now exposed to the invisible creature.
As they proceed through the jungle, the third Thal, Vaber, becomes increasingly agitated about not fighting the Daleks directly. A patrol of Daleks is spotted and the group tries to go around but they run into a group of Spirodonians. Codal runs into the jungle to draw them off. They catch up to him and knock him out. The other three make their way to the ship just as two Daleks discover it. The Doctor, believing Jo to still be inside, begs them to leave it be. The Daleks stun him and then destroy the ship.
The Daleks take the Doctor back to their base where he discovers Codal, who was captured by the Dalek patrol after being knocked out. The two men work together in their cell, deciding to attack the Daleks when they open the cell door to try and escape.
Jo wakes in a nearby cave, having been pulled out of the ship earlier by a Spirodonian named Wester. He applies a balm that kills the fungus on her arm. He then tells her of the Dalek invasion and the capture of the Doctor and one of Thals by the Daleks.
Taron and Vaber recover some of the explosives from the wrecked ship with Vaber wanting to go in guns blazing to take out the Daleks. Taron overrules him and Vaber nearly shoots him trying to take the explosives. They are distracted by a crashing spacecraft. Investigating, they discover it's a second Thal ship. The commander, a woman named Rebec, informs them that the Thals intercepted a transmission indicating that there are not the dozen Daleks they thought were here but nearly ten thousand. The help the other two Thals out of the wreckage and head towards the Dalek base.
Jo and Wester also head to the Dalek base. She sees cloaked figures entering and Wester explains that those are his people but with cloaks on to protect them from the cold of the base, which is built into an ice volcano. Jo hops inside one of the baskets being carried and sneaks inside the base to look for the Doctor, leaving Wester to watch from outside.
Outside the base, Taron, Rebek and another Thal named Marat decide to sneak into the ice ducts to try and set up interior explosives. Vaber and the remaining Thal, Latep, plant additional explosives on the exterior of the mountain. The three Thals crawl down the passages, aware that from the surges of cold, an eruption of ice is due soon. It soon becomes a race to get into the base before the eruption catches them.
In the cell, the Doctor and Codal perfect a small device that will disable a Dalek up close. When a Dalek comes to take them for interrogation, they jump it and the Doctor plants his device. The Dalek loses control and then shuts down, though it's thrashing destroyed the Doctor device. The Doctor and Codal are spotted in the corridors and the Daleks chase them down, herding them toward the lowest level of the base.
On the lowest level, the Doctor and Codal find Taron and his team in the ducts and help them out. They get them out just before the Daleks can seal off the vents. Their jamming the doors buys them additional time as the ice explosion covers the Dalek patrol pursuing the Doctor and Codal, freezing them for a short time. Additional patrols arrive though and the group is forced to take refuge in a control room. Marat refuses and engages the Daleks in the corridor where he is gunned down by the Daleks. The Daleks also discover a plan on Marat's body of the locations of the explosive plants and move to remove those.
In the base, Jo switches on the communications and overhears how the prisoners have been herded to the lowest levels and how a Dalek patrol is heading out to remove the explosives. With no way to get down to the lower parts of the base, Jo shadows the Dalek patrol going after the explosives back out of the base.
In the control room, the Doctor buys a small amount of time by sealing the doors, though the Daleks begin to cut their way through. The group discovers a shaft channeling warm air out and a heavy duty cooling unit nearby. The Doctor activates the cooling unit and the group ties together several pieces of plastic sheeting under the hot air shaft. As they do so, the Doctor notices through a window that there are thousands of Daleks assembled and waiting. As the Daleks begin to break through the door, the temperature contrast begins to pull on the plastic sheeting and pulls the group of four up the shaft.
Jo follows the Daleks outside the city and to the location of the explosives. The Daleks rig the explosives to detonate early and then leave. Jo deactivates two of them but a small avalanche briefly knocks her out before she can disarm the third one. She comes two, grabs the two she defused and runs off as the remaining explosives explode.
After cutting through the door, the Daleks realize the prisoners have gone up the shaft. They bring in an antigravity plate and send a Dalek up the shaft after them. As the balloon reaches the top, one corner tears and the Doctor is forced to leap off and hold on to a ledge. The other three reach the top and hoist the Doctor up on a rope. They then roll a small boulder in, smashing the Dalek and knocking it back to the bottom of the shaft.
Moving away, the party walks past Jo's hiding spot where she is delighted to find them. As she and the Doctor catch up, Vaber and Latep find them after being forced to scatter to avoid Dalek patrols. Jo informs them of her rescue of some of the explosives and the group decides to head to a plain of stones which trap the heat of the day for the night as the nights on Spirodon are frigid.
Once at the plain, they make camp but Vaber still wants to attack the Daleks directly. They figure that they can use the explosives to destroy the refrigeration unit at the bottom of the shaft and that will cause such massive overheating as to destroy the Daleks. Vaber wants to set off at once but Taron insists on waiting until morning so they can formulate a plan. Vaber attacks him but is restrained by the others. Once the rest fall asleep, he steals the explosives and runs to the shaft to destroy the unit.
In the base, the Daleks plan to release a bacterial agent that will destroy all non-inoculated life on the surface of the planet. They send out the Spirodonian slaves to scour the area and send everyone in for inoculation. One group of Spirodonians discovers Vaber and captures him. Taron and Codal go after him with the Doctor warning to not let the refrigeration unit be destroyed as it would awaken the Dalek army he saw earlier.
Taron and Codal knock out two Spirodonians and disguise themselves in their cloaks. Varon is taken to a Dalek who interrogates him about the others. He offers to lead the Daleks to them but tries to run as soon as he is let go. The Daleks shoot him down. In the confusion, Taron and Codal seize the explosives from another Spirodonian and run back to camp with the Dalek patrol pursuing them.
Back at the camp, Wester arrives and tells Jo about the bacteria to be released. He intends to sneak into the base and try and stop it. The Doctor and Jo promise to assist later. As he leaves, Taron and Codal return, warning of the pursuing patrol. The Doctor sends Latep and Jo to distract the Daleks for a short time before leading them back to the camp. They do so and the Daleks arrives a few minutes later at the plain. The Doctor lures one Dalek to the shore of a small lake where the water is liquid but perpetually around freezing. He and Taron leap from hiding and push the surprised Dalek into the water. The other Thals and Jo do the same with the second Dalek when it arrives and the shock of the cold kills both Daleks. The Doctor then has the Thals pull out the mutants and clear space for Rebec to get inside one of the Dalek casings.
Wester arrives at the base as the Daleks and the Spirodonians are receiving immunity from the bacterial mass. He pretends to have a message for the Dalek commander who is in with the mass. He is ordered to wait until the commander is no longer busy.
At the same time, Rebec enters the base disguised as a Dalek with Taron, Codal and the Doctor disguised as Spirodonians. Latep and Jo have gone on to the vent shafts to enter in that way, with both sides instructed to blow up the tunnels and seal the Daleks in the base. The Doctor's group gets to just outside the storage facility when Wester leaps up and rips open the case with the bacterial mass. The infection flows outward, killing Wester. The two Daleks are safe as they had been immunized earlier but they cannot risk unsealing the door as most of the Daleks had not yet been immunized and opening the door would destroy the army.
The Doctor's group tries to get to the lower level but another Dalek orders them to proceed to another level with the rest of the Spirodonians. However, the Dalek also spots that their feet are visible and sounds the alarm, aware they are not Spirodonians. They throw off their disguises on the Dalek and run away, eventually making their way to the lowest level. They set up a barricade against the Daleks and look to see how they can deal with the Dalek army.
Outside, as Jo and Latep head towards the heat shaft, they see a Dalek spaceship arrive and a Supreme Dalek disembark. The Supreme Dalek unseals the door with the trapped Dalek commander, the infection having gone inert. Displeased with his failure, the Dalek Supreme kills the commander and orders both that the army be revived and that the Doctor be taken alive, having been recognized by the Dalek leadership.
Jo and Latep get to the shaft and begin to rappel down. Jo had remarked earlier that the Thals could steal the Dalek spaceship to return home but Latep tries not the think of that as the idea that this had been a suicide mission gave the Thals focus. They arrive at the bottom level to see a group of Daleks about to punch through the barrier the Doctor's group had erected. Latep hurls his bomb at them and destroys the entire group.
Jo and Latep meet up with the Doctor and the other Thals as the Doctor and Codal are setting up the other bomb in a weak section of the cave wall. They had noticed that the refrigeration unit had been deactivated and that the Daleks were waking up, although they were still highly disoriented. Codal sets the timer as Taron returns, having found a catwalk that would take them back to the surface. The explosives go off, destroying two more Daleks pursuing them.
The cave wall buckles for a moment and then collapses in a wave of supercooled water. The water rushes in to the lower level and covers the reviving Dalek army where it begins to freeze in a solid block of ice. The explosion also creates fissures throughout the base, causing supercooled water to seep into other levels. The Dalek Supreme attempts to contact others but finds he and his escort are all that remains. He orders the evacuation of the base as other levels begin to flood and collapse.
Emerging on the surface, Jo points out the Dalek ship and Codal takes control of it. The Doctor wishes Taron well but implores him to tell the whole story of their adventure so as to not make war so glamorous. Latep asks Jo to return to Skaro with him but Jo kindly declines. The Thals then take off, leaving the Daleks stranded.
The Dalek Supreme spies the Doctor and he and his escort chase them back to the TARDIS. They take off just before the Daleks overtake them. With the Doctor gone, the Dalek Supreme orders they signal for a rescue ship and workers to begin pulling the army out of the ice. On the TARDIS, the Doctor offers to take Jo wherever she would like, but she asks to just head home.
Analysis
I think one's appreciation of this story is going to depend entirely on how they come in to it. If you come in expecting it to be a continuation of the story line from Frontier in Space, you are going to be disappointed and probably frustrated by the whole thing. But if you come into it as just another Terry Nation Dalek story, it's actually not bad. It is impossible to treat the story as a complete standalone as it opens with a wounded Doctor recovering from the Master's attack and Jo and the Doctor's catch-up in Episode Four reference back to the Dalek involvement in stirring up a war between the humans and Draconians. But those are fairly easy to gloss over and don't impact the overall plot in any significant way.
There is one other elephant in the room to address with this story and that is that it's well deserved moniker of Terry Nation's Greatest Hits. Unquestionably, there is almost no salient plot point or element that has not been harvested from another story. The primary story as a whole is a rehash of The Daleks with a heavy dose of Mission to the Unknown thrown in for good measure. There are also a couple of grabs from The Dalek Invasion of Earth thrown in for good measure. However, it is important to remember that this is Terry Nation's first story in almost eight years. The odds that any of the viewing audience would have seen or remembered much of any of these three stories is pretty remote, even with the 1965 movie to reinforce the plot. As such, though we see all the tropes and poo-poo Terry Nation's recycling of plot, the audience would have not noticed this and just seen an action story with Daleks.
What's more, even with the retread of plot elements, the pace of the story is quite different with the more action oriented Third Doctor as opposed to the plotting and cautious First Doctor. You could make an argument that Taron is a morph of the First Doctor and the Thal leader Alydon which puts the Third Doctor into what was the Ian role, although he doesn't need to trick the Thals into fighting. But there is no trickery regarding the fluid link or any other hokeyness to get the plot moving. The Daleks have invaded and are a threat so the Thals and the Doctor take up the role to defeat them, thus borrowing more from Terry Nation's planned series involving the Space Security Service. I could see how the borrowing could get annoying, especially as Nation did it before, but the combination of the tone shift and the long break didn't bother me unless it hit a sour note regarding some other plot point.
One of the things that helps this story immensely is the quality of the acting. Everyone did well, even the famously overacting Prentis Hancock as Vaber did well and it kept me engaged. The Doctor was his usual intellectual and action-oriented self. One of the nice things about dealing with Daleks is that the Third Doctor can't default to his martial arts tricks and actually has to think of a way to defeat the Daleks. If there is a significant flaw to the Third Doctor overall, it is that he sometimes goes a little too James Bond and loses some of the intellectual advantage he has over his enemies. He also has a nice rapport with Jo in this story. There are a few stories where the Doctor is overly dismissive of Jo to the point of rudeness, but here he is much more in the role of a fatherly friend who also trusts her to get things done. At one point he does try to chastise her but is quickly rebuked when he learns that he didn't give her any instructions. He even goes so far as to apologize for this action which is almost unheard of in the interactions between the Doctor and Jo.
Jo herself does pretty well in this story. Long gone are the days of her being the klutzy damsel in distress. Instead, she is as much a person of action as the Doctor. When she infiltrates the Dalek base in Episode Two, you generally expect her to get caught. But instead, she avoids trouble, learns of part of the Dalek plan and manages to salvage a couple of bombs which drive much of the later plot. She stands up the Doctor as well, allowing her two more instances where she works against the Daleks without him supervising her. Given that she actually went the entire story without being caught by the Daleks as well puts her a notch above the Doctor in that score. Of course, Jo also has to turn the head of one of the men and gets another marriage proposal, which does feel a bit clichéd but it at least is not overplayed.
All the Thals were pretty good, although I thought Taron did especially well. He had the air of a reluctant leader yet a man determined to see the job done. I think it would have been very easy to go over-the-top in that role, but there was restraint in the performance and that gave it an extra edge of gravity. When he tells Rebec about how he feels for her, there is a genuine tenderness in his voice and you can feel that the two of them must have had a history of some kind just in the way they interact with each other. It is well done and gives the characters both depth and backstory that doesn't require clunky exposition. It also makes you care about the survival of those characters.
On the weaker end of things you had Latep and Vaber. Neither was bad, but they weren't as strong as the others. Vaber was doing the traditional hothead but to the point of just being stupid. It was overplayed enough that you knew he was going to die and it was only a question of when. Latep on the other hand was just a bit flat and much of that was probably due to lack of screen time. He was broadcasting his feelings for Jo almost from the moment they met so there was at least some believability in his proposition to her. But aside from that, there was almost nothing else in how he acted to draw a person's attention. Not bad, but just kind of there.
The Spirodonians were a bit lame as far as the native collaborators go. Invisibility is a bit of a cheap trick to allow the designers a break so they don't have to create another alien. However, the invisibility should be used for something. Yes we are told that the Daleks are attempting to create invisibility for themselves, but it's never really used. It's more the McGuffin that gets everyone to Spirondon. If there had been a scene or two of a Dalek patrol becoming visible or we saw more use of the invisibility, I could have respected that choice. But as is, it didn't do much for me.
The Daleks themselves were okay but they did veer on to the silly side at times. It took some effort, but two Daleks were shoved into the ice pond by the Doctor and his companions. We also had the obligatory get away by obstructing the eyestalk of a Dalek, complete with it ranting that it's vision is impaired. In many ways, the Daleks aren't shown much as they are a more simple threat that does not need to be developed. They are the bad guys with guns and an army and must be stopped. Any further development is not particularly necessary. It's not bad again, but it is pretty simple.
The direction in this is pretty good. The jungle set is also pretty good and the director does a good job of convincing you that the jungle is real as are the base sets. I think he also did a good job of establishing tension where you might not have otherwise felt it. There are several scenes that could have been overly silly or ineffective but because of how they were shot, they came across as having real drama and I think all credit there should go to the director.
I think one's overall opinion of this story is going to depend on how they go into it. If you're expecting a full follow-on to Frontier in Space, you will be disappointed. Likewise, if you are expecting a deeper story, you will again be disappointed. This story is a basic adventure, much like Terry Nation wrote in the 60's. As far as that adventure goes, it does a decent job, I think. I appreciate good thinking stories or stories with darker edges, but I also don't have a problem with a good run around either.
That being said, it is also not a story that you are going to rush back for a repeat viewing. It entertains you well enough but it's also flash in the pan. It's easily a story that you could have in the background while doing something else. Sometimes you want that and the first time around it is pretty engaging. I'm not going to punish a story for being shallow, especially if is entertaining that first time around as many stories fail even in that regard. But I'm also not going to bestow high praise on it and say that it's a great story. It is serviceable and reasonably entertaining and sometimes that's good enough.
Overall personal score: 3 out of 5
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Battlefield
Destroyer: Pitiful. Can this world do no better than you as a champion?
Brigadier: Probably. I just do the best I can
Battlefield is the Doctor Who take on the King Arthur legend. I've not heard much about it other than it is generally considered the weakest of four stories that make up Season 26, even by those that despise Ghost Light. I also know that there was an issue with production where this story was expanded from it's intended three episodes to four which has rather baffled people as again, Ghost Light would have benefited from expansion probably more than this story.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Ace receive a distress call in the TARDIS and materialize on Earth a few years beyond when Ace left. They hitch a ride from an archeologist named Peter Warmsly, who is following a UNIT truck on his way to his dig site. At the dig site, from the Arthurian period, the Doctor finds a UNIT nuclear missile convoy with the new commander, Brigadier Winifred Bambera. Brigadier Bambera is dismissive of the Doctor, but is informed by her sergeant of the Doctor's status as UNIT's scientific adviser.
Bambera drives the Doctor and Ace to a local inn where Ace strikes up with a local named Shou Yuing, who shares her interest in explosives. The Doctor meanwhile examines a scabbard unearthed by Warmsly and hung on the wall. The wife of the proprietor, Mrs. Rawlinson, warns the Doctor that something is off about the scabbard. She is blind, but she can sense power from it. The Doctor notes that it feels hot to the touch and agrees with her.
Bambera drives back but stops on seeing the TARDIS, having been warned to be on the lookout for it. While examining it, she is caught in a firefight between an armored knight and his three armored pursuers. Both are using swords and laser weapons. Bambera shoots back but her gun has no effect. The lone knight retreats but one of them throws a grenade and launches him through the air and into the brewery building next to the inn.
Hearing the crash, the Doctor, Ace and Shou Yuing go to investigate. The find the knight alive, though knocked out briefly. The knight is Ancelyn and he recognizes the Doctor as Merlin, though with a different face. Bambera arrives and tries to arrest the lot but she is interrupted by the other knights. Their leader is Mordred who aims to kill them. However upon seeing the Doctor, whom he also recognizes as Merlin, he retreats, preferring to leave him to his mother Morgaine.
Mordred retreats to a sanctum established in a local castle and uses the power of his sword to open a porthole for his mother to pass through. She arrives during the night while the Doctor's group is hunkered down at the inn. The scabbard leaps off it's mounting and imbeds itself in a post, pulled toward the dig site.
During all this, retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is at his home with his wife Doris. He receives a call from Geneva and dismisses them at first but changes his mind when he hears the Doctor has come back. He is picked up via helicopter and flown to London to be briefed. He and Lt. Lavel then fly north to the site of the action. His helicopter is observed by Morgaine and she brings it down with a surge of power from her hand. The Brigadier and Lavel survive the crash but Lavel is injured. The Brigadier heads to town to get help.
In town he is confronted by Morgaine but she does not attack, seeing a fellow warrior. She had ordered her forces to stand down as they had arrived on a memorial to the World War I and II dead and sheading blood on a memorial for soldiers would be seen as dishonorable. She warns the Brigadier that she will kill him the next time they meet on the field of battle. The Brigadier continues and commandeers the car of Shou Yuing, forcing her into the passenger seat.
The Doctor and Ace return to the dig site with Warmsly where they uncover a stone with the Doctor's writing. He orders Ace to create a hole and she detonates an explosive there, revealing a concrete passage nearly 1300 years old. They enter the passage and then a buried spaceship. The Doctor triggers a door using his voice pattern, figuring that a future version of himself must have set all this in place.
They enter the chamber where a knight in suspended animation is slumped over an alter with a sword buried in it. Ace accidentally pulls the sword out, trigging a defensive system that attacks them. Ace runs back into a cubby which seals behind her and begins to fill with water. The Doctor triggers a button on a console which opens a hatch and shoots Ace to the surface like a torpedo where she swims to shore, gathered up by Warmsley and Ancelyn.
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart arrives and upon hearing Ace's story, runs into the tunnel. He takes the control from the stunned Doctor and deactivates the security system. The two return to the surface and gather the whole party in two cars to head back to the inn. Most pile in the UNIT car but Brigadier Bambera and Ancelyn take Shou Yuing's car with Bambera a bit put out at Letbrigde-Stewart having taken over command.
Mordred arrives at the inn where he is confronted by Lieutenant Lavel. Morgaine also arrives and probes Lavel's mind, learning of the Brigadier's plans and arrival. She then kills Lavel, turning her body to ash. However, she also pays for the pint Mordred drank by restoring sight to Mrs. Rawlinson. Morgaine orders Mordred to lead the men to attack the UNIT forces while she goes after the Doctor and Excalibur.
Mordred's men ambush the two cars returning to the inn but Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's gets through. Brigadier Bambera and Ancelyn are run off the road and are forced to run back to the lake to regroup with other UNIT soldiers.
The other car arrives at the inn where another group of UNIT soldiers is unloading specially designed munitions for alien invaders. The Doctor puts in an order for silver bullets and then hypnotizes the Rawlinsons and Warmsley into evacuating. He leaves Excalibur with Ace and Shou Yuing and orders Ace that if things go funny to draw a circle with a piece of chalk he gives her and stay inside it.
The Doctor and the Brigadier drive back to the lake to see UNIT and Mordred's men engaged in combat. He runs in to stop the fighting but Mordred laughs at him, noting that this is just a feint. The Doctor realizes that the real attack is now against Ace.
Ace and Shou Yuing stay in the circle as darkness envelops the inn, though light remains in the circle. The two girls start fighting as they think they hear the other one insult them but they realize they are being tricked. Finally Morgaine herself appears with a demon called The Destroyer to recover Excalibur. However, she cannot penetrate the chalk circle. The Destroyer can but Morgaine refuses to unbind his silver chains to unleash his full power.
The Doctor calls out to Morgaine, threatening to kill Mordred but she dismisses him as bluffing. However, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart steps up, prepared to shoot Mordred and Morgaine knows he is not bluffing. She abandons Mordred and the Doctor and the Brigadier stuff him into Bessie and drive back to the inn. The Destroyer breaches the circle and he and Morgaine head back to the castle with Excalibur, destroying part of the inn in the process.
The Doctor and the Brigadier arrive with the real Excalibur to find Ace and Shou Yuing partially buried in the ruins but ok. They also notice the gateway used by Morgaine and the Destroyer is still open, being held open by the Destroyer. The Doctor and the Brigadier hurry through it. Ace follows a few moments later with two boxes of silver bullets. Mordred slips away from Bessie and runs back to the castle on foot.
In the castle, Morgaine uses Excalibur to try and reopen the portal to their own world. The Doctor, the Brigadier and Ace arrive to confront her. Threatened, Morgaine orders her men to attack UNIT and finally unbinds the Destroyer's chains, catching the Doctor off guard. Mordred reappears, catching his mother off guard as well. He is put out at her abandonment of him but the two vanish away from the castle as the Doctor steals Excalibur back from her.
The three retreat from the castle with the Doctor telling them that silver bullets are the only way to stop the Destroyer. He loads the Brigadier's gun with the bullets and prepares to go back in. However, the Brigadier knocks him out and takes the gun in himself. He confronts the Destroyer, shooting him and running as the demon explodes. The Doctor comes to as the castle explodes. He finds the Brigadier just outside the ruins of the castle, dirty and bloodied but alive. The three then head to the lake to stop Morgaine.
UNIT successfully defeats Morgaine's troops but Brigadier Bambera is captured by Mordred and taken to Morgaine, who probes her mind to discover how to activate the missile. The Doctor, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Ace return Excalibur to the ship and find that Arthur is actually dead, having died in battle 1,000 years ago. The Doctor finds a note left by his future self, warning of the armed missile and heads off to find Morgaine. Ace and the Brigadier are left with orders to destroy the ship, which Ace does with relish.
The Doctor finds Morgaine and confronts her with the reality that nuclear destruction is death without honor. She relents and deactivates the missile but demands to face Arthur in combat again. He reveals that Arthur died and she wilts with a lack of purpose, her thirst for revenge unfulfilled. He has Morgaine arrested, along with Mordred, whom he disarms just prior to killing Anselyn in single combat.
Victorious, the whole group returns to the Brigadier's estate where the ladies all take Bessie for a day in town, leaving the Brigadier, the Doctor and Anselyn to work the garden and prepare dinner.
Analysis
Battlefield is a story that probably had a significant amount of potential when it was first written, but the background folks let it down. It was padded which bloats the story and the acting took a hard turn into the scenery chewing vein and not in a good way.
The more stories I've seen, the more I like the Seventh Doctor and this story is no exception. The Doctor adapts rather well to the conditions shown him and unlike the other stories of this season where he is a bit too much in control, there is enough wrong-footedness to make his performance that much stronger. Being forced to adapt to things you haven't done yet puts the Doctor in the unique position of having to figure things out on the fly. Of course, it also gives an extra sense of boldness since the Doctor knows that he must survive in order to be Merlin in the future and set things in motion for his past self. But it still works.
It was nice to see the Brigadier again. I thought he did very well and in Episode Four he took Ace's position away as primary companion, to the point that he made a little joke of it. I liked the Brig in this one, especially as he fully gave way to the Doctor and was prepared for just about anything. I also appreciated his candor about the situation, knocking the Doctor out because he felt he was more expendable than the Doctor. In early drafts of the script, the Brigadier was supposed to die in the confrontation with the Destroyer. I'm glad he didn't but if that had been kept, it would have been a noble and fitting end for him.
I was a little disappointed by Ace in this story. Part of that comes from a sense of Sophie Aldred trying a bit too hard with the teenager bit in her scenes with Shou Yuing. Her nature works well in contrast with the Doctor and the Brigadier because she is so much younger than they are and the naivety plays more naturally. When she is with peers or even other people, it starts coming across that she is older than what she is trying to play and there is a sense of wrongness about it. It's not terrible, but it just rubs wrong during the story.
Where this story really starts to fall apart though is in the guest cast. Most of the ancillary characters are middling at best in their acting. A couple stand out as being a little better here and there but most aren't great. The three that really disappoint though are Brigadier Bambera, Mordred and Morgaine. Bambera is supposed to be this "tough as nails" sort of commander, but she comes across as more of a jerk than anything else. It's hard to imagine anyone with more of a "shoot first and ask questions later" person than Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, but there she is. However, this does not enhance her character but instead makes her into a dumb hothead. She doesn't know the Doctor and constantly gets her foot into it. She is further diminished by playing up a comedy role for her as the object of Ancelyn's affection which is so cliché that it just doesn't work very well.
I didn't expect much out of Mordred so his turns to camp were not overly surprising, though no less painful. His scenery chewing, especially with Ancelyn made me just long for the Brigadier to pull the trigger on him when he is cornered at the beginning of Episode Four. But despite that, Morgaine was actually worse for me. I think this is due to the fact that Jean Marsh is a good actress and she has been shown to play her roles well, even in other Doctor Who stories. Here, she is incredibly over-the-top and scenery chewing and it goes to the point of being almost community theater level of portraying the bad guy.
While I was watching her performance, I found myself wondering why her performance was so painful to watch when Anthony Ainley's performances as the Master were probably just as campy but enjoyable. My speculation is that Ainley knew when to pull it back when he had to for dramatic purposes and that his camp was always layered in a sense of fun that the Master would have. Whatever the circumstances, the Master was enjoying himself and the whole plot was just a game. Here, Morgaine is set out with a mission to find and recover Excalibur and then defeat Arthur. There is nothing fun in that so her decent into camp feels exactly like an actor doing a bad job rather than playing up the mustache twirly-ness for comedic effect. I wouldn't have thought it bad, but it just didn't work for me.
As interesting as the idea was, there were also some problems with the writing. Some of this came to stringing out of the plot, which added scenes and expanded the scope, but that expansion also created extra threads which just left things dangling.
I genuinely did not understand what the whole bit with the nuclear missile had to do with anything. That was never made a focus of Morgaine's at any point. Her goal was always to recover Excalibur and then battle Arthur. Fleeing before the released Destroyer was one thing but the idea of setting off the nuclear missile out of effectively spite, only to be talked down because of a lack of honor in such a killing was just dumb. Had she taken over the missile and threatened to use it unless Arthur came to challenge her and then have her face the reality of Arthur's death would have played much better. It would have put the focus on her revenge rather than another anti-nuclear bit that was very common in the 80's.
In many ways, the inclusion of the Destroyer himself is rather pointless. He is introduced midway in Episode Three and then dispatched early in Episode Four. There is a lot of build up towards with the silver bullets but it's a bit too much for a simple dragon and it took the focus off Morgaine and she should have stayed the focus in my opinion. It feels like another instance of putting a monster in Doctor Who simply so there will be a monster.
One of the few good scenes that came out of the need to pad this story out to four episodes is a reunification between Nicholas Courtney and Jean Marsh. Jean Marsh made her Doctor Who debut in The Crusade but they were both featured prominently in Nicholas Courtney's first appearance in The Daleks' Master Plan where Jean Marsh's Sarah Kingdom shot and killed Nicholas Courtney's Bret Vyon. The characters show a great deal of respect for each other and you can't help but think that very little acting is actually going on as it is two distinguished actors giving each other respect. As an overall scene, it is completely pointless and puts a rather odd bit of honor in what is otherwise rather ruthless killing, but I still enjoyed seeing the two of them share the screen together.
Another thought that came to me while I was watching was how the story should have been tightened further in regard to the Brigadier. I'm not well versed in the Arthurian legend about his return, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that the Brigadier was playing the role of Arthur. He had retired to his own Avalon with Doris but is summoned back by Merlin (the Doctor). He leads his forces to victory over Morgaine and her dragon and in early drafts of the story, the Brigadier actually died which would have further played into the legend, given Arthur's own death against Mordred's forces. You even have the nice tie in with the actors having played brother and sister in a previous story. But it felt like the Arthurian bits got dropped by Episode Four, and it just didn't quite work after that. You had a tiny little revival when Morgaine effectively gives up after learning of Arthur's death (much like the legend) but since so little focus had been given on that part of Morgaine's desire, it didn't really go anywhere.
That little point also speaks to a larger problem with the ending. Mordred is disarmed and captured. Fine, that works. But Morgaine also gives up and yet she still has all her technology/magical powers that she had before. Are we to assume that she is going to meekly submit to spending the next few years sitting in a British prison and will be released at some future point? That makes absolutely no sense. If the story didn't want to kill the antagonists, fine. I can deal with that. But the Doctor should have arranged to have them detained in their own dimension or exiled to some other world as a prison there. These are not conventional criminals that you just toss in a cell. It's another aspect of the odd pacing that came about by the expansion.
I rather wonder if in the original story, Morgaine is killed or mortally wounded by the Destroyer and calls for Arthur to finish her off after the Brigadier defeats him. There the Doctor would have stood over her and told her that Arthur was dead and that her revenge was pointless. I would have been a bit of the dark Doctor showing up and fully closing Morgaine's story rather than just letting it dangle at the end.
The production values of this story aren't bad for the 80's. It is fairly well directed and there is some nice camera work. There are a number of visual effects which do look very fake, even for the time. In fact, just about everything the Destroyer does looks quite bad. Despite the fact that the Destroyer himself actually looks really good. I'm going to fault the times and the budget more than anything and compared to the other problems of this story, it's a minor thing.
This is a story that I can honestly say I wished I liked more. There is potential here both in plotline and the talent available. But it just turned into a steaming pile. There are too many groaner moments to outweigh the good moments, especially between the Doctor and the Brigadier. There are far better Seventh Doctor stories and I think the final ride of the Brigadier is the only reason to give this one a second time around.
Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5
Brigadier: Probably. I just do the best I can
Battlefield is the Doctor Who take on the King Arthur legend. I've not heard much about it other than it is generally considered the weakest of four stories that make up Season 26, even by those that despise Ghost Light. I also know that there was an issue with production where this story was expanded from it's intended three episodes to four which has rather baffled people as again, Ghost Light would have benefited from expansion probably more than this story.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Ace receive a distress call in the TARDIS and materialize on Earth a few years beyond when Ace left. They hitch a ride from an archeologist named Peter Warmsly, who is following a UNIT truck on his way to his dig site. At the dig site, from the Arthurian period, the Doctor finds a UNIT nuclear missile convoy with the new commander, Brigadier Winifred Bambera. Brigadier Bambera is dismissive of the Doctor, but is informed by her sergeant of the Doctor's status as UNIT's scientific adviser.
Bambera drives the Doctor and Ace to a local inn where Ace strikes up with a local named Shou Yuing, who shares her interest in explosives. The Doctor meanwhile examines a scabbard unearthed by Warmsly and hung on the wall. The wife of the proprietor, Mrs. Rawlinson, warns the Doctor that something is off about the scabbard. She is blind, but she can sense power from it. The Doctor notes that it feels hot to the touch and agrees with her.
Bambera drives back but stops on seeing the TARDIS, having been warned to be on the lookout for it. While examining it, she is caught in a firefight between an armored knight and his three armored pursuers. Both are using swords and laser weapons. Bambera shoots back but her gun has no effect. The lone knight retreats but one of them throws a grenade and launches him through the air and into the brewery building next to the inn.
Hearing the crash, the Doctor, Ace and Shou Yuing go to investigate. The find the knight alive, though knocked out briefly. The knight is Ancelyn and he recognizes the Doctor as Merlin, though with a different face. Bambera arrives and tries to arrest the lot but she is interrupted by the other knights. Their leader is Mordred who aims to kill them. However upon seeing the Doctor, whom he also recognizes as Merlin, he retreats, preferring to leave him to his mother Morgaine.
Mordred retreats to a sanctum established in a local castle and uses the power of his sword to open a porthole for his mother to pass through. She arrives during the night while the Doctor's group is hunkered down at the inn. The scabbard leaps off it's mounting and imbeds itself in a post, pulled toward the dig site.
During all this, retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is at his home with his wife Doris. He receives a call from Geneva and dismisses them at first but changes his mind when he hears the Doctor has come back. He is picked up via helicopter and flown to London to be briefed. He and Lt. Lavel then fly north to the site of the action. His helicopter is observed by Morgaine and she brings it down with a surge of power from her hand. The Brigadier and Lavel survive the crash but Lavel is injured. The Brigadier heads to town to get help.
In town he is confronted by Morgaine but she does not attack, seeing a fellow warrior. She had ordered her forces to stand down as they had arrived on a memorial to the World War I and II dead and sheading blood on a memorial for soldiers would be seen as dishonorable. She warns the Brigadier that she will kill him the next time they meet on the field of battle. The Brigadier continues and commandeers the car of Shou Yuing, forcing her into the passenger seat.
The Doctor and Ace return to the dig site with Warmsly where they uncover a stone with the Doctor's writing. He orders Ace to create a hole and she detonates an explosive there, revealing a concrete passage nearly 1300 years old. They enter the passage and then a buried spaceship. The Doctor triggers a door using his voice pattern, figuring that a future version of himself must have set all this in place.
They enter the chamber where a knight in suspended animation is slumped over an alter with a sword buried in it. Ace accidentally pulls the sword out, trigging a defensive system that attacks them. Ace runs back into a cubby which seals behind her and begins to fill with water. The Doctor triggers a button on a console which opens a hatch and shoots Ace to the surface like a torpedo where she swims to shore, gathered up by Warmsley and Ancelyn.
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart arrives and upon hearing Ace's story, runs into the tunnel. He takes the control from the stunned Doctor and deactivates the security system. The two return to the surface and gather the whole party in two cars to head back to the inn. Most pile in the UNIT car but Brigadier Bambera and Ancelyn take Shou Yuing's car with Bambera a bit put out at Letbrigde-Stewart having taken over command.
Mordred arrives at the inn where he is confronted by Lieutenant Lavel. Morgaine also arrives and probes Lavel's mind, learning of the Brigadier's plans and arrival. She then kills Lavel, turning her body to ash. However, she also pays for the pint Mordred drank by restoring sight to Mrs. Rawlinson. Morgaine orders Mordred to lead the men to attack the UNIT forces while she goes after the Doctor and Excalibur.
Mordred's men ambush the two cars returning to the inn but Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's gets through. Brigadier Bambera and Ancelyn are run off the road and are forced to run back to the lake to regroup with other UNIT soldiers.
The other car arrives at the inn where another group of UNIT soldiers is unloading specially designed munitions for alien invaders. The Doctor puts in an order for silver bullets and then hypnotizes the Rawlinsons and Warmsley into evacuating. He leaves Excalibur with Ace and Shou Yuing and orders Ace that if things go funny to draw a circle with a piece of chalk he gives her and stay inside it.
The Doctor and the Brigadier drive back to the lake to see UNIT and Mordred's men engaged in combat. He runs in to stop the fighting but Mordred laughs at him, noting that this is just a feint. The Doctor realizes that the real attack is now against Ace.
Ace and Shou Yuing stay in the circle as darkness envelops the inn, though light remains in the circle. The two girls start fighting as they think they hear the other one insult them but they realize they are being tricked. Finally Morgaine herself appears with a demon called The Destroyer to recover Excalibur. However, she cannot penetrate the chalk circle. The Destroyer can but Morgaine refuses to unbind his silver chains to unleash his full power.
The Doctor calls out to Morgaine, threatening to kill Mordred but she dismisses him as bluffing. However, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart steps up, prepared to shoot Mordred and Morgaine knows he is not bluffing. She abandons Mordred and the Doctor and the Brigadier stuff him into Bessie and drive back to the inn. The Destroyer breaches the circle and he and Morgaine head back to the castle with Excalibur, destroying part of the inn in the process.
The Doctor and the Brigadier arrive with the real Excalibur to find Ace and Shou Yuing partially buried in the ruins but ok. They also notice the gateway used by Morgaine and the Destroyer is still open, being held open by the Destroyer. The Doctor and the Brigadier hurry through it. Ace follows a few moments later with two boxes of silver bullets. Mordred slips away from Bessie and runs back to the castle on foot.
In the castle, Morgaine uses Excalibur to try and reopen the portal to their own world. The Doctor, the Brigadier and Ace arrive to confront her. Threatened, Morgaine orders her men to attack UNIT and finally unbinds the Destroyer's chains, catching the Doctor off guard. Mordred reappears, catching his mother off guard as well. He is put out at her abandonment of him but the two vanish away from the castle as the Doctor steals Excalibur back from her.
The three retreat from the castle with the Doctor telling them that silver bullets are the only way to stop the Destroyer. He loads the Brigadier's gun with the bullets and prepares to go back in. However, the Brigadier knocks him out and takes the gun in himself. He confronts the Destroyer, shooting him and running as the demon explodes. The Doctor comes to as the castle explodes. He finds the Brigadier just outside the ruins of the castle, dirty and bloodied but alive. The three then head to the lake to stop Morgaine.
UNIT successfully defeats Morgaine's troops but Brigadier Bambera is captured by Mordred and taken to Morgaine, who probes her mind to discover how to activate the missile. The Doctor, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Ace return Excalibur to the ship and find that Arthur is actually dead, having died in battle 1,000 years ago. The Doctor finds a note left by his future self, warning of the armed missile and heads off to find Morgaine. Ace and the Brigadier are left with orders to destroy the ship, which Ace does with relish.
The Doctor finds Morgaine and confronts her with the reality that nuclear destruction is death without honor. She relents and deactivates the missile but demands to face Arthur in combat again. He reveals that Arthur died and she wilts with a lack of purpose, her thirst for revenge unfulfilled. He has Morgaine arrested, along with Mordred, whom he disarms just prior to killing Anselyn in single combat.
Victorious, the whole group returns to the Brigadier's estate where the ladies all take Bessie for a day in town, leaving the Brigadier, the Doctor and Anselyn to work the garden and prepare dinner.
Analysis
Battlefield is a story that probably had a significant amount of potential when it was first written, but the background folks let it down. It was padded which bloats the story and the acting took a hard turn into the scenery chewing vein and not in a good way.
The more stories I've seen, the more I like the Seventh Doctor and this story is no exception. The Doctor adapts rather well to the conditions shown him and unlike the other stories of this season where he is a bit too much in control, there is enough wrong-footedness to make his performance that much stronger. Being forced to adapt to things you haven't done yet puts the Doctor in the unique position of having to figure things out on the fly. Of course, it also gives an extra sense of boldness since the Doctor knows that he must survive in order to be Merlin in the future and set things in motion for his past self. But it still works.
It was nice to see the Brigadier again. I thought he did very well and in Episode Four he took Ace's position away as primary companion, to the point that he made a little joke of it. I liked the Brig in this one, especially as he fully gave way to the Doctor and was prepared for just about anything. I also appreciated his candor about the situation, knocking the Doctor out because he felt he was more expendable than the Doctor. In early drafts of the script, the Brigadier was supposed to die in the confrontation with the Destroyer. I'm glad he didn't but if that had been kept, it would have been a noble and fitting end for him.
I was a little disappointed by Ace in this story. Part of that comes from a sense of Sophie Aldred trying a bit too hard with the teenager bit in her scenes with Shou Yuing. Her nature works well in contrast with the Doctor and the Brigadier because she is so much younger than they are and the naivety plays more naturally. When she is with peers or even other people, it starts coming across that she is older than what she is trying to play and there is a sense of wrongness about it. It's not terrible, but it just rubs wrong during the story.
Where this story really starts to fall apart though is in the guest cast. Most of the ancillary characters are middling at best in their acting. A couple stand out as being a little better here and there but most aren't great. The three that really disappoint though are Brigadier Bambera, Mordred and Morgaine. Bambera is supposed to be this "tough as nails" sort of commander, but she comes across as more of a jerk than anything else. It's hard to imagine anyone with more of a "shoot first and ask questions later" person than Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, but there she is. However, this does not enhance her character but instead makes her into a dumb hothead. She doesn't know the Doctor and constantly gets her foot into it. She is further diminished by playing up a comedy role for her as the object of Ancelyn's affection which is so cliché that it just doesn't work very well.
I didn't expect much out of Mordred so his turns to camp were not overly surprising, though no less painful. His scenery chewing, especially with Ancelyn made me just long for the Brigadier to pull the trigger on him when he is cornered at the beginning of Episode Four. But despite that, Morgaine was actually worse for me. I think this is due to the fact that Jean Marsh is a good actress and she has been shown to play her roles well, even in other Doctor Who stories. Here, she is incredibly over-the-top and scenery chewing and it goes to the point of being almost community theater level of portraying the bad guy.
While I was watching her performance, I found myself wondering why her performance was so painful to watch when Anthony Ainley's performances as the Master were probably just as campy but enjoyable. My speculation is that Ainley knew when to pull it back when he had to for dramatic purposes and that his camp was always layered in a sense of fun that the Master would have. Whatever the circumstances, the Master was enjoying himself and the whole plot was just a game. Here, Morgaine is set out with a mission to find and recover Excalibur and then defeat Arthur. There is nothing fun in that so her decent into camp feels exactly like an actor doing a bad job rather than playing up the mustache twirly-ness for comedic effect. I wouldn't have thought it bad, but it just didn't work for me.
As interesting as the idea was, there were also some problems with the writing. Some of this came to stringing out of the plot, which added scenes and expanded the scope, but that expansion also created extra threads which just left things dangling.
I genuinely did not understand what the whole bit with the nuclear missile had to do with anything. That was never made a focus of Morgaine's at any point. Her goal was always to recover Excalibur and then battle Arthur. Fleeing before the released Destroyer was one thing but the idea of setting off the nuclear missile out of effectively spite, only to be talked down because of a lack of honor in such a killing was just dumb. Had she taken over the missile and threatened to use it unless Arthur came to challenge her and then have her face the reality of Arthur's death would have played much better. It would have put the focus on her revenge rather than another anti-nuclear bit that was very common in the 80's.
In many ways, the inclusion of the Destroyer himself is rather pointless. He is introduced midway in Episode Three and then dispatched early in Episode Four. There is a lot of build up towards with the silver bullets but it's a bit too much for a simple dragon and it took the focus off Morgaine and she should have stayed the focus in my opinion. It feels like another instance of putting a monster in Doctor Who simply so there will be a monster.
One of the few good scenes that came out of the need to pad this story out to four episodes is a reunification between Nicholas Courtney and Jean Marsh. Jean Marsh made her Doctor Who debut in The Crusade but they were both featured prominently in Nicholas Courtney's first appearance in The Daleks' Master Plan where Jean Marsh's Sarah Kingdom shot and killed Nicholas Courtney's Bret Vyon. The characters show a great deal of respect for each other and you can't help but think that very little acting is actually going on as it is two distinguished actors giving each other respect. As an overall scene, it is completely pointless and puts a rather odd bit of honor in what is otherwise rather ruthless killing, but I still enjoyed seeing the two of them share the screen together.
Another thought that came to me while I was watching was how the story should have been tightened further in regard to the Brigadier. I'm not well versed in the Arthurian legend about his return, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that the Brigadier was playing the role of Arthur. He had retired to his own Avalon with Doris but is summoned back by Merlin (the Doctor). He leads his forces to victory over Morgaine and her dragon and in early drafts of the story, the Brigadier actually died which would have further played into the legend, given Arthur's own death against Mordred's forces. You even have the nice tie in with the actors having played brother and sister in a previous story. But it felt like the Arthurian bits got dropped by Episode Four, and it just didn't quite work after that. You had a tiny little revival when Morgaine effectively gives up after learning of Arthur's death (much like the legend) but since so little focus had been given on that part of Morgaine's desire, it didn't really go anywhere.
That little point also speaks to a larger problem with the ending. Mordred is disarmed and captured. Fine, that works. But Morgaine also gives up and yet she still has all her technology/magical powers that she had before. Are we to assume that she is going to meekly submit to spending the next few years sitting in a British prison and will be released at some future point? That makes absolutely no sense. If the story didn't want to kill the antagonists, fine. I can deal with that. But the Doctor should have arranged to have them detained in their own dimension or exiled to some other world as a prison there. These are not conventional criminals that you just toss in a cell. It's another aspect of the odd pacing that came about by the expansion.
I rather wonder if in the original story, Morgaine is killed or mortally wounded by the Destroyer and calls for Arthur to finish her off after the Brigadier defeats him. There the Doctor would have stood over her and told her that Arthur was dead and that her revenge was pointless. I would have been a bit of the dark Doctor showing up and fully closing Morgaine's story rather than just letting it dangle at the end.
The production values of this story aren't bad for the 80's. It is fairly well directed and there is some nice camera work. There are a number of visual effects which do look very fake, even for the time. In fact, just about everything the Destroyer does looks quite bad. Despite the fact that the Destroyer himself actually looks really good. I'm going to fault the times and the budget more than anything and compared to the other problems of this story, it's a minor thing.
This is a story that I can honestly say I wished I liked more. There is potential here both in plotline and the talent available. But it just turned into a steaming pile. There are too many groaner moments to outweigh the good moments, especially between the Doctor and the Brigadier. There are far better Seventh Doctor stories and I think the final ride of the Brigadier is the only reason to give this one a second time around.
Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Planet of Fire
The worst place in the universe, English public school on Earth.
I know very little about Planet of Fire going in to it other than it involves the Master, Kamelion returns, Turlough leaves and Peri joins. That's quite a lot for one story to do so I'm not surprised that those parts are well known. What's surprising is that so much of the story is not discussed. Even the location shooting on Lanzarote is better known than most of the plot elements so despite knowing several highlights, I'm going into this one with something of a blank slate.
Plot Summary
On the planet Sarn, two men are climbing a volcano, testing to see if their god Logar is real. Reaching the top, they find nothing, validating their skepticism. They head back down and confront their leader, Timinov, who is a strong adherent to the faith and is guiding Malkon, the Chosen One.
On the TARDIS, the Doctor overhears Kamelion screaming and finds that the TARDIS is picking up a signal that is overwriting his functions. Turlough sets up a wave to block the signal but also sees another signal from the Trions, his own race. He sabotages the circuit picking up the signal, but the TARDIS is redirected to the source, the island of Lanzarote on Earth. The Doctor and Turlough walk around searching for the source of the signal.
On the beach, they meet Howard and Curt, who have been pulling artifacts out of the ocean. Howard is the stepfather to Peri, a young American woman attending school in England. He has also just tricked her into missing a flight to Morocco where she had planned to spend the summer with some English boys she had met and is now stuck on the artifact recovery boat. The Doctor notes the signal coming through and Turlough heads back to the TARDIS so that they can triangulate the signal.
Angry at Howard and determined to make her flight, Peri leaps off the boat and tries to swim to shore. However, she cramps up and begins to drown. Hearing her cries for help, Turlough swims out and pulls her to shore. He takes her into the TARDIS and lays her down on a bed to recover. He also notices that one of the things in her bag is the source of the signal, marked with a double triangle signal, identical to a brand on his own arm (and on Malkon's arm, the symbol of Logar).
Turlough takes the device and tries to destroy it but it signals again and the Doctor follows it back to the TARDIS. The signal takes hold of Kamelion and Kamelion enters new coordinates into the TARDIS, though Turlough stops him before he can fully engage. The Doctor takes the data core from the device but it engages the TARDIS and they take off.
Kamelion reconfigures himself to the appearance of Howard, startling Peri. She follows "Howard" into the TARDIS control room asking what is going on. No one says anything as they land on Sarn. The Doctor and Turlough leave to explore, leaving Peri with Kamelion.
In the temple, the unbelievers confront Timinov who requests a sign from Logar. In response, the flames of the temple burst through the gates. They receive word a few moments later that an Outsider has arrived, seemingly in response to a prophecy. Timinov orders the unbelievers arrested and appeals to Malkon to have the unbelievers thrown to the fire as a sacrifice to Logar, as only the Chosen One has the authority to order such a sacrifice. Malkon demurs, wishing to see to the Outsider before ordering death to anyone.
On the TARDIS, Kamelion, in his Howard form begins to laugh and transforms himself again into the Master. The Master keeps Peri in the TARDIS until her mind begins to override the Master's. Kamelion transforms into a silver-skinned Howard, who gives Peri a computer component of the TARDIS and orders her to run. As she tries to flee, the Master regains control and grabs her. But an earthquake knocks over the Master's TARDIS, which has materialized across the courtyard from the Doctor's, and the Master loses control again, allowing Peri to run.
Peri runs after the Doctor and Turlough, spying them on a ridge ahead of her. She calls out but they are too far ahead. She runs further with the Kamelion Master behind her. She reaches the lookout point from where the TARDIS was spotted by the Sarnians, trapped by a dead end. She threatens to throw the TARDIS component over the edge if the Master approaches. Her strength of will begins to override the Master's control again and Kamelion turns back into the silver Howard allowing her to flee into the waste.
The Doctor and Turlough keep walking until they are spotted by a lookout for the unbelievers. He takes them to a cave in the mountain where Turlough recognizes the equipment as a means of tapping the energy of the mountain by his people, the Trions. The Doctor and Turlough meet Malkon, to whom the Doctor explains the equipment. Turlough listens to Malkon's story of being discovered near the mountain with a double triangle brand, a brand Turlough shares, and Turlough implores Malkon to take him there. The Doctor meanwhile, asks to be taken to the main settlement.
Timinov and the scout stop to rest near the lookout post where they find Kamelion in silver Howard form. As silver skin is a sign of Logar, they assume him to be the Outsider. The Master reestablishes control and resumes that form, requesting they take him to their settlement. Once there, he sees the Doctor and orders him and the unbelievers to be consigned to the flames.
Turlough and Malkon reach the remains of a crashed Trion ship from which Malkon was found. Turlough also finds Peri nearby and takes her along. Peri gives Turlough the piece of the Doctor's TARDIS and tells him that the Master is here. The three then run back to the settlement as the Master is ordering the burning.
Malkon enters, ordering that the burning be stopped. The Master counters the order and one of the guards shoots Malkon, though not killing him. Turlough and Peri run to the unbeliever's cave and reworks the machine to shut off the gas flow, killing the flames in the burn cave. Timinov takes this as a sign that Logar rejects the sacrifice due to the wounding of the Chosen One.
The Doctor tries to take control of Kamelion by asserting his will over the Master's. The Master fights and orders the Doctor and the unbelievers be locked in the extinguished cave. The geology of the cave diminishes the power of the Doctor's thoughts and the Master reasserts control. Seeing this on a screen, Peri runs back and tries to take control, but the Master has taken a firmer hand and her mind is no match for his. The Master then orders the villagers to come to the ruins where he will give them the gifts of Logar, taking Peri with him.
Turlough sneaks back and releases the Doctor and the unbelievers from the cave. They head back to the unbeliever's hideout carrying Malkon with them. Turlough reveals that he believes Malkon may be his brother. Knowing that he has to rescue Peri, the Doctor heads to the ruins with an unbeliever named Amyand as his guide. Turlough gives the Doctor the component that Peri gave him and follows.
At the ruins, the Sarnians uncover and right the Master's TARDIS, disguised as a pillar of stone. The Master pulls Peri into the TARDIS and disappears. The Doctor observes this, but knows that the Master is still on Sarn as their two TARDISes are linked. Turlough reveals his brand and declares himself as the new Chosen One. This permits the Doctor to reenter the TARDIS and reinstall the component. However, he realizes that the Master has also removed a component and they are still stuck.
The Master and Peri rematerialize in the control chamber of the volcano. He threatens Peri with his tissue compression eliminator and reworks the controls. His experimenting causes earthquakes and Turlough orders everyone into the TARDIS for protection. They emerge when the tremors stop and find the volcano spewing blue gas, a sign of great favor from Logar according to Timinov as it has healing powers.
The gas is actually numismaton gas, a rare and powerful restorative agent mined by the Trions on Sarn. With the gas flow established as ready, the Kamelion Master prepares to pull a box from his TARDIS into the flow. Peri manages to get away from him and lock herself in the Master's TARDIS with Kamelion out of it. She opens the box to find the real Master, shrunk to a tiny size, a victim of a failed experiment with his Tissue Compression Eliminator.
The Doctor and the rest of the group return to the settlement where the Doctor orders Malkon brought up and placed in the cave. The flames are reestablished and turn blue as the released gas mixes with the flames. They all step in and feel a great restoration with Malkon being healed of his wounds. However, the Doctor realizes that the mountain will explode from the Master's interference and makes plans to evacuate. Turlough decides to return to the crashed ship and signal his people.
Turlough reveals that the brand is the mark of Trion prisoners. His family was on the losing side of a civil war. His father and brother and other members were sent to the prison planet of Sarn while he was exiled to Earth where Trion had a scout to keep taps on him and others like him. He will summon a Trion ship to rescue the people, who are descendants of the original inhabitants blended with prior Trion exiles. As he leaves, the Doctor and Amyand also leave to find the entrance to the control cave.
In the Master's TARDIS, the Master eludes Peri by diving into the console. He triggers the doors, allowing Peri to escape before the Master can reestablish control over Kamelion. She runs out of the cave and on the slope where she spots the Doctor. She hails him and leads him to the cave entrance.
The Master crawls back into his control box just as the Doctor, Peri and Amyand enter. The Doctor steals the control mechanism from the Master's TARDIS to replace the one stolen from his. He then peers in on the Master. The Master has reestablished control over Kamelion who then forces the three out of his TARDIS. Kamelion then moves the TARDIS into the flame area.
The Doctor gives Amyand the control unit and orders him to give it to Turlough and to bring the TARDIS to the room. He dresses Amyand in a thermal suit to protect him from the volcano fires that are now erupting around them. The Doctor then rigs a mechanism to break the Master's control of Kamelion as well as reconfiguring the flame output of the mountain.
Kamelion emerges from the TARDIS and places the Master's box in the flame. He emerges to stop the Doctor with the Tissue Compression Eliminator but the Doctor triggers the device, causing Kamelion to spasm. As the Master loses control, Kamelion urges the Doctor to kill him as he is in pain and cannot fully break free of the Master. The Doctor uses the Tissue Compression Eliminator to shrink and destroy Kamelion.
Turlough signals Trion and arranges a rescue ship. He then heads back to the settlement to urge everyone to head out there. While there, Amyand arrives, mistaken at first by Timanov for Logar. Amyand reveals himself and gives the circuit to Turlough who races off, followed by most of the people. Amyand appeals to Timanov to come with them but he declines saying that he and the other elders will die with the settlement, subservient to Logar to the end.
As the rescue ship arrives, Turlough reinstalls the circuit and send the TARDIS to the control room on delay while he goes with the others. The TARDIS arrives just as the flames begin to be infuses with the healing gas. Peri goes in the TARDIS as the Master regrows back to his normal size. But the Doctor shuts off the gas flow and the Master is surrounded by flames. They grow and he disappears into the flames. The Doctor follows into the TARDIS and takes it back to the rescue ship where Turlough is waiting.
Turlough is informed that the regime on Trion has changed and political prisoners are no longer subject to exile, meaning that he is allowed to return home. With his brother to see to and with a longing for home, he reluctantly bids goodbye to the Doctor and Peri and leaves in the Trion ship. The Doctor and Peri take off as well with Peri asking if she could travel with the Doctor for a while as she had been hoping to travel before everything got started. The Doctor agrees and officially welcomes her aboard.
Analysis
I rather like this story. I know that Peter Grimwade was predominantly a director rather than a writer but I'd say he did a decent job on this one, though Eric Saward did a fair amount of fill in work. I would also say that there is a lingering presence of Christopher Bidmede in this story as well, though with slightly less derision towards religion than Bidemede usually included.
Before even getting into the story or the acting, much praise must be heaped on to Fiona Cumming and the location shooting. The studio work was pretty good too with some nice angles and viewpoints but the exterior filming on Lanzarote is some of the best I've ever seen on the show. She made an absolutely excellent use of all the available terrain and features to really give you the sense of an alien frontier and doing a lot with probably a very small budget.
The Doctor does well here. There is something about the final season of the Fifth Doctor that gives him a darker edge and it works well. He tries to maintain the lightness of tone, but there is no longer any aloofness about him. He is very direct and what few jokes he does make are very underplayed, mostly in an aside to no one sort of way. This more serious take lends an extra air of seriousness that is sometimes lacking in other stories. Given that there are no rubber monsters to deal with, it gives the overall story some significant gravity.
The companions are a mixed bag here. Turlough was pretty good although I think Mark Strickson still delves a bit too much into the overacting bag. He is more restrained and that helps his performance but you get a bit of the darker Turlough here given his fear to reveal his past to the Doctor. It both helps and hurts because there isn't really any reason that he should be keeping anything from the Doctor at this point. It's not even as if he is a real criminal. His side merely lost a war and he was exiled for it. There is no personal shame in that, nor would the Doctor be angry at Turlough for it. I can understand Turlough's lack of desire to contact Trion for fear of being returned to exile, but that also betrays a lack of trust in the Doctor to keep him free. Still, I think his overall performance was definitely weighted on the positive side.
The introduction of Peri demonstrates to me that there were very little change in her performance in her time on the show. I will give Nicola Bryant one significant benefit of the doubt in that I believe her performances suffered due to shallow writing and her focus on maintaining the "American" accent. It's also unfortunate that most male fans focus on Peri's "attributes" being showcased in Episode One and take that as the whole reason to like her. Looks are fine and I'm not going to complain about things like that, but I would rather have had a companion with a bit more substance and a lot less of the whiney-wibble in her voice. But for that, I blame JNT who clearly told her to focus on the accent. Still, Peri is probably less objectionable in this story than in others, though she does do nothing other than be the damsel in distress the whole time. I would have preferred it if she had actually done something of substance in the story.
Another bout of disappointment in her character is the obvious potential for backstory laid here that was never explored. Her nightmare when recovering from nearly drowning clearly indicates that she was abused (probably sexually) by Howard. Couple this with an obvious desire to accompany men to strange, exotic places for thrills shows a rather damaged young woman. This helps explain why she sticks with the emotionally abusive Sixth Doctor but also makes him to be such a bigger jerk than even originally intended. I would have liked to see some growth and independence in her overall development, such that she was a stronger person towards the end. Admittedly, she was better in The Mysterious Planet, but I still feel that there were some missed opportunities in her overall arc.
There's not much to say about Kamelion. I think this story did a good job of showing the missed opportunities with him and the pitfalls. Kamelion was dropped because they couldn't get the robot puppet to work right and that still shows in the few scenes where you see it. But it also shows how Kamelion could have been portrayed by a random guest actor as the story warranted it. Of course, Kamelion spends so much time as the Master that you genuinely forget that it is Kamelion at points if there weren't several protracted battles for his control. In the end, I'm not sorry they killed him off. It was too confusing and the control issues never really resolved themselves. There is one extra bit of interest as I believe this is the only instance where the Doctor actually killed a companion himself. All the other companions who died, died due to the machinations of the enemy or by their own actions.
Of the guest cast, Timinov was my favorite. It would be very easy in this story to show the believers of Logar as delusional fools and blood-thirsty savages, much as was done in Meglos. However, Timinov gives a great sense of nobility in his faith, going so far as to accept his own death in the destruction of the mountain as a gesture of his faith. A measure of condescension towards this can be seen with the unbelievers, especially Amyand, but I respected Timinov for his choices and beliefs. He remained ignorant of certain truths and that probably resulted in his overall downfall, but his faith was genuine and I could appreciate that.
I continue to maintain that Anthony Ainley is a better Master and certainly better actor than he is given credit for. Yes, he goes mustache twirl-y over-the-top a number of times, but there still a level of menace in his performance and he can pull it back to a more serious tone when necessary. I found him quite enjoyable in this story, although he did have a bad moment when he was posing as Logar's prophet. He went way overboard with the hand and body movements in pronouncing judgment on the non-believers. He looked like he was trying to do something like what Southern revivalist preachers might do, but it was so unnatural and jerky that it just looked incredibly out of place. Other that that, I didn't have a problem with it and actually rather enjoyed the fact that the Master was operating on a rather simple and direct plan. He had had an accident and was trying to fix himself. No grand design, no significant theater. Just a was to fix a problem situation.
On an overall level, I really enjoyed this one. There were a couple of hiccups here and there but the flow of the story worked well and it's well worth watching for the cinematography alone. That it has excellent performances for the most part is just another bonus. Of the all the Fifth Doctor stories I've seen so far, I think I would only place it behind Earthshock and Kinda so I would readily watch this one a second time around.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
I know very little about Planet of Fire going in to it other than it involves the Master, Kamelion returns, Turlough leaves and Peri joins. That's quite a lot for one story to do so I'm not surprised that those parts are well known. What's surprising is that so much of the story is not discussed. Even the location shooting on Lanzarote is better known than most of the plot elements so despite knowing several highlights, I'm going into this one with something of a blank slate.
Plot Summary
On the planet Sarn, two men are climbing a volcano, testing to see if their god Logar is real. Reaching the top, they find nothing, validating their skepticism. They head back down and confront their leader, Timinov, who is a strong adherent to the faith and is guiding Malkon, the Chosen One.
On the TARDIS, the Doctor overhears Kamelion screaming and finds that the TARDIS is picking up a signal that is overwriting his functions. Turlough sets up a wave to block the signal but also sees another signal from the Trions, his own race. He sabotages the circuit picking up the signal, but the TARDIS is redirected to the source, the island of Lanzarote on Earth. The Doctor and Turlough walk around searching for the source of the signal.
On the beach, they meet Howard and Curt, who have been pulling artifacts out of the ocean. Howard is the stepfather to Peri, a young American woman attending school in England. He has also just tricked her into missing a flight to Morocco where she had planned to spend the summer with some English boys she had met and is now stuck on the artifact recovery boat. The Doctor notes the signal coming through and Turlough heads back to the TARDIS so that they can triangulate the signal.
Angry at Howard and determined to make her flight, Peri leaps off the boat and tries to swim to shore. However, she cramps up and begins to drown. Hearing her cries for help, Turlough swims out and pulls her to shore. He takes her into the TARDIS and lays her down on a bed to recover. He also notices that one of the things in her bag is the source of the signal, marked with a double triangle signal, identical to a brand on his own arm (and on Malkon's arm, the symbol of Logar).
Turlough takes the device and tries to destroy it but it signals again and the Doctor follows it back to the TARDIS. The signal takes hold of Kamelion and Kamelion enters new coordinates into the TARDIS, though Turlough stops him before he can fully engage. The Doctor takes the data core from the device but it engages the TARDIS and they take off.
Kamelion reconfigures himself to the appearance of Howard, startling Peri. She follows "Howard" into the TARDIS control room asking what is going on. No one says anything as they land on Sarn. The Doctor and Turlough leave to explore, leaving Peri with Kamelion.
In the temple, the unbelievers confront Timinov who requests a sign from Logar. In response, the flames of the temple burst through the gates. They receive word a few moments later that an Outsider has arrived, seemingly in response to a prophecy. Timinov orders the unbelievers arrested and appeals to Malkon to have the unbelievers thrown to the fire as a sacrifice to Logar, as only the Chosen One has the authority to order such a sacrifice. Malkon demurs, wishing to see to the Outsider before ordering death to anyone.
On the TARDIS, Kamelion, in his Howard form begins to laugh and transforms himself again into the Master. The Master keeps Peri in the TARDIS until her mind begins to override the Master's. Kamelion transforms into a silver-skinned Howard, who gives Peri a computer component of the TARDIS and orders her to run. As she tries to flee, the Master regains control and grabs her. But an earthquake knocks over the Master's TARDIS, which has materialized across the courtyard from the Doctor's, and the Master loses control again, allowing Peri to run.
Peri runs after the Doctor and Turlough, spying them on a ridge ahead of her. She calls out but they are too far ahead. She runs further with the Kamelion Master behind her. She reaches the lookout point from where the TARDIS was spotted by the Sarnians, trapped by a dead end. She threatens to throw the TARDIS component over the edge if the Master approaches. Her strength of will begins to override the Master's control again and Kamelion turns back into the silver Howard allowing her to flee into the waste.
The Doctor and Turlough keep walking until they are spotted by a lookout for the unbelievers. He takes them to a cave in the mountain where Turlough recognizes the equipment as a means of tapping the energy of the mountain by his people, the Trions. The Doctor and Turlough meet Malkon, to whom the Doctor explains the equipment. Turlough listens to Malkon's story of being discovered near the mountain with a double triangle brand, a brand Turlough shares, and Turlough implores Malkon to take him there. The Doctor meanwhile, asks to be taken to the main settlement.
Timinov and the scout stop to rest near the lookout post where they find Kamelion in silver Howard form. As silver skin is a sign of Logar, they assume him to be the Outsider. The Master reestablishes control and resumes that form, requesting they take him to their settlement. Once there, he sees the Doctor and orders him and the unbelievers to be consigned to the flames.
Turlough and Malkon reach the remains of a crashed Trion ship from which Malkon was found. Turlough also finds Peri nearby and takes her along. Peri gives Turlough the piece of the Doctor's TARDIS and tells him that the Master is here. The three then run back to the settlement as the Master is ordering the burning.
Malkon enters, ordering that the burning be stopped. The Master counters the order and one of the guards shoots Malkon, though not killing him. Turlough and Peri run to the unbeliever's cave and reworks the machine to shut off the gas flow, killing the flames in the burn cave. Timinov takes this as a sign that Logar rejects the sacrifice due to the wounding of the Chosen One.
The Doctor tries to take control of Kamelion by asserting his will over the Master's. The Master fights and orders the Doctor and the unbelievers be locked in the extinguished cave. The geology of the cave diminishes the power of the Doctor's thoughts and the Master reasserts control. Seeing this on a screen, Peri runs back and tries to take control, but the Master has taken a firmer hand and her mind is no match for his. The Master then orders the villagers to come to the ruins where he will give them the gifts of Logar, taking Peri with him.
Turlough sneaks back and releases the Doctor and the unbelievers from the cave. They head back to the unbeliever's hideout carrying Malkon with them. Turlough reveals that he believes Malkon may be his brother. Knowing that he has to rescue Peri, the Doctor heads to the ruins with an unbeliever named Amyand as his guide. Turlough gives the Doctor the component that Peri gave him and follows.
At the ruins, the Sarnians uncover and right the Master's TARDIS, disguised as a pillar of stone. The Master pulls Peri into the TARDIS and disappears. The Doctor observes this, but knows that the Master is still on Sarn as their two TARDISes are linked. Turlough reveals his brand and declares himself as the new Chosen One. This permits the Doctor to reenter the TARDIS and reinstall the component. However, he realizes that the Master has also removed a component and they are still stuck.
The Master and Peri rematerialize in the control chamber of the volcano. He threatens Peri with his tissue compression eliminator and reworks the controls. His experimenting causes earthquakes and Turlough orders everyone into the TARDIS for protection. They emerge when the tremors stop and find the volcano spewing blue gas, a sign of great favor from Logar according to Timinov as it has healing powers.
The gas is actually numismaton gas, a rare and powerful restorative agent mined by the Trions on Sarn. With the gas flow established as ready, the Kamelion Master prepares to pull a box from his TARDIS into the flow. Peri manages to get away from him and lock herself in the Master's TARDIS with Kamelion out of it. She opens the box to find the real Master, shrunk to a tiny size, a victim of a failed experiment with his Tissue Compression Eliminator.
The Doctor and the rest of the group return to the settlement where the Doctor orders Malkon brought up and placed in the cave. The flames are reestablished and turn blue as the released gas mixes with the flames. They all step in and feel a great restoration with Malkon being healed of his wounds. However, the Doctor realizes that the mountain will explode from the Master's interference and makes plans to evacuate. Turlough decides to return to the crashed ship and signal his people.
Turlough reveals that the brand is the mark of Trion prisoners. His family was on the losing side of a civil war. His father and brother and other members were sent to the prison planet of Sarn while he was exiled to Earth where Trion had a scout to keep taps on him and others like him. He will summon a Trion ship to rescue the people, who are descendants of the original inhabitants blended with prior Trion exiles. As he leaves, the Doctor and Amyand also leave to find the entrance to the control cave.
In the Master's TARDIS, the Master eludes Peri by diving into the console. He triggers the doors, allowing Peri to escape before the Master can reestablish control over Kamelion. She runs out of the cave and on the slope where she spots the Doctor. She hails him and leads him to the cave entrance.
The Master crawls back into his control box just as the Doctor, Peri and Amyand enter. The Doctor steals the control mechanism from the Master's TARDIS to replace the one stolen from his. He then peers in on the Master. The Master has reestablished control over Kamelion who then forces the three out of his TARDIS. Kamelion then moves the TARDIS into the flame area.
The Doctor gives Amyand the control unit and orders him to give it to Turlough and to bring the TARDIS to the room. He dresses Amyand in a thermal suit to protect him from the volcano fires that are now erupting around them. The Doctor then rigs a mechanism to break the Master's control of Kamelion as well as reconfiguring the flame output of the mountain.
Kamelion emerges from the TARDIS and places the Master's box in the flame. He emerges to stop the Doctor with the Tissue Compression Eliminator but the Doctor triggers the device, causing Kamelion to spasm. As the Master loses control, Kamelion urges the Doctor to kill him as he is in pain and cannot fully break free of the Master. The Doctor uses the Tissue Compression Eliminator to shrink and destroy Kamelion.
Turlough signals Trion and arranges a rescue ship. He then heads back to the settlement to urge everyone to head out there. While there, Amyand arrives, mistaken at first by Timanov for Logar. Amyand reveals himself and gives the circuit to Turlough who races off, followed by most of the people. Amyand appeals to Timanov to come with them but he declines saying that he and the other elders will die with the settlement, subservient to Logar to the end.
As the rescue ship arrives, Turlough reinstalls the circuit and send the TARDIS to the control room on delay while he goes with the others. The TARDIS arrives just as the flames begin to be infuses with the healing gas. Peri goes in the TARDIS as the Master regrows back to his normal size. But the Doctor shuts off the gas flow and the Master is surrounded by flames. They grow and he disappears into the flames. The Doctor follows into the TARDIS and takes it back to the rescue ship where Turlough is waiting.
Turlough is informed that the regime on Trion has changed and political prisoners are no longer subject to exile, meaning that he is allowed to return home. With his brother to see to and with a longing for home, he reluctantly bids goodbye to the Doctor and Peri and leaves in the Trion ship. The Doctor and Peri take off as well with Peri asking if she could travel with the Doctor for a while as she had been hoping to travel before everything got started. The Doctor agrees and officially welcomes her aboard.
Analysis
I rather like this story. I know that Peter Grimwade was predominantly a director rather than a writer but I'd say he did a decent job on this one, though Eric Saward did a fair amount of fill in work. I would also say that there is a lingering presence of Christopher Bidmede in this story as well, though with slightly less derision towards religion than Bidemede usually included.
Before even getting into the story or the acting, much praise must be heaped on to Fiona Cumming and the location shooting. The studio work was pretty good too with some nice angles and viewpoints but the exterior filming on Lanzarote is some of the best I've ever seen on the show. She made an absolutely excellent use of all the available terrain and features to really give you the sense of an alien frontier and doing a lot with probably a very small budget.
The Doctor does well here. There is something about the final season of the Fifth Doctor that gives him a darker edge and it works well. He tries to maintain the lightness of tone, but there is no longer any aloofness about him. He is very direct and what few jokes he does make are very underplayed, mostly in an aside to no one sort of way. This more serious take lends an extra air of seriousness that is sometimes lacking in other stories. Given that there are no rubber monsters to deal with, it gives the overall story some significant gravity.
The companions are a mixed bag here. Turlough was pretty good although I think Mark Strickson still delves a bit too much into the overacting bag. He is more restrained and that helps his performance but you get a bit of the darker Turlough here given his fear to reveal his past to the Doctor. It both helps and hurts because there isn't really any reason that he should be keeping anything from the Doctor at this point. It's not even as if he is a real criminal. His side merely lost a war and he was exiled for it. There is no personal shame in that, nor would the Doctor be angry at Turlough for it. I can understand Turlough's lack of desire to contact Trion for fear of being returned to exile, but that also betrays a lack of trust in the Doctor to keep him free. Still, I think his overall performance was definitely weighted on the positive side.
The introduction of Peri demonstrates to me that there were very little change in her performance in her time on the show. I will give Nicola Bryant one significant benefit of the doubt in that I believe her performances suffered due to shallow writing and her focus on maintaining the "American" accent. It's also unfortunate that most male fans focus on Peri's "attributes" being showcased in Episode One and take that as the whole reason to like her. Looks are fine and I'm not going to complain about things like that, but I would rather have had a companion with a bit more substance and a lot less of the whiney-wibble in her voice. But for that, I blame JNT who clearly told her to focus on the accent. Still, Peri is probably less objectionable in this story than in others, though she does do nothing other than be the damsel in distress the whole time. I would have preferred it if she had actually done something of substance in the story.
Another bout of disappointment in her character is the obvious potential for backstory laid here that was never explored. Her nightmare when recovering from nearly drowning clearly indicates that she was abused (probably sexually) by Howard. Couple this with an obvious desire to accompany men to strange, exotic places for thrills shows a rather damaged young woman. This helps explain why she sticks with the emotionally abusive Sixth Doctor but also makes him to be such a bigger jerk than even originally intended. I would have liked to see some growth and independence in her overall development, such that she was a stronger person towards the end. Admittedly, she was better in The Mysterious Planet, but I still feel that there were some missed opportunities in her overall arc.
There's not much to say about Kamelion. I think this story did a good job of showing the missed opportunities with him and the pitfalls. Kamelion was dropped because they couldn't get the robot puppet to work right and that still shows in the few scenes where you see it. But it also shows how Kamelion could have been portrayed by a random guest actor as the story warranted it. Of course, Kamelion spends so much time as the Master that you genuinely forget that it is Kamelion at points if there weren't several protracted battles for his control. In the end, I'm not sorry they killed him off. It was too confusing and the control issues never really resolved themselves. There is one extra bit of interest as I believe this is the only instance where the Doctor actually killed a companion himself. All the other companions who died, died due to the machinations of the enemy or by their own actions.
Of the guest cast, Timinov was my favorite. It would be very easy in this story to show the believers of Logar as delusional fools and blood-thirsty savages, much as was done in Meglos. However, Timinov gives a great sense of nobility in his faith, going so far as to accept his own death in the destruction of the mountain as a gesture of his faith. A measure of condescension towards this can be seen with the unbelievers, especially Amyand, but I respected Timinov for his choices and beliefs. He remained ignorant of certain truths and that probably resulted in his overall downfall, but his faith was genuine and I could appreciate that.
I continue to maintain that Anthony Ainley is a better Master and certainly better actor than he is given credit for. Yes, he goes mustache twirl-y over-the-top a number of times, but there still a level of menace in his performance and he can pull it back to a more serious tone when necessary. I found him quite enjoyable in this story, although he did have a bad moment when he was posing as Logar's prophet. He went way overboard with the hand and body movements in pronouncing judgment on the non-believers. He looked like he was trying to do something like what Southern revivalist preachers might do, but it was so unnatural and jerky that it just looked incredibly out of place. Other that that, I didn't have a problem with it and actually rather enjoyed the fact that the Master was operating on a rather simple and direct plan. He had had an accident and was trying to fix himself. No grand design, no significant theater. Just a was to fix a problem situation.
On an overall level, I really enjoyed this one. There were a couple of hiccups here and there but the flow of the story worked well and it's well worth watching for the cinematography alone. That it has excellent performances for the most part is just another bonus. Of the all the Fifth Doctor stories I've seen so far, I think I would only place it behind Earthshock and Kinda so I would readily watch this one a second time around.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
The Ark
They were treated like slaves. Is it no wonder that when they got the chance they repaid you in kind?
The Ark is a story that I don't know much about other than that the principle aliens are the Monoids and that it is divided into two halves with the cliffhanger of Episode Two being the statue with a Monoid head. I've never heard anyone speak highly of it so I'm expecting a story that rather mundane. Usually if a story is openly bad, it gets a little extra attention just for that. Forgettable stories just fade into the ether.
Plot Summary
The TARDIS lands in the midst of a jungle filled with Earth creatures. Dodo, who is suffering from a cold, assumes they've landed in a zoo and goes wandering off. Steven follows her, chastising her for being so cavalier. The Doctor also believes they are in a zoo of some kind but notes a metallic sky and mechanical vibration in the floor.
They have actually landed on a ship and in the crew area, a trial is being held regarding a crewman who endangered the lives of others both human and the alien Monoids, who escaped to Earth from their own dying world and are now travelling with these humans who are escaping the dying Earth. The defendant is found guilty and placed into a machine that shrinks him to a microscopic level where he is then frozen and placed into storage. One Monoid enters and informs the court that strangers have arrived and a group of Monoids go to investigate.
The Doctor and his party become aware of the search party and duck into a cave to avoid them. Once past, they walk out and into the inhabited part of the ship, with the Doctor realizing they are on a ship. The Monoid search party finds them and they are taken to the Commander.
The Commander welcomes them and explains their history and their goal of traveling to a world seven hundred years travel away. Most of the human colonists have been shrunk and frozen, leaving a small group to breed and man the ship along with the Monoids. The group is also shown a statue being built as a symbol of unity among the crew.
As they talk, the Commander begins to feel a bit ill. As his fever grows, a flatbed cart is driven in by a Monoid with another Monoid on it. Both the Monoid and the Commander have contracted Dodo's cold and their lack of immunity is making it worse than for Dodo. The Monoid dies and the Commander becomes incoherent. The deputy commander, Zentos, accuses the Doctor's party of being agents of the planet they intend to colonize and orders them arrested.
As the cold spreads, Zentos orders the Doctor, Dodo and Steven to be put on trial as saboteurs. Steven elects to be the representative at the court with a man named Rhos and the Commander's daughter Millium acting as defense. During the trial, word comes that a human has died from the illness and the crowd declares the defendants guilty and to be executed by being ejected into space. Also during the trial, Steven falls ill from the cold and is taken back to the cell.
Millium goes to her father and rouses him enough to order that the Doctor be given a chance to find a cure for the illness and that Steven is to be the test subject. If he fails, they will be executed. The Doctor readily accepts and has Dodo and the Monoids bring him ingredients from the TARDIS and the animals in the jungle. Working with both the human scientists and a Monoid technician, the Doctor synthesizes a cure and injects Steven with it. His fever spikes briefly and then breaks. Dodo heads out to inform the others and the cure is passed out to all the others.
Apologetic, Zentos releases them and wishes them well on their travels. The three leave in the TARDIS only to have it reappear in the same place. Confused, they walk out to look for the people they just met and find the space nearly empty. They do find the statue has been completed, only instead of being a man like the plans, it has the face of a Monoid.
The Doctor investigates the empty control room to find it fully automated. He also discovers that the Monoids have taken over and are now using the humans as slaves. The Doctor, Dodo and Steven are discovered by the Monoid second-in-command who takes them to the Monoid leader. The leader recognizes them as the same travelers from the past. He also relates that Dodo's cold mutated after they left, weakening the humans and Monoids in it's wake. The Monoids, encouraged by the humans to improve themselves, learned to make weapons and rose up in a violent revolution.
The three are sent to the security kitchen to assist in the preparation of food. The Doctor and Steven rally the humans to try and rise up against the Monoids but they are beaten back and one is killed by reinforcements. The Doctor and Dodo are taken out of the kitchen with Steven left as a promise of good behavior.
Approaching the planet Refusis II, the Monoids launch a landing craft with the Monoid second-in-command, his human slave, the Doctor and Dodo. They explore the planet but see no one. They do find a castle and enter it. The Monoid begins to destroy things to get the inhabitants attention but he is stopped by an invisible power. The Doctor calmly talks with the Refusian and learns they were altered into beings of energy by a solar flare impacting their planet. They welcome new inhabitants, so long as they are peaceful, and have taken steps to build shelters for them, including the castle.
Back on the ship, the Monoids plan to land on the planet and colonize it once they have a report. They also plan to blow up the Ark and all it's inhabitants with a bomb in the statue, ridding themselves of the remaining humans. One of the slaves overhears this and runs to the kitchen to warn the others.
This plan is also let slip by the second-in-command to his slave and Dodo. The slave tries to fight him but is shot down. The Monoid continues back to the landing craft, unaware that he is being followed by a Refusian. He signals the Ark but before he can relate the information about the Refusians, the Refusian blows up the landing craft, killing the second-in-command and leaving the Doctor and Dodo stranded on the planet.
Concerned over the failure of communications with Two, the lead Monoid orders that all Monoids, including the preserved ones, head down to the planet. However, Monoid Four believes that they should stay on the Ark and begins to foment dissent among some of the Monoids.
Knowing that they need to find the bomb, Steven and the others watch the Monoids prepare to depart. One man, Maharis, sneaks out after finishing loading the pods with the Monoid colonist trays and releases the others from the kitchen. After the Monoids depart the ship, they begin to scour the ship for the bomb.
On the planet, the Doctor and Dodo hide while the Monoids look for Two and the inhabitants of the planet. The Doctor and Dodo sneak aboard one landing craft and signal the Ark. The Doctor and Steven devise a plan where they will keep looking for the bomb while the Doctor tries to get it's location from the Monoids. As an added distraction, the Doctor has the Refusian he has been in contact with, take the landing craft back to the Ark.
The Doctor and Dodo surrender to the Monoids and the Monoids are equally dumbfounded by the landing craft departing when they cannot see anyone flying it. Interrogated by Monoid One, the Doctor insists that he and Dodo have not seen anyone. Unnerved, Monoid Four openly defies the leader and leads some of the Monoids back to the pods with the intention of taking the Ark elsewhere. Monoid One gloats that as the bomb is in the statue, he will find it difficult to move, allowing the Doctor to learn of it's location. Monoid One then gathers his followers to deal with Monoid Four's insubordination.
On the Ark, Maharis decides to take the landing craft back to Refusis to help the Doctor. Another collaborator, Dassuk, insists on going along and they head down. They land to see the Monoids in a firefight with each other. Dassuk tries to give himself to them but he is shot down. Maharis and those that accompanied him run to the castle where they tell the lone Monoid guard that Monoid One has sent for him to help in the fight.
Unguarded, the humans and the Doctor make their way back to the landing craft where the Doctor signals Steven that the bomb is in the statue. On board, the Refusian uses he powers to levitate the statue to the landing bay and Steven and another human named Venussa launch it into space where it explodes harmlessly.
The humans come down to the planet where they disarm the few surviving Monoids, Monoids One and Four having been killed in the fight. The Refusians allow them to colonize the planet so long as the two species live in peace. The Doctor chastises the humans noting that their ancestors enslaved the Monoids, embittering them towards the humans. If they treat each other as equals, they will live well together.
The Doctor, Steven and Dodo depart in the TARDIS. While in flight, the Doctor has a slight cough and as he does so, he begins to become invisible. Steven asks if this is similar to the Refusians but the Doctor informs him that he believes they are under attack from a more powerful source.
Analysis
I think The Ark can best be described as something that is there as it is not overly engaging. I do think that the second half of the story is better than the first, but neither is particularly engaging.
I think unquestionably the best thing about this story is the Doctor. The Doctor is calm, collected and inquisitive. He aims to help and doesn't get flustered, even when things go against him. He is also quite proactive, which is somewhat unusual for the First Doctor. Steven still takes the lead on much of the action but the Doctor goes out of his way to do things on his own. He actively petitions to help cure the plague in the first half, he instigates the feelings of rebellion in the second and actively works to thwart the Monoids and lend as much aid as possible to Steven in finding the bomb. He does all this with a chipper sense of adventure that is sometimes lacking with the First Doctor and it is enjoyable.
I'm not much for linguistics and it's been a while since I watched The Massacre so Dodo's switch from a more working class accent to the posh version was entirely lost on me. She was okay in this story though a bit dim. I got the feeling that she was intended to be more of a comic relief type of character, especially when dealing with the cold in the first half. In the second, she took a more subservient role to the Doctor and behaved more or less as the average 60's female companion: look nice and don't get in the Doctor's way. I didn't have a problem with it but there was nothing particularly catching about it either.
Steven was typical Steven. He took on a slightly exasperated parent tone when dealing with Dodo in Episode One, which did amuse me as Vicki had a similar tone when dealing with Steven in The Time Meddler. But once things got real, he settled down into his usual role. Episode Two didn't give him much other than the trial at the beginning but in the second half of the story, he went into typical action-man mode, going so far as to metaphorically slapping around the human slaves. He did well, but again, there wasn't much outside of what I would have expected. It was Steven being Steven and he did it well but nothing outside of that.
If there was a point where this story really fell down it was in the acting of the guest cast. This is more so in the first half. I actually didn't have a problem with the Monoids as I thought they were reasonably well designed and did about as well as you would expect a man in a suit to do. As such, when they were the focus in the second half, shortfalls in the acting did not register as much.
The real problems came with the human crew. The worst offender I thought was the Commander who falls ill at the end of Episode One. He has one good moment where a criminal is put into storage. After that, his delivery is terrible and he doesn't seem to know which direction he should take himself. Mellium is okay but she is every bland 60's female guest actor. She has her moments of stilted delivery and just standing about looking pretty which makes her quite uninteresting. Similarly Zentos is every zealous over-reactionary we've seen before. He chews the scenery while proclaiming the Doctor and his companions to be evil with no proof. He stands in a position of self-righteousness only to be humbled later as we have seen so many times before. If the acting doesn't get you, the genericness of the characters will.
There is a bit of an improvement in the second half as all the human characters seem to be portrayed by better actors, but there is so little time devoted to them, that it is impossible to care about them. I actually lost track of who was who at one point because all the men just seemed to look like each other. I guess that should be expected when you start with a relatively small genetic pool and then look forward seven hundred years, but it made the story just that much more difficult to follow. The standout was Venussa, not only because she was a woman but also because she seemed to be a slightly better actress and seemed to be the most enthusiastic about the revolution.
It's actually a bit of a shame that more time could not have been devoted to them because there was an interesting angle could have been explored about the collaborators and their relationship with the Monoids and then back to the humans. It's glossed over in a bit of a hasty way in this story with only the one die-hard collaborator who is gunned down by his masters when he surprises them.
Another thing that bugged me about this story is the nature of the plague that developed. Dodo has a generic cold, a bout of the sniffles essentially when they land. I can understand it felling the inhabitants of the Ark and being nastier there as they are lacking the level of immunity that Dodo and Steven have. However, even without that immunity, death from a cold seems like an extreme reaction. What's more, Steven catches the disease but instead of having symptoms like Dodo, the virus has apparently mutated in the span of a few hours to fell him during the trial. This makes no sense as the base level germ should have been the same to what he was exposed to in the TARDIS. At one point when hiding, Steven had his hand over Dodo's mouth to keep her quiet so he has been more than exposed to the germ. Yet, rather than having an immunity to it, he is felled just as bad as the others. Even if he had not yet fully gotten Dodo's cold, he should have displayed symptoms similar to hers, given his own build up of immunities over the years. A slight fever maybe but it should have essentially been a runny nose, watery eyes and sneezing.
I would argue that the disease is not Dodo's cold but in fact some other germ that they've been exposed to and brought with them. The Doctor is immune because of his different physiology and Dodo does not get it because her cold has her immune system working harder and it repels the bulk of the infection without any significant effects. The passengers are felled first because of their lack of prior immunities but then Steven goes down with similar symptoms, demonstrating that it is a different bug. At least, that's how I like to think of it.
Jumping back to the Monoids, I rather liked the design even if the Beatles haircuts are a bit much. I would also note that despite what the Doctor says in Episode Four, there isn't a lot of evidence showing the Monoids as slaves in the first two episodes. Monoid One even goes so far as to mock the humans for encouraging their learning which allowed them to rise up. I thought it rather a weak sauce to make the idea of peace a little easier at the end by implying the humans were just as guilty as the Monoids, despite there being no evidence in the story of that guilt. It is actually a Monoid death that prompts Zentos to have the Doctor and his companions arrested, which doesn't seem like the actions of a slave master. I think it would have worked a bit better if the Monoids felt like they were being oppressed and the Doctor telling both sides they needed to talk to each other rather than just have the Doctor pronounce guilt on the humans, mitigating the Monoid's actions.
One positive point was the model work. Both the model statue and the ships were quite well done and I thought that was good work for the time. All the sets really were well done, although the idea of a "security kitchen" is a little dumb. I'm also not sure a real elephant was necessary to convey the feeling of the Ark, but it did add a nice little bit of extra flair.
I'm a bit indifferent about the Refusians. They were a literal Deus Ex Machina with the added benefit of being invisible so you save money on design. The story worked well enough with them, though the addition of god-like beings did make the Monoids seem like much more adept villains that normal. Or the humans as just that much more pathetic. Take you choice there.
If you can get past the faults of the first two episodes, this story isn't terrible. I wouldn't recommend it as a first run on the First Doctor era as there are much better stories out there. But it has some good points and at least a bit of fun adventure in the second half. The concept is definitely sound and one that should be played with more often (such as is implied in The Face of Evil) but this is more of a first draft effort.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
The Ark is a story that I don't know much about other than that the principle aliens are the Monoids and that it is divided into two halves with the cliffhanger of Episode Two being the statue with a Monoid head. I've never heard anyone speak highly of it so I'm expecting a story that rather mundane. Usually if a story is openly bad, it gets a little extra attention just for that. Forgettable stories just fade into the ether.
Plot Summary
The TARDIS lands in the midst of a jungle filled with Earth creatures. Dodo, who is suffering from a cold, assumes they've landed in a zoo and goes wandering off. Steven follows her, chastising her for being so cavalier. The Doctor also believes they are in a zoo of some kind but notes a metallic sky and mechanical vibration in the floor.
They have actually landed on a ship and in the crew area, a trial is being held regarding a crewman who endangered the lives of others both human and the alien Monoids, who escaped to Earth from their own dying world and are now travelling with these humans who are escaping the dying Earth. The defendant is found guilty and placed into a machine that shrinks him to a microscopic level where he is then frozen and placed into storage. One Monoid enters and informs the court that strangers have arrived and a group of Monoids go to investigate.
The Doctor and his party become aware of the search party and duck into a cave to avoid them. Once past, they walk out and into the inhabited part of the ship, with the Doctor realizing they are on a ship. The Monoid search party finds them and they are taken to the Commander.
The Commander welcomes them and explains their history and their goal of traveling to a world seven hundred years travel away. Most of the human colonists have been shrunk and frozen, leaving a small group to breed and man the ship along with the Monoids. The group is also shown a statue being built as a symbol of unity among the crew.
As they talk, the Commander begins to feel a bit ill. As his fever grows, a flatbed cart is driven in by a Monoid with another Monoid on it. Both the Monoid and the Commander have contracted Dodo's cold and their lack of immunity is making it worse than for Dodo. The Monoid dies and the Commander becomes incoherent. The deputy commander, Zentos, accuses the Doctor's party of being agents of the planet they intend to colonize and orders them arrested.
As the cold spreads, Zentos orders the Doctor, Dodo and Steven to be put on trial as saboteurs. Steven elects to be the representative at the court with a man named Rhos and the Commander's daughter Millium acting as defense. During the trial, word comes that a human has died from the illness and the crowd declares the defendants guilty and to be executed by being ejected into space. Also during the trial, Steven falls ill from the cold and is taken back to the cell.
Millium goes to her father and rouses him enough to order that the Doctor be given a chance to find a cure for the illness and that Steven is to be the test subject. If he fails, they will be executed. The Doctor readily accepts and has Dodo and the Monoids bring him ingredients from the TARDIS and the animals in the jungle. Working with both the human scientists and a Monoid technician, the Doctor synthesizes a cure and injects Steven with it. His fever spikes briefly and then breaks. Dodo heads out to inform the others and the cure is passed out to all the others.
Apologetic, Zentos releases them and wishes them well on their travels. The three leave in the TARDIS only to have it reappear in the same place. Confused, they walk out to look for the people they just met and find the space nearly empty. They do find the statue has been completed, only instead of being a man like the plans, it has the face of a Monoid.
The Doctor investigates the empty control room to find it fully automated. He also discovers that the Monoids have taken over and are now using the humans as slaves. The Doctor, Dodo and Steven are discovered by the Monoid second-in-command who takes them to the Monoid leader. The leader recognizes them as the same travelers from the past. He also relates that Dodo's cold mutated after they left, weakening the humans and Monoids in it's wake. The Monoids, encouraged by the humans to improve themselves, learned to make weapons and rose up in a violent revolution.
The three are sent to the security kitchen to assist in the preparation of food. The Doctor and Steven rally the humans to try and rise up against the Monoids but they are beaten back and one is killed by reinforcements. The Doctor and Dodo are taken out of the kitchen with Steven left as a promise of good behavior.
Approaching the planet Refusis II, the Monoids launch a landing craft with the Monoid second-in-command, his human slave, the Doctor and Dodo. They explore the planet but see no one. They do find a castle and enter it. The Monoid begins to destroy things to get the inhabitants attention but he is stopped by an invisible power. The Doctor calmly talks with the Refusian and learns they were altered into beings of energy by a solar flare impacting their planet. They welcome new inhabitants, so long as they are peaceful, and have taken steps to build shelters for them, including the castle.
Back on the ship, the Monoids plan to land on the planet and colonize it once they have a report. They also plan to blow up the Ark and all it's inhabitants with a bomb in the statue, ridding themselves of the remaining humans. One of the slaves overhears this and runs to the kitchen to warn the others.
This plan is also let slip by the second-in-command to his slave and Dodo. The slave tries to fight him but is shot down. The Monoid continues back to the landing craft, unaware that he is being followed by a Refusian. He signals the Ark but before he can relate the information about the Refusians, the Refusian blows up the landing craft, killing the second-in-command and leaving the Doctor and Dodo stranded on the planet.
Concerned over the failure of communications with Two, the lead Monoid orders that all Monoids, including the preserved ones, head down to the planet. However, Monoid Four believes that they should stay on the Ark and begins to foment dissent among some of the Monoids.
Knowing that they need to find the bomb, Steven and the others watch the Monoids prepare to depart. One man, Maharis, sneaks out after finishing loading the pods with the Monoid colonist trays and releases the others from the kitchen. After the Monoids depart the ship, they begin to scour the ship for the bomb.
On the planet, the Doctor and Dodo hide while the Monoids look for Two and the inhabitants of the planet. The Doctor and Dodo sneak aboard one landing craft and signal the Ark. The Doctor and Steven devise a plan where they will keep looking for the bomb while the Doctor tries to get it's location from the Monoids. As an added distraction, the Doctor has the Refusian he has been in contact with, take the landing craft back to the Ark.
The Doctor and Dodo surrender to the Monoids and the Monoids are equally dumbfounded by the landing craft departing when they cannot see anyone flying it. Interrogated by Monoid One, the Doctor insists that he and Dodo have not seen anyone. Unnerved, Monoid Four openly defies the leader and leads some of the Monoids back to the pods with the intention of taking the Ark elsewhere. Monoid One gloats that as the bomb is in the statue, he will find it difficult to move, allowing the Doctor to learn of it's location. Monoid One then gathers his followers to deal with Monoid Four's insubordination.
On the Ark, Maharis decides to take the landing craft back to Refusis to help the Doctor. Another collaborator, Dassuk, insists on going along and they head down. They land to see the Monoids in a firefight with each other. Dassuk tries to give himself to them but he is shot down. Maharis and those that accompanied him run to the castle where they tell the lone Monoid guard that Monoid One has sent for him to help in the fight.
Unguarded, the humans and the Doctor make their way back to the landing craft where the Doctor signals Steven that the bomb is in the statue. On board, the Refusian uses he powers to levitate the statue to the landing bay and Steven and another human named Venussa launch it into space where it explodes harmlessly.
The humans come down to the planet where they disarm the few surviving Monoids, Monoids One and Four having been killed in the fight. The Refusians allow them to colonize the planet so long as the two species live in peace. The Doctor chastises the humans noting that their ancestors enslaved the Monoids, embittering them towards the humans. If they treat each other as equals, they will live well together.
The Doctor, Steven and Dodo depart in the TARDIS. While in flight, the Doctor has a slight cough and as he does so, he begins to become invisible. Steven asks if this is similar to the Refusians but the Doctor informs him that he believes they are under attack from a more powerful source.
Analysis
I think The Ark can best be described as something that is there as it is not overly engaging. I do think that the second half of the story is better than the first, but neither is particularly engaging.
I think unquestionably the best thing about this story is the Doctor. The Doctor is calm, collected and inquisitive. He aims to help and doesn't get flustered, even when things go against him. He is also quite proactive, which is somewhat unusual for the First Doctor. Steven still takes the lead on much of the action but the Doctor goes out of his way to do things on his own. He actively petitions to help cure the plague in the first half, he instigates the feelings of rebellion in the second and actively works to thwart the Monoids and lend as much aid as possible to Steven in finding the bomb. He does all this with a chipper sense of adventure that is sometimes lacking with the First Doctor and it is enjoyable.
I'm not much for linguistics and it's been a while since I watched The Massacre so Dodo's switch from a more working class accent to the posh version was entirely lost on me. She was okay in this story though a bit dim. I got the feeling that she was intended to be more of a comic relief type of character, especially when dealing with the cold in the first half. In the second, she took a more subservient role to the Doctor and behaved more or less as the average 60's female companion: look nice and don't get in the Doctor's way. I didn't have a problem with it but there was nothing particularly catching about it either.
Steven was typical Steven. He took on a slightly exasperated parent tone when dealing with Dodo in Episode One, which did amuse me as Vicki had a similar tone when dealing with Steven in The Time Meddler. But once things got real, he settled down into his usual role. Episode Two didn't give him much other than the trial at the beginning but in the second half of the story, he went into typical action-man mode, going so far as to metaphorically slapping around the human slaves. He did well, but again, there wasn't much outside of what I would have expected. It was Steven being Steven and he did it well but nothing outside of that.
If there was a point where this story really fell down it was in the acting of the guest cast. This is more so in the first half. I actually didn't have a problem with the Monoids as I thought they were reasonably well designed and did about as well as you would expect a man in a suit to do. As such, when they were the focus in the second half, shortfalls in the acting did not register as much.
The real problems came with the human crew. The worst offender I thought was the Commander who falls ill at the end of Episode One. He has one good moment where a criminal is put into storage. After that, his delivery is terrible and he doesn't seem to know which direction he should take himself. Mellium is okay but she is every bland 60's female guest actor. She has her moments of stilted delivery and just standing about looking pretty which makes her quite uninteresting. Similarly Zentos is every zealous over-reactionary we've seen before. He chews the scenery while proclaiming the Doctor and his companions to be evil with no proof. He stands in a position of self-righteousness only to be humbled later as we have seen so many times before. If the acting doesn't get you, the genericness of the characters will.
There is a bit of an improvement in the second half as all the human characters seem to be portrayed by better actors, but there is so little time devoted to them, that it is impossible to care about them. I actually lost track of who was who at one point because all the men just seemed to look like each other. I guess that should be expected when you start with a relatively small genetic pool and then look forward seven hundred years, but it made the story just that much more difficult to follow. The standout was Venussa, not only because she was a woman but also because she seemed to be a slightly better actress and seemed to be the most enthusiastic about the revolution.
It's actually a bit of a shame that more time could not have been devoted to them because there was an interesting angle could have been explored about the collaborators and their relationship with the Monoids and then back to the humans. It's glossed over in a bit of a hasty way in this story with only the one die-hard collaborator who is gunned down by his masters when he surprises them.
Another thing that bugged me about this story is the nature of the plague that developed. Dodo has a generic cold, a bout of the sniffles essentially when they land. I can understand it felling the inhabitants of the Ark and being nastier there as they are lacking the level of immunity that Dodo and Steven have. However, even without that immunity, death from a cold seems like an extreme reaction. What's more, Steven catches the disease but instead of having symptoms like Dodo, the virus has apparently mutated in the span of a few hours to fell him during the trial. This makes no sense as the base level germ should have been the same to what he was exposed to in the TARDIS. At one point when hiding, Steven had his hand over Dodo's mouth to keep her quiet so he has been more than exposed to the germ. Yet, rather than having an immunity to it, he is felled just as bad as the others. Even if he had not yet fully gotten Dodo's cold, he should have displayed symptoms similar to hers, given his own build up of immunities over the years. A slight fever maybe but it should have essentially been a runny nose, watery eyes and sneezing.
I would argue that the disease is not Dodo's cold but in fact some other germ that they've been exposed to and brought with them. The Doctor is immune because of his different physiology and Dodo does not get it because her cold has her immune system working harder and it repels the bulk of the infection without any significant effects. The passengers are felled first because of their lack of prior immunities but then Steven goes down with similar symptoms, demonstrating that it is a different bug. At least, that's how I like to think of it.
Jumping back to the Monoids, I rather liked the design even if the Beatles haircuts are a bit much. I would also note that despite what the Doctor says in Episode Four, there isn't a lot of evidence showing the Monoids as slaves in the first two episodes. Monoid One even goes so far as to mock the humans for encouraging their learning which allowed them to rise up. I thought it rather a weak sauce to make the idea of peace a little easier at the end by implying the humans were just as guilty as the Monoids, despite there being no evidence in the story of that guilt. It is actually a Monoid death that prompts Zentos to have the Doctor and his companions arrested, which doesn't seem like the actions of a slave master. I think it would have worked a bit better if the Monoids felt like they were being oppressed and the Doctor telling both sides they needed to talk to each other rather than just have the Doctor pronounce guilt on the humans, mitigating the Monoid's actions.
One positive point was the model work. Both the model statue and the ships were quite well done and I thought that was good work for the time. All the sets really were well done, although the idea of a "security kitchen" is a little dumb. I'm also not sure a real elephant was necessary to convey the feeling of the Ark, but it did add a nice little bit of extra flair.
I'm a bit indifferent about the Refusians. They were a literal Deus Ex Machina with the added benefit of being invisible so you save money on design. The story worked well enough with them, though the addition of god-like beings did make the Monoids seem like much more adept villains that normal. Or the humans as just that much more pathetic. Take you choice there.
If you can get past the faults of the first two episodes, this story isn't terrible. I wouldn't recommend it as a first run on the First Doctor era as there are much better stories out there. But it has some good points and at least a bit of fun adventure in the second half. The concept is definitely sound and one that should be played with more often (such as is implied in The Face of Evil) but this is more of a first draft effort.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
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