Will there be strawberry jam with the tea?
The Power of Kroll is the fifth entry in the Key to Time quest and the second for Robert Holmes. It also is oddly derided by fans. If you ask a random fan which is the weakest story of the season, they will usually cite this one or The Armageddon Factor. Some of that may be due to the production values but often they will cite story as well. Having seen this once before, I can't really understand what the significant problem is.
Plot Summary
On one of the moons of Delta Magna, Commander Thawn has returned to a methane gas extraction facility after a visit to the home planet. One of the technicians, Dugeen, notices that another ship followed Thawn's through the atmosphere trying to mask itself. Fearing that it might be a smuggler named Rohm-Dutt supplying weapons to the local tribe, nicknamed Swampies, Thawn and his second-in-command, Fenner, head out to investigate.
The TARDIS lands in the swamp and the Doctor and Romana leave it to look for the fifth segment to the Key to Time. K-9 is forced to stay in the TARDIS due to the marshy conditions. The atmosphere plays with the key detector so Romana heads for higher ground to get a better signal. While on the ridge she is grabbed by Rohm-Dutt and a party of Swampies and take her to the Swampie village.
The Doctor hears Thawn and Fenner approaching but when he stands up, he is shot by Fenner. Thawn realizes that he is not Rohm-Dutt and when the Doctor sits up (Fenner shot his hat) Thawn takes him back to the extraction facility. The Doctor gives a few suggestions on how to improve the facility which convinces the crew temporarily that he is not an agent here to assist the Swampies. However, they refuse to let him leave.
Romana is taken back to the village where Rohm-Dutt delivers a load of guns to the Swampies. Newly armed, the Swampies decide to attack the refinery in the morning and prepare to offer Romana as a sacrifice to Kroll, their squid god, to give them victory.
While the crew is distracted by sending a payload of processed protein into orbit for delivery, the Doctor slips out, using his sonic screwdriver to open the door. At the same time, Mensch, Thawn's Swampie manservant, slips out and signals the village with a code via flashing light. A villager responds to him and the Doctor follows the light in a stolen boat to the village. He arrives just as another Swampie, dressed as Kroll is preparing to kill Romana. He knocks him away and frees Romana.
Left behind, the Swampie leaves a book detailing the history of the Swampies. They discover how the people were exiled from Delta Magna to this moon and began to worship a squid that was transported at the same time and grew to a large size. The tome also tells of how Kroll rises every couple of hundred years to cleanse the people from unrighteousness. The Doctor and Romana speculate that if there is a giant squid creature, it is preparing to emerge from a state of hibernation and that would explain the large quantity of protein the facility is able to get from the lake.
Thawn and the crew realize that the Doctor has slipped away and guess that he is league with Rohm-Dutt. Thawn is also alerted to a large disturbance on the sea bed by Dugeen. Thawn and Mensch leave the base to hunt down the Doctor and his allies. The Swampies are laying in wait for them but their weapons are faulty and only kill them. Before battle is joined, Kroll rises from the sea, a huge squid, grabs Mensch and drags him below. Thawn retreats back to the base while the Swampies abase themselves before the vision of Kroll.
The returning Swampies discover the Doctor and Romana about to continue their quest for the key segment and capture them along with Rohm-Dutt who they accuse of delivering faulty weapons to maximize his own profits. The village leader, Ranquin, consults the holy book and decrees that the three prisoners are to be sacrificed in one of seven specified ways to Kroll.
Back at the base, Thawn relays his experience to the others and they also observe more large disturbances on the sea floor. Unsure of the base's ability to withstand large torsional forces, they look at securing the facility. While doing so, Kroll snakes a tentacle through the extraction pipes, punches through, grabs Harg and pulls him down through the pipes and back into the sea.
The Doctor, Romana and Rohm-Dutt are tied to a rack with vines and a window to allow the sun in. As the vines dry, they contract, pulling the three like a rack. The Swampies leave to let the execution happen. As the vines tighten, Rohm-Dutt admits that he was actually hired by Thawn to deliver faulty weapons. It would give him justification to eradicate the Swampies, as they are arming, and also discredit The Sons of Earth, a fringe group advocating the abandoning of the colony and return to Earth.
On the extractor, Thawn orders the shut down and repair of the damaged pipes and also the continual monitor of Kroll. He and Fenner debate attempts of ways to kill the creature. Thawn has twenty-five depth charges that he thinks can be used against it but is unable to figure out a way to deliver them in a compact fashion against the creature's vitals. They are also distracted by a storm rolling in which causes everyone on the station to batten down.
As the storm rolls in, the three notice the rain splashing the window. The Doctor emits a high pitched tone which shatters the window. The rain flows into the room and the vines swell with the moisture, allowing the three to free themselves. They flee the village but the Swampies notice their departure and chase after them.
As the storm subsides, Thawn's team notices Kroll leaving the lake and heading towards the village, attracted by the vibration of the chase. The Doctor also notices signs of Kroll's advance and orders them to stop. Rohm-Dutt panics and continues to run until a tentacle reaches out and drags him under the water. The Doctor and Romana enter a boat and propel themselves amidst the swamp while Kroll surfaces and attacks the Swampies.
As Kroll is distracted, Thawn get the idea to launch the orbital rocket into Kroll. Dugeen objects, noting that it will kill the Swampies as well but Thawn knocks him out. Thawn pulls a gun and forces Fenner to start the launch sequence. The Doctor and Romana, who managed to sneak into the station, overhear the plan and head down to the rocket silo to disable the rocket.
The Doctor climbs up the rocket and pulls the guidance panel that controls the rocket. Dugeen comes around and tries to disable it from the control panel but Thawn shoots him. The Doctor however smashes the wiring in the rocket, disabling it. Knowing that sabotage has occurred, Thawn heads down and takes the Doctor and Romana back to the control room at gunpoint.
Kroll recedes into the lake, leaving the Swampies. Ranquin, sure that Kroll has punished them for not sacrificing the Doctor and Romana, leads the tribe to the base to fulfill their obligation. With Thawn distracted, they enter the base with ease. They then kill Thawn with a spear as he is about to execute the Doctor.
Kroll rises from the lake again and attacks the base. Tentacles snake in towards the control room but the Doctor has Fenner activate equipment elsewhere in the base. The vibrations attract Kroll and he leaves the control room alone while attacking other parts of the platform. Ranquin, believing Kroll has heard his prayers, heads to another part of the base to abase himself before Kroll, but is grabbed by a tentacle and dragged out.
The Doctor gets an idea and heads outside to a point where Kroll's body is pressed against the platform. He is grabbed by a tentacle but he manages to press the Key detection stick against Kroll's body. Kroll immediately disintegrates as the fifth segment materializes on the end of the detection stick.
The Doctor takes the segment in to Romana and then manages to disable the computer before it sets off components that would destroy the platform. With the base secure, the Doctor and Romana leave, suggesting that Fenner try to get to know the Swampies better and informing him that with Kroll gone, the methane production of the station will crater. They walk back to the TARDIS and take off as K-9 greets them.
Analysis
Again, for the life of me I can't figure out why this story is derided so much. Yes the split screen with Kroll is pretty obvious but fans tend to be forgiving of the Barry Letts era and I think the things he did were worse. What's more, you have some really good acting and (aside from the split screen) pretty good production values going on. Even the story, while very basic, rolls along at a good pace.
The Fourth Doctor is quite good here being a good balance of funny but also somewhat serious about the overall situation. He is never angry and always focuses on the lives of others, continuously insisting that he needs to go help Romana as well as constantly emphasizing the Swampies as real people. But he also does not hesitate to call out the Swampies own faults in their worship of Kroll and in ignoring their own history in doing so. It's the Fourth Doctor at his most fun.
Romana is enjoyable but she is a bit shortchanged in this story. Since it is Robert Holmes writing her again, she returns to the psychological mindset as well trading witty barbs, tinged with a bit of sarcasm. It's Romana at some of her most entertaining but aside from the dialogue, she just isn't given much. She spends most of the first three episodes captured, either waiting for or with the Doctor. In Episode Four, she does nothing as it is the Doctor who shorts the guidance in the rocket, destroys Kroll and disables the computer. Romana merely comments on the situation the whole time. She even manages to behave somewhat stupidly by first not dragging the Doctor out of the silo when he knocks himself out disabling the rocket and then by dismissing Kroll's attack and nearly getting grabbed by a tentacle. Not the best role for her.
Thawn made for a pretty good bad guy. He gets outacted by Fenner, played by Philip Madoc, but his overall performance is pretty good. He does things in such a way that he starts as somewhat reasonable, even if you disagree with him, but as things escalate, he gets more and more manic and savage. Yet despite the manicness, it never goes over-the-top. It just goes to the point where you feel satisfied that the Swampies have taken him down. It also makes sense in the context of the story that Thawn would have to be removed as an antagonist before Kroll could be fully dealt with so his death only halfway through Episode Four feels appropriate and doesn't leave the story hanging for the rest of the episode.
The Swampies were pretty good as a native. The makeup used to get that green skin was quite effective and they were all pretty good actors, Ranquin especially. There was some nice undertones with Mensch that would have been interesting to explore as well. He is a domesticated Swampie and carries that countenance of a native who has been "civilized" but knows the disdain he is under. The actor played it well and it's a shame that he is taken out halfway in Episode Two. My only other complaint about the Swampies is that their ceremony of sacrifice for Romana goes on a bit too long. It gets a bit tedious to hear them shout Kroll constantly for nearly half of Episode One. The ceremony should have been cut down or some other things done to institute a bit of variety in the proceedings.
I will admit that the split screen done for Kroll was not good, but I've also seen worse. I think a case could be made that the giant robot in Episode Four of Robot was worse and yet that doesn't seem to be derided quite as much as this. There is a point where it gets too close and the effect seems even worse than it should but that's a small niggle. They actually do a better job in making Kroll seem more fierce with the use of the tentacles and dragging several people into the depths. I look at Kroll as an ambitious try to which they did not quite succeed.
Aside from Kroll, the effects are pretty good. There is nice location work which puts nearly everything outside on film and that looks good. There is some very nice night shooting for Romana's sacrifice that also looks good. Even the base set is pretty good, spare but serviceable. There is a point where the ladder used by the Doctor to disarm the rocket is seen to be rather wobbly but I'm willing to overlook that in favor of everything else they did.
There is one point that is just a bit dumb and it cannot be overlooked. That is the way the Doctor, Romana and Rohm-Dutt get out of the rack in Episode Three. Having the Doctor emit a high pitched tone and then talk about learning it from Nellie Melba is taking it beyond the realm of believability. I think it might have gone over slightly better if an actual soprano's voice had been used. At least there the joke about the opera singer would have made sense, even if it was a groaner. Instead you get a synthetic sound that makes the Doctor sound like a robot and that just didn't work.
Even with the missteps, I think this is a pretty good story. It's not The Ribos Operation and I think that's why it's reputation suffers. Since Robert Holmes already penned a very good story in the arc, it can't help but be compared to that one and it's just not as good. Had any other writer delivered this, it probably would be appreciated for the simple story that it is. While I like Robert Holmes, I try not to force a story to live up to a higher reputation just because of who wrote it. If the story is entertaining, well-acted and looks decent, I'm fine with that. Within the Key to Time season, I would certainly rather watch this than say The Pirate Planet, even though that story is supposed to be funnier.
Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
The Sea Devils
I reversed the polarity of the neutron flow.
The Sea Devils is a follow up to Doctor Who and the Silurians but with the Master thrown in as an added antagonist. The general opinion amongst fans is that it is good but not quite as good as Silurians. There is also one rather famous scene where the Doctor deprives Jo of a plate of sandwiches and eats them himself. Something comical I guess but it has really fed in to the idea of the Doctor being a bit abusive towards Jo at times. So I'm curious to see how this compares to the rest of Malcolm Hulke's work.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Jo arrive at the island where the Master is being held prisoner. They meet the commandant, Colonel Trenchard, who shows them to see the Master and also mentions the sinking of several ships recently while making small talk. The Master makes an outward show of being penitent but also refuses to tell the Doctor the location of his TARDIS. He also asks that the Doctor return to see him for more stimulating conversation.
Curious about the sinkings, the Doctor talks to the man who ferried them over. He tells of a lifeboat that was recovered with strange markings and was taken to a naval base nearby. The Doctor bribes the man and takes his boat over the naval base where he finds the lifeboat with scorch marks. The base's guards find the Doctor and take him to see the commander, Captain Hart.
Discovering the Doctor's little adventure, Jo borrows a motorcycle and arrives at the base with their UNIT passes, which satisfy Hart's demand for regulation. Looking on a chart, the Doctor notes that at the center of the attacks is an old naval fort. He learns that a two-man maintenance team has been assigned to upgrade the fort to use as a SONAR station. Hart however, refuses to send a team out as he's had no complaint from the maintenance crew.
The Doctor and Jo head out to the station on their own and explore the fort. They find one member of the crew dead. The other member comes out of the shadows in a state of panic. They get him back to his bed and the Doctor sedates him with supplies from the medical kit. They also find that their boat has been sunk by the gas tank being exploded.
The Doctor thinks to radio for help but finds the radio destroyed. He instead goes to find a transceiver which he can modify to send a distress signal. In the corridors he is attacked by a creature similar to the Silurians. He rushes back to the room and barricades the door. The creature uses a heat ray to burn a hole through the door and tries to unbar the door. The Doctor electrifies the door, giving the creature a nasty shock. It retreats and dives out a window into the sea.
When the Doctor and Jo fail to report in, a notice is sent to Captain Hart. He tries to raise the fort but gets no response. He then dispatches a rescue helicopter to investigate. As the helicopter approaches, it receives a signal from the Doctor, who managed to rewire a transceiver, and takes all three of them back to the naval base.
Back in the prison, Trenchard and the Master leave with the Master disguised as a naval officer. The Master is slightly annoyed with Trenchard for having mentioned the sinking ships to the Doctor but they press on anyway. Trenchard enters Captain Hart's office, interrupting his meeting with the Doctor and Jo to discuss a replacement for the weekend golf match. Meanwhile the Master sneaks into the store room and steals parts for SONAR equipment. He is met by the manager of the store room and when he fails to hypnotize him, the Master knocks him out.
Trenchard finally leaves but when Jo walks over to the window, she sees the Master walking below. She alerts the Doctor and a moment later, Hart is informed of the attack on the equipment room chief.
The Doctor and Jo, suspecting Trenchard's involvement, head back to the prison. Trenchard is caught off-guard and asks the Master what to do. He tells Trenchard to let him see the Doctor. He then knocks out a guard and takes his gun and knife from him.
The Doctor tells Jo to head back and then goes to see the Master himself once Trenchard returns. The Master tries to hold him with the gun but the Doctor knocks it out of his hand. They each grab a sword from a rack nearby and fence. The Doctor disarms the Master but the Master throws the stolen knife at him. Trenchard enters at the last minute, throwing off the Master's aim and he misses. Trenchard believes the Master's accusation that the Doctor attacked him and has the Doctor arrested.
Trenchard orders that Jo be arrested as well but she gets past the guards at the prison entrance and takes cover on the grounds while the guards search for her. She doubles back around to the exterior of the prison as the Doctor is taken in to the Master's room and handcuffed to a chair. The Master admits that he is making contact with the aquatic Eocenes and intends to assist them in retaking Earth and destroying humanity.
Back at the naval base, Captain Hart dispatches one of his submarine commanders to investigate the waters around the island fort. Officer Blythe enters informing him that Colonel Trenchard reported the Doctor and Jo leaving in a cab rather than their supplied transport. He also states that they immediately left for London rather than returning to the base as they had originally intended. Suspicious, Hart heads over to the prison to talk with Trenchard.
Upon learning of Hart's arrival, Trenchard summons the Master to observe from behind the scenes. Jo takes advantage of the situation and, having signaled the Doctor through the window, gets past the guard at the door as the Doctor distracts him. She undoes the handcuffs and the Doctor knocks out the guard, allowing them to flee the prison.
On the submarine, as they approach the island, they begin getting SONAR pings. The system is then overwhelmed and the whole sub begins to lose power, despite no apparent damage to any system. The sub sinks to the bottom and several Sea Devils enter through the escape hatches and attack the crew. One breaks through to the bridge where it forces the crew to drive the sub to a specific point.
Trenchard is able to allay Hart's suspicions and dismisses him. The Master enters with his machine that he tells Trenchard will allow him to communicate with the Sea Devils. Trenchard has been fooled by the Master into thinking they are enemy agents and can be dealt with by normal means. They are alerted to Jo and the Doctor's escape and follow them down to the beach where the Doctor and Jo are caught between armed guards and a minefield. The Master activates his machine and a Sea Devil rises out of the ocean and walks on to the beach.
The Sea Devil attacks the soldiers first, driving them off. The Doctor and Jo dash into the minefield to escape with the Doctor using his sonic screwdriver to detect the mines. The Sea Devil tries to follow them at the urging of the Master but the Doctor detonates several mines behind him with the sonic, driving the creature back into the sea. The Doctor and Jo continue on while the Master and Trenchard retreat to the prison.
Back at the prison, Trenchard is stunned as he thought they would be fighting enemy agents. The Master tries to calm him and tells him that the creatures are intent on taking back the Earth. Trenchard wants to call the authorities but the Master persuades him to wait until he has finished his communication device. He then sets on tweaking it and making it more powerful.
The Doctor and Jo make it back to the naval base on foot where they tell Captain Hart of the creatures. He doesn't believe them at first but he comes around to the Doctor's thinking as the ships sent out to find the missing sub are recalled due to darkness. Hart is then alerted by a SONAR technician that a blip has been picked up nearby. They watch as it approaches the shore and then holds steady.
Summoned by the Master, a group of Sea Devils wades ashore and breaks in to the prison. The guards are quickly overpowered as they approach the Master's cell. Trenchard, who had been trying to get a hold of government ministers, seizes his gun and stands against the Master's door, fighting off the Sea Devils. They kill eventually kill him and take the Master back with them.
As the blip departs from the shore, Hart calls in more naval personnel to fight with the creatures. The Doctor decides to examine the sea floor around the island fort and the party travels to one of the vessels to use it's diving bell. The Doctor heads inside and is lowered to the bottom. On the bottom, he spies something coming up against the glass but communications are cut off. Hart orders the bell drawn up but when opened, they find it empty.
The Doctor has been taken prisoner by the Sea Devils and is taken back to their base. He appeals to them to discuss a peaceful solution with the humans, allowing the humans the land while the Sea Devils live in the ocean. He also suggests that they release the sub as a measure of good faith. The Master objects to this but the senior Sea Devil overrules him and tells the Doctor that he will think about it.
Back at the naval base, Undersecretary Walker arrives and orders ships into position to fire on the Sea Devil's base. Jo and Captain Hart object, thinking it will endanger the Doctor and the sub crew, but Walker overrules them and orders the ships to fire.
The attack causes superficial damage to the base but the chief Sea Devil becomes angry and refuses the Doctor's offer. He orders him taken to another room and executed. However another blast causes a minor cave in, allowing the Doctor escape his would-be executioners. He take a gun and uses it to free the sub commander and his lieutenant. They make their way back to the sub, kill the guard and launch the sub from it's pen as the rest of the crew had been kept on board.
The Master suggests floating the bodies of any dead Sea Devils to the surface to lull the humans into thinking they've won. They also activate a force field around the sub to keep it from escaping. But the sub fires a torpedo into the side wall, damaging the field enough to allow them to escape. With the humans having escaped, the chief Sea Devil orders the Master to continue to repair the hibernation unit that will allow him to reanimate the rest of his people. The Master agrees but states that he needs equipment from the naval base and suggests an attack.
Arriving back at the base, the Doctor first berates Wilson for ruining his negotiation and then appeals to him to allow him to fix the mistake. Wilson is nonplussed but agrees to allow the Doctor to talk to the Sea Devils once more. As they leave the building, they discover the base under attack by a squad of Sea Devils. One prepares to attack the Doctor and Jo, but the Doctor disarms it. However, another grabs him from behind and knocks him out. The Master arrives and prevents the Sea Devils from killing them and instead take the Doctor, Jo, and Hart back inside as prisoners. They are soon in control of the whole base.
The Master takes the Doctor into the store room and has him help him build a machine that will provide power and awaken every hibernating Sea Devil around the ocean. As the Doctor works, he makes modifications to the Master's design, both improving it and letting the Doctor booby trap it.
In the control quarters Jo, Hart and Wilson are locked in but Hart is able to loosen the grate to the ventilation shaft. He helps Jo through and she climbs up to the roof of the building. She then climbs down and signals the Doctor through the window. He tells her that he is going to create a distraction and she must use it to get the others out. She then slips back to just outside the building where Hart and Wilson are held to wait.
Upon completing the machine, the Doctor activates it and a high pitched squeal emits from it, sending the Sea Devils into fits. Jo rushes in and frees Hart and Wilson, although Wilson takes one look at the flailing Sea Devil and seals himself back in the room. Hart grabs a machine gun and he and Jo run down to the beach where they grab a hovercraft and launch away from the base. The Master, seeing one of the Sea Devil's writhe about, turns off the machine and demands to know what happened. The Doctor states that he must have switched the input and output by accident. They run a couple of final checks and then prepare to leave.
Hart and Jo return in the hovercraft with several squads of heavily armed seamen. They overrun the Sea Devils patrolling the coast and free the rest of the captive soldiers. The steadily wipe out the Sea Devils, who are preparing to retreat into the sea. The Master grabs the device, stows it on a jet ski and takes off for the island. The Doctor, having verified that Jo was okay, takes off after him on another jet ski. The humans have secured the base but the Doctor is captured upon arriving at the sea fort as a group of Sea Devils are waiting for them as he and the Master arrive.
The Doctor and the Master take the machine below and hook it up to the main power supply. The Doctor appeals to the chief Sea Devil once more to consider peace through negotiation but the chief says no. The Doctor then quietly shifts a lever just before the Master activates it. With the machine active and slowly powering up, the chief Sea Devil orders them to be taken away and locked up. The Master protests but his usefulness is over.
In the prison, the Doctor informs the Master that he sabotaged the machine and that when fully powered or if the Sea Devils try to deactivate it, it will explode, destroying the entire base. With a race against time, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to open the prison door and he and the Master grab two underwater suits left by the submarine crew when they were imprisoned. They leave through a hatch and float to the surface.
Wilson calls the ministry to get authorization to detonate a nuclear warhead at the base to destroy the Sea Devil's base. While he is on the phone, Hart, at Jo's request, sends out the hovercraft to sweep the area in case the Doctor escaped. The hovercraft spies the Doctor and the Master and picks them up, though shortly after they board, the Master collapses with chest pains.
As the hovercraft approaches the shore, the device reaches full power and detonates, sending a massive explosion though the water. The hovercraft lands and an ambulance approaches, having been radioed for for the Master. The Doctor disembarks and tells Hart and Jo what happened. The medical team also leave with a patient but the Doctor discovers that it is the pilot of the hovercraft in a mask. He turns around to see the Master getting away in the hovercraft.
Analysis
I think I would be a bit hard pressed to say if I liked this one or The Silurians better. The Silurians had several great scenes but did have periods of dullness while The Sea Devils didn't have any great scenes but was more consistently good across the board. At the very least, the show certainly got a nice effort out of the British Navy in this story.
One of the best things about this story was that it had a natural flow to it. It's more just bad luck that the Doctor learned about the sinking of the ships and got involved. But once he is, there is a nice escalation and it's easy to see how you get from point A to B to C. That has the added advantage of making the story seem a bit more natural to be six parts, although I think a bit of tightening wouldn't have diminished anything in this story.
One the great ironys of this story is that it has one of the most remembered scenes of the Doctor being an ass to Jo and yet he is generally respectful towards her through the rest of the story. In fact, the Third Doctor as written by Malcolm Hulke almost always had a good relationship with Jo and it was other writers that made him more of a jerk towards her. But it's still this scene (clearly meant as a joke) that is plucked for the Doctor's attitude towards her.
Jo actually rescues the Doctor twice in this story which would seem to make her a bit more resourceful than him. Jo is actually very likable in this story and at near top form as a companion. I think the only real fault she has is that she runs out of things to do once the battle is fully joined in Episode Six and just mostly stands around insisting that others do things for her. You also have to give Jo mad props for crawling through a ventilation duct in a white pantsuit and emerging with it perfectly clean. That's a near superpower there.
The Doctor is pretty good in this and while he does continue over with his negotiation first strategy as seen in The Silurians, he also gives way to pragmatism and open blows the Sea Devils up at the end. There is no fretting about sealing them off or working with them later. They rejected him twice and he finishes the matter. Which probably means that the Brigadier has had a bit more of an effect on the Doctor than vice versa.
Of course, the Doctor is still a pompous blowhard at points. Probably the most gratuitous moment was the sword fight at the end of Episode Two. First, what prison keeps swords by the prisoner's cell? Then, he is disdainful of the Master throughout the fight but is so clearly enjoying it that he returns the Master's blade once he has disarmed him just so they can keep fighting. You can almost see the justification of how the Master's greatest fear is the Doctor laughing at him as seen in The Mind of Evil. I actually wish the Master had hit the Doctor when he threw the knife at him just to knock some of the wind out of the Doctor's sails and treat the Master with a bit more seriousness. I also find it ironic that the Doctor chides the Master by telling him that violence never solves anything but the entirety of Episode Six is demonstrating how violence was the only way to end the threat of the Sea Devils.
This story has only furthered my believe that the best writer for the Master was Malcolm Hulke. The Master's plans are not overly complicated, nor are they deeply involved. He wants revenge on the Doctor and has decided to take advantage of the Sea Devil awakening to get it by destroying humanity. It's petty but understandable. But he also carries out fairly well. It is slips by others that mostly ruin him, although, ironically, it is his trust in both the Doctor and the Sea Devils that fully finish him.
But it's his repartee with the Doctor that is the most enjoyable. It's clear that the Master enjoys witty banter and only the Doctor is his intellectual equal, although other stories indicate that he does enjoy Jo to a lesser degree. But the back and forth between the Doctor and the Master is quite stimulating and you only wish there could be more scenes with them just interacting.
Most of the side characters are pretty good too. Trenchard is actually somewhat sympathetic, although why he fell for the Master's deception is unexplained. But his weakness is patriotism which is strangely noble. He also at least dies with honor attempting to undo the wrong he has done. Hart is also quite good. He plays the Brigadier role in being somewhat skeptical, but unlike other stories where his unbelief would be allowed to linger and compromise the situation, he is refuted within a few moments, often to something of a comedic effect. By the time things roll around to Episode Five, Hart doesn't even bother to object, he just goes along with it because what's the point. He's been proven wrong too often as it is.
The most annoying character is Walker and you can't help but get the feeling that Hulke inserted him in as a means of getting at least some political satire in. Walker is a coward, rude and an outright pig. The director goes one better by emphasizing this by zooming in on Walker's mouth as he stuffs his face while opining that lives must be sacrificed in war. The most annoying part is that for a character so odious, nothing actually happens to him. He hides during the Sea Devil invasion and tries to conduct a nuclear strike on the Sea Devil's base later. Presumably this is called off after it's destroyed by the Doctor, but he's likely to head back to London and be rewarded in some fashion for handling the crisis. Even his exposure as a coward doesn't net much other than a small chuckle and it's nothing that's going to hurt him long term. I just wish that he could have been punished in some fashion at the end of the story.
The direction was quite good as were all the action scenes, although there were some gratuitous points. I noted the sword fight already but there were a few other scenes that didn't make much sense. Why does the Master permit the sonic blast to go on so long when it's obvious the Sea Devil is in pain? He should have stopped it immediately rather than the thirty seconds it's allowed to go. How did Hart and Jo return with so many soldiers so quickly? Were they on the auxiliary base just down the beach? How did the Master have a mask of his face on hand to make his escape? These are just little plot points that just stick way out there and bring you out of the story.
I must also say that I did not like the music in this story. I don't mind a bit of Avant Garde here and there (see 2001) but the music in this story was particularly jarring and off-putting. Music should enhance the story and be more or less unnoticed. This music however is screaming to be noticed at the expense of whatever is going on screen. It was just an unfortunate choice and application.
I'm still a little unsure of how to properly stack it against The Silurians. As mentioned earlier, there are no real slow or bad moments. It hums along nicely as a fun action/adventure. But I was always hoping for a real ratchet up moment like Episode Six of The Silurians. That was just excellent and the lack of anything like that made this story feel a little disappointing, even though it was more consistently good. In the end, I think it's going to depend on your mood. A good action story would favor Sea Devils while a bit more of a think piece would favor Doctor Who and the Silurians. But both are good and readily watchable.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
The Sea Devils is a follow up to Doctor Who and the Silurians but with the Master thrown in as an added antagonist. The general opinion amongst fans is that it is good but not quite as good as Silurians. There is also one rather famous scene where the Doctor deprives Jo of a plate of sandwiches and eats them himself. Something comical I guess but it has really fed in to the idea of the Doctor being a bit abusive towards Jo at times. So I'm curious to see how this compares to the rest of Malcolm Hulke's work.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Jo arrive at the island where the Master is being held prisoner. They meet the commandant, Colonel Trenchard, who shows them to see the Master and also mentions the sinking of several ships recently while making small talk. The Master makes an outward show of being penitent but also refuses to tell the Doctor the location of his TARDIS. He also asks that the Doctor return to see him for more stimulating conversation.
Curious about the sinkings, the Doctor talks to the man who ferried them over. He tells of a lifeboat that was recovered with strange markings and was taken to a naval base nearby. The Doctor bribes the man and takes his boat over the naval base where he finds the lifeboat with scorch marks. The base's guards find the Doctor and take him to see the commander, Captain Hart.
Discovering the Doctor's little adventure, Jo borrows a motorcycle and arrives at the base with their UNIT passes, which satisfy Hart's demand for regulation. Looking on a chart, the Doctor notes that at the center of the attacks is an old naval fort. He learns that a two-man maintenance team has been assigned to upgrade the fort to use as a SONAR station. Hart however, refuses to send a team out as he's had no complaint from the maintenance crew.
The Doctor and Jo head out to the station on their own and explore the fort. They find one member of the crew dead. The other member comes out of the shadows in a state of panic. They get him back to his bed and the Doctor sedates him with supplies from the medical kit. They also find that their boat has been sunk by the gas tank being exploded.
The Doctor thinks to radio for help but finds the radio destroyed. He instead goes to find a transceiver which he can modify to send a distress signal. In the corridors he is attacked by a creature similar to the Silurians. He rushes back to the room and barricades the door. The creature uses a heat ray to burn a hole through the door and tries to unbar the door. The Doctor electrifies the door, giving the creature a nasty shock. It retreats and dives out a window into the sea.
When the Doctor and Jo fail to report in, a notice is sent to Captain Hart. He tries to raise the fort but gets no response. He then dispatches a rescue helicopter to investigate. As the helicopter approaches, it receives a signal from the Doctor, who managed to rewire a transceiver, and takes all three of them back to the naval base.
Back in the prison, Trenchard and the Master leave with the Master disguised as a naval officer. The Master is slightly annoyed with Trenchard for having mentioned the sinking ships to the Doctor but they press on anyway. Trenchard enters Captain Hart's office, interrupting his meeting with the Doctor and Jo to discuss a replacement for the weekend golf match. Meanwhile the Master sneaks into the store room and steals parts for SONAR equipment. He is met by the manager of the store room and when he fails to hypnotize him, the Master knocks him out.
Trenchard finally leaves but when Jo walks over to the window, she sees the Master walking below. She alerts the Doctor and a moment later, Hart is informed of the attack on the equipment room chief.
The Doctor and Jo, suspecting Trenchard's involvement, head back to the prison. Trenchard is caught off-guard and asks the Master what to do. He tells Trenchard to let him see the Doctor. He then knocks out a guard and takes his gun and knife from him.
The Doctor tells Jo to head back and then goes to see the Master himself once Trenchard returns. The Master tries to hold him with the gun but the Doctor knocks it out of his hand. They each grab a sword from a rack nearby and fence. The Doctor disarms the Master but the Master throws the stolen knife at him. Trenchard enters at the last minute, throwing off the Master's aim and he misses. Trenchard believes the Master's accusation that the Doctor attacked him and has the Doctor arrested.
Trenchard orders that Jo be arrested as well but she gets past the guards at the prison entrance and takes cover on the grounds while the guards search for her. She doubles back around to the exterior of the prison as the Doctor is taken in to the Master's room and handcuffed to a chair. The Master admits that he is making contact with the aquatic Eocenes and intends to assist them in retaking Earth and destroying humanity.
Back at the naval base, Captain Hart dispatches one of his submarine commanders to investigate the waters around the island fort. Officer Blythe enters informing him that Colonel Trenchard reported the Doctor and Jo leaving in a cab rather than their supplied transport. He also states that they immediately left for London rather than returning to the base as they had originally intended. Suspicious, Hart heads over to the prison to talk with Trenchard.
Upon learning of Hart's arrival, Trenchard summons the Master to observe from behind the scenes. Jo takes advantage of the situation and, having signaled the Doctor through the window, gets past the guard at the door as the Doctor distracts him. She undoes the handcuffs and the Doctor knocks out the guard, allowing them to flee the prison.
On the submarine, as they approach the island, they begin getting SONAR pings. The system is then overwhelmed and the whole sub begins to lose power, despite no apparent damage to any system. The sub sinks to the bottom and several Sea Devils enter through the escape hatches and attack the crew. One breaks through to the bridge where it forces the crew to drive the sub to a specific point.
Trenchard is able to allay Hart's suspicions and dismisses him. The Master enters with his machine that he tells Trenchard will allow him to communicate with the Sea Devils. Trenchard has been fooled by the Master into thinking they are enemy agents and can be dealt with by normal means. They are alerted to Jo and the Doctor's escape and follow them down to the beach where the Doctor and Jo are caught between armed guards and a minefield. The Master activates his machine and a Sea Devil rises out of the ocean and walks on to the beach.
The Sea Devil attacks the soldiers first, driving them off. The Doctor and Jo dash into the minefield to escape with the Doctor using his sonic screwdriver to detect the mines. The Sea Devil tries to follow them at the urging of the Master but the Doctor detonates several mines behind him with the sonic, driving the creature back into the sea. The Doctor and Jo continue on while the Master and Trenchard retreat to the prison.
Back at the prison, Trenchard is stunned as he thought they would be fighting enemy agents. The Master tries to calm him and tells him that the creatures are intent on taking back the Earth. Trenchard wants to call the authorities but the Master persuades him to wait until he has finished his communication device. He then sets on tweaking it and making it more powerful.
The Doctor and Jo make it back to the naval base on foot where they tell Captain Hart of the creatures. He doesn't believe them at first but he comes around to the Doctor's thinking as the ships sent out to find the missing sub are recalled due to darkness. Hart is then alerted by a SONAR technician that a blip has been picked up nearby. They watch as it approaches the shore and then holds steady.
Summoned by the Master, a group of Sea Devils wades ashore and breaks in to the prison. The guards are quickly overpowered as they approach the Master's cell. Trenchard, who had been trying to get a hold of government ministers, seizes his gun and stands against the Master's door, fighting off the Sea Devils. They kill eventually kill him and take the Master back with them.
As the blip departs from the shore, Hart calls in more naval personnel to fight with the creatures. The Doctor decides to examine the sea floor around the island fort and the party travels to one of the vessels to use it's diving bell. The Doctor heads inside and is lowered to the bottom. On the bottom, he spies something coming up against the glass but communications are cut off. Hart orders the bell drawn up but when opened, they find it empty.
The Doctor has been taken prisoner by the Sea Devils and is taken back to their base. He appeals to them to discuss a peaceful solution with the humans, allowing the humans the land while the Sea Devils live in the ocean. He also suggests that they release the sub as a measure of good faith. The Master objects to this but the senior Sea Devil overrules him and tells the Doctor that he will think about it.
Back at the naval base, Undersecretary Walker arrives and orders ships into position to fire on the Sea Devil's base. Jo and Captain Hart object, thinking it will endanger the Doctor and the sub crew, but Walker overrules them and orders the ships to fire.
The attack causes superficial damage to the base but the chief Sea Devil becomes angry and refuses the Doctor's offer. He orders him taken to another room and executed. However another blast causes a minor cave in, allowing the Doctor escape his would-be executioners. He take a gun and uses it to free the sub commander and his lieutenant. They make their way back to the sub, kill the guard and launch the sub from it's pen as the rest of the crew had been kept on board.
The Master suggests floating the bodies of any dead Sea Devils to the surface to lull the humans into thinking they've won. They also activate a force field around the sub to keep it from escaping. But the sub fires a torpedo into the side wall, damaging the field enough to allow them to escape. With the humans having escaped, the chief Sea Devil orders the Master to continue to repair the hibernation unit that will allow him to reanimate the rest of his people. The Master agrees but states that he needs equipment from the naval base and suggests an attack.
Arriving back at the base, the Doctor first berates Wilson for ruining his negotiation and then appeals to him to allow him to fix the mistake. Wilson is nonplussed but agrees to allow the Doctor to talk to the Sea Devils once more. As they leave the building, they discover the base under attack by a squad of Sea Devils. One prepares to attack the Doctor and Jo, but the Doctor disarms it. However, another grabs him from behind and knocks him out. The Master arrives and prevents the Sea Devils from killing them and instead take the Doctor, Jo, and Hart back inside as prisoners. They are soon in control of the whole base.
The Master takes the Doctor into the store room and has him help him build a machine that will provide power and awaken every hibernating Sea Devil around the ocean. As the Doctor works, he makes modifications to the Master's design, both improving it and letting the Doctor booby trap it.
In the control quarters Jo, Hart and Wilson are locked in but Hart is able to loosen the grate to the ventilation shaft. He helps Jo through and she climbs up to the roof of the building. She then climbs down and signals the Doctor through the window. He tells her that he is going to create a distraction and she must use it to get the others out. She then slips back to just outside the building where Hart and Wilson are held to wait.
Upon completing the machine, the Doctor activates it and a high pitched squeal emits from it, sending the Sea Devils into fits. Jo rushes in and frees Hart and Wilson, although Wilson takes one look at the flailing Sea Devil and seals himself back in the room. Hart grabs a machine gun and he and Jo run down to the beach where they grab a hovercraft and launch away from the base. The Master, seeing one of the Sea Devil's writhe about, turns off the machine and demands to know what happened. The Doctor states that he must have switched the input and output by accident. They run a couple of final checks and then prepare to leave.
Hart and Jo return in the hovercraft with several squads of heavily armed seamen. They overrun the Sea Devils patrolling the coast and free the rest of the captive soldiers. The steadily wipe out the Sea Devils, who are preparing to retreat into the sea. The Master grabs the device, stows it on a jet ski and takes off for the island. The Doctor, having verified that Jo was okay, takes off after him on another jet ski. The humans have secured the base but the Doctor is captured upon arriving at the sea fort as a group of Sea Devils are waiting for them as he and the Master arrive.
The Doctor and the Master take the machine below and hook it up to the main power supply. The Doctor appeals to the chief Sea Devil once more to consider peace through negotiation but the chief says no. The Doctor then quietly shifts a lever just before the Master activates it. With the machine active and slowly powering up, the chief Sea Devil orders them to be taken away and locked up. The Master protests but his usefulness is over.
In the prison, the Doctor informs the Master that he sabotaged the machine and that when fully powered or if the Sea Devils try to deactivate it, it will explode, destroying the entire base. With a race against time, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to open the prison door and he and the Master grab two underwater suits left by the submarine crew when they were imprisoned. They leave through a hatch and float to the surface.
Wilson calls the ministry to get authorization to detonate a nuclear warhead at the base to destroy the Sea Devil's base. While he is on the phone, Hart, at Jo's request, sends out the hovercraft to sweep the area in case the Doctor escaped. The hovercraft spies the Doctor and the Master and picks them up, though shortly after they board, the Master collapses with chest pains.
As the hovercraft approaches the shore, the device reaches full power and detonates, sending a massive explosion though the water. The hovercraft lands and an ambulance approaches, having been radioed for for the Master. The Doctor disembarks and tells Hart and Jo what happened. The medical team also leave with a patient but the Doctor discovers that it is the pilot of the hovercraft in a mask. He turns around to see the Master getting away in the hovercraft.
Analysis
I think I would be a bit hard pressed to say if I liked this one or The Silurians better. The Silurians had several great scenes but did have periods of dullness while The Sea Devils didn't have any great scenes but was more consistently good across the board. At the very least, the show certainly got a nice effort out of the British Navy in this story.
One of the best things about this story was that it had a natural flow to it. It's more just bad luck that the Doctor learned about the sinking of the ships and got involved. But once he is, there is a nice escalation and it's easy to see how you get from point A to B to C. That has the added advantage of making the story seem a bit more natural to be six parts, although I think a bit of tightening wouldn't have diminished anything in this story.
One the great ironys of this story is that it has one of the most remembered scenes of the Doctor being an ass to Jo and yet he is generally respectful towards her through the rest of the story. In fact, the Third Doctor as written by Malcolm Hulke almost always had a good relationship with Jo and it was other writers that made him more of a jerk towards her. But it's still this scene (clearly meant as a joke) that is plucked for the Doctor's attitude towards her.
Jo actually rescues the Doctor twice in this story which would seem to make her a bit more resourceful than him. Jo is actually very likable in this story and at near top form as a companion. I think the only real fault she has is that she runs out of things to do once the battle is fully joined in Episode Six and just mostly stands around insisting that others do things for her. You also have to give Jo mad props for crawling through a ventilation duct in a white pantsuit and emerging with it perfectly clean. That's a near superpower there.
The Doctor is pretty good in this and while he does continue over with his negotiation first strategy as seen in The Silurians, he also gives way to pragmatism and open blows the Sea Devils up at the end. There is no fretting about sealing them off or working with them later. They rejected him twice and he finishes the matter. Which probably means that the Brigadier has had a bit more of an effect on the Doctor than vice versa.
Of course, the Doctor is still a pompous blowhard at points. Probably the most gratuitous moment was the sword fight at the end of Episode Two. First, what prison keeps swords by the prisoner's cell? Then, he is disdainful of the Master throughout the fight but is so clearly enjoying it that he returns the Master's blade once he has disarmed him just so they can keep fighting. You can almost see the justification of how the Master's greatest fear is the Doctor laughing at him as seen in The Mind of Evil. I actually wish the Master had hit the Doctor when he threw the knife at him just to knock some of the wind out of the Doctor's sails and treat the Master with a bit more seriousness. I also find it ironic that the Doctor chides the Master by telling him that violence never solves anything but the entirety of Episode Six is demonstrating how violence was the only way to end the threat of the Sea Devils.
This story has only furthered my believe that the best writer for the Master was Malcolm Hulke. The Master's plans are not overly complicated, nor are they deeply involved. He wants revenge on the Doctor and has decided to take advantage of the Sea Devil awakening to get it by destroying humanity. It's petty but understandable. But he also carries out fairly well. It is slips by others that mostly ruin him, although, ironically, it is his trust in both the Doctor and the Sea Devils that fully finish him.
But it's his repartee with the Doctor that is the most enjoyable. It's clear that the Master enjoys witty banter and only the Doctor is his intellectual equal, although other stories indicate that he does enjoy Jo to a lesser degree. But the back and forth between the Doctor and the Master is quite stimulating and you only wish there could be more scenes with them just interacting.
Most of the side characters are pretty good too. Trenchard is actually somewhat sympathetic, although why he fell for the Master's deception is unexplained. But his weakness is patriotism which is strangely noble. He also at least dies with honor attempting to undo the wrong he has done. Hart is also quite good. He plays the Brigadier role in being somewhat skeptical, but unlike other stories where his unbelief would be allowed to linger and compromise the situation, he is refuted within a few moments, often to something of a comedic effect. By the time things roll around to Episode Five, Hart doesn't even bother to object, he just goes along with it because what's the point. He's been proven wrong too often as it is.
The most annoying character is Walker and you can't help but get the feeling that Hulke inserted him in as a means of getting at least some political satire in. Walker is a coward, rude and an outright pig. The director goes one better by emphasizing this by zooming in on Walker's mouth as he stuffs his face while opining that lives must be sacrificed in war. The most annoying part is that for a character so odious, nothing actually happens to him. He hides during the Sea Devil invasion and tries to conduct a nuclear strike on the Sea Devil's base later. Presumably this is called off after it's destroyed by the Doctor, but he's likely to head back to London and be rewarded in some fashion for handling the crisis. Even his exposure as a coward doesn't net much other than a small chuckle and it's nothing that's going to hurt him long term. I just wish that he could have been punished in some fashion at the end of the story.
The direction was quite good as were all the action scenes, although there were some gratuitous points. I noted the sword fight already but there were a few other scenes that didn't make much sense. Why does the Master permit the sonic blast to go on so long when it's obvious the Sea Devil is in pain? He should have stopped it immediately rather than the thirty seconds it's allowed to go. How did Hart and Jo return with so many soldiers so quickly? Were they on the auxiliary base just down the beach? How did the Master have a mask of his face on hand to make his escape? These are just little plot points that just stick way out there and bring you out of the story.
I must also say that I did not like the music in this story. I don't mind a bit of Avant Garde here and there (see 2001) but the music in this story was particularly jarring and off-putting. Music should enhance the story and be more or less unnoticed. This music however is screaming to be noticed at the expense of whatever is going on screen. It was just an unfortunate choice and application.
I'm still a little unsure of how to properly stack it against The Silurians. As mentioned earlier, there are no real slow or bad moments. It hums along nicely as a fun action/adventure. But I was always hoping for a real ratchet up moment like Episode Six of The Silurians. That was just excellent and the lack of anything like that made this story feel a little disappointing, even though it was more consistently good. In the end, I think it's going to depend on your mood. A good action story would favor Sea Devils while a bit more of a think piece would favor Doctor Who and the Silurians. But both are good and readily watchable.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Monday, May 22, 2017
Extremis
In darkness there is truth.
Steven Moffat returns in what I hope will be a more interesting story than The Pilot. Certainly the promise of Missy and intrigue from the Vatican are a tantalizing premise. I'm also under the impression that the next couple of stories are going to tie together in some fashion so this story might serve as more of an introduction and be a little thinner on the overall plot. But that doesn't mean it will be a bad story.
Plot Summary
In a flashback, the Doctor is revealed to have been summoned to a planet to conduct the execution of Missy. Whilst reminiscing about this outside the vault, the Doctor receives a message called Extremis over his sonic sunglasses, which give him a limited ability to see. He downloads the file and plays the message.
The Doctor is in a darkened lecture hall when Nardole enters with several Vatican cardinals. They also bring in the pope who appeals to the Doctor for help. They have a document in the Vatican archives called Veritas where everyone who has read the document kills themselves. They now believe this document will destroy all of society and are asking the Doctor to read it and help them.
Bill arrives back at her apartment with her date, Penny, and the two settle down for a bit of tea. They hear the TARDIS arriving and a moment later, the pope walks out of Bill's room. When Bill goes to investigate, Penny follows and runs out of the apartment at seeing several cardinals in her bedroom. Bill is a bit put out but accompanies the Doctor, Nardole and the rest back to the Vatican.
At the Vatican, the Doctor, Bill, Nardole and Cardinal Angelo enter the heretical book library. They are distracted by a great beam of light emerging from a wall that subsequently disappears. Cardinal Angelo goes to check on it while the other three follow the sound of a man's voice to a cage. While they are distracted, a withered arm reaches out from the wall and attacks Cardinal Angelo.
The other three find a Vatican researcher who admits to having sent a copy of the Veritas document to scientists at CERN and other world leaders. He runs out of the cage and moments later a gun shot is heard. The Doctor knows that he is dead but sends Bill and Nardole off to investigate to allow him a chance to examine the document alone. They go forward and find the body but also find another beam of light. They follow it and discover that it is a porthole to a central projection facility.
The Doctor uses a device that borrows from his own future and temporarily allows him to see, although it is a fuzzy field. He prepares to read the document but is attacked by a withered creature in monk's robes. The creature grabs the Vertias document but the Doctor makes off with the researcher's laptop that contained a copy of the Veritas document. He hurries down the corridor but finds his vision fading before he can open it and read the document.
The Doctor flashes back to his execution of Missy when things were interrupted by a hooded monk. They stop and the Doctor consults with the monk, who it turns out is Nardole. He gives the Doctor River's diary, salvaged after her death in the Library and a message imploring him not to go to extremes.
Bill and Nardole step into one opening and find themselves in the Pentagon. They hurry back and try and different one and find themselves at CERN. They meet a Swiss scientist who invites them down to the lab where the other scientists are sitting drinking wine at tables rigged with dynamite. A clock is counting down to when they explode. They decide to leave but the first scientist, noting that they don't know yet, asks them to name a random number. Bill and Nardole name several numbers and each time they do, they both pick the same number. Soon the other scientists join in and they always pick the same number. Freaked out, they run back to the projector room just before the dynamite goes off.
In the projector room, they notice a small blood trail and suspect the Doctor has passed through. Nardole examines the projectors and realizes that everything they've been through is a simulation. Fearful, he puts his hand in a dark space behind the projectors and then disappears, realizing that he is a simulation as well. Bill panics and follows the blood trail into the Oval Office where the President is dead, having killed himself with a vial of pills.
The Doctor sits behind the desk and tells Bill that their entire world is a simulation managed by an alien entity planning to conquer Earth. Veritas noted that simulations have trouble with randomness and that when randomness is attempted in the form of selecting numbers, those numbers are always predicted by others, informing the reader that they too are part of the simulation. Killing themselves is a way to take themselves out of the game, like Mario becoming self aware and leaving the game because he is tired of dying.
Bill freaks out once more but is subsequently digitized by the alien monk. The monk informs the Doctor that their simulations are complete and they will begin their conquest soon. The Doctor then informs the monk that since he has been struck blind, his sonic sunglasses have been recording the last several hours of the adventure. He compacts the file and sends it out of the simulation to the real Doctor's sonic sunglasses before the monk can shut down the simulation.
The real Doctor finishes watching the recording and thinks back one last time. He pulls the lever for Missy's execution and she falls over, but only stunned. The Doctor admits to agreeing to watching her body for a thousand years but not to killing her. He chases off the executioners with threats to their own persons based on his own body count and places Missy within the vault.
Coming out of his memory, the Doctor calls Bill and suggest that she ask Penny out sooner rather than later. He then knocks on the vault door and asks Missy for her help in fighting the immanent invasion.
Analysis
I have read that this is the first of three episodes that will make a loose trilogy as they all feature this alien monk as the principle antagonist. As such, there is not really a satisfying ending to this story, but I think that's okay. This story does fairly well in introducing the players and also having a pretty good "what is reality story."
This is not the first story that has feature a premise of characters in a simulation or game becoming aware of their state in Doctor Who as I think you can go back to Castrovalva for a similar situation. But unlike that story, I think it was handled quite well overall and the revelation of the nature of the simulation was done fairly well, especially as it involved the leads discovering the nature of their existence at the same time. It also gave the story the leeway to effectively kill the leads, which is something that you can only do in stories like this.
I listened to one review of this story and heard it compared to The Android Invasion and that's a pretty good set up. However, I think this is done somewhat better and without the nagging plot holes of that previous story. Of course, it does have it's own set of plot holes in that if the world is a simulation, how does a document like Veritas come into existence? Yes, people might figure out the nature of the truth of their existence through experience, but why is there a secret document that can allow the whole system to crash? The aliens running the simulation should have been aware of this glitch and taken steps to rectify it long before it reached the critical mass point of destroying the simulation. What's more, unless this glitch was a byproduct of programing, the simulation has been running for some time to allow the creation of such a document. But why do so? If the aliens are planning an imminent attack, why allow a simulation to run longer than several months or even one year? Backstory can be programmed in via observation and we are never given evidence of other flaws being in the system such as those that led to self discovery in Castrovalva.
The Doctor is good here but his lacking of eyesight has taken his edge off a bit. He does still have a bit of wit, especially when interacting from the folks from the Vatican, but there is a decided slowness in how he handles things throughout the story and it seems to tie in whenever he is hampered by the lack of eyesight. In fact, the whole story has a slow unfold very much like a suspense movie but punctuated by a bit more comedy. I think things might have worked a bit better if there had been a touch more dread surrounding these slow moments of the Doctor since the main elements of the plot were more clearly defined with Bill and Nardole.
Much like Oxygen, Nardole is finally getting some time to stretch out on screen. He is still his slightly cowardly and funny self, but he is showing more elements of backbone as well. He still has his squeaks and cries of fright but especially when away from the Doctor, he shows strength and a willingness to step into the Doctor's role with Bill. He puts together the puzzle much sooner than Bill and perhaps even the Doctor, although the Doctor is dealing with less information. But I still think this story showed that Nardole is not solely relegated to comic relief.
Bill was decent in this story but also not given much room to do anything. She was completely out of her element and served mostly as a vehicle to explain the plot to the audience towards the end. That put her more into the role of generic companion rather than emphasizing any of her inherent talents. But that is a consequence of being the companion and I don't feel that being in a diminutive position harmed Bill's character in any way. She just didn't get a chance to shine the way Nardole did.
I think it speaks of the power of Missy that even though she's only in a couple minutes of the overall story and flashback at that, she is still just so enjoyable. I'm sure the circumstances of her capture, conviction and death sentence will never actually be revealed but she is just so enjoyable to see on screen. Even in a moment of pleading for her life, she can't help the sarcasm and sharp wit we've seen in the past. I'm not overly surprised that it was her in the vault, although I'm trying to recall if Nardole actually used a gender pronoun when asking about the piano in the vault at the end of Knock Knock. He might have said "he" but I could have misheard that. Still, I'm now itching to get Missy out of the vault and into her full strutted glory. I think my biggest potential disappointment for the departure of the Twelfth Doctor at the end of this year is the likelihood that the Master will change as well.
There's not much to say about the villain since this was a light introduction. The design is a bit strange with that withered look and generic open mouth speaking, which calls back to the Mondasian Cybermen. I doubt there will be a direct connection between the two but it is one thing that popped into my mind, given how prominent the return of the Mondasian Cybermen have been. As far as the monk is concerned, I'll reserve judgment until I can see him operate in a more direct manner in the following two stories.
The look of the story was quite atmospheric for the most part and I liked the look. I also liked the look of all the other locations as there was a strong sense of believability about them. I think the only thing that struck me as odd was the method of death in the CERN lab. I find it rather unlikely that the occupants of the lab would have found coils of dynamite like a Looney Tunes cartoon. I also find it odd that they would put them under the tables like some elaborate booby trap. Far more likely (and a better use of the countdown clock) would have been the overcharging of the collider itself, which would have destroyed the facility easily and taken out much of the above ground structure as well. That did bug me a bit given how seriously everything else was played.
Overall, I'd say I enjoyed this one. I think one's overall enjoyment of it will change based on how the overall arc holds up. If the alien monks turn out to be good villains, this story might go up. If they turn out as garbage or if Missy's backstory into the vault has no real tie in except to expose that, it may go down. But for me I think it worked well. It wasn't perfect, but I look forward to going back and watching it a second time with an eye to the clues knowing how the story ends.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Steven Moffat returns in what I hope will be a more interesting story than The Pilot. Certainly the promise of Missy and intrigue from the Vatican are a tantalizing premise. I'm also under the impression that the next couple of stories are going to tie together in some fashion so this story might serve as more of an introduction and be a little thinner on the overall plot. But that doesn't mean it will be a bad story.
Plot Summary
In a flashback, the Doctor is revealed to have been summoned to a planet to conduct the execution of Missy. Whilst reminiscing about this outside the vault, the Doctor receives a message called Extremis over his sonic sunglasses, which give him a limited ability to see. He downloads the file and plays the message.
The Doctor is in a darkened lecture hall when Nardole enters with several Vatican cardinals. They also bring in the pope who appeals to the Doctor for help. They have a document in the Vatican archives called Veritas where everyone who has read the document kills themselves. They now believe this document will destroy all of society and are asking the Doctor to read it and help them.
Bill arrives back at her apartment with her date, Penny, and the two settle down for a bit of tea. They hear the TARDIS arriving and a moment later, the pope walks out of Bill's room. When Bill goes to investigate, Penny follows and runs out of the apartment at seeing several cardinals in her bedroom. Bill is a bit put out but accompanies the Doctor, Nardole and the rest back to the Vatican.
At the Vatican, the Doctor, Bill, Nardole and Cardinal Angelo enter the heretical book library. They are distracted by a great beam of light emerging from a wall that subsequently disappears. Cardinal Angelo goes to check on it while the other three follow the sound of a man's voice to a cage. While they are distracted, a withered arm reaches out from the wall and attacks Cardinal Angelo.
The other three find a Vatican researcher who admits to having sent a copy of the Veritas document to scientists at CERN and other world leaders. He runs out of the cage and moments later a gun shot is heard. The Doctor knows that he is dead but sends Bill and Nardole off to investigate to allow him a chance to examine the document alone. They go forward and find the body but also find another beam of light. They follow it and discover that it is a porthole to a central projection facility.
The Doctor uses a device that borrows from his own future and temporarily allows him to see, although it is a fuzzy field. He prepares to read the document but is attacked by a withered creature in monk's robes. The creature grabs the Vertias document but the Doctor makes off with the researcher's laptop that contained a copy of the Veritas document. He hurries down the corridor but finds his vision fading before he can open it and read the document.
The Doctor flashes back to his execution of Missy when things were interrupted by a hooded monk. They stop and the Doctor consults with the monk, who it turns out is Nardole. He gives the Doctor River's diary, salvaged after her death in the Library and a message imploring him not to go to extremes.
Bill and Nardole step into one opening and find themselves in the Pentagon. They hurry back and try and different one and find themselves at CERN. They meet a Swiss scientist who invites them down to the lab where the other scientists are sitting drinking wine at tables rigged with dynamite. A clock is counting down to when they explode. They decide to leave but the first scientist, noting that they don't know yet, asks them to name a random number. Bill and Nardole name several numbers and each time they do, they both pick the same number. Soon the other scientists join in and they always pick the same number. Freaked out, they run back to the projector room just before the dynamite goes off.
In the projector room, they notice a small blood trail and suspect the Doctor has passed through. Nardole examines the projectors and realizes that everything they've been through is a simulation. Fearful, he puts his hand in a dark space behind the projectors and then disappears, realizing that he is a simulation as well. Bill panics and follows the blood trail into the Oval Office where the President is dead, having killed himself with a vial of pills.
The Doctor sits behind the desk and tells Bill that their entire world is a simulation managed by an alien entity planning to conquer Earth. Veritas noted that simulations have trouble with randomness and that when randomness is attempted in the form of selecting numbers, those numbers are always predicted by others, informing the reader that they too are part of the simulation. Killing themselves is a way to take themselves out of the game, like Mario becoming self aware and leaving the game because he is tired of dying.
Bill freaks out once more but is subsequently digitized by the alien monk. The monk informs the Doctor that their simulations are complete and they will begin their conquest soon. The Doctor then informs the monk that since he has been struck blind, his sonic sunglasses have been recording the last several hours of the adventure. He compacts the file and sends it out of the simulation to the real Doctor's sonic sunglasses before the monk can shut down the simulation.
The real Doctor finishes watching the recording and thinks back one last time. He pulls the lever for Missy's execution and she falls over, but only stunned. The Doctor admits to agreeing to watching her body for a thousand years but not to killing her. He chases off the executioners with threats to their own persons based on his own body count and places Missy within the vault.
Coming out of his memory, the Doctor calls Bill and suggest that she ask Penny out sooner rather than later. He then knocks on the vault door and asks Missy for her help in fighting the immanent invasion.
Analysis
I have read that this is the first of three episodes that will make a loose trilogy as they all feature this alien monk as the principle antagonist. As such, there is not really a satisfying ending to this story, but I think that's okay. This story does fairly well in introducing the players and also having a pretty good "what is reality story."
This is not the first story that has feature a premise of characters in a simulation or game becoming aware of their state in Doctor Who as I think you can go back to Castrovalva for a similar situation. But unlike that story, I think it was handled quite well overall and the revelation of the nature of the simulation was done fairly well, especially as it involved the leads discovering the nature of their existence at the same time. It also gave the story the leeway to effectively kill the leads, which is something that you can only do in stories like this.
I listened to one review of this story and heard it compared to The Android Invasion and that's a pretty good set up. However, I think this is done somewhat better and without the nagging plot holes of that previous story. Of course, it does have it's own set of plot holes in that if the world is a simulation, how does a document like Veritas come into existence? Yes, people might figure out the nature of the truth of their existence through experience, but why is there a secret document that can allow the whole system to crash? The aliens running the simulation should have been aware of this glitch and taken steps to rectify it long before it reached the critical mass point of destroying the simulation. What's more, unless this glitch was a byproduct of programing, the simulation has been running for some time to allow the creation of such a document. But why do so? If the aliens are planning an imminent attack, why allow a simulation to run longer than several months or even one year? Backstory can be programmed in via observation and we are never given evidence of other flaws being in the system such as those that led to self discovery in Castrovalva.
The Doctor is good here but his lacking of eyesight has taken his edge off a bit. He does still have a bit of wit, especially when interacting from the folks from the Vatican, but there is a decided slowness in how he handles things throughout the story and it seems to tie in whenever he is hampered by the lack of eyesight. In fact, the whole story has a slow unfold very much like a suspense movie but punctuated by a bit more comedy. I think things might have worked a bit better if there had been a touch more dread surrounding these slow moments of the Doctor since the main elements of the plot were more clearly defined with Bill and Nardole.
Much like Oxygen, Nardole is finally getting some time to stretch out on screen. He is still his slightly cowardly and funny self, but he is showing more elements of backbone as well. He still has his squeaks and cries of fright but especially when away from the Doctor, he shows strength and a willingness to step into the Doctor's role with Bill. He puts together the puzzle much sooner than Bill and perhaps even the Doctor, although the Doctor is dealing with less information. But I still think this story showed that Nardole is not solely relegated to comic relief.
Bill was decent in this story but also not given much room to do anything. She was completely out of her element and served mostly as a vehicle to explain the plot to the audience towards the end. That put her more into the role of generic companion rather than emphasizing any of her inherent talents. But that is a consequence of being the companion and I don't feel that being in a diminutive position harmed Bill's character in any way. She just didn't get a chance to shine the way Nardole did.
I think it speaks of the power of Missy that even though she's only in a couple minutes of the overall story and flashback at that, she is still just so enjoyable. I'm sure the circumstances of her capture, conviction and death sentence will never actually be revealed but she is just so enjoyable to see on screen. Even in a moment of pleading for her life, she can't help the sarcasm and sharp wit we've seen in the past. I'm not overly surprised that it was her in the vault, although I'm trying to recall if Nardole actually used a gender pronoun when asking about the piano in the vault at the end of Knock Knock. He might have said "he" but I could have misheard that. Still, I'm now itching to get Missy out of the vault and into her full strutted glory. I think my biggest potential disappointment for the departure of the Twelfth Doctor at the end of this year is the likelihood that the Master will change as well.
There's not much to say about the villain since this was a light introduction. The design is a bit strange with that withered look and generic open mouth speaking, which calls back to the Mondasian Cybermen. I doubt there will be a direct connection between the two but it is one thing that popped into my mind, given how prominent the return of the Mondasian Cybermen have been. As far as the monk is concerned, I'll reserve judgment until I can see him operate in a more direct manner in the following two stories.
The look of the story was quite atmospheric for the most part and I liked the look. I also liked the look of all the other locations as there was a strong sense of believability about them. I think the only thing that struck me as odd was the method of death in the CERN lab. I find it rather unlikely that the occupants of the lab would have found coils of dynamite like a Looney Tunes cartoon. I also find it odd that they would put them under the tables like some elaborate booby trap. Far more likely (and a better use of the countdown clock) would have been the overcharging of the collider itself, which would have destroyed the facility easily and taken out much of the above ground structure as well. That did bug me a bit given how seriously everything else was played.
Overall, I'd say I enjoyed this one. I think one's overall enjoyment of it will change based on how the overall arc holds up. If the alien monks turn out to be good villains, this story might go up. If they turn out as garbage or if Missy's backstory into the vault has no real tie in except to expose that, it may go down. But for me I think it worked well. It wasn't perfect, but I look forward to going back and watching it a second time with an eye to the clues knowing how the story ends.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Friday, May 19, 2017
The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords
Here come the drums! Here come the drums!
With the leaked spoiler of the return of the John Simm Master in Series 10, I thought it only fitting to rewatch his moments of triumph in the Series 3 two-part finale. Most fans that I've heard from generally enjoy the Simm Master but his episodes have a rather negative reputation. The End of Time speaks for itself and I've already gone over that story. The Sound of Drums seems to be the most well liked of the four episodes that he stars in with things taking a bit of a dive in Last of the Time Lords. Are these reputations justified? Let's refresh the memory and see.
Plot Summary
Following the newly regenerated Master's theft of the Doctor's TARDIS at the end of Utopia, the Doctor repairs Jack's vortex manipulator and the three of them transport back to Earth. They land a couple of days after the election and find that the Master has been elected Prime Minister of Britain under the name of Harold Saxon.
In Downing Street, the Master kills his new cabinet with poison gas. At the same time, his wife, Lucy, gets a visit from a reporter who is also working as a Torchwood agent. She tells Lucy that Harold Saxon only appeared 18 months ago and has forged his past. Lucy acknowledges this as she already knew and the Master enters the room. The Master summons three alien spheres who attack and kill the reporter.
The Doctor, Jack and Martha head back to Martha's apartment where they work on trying to figure how the Master had taken over. The Doctor informs them that before the Master disappeared in the TARDIS, he locked the controls so that it only could operate between it's last two points of departure: 100 trillion years in the future and that day, give or take about 18 months. Observing Martha talking about Saxon, he realizes that the Master has set up some sort of hypnotic field but doesn't know how.
They are interrupted by a broadcast from Saxon that the UK has made initial contact with a new alien species called the Toclafane. They will be making a formal landing the following morning and Saxon intends to have it broadcast. As he explains, he states a key word and it triggers the timer on a bomb on the back of Martha's television. The trio rushes out before the bomb goes off and destroys Martha's apartment.
Panicked about the Master's knowledge of her, Martha calls her mom. Her mom urges her to come over even stating that her dad is over. Her father speaks as well but when Martha gets suspicious, he warns her and Saxon's men arrest him and Francine. The trio hop in a car and race to Francine's apartment. The agent in charge informs the Master of what has happened and he orders the arrest of Martha's sister Trish as well as she had been working as secretary to Lucy Saxon.
The trio arrives just as Martha's parents are placed in a police van. They open fire on Martha and they are forced to drive away. They ditch the car and walk away. Martha calls her brother who is in Brighton. She warns him to hide but their call in interrupted by the Master listening in. The Doctor takes the phone and he and the Master talk, the Master telling the Doctor of how he ran away from the Time War after being resurrected by the Time Lords. The Doctor in turn tells him that Gallifrey was destroyed in the Time War. The Master places their pictures on the television and has them proclaimed public enemies.
The trio runs and hides in an old warehouse. Jack and Martha gather both food and information. They learn that the Master set up a satellite system for phones now used by everyone called Archangel. The Doctor realizes that is how the Master is controlling people. To further help them, he takes the TARDIS key and splits it so they can each wear one. It is treated with a low level perception filter that causes people to look away, rendering them nondescript to ordinary people.
They leave the warehouse and head to an airport where the Master is meeting the new US President. Annoyed at Saxon's breach of UN agreements, he steps in and takes over the meeting with the Toclafane, which will take place on the Valiant, a UNIT airship. The Master is unperturbed and has his personal jet prepared to join the meeting. He also loads Martha's parents and sister aboard the jet to join him.
Knowing they need to follow, the Doctor uses Jack's vortex manipulator as a transport and takes the three of them to the Valiant. Searching inside, they find the TARDIS. Inside however, they discover that the Master has cannibalized it and created a paradox machine. They sneak up to the flight deck where President Winters is preparing to greet the Toclafane.
The Toclafane are not pleased to see the President and insist on meeting the Master. The Master stands up and vaporizes the President. He then pins the Doctor down and kills Jack with a laser screwdriver. Martha rushes to Jack as he revives and Jack gives her his vortex manipulator. The Master changes the setting on his screwdriver and ages the Doctor over 100 years, making him an old man. The Master activates the paradox machine and billions of Toclafane pass through the vortex and invade Earth where the Master suggests they kill ten percent of humanity.
The Doctor whispers something to Martha and she steps back and teleports off the ship. As the Toclafane destroy cities, she promises to return. She does a year later after wandering through the world. She meets a young man named Thomas. She asks Thomas to take her to see a rogue scientists named Professor Docherty. As they walk, Martha tells Thomas of her journeys and the sights of the ships and weapons the Master is building to take over the universe.
On the Valiant, the Doctor, the Jones family and Jack attempt to take down the Master but are thwarted by him. He has Jack killed and relocked up and locks the Jones family in a cell for a while as they had been working as servants. He places the Doctor back in his chair for later punishment.
Martha and Thomas find Professor Docherty just as the Master is making a broadcast announcing that the conquest will start tomorrow. He also sends a message to Martha as he zaps the Doctor once more with his screwdriver, adding all the Doctor's years to this single regeneration. The Doctor ages 900 years and shrinks to a tiny size as the Master cuts the broadcast.
Martha is unphased and asks the professor and Thomas to help catch a Toclafane using a electrical pulse. They do so and when they unseal the sphere, they find a human head. Martha realizes that the Toclafane are the remnants of humanity that fled looking for Utopia. Upon finding nothing, they built insulating containers for themselves and regressed into a child-like manner. When the captured Toclafane notes that they kill because it's fun, Thomas shoots it.
Thomas takes Martha to London after showing Professor Docherty a gun that uses four chemicals and can kill a Time Lord. Docherty signals the Master of this, who has her son as a hostage. When Martha reaches London, they hide with other refugees and Martha tells of her travels and the Doctor. As she does, the Master arrives and orders Martha to surrender or he will kill everyone on that street. Unwilling to allow that, she surrenders. The Master destroys the bag containing her gun and then kills Thomas as he rushes to attack him. The Master however decides to take Martha back to the Valiant to kill her in front of the Doctor.
In the control room, as the Master prepares to kill Martha, he also starts a countdown for the launch of ships and missiles to start the war. Martha begins to laugh and tells the Master the she did not have a weapon against him. She had spent the year traveling to tell people about the Doctor and how they should think of him when the Master's countdown goes to zero. As it does, the Doctor is energized by the collective psychic power of humanity connected through the Archangel network. He undoes the Master's aging of him, knocks away his laser screwdriver and frees humanity of their fear of him. He also cradles the Master and tells him that he forgives him.
The Toclafane head towards the Valiant to defend the paradox machine. Jack and two soldiers run down to destroy it. Jack, through several deaths, gets past three Toclafane and destroy the paradox machine within the TARDIS. This causes time to reverse to when it was first activated. The Master's work is undone and the Toclafane are sucked back to the year 100 Trillion. Only those at the center of events on the Valiant have any memory of the lost year as time resets to just after the Master killed the President.
The Master tries to escape but is arrested by several guards. The Doctor decides to keep the Master as a prisoner in the TARDIS but before he can, Lucy shoots the Master, having become resentful of his harmful treatment of her. The Master refuses to regenerate and dies in the Doctor's arms. The Doctor later burns the Master's body, though a mysterious woman steals his ring from the ashes.
The Doctor then prepares to leave in the TARDIS as Martha enters but she tells him that she is not coming back. She is tired and knows how fruitless it is to pursue the Doctor when he sees her only as a friend. She does give him her cell phone so that she can call him in an emergency. The Doctor then takes off but his flight is interrupted as the prow of an ocean liner crashes through the TARDIS wall. He is even further bothered when seeing that the ship is the Titanic.
Analysis
The expression, Deus Ex Machina is one that should be pretty familiar to Doctor Who fans as a form of it is used fairly often in this show. However, I don't even think that some of the wildest uses of it have ever gone so far as to turn the Doctor into a literal embodiment of God. It's actually mildly amusing to think of RTD, who is a fairly staunch atheist, going so deep into a Christ metaphor and then going even the extra mile and having the Master comment on it.
Like nearly all the RTD season ending two-parters, this is a tale of two halves. The Sound of Drums is largely the Master's tale with the Doctor, Martha and Jack restricted to a more passive role. Last of the Time Lords, despite it's title, is essentially Martha's tale with the Doctor providing the solution at the end. Right off the bat, without any other considerations, you can immediately see the potential problems. The Master is an outsized personality, easily able to carry a story and even more so in his almost Joker-like iteration of the John Simm Master. Martha on the other hand, has spent the series playing second fiddle to the Doctor both as companion and unrequited love interest. At almost no point in the series has she been given agency to be the central focus of the story. Even in the Family two-parter (arguably her best story) her story line comes after the mystery of what will happen to the Doctor. To expect her to be able to fully carry the story here is a tall order.
As mentioned before, the John Simm Master is almost like a British version of the Joker. He is wild and unpredictable. You get a very Joker-like scene near the beginning of the first episode where he gasses his entire cabinet and gives a thumbs up when they accuse him of being crazy. About all that was missing was for the ministers to have the smiles and then a bad joke by the Master and it would have been almost indistinguishable. It's interesting that for once the Master doesn't have a particularly convoluted plan and as a result, it actually works. He is aware of the Doctor but allows him in to see his triumph and to gloat over him.
We also see the effects of what a Master's win would look like in that Earth is only the first stage and he will now try to take over the universe once more. That is a little less interesting as it comes across as a bit more hackneyed with the plan to launch powerful missiles everywhere and then demand everyone's surrender. That's more of a harken back to the Ainley Master and his more zany schemes.
I'm also a bit annoyed about the Master's death. Not the fact that his wife shot him, that worked for me. But the scene before we had the Doctor call the Master's bluff in that his survival mattered more than defeating the Doctor, so he didn't create a black hole that destroys Earth. However, once shot, the Master refuses to regenerate just to triumph over the Doctor in death. That makes no sense. The threat of prison with the Doctor cannot be so bad as to overcome the Master's inherent desire to survive at all costs. It is a clichéd and terrible premise. It would have worked so much better if the Master had been taken prisoner. He could have easily been ignored to allow Donna free reign in Series Four and his escape from the Doctor's prison (whether the TARDIS or some other location) would have been far more interesting than the potions resurrection we got in The End of Time.
Speaking of the Doctor, he's a real non-entity in this story. He gives the backstory about Gallifrey and gives Martha and Jack their pseudo-cloaking devices, but aside from that, he doesn't do much. He is the god who restores everything at the end but it's Martha's story that spreads the word and almost nothing that he does. He even goes into full Jesus mode by forgiving the Master despite having killed millions of people. I guess it's akin to the Third Doctor laughing off the deaths in Terror of the Autons but stating that they'll be seeing the Master again, but that doesn't make it any less dumb.
Martha is okay in this but her focus on her family does make her sound rather whiney through a good portion of The Sound of Drums and I just don't care about any of them. Heck, the series has spent a better part of it's time making me dislike her mom so I don't know why I should care for her now, even if she is duped by the Master. Martha does improve some during her journey as she gains a measure of confidence and seems to do well to strike out on her own, but she's still not overly engaging from a personality standpoint. She's a bit too relaxed and confident in everything and it takes away some of the tension that the scenes are trying to build.
To top off Martha, we finally have the culmination of the unrequited love and it is boring. I don't care for Martha when she's in that mode in the first half of the series and the great gain of the second half is that she puts her feelings aside and just goes for the adventure. To bring it back and turn down the Doctor's offer of further travel because she needs to not pine after him dredges up that early unpleasantness. We actually get a double dose of it as Martha has a goodbye, walks out of the TARDIS and then goes back in to explain herself further. It's just painful to watch and just makes the Doctor look like a jerk for not even acknowledging her. Of course, he also had to pine over Rose in the first half of the series and that was also painful.
Jack was Jack and he was fine for the most part. He actually injected a bit of humor here and there, having gotten used to the dying and resurrecting bit. But Jack's leaving scene was also painfully written. I don't mind the fact that Jack might have been the Face of Boe as that would actually make for an interesting twist on a minor character. But the way it was written was painful. It wasn't even Exposition 101 it was set up so badly. It was a real shame that Jack's final scene of the arc was that badly written.
So let's get to the crux of the matter on the whole thing: the transfiguration of the Doctor into Christ. I will admit that I didn't care for the 1,000 year old "Dobby Doctor" as he's sometimes called, but I could get past it as a minor point. But no matter how much scientific babble you try to put on to it, the solution of the story comes from the people of the world effectively praying to the Doctor and the Doctor using that to resurrect himself. What's more, he has even more power as we see him lose the glow, the floating and the ability to Force push things away within a few minutes. I honestly can't see how anyone thought this was a good idea. Even the pseudo-science that the show uses would call this crap and it's the worst kind of get-out-of-jail free card I've seen. It undercuts the dire set up started in Utopia and amplified in The Sound of Drums. I think even if you found the Martha quest story interesting, this offering just knocks the story down to tolerable levels at best.
It is so unfortunate that this story ends on such a sour note. Utopia is an excellent lead in and The Sound of Drums is quite entertaining. It's not perfect as I find the Master a bit too over-the-top for my taste, but he is at least entertaining. There is also the fun of seeing him succeed for once at one of his plans. Even the first half of Last of the Time Lords isn't that bad. I'm not that big on Martha but her quest has some narrative value and the tension is appropriately spiked in various locations. But the last 15 minutes are just so bad. We have the Doctor becoming God, a total character flip that allows the Master to die but not actually destroy Earth and Martha's uncomfortable goodbye scene where she spills her heart out. I had been avoiding rewatching this one for a while and the second time around validated my avoidance of the story. Here's hoping that whatever the episode the John Simm Master pops up in next, he's given better material to work with than here.
Overall personal score: The Sound of Drums - 4 out of 5; Last of the Time Lords - 0.5 out of 5
With the leaked spoiler of the return of the John Simm Master in Series 10, I thought it only fitting to rewatch his moments of triumph in the Series 3 two-part finale. Most fans that I've heard from generally enjoy the Simm Master but his episodes have a rather negative reputation. The End of Time speaks for itself and I've already gone over that story. The Sound of Drums seems to be the most well liked of the four episodes that he stars in with things taking a bit of a dive in Last of the Time Lords. Are these reputations justified? Let's refresh the memory and see.
Plot Summary
Following the newly regenerated Master's theft of the Doctor's TARDIS at the end of Utopia, the Doctor repairs Jack's vortex manipulator and the three of them transport back to Earth. They land a couple of days after the election and find that the Master has been elected Prime Minister of Britain under the name of Harold Saxon.
In Downing Street, the Master kills his new cabinet with poison gas. At the same time, his wife, Lucy, gets a visit from a reporter who is also working as a Torchwood agent. She tells Lucy that Harold Saxon only appeared 18 months ago and has forged his past. Lucy acknowledges this as she already knew and the Master enters the room. The Master summons three alien spheres who attack and kill the reporter.
The Doctor, Jack and Martha head back to Martha's apartment where they work on trying to figure how the Master had taken over. The Doctor informs them that before the Master disappeared in the TARDIS, he locked the controls so that it only could operate between it's last two points of departure: 100 trillion years in the future and that day, give or take about 18 months. Observing Martha talking about Saxon, he realizes that the Master has set up some sort of hypnotic field but doesn't know how.
They are interrupted by a broadcast from Saxon that the UK has made initial contact with a new alien species called the Toclafane. They will be making a formal landing the following morning and Saxon intends to have it broadcast. As he explains, he states a key word and it triggers the timer on a bomb on the back of Martha's television. The trio rushes out before the bomb goes off and destroys Martha's apartment.
Panicked about the Master's knowledge of her, Martha calls her mom. Her mom urges her to come over even stating that her dad is over. Her father speaks as well but when Martha gets suspicious, he warns her and Saxon's men arrest him and Francine. The trio hop in a car and race to Francine's apartment. The agent in charge informs the Master of what has happened and he orders the arrest of Martha's sister Trish as well as she had been working as secretary to Lucy Saxon.
The trio arrives just as Martha's parents are placed in a police van. They open fire on Martha and they are forced to drive away. They ditch the car and walk away. Martha calls her brother who is in Brighton. She warns him to hide but their call in interrupted by the Master listening in. The Doctor takes the phone and he and the Master talk, the Master telling the Doctor of how he ran away from the Time War after being resurrected by the Time Lords. The Doctor in turn tells him that Gallifrey was destroyed in the Time War. The Master places their pictures on the television and has them proclaimed public enemies.
The trio runs and hides in an old warehouse. Jack and Martha gather both food and information. They learn that the Master set up a satellite system for phones now used by everyone called Archangel. The Doctor realizes that is how the Master is controlling people. To further help them, he takes the TARDIS key and splits it so they can each wear one. It is treated with a low level perception filter that causes people to look away, rendering them nondescript to ordinary people.
They leave the warehouse and head to an airport where the Master is meeting the new US President. Annoyed at Saxon's breach of UN agreements, he steps in and takes over the meeting with the Toclafane, which will take place on the Valiant, a UNIT airship. The Master is unperturbed and has his personal jet prepared to join the meeting. He also loads Martha's parents and sister aboard the jet to join him.
Knowing they need to follow, the Doctor uses Jack's vortex manipulator as a transport and takes the three of them to the Valiant. Searching inside, they find the TARDIS. Inside however, they discover that the Master has cannibalized it and created a paradox machine. They sneak up to the flight deck where President Winters is preparing to greet the Toclafane.
The Toclafane are not pleased to see the President and insist on meeting the Master. The Master stands up and vaporizes the President. He then pins the Doctor down and kills Jack with a laser screwdriver. Martha rushes to Jack as he revives and Jack gives her his vortex manipulator. The Master changes the setting on his screwdriver and ages the Doctor over 100 years, making him an old man. The Master activates the paradox machine and billions of Toclafane pass through the vortex and invade Earth where the Master suggests they kill ten percent of humanity.
The Doctor whispers something to Martha and she steps back and teleports off the ship. As the Toclafane destroy cities, she promises to return. She does a year later after wandering through the world. She meets a young man named Thomas. She asks Thomas to take her to see a rogue scientists named Professor Docherty. As they walk, Martha tells Thomas of her journeys and the sights of the ships and weapons the Master is building to take over the universe.
On the Valiant, the Doctor, the Jones family and Jack attempt to take down the Master but are thwarted by him. He has Jack killed and relocked up and locks the Jones family in a cell for a while as they had been working as servants. He places the Doctor back in his chair for later punishment.
Martha and Thomas find Professor Docherty just as the Master is making a broadcast announcing that the conquest will start tomorrow. He also sends a message to Martha as he zaps the Doctor once more with his screwdriver, adding all the Doctor's years to this single regeneration. The Doctor ages 900 years and shrinks to a tiny size as the Master cuts the broadcast.
Martha is unphased and asks the professor and Thomas to help catch a Toclafane using a electrical pulse. They do so and when they unseal the sphere, they find a human head. Martha realizes that the Toclafane are the remnants of humanity that fled looking for Utopia. Upon finding nothing, they built insulating containers for themselves and regressed into a child-like manner. When the captured Toclafane notes that they kill because it's fun, Thomas shoots it.
Thomas takes Martha to London after showing Professor Docherty a gun that uses four chemicals and can kill a Time Lord. Docherty signals the Master of this, who has her son as a hostage. When Martha reaches London, they hide with other refugees and Martha tells of her travels and the Doctor. As she does, the Master arrives and orders Martha to surrender or he will kill everyone on that street. Unwilling to allow that, she surrenders. The Master destroys the bag containing her gun and then kills Thomas as he rushes to attack him. The Master however decides to take Martha back to the Valiant to kill her in front of the Doctor.
In the control room, as the Master prepares to kill Martha, he also starts a countdown for the launch of ships and missiles to start the war. Martha begins to laugh and tells the Master the she did not have a weapon against him. She had spent the year traveling to tell people about the Doctor and how they should think of him when the Master's countdown goes to zero. As it does, the Doctor is energized by the collective psychic power of humanity connected through the Archangel network. He undoes the Master's aging of him, knocks away his laser screwdriver and frees humanity of their fear of him. He also cradles the Master and tells him that he forgives him.
The Toclafane head towards the Valiant to defend the paradox machine. Jack and two soldiers run down to destroy it. Jack, through several deaths, gets past three Toclafane and destroy the paradox machine within the TARDIS. This causes time to reverse to when it was first activated. The Master's work is undone and the Toclafane are sucked back to the year 100 Trillion. Only those at the center of events on the Valiant have any memory of the lost year as time resets to just after the Master killed the President.
The Master tries to escape but is arrested by several guards. The Doctor decides to keep the Master as a prisoner in the TARDIS but before he can, Lucy shoots the Master, having become resentful of his harmful treatment of her. The Master refuses to regenerate and dies in the Doctor's arms. The Doctor later burns the Master's body, though a mysterious woman steals his ring from the ashes.
The Doctor then prepares to leave in the TARDIS as Martha enters but she tells him that she is not coming back. She is tired and knows how fruitless it is to pursue the Doctor when he sees her only as a friend. She does give him her cell phone so that she can call him in an emergency. The Doctor then takes off but his flight is interrupted as the prow of an ocean liner crashes through the TARDIS wall. He is even further bothered when seeing that the ship is the Titanic.
Analysis
The expression, Deus Ex Machina is one that should be pretty familiar to Doctor Who fans as a form of it is used fairly often in this show. However, I don't even think that some of the wildest uses of it have ever gone so far as to turn the Doctor into a literal embodiment of God. It's actually mildly amusing to think of RTD, who is a fairly staunch atheist, going so deep into a Christ metaphor and then going even the extra mile and having the Master comment on it.
Like nearly all the RTD season ending two-parters, this is a tale of two halves. The Sound of Drums is largely the Master's tale with the Doctor, Martha and Jack restricted to a more passive role. Last of the Time Lords, despite it's title, is essentially Martha's tale with the Doctor providing the solution at the end. Right off the bat, without any other considerations, you can immediately see the potential problems. The Master is an outsized personality, easily able to carry a story and even more so in his almost Joker-like iteration of the John Simm Master. Martha on the other hand, has spent the series playing second fiddle to the Doctor both as companion and unrequited love interest. At almost no point in the series has she been given agency to be the central focus of the story. Even in the Family two-parter (arguably her best story) her story line comes after the mystery of what will happen to the Doctor. To expect her to be able to fully carry the story here is a tall order.
As mentioned before, the John Simm Master is almost like a British version of the Joker. He is wild and unpredictable. You get a very Joker-like scene near the beginning of the first episode where he gasses his entire cabinet and gives a thumbs up when they accuse him of being crazy. About all that was missing was for the ministers to have the smiles and then a bad joke by the Master and it would have been almost indistinguishable. It's interesting that for once the Master doesn't have a particularly convoluted plan and as a result, it actually works. He is aware of the Doctor but allows him in to see his triumph and to gloat over him.
We also see the effects of what a Master's win would look like in that Earth is only the first stage and he will now try to take over the universe once more. That is a little less interesting as it comes across as a bit more hackneyed with the plan to launch powerful missiles everywhere and then demand everyone's surrender. That's more of a harken back to the Ainley Master and his more zany schemes.
I'm also a bit annoyed about the Master's death. Not the fact that his wife shot him, that worked for me. But the scene before we had the Doctor call the Master's bluff in that his survival mattered more than defeating the Doctor, so he didn't create a black hole that destroys Earth. However, once shot, the Master refuses to regenerate just to triumph over the Doctor in death. That makes no sense. The threat of prison with the Doctor cannot be so bad as to overcome the Master's inherent desire to survive at all costs. It is a clichéd and terrible premise. It would have worked so much better if the Master had been taken prisoner. He could have easily been ignored to allow Donna free reign in Series Four and his escape from the Doctor's prison (whether the TARDIS or some other location) would have been far more interesting than the potions resurrection we got in The End of Time.
Speaking of the Doctor, he's a real non-entity in this story. He gives the backstory about Gallifrey and gives Martha and Jack their pseudo-cloaking devices, but aside from that, he doesn't do much. He is the god who restores everything at the end but it's Martha's story that spreads the word and almost nothing that he does. He even goes into full Jesus mode by forgiving the Master despite having killed millions of people. I guess it's akin to the Third Doctor laughing off the deaths in Terror of the Autons but stating that they'll be seeing the Master again, but that doesn't make it any less dumb.
Martha is okay in this but her focus on her family does make her sound rather whiney through a good portion of The Sound of Drums and I just don't care about any of them. Heck, the series has spent a better part of it's time making me dislike her mom so I don't know why I should care for her now, even if she is duped by the Master. Martha does improve some during her journey as she gains a measure of confidence and seems to do well to strike out on her own, but she's still not overly engaging from a personality standpoint. She's a bit too relaxed and confident in everything and it takes away some of the tension that the scenes are trying to build.
To top off Martha, we finally have the culmination of the unrequited love and it is boring. I don't care for Martha when she's in that mode in the first half of the series and the great gain of the second half is that she puts her feelings aside and just goes for the adventure. To bring it back and turn down the Doctor's offer of further travel because she needs to not pine after him dredges up that early unpleasantness. We actually get a double dose of it as Martha has a goodbye, walks out of the TARDIS and then goes back in to explain herself further. It's just painful to watch and just makes the Doctor look like a jerk for not even acknowledging her. Of course, he also had to pine over Rose in the first half of the series and that was also painful.
Jack was Jack and he was fine for the most part. He actually injected a bit of humor here and there, having gotten used to the dying and resurrecting bit. But Jack's leaving scene was also painfully written. I don't mind the fact that Jack might have been the Face of Boe as that would actually make for an interesting twist on a minor character. But the way it was written was painful. It wasn't even Exposition 101 it was set up so badly. It was a real shame that Jack's final scene of the arc was that badly written.
So let's get to the crux of the matter on the whole thing: the transfiguration of the Doctor into Christ. I will admit that I didn't care for the 1,000 year old "Dobby Doctor" as he's sometimes called, but I could get past it as a minor point. But no matter how much scientific babble you try to put on to it, the solution of the story comes from the people of the world effectively praying to the Doctor and the Doctor using that to resurrect himself. What's more, he has even more power as we see him lose the glow, the floating and the ability to Force push things away within a few minutes. I honestly can't see how anyone thought this was a good idea. Even the pseudo-science that the show uses would call this crap and it's the worst kind of get-out-of-jail free card I've seen. It undercuts the dire set up started in Utopia and amplified in The Sound of Drums. I think even if you found the Martha quest story interesting, this offering just knocks the story down to tolerable levels at best.
It is so unfortunate that this story ends on such a sour note. Utopia is an excellent lead in and The Sound of Drums is quite entertaining. It's not perfect as I find the Master a bit too over-the-top for my taste, but he is at least entertaining. There is also the fun of seeing him succeed for once at one of his plans. Even the first half of Last of the Time Lords isn't that bad. I'm not that big on Martha but her quest has some narrative value and the tension is appropriately spiked in various locations. But the last 15 minutes are just so bad. We have the Doctor becoming God, a total character flip that allows the Master to die but not actually destroy Earth and Martha's uncomfortable goodbye scene where she spills her heart out. I had been avoiding rewatching this one for a while and the second time around validated my avoidance of the story. Here's hoping that whatever the episode the John Simm Master pops up in next, he's given better material to work with than here.
Overall personal score: The Sound of Drums - 4 out of 5; Last of the Time Lords - 0.5 out of 5
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
Oxygen
Doctor: What do you want from me?
Nardole: The truth
Doctor: Don't be unreasonable.
Oxygen gives us the return of Jamie Mathieson, notable for the back-to-back Series Eight hits of Mummy on the Orient Express and Flatline. His Series Nine contribution was The Girl Who Died, which was a decent little story, although a bit overshadowed by other stories of the Series and especially with everyone's speculation about the nature of Ashildur. This time around it appears that we are getting spacesuit zombies, which would seem to be a decent premise for a story. The trailer at least gave me a strong Under the Lake vibe and I don't have any problem with that.
Plot Summary
On a far space station, two crewmen are on an EVA. The near the airlock but as they approach two dead bodies in spacesuits grab the trailing crewman from behind and rip her helmet off. As the first crewman opens the airlock, he sees three bodies approaching him.
Bored on Earth, the Doctor opts for another adventure in space with Bill. Nardole, annoyed with the Doctor's shirking of duty regarding the vault, tries to stop him by sabotaging the TARDIS. The attempt fails and the three of them are transported to a distant space station. The station is a mining colony and the workers are charged for the oxygen they breathe. As a result, the station detects the oxygen being extended by the TARDIS shell and opens the airlock to vent it into space.
The Doctor secures the door but it leaves the TARDIS trapped in a vacuum. In the room they are in is a dead body in a space suit. The Doctor notices that the station has forty crewmen and thirty-six are registered as dead. That suit comes to life and advances on them. The Doctor manages to short the suit out but it destroys his sonic screwdriver in the process.
The commotion attracts the attention of the other suits and they advance on them. The trio puts on three suits that had been put in for maintenance and contact the remaining crew. They radio down to follow the corridor where they will let them in. They rush down and the crew opens the door just before the suits grab them. The remaining crew inform them that the suits downloaded instructions to kill the organics inside and they were only spared because they were in a section where the information couldn't be downloaded.
Bill's suit develops a fault that causes her arms to raise but a crewman named Ivan resets her suit to correct the fault. Shortly afterward, the suits correct the fault that is locking the doors and they get in. They try to flee to another part of the station but the suits are there as well and they kill the crew leader, Tasker. With no other options, they decide to EVA to the unmapped section the crew were in before. As they are in the airlock, Bill's helmet develops a fault and will not work. The door opens and she is exposed to the vacuum of space. The lack of oxygen causes her to black out.
Bill wakes in the new section and finds that the Doctor used his helmet on her during the EVA. However, the vacuum of space damaged his eyes, rendering him blind. They discuss their options and one of the crew, Abby, finds a signal that seems to be from a rescue ship. While they are talking, the suits detect conversation between Nardole and Bill that allows them to map the new section into their system. They begin to advance into the section and kill the fourth crewman, Dahn-Ren.
The group runs to the reactor room but Bill's suit malfunctions again. They cannot get it working again and it magnetizes to prevent it from being lifted. With no options, the Doctor tells Bill to relax and this will feel bad but he will save her in the end. They flee, leaving Bill. The suits touch her and her suit upgrades and sends a power surge into her body.
Once inside the reactor room, the Doctor ties the life detection circuits in their suits to the reactor coolant. If they die, the coolant will be drained out and the entire station will be destroyed in five minutes. He then orders the door opened. Abby objects but the Doctor points out that there is no rescue ship. The whole thing was a set up by the company as people are too expensive and they intend to run the station using the suits alone.
They open the doors but as they advance, the Doctor notes that their deaths will be very expensive. The suits stop immediately and assess the situation. As they do, the Doctor reactivates Bill's suit and revives her. He noted that her suit lacked the battery power to kill her, only knocking her out but he couldn't say anything in case the suits overheard him. The suits then give everyone an oxygen pack to ensure their survival.
The whole group goes back to the TARDIS where Nardole uses medical equipment on the Doctor's eyes, seemingly restoring them. The Doctor transports Ivan and Abby in the TARDIS to corporate headquarters to file a major complaint, which the Doctor confides to Bill will result in a revolution. They return to Earth and Bill leaves for her apartment. Nardole exits to lecture the Doctor but the Doctor cuts him off noting that despite the medical treatment, the Doctor is still blind.
Analysis
I'm not one for the zombie genre, but this was a pretty enjoyable story. I was a little confused at the beginning by the focus as to what the balance between scary and funny they were going for, but I got my head around it fairly soon. I also liked that despite giving a couple of false flags about the potential wellness of our leads, there were some actual consequences to their actions.
The Doctor was quite good in this. He had that aloof nature where he would make jokes in the face of peril that was very natural for the Fourth Doctor. I also liked it that while he was pretty aware of the nature of the threat and how to deal with it, he was on his heels for most of the story. Unlike Nardole, he seemed to grasp fairly quickly the nature of the suits and their AI. Their ignorance was his greatest weapon and he exploited that, even though it meant dark things for Bill.
Both companions were quite good in this. Bill acted almost exactly like you would expect with the wonder of things at first and then the steady freakout as things went wrong. Of course she had the bad luck of a more faulty suit than the rest but seemed to handle it fairly well. I did think the racism bit between her and Dahh-Ren was a bit forced and the dialogue there never really felt natural. Nardole's joke line about having friends who are "blue-ish" was a real groaner as well.
I liked Nardole a lot in this one as he was finally given something to properly do. He was the conscience of the group in both trying to prevent the Doctor from going in the first place and then in trying to get them back to the TARDIS. But he also had a caring side and was genuinely concerned over Bill when it looked like she was going to be killed at several different points. Of course, he was also the one who nearly got them killed by not recognizing that the suit AI could hear him and learned to make the map based on his speech. So a slightly mixed bag but I enjoyed Nardole on the overall.
The guest cast didn't have much time to make much of an impression but they seemed alright. I was a little disappointed that Dahh-Ren was killed because even though I thought the racism bit was a bit forced, I enjoyed his dry delivery style. I found him more enjoyable than Abby, who was playing the I'm the stressed and angry woman clichéd role a bit much. I did like Ivan as he seemed more sympathetic in his practicality and you could feel for him, especially at the end where Bill was brought back but he could see that Ellie was still dead.
As for the villain, I have to say that having animated suits with corpses in them is a pretty good way to do zombies. The corpses are just there and it's the suits that are the issue (much like the robots in The Girl Who Waited) but having the decaying corpse in the suit adds that extra level of creep factor that you probably wouldn't get if you just showed an empty suit walking towards you. I also appreciated the fact that the "zombies" had an adaptable intelligence. Usually when you see a zombie move, it's some other faction of humans or a breakdown of dynamics within the survivors that allow the zombies to get in the base and swarm the protagonists. Here, you actually had something that would learn and didn't depend on a major mistake by the survivors and that was refreshing.
I also liked the fact that the suit AI was capable of learning was how the Doctor defeated it. The AI was upgraded to provide cost savings for the company but it could learn quickly enough that cost savings was a higher priority than it's base programing of deleting the organic portions. It was a clever way of defeating the enemy and using it's own weapons against it. Far better than the standard blow everything up method.
I also enjoyed the cinematography of this story. It was well shot with the different sun providing a different cast of light on the whole thing. It gave you the moody effect without resorting to the standard power failure and light's flickering that has become a staple of the horror genre. I also thought Bill's blackout just prior to the EVA was an excellent use of both heightening tension and avoiding what would have been expensive and probably less believable shots in crossing the station.
The EVA scene did point out one small point that wasn't really addressed. In Bill's brief moments of lucidity, we can see one or two of the crew members using weapons of some kind to clear the one or two suits in their way. You can see the weapons again when they breach the newly mapped section. According to the Doctor, there were 36 people who had been killed so far plus a few spare suits I would imagine. So in the entire base, there are probably less than 50 suits. If they have weapons, why don't they have a slow retreat with the weapons providing cover and steadily destroying the number of attackers? The suits would be limited by the corridors and they are naturally slow so picking off two or three each volley while maintaining a steady retreat shouldn't be too much of an issue. Picking off the suits that might be isolated would also solve the issue of getting extra oxygen as well. I can understand that weapons use might have been limited either by power available or rechargeability, but I would have liked a line that explained why the weapons use was so limited.
One other small problem I had was that through most of the episode, the threat was almost constantly to Bill. It was her suit that kept malfunctioning and her that kept being put in peril. Granted the Doctor ended up suffering but the constant focus on Bill made it that much more apparent (at least to me) that she would not be killed by the suits when they attacked her. Granted we already knew that since there was no way they would kill off a companion in the middle of a series, but the constant calling of attention to her made it just that much more obvious that she would be fine. The real twist was that she would be the only one and even someone not exposed to the vacuum of space, like Dahh-Ren, would stay dead because his suit was fully powered.
I am curious as to where they are going with the blindness of the Doctor. It's also an odd thing given that we've seen the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors all voluntarily release regeneration energy to heal others. Can the Doctor not release regeneration energy to heal himself with carrying out the whole process? I can only guess that this must be a restriction in it's use, else we wouldn't have gotten the Handy Doctor in Journey's End. Still, I'm curious to see how this plays out over the next few stories and what it's ultimate consequence will be. I'm sure his eyes will be healed eventually since it seems like they are back to normal in the momentary clip from The Empress of Mars shown in the trailer. But we shall just have to see.
Overall, I would say that this was quite good. I think I liked both Mummy on the Orient Express and Flatline a bit better, but I suspect that's due to my overall disinterest in the zombie genre. At the very least, this is a good scary episode and also keeps things moving so that there is very little dead time. I shall look forward to revisiting this one in the near future and can only imagine how younger viewers (such as my own kids) would respond when watching it.
Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5
Nardole: The truth
Doctor: Don't be unreasonable.
Oxygen gives us the return of Jamie Mathieson, notable for the back-to-back Series Eight hits of Mummy on the Orient Express and Flatline. His Series Nine contribution was The Girl Who Died, which was a decent little story, although a bit overshadowed by other stories of the Series and especially with everyone's speculation about the nature of Ashildur. This time around it appears that we are getting spacesuit zombies, which would seem to be a decent premise for a story. The trailer at least gave me a strong Under the Lake vibe and I don't have any problem with that.
Plot Summary
On a far space station, two crewmen are on an EVA. The near the airlock but as they approach two dead bodies in spacesuits grab the trailing crewman from behind and rip her helmet off. As the first crewman opens the airlock, he sees three bodies approaching him.
Bored on Earth, the Doctor opts for another adventure in space with Bill. Nardole, annoyed with the Doctor's shirking of duty regarding the vault, tries to stop him by sabotaging the TARDIS. The attempt fails and the three of them are transported to a distant space station. The station is a mining colony and the workers are charged for the oxygen they breathe. As a result, the station detects the oxygen being extended by the TARDIS shell and opens the airlock to vent it into space.
The Doctor secures the door but it leaves the TARDIS trapped in a vacuum. In the room they are in is a dead body in a space suit. The Doctor notices that the station has forty crewmen and thirty-six are registered as dead. That suit comes to life and advances on them. The Doctor manages to short the suit out but it destroys his sonic screwdriver in the process.
The commotion attracts the attention of the other suits and they advance on them. The trio puts on three suits that had been put in for maintenance and contact the remaining crew. They radio down to follow the corridor where they will let them in. They rush down and the crew opens the door just before the suits grab them. The remaining crew inform them that the suits downloaded instructions to kill the organics inside and they were only spared because they were in a section where the information couldn't be downloaded.
Bill's suit develops a fault that causes her arms to raise but a crewman named Ivan resets her suit to correct the fault. Shortly afterward, the suits correct the fault that is locking the doors and they get in. They try to flee to another part of the station but the suits are there as well and they kill the crew leader, Tasker. With no other options, they decide to EVA to the unmapped section the crew were in before. As they are in the airlock, Bill's helmet develops a fault and will not work. The door opens and she is exposed to the vacuum of space. The lack of oxygen causes her to black out.
Bill wakes in the new section and finds that the Doctor used his helmet on her during the EVA. However, the vacuum of space damaged his eyes, rendering him blind. They discuss their options and one of the crew, Abby, finds a signal that seems to be from a rescue ship. While they are talking, the suits detect conversation between Nardole and Bill that allows them to map the new section into their system. They begin to advance into the section and kill the fourth crewman, Dahn-Ren.
The group runs to the reactor room but Bill's suit malfunctions again. They cannot get it working again and it magnetizes to prevent it from being lifted. With no options, the Doctor tells Bill to relax and this will feel bad but he will save her in the end. They flee, leaving Bill. The suits touch her and her suit upgrades and sends a power surge into her body.
Once inside the reactor room, the Doctor ties the life detection circuits in their suits to the reactor coolant. If they die, the coolant will be drained out and the entire station will be destroyed in five minutes. He then orders the door opened. Abby objects but the Doctor points out that there is no rescue ship. The whole thing was a set up by the company as people are too expensive and they intend to run the station using the suits alone.
They open the doors but as they advance, the Doctor notes that their deaths will be very expensive. The suits stop immediately and assess the situation. As they do, the Doctor reactivates Bill's suit and revives her. He noted that her suit lacked the battery power to kill her, only knocking her out but he couldn't say anything in case the suits overheard him. The suits then give everyone an oxygen pack to ensure their survival.
The whole group goes back to the TARDIS where Nardole uses medical equipment on the Doctor's eyes, seemingly restoring them. The Doctor transports Ivan and Abby in the TARDIS to corporate headquarters to file a major complaint, which the Doctor confides to Bill will result in a revolution. They return to Earth and Bill leaves for her apartment. Nardole exits to lecture the Doctor but the Doctor cuts him off noting that despite the medical treatment, the Doctor is still blind.
Analysis
I'm not one for the zombie genre, but this was a pretty enjoyable story. I was a little confused at the beginning by the focus as to what the balance between scary and funny they were going for, but I got my head around it fairly soon. I also liked that despite giving a couple of false flags about the potential wellness of our leads, there were some actual consequences to their actions.
The Doctor was quite good in this. He had that aloof nature where he would make jokes in the face of peril that was very natural for the Fourth Doctor. I also liked it that while he was pretty aware of the nature of the threat and how to deal with it, he was on his heels for most of the story. Unlike Nardole, he seemed to grasp fairly quickly the nature of the suits and their AI. Their ignorance was his greatest weapon and he exploited that, even though it meant dark things for Bill.
Both companions were quite good in this. Bill acted almost exactly like you would expect with the wonder of things at first and then the steady freakout as things went wrong. Of course she had the bad luck of a more faulty suit than the rest but seemed to handle it fairly well. I did think the racism bit between her and Dahh-Ren was a bit forced and the dialogue there never really felt natural. Nardole's joke line about having friends who are "blue-ish" was a real groaner as well.
I liked Nardole a lot in this one as he was finally given something to properly do. He was the conscience of the group in both trying to prevent the Doctor from going in the first place and then in trying to get them back to the TARDIS. But he also had a caring side and was genuinely concerned over Bill when it looked like she was going to be killed at several different points. Of course, he was also the one who nearly got them killed by not recognizing that the suit AI could hear him and learned to make the map based on his speech. So a slightly mixed bag but I enjoyed Nardole on the overall.
The guest cast didn't have much time to make much of an impression but they seemed alright. I was a little disappointed that Dahh-Ren was killed because even though I thought the racism bit was a bit forced, I enjoyed his dry delivery style. I found him more enjoyable than Abby, who was playing the I'm the stressed and angry woman clichéd role a bit much. I did like Ivan as he seemed more sympathetic in his practicality and you could feel for him, especially at the end where Bill was brought back but he could see that Ellie was still dead.
As for the villain, I have to say that having animated suits with corpses in them is a pretty good way to do zombies. The corpses are just there and it's the suits that are the issue (much like the robots in The Girl Who Waited) but having the decaying corpse in the suit adds that extra level of creep factor that you probably wouldn't get if you just showed an empty suit walking towards you. I also appreciated the fact that the "zombies" had an adaptable intelligence. Usually when you see a zombie move, it's some other faction of humans or a breakdown of dynamics within the survivors that allow the zombies to get in the base and swarm the protagonists. Here, you actually had something that would learn and didn't depend on a major mistake by the survivors and that was refreshing.
I also liked the fact that the suit AI was capable of learning was how the Doctor defeated it. The AI was upgraded to provide cost savings for the company but it could learn quickly enough that cost savings was a higher priority than it's base programing of deleting the organic portions. It was a clever way of defeating the enemy and using it's own weapons against it. Far better than the standard blow everything up method.
I also enjoyed the cinematography of this story. It was well shot with the different sun providing a different cast of light on the whole thing. It gave you the moody effect without resorting to the standard power failure and light's flickering that has become a staple of the horror genre. I also thought Bill's blackout just prior to the EVA was an excellent use of both heightening tension and avoiding what would have been expensive and probably less believable shots in crossing the station.
The EVA scene did point out one small point that wasn't really addressed. In Bill's brief moments of lucidity, we can see one or two of the crew members using weapons of some kind to clear the one or two suits in their way. You can see the weapons again when they breach the newly mapped section. According to the Doctor, there were 36 people who had been killed so far plus a few spare suits I would imagine. So in the entire base, there are probably less than 50 suits. If they have weapons, why don't they have a slow retreat with the weapons providing cover and steadily destroying the number of attackers? The suits would be limited by the corridors and they are naturally slow so picking off two or three each volley while maintaining a steady retreat shouldn't be too much of an issue. Picking off the suits that might be isolated would also solve the issue of getting extra oxygen as well. I can understand that weapons use might have been limited either by power available or rechargeability, but I would have liked a line that explained why the weapons use was so limited.
One other small problem I had was that through most of the episode, the threat was almost constantly to Bill. It was her suit that kept malfunctioning and her that kept being put in peril. Granted the Doctor ended up suffering but the constant focus on Bill made it that much more apparent (at least to me) that she would not be killed by the suits when they attacked her. Granted we already knew that since there was no way they would kill off a companion in the middle of a series, but the constant calling of attention to her made it just that much more obvious that she would be fine. The real twist was that she would be the only one and even someone not exposed to the vacuum of space, like Dahh-Ren, would stay dead because his suit was fully powered.
I am curious as to where they are going with the blindness of the Doctor. It's also an odd thing given that we've seen the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors all voluntarily release regeneration energy to heal others. Can the Doctor not release regeneration energy to heal himself with carrying out the whole process? I can only guess that this must be a restriction in it's use, else we wouldn't have gotten the Handy Doctor in Journey's End. Still, I'm curious to see how this plays out over the next few stories and what it's ultimate consequence will be. I'm sure his eyes will be healed eventually since it seems like they are back to normal in the momentary clip from The Empress of Mars shown in the trailer. But we shall just have to see.
Overall, I would say that this was quite good. I think I liked both Mummy on the Orient Express and Flatline a bit better, but I suspect that's due to my overall disinterest in the zombie genre. At the very least, this is a good scary episode and also keeps things moving so that there is very little dead time. I shall look forward to revisiting this one in the near future and can only imagine how younger viewers (such as my own kids) would respond when watching it.
Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5
Friday, May 12, 2017
The Daleks
Make no attempt to capture the prisoners. They are to be exterminated!
This is the story that really kicked things off. Whatever one thinks of An Unearthly Child now, it didn't really grab the public in ways that the BBC wanted. It was the following story that grabbed the public attention and kicked off Dalekmania. Of course, this story is also known for being heavily padded and of the First Doctor still being in his crotchety mode. But can the story as a whole rise up and still be entertaining to a modern audience?
Plot Summary
The Doctor and crew arrive on an alien planet, unaware that the radiation meter has crept up into the danger zone. They exit the TARDIS and find themselves in a petrified jungle where the trees have been turned into brittle stone. The explore a bit more and discover a city over the ridge which also seems devoid of life. The Doctor wants to explore it but cannot due to the approach of dark. The group heads back to the TARDIS. On the way, Susan is touched on the shoulder by an alien hand. She panics and lurches back to the group but both the Doctor and Ian believe that she imagined it.
Inside the TARDIS, Susan mopes a bit though Barbara telling her that she believes her comforts her some. The Doctor treats Ian and Barbara to some food but their meal is interrupted by a knocking sound outside. They turn on the scanner but find nothing there. Unnerved, the other three insist on leaving. Annoyed, the Doctor starts to take off but he loosens the fluid link below the console. The TARDIS fails to take off and he claims to just discover the fault. He also claims that they will have to refill the fluid link with mercury and the only place to find it will be the city.
In the morning they prepare to head down to the city and find a box containing glass vials filled with fluid. Susan puts them in the TARDIS and they set out. They reach the city some time later, all of them starting to suffer from radiation sickness. They split up to explore and Barbara becomes separated by a series of closing doors. She is trapped in an elevator and when it opens, she is captured by an unseen creature.
When Barbara fails to return to the rendezvous point, the other three go to look for her. In the city, they find scientific equipment monitoring the radiation levels and realize that they're suffering from radiation sickness. The Doctor also admits that the fluid link works fine but the Doctor made up the story about needing mercury because he wanted to visit the city. They leave the room but find themselves surrounded by Daleks. The Daleks order them to move but Ian tries to make a break for it. The Daleks shoot him, temporarily paralyzing him from the waist down. The Daleks make the Doctor and Susan drag Ian into a cell where Barbara had already been taken.
Believing the Doctor and his party to be Thals, their planetary enemy, the Daleks pull the Doctor out and interrogate him. The Doctor learns about the neutron war between the Daleks and the Thals while the Daleks realize that the Doctor is not actually a Thal. They also learn that he might have anti-radiation chemicals which the Daleks believe they will need if they are ever to leave the city. They tell the Doctor that one of their party may go to the TARDIS to get the chemicals while the rest stay as hostages.
Ian wants to go but the feeling in his legs has not fully come back and both the Doctor and Barbara are starting to suffer from the advanced stages of the radiation sickness. Ultimately, Susan goes and despite some frights, makes it back to the TARDIS and collects the vials. Upon leaving the TARDIS, she meets a Thal called Alydon. He tells her that he left the chemicals for them and gives her a second box upon learning that they are currently being held by the Daleks.
As Susan returns, the Daleks change their minds about letting the humans die as they might have some value. They seize one of the boxes but allow Susan to keep the second and she distributes the chemical to everyone, allowing them to return to full health. She tells the other three that the Thals have been forced to leave their settlement due to drought and are currently looking for food. They hope to sign a peace treaty with the Daleks in exchange for food. The Daleks overhear this and decide to set a trap to destroy the Thals.
Susan is pulled from her cell and told to write a letter to the Thals including promises of food and mutual cooperation. Susan realizes that the Daleks have been monitoring their conversations in the cell but believes they are sincere in their talk of a truce. However the Doctor is not so convinced and decides they must take action to escape.
The Doctor and Ian stage a fight where Susan leaps on Ian's back and while elevated, destroys the camera watching them. The Daleks suspect it was deliberate but opt to leave them alone. Free to talk, the Doctor figures out that the Daleks are drawing power via static electricity in the floor. They figure that if they can get a Dalek on to the plastic cloak Alydon gave Susan, it will kill the power to the Dalek.
When a Dalek enters to bring them food, Ian jams the door. The Dalek reenters and Barbara blinds it with mud made from dirt that adhered to Susan's shoe. Ian and the Doctor then drag the Dalek onto the cloak where it goes inert. They pull out the mutant inside and Ian climbs in the casing. He then escorts them down the hall and into the elevator as though taking them to the council.
After the main door closes, the trio tries to get Ian out but he find the latch stuck. Meanwhile a passing Dalek informed the council of the prisoners approach and learns that this was actually an escape attempt. The alarm is sounded and other Daleks come and begin to cut through the door. The trio is sent up the elevator while Ian tries to get out. Upon reaching the surface, the Doctor sends the elevator back for Ian, who just manages to get out and in the elevator before the Daleks break through and destroy his casing.
The Daleks pursue them up the elevator but Barbara and Susan send a large rock down the shaft and destroy the elevator and the pursing Dalek. They also spy a group of Thals coming to meet with the Daleks. Unable to get their attention, Ian goes to warn the Thals while the Doctor and the women make their way back to the TARDIS.
The Thal leader, Temmosus, enters the room and offers the Daleks peace. As he begins to invite the other Thals in, Ian leaps out and yells that it's a trap. The Daleks emerge from their hiding places and kill Temmosus. They shoot at Ian and the retreating Thals but only succeed in wounding a couple of them.
Back at the TARDIS, the group prepares to leave but they discover that the fluid link is still in the city as the Daleks had taken it from Ian. Knowing that they will have to fight the Daleks, they try to convince the Thals to fight with them. Alydon, who has become the new leader, refuses until Ian spurs him to anger by suggesting he could get what he needs by trading a woman Alydon fancies, Dyoni, to the Daleks. Alydon knows it's a trick but he attacks Ian anyway and realizes that fighting and dying would be better than living in meager cowardice.
Back in the Dalek city, the Daleks begin to distribute their replication of the Thal's anti-radiation drugs. However, the drug begins to kill the Daleks and they cease implementation. They counteract the drugs with more radiation exposure and most of the Daleks recover. They decide that since radiation levels on the planet are steadily dropping, they must introduce more radiation to the planet and prepare to set off a new neutron bomb.
Alydon, the Doctor, Ian, and another Thal named Ganatus devise a two part attack plan. Ganatus and a group of the Thals with Ian and Barbara will travel through the swamps at the rear of the city and sneak in through the mountains to catch the Daleks by surprise. The Doctor, Susan, Alydon and the rest of the Thals will distract and disrupt the Daleks with feinting tactics at the front of the city. After three days, they will attack the front and meet in the middle.
Gantus leads his group through the swamps where they discover pipes leading from the lake to the city. Figuring the Daleks are pumping their water from the lake, the decide to follow the pipes. However, one of the Thals is attacked and sucked under the lake while filling the water bags.
The remaining group enters the mountain caves a treks through. Ganatus' brother, Antodus, becomes increasingly fearful and wants to turn back. Ganatus tries to restrain him but a sudden cave-in causes both men to fall back. The cave-in blocks their escape and the group presses forward knowing it's their only way out.
Distracting the Dalek cameras with mirrors, the Doctor, Susan and Alydon sneak into the city, destroying antennae and cameras. They find a control box for the power and the Doctor works to short-circuit the system. He sends Alydon back to move the mirrors to a new location and then destroys the box. Pleased with himself, he fails to move quickly and he and Susan are captured by a Dalek patrol sent to investigate.
In the caves, Ganatus and Barbara find an opening that leads to an underground river. The river cuts off their path but they can see another tunnel on the far side. Ian and Ganatus leap across the chasm to investigate and find that it leads back towards the city. They then have all the others leap across with them. However, Antodus mistimes his jump and slips down the cliff face, his safety rope threatening to drag Ian down with him. Antodus then cuts the rope and falls to his death while Ganatus pull Ian back up the cliff.
The Doctor and Susan are taken into the city and held in a room just off the control room. The Daleks are diverting the radiation from their nuclear reactors into a storage device and will release that into the atmosphere rather than setting off a new neutron bomb. The Doctor offers to show the Daleks the TARDIS and how it works in exchange for not releasing the radiation and setting them free. The Daleks however decide that they will simply examine his ship without his help if necessary.
Alydon gathers up the Thals and attacks the city, using the Doctor's knock out of the detection equipment as cover. He meets up with Ganatus' group, who has just emerged from the tunnels in the water pumping area, and the separate groups all converge on the Dalek control room. The Daleks are counting down the release of the radiation but are distracted by the Thal attack. One Dalek is pushed into the power relay which both electrocutes the Dalek and also cuts the power to the rest of the Daleks throughout the city. Without the power, the Daleks simply cease to function, leaving the mutants trapped in cases that cannot support them.
The groups return to the forest with the fluid link and the equipment the Daleks used to grow food. They each say their goodbyes, with Ganatus lingering a bit with Barbara, and then leave in the TARDIS. As the TARDIS takes off, it suddenly lurches violently, throwing everyone inside to the ground.
Analysis
Because Terry Nation had a tendency to recycle various parts of his story elements, it has become a bit fashionable among fans to dismiss all of his work as just the same thing. However, there is something rather unique in the original Dalek story and when you go back and watch it with an open mind, it is actually quite good. Yes, there are elements that come up in later stories and yes it is rather padded, but it almost surprising as how well it holds up as a story and you can see how Dalekmania blossomed in it's wake.
One of the things that I think is very important to enjoying this story is understanding it's context. Unlike most of the other First Doctor stories, this one has Ian and Barbara still pretty pissed at the Doctor for abducting him as well as the Doctor being closer to his nastier self as seen in the caveman adventure (which did not get notes from Sidney Newman). Therefore, there is a natural tension that arises and Ian's attitude of either not trusting or being openly angry towards the Doctor is completely understandable.
The Doctor is better in this story than in the previous one. Yes he sabotages the ship, but not in any meaningful way and there is an inherent curiosity that is appealing in him. He also is clearly the idea man for though Ian and Susan actually carry things out, it is the Doctor that comes up with the various concepts, showing that they must think their way out of the situation rather than just use brute force.
All the companions are pretty good in this one, even Susan. I noted Ian's attitude towards the Doctor but you can see the good man and natural leader pretty much throughout the story. It is also interesting to see that Barbara, who doesn't get as much to do in this story, is already starting to become the Doctor's favorite. She is the one who sides with the Doctor against Ian in provoking the Thals, even though Ian is right. In The Edge of Destruction, it is Barbara who the Doctor specifically makes up with after the events in the TARDIS. Her little dabble with Ganatus is nice but even from this point you know she is Ian's woman. Still it provides a nice reminder that Barbara is a fairly young woman and not defaulting completely into the mom role.
Susan is more of a mixed bag in this story but it certainly is better than her previous one. I think what gets to me most about her is that Carol Ann Ford is clearly in her early twenties and should be playing a character in her mid-to-late teens. However, her dialogue and dialogue about her is more geared towards a character that is closer to ten. I could easily imagine my own daughter (who is eleven) saying these lines and acting like Susan does. She is responsible in a group but so easily hysterical when forced to do something on her own. If Susan was as stroppy a teenager as we might expect, she should have been more independent and less fearful, even with the night run to the TARDIS. I can understand why her character was reduced to a young girl in the movie version. Again her overall performance isn't bad, but the contrast in written age and actual age is just strikes a sour note here and there.
One of the things that really surprised me when I was rewatching this is how different the Daleks were compared to their usual state. I think we have gotten used to Daleks that are rant-y and near insane with hate. Here you have cold and calculating Daleks. They kill with impunity but they have a cold logic that also keeps them from killing indiscriminately. The Daleks as originally written actually are far closer to the scheming David Whitaker Daleks of Power of the Daleks and Evil of the Daleks than they are of even Terry Nation's other Dalek scripts.
My suspicion is that in this original treatment, the Daleks are just written as another alien race and given a cold, logical style. In the next appearance of the Daleks (The Dalek Invasion of Earth) Nation turned them into a Nazi parallel and I think he never went away from that, which caused the Daleks to lose some of that conniving quality that only reappeared when someone else wrote them.
I find it fascinating that the Daleks are not actually taken in by nearly any of the deceptions tried against them. They know the cameras are knocked out deliberately by the prisoners, they are aware of the infiltrations into the city and even the escape attempt they cotton on to fairly quickly. It is only their limitations to the city and their underestimating of the potential damage these things can do that really harms them.
The Thals are a little generic and a touch boring but not in an overly objectional way. Fortunately, there are very few scenes with them by themselves as those scenes just don't grab you. I should even put a caveat there as the worst offender is Dyoni. The actress seems a bit unsure of how to play the character and ends up being a bit more aloof that I think is needed. Temmosus is actually somewhat interesting given how few scenes he gets as he is the pure optimist, choosing to try peace rather than war. Alydon is more of a blend but I think that style of character was done better as Taron in Planet of the Daleks.
Since I have introduced the concept of the Thals being a bit dull, let's talk about the limitation of this story and that is its padding. Granted, your appreciation of this story is going to be far different if you actually space it out over seven weeks rather than watch it in one or two sittings as most modern fans do. That emphasizes the padding and makes it so much more noticeable. I ended watching this in two sittings and got through Episode Five before I had to stop and the only part that bothered me was Episode Two where they were in the cell. Going back the next day, even the famously drawn out crevasse jump scene in Episode Six didn't feel that bad and I'm sure would have been very tense for the kids watching.
These two instances led me to think that the padding that Terry Nation puts in is only that heavily noticeable when there is no movement. I don't think he does people sitting and talking very well the way Malcolm Hulke or Robert Holmes does. Nation is a writer that is entertaining when things are moving. So even the crevasse scene is not that bad because there is movement and you know that someone is going to fall. It gains tension even if it is too much time paid to. But having the four sit around dying of radiation poisoning while Ian tries to get his legs to work and also convince Susan that she has to go to the TARDIS just gets dull. Contrast that scene to a similar one in Episode Three where they are all working together to escape and even though it is again them confined in a room and talking, there is action in the form of a plan taking shape and stuff being done to implement that plan.
There are two other points that really bother me from a story standpoint. The first is that Alydon joins Ian's team after they emerge from the mountains. If Alydon was able to do that, it effectively means that the entire journey through the swamp and the mountains (with two deaths to beat) was totally pointless. Ian's team gained no advantage if a Thal group that came through a frontal assault was able to join and work with them. It might be argued that the Daleks became aware of Ian's team in the city and that caused them to redirect their defenses which allowed Alydon's team to get in, but that is not made clear. I think it would have worked better if we had seen Alydon's team attack the control room, grabbing the Dalek's attention and then having Ian's team attack and getting the drop on the Daleks as the plan was more originally constructed.
My other objection is the oddity of the Daleks not being aware of their need for radiation. You would think that after several hundred years, the Daleks would have come up with their own anti-radiation treatments and figured out that their physiology had adapted to the radiation long before this. It is this lack of drugs or understanding of their physiology that both drives the plot in Episode Two and then provides the added danger of the countdown (which is rather unnecessary) in Episodes Six and Seven. It's just something added that makes no real sense and don't really add anything to the overall plot of the story.
Going back to the positive side, I think the end of Episode One where an unseen Dalek except for the plunger approaching Barbara is one of the best cliffhangers in the scene. It is played very well by Jacqueline Hill and when done on top of the already disorienting cinematography of her being cut off and herded deeper in, it must have scared the kids watching immeasurably. You can also tell that it was a second go around because there is a different reaction in the recap at the start of Episode Two and it just doesn't work as well in ratcheting up the tension. But the one in Episode One is excellent.
On that note, the design and direction are quite good in this story. Even though a lot of sets are reused, they do it in such a way that it really disguises the reuse. The action flows well and you get very good performances out of nearly all the actors. I think you could show this story to a more modern audience and they would have a measure of respect for the way it looks and their objections would be restricted to story and pacing which is just so different in today's television.
Overall I would say that this is a good story, better than what is generally expected. Because there is so much repetition with Nation, I think fans feel they have the measure of this story and prejudge it based on their knowledge of other stories. They also object to the obvious padding and while that does drag the story at a few points, it is moves pretty well. I wouldn't have a problem sitting down with this one again in the near future but I also think that if you were going to expose a new fan to this, it would be better done in smaller chunks, only one or two episodes at a time to allow them to digest it. It might make the padded nature of it seem like less of a slog if they are not used to that format.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
This is the story that really kicked things off. Whatever one thinks of An Unearthly Child now, it didn't really grab the public in ways that the BBC wanted. It was the following story that grabbed the public attention and kicked off Dalekmania. Of course, this story is also known for being heavily padded and of the First Doctor still being in his crotchety mode. But can the story as a whole rise up and still be entertaining to a modern audience?
Plot Summary
The Doctor and crew arrive on an alien planet, unaware that the radiation meter has crept up into the danger zone. They exit the TARDIS and find themselves in a petrified jungle where the trees have been turned into brittle stone. The explore a bit more and discover a city over the ridge which also seems devoid of life. The Doctor wants to explore it but cannot due to the approach of dark. The group heads back to the TARDIS. On the way, Susan is touched on the shoulder by an alien hand. She panics and lurches back to the group but both the Doctor and Ian believe that she imagined it.
Inside the TARDIS, Susan mopes a bit though Barbara telling her that she believes her comforts her some. The Doctor treats Ian and Barbara to some food but their meal is interrupted by a knocking sound outside. They turn on the scanner but find nothing there. Unnerved, the other three insist on leaving. Annoyed, the Doctor starts to take off but he loosens the fluid link below the console. The TARDIS fails to take off and he claims to just discover the fault. He also claims that they will have to refill the fluid link with mercury and the only place to find it will be the city.
In the morning they prepare to head down to the city and find a box containing glass vials filled with fluid. Susan puts them in the TARDIS and they set out. They reach the city some time later, all of them starting to suffer from radiation sickness. They split up to explore and Barbara becomes separated by a series of closing doors. She is trapped in an elevator and when it opens, she is captured by an unseen creature.
When Barbara fails to return to the rendezvous point, the other three go to look for her. In the city, they find scientific equipment monitoring the radiation levels and realize that they're suffering from radiation sickness. The Doctor also admits that the fluid link works fine but the Doctor made up the story about needing mercury because he wanted to visit the city. They leave the room but find themselves surrounded by Daleks. The Daleks order them to move but Ian tries to make a break for it. The Daleks shoot him, temporarily paralyzing him from the waist down. The Daleks make the Doctor and Susan drag Ian into a cell where Barbara had already been taken.
Believing the Doctor and his party to be Thals, their planetary enemy, the Daleks pull the Doctor out and interrogate him. The Doctor learns about the neutron war between the Daleks and the Thals while the Daleks realize that the Doctor is not actually a Thal. They also learn that he might have anti-radiation chemicals which the Daleks believe they will need if they are ever to leave the city. They tell the Doctor that one of their party may go to the TARDIS to get the chemicals while the rest stay as hostages.
Ian wants to go but the feeling in his legs has not fully come back and both the Doctor and Barbara are starting to suffer from the advanced stages of the radiation sickness. Ultimately, Susan goes and despite some frights, makes it back to the TARDIS and collects the vials. Upon leaving the TARDIS, she meets a Thal called Alydon. He tells her that he left the chemicals for them and gives her a second box upon learning that they are currently being held by the Daleks.
As Susan returns, the Daleks change their minds about letting the humans die as they might have some value. They seize one of the boxes but allow Susan to keep the second and she distributes the chemical to everyone, allowing them to return to full health. She tells the other three that the Thals have been forced to leave their settlement due to drought and are currently looking for food. They hope to sign a peace treaty with the Daleks in exchange for food. The Daleks overhear this and decide to set a trap to destroy the Thals.
Susan is pulled from her cell and told to write a letter to the Thals including promises of food and mutual cooperation. Susan realizes that the Daleks have been monitoring their conversations in the cell but believes they are sincere in their talk of a truce. However the Doctor is not so convinced and decides they must take action to escape.
The Doctor and Ian stage a fight where Susan leaps on Ian's back and while elevated, destroys the camera watching them. The Daleks suspect it was deliberate but opt to leave them alone. Free to talk, the Doctor figures out that the Daleks are drawing power via static electricity in the floor. They figure that if they can get a Dalek on to the plastic cloak Alydon gave Susan, it will kill the power to the Dalek.
When a Dalek enters to bring them food, Ian jams the door. The Dalek reenters and Barbara blinds it with mud made from dirt that adhered to Susan's shoe. Ian and the Doctor then drag the Dalek onto the cloak where it goes inert. They pull out the mutant inside and Ian climbs in the casing. He then escorts them down the hall and into the elevator as though taking them to the council.
After the main door closes, the trio tries to get Ian out but he find the latch stuck. Meanwhile a passing Dalek informed the council of the prisoners approach and learns that this was actually an escape attempt. The alarm is sounded and other Daleks come and begin to cut through the door. The trio is sent up the elevator while Ian tries to get out. Upon reaching the surface, the Doctor sends the elevator back for Ian, who just manages to get out and in the elevator before the Daleks break through and destroy his casing.
The Daleks pursue them up the elevator but Barbara and Susan send a large rock down the shaft and destroy the elevator and the pursing Dalek. They also spy a group of Thals coming to meet with the Daleks. Unable to get their attention, Ian goes to warn the Thals while the Doctor and the women make their way back to the TARDIS.
The Thal leader, Temmosus, enters the room and offers the Daleks peace. As he begins to invite the other Thals in, Ian leaps out and yells that it's a trap. The Daleks emerge from their hiding places and kill Temmosus. They shoot at Ian and the retreating Thals but only succeed in wounding a couple of them.
Back at the TARDIS, the group prepares to leave but they discover that the fluid link is still in the city as the Daleks had taken it from Ian. Knowing that they will have to fight the Daleks, they try to convince the Thals to fight with them. Alydon, who has become the new leader, refuses until Ian spurs him to anger by suggesting he could get what he needs by trading a woman Alydon fancies, Dyoni, to the Daleks. Alydon knows it's a trick but he attacks Ian anyway and realizes that fighting and dying would be better than living in meager cowardice.
Back in the Dalek city, the Daleks begin to distribute their replication of the Thal's anti-radiation drugs. However, the drug begins to kill the Daleks and they cease implementation. They counteract the drugs with more radiation exposure and most of the Daleks recover. They decide that since radiation levels on the planet are steadily dropping, they must introduce more radiation to the planet and prepare to set off a new neutron bomb.
Alydon, the Doctor, Ian, and another Thal named Ganatus devise a two part attack plan. Ganatus and a group of the Thals with Ian and Barbara will travel through the swamps at the rear of the city and sneak in through the mountains to catch the Daleks by surprise. The Doctor, Susan, Alydon and the rest of the Thals will distract and disrupt the Daleks with feinting tactics at the front of the city. After three days, they will attack the front and meet in the middle.
Gantus leads his group through the swamps where they discover pipes leading from the lake to the city. Figuring the Daleks are pumping their water from the lake, the decide to follow the pipes. However, one of the Thals is attacked and sucked under the lake while filling the water bags.
The remaining group enters the mountain caves a treks through. Ganatus' brother, Antodus, becomes increasingly fearful and wants to turn back. Ganatus tries to restrain him but a sudden cave-in causes both men to fall back. The cave-in blocks their escape and the group presses forward knowing it's their only way out.
Distracting the Dalek cameras with mirrors, the Doctor, Susan and Alydon sneak into the city, destroying antennae and cameras. They find a control box for the power and the Doctor works to short-circuit the system. He sends Alydon back to move the mirrors to a new location and then destroys the box. Pleased with himself, he fails to move quickly and he and Susan are captured by a Dalek patrol sent to investigate.
In the caves, Ganatus and Barbara find an opening that leads to an underground river. The river cuts off their path but they can see another tunnel on the far side. Ian and Ganatus leap across the chasm to investigate and find that it leads back towards the city. They then have all the others leap across with them. However, Antodus mistimes his jump and slips down the cliff face, his safety rope threatening to drag Ian down with him. Antodus then cuts the rope and falls to his death while Ganatus pull Ian back up the cliff.
The Doctor and Susan are taken into the city and held in a room just off the control room. The Daleks are diverting the radiation from their nuclear reactors into a storage device and will release that into the atmosphere rather than setting off a new neutron bomb. The Doctor offers to show the Daleks the TARDIS and how it works in exchange for not releasing the radiation and setting them free. The Daleks however decide that they will simply examine his ship without his help if necessary.
Alydon gathers up the Thals and attacks the city, using the Doctor's knock out of the detection equipment as cover. He meets up with Ganatus' group, who has just emerged from the tunnels in the water pumping area, and the separate groups all converge on the Dalek control room. The Daleks are counting down the release of the radiation but are distracted by the Thal attack. One Dalek is pushed into the power relay which both electrocutes the Dalek and also cuts the power to the rest of the Daleks throughout the city. Without the power, the Daleks simply cease to function, leaving the mutants trapped in cases that cannot support them.
The groups return to the forest with the fluid link and the equipment the Daleks used to grow food. They each say their goodbyes, with Ganatus lingering a bit with Barbara, and then leave in the TARDIS. As the TARDIS takes off, it suddenly lurches violently, throwing everyone inside to the ground.
Analysis
Because Terry Nation had a tendency to recycle various parts of his story elements, it has become a bit fashionable among fans to dismiss all of his work as just the same thing. However, there is something rather unique in the original Dalek story and when you go back and watch it with an open mind, it is actually quite good. Yes, there are elements that come up in later stories and yes it is rather padded, but it almost surprising as how well it holds up as a story and you can see how Dalekmania blossomed in it's wake.
One of the things that I think is very important to enjoying this story is understanding it's context. Unlike most of the other First Doctor stories, this one has Ian and Barbara still pretty pissed at the Doctor for abducting him as well as the Doctor being closer to his nastier self as seen in the caveman adventure (which did not get notes from Sidney Newman). Therefore, there is a natural tension that arises and Ian's attitude of either not trusting or being openly angry towards the Doctor is completely understandable.
The Doctor is better in this story than in the previous one. Yes he sabotages the ship, but not in any meaningful way and there is an inherent curiosity that is appealing in him. He also is clearly the idea man for though Ian and Susan actually carry things out, it is the Doctor that comes up with the various concepts, showing that they must think their way out of the situation rather than just use brute force.
All the companions are pretty good in this one, even Susan. I noted Ian's attitude towards the Doctor but you can see the good man and natural leader pretty much throughout the story. It is also interesting to see that Barbara, who doesn't get as much to do in this story, is already starting to become the Doctor's favorite. She is the one who sides with the Doctor against Ian in provoking the Thals, even though Ian is right. In The Edge of Destruction, it is Barbara who the Doctor specifically makes up with after the events in the TARDIS. Her little dabble with Ganatus is nice but even from this point you know she is Ian's woman. Still it provides a nice reminder that Barbara is a fairly young woman and not defaulting completely into the mom role.
Susan is more of a mixed bag in this story but it certainly is better than her previous one. I think what gets to me most about her is that Carol Ann Ford is clearly in her early twenties and should be playing a character in her mid-to-late teens. However, her dialogue and dialogue about her is more geared towards a character that is closer to ten. I could easily imagine my own daughter (who is eleven) saying these lines and acting like Susan does. She is responsible in a group but so easily hysterical when forced to do something on her own. If Susan was as stroppy a teenager as we might expect, she should have been more independent and less fearful, even with the night run to the TARDIS. I can understand why her character was reduced to a young girl in the movie version. Again her overall performance isn't bad, but the contrast in written age and actual age is just strikes a sour note here and there.
One of the things that really surprised me when I was rewatching this is how different the Daleks were compared to their usual state. I think we have gotten used to Daleks that are rant-y and near insane with hate. Here you have cold and calculating Daleks. They kill with impunity but they have a cold logic that also keeps them from killing indiscriminately. The Daleks as originally written actually are far closer to the scheming David Whitaker Daleks of Power of the Daleks and Evil of the Daleks than they are of even Terry Nation's other Dalek scripts.
My suspicion is that in this original treatment, the Daleks are just written as another alien race and given a cold, logical style. In the next appearance of the Daleks (The Dalek Invasion of Earth) Nation turned them into a Nazi parallel and I think he never went away from that, which caused the Daleks to lose some of that conniving quality that only reappeared when someone else wrote them.
I find it fascinating that the Daleks are not actually taken in by nearly any of the deceptions tried against them. They know the cameras are knocked out deliberately by the prisoners, they are aware of the infiltrations into the city and even the escape attempt they cotton on to fairly quickly. It is only their limitations to the city and their underestimating of the potential damage these things can do that really harms them.
The Thals are a little generic and a touch boring but not in an overly objectional way. Fortunately, there are very few scenes with them by themselves as those scenes just don't grab you. I should even put a caveat there as the worst offender is Dyoni. The actress seems a bit unsure of how to play the character and ends up being a bit more aloof that I think is needed. Temmosus is actually somewhat interesting given how few scenes he gets as he is the pure optimist, choosing to try peace rather than war. Alydon is more of a blend but I think that style of character was done better as Taron in Planet of the Daleks.
Since I have introduced the concept of the Thals being a bit dull, let's talk about the limitation of this story and that is its padding. Granted, your appreciation of this story is going to be far different if you actually space it out over seven weeks rather than watch it in one or two sittings as most modern fans do. That emphasizes the padding and makes it so much more noticeable. I ended watching this in two sittings and got through Episode Five before I had to stop and the only part that bothered me was Episode Two where they were in the cell. Going back the next day, even the famously drawn out crevasse jump scene in Episode Six didn't feel that bad and I'm sure would have been very tense for the kids watching.
These two instances led me to think that the padding that Terry Nation puts in is only that heavily noticeable when there is no movement. I don't think he does people sitting and talking very well the way Malcolm Hulke or Robert Holmes does. Nation is a writer that is entertaining when things are moving. So even the crevasse scene is not that bad because there is movement and you know that someone is going to fall. It gains tension even if it is too much time paid to. But having the four sit around dying of radiation poisoning while Ian tries to get his legs to work and also convince Susan that she has to go to the TARDIS just gets dull. Contrast that scene to a similar one in Episode Three where they are all working together to escape and even though it is again them confined in a room and talking, there is action in the form of a plan taking shape and stuff being done to implement that plan.
There are two other points that really bother me from a story standpoint. The first is that Alydon joins Ian's team after they emerge from the mountains. If Alydon was able to do that, it effectively means that the entire journey through the swamp and the mountains (with two deaths to beat) was totally pointless. Ian's team gained no advantage if a Thal group that came through a frontal assault was able to join and work with them. It might be argued that the Daleks became aware of Ian's team in the city and that caused them to redirect their defenses which allowed Alydon's team to get in, but that is not made clear. I think it would have worked better if we had seen Alydon's team attack the control room, grabbing the Dalek's attention and then having Ian's team attack and getting the drop on the Daleks as the plan was more originally constructed.
My other objection is the oddity of the Daleks not being aware of their need for radiation. You would think that after several hundred years, the Daleks would have come up with their own anti-radiation treatments and figured out that their physiology had adapted to the radiation long before this. It is this lack of drugs or understanding of their physiology that both drives the plot in Episode Two and then provides the added danger of the countdown (which is rather unnecessary) in Episodes Six and Seven. It's just something added that makes no real sense and don't really add anything to the overall plot of the story.
Going back to the positive side, I think the end of Episode One where an unseen Dalek except for the plunger approaching Barbara is one of the best cliffhangers in the scene. It is played very well by Jacqueline Hill and when done on top of the already disorienting cinematography of her being cut off and herded deeper in, it must have scared the kids watching immeasurably. You can also tell that it was a second go around because there is a different reaction in the recap at the start of Episode Two and it just doesn't work as well in ratcheting up the tension. But the one in Episode One is excellent.
On that note, the design and direction are quite good in this story. Even though a lot of sets are reused, they do it in such a way that it really disguises the reuse. The action flows well and you get very good performances out of nearly all the actors. I think you could show this story to a more modern audience and they would have a measure of respect for the way it looks and their objections would be restricted to story and pacing which is just so different in today's television.
Overall I would say that this is a good story, better than what is generally expected. Because there is so much repetition with Nation, I think fans feel they have the measure of this story and prejudge it based on their knowledge of other stories. They also object to the obvious padding and while that does drag the story at a few points, it is moves pretty well. I wouldn't have a problem sitting down with this one again in the near future but I also think that if you were going to expose a new fan to this, it would be better done in smaller chunks, only one or two episodes at a time to allow them to digest it. It might make the padded nature of it seem like less of a slog if they are not used to that format.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
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