I have to see a man about a cat.
Survival was the last story of the classic era. Although not the last filmed, it was selected to go last in the season and when word came down that the show was going to be shelved, the final coda of the Seventh Doctor was recorded and dubbed in as he and Ace walk away. I had been holding off on this one, even toying with the idea of making it the last classic era story I would watch. However, given that Rona Munro is coming back to write in Series 10, I thought it best to watch this prior to her return to the show to get a proper feel for her style.
Plot Summary
A young man is washing his mother's care in Ace's hometown of Perivale while being spied on by a black cat. Suddenly a large thing appears and the man tries to run away but is quickly overcome by the thing and he vanishes.
A few moments later, the Doctor and Ace arrive in the TARDIS. Ace had made an offhand comment about seeing some of her old friends and the Doctor indulged her. They head up to an old haunt of hers but find nothing, though the Doctor spies evidence of horses and a black cat observing them.
They then head to the local youth club, which also is missing several of things Ace remembered. Instead they find Sergeant Paterson teaching wrestling to a group of young men. After the lesson, Ace talks to him about some of her old friends. He doesn't know what happened to them but does recall Ace getting in trouble now and then. The Doctor is distracted once more by a presence of cats.
The Doctor and Ace head to the local food mart where the Doctor buys several tins of cat food. He also surprises a black cat that had been hiding among the cans. He warns the two shopkeepers to be on their toes. This is emphasized later as one of them heads to the back room to feed his own cat, Tiger, only to find the animal dead and having been chewed on.
Ace finally meets one of her old friends taking collections outside another store. She tells Ace that most of her old friends have gone. Some have gotten married or moved away but several have simply disappeared. Again, Ace attempts to engage the Doctor but he remains distracted. He finally sets up the cat food, hoping to attract the black cat that keeps crossing their path.
The black cat spies one of the young men who had been wrestling and marks him. A mysterious man in shadow can be seen looking through the cat's eyes and agrees. Again, a figure appears in front of the young man and when he tries to run, he is overtaken and vanishes.
Annoyed with the Doctor and depressed at the changes to her friends, Ace wanders up to the local park. There she finds the black cat and begins to stroke it. The cat leaps out of her grasp and in a flash a humanoid cheetah appears riding on horseback. The cheetah person chases Ace who ducks and hides in the various bits of playground equipment. She eventually breaks into the open but the cheetah person catches up to her and Ace suddenly finds herself in a wasteland on an alien planet.
Hearing Ace's cries, the Doctor comes running but finds Ace gone. He turns his attention back towards the black cat, whom he finally sees eating the cat food. Before he can grab him, Sargent Paterson grabs him and accuses him of being a nuisance. The cat runs off and the Doctor runs after it with Sargent Paterson following.
On the alien planet, Ace spies the body of the man who had been washing a car. She also sees the same cat person on a horse and tries to run. The cheetah person gives chase but is distracted by the young man who had been taken a few moments before Ace. He lunges out after the cheetah person but it knocks him cold. Satisfied with the hunt, it places the young man's body on the back of the horse and rides off. Ace runs in the opposite direction and spots an old friend of hers, Shreela. Shreela pulls her into the woods where she finds her hiding out with an old friend named Midge and another man named Derek.
The Doctor attempts to catch the cat again but again, Sargent Paterson thwarts him. This time they get aggressive towards each other and suddenly find themselves transported to the same alien world. Surrounded by cat people, they are herded towards a tent which the Doctor opens to find the Master welcoming him. The Master tries to spook the Doctor and Paterson into running. Paterson does but this just attracts the attention of the cheetah people who start toying with him. The Doctor grabs a control ball from the Master and distracts the cheetah people long enough to grab a horse, then Paterson and ride away.
Ace rallies her friends into setting up a trap to defend themselves from the cheetah people. One spots the trap and goes through but they find another trap triggered. However, it is the Doctor and Paterson who have sprung it. Banded together now, the Doctor opts to head towards a volcanic ridge nearby. He has observed that the planet is dying and the unstable area around the volcano will keep them from the cheetah people until they can figure how to get back to Earth.
They pass a group of cheetah people lounging in the sun. The Doctor warns them to move slowly and not engage as they will only attack if startled or very hungry. Unfortunately, one of the cheetah people returns from another expedition to Earth with a young man and this stirs up those that had been lounging. Adding to this, when confronted, Paterson and most of the men grab rocks and start flinging them at the cheetah people to drive them off. The Doctor implores them all to stand still and not move but no one listens to him.
The group gets separated with most of the group following Paterson around a ridge. Midge is saved when two cheetah people start fighting with each other over him and Ace runs near a lake after knocking one off a horse. Meanwhile, the Doctor is quietly approached by the Master. Observing the fight over Midge, the Master notes that there is a psychic connection between the cheetah people and the planet. As they fight, the destruction accelerates. He also reveals that the planet takes control the longer people are here. He reveals that he himself has begun to transform into a cat person and can see through the eyes of the regular cat which act as spotters.
The two cheetah people fight to exhaustion while Midge takes a fang from a skeleton and uses it to kill the exhausted cheetah people fighters. The Doctor finds Ace tending to one of the cheetah people who was felled by offering her water. The two make their way back to the others where they find Midge has become more aggressive and is attacking Derek. They stop his attack and the Doctor informs them that since the people here have the ability to jump to Earth to hunt and then bring prey back here, they must find a cheetah person to whom they can link to head back.
The Master overhears this and sets a trap for Midge. When he falls into it, his reaction to fight accelerates the transformation process. The Master ties a rope to him and they disappear as Midge jumps to Earth to hunt.
Paranoia spreads among the group as they fear who will be next. The Doctor tries to stop them from fighting which will advance the transformation when Ace points out an approaching cheetah person. As she turns back the Doctor notices that her eyes have gone yellow like the cheetah people. She runs off with the cheetah girl whose name is Karra. Karra tempts Ace to join in the hunt but the Doctor follows her and brings her back to herself.
With Ace in partial transformation, she is able to send them all back to Perivale. The other three disperse and Ace suggests they leave in the TARDIS but the Doctor is concerned about the Master and heads out after him, deciding to try Midge's house first.
The Master and Midge return to Midge's house where the Master partially suppresses his own transformation but encourages Midge's, furthering his control over Midge. They leave the apartment and first take a couple of motorcycles from a local dealership. They then head to the youth club where Midge and the Master exert control over the boys. They turn them on Paterson and kill him.
At Midge's house, they find a young girl crying over her cat that was killed by Midge. Anger builds in Ace, causing her to slip into cat mind briefly but it also allows her to see where the Master is. They see him assembling the boys on a ridge near the playground. Ace decides to fight but the Doctor warns her that if she does she will slip further into transformation. Instead, the Doctor hops on to a motorcycle left at their end and charges into Midge driving the other motorcycle.
The bikes crash and both are thrown clear. Midge dies of his injuries and the Master sets the other boys on Ace. Resisting the urge to fight back, she calls for help and Karra appears. She drives off the boys in fear but when she attacks the Master, he stabs her with the fang Midge had taken earlier. The Master runs off as the Doctor awakes from a pile of rubbish on which he landed.
Ace mourns for Karra as she turns back from cheetah form to her normal human visage. She then dies and the Doctor comforts Ace about her fate.
The Doctor catches up to the Master, attempting to enter the Doctor's TARDIS. They fight and are transported back to the cheetah person planet, which is now turning into a flaming ruin. The Doctor gets the upper hand on the Master and nearly kills him but he comes to his senses, refusing to fight. As he does, he is transported back to Earth alone.
The Doctor finds Ace again as one last cheetah person comes through. However this one disappears before a hunt can be initiated. The Doctor informs Ace that the planet has been consumed, though she will always carry a part of it in her. They head back to the TARDIS as the Doctor proclaims that there is more work to be done.
Analysis
I must confess that I was disappointed by Survival. I had heard that it was considered decent and not a bad story to go out on. But when watching it, I found it to be trying to hard to be meta while the same time being so shallow on story that the entire middle section felt like filler.
I thought the story began well with a lot of puns, mysterious events happening and a dark figure in the background, whom I already knew to be the Master. But once they got to the planet, the story stalled out. Aside from the exposition by the Master about the planet taking control of it's inhabitants, nothing really happens except a lot of run around. It almost felt like a middle episode of a six-part First Doctor story except that it constitutes one-third of the whole story. Things picked up a bit in Episode Three but even there, it was so unclear as to the purpose and why behind everything that it ultimately left more questions than answers.
The Doctor was pretty good in this as he had stepped back from his all-knowing persona a bit. I believe this story was the second one filmed and it is missing something from the Doctor and Ace interaction that you would expect from having gone through The Curse of Fenric and Ghost Light. Nevertheless, he is still entertaining, especially when he gets very focused on the cats in Episode One. There were two points that I didn't like though. The motorcycle jousting was just bizarre and the Doctor got a little melodramatic in his line delivery in his final fight with the Master. I thought those moments dragged his performance down a bit.
Ace wasn't bad but her delivery wasn't particularly well done overall. Having seen Ace do well in other stories, I'm going to chalk that one up to the thin script and a lack of direction. I get that Ace was supposed to be a bit mournful about the passage of time and the loss of old friends, but how that accelerated her transformation and caused her to bond with Karra was never properly fleshed out. I got the impression that it was unclear for Sophie Aldred as well as she seemed unsure of her style and delivery. It wasn't painfully bad, but for a story that should have centered so much on Ace, her lack of focus was very obvious and detrimental to the overall story.
I recall hearing some people say that they thought this was one of Anthony Ainley's best performances as the Master. I will say that it is probably his most restrained and I could see how that would benefit. But it's also one of the most useless. The Master directs the action in Episode One and gives the only exposition in Episode Two. But talk about control and attempting to force his will over the teenagers in Episode Three seemed jumbled and rather beneath him. In fact, the whole retreat to Earth seemed like a waste of the Master. Rather than confronting and thwarting the Doctor, he runs away and sets the laziest of traps for the Doctor, assuming his return. It just seemed like small potatoes for him. It also seems odd that if the Master wanted to fight and destroy the Doctor, why not engage him directly after the motorcycle crash when the Doctor was woozy? This outing of the Master just felt like a man who had no plan once he had escaped the planet and someone who should have fled the scene immediately once he was safe. I thought the performance by Ainley was fine, but overall an underwhelming performance by the Master.
Rather ironically, one of the things that gets derided the most about this story is something I actually liked: the cheetah people. I didn't really understand the planet turning humans into cheetahs but I thought the costumes were actually pretty good and they seemed like a genuine threat to the Doctor and the other humans. They managed to get a flavor of what a human transformed into a cat would be like but while still maintaining a level of humanity. Again, why cats, but of all the other issues with this story, that's one of the least bothersome.
I criticized the director earlier when it came to Ace but I should point out that the director did do a good job when it came to the environment. I thought there were some nice shots of the action and I thought they did a good job of making the quarry look like an alien planet, even though it is still a quarry. I suspect that the director was focused so much on get the look and action right that they didn't pay as much attention to the actors and the performances suffered. Most of the characters were a bit stiff. Outside of the Doctor and the Master, the only other one I thought that gave a pretty good performance was Paterson.
Paterson's performance overall was decent but I'm not quite sure what the point of his character was after the initial scene in the youth club. His set up lines about "survival of the fittest" played well with the overall theme but aside from causing a distraction to the Doctor when he tried to capture the Master's kitlin, he was a bit of a waste. He was subservient to the Doctor the whole time and did nothing except initiate the fighting when the milkman was brought back. That was something that could easily have been done by one of the others. I actually think the story would have played better if Paterson leaves the club in Episode One after talking all of his "survival of the fittest" bit and then comes in unphased only to be turned into a victim in Episode Three. As it stands, he is in shock and only a shell of his former self when attacked. That makes him easy prey in his scenario but it doesn't play up much for the strength of the Master's will. I think it would have worked better if he hadn't been in it so much, even though his performance was one of the better ones overall.
Overall, I can't say that I thought that this story was particularly good. The acting was ok but dipped into subpar on several occasions. The storyline was very thin and felt like it was trying to disguise it by being about more than it was. But it didn't explain the ideas it had and spent so much time with rather pointless running around instead of addressing the ideas. I have no problem with stories that want to be deep but if they do, they need to get into the them more and not just give lip service. Even doing something more direct like having the Master take on the Doctor in a more head-on fashion prior to the last two minutes of Episode Three would have been an improvement.
I would say that even if this story were great, it almost certainly couldn't be watched in isolation. There is too much build up and the story is aware of it's own weight and it's position. I don't think it needs to be saved as the true final story of a run, but it does need to be watched with awareness of the history of the show. It's definitely not a story to be watched by a new fan or in a casual manner. But given the quality of it, I probably wouldn't watch it again unless I was doing a marathon rewatch and needed that sense of closure.
Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5
Showing posts with label 7th Doctor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 7th Doctor. Show all posts
Friday, May 5, 2017
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Battlefield
Destroyer: Pitiful. Can this world do no better than you as a champion?
Brigadier: Probably. I just do the best I can
Battlefield is the Doctor Who take on the King Arthur legend. I've not heard much about it other than it is generally considered the weakest of four stories that make up Season 26, even by those that despise Ghost Light. I also know that there was an issue with production where this story was expanded from it's intended three episodes to four which has rather baffled people as again, Ghost Light would have benefited from expansion probably more than this story.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Ace receive a distress call in the TARDIS and materialize on Earth a few years beyond when Ace left. They hitch a ride from an archeologist named Peter Warmsly, who is following a UNIT truck on his way to his dig site. At the dig site, from the Arthurian period, the Doctor finds a UNIT nuclear missile convoy with the new commander, Brigadier Winifred Bambera. Brigadier Bambera is dismissive of the Doctor, but is informed by her sergeant of the Doctor's status as UNIT's scientific adviser.
Bambera drives the Doctor and Ace to a local inn where Ace strikes up with a local named Shou Yuing, who shares her interest in explosives. The Doctor meanwhile examines a scabbard unearthed by Warmsly and hung on the wall. The wife of the proprietor, Mrs. Rawlinson, warns the Doctor that something is off about the scabbard. She is blind, but she can sense power from it. The Doctor notes that it feels hot to the touch and agrees with her.
Bambera drives back but stops on seeing the TARDIS, having been warned to be on the lookout for it. While examining it, she is caught in a firefight between an armored knight and his three armored pursuers. Both are using swords and laser weapons. Bambera shoots back but her gun has no effect. The lone knight retreats but one of them throws a grenade and launches him through the air and into the brewery building next to the inn.
Hearing the crash, the Doctor, Ace and Shou Yuing go to investigate. The find the knight alive, though knocked out briefly. The knight is Ancelyn and he recognizes the Doctor as Merlin, though with a different face. Bambera arrives and tries to arrest the lot but she is interrupted by the other knights. Their leader is Mordred who aims to kill them. However upon seeing the Doctor, whom he also recognizes as Merlin, he retreats, preferring to leave him to his mother Morgaine.
Mordred retreats to a sanctum established in a local castle and uses the power of his sword to open a porthole for his mother to pass through. She arrives during the night while the Doctor's group is hunkered down at the inn. The scabbard leaps off it's mounting and imbeds itself in a post, pulled toward the dig site.
During all this, retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is at his home with his wife Doris. He receives a call from Geneva and dismisses them at first but changes his mind when he hears the Doctor has come back. He is picked up via helicopter and flown to London to be briefed. He and Lt. Lavel then fly north to the site of the action. His helicopter is observed by Morgaine and she brings it down with a surge of power from her hand. The Brigadier and Lavel survive the crash but Lavel is injured. The Brigadier heads to town to get help.
In town he is confronted by Morgaine but she does not attack, seeing a fellow warrior. She had ordered her forces to stand down as they had arrived on a memorial to the World War I and II dead and sheading blood on a memorial for soldiers would be seen as dishonorable. She warns the Brigadier that she will kill him the next time they meet on the field of battle. The Brigadier continues and commandeers the car of Shou Yuing, forcing her into the passenger seat.
The Doctor and Ace return to the dig site with Warmsly where they uncover a stone with the Doctor's writing. He orders Ace to create a hole and she detonates an explosive there, revealing a concrete passage nearly 1300 years old. They enter the passage and then a buried spaceship. The Doctor triggers a door using his voice pattern, figuring that a future version of himself must have set all this in place.
They enter the chamber where a knight in suspended animation is slumped over an alter with a sword buried in it. Ace accidentally pulls the sword out, trigging a defensive system that attacks them. Ace runs back into a cubby which seals behind her and begins to fill with water. The Doctor triggers a button on a console which opens a hatch and shoots Ace to the surface like a torpedo where she swims to shore, gathered up by Warmsley and Ancelyn.
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart arrives and upon hearing Ace's story, runs into the tunnel. He takes the control from the stunned Doctor and deactivates the security system. The two return to the surface and gather the whole party in two cars to head back to the inn. Most pile in the UNIT car but Brigadier Bambera and Ancelyn take Shou Yuing's car with Bambera a bit put out at Letbrigde-Stewart having taken over command.
Mordred arrives at the inn where he is confronted by Lieutenant Lavel. Morgaine also arrives and probes Lavel's mind, learning of the Brigadier's plans and arrival. She then kills Lavel, turning her body to ash. However, she also pays for the pint Mordred drank by restoring sight to Mrs. Rawlinson. Morgaine orders Mordred to lead the men to attack the UNIT forces while she goes after the Doctor and Excalibur.
Mordred's men ambush the two cars returning to the inn but Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's gets through. Brigadier Bambera and Ancelyn are run off the road and are forced to run back to the lake to regroup with other UNIT soldiers.
The other car arrives at the inn where another group of UNIT soldiers is unloading specially designed munitions for alien invaders. The Doctor puts in an order for silver bullets and then hypnotizes the Rawlinsons and Warmsley into evacuating. He leaves Excalibur with Ace and Shou Yuing and orders Ace that if things go funny to draw a circle with a piece of chalk he gives her and stay inside it.
The Doctor and the Brigadier drive back to the lake to see UNIT and Mordred's men engaged in combat. He runs in to stop the fighting but Mordred laughs at him, noting that this is just a feint. The Doctor realizes that the real attack is now against Ace.
Ace and Shou Yuing stay in the circle as darkness envelops the inn, though light remains in the circle. The two girls start fighting as they think they hear the other one insult them but they realize they are being tricked. Finally Morgaine herself appears with a demon called The Destroyer to recover Excalibur. However, she cannot penetrate the chalk circle. The Destroyer can but Morgaine refuses to unbind his silver chains to unleash his full power.
The Doctor calls out to Morgaine, threatening to kill Mordred but she dismisses him as bluffing. However, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart steps up, prepared to shoot Mordred and Morgaine knows he is not bluffing. She abandons Mordred and the Doctor and the Brigadier stuff him into Bessie and drive back to the inn. The Destroyer breaches the circle and he and Morgaine head back to the castle with Excalibur, destroying part of the inn in the process.
The Doctor and the Brigadier arrive with the real Excalibur to find Ace and Shou Yuing partially buried in the ruins but ok. They also notice the gateway used by Morgaine and the Destroyer is still open, being held open by the Destroyer. The Doctor and the Brigadier hurry through it. Ace follows a few moments later with two boxes of silver bullets. Mordred slips away from Bessie and runs back to the castle on foot.
In the castle, Morgaine uses Excalibur to try and reopen the portal to their own world. The Doctor, the Brigadier and Ace arrive to confront her. Threatened, Morgaine orders her men to attack UNIT and finally unbinds the Destroyer's chains, catching the Doctor off guard. Mordred reappears, catching his mother off guard as well. He is put out at her abandonment of him but the two vanish away from the castle as the Doctor steals Excalibur back from her.
The three retreat from the castle with the Doctor telling them that silver bullets are the only way to stop the Destroyer. He loads the Brigadier's gun with the bullets and prepares to go back in. However, the Brigadier knocks him out and takes the gun in himself. He confronts the Destroyer, shooting him and running as the demon explodes. The Doctor comes to as the castle explodes. He finds the Brigadier just outside the ruins of the castle, dirty and bloodied but alive. The three then head to the lake to stop Morgaine.
UNIT successfully defeats Morgaine's troops but Brigadier Bambera is captured by Mordred and taken to Morgaine, who probes her mind to discover how to activate the missile. The Doctor, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Ace return Excalibur to the ship and find that Arthur is actually dead, having died in battle 1,000 years ago. The Doctor finds a note left by his future self, warning of the armed missile and heads off to find Morgaine. Ace and the Brigadier are left with orders to destroy the ship, which Ace does with relish.
The Doctor finds Morgaine and confronts her with the reality that nuclear destruction is death without honor. She relents and deactivates the missile but demands to face Arthur in combat again. He reveals that Arthur died and she wilts with a lack of purpose, her thirst for revenge unfulfilled. He has Morgaine arrested, along with Mordred, whom he disarms just prior to killing Anselyn in single combat.
Victorious, the whole group returns to the Brigadier's estate where the ladies all take Bessie for a day in town, leaving the Brigadier, the Doctor and Anselyn to work the garden and prepare dinner.
Analysis
Battlefield is a story that probably had a significant amount of potential when it was first written, but the background folks let it down. It was padded which bloats the story and the acting took a hard turn into the scenery chewing vein and not in a good way.
The more stories I've seen, the more I like the Seventh Doctor and this story is no exception. The Doctor adapts rather well to the conditions shown him and unlike the other stories of this season where he is a bit too much in control, there is enough wrong-footedness to make his performance that much stronger. Being forced to adapt to things you haven't done yet puts the Doctor in the unique position of having to figure things out on the fly. Of course, it also gives an extra sense of boldness since the Doctor knows that he must survive in order to be Merlin in the future and set things in motion for his past self. But it still works.
It was nice to see the Brigadier again. I thought he did very well and in Episode Four he took Ace's position away as primary companion, to the point that he made a little joke of it. I liked the Brig in this one, especially as he fully gave way to the Doctor and was prepared for just about anything. I also appreciated his candor about the situation, knocking the Doctor out because he felt he was more expendable than the Doctor. In early drafts of the script, the Brigadier was supposed to die in the confrontation with the Destroyer. I'm glad he didn't but if that had been kept, it would have been a noble and fitting end for him.
I was a little disappointed by Ace in this story. Part of that comes from a sense of Sophie Aldred trying a bit too hard with the teenager bit in her scenes with Shou Yuing. Her nature works well in contrast with the Doctor and the Brigadier because she is so much younger than they are and the naivety plays more naturally. When she is with peers or even other people, it starts coming across that she is older than what she is trying to play and there is a sense of wrongness about it. It's not terrible, but it just rubs wrong during the story.
Where this story really starts to fall apart though is in the guest cast. Most of the ancillary characters are middling at best in their acting. A couple stand out as being a little better here and there but most aren't great. The three that really disappoint though are Brigadier Bambera, Mordred and Morgaine. Bambera is supposed to be this "tough as nails" sort of commander, but she comes across as more of a jerk than anything else. It's hard to imagine anyone with more of a "shoot first and ask questions later" person than Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, but there she is. However, this does not enhance her character but instead makes her into a dumb hothead. She doesn't know the Doctor and constantly gets her foot into it. She is further diminished by playing up a comedy role for her as the object of Ancelyn's affection which is so cliché that it just doesn't work very well.
I didn't expect much out of Mordred so his turns to camp were not overly surprising, though no less painful. His scenery chewing, especially with Ancelyn made me just long for the Brigadier to pull the trigger on him when he is cornered at the beginning of Episode Four. But despite that, Morgaine was actually worse for me. I think this is due to the fact that Jean Marsh is a good actress and she has been shown to play her roles well, even in other Doctor Who stories. Here, she is incredibly over-the-top and scenery chewing and it goes to the point of being almost community theater level of portraying the bad guy.
While I was watching her performance, I found myself wondering why her performance was so painful to watch when Anthony Ainley's performances as the Master were probably just as campy but enjoyable. My speculation is that Ainley knew when to pull it back when he had to for dramatic purposes and that his camp was always layered in a sense of fun that the Master would have. Whatever the circumstances, the Master was enjoying himself and the whole plot was just a game. Here, Morgaine is set out with a mission to find and recover Excalibur and then defeat Arthur. There is nothing fun in that so her decent into camp feels exactly like an actor doing a bad job rather than playing up the mustache twirly-ness for comedic effect. I wouldn't have thought it bad, but it just didn't work for me.
As interesting as the idea was, there were also some problems with the writing. Some of this came to stringing out of the plot, which added scenes and expanded the scope, but that expansion also created extra threads which just left things dangling.
I genuinely did not understand what the whole bit with the nuclear missile had to do with anything. That was never made a focus of Morgaine's at any point. Her goal was always to recover Excalibur and then battle Arthur. Fleeing before the released Destroyer was one thing but the idea of setting off the nuclear missile out of effectively spite, only to be talked down because of a lack of honor in such a killing was just dumb. Had she taken over the missile and threatened to use it unless Arthur came to challenge her and then have her face the reality of Arthur's death would have played much better. It would have put the focus on her revenge rather than another anti-nuclear bit that was very common in the 80's.
In many ways, the inclusion of the Destroyer himself is rather pointless. He is introduced midway in Episode Three and then dispatched early in Episode Four. There is a lot of build up towards with the silver bullets but it's a bit too much for a simple dragon and it took the focus off Morgaine and she should have stayed the focus in my opinion. It feels like another instance of putting a monster in Doctor Who simply so there will be a monster.
One of the few good scenes that came out of the need to pad this story out to four episodes is a reunification between Nicholas Courtney and Jean Marsh. Jean Marsh made her Doctor Who debut in The Crusade but they were both featured prominently in Nicholas Courtney's first appearance in The Daleks' Master Plan where Jean Marsh's Sarah Kingdom shot and killed Nicholas Courtney's Bret Vyon. The characters show a great deal of respect for each other and you can't help but think that very little acting is actually going on as it is two distinguished actors giving each other respect. As an overall scene, it is completely pointless and puts a rather odd bit of honor in what is otherwise rather ruthless killing, but I still enjoyed seeing the two of them share the screen together.
Another thought that came to me while I was watching was how the story should have been tightened further in regard to the Brigadier. I'm not well versed in the Arthurian legend about his return, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that the Brigadier was playing the role of Arthur. He had retired to his own Avalon with Doris but is summoned back by Merlin (the Doctor). He leads his forces to victory over Morgaine and her dragon and in early drafts of the story, the Brigadier actually died which would have further played into the legend, given Arthur's own death against Mordred's forces. You even have the nice tie in with the actors having played brother and sister in a previous story. But it felt like the Arthurian bits got dropped by Episode Four, and it just didn't quite work after that. You had a tiny little revival when Morgaine effectively gives up after learning of Arthur's death (much like the legend) but since so little focus had been given on that part of Morgaine's desire, it didn't really go anywhere.
That little point also speaks to a larger problem with the ending. Mordred is disarmed and captured. Fine, that works. But Morgaine also gives up and yet she still has all her technology/magical powers that she had before. Are we to assume that she is going to meekly submit to spending the next few years sitting in a British prison and will be released at some future point? That makes absolutely no sense. If the story didn't want to kill the antagonists, fine. I can deal with that. But the Doctor should have arranged to have them detained in their own dimension or exiled to some other world as a prison there. These are not conventional criminals that you just toss in a cell. It's another aspect of the odd pacing that came about by the expansion.
I rather wonder if in the original story, Morgaine is killed or mortally wounded by the Destroyer and calls for Arthur to finish her off after the Brigadier defeats him. There the Doctor would have stood over her and told her that Arthur was dead and that her revenge was pointless. I would have been a bit of the dark Doctor showing up and fully closing Morgaine's story rather than just letting it dangle at the end.
The production values of this story aren't bad for the 80's. It is fairly well directed and there is some nice camera work. There are a number of visual effects which do look very fake, even for the time. In fact, just about everything the Destroyer does looks quite bad. Despite the fact that the Destroyer himself actually looks really good. I'm going to fault the times and the budget more than anything and compared to the other problems of this story, it's a minor thing.
This is a story that I can honestly say I wished I liked more. There is potential here both in plotline and the talent available. But it just turned into a steaming pile. There are too many groaner moments to outweigh the good moments, especially between the Doctor and the Brigadier. There are far better Seventh Doctor stories and I think the final ride of the Brigadier is the only reason to give this one a second time around.
Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5
Brigadier: Probably. I just do the best I can
Battlefield is the Doctor Who take on the King Arthur legend. I've not heard much about it other than it is generally considered the weakest of four stories that make up Season 26, even by those that despise Ghost Light. I also know that there was an issue with production where this story was expanded from it's intended three episodes to four which has rather baffled people as again, Ghost Light would have benefited from expansion probably more than this story.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Ace receive a distress call in the TARDIS and materialize on Earth a few years beyond when Ace left. They hitch a ride from an archeologist named Peter Warmsly, who is following a UNIT truck on his way to his dig site. At the dig site, from the Arthurian period, the Doctor finds a UNIT nuclear missile convoy with the new commander, Brigadier Winifred Bambera. Brigadier Bambera is dismissive of the Doctor, but is informed by her sergeant of the Doctor's status as UNIT's scientific adviser.
Bambera drives the Doctor and Ace to a local inn where Ace strikes up with a local named Shou Yuing, who shares her interest in explosives. The Doctor meanwhile examines a scabbard unearthed by Warmsly and hung on the wall. The wife of the proprietor, Mrs. Rawlinson, warns the Doctor that something is off about the scabbard. She is blind, but she can sense power from it. The Doctor notes that it feels hot to the touch and agrees with her.
Bambera drives back but stops on seeing the TARDIS, having been warned to be on the lookout for it. While examining it, she is caught in a firefight between an armored knight and his three armored pursuers. Both are using swords and laser weapons. Bambera shoots back but her gun has no effect. The lone knight retreats but one of them throws a grenade and launches him through the air and into the brewery building next to the inn.
Hearing the crash, the Doctor, Ace and Shou Yuing go to investigate. The find the knight alive, though knocked out briefly. The knight is Ancelyn and he recognizes the Doctor as Merlin, though with a different face. Bambera arrives and tries to arrest the lot but she is interrupted by the other knights. Their leader is Mordred who aims to kill them. However upon seeing the Doctor, whom he also recognizes as Merlin, he retreats, preferring to leave him to his mother Morgaine.
Mordred retreats to a sanctum established in a local castle and uses the power of his sword to open a porthole for his mother to pass through. She arrives during the night while the Doctor's group is hunkered down at the inn. The scabbard leaps off it's mounting and imbeds itself in a post, pulled toward the dig site.
During all this, retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is at his home with his wife Doris. He receives a call from Geneva and dismisses them at first but changes his mind when he hears the Doctor has come back. He is picked up via helicopter and flown to London to be briefed. He and Lt. Lavel then fly north to the site of the action. His helicopter is observed by Morgaine and she brings it down with a surge of power from her hand. The Brigadier and Lavel survive the crash but Lavel is injured. The Brigadier heads to town to get help.
In town he is confronted by Morgaine but she does not attack, seeing a fellow warrior. She had ordered her forces to stand down as they had arrived on a memorial to the World War I and II dead and sheading blood on a memorial for soldiers would be seen as dishonorable. She warns the Brigadier that she will kill him the next time they meet on the field of battle. The Brigadier continues and commandeers the car of Shou Yuing, forcing her into the passenger seat.
The Doctor and Ace return to the dig site with Warmsly where they uncover a stone with the Doctor's writing. He orders Ace to create a hole and she detonates an explosive there, revealing a concrete passage nearly 1300 years old. They enter the passage and then a buried spaceship. The Doctor triggers a door using his voice pattern, figuring that a future version of himself must have set all this in place.
They enter the chamber where a knight in suspended animation is slumped over an alter with a sword buried in it. Ace accidentally pulls the sword out, trigging a defensive system that attacks them. Ace runs back into a cubby which seals behind her and begins to fill with water. The Doctor triggers a button on a console which opens a hatch and shoots Ace to the surface like a torpedo where she swims to shore, gathered up by Warmsley and Ancelyn.
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart arrives and upon hearing Ace's story, runs into the tunnel. He takes the control from the stunned Doctor and deactivates the security system. The two return to the surface and gather the whole party in two cars to head back to the inn. Most pile in the UNIT car but Brigadier Bambera and Ancelyn take Shou Yuing's car with Bambera a bit put out at Letbrigde-Stewart having taken over command.
Mordred arrives at the inn where he is confronted by Lieutenant Lavel. Morgaine also arrives and probes Lavel's mind, learning of the Brigadier's plans and arrival. She then kills Lavel, turning her body to ash. However, she also pays for the pint Mordred drank by restoring sight to Mrs. Rawlinson. Morgaine orders Mordred to lead the men to attack the UNIT forces while she goes after the Doctor and Excalibur.
Mordred's men ambush the two cars returning to the inn but Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's gets through. Brigadier Bambera and Ancelyn are run off the road and are forced to run back to the lake to regroup with other UNIT soldiers.
The other car arrives at the inn where another group of UNIT soldiers is unloading specially designed munitions for alien invaders. The Doctor puts in an order for silver bullets and then hypnotizes the Rawlinsons and Warmsley into evacuating. He leaves Excalibur with Ace and Shou Yuing and orders Ace that if things go funny to draw a circle with a piece of chalk he gives her and stay inside it.
The Doctor and the Brigadier drive back to the lake to see UNIT and Mordred's men engaged in combat. He runs in to stop the fighting but Mordred laughs at him, noting that this is just a feint. The Doctor realizes that the real attack is now against Ace.
Ace and Shou Yuing stay in the circle as darkness envelops the inn, though light remains in the circle. The two girls start fighting as they think they hear the other one insult them but they realize they are being tricked. Finally Morgaine herself appears with a demon called The Destroyer to recover Excalibur. However, she cannot penetrate the chalk circle. The Destroyer can but Morgaine refuses to unbind his silver chains to unleash his full power.
The Doctor calls out to Morgaine, threatening to kill Mordred but she dismisses him as bluffing. However, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart steps up, prepared to shoot Mordred and Morgaine knows he is not bluffing. She abandons Mordred and the Doctor and the Brigadier stuff him into Bessie and drive back to the inn. The Destroyer breaches the circle and he and Morgaine head back to the castle with Excalibur, destroying part of the inn in the process.
The Doctor and the Brigadier arrive with the real Excalibur to find Ace and Shou Yuing partially buried in the ruins but ok. They also notice the gateway used by Morgaine and the Destroyer is still open, being held open by the Destroyer. The Doctor and the Brigadier hurry through it. Ace follows a few moments later with two boxes of silver bullets. Mordred slips away from Bessie and runs back to the castle on foot.
In the castle, Morgaine uses Excalibur to try and reopen the portal to their own world. The Doctor, the Brigadier and Ace arrive to confront her. Threatened, Morgaine orders her men to attack UNIT and finally unbinds the Destroyer's chains, catching the Doctor off guard. Mordred reappears, catching his mother off guard as well. He is put out at her abandonment of him but the two vanish away from the castle as the Doctor steals Excalibur back from her.
The three retreat from the castle with the Doctor telling them that silver bullets are the only way to stop the Destroyer. He loads the Brigadier's gun with the bullets and prepares to go back in. However, the Brigadier knocks him out and takes the gun in himself. He confronts the Destroyer, shooting him and running as the demon explodes. The Doctor comes to as the castle explodes. He finds the Brigadier just outside the ruins of the castle, dirty and bloodied but alive. The three then head to the lake to stop Morgaine.
UNIT successfully defeats Morgaine's troops but Brigadier Bambera is captured by Mordred and taken to Morgaine, who probes her mind to discover how to activate the missile. The Doctor, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Ace return Excalibur to the ship and find that Arthur is actually dead, having died in battle 1,000 years ago. The Doctor finds a note left by his future self, warning of the armed missile and heads off to find Morgaine. Ace and the Brigadier are left with orders to destroy the ship, which Ace does with relish.
The Doctor finds Morgaine and confronts her with the reality that nuclear destruction is death without honor. She relents and deactivates the missile but demands to face Arthur in combat again. He reveals that Arthur died and she wilts with a lack of purpose, her thirst for revenge unfulfilled. He has Morgaine arrested, along with Mordred, whom he disarms just prior to killing Anselyn in single combat.
Victorious, the whole group returns to the Brigadier's estate where the ladies all take Bessie for a day in town, leaving the Brigadier, the Doctor and Anselyn to work the garden and prepare dinner.
Analysis
Battlefield is a story that probably had a significant amount of potential when it was first written, but the background folks let it down. It was padded which bloats the story and the acting took a hard turn into the scenery chewing vein and not in a good way.
The more stories I've seen, the more I like the Seventh Doctor and this story is no exception. The Doctor adapts rather well to the conditions shown him and unlike the other stories of this season where he is a bit too much in control, there is enough wrong-footedness to make his performance that much stronger. Being forced to adapt to things you haven't done yet puts the Doctor in the unique position of having to figure things out on the fly. Of course, it also gives an extra sense of boldness since the Doctor knows that he must survive in order to be Merlin in the future and set things in motion for his past self. But it still works.
It was nice to see the Brigadier again. I thought he did very well and in Episode Four he took Ace's position away as primary companion, to the point that he made a little joke of it. I liked the Brig in this one, especially as he fully gave way to the Doctor and was prepared for just about anything. I also appreciated his candor about the situation, knocking the Doctor out because he felt he was more expendable than the Doctor. In early drafts of the script, the Brigadier was supposed to die in the confrontation with the Destroyer. I'm glad he didn't but if that had been kept, it would have been a noble and fitting end for him.
I was a little disappointed by Ace in this story. Part of that comes from a sense of Sophie Aldred trying a bit too hard with the teenager bit in her scenes with Shou Yuing. Her nature works well in contrast with the Doctor and the Brigadier because she is so much younger than they are and the naivety plays more naturally. When she is with peers or even other people, it starts coming across that she is older than what she is trying to play and there is a sense of wrongness about it. It's not terrible, but it just rubs wrong during the story.
Where this story really starts to fall apart though is in the guest cast. Most of the ancillary characters are middling at best in their acting. A couple stand out as being a little better here and there but most aren't great. The three that really disappoint though are Brigadier Bambera, Mordred and Morgaine. Bambera is supposed to be this "tough as nails" sort of commander, but she comes across as more of a jerk than anything else. It's hard to imagine anyone with more of a "shoot first and ask questions later" person than Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, but there she is. However, this does not enhance her character but instead makes her into a dumb hothead. She doesn't know the Doctor and constantly gets her foot into it. She is further diminished by playing up a comedy role for her as the object of Ancelyn's affection which is so cliché that it just doesn't work very well.
I didn't expect much out of Mordred so his turns to camp were not overly surprising, though no less painful. His scenery chewing, especially with Ancelyn made me just long for the Brigadier to pull the trigger on him when he is cornered at the beginning of Episode Four. But despite that, Morgaine was actually worse for me. I think this is due to the fact that Jean Marsh is a good actress and she has been shown to play her roles well, even in other Doctor Who stories. Here, she is incredibly over-the-top and scenery chewing and it goes to the point of being almost community theater level of portraying the bad guy.
While I was watching her performance, I found myself wondering why her performance was so painful to watch when Anthony Ainley's performances as the Master were probably just as campy but enjoyable. My speculation is that Ainley knew when to pull it back when he had to for dramatic purposes and that his camp was always layered in a sense of fun that the Master would have. Whatever the circumstances, the Master was enjoying himself and the whole plot was just a game. Here, Morgaine is set out with a mission to find and recover Excalibur and then defeat Arthur. There is nothing fun in that so her decent into camp feels exactly like an actor doing a bad job rather than playing up the mustache twirly-ness for comedic effect. I wouldn't have thought it bad, but it just didn't work for me.
As interesting as the idea was, there were also some problems with the writing. Some of this came to stringing out of the plot, which added scenes and expanded the scope, but that expansion also created extra threads which just left things dangling.
I genuinely did not understand what the whole bit with the nuclear missile had to do with anything. That was never made a focus of Morgaine's at any point. Her goal was always to recover Excalibur and then battle Arthur. Fleeing before the released Destroyer was one thing but the idea of setting off the nuclear missile out of effectively spite, only to be talked down because of a lack of honor in such a killing was just dumb. Had she taken over the missile and threatened to use it unless Arthur came to challenge her and then have her face the reality of Arthur's death would have played much better. It would have put the focus on her revenge rather than another anti-nuclear bit that was very common in the 80's.
In many ways, the inclusion of the Destroyer himself is rather pointless. He is introduced midway in Episode Three and then dispatched early in Episode Four. There is a lot of build up towards with the silver bullets but it's a bit too much for a simple dragon and it took the focus off Morgaine and she should have stayed the focus in my opinion. It feels like another instance of putting a monster in Doctor Who simply so there will be a monster.
One of the few good scenes that came out of the need to pad this story out to four episodes is a reunification between Nicholas Courtney and Jean Marsh. Jean Marsh made her Doctor Who debut in The Crusade but they were both featured prominently in Nicholas Courtney's first appearance in The Daleks' Master Plan where Jean Marsh's Sarah Kingdom shot and killed Nicholas Courtney's Bret Vyon. The characters show a great deal of respect for each other and you can't help but think that very little acting is actually going on as it is two distinguished actors giving each other respect. As an overall scene, it is completely pointless and puts a rather odd bit of honor in what is otherwise rather ruthless killing, but I still enjoyed seeing the two of them share the screen together.
Another thought that came to me while I was watching was how the story should have been tightened further in regard to the Brigadier. I'm not well versed in the Arthurian legend about his return, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that the Brigadier was playing the role of Arthur. He had retired to his own Avalon with Doris but is summoned back by Merlin (the Doctor). He leads his forces to victory over Morgaine and her dragon and in early drafts of the story, the Brigadier actually died which would have further played into the legend, given Arthur's own death against Mordred's forces. You even have the nice tie in with the actors having played brother and sister in a previous story. But it felt like the Arthurian bits got dropped by Episode Four, and it just didn't quite work after that. You had a tiny little revival when Morgaine effectively gives up after learning of Arthur's death (much like the legend) but since so little focus had been given on that part of Morgaine's desire, it didn't really go anywhere.
That little point also speaks to a larger problem with the ending. Mordred is disarmed and captured. Fine, that works. But Morgaine also gives up and yet she still has all her technology/magical powers that she had before. Are we to assume that she is going to meekly submit to spending the next few years sitting in a British prison and will be released at some future point? That makes absolutely no sense. If the story didn't want to kill the antagonists, fine. I can deal with that. But the Doctor should have arranged to have them detained in their own dimension or exiled to some other world as a prison there. These are not conventional criminals that you just toss in a cell. It's another aspect of the odd pacing that came about by the expansion.
I rather wonder if in the original story, Morgaine is killed or mortally wounded by the Destroyer and calls for Arthur to finish her off after the Brigadier defeats him. There the Doctor would have stood over her and told her that Arthur was dead and that her revenge was pointless. I would have been a bit of the dark Doctor showing up and fully closing Morgaine's story rather than just letting it dangle at the end.
The production values of this story aren't bad for the 80's. It is fairly well directed and there is some nice camera work. There are a number of visual effects which do look very fake, even for the time. In fact, just about everything the Destroyer does looks quite bad. Despite the fact that the Destroyer himself actually looks really good. I'm going to fault the times and the budget more than anything and compared to the other problems of this story, it's a minor thing.
This is a story that I can honestly say I wished I liked more. There is potential here both in plotline and the talent available. But it just turned into a steaming pile. There are too many groaner moments to outweigh the good moments, especially between the Doctor and the Brigadier. There are far better Seventh Doctor stories and I think the final ride of the Brigadier is the only reason to give this one a second time around.
Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5
Friday, January 6, 2017
Time and the Rani
Time and tide wait for the snowman.
Time and the Rani might be considered the worst Doctor Who story ever. To be fair to it though, it was slapped together extremely quickly with no time for script editing nor any budget. They also did not get Colin Baker back to do a regeneration scene, not surprising given how insultingly he was dismissed. Still, it does exist as it's own thing and must stand on it's own merit.
Plot Summary
The TARDIS is pursued by the Rani and forced to crash on the planet Lakertya. An explosion on the TARDIS causes him to regenerate as the Rani forces her way in and takes him prisoner, leaving Mel behind. The Doctor wakes later in the Rani's lab and tries to fight his way out but he is knocked out by her Tetrap servant. She then injects him with a chemical to inflict short term amnesia.
One of the locals, Ikona, captures Mel believing her to be allied with the Rani. He intends a hostage swap with the Rani for the Lakertyan leader Beyus, who is being forced to assist her. One of the other Lakertyans attempt to escape the Rani but is killed in a bubble trap. Mel prevents Ikona from falling into a similar trap and he realizes that she is telling the truth about not being allied with the Rani. The two of them make their way into a disused pipe to hide from the Rani's guards.
The Rani disguises herself as Mel and as the Doctor comes to, she convinces him that he was working on a machine in the lab and injured in the explosion which caused him to regenerate. Confused by the memory loss, he assumes it's part of the regeneration crisis and begins to work on the machine. But he is easily distracted and eventually realizes he is lacking the proper equipment. The Rani, losing patience with the Doctor's antics, suggests they head back to the TARDIS to gather the equipment.
As they walk back, the Doctor begins to regain his memory and is also becoming more suspicious of "Mel". Entering the TARDIS, he picks a new outfit and then begins to hunt for the needed equipment. On the monitor, they spy the real Mel trying to get back to the TARDIS, although the Rani tries to convince the Doctor that she is the Rani. As Mel approaches, she stumbles and is caught in a bubble trap. She floats away and lands on the edge of a lake, the bubble being slightly trapped so that it doesn't roll on the detonator. Ikona follows Mel and frees her from the trap.
The Doctor and the Rani return to the lab where the Doctor discovers a flaw in the machine. The Rani leaves to get a replacement part while he continues to work. Mel and Ikona run into Faroon, Beyus' wife. They tell her what happened to her and Beyus' daughter and Faroon is determined to tell Beyus in person. She walks into the Rani's fortress. Mel is determined to follow and Ikona creates a distraction for the Tetrap guard, allowing her to get in.
Mel meets the Doctor but he initially believes her to be the Rani while she is confused about his new appearance. They check each other's pulses to see if they are telling the truth and realize the deception. They meet with Beyus and Faroon, discovering that the Rani has captured some of Earth's greatest scientific minds and is holding them in suspended animation. She has also reserved a space for the Doctor.
Outside, the distracted Tetrap guard captures the Rani, believing her to be Mel. He frees her upon realizing his mistake and escorts her to her TARDIS where she retrieves the needed materials. She heads back and Mel and Faroon hide. The Doctor pretends as though he still thinks she's Mel, but the Rani quickly guesses that he has discerned the truth.
The Doctor flees and tries to hide in the Tetrap lair where he is quickly surrounded by the creatures. But Beyus activates the feeding system and releases the Doctor. He sends the Doctor out but also tells him to go to the leisure center of his people to understand why he obeys the Rani. He tries to stop the Doctor when the Doctor takes a piece of equipment from the Rani's machine but the Doctor knocks him down and escapes. He meets Ikona outside who saves him from an attacking Tetrap and takes him to the Lakertyan city.
Outside, Faroon returns to the city and Mel tries to get back to the TARDIS but is captured by the Tetraps. She is brought back to the Rani and held as a hostage until the Doctor returns the stolen piece of equipment.
Inside the leisure center, which Ikona is disdainful of, the Doctor discovers a sphere installed by the Rani. The Rani, learning of the Doctor's arrival and warning against helping him, opens a panel in the sphere releasing several deadly insects. They sting and kill two Lakertyans while the rest flee. Outside, a Tetrap offers the Rani's deal to the Doctor, which he accepts.
Mel arrives with the Tetrap and the exchange is made but Mel then disappears and the Doctor learns he has been tricked by a hologram. He decides to reinfiltrate the Rani's lab. Iknoa again distracts the guards but additional guards show up and the Doctor is captured. Mel is released from the prison and ordered to assist Beyus with the computers while the Doctor is brought in and installed in the cabinet earmarked for him.
Once installed, the Rani activates the machine and the various minds are directed into a giant brain in a sealed chamber. She is transferring their minds to it to aid her in developing a means to detonate a passing asteroid made of a material called "strange matter", which normally can only be detonated by interacting with itself. The resulting explosion would create a supernova and interact with the Lakertyan atmosphere, creating time particles. Lakertya would then be transformed into a giant time engine, allowing the Rani to manipulate large swaths of time for her own purposes.
The Rani dispatches the Tetraps who enter the Lakertyan city and fit all the Lakertyans with ankle bands that will kill them if they are removed or if a master switch is activated. As the Tetraps leave the Rani's lab, Ikona sneaks into the lab.
The Rani, observing the brain, begins to notice that the Doctor is beginning to infuse the brain with his own discordant personality. Angered that he might override the calculations, she pulls him out of his cabinet but before she can attack him, she is grabbed from behind by Ikona and shoved into the cabinet herself and locked in. The Doctor studies the brain, deducing it's function and figuring a way to stop it.
The Rani threatens Beyus as he passes by and he releases her, fearing for his people's safety. The Rani confronts the Doctor and admits that her plan will destroy all life on Lakertya, a fact that is overheard by the lead Tetrap. The Doctor and Mel get past the Rani while she is distracted by the brain completing it's calculations and informing her of what material she must fill the nose of the missile with.
The Doctor, Mel and Ikona return to the Lakertyan city to raise the people to fight the Rani. The Doctor manages to free them from their detonation bracelets and collects them in his umbrella. He and Mel then race back to the Rani's lab.
While they are away, the Rani finishes loading the missile and prepares to leave for her TARDIS. The chief Tetrap, aware of the consequences, offers to go with her in the TARDIS but she orders him to stay and contain the Lakertyans. He then follows her at a distance as she leaves, leaving the lab abandoned.
The Doctor and Mel return and use the bracelets to surround the brain and create a field, delaying the countdown. Beyus offers to stay and activate the bracelets. The Doctor and Mel run out and confront the Rani as Beyus activates the devices, halting the countdown at four seconds. The Rani angrily overrides the system, blowing up the brain and Beyus but launching the missile. She then leaves in her TARDIS.
The missile launch destroys the Rani's lab and the Doctor reassures the Lakertyans as the delay in launch threw the missile off it's trajectory and it misses the asteroid. He and Mel then depart in his TARDIS, while in the Rani's TARDIS, the Tetraps have taken over and captured her, preparing to take her back to their home planet where he mind will be used to help their people.
Analysis
After watching the first episode, I saw two possibilities for this story. Either it was going to turn in to The Twin Dilemma where it plummeted into badness around Episodes Three or Four, or this story was not going to be as bad as I expected. In the end, I have to say that I don't think this one is that bad. It's not particularly good, but I don't see why it typically finishes so low in various polls.
The Seventh Doctor's regeneration crisis seems to be quirkiness. Early in the story, there is heavy dose of physical comedy that thankfully starts to go away and is banished when we get to Paradise Towers. Throughout the story he has a constant quirk of misstating common sayings, which could have gotten old, but I'm actually a little sorry didn't stick around as a gimmick of his. Once or twice in a story would have been sufficient. But other than those, the Seventh Doctor emerges mostly as himself, just a touch more manic than he will become and I can't fault that. Had the physical comedy continued, it would have grated, but I see no problem with the Seventh Doctor in this story.
Mel is not great but she's not overly annoying either. He worst trait is that she does a lot of screaming in this story and most of it unnecessarily. I understand a scream when first confronted by a Tetrap as it does a little jump scare and most people find bats somewhat repulsive. I can also justify screaming her head off when in the bubble trap, given it's design to kill you. But after that, he screaming should have been curtailed. There is no reason for Mel to scream her head off every time she sees a Tetrap, even if they are grabbing her. I would have liked to have seen a bit more backbone and fortitude from her.
That being said, Mel did not fall into a whimpering mess the way Peri usually did. When not screaming, Mel was offering comfort and planning to the Lakertyans. She was always trying to help them or get back to the Doctor so she did show some fire and independence. I would have liked for her to be given a chance at some subterfuge or sabotage when she was forced to work with Beyus on the computers and that might have developed if there had been time for a rewrite or two. Still, on the whole, Mel is passible in this one and doesn't go poorly as she does in later stories.
The Rani continues to be enjoyable in this story. If the whole story had been like Episode One and part of Episode Two where the Doctor and the Rani work together (even under deception), this would be a far more enjoyable story just because I don't think anyone can get tired of the Rani's constant frustration and asides with the Doctor. It's not quite as self aware as in The Mark of the Rani but she also doesn't have the Master to play off. Still, it is enjoyable, especially as she has to keep herself from throttling the Doctor.
Unfortunately, once the posing as Mel phase is over, the Rani becomes much more of a generic villain. Her witticisms dry up and it becomes all about ordering the henchmen about to ensure the success of the plan. Her performance is still decent, but it loses the thing that really makes her stand out. Plus I kept getting distracted by a spot on side of her nose that I never really noticed in prior Episodes.
Another reason I thought at first that maybe this story was derided so much was because of the performance of the Lakertyans but that is not the case. Beyus and Faroon are well acted and carry the gravitas of a cowed people trying to preserve themselves. Ikona started a little shaky but as the action continued, his performance improved greatly. Sarn wasn't very good but she dies halfway through Episode One so it is only a small blemish and they other Lakertyans don't get enough screen time or dialogue to make any kind of impact. I had no qualms about them and didn't see any particular problems with their makeup either.
There were some production shortfalls, but nothing that ruined the story for me. The Tetraps weren't great but as long as they stayed in shadow, they worked reasonably well. I think if the outdoor scenes had been filmed later, it would have helped make them work a bit better. Likewise a later time might have helped diminish the need for tinting the sky as much. It wasn't as jarring as in Mindwarp, but it was still a pretty obvious computer effect that stood out whenever seen.
But I can imagine that the point where most people throw up their hands is the giant brain. It makes no sense. Where did it come from or how it was made is completely ignored. Nor is why a brain is used rather than just a large computer. It's something thrown in to be weird and I think just a touch horrifying for young kids but ends up coming across as just dumb. It doesn't help that the brain looks very much like the fabric prop that it actually was. Dimming the lights in the room helped but it still doesn't look particularly good and the story starts to go off the rails.
In my own mind, I can imagine that Pip and Jane Baker probably had an outline of a story they were working on to submit later and had probably gone over a few scenes before they got the desperation call from JNT. This is how I imagine that Episodes One and Two have a bit more depth and are more memorable. Episodes Three and Four have a much more slapdash feel and I think this is the point where what is on screen was a first draft effort rather than having been massaged a bit like the earlier script. Still, for me, this isn't so bad that it ruins the whole experience. It is still fairly well acted and the worst parts don't go on for so long that it becomes a slog.
Probably more bothersome to me than the brain was the lazy plot device of the bracelet bombs. The Rani was already controlling the population with the threat of deadly insects so why the bracelets except as something for the Doctor to use? Again, in a second or third draft, the insects would have been excised and only the bracelets would have been used as a means of controlling the population. The Doctor freeing them would have had the liberating effect of prompting them to action and it would have given Beyus the freedom to rise up as the Rani now could not commit instant genocide against his people. The Tetraps could have easily fled the lab and invaded her TARDIS after overhearing the Rani as her betrayal of them was easily understood at that point.
I don't think story ever had the potential of being great, but it had the potential of being better than it is. But I also think that in that lost potential, it is not as bad as it is made out to be. It moves quickly and the characters are all pretty much enjoyable. The plot is not overly complex, even if the Rani's plan is. It hums along well enough and any failures in production value were going to be there anyway because of budget and just the fact that it was the 1980's. Is it good? No. Is it terrible and something I would never watch again? Also no. I would call it slightly below average in my book, which rates it above at least two other Seventh Doctor stories. Would I watch it again? Probably, although I think I would get bored with it a second time around, especially in the later episodes. So for me, Dragonfire stands easily as the worst of the Seventh Doctor stories rather than this one.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
Time and the Rani might be considered the worst Doctor Who story ever. To be fair to it though, it was slapped together extremely quickly with no time for script editing nor any budget. They also did not get Colin Baker back to do a regeneration scene, not surprising given how insultingly he was dismissed. Still, it does exist as it's own thing and must stand on it's own merit.
Plot Summary
The TARDIS is pursued by the Rani and forced to crash on the planet Lakertya. An explosion on the TARDIS causes him to regenerate as the Rani forces her way in and takes him prisoner, leaving Mel behind. The Doctor wakes later in the Rani's lab and tries to fight his way out but he is knocked out by her Tetrap servant. She then injects him with a chemical to inflict short term amnesia.
One of the locals, Ikona, captures Mel believing her to be allied with the Rani. He intends a hostage swap with the Rani for the Lakertyan leader Beyus, who is being forced to assist her. One of the other Lakertyans attempt to escape the Rani but is killed in a bubble trap. Mel prevents Ikona from falling into a similar trap and he realizes that she is telling the truth about not being allied with the Rani. The two of them make their way into a disused pipe to hide from the Rani's guards.
The Rani disguises herself as Mel and as the Doctor comes to, she convinces him that he was working on a machine in the lab and injured in the explosion which caused him to regenerate. Confused by the memory loss, he assumes it's part of the regeneration crisis and begins to work on the machine. But he is easily distracted and eventually realizes he is lacking the proper equipment. The Rani, losing patience with the Doctor's antics, suggests they head back to the TARDIS to gather the equipment.
As they walk back, the Doctor begins to regain his memory and is also becoming more suspicious of "Mel". Entering the TARDIS, he picks a new outfit and then begins to hunt for the needed equipment. On the monitor, they spy the real Mel trying to get back to the TARDIS, although the Rani tries to convince the Doctor that she is the Rani. As Mel approaches, she stumbles and is caught in a bubble trap. She floats away and lands on the edge of a lake, the bubble being slightly trapped so that it doesn't roll on the detonator. Ikona follows Mel and frees her from the trap.
The Doctor and the Rani return to the lab where the Doctor discovers a flaw in the machine. The Rani leaves to get a replacement part while he continues to work. Mel and Ikona run into Faroon, Beyus' wife. They tell her what happened to her and Beyus' daughter and Faroon is determined to tell Beyus in person. She walks into the Rani's fortress. Mel is determined to follow and Ikona creates a distraction for the Tetrap guard, allowing her to get in.
Mel meets the Doctor but he initially believes her to be the Rani while she is confused about his new appearance. They check each other's pulses to see if they are telling the truth and realize the deception. They meet with Beyus and Faroon, discovering that the Rani has captured some of Earth's greatest scientific minds and is holding them in suspended animation. She has also reserved a space for the Doctor.
Outside, the distracted Tetrap guard captures the Rani, believing her to be Mel. He frees her upon realizing his mistake and escorts her to her TARDIS where she retrieves the needed materials. She heads back and Mel and Faroon hide. The Doctor pretends as though he still thinks she's Mel, but the Rani quickly guesses that he has discerned the truth.
The Doctor flees and tries to hide in the Tetrap lair where he is quickly surrounded by the creatures. But Beyus activates the feeding system and releases the Doctor. He sends the Doctor out but also tells him to go to the leisure center of his people to understand why he obeys the Rani. He tries to stop the Doctor when the Doctor takes a piece of equipment from the Rani's machine but the Doctor knocks him down and escapes. He meets Ikona outside who saves him from an attacking Tetrap and takes him to the Lakertyan city.
Outside, Faroon returns to the city and Mel tries to get back to the TARDIS but is captured by the Tetraps. She is brought back to the Rani and held as a hostage until the Doctor returns the stolen piece of equipment.
Inside the leisure center, which Ikona is disdainful of, the Doctor discovers a sphere installed by the Rani. The Rani, learning of the Doctor's arrival and warning against helping him, opens a panel in the sphere releasing several deadly insects. They sting and kill two Lakertyans while the rest flee. Outside, a Tetrap offers the Rani's deal to the Doctor, which he accepts.
Mel arrives with the Tetrap and the exchange is made but Mel then disappears and the Doctor learns he has been tricked by a hologram. He decides to reinfiltrate the Rani's lab. Iknoa again distracts the guards but additional guards show up and the Doctor is captured. Mel is released from the prison and ordered to assist Beyus with the computers while the Doctor is brought in and installed in the cabinet earmarked for him.
Once installed, the Rani activates the machine and the various minds are directed into a giant brain in a sealed chamber. She is transferring their minds to it to aid her in developing a means to detonate a passing asteroid made of a material called "strange matter", which normally can only be detonated by interacting with itself. The resulting explosion would create a supernova and interact with the Lakertyan atmosphere, creating time particles. Lakertya would then be transformed into a giant time engine, allowing the Rani to manipulate large swaths of time for her own purposes.
The Rani dispatches the Tetraps who enter the Lakertyan city and fit all the Lakertyans with ankle bands that will kill them if they are removed or if a master switch is activated. As the Tetraps leave the Rani's lab, Ikona sneaks into the lab.
The Rani, observing the brain, begins to notice that the Doctor is beginning to infuse the brain with his own discordant personality. Angered that he might override the calculations, she pulls him out of his cabinet but before she can attack him, she is grabbed from behind by Ikona and shoved into the cabinet herself and locked in. The Doctor studies the brain, deducing it's function and figuring a way to stop it.
The Rani threatens Beyus as he passes by and he releases her, fearing for his people's safety. The Rani confronts the Doctor and admits that her plan will destroy all life on Lakertya, a fact that is overheard by the lead Tetrap. The Doctor and Mel get past the Rani while she is distracted by the brain completing it's calculations and informing her of what material she must fill the nose of the missile with.
The Doctor, Mel and Ikona return to the Lakertyan city to raise the people to fight the Rani. The Doctor manages to free them from their detonation bracelets and collects them in his umbrella. He and Mel then race back to the Rani's lab.
While they are away, the Rani finishes loading the missile and prepares to leave for her TARDIS. The chief Tetrap, aware of the consequences, offers to go with her in the TARDIS but she orders him to stay and contain the Lakertyans. He then follows her at a distance as she leaves, leaving the lab abandoned.
The Doctor and Mel return and use the bracelets to surround the brain and create a field, delaying the countdown. Beyus offers to stay and activate the bracelets. The Doctor and Mel run out and confront the Rani as Beyus activates the devices, halting the countdown at four seconds. The Rani angrily overrides the system, blowing up the brain and Beyus but launching the missile. She then leaves in her TARDIS.
The missile launch destroys the Rani's lab and the Doctor reassures the Lakertyans as the delay in launch threw the missile off it's trajectory and it misses the asteroid. He and Mel then depart in his TARDIS, while in the Rani's TARDIS, the Tetraps have taken over and captured her, preparing to take her back to their home planet where he mind will be used to help their people.
Analysis
After watching the first episode, I saw two possibilities for this story. Either it was going to turn in to The Twin Dilemma where it plummeted into badness around Episodes Three or Four, or this story was not going to be as bad as I expected. In the end, I have to say that I don't think this one is that bad. It's not particularly good, but I don't see why it typically finishes so low in various polls.
The Seventh Doctor's regeneration crisis seems to be quirkiness. Early in the story, there is heavy dose of physical comedy that thankfully starts to go away and is banished when we get to Paradise Towers. Throughout the story he has a constant quirk of misstating common sayings, which could have gotten old, but I'm actually a little sorry didn't stick around as a gimmick of his. Once or twice in a story would have been sufficient. But other than those, the Seventh Doctor emerges mostly as himself, just a touch more manic than he will become and I can't fault that. Had the physical comedy continued, it would have grated, but I see no problem with the Seventh Doctor in this story.
Mel is not great but she's not overly annoying either. He worst trait is that she does a lot of screaming in this story and most of it unnecessarily. I understand a scream when first confronted by a Tetrap as it does a little jump scare and most people find bats somewhat repulsive. I can also justify screaming her head off when in the bubble trap, given it's design to kill you. But after that, he screaming should have been curtailed. There is no reason for Mel to scream her head off every time she sees a Tetrap, even if they are grabbing her. I would have liked to have seen a bit more backbone and fortitude from her.
That being said, Mel did not fall into a whimpering mess the way Peri usually did. When not screaming, Mel was offering comfort and planning to the Lakertyans. She was always trying to help them or get back to the Doctor so she did show some fire and independence. I would have liked for her to be given a chance at some subterfuge or sabotage when she was forced to work with Beyus on the computers and that might have developed if there had been time for a rewrite or two. Still, on the whole, Mel is passible in this one and doesn't go poorly as she does in later stories.
The Rani continues to be enjoyable in this story. If the whole story had been like Episode One and part of Episode Two where the Doctor and the Rani work together (even under deception), this would be a far more enjoyable story just because I don't think anyone can get tired of the Rani's constant frustration and asides with the Doctor. It's not quite as self aware as in The Mark of the Rani but she also doesn't have the Master to play off. Still, it is enjoyable, especially as she has to keep herself from throttling the Doctor.
Unfortunately, once the posing as Mel phase is over, the Rani becomes much more of a generic villain. Her witticisms dry up and it becomes all about ordering the henchmen about to ensure the success of the plan. Her performance is still decent, but it loses the thing that really makes her stand out. Plus I kept getting distracted by a spot on side of her nose that I never really noticed in prior Episodes.
Another reason I thought at first that maybe this story was derided so much was because of the performance of the Lakertyans but that is not the case. Beyus and Faroon are well acted and carry the gravitas of a cowed people trying to preserve themselves. Ikona started a little shaky but as the action continued, his performance improved greatly. Sarn wasn't very good but she dies halfway through Episode One so it is only a small blemish and they other Lakertyans don't get enough screen time or dialogue to make any kind of impact. I had no qualms about them and didn't see any particular problems with their makeup either.
There were some production shortfalls, but nothing that ruined the story for me. The Tetraps weren't great but as long as they stayed in shadow, they worked reasonably well. I think if the outdoor scenes had been filmed later, it would have helped make them work a bit better. Likewise a later time might have helped diminish the need for tinting the sky as much. It wasn't as jarring as in Mindwarp, but it was still a pretty obvious computer effect that stood out whenever seen.
But I can imagine that the point where most people throw up their hands is the giant brain. It makes no sense. Where did it come from or how it was made is completely ignored. Nor is why a brain is used rather than just a large computer. It's something thrown in to be weird and I think just a touch horrifying for young kids but ends up coming across as just dumb. It doesn't help that the brain looks very much like the fabric prop that it actually was. Dimming the lights in the room helped but it still doesn't look particularly good and the story starts to go off the rails.
In my own mind, I can imagine that Pip and Jane Baker probably had an outline of a story they were working on to submit later and had probably gone over a few scenes before they got the desperation call from JNT. This is how I imagine that Episodes One and Two have a bit more depth and are more memorable. Episodes Three and Four have a much more slapdash feel and I think this is the point where what is on screen was a first draft effort rather than having been massaged a bit like the earlier script. Still, for me, this isn't so bad that it ruins the whole experience. It is still fairly well acted and the worst parts don't go on for so long that it becomes a slog.
Probably more bothersome to me than the brain was the lazy plot device of the bracelet bombs. The Rani was already controlling the population with the threat of deadly insects so why the bracelets except as something for the Doctor to use? Again, in a second or third draft, the insects would have been excised and only the bracelets would have been used as a means of controlling the population. The Doctor freeing them would have had the liberating effect of prompting them to action and it would have given Beyus the freedom to rise up as the Rani now could not commit instant genocide against his people. The Tetraps could have easily fled the lab and invaded her TARDIS after overhearing the Rani as her betrayal of them was easily understood at that point.
I don't think story ever had the potential of being great, but it had the potential of being better than it is. But I also think that in that lost potential, it is not as bad as it is made out to be. It moves quickly and the characters are all pretty much enjoyable. The plot is not overly complex, even if the Rani's plan is. It hums along well enough and any failures in production value were going to be there anyway because of budget and just the fact that it was the 1980's. Is it good? No. Is it terrible and something I would never watch again? Also no. I would call it slightly below average in my book, which rates it above at least two other Seventh Doctor stories. Would I watch it again? Probably, although I think I would get bored with it a second time around, especially in the later episodes. So for me, Dragonfire stands easily as the worst of the Seventh Doctor stories rather than this one.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
Friday, November 18, 2016
The Happiness Patrol
Happiness shall prevail.
The Happiness Patrol is a story that seems to rate in the lower middle of most fan's lists. I don't know that I've ever run into anyone that raved over it but I have heard of several fans that despise it, mostly due to the Kandy Man. I've been of a mixed mind on this one as it is hard to overlook a prejudice that significant, but I found that I've had a better appreciation of some of the Seventh Doctor stories than general fandom so I'm trying to keep an open mind.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Ace arrive on the Earth colony of Terra Alpha, which the Doctor had been meaning to look into for a while due to troubling rumors. He and Ace walk around a bit and run into a census taker named Trevor Sigma. When they come back to the TARDIS they find a squad from the Happiness Patrol painting it pink, having just returned from the execution of a killjoy (someone not happy). The Doctor and Ace manage to get themselves arrested and taken to a waiting area.
The colony is run by a woman named Helen A who works with a sadistic henchman called the Kandy Man. Helen A sends out a message of happiness to the citizens before having a man executed by being smothered to death in tube of fondant sent up from the Kandy Man. Her address is watched by another man in the holding area who used to be a joke writer for Helen A. However, he began investigating disappearances in the colony and was sent away. As he relates this to the Doctor and Ace, Helen A sends a charge through the machine he is using and electrocutes him.
The Doctor and Ace disable a booby trap on a patrol cart and leave the waiting area. They soon split up with Ace surrendering to the Happiness Patrol on the pretext of wanting to join them. She is taken back to the Patrol HQ where she befriends a member of the patrol named Susan Q, who is becoming disillusioned with life in the colony and on the patrol.
The Doctor meets a tourist named Earl Sigma who has been trapped on the colony and now working against the regime. To avoid a patrol, they dash into a building only to find that it is the Kandy Man's kitchen where he prepares to use them to experiment on. He places them in chairs for testing his sweets on but the Doctor tricks him into knocking over a bottle of lemonade, which causes his feet to stick to the floor (being made of confectionary). The Doctor and Earl flee into the underground tunnels.
Ace and Susan Q are taken from the Patrol HQ to another waiting area where they are sentenced to execution. This movement is observed by creatures living in the tunnels. The Doctor and Earl run into these creatures, who are the natives of the planet. The Doctor recognizes slogans they picked up from overhearing Ace and they recognize him as a friend.
The natives escort the Doctor through the sewers and let him and Earl out near where Trevor Sigma is conducting business. Earl leaves and the Doctor overrides Trevor and they head off to see Helen A. Helen A greets Trevor warmly but the Doctor takes command and warns Helen A to change how things are done on the colony. She dismisses him and the Doctor walks out.
After meeting the Doctor, one of the natives conducts a raid on the holding area and rescues Ace. Susan Q had already been taken away for execution. Upon learning of the escape, Helen A sends her pet Stigorax, Fifi, into the sewers after them. Ace blows up the tunnel with a can of Nitro-9, before slipping down another shaft.
The Doctor heads back towards the Kandy Kitchen, stopping a pair of snipers who had been firing on a crowd of striking workers on his way. He finds the Kandy Man still suck to the floor where he left him. He offers to free the Kandy Man if he diverts the flow of fondant, preventing another execution. The Kandy Man agrees and changes the flow of the fondant just before Susan Q is to be killed. The change in pipe flow also causes Ace and her native guide to be dropped into the execution area where she is rearrested.
Trevor Sigma informs Helen A that per galactic law, Susan Q and Ace cannot be executed by the same method if it fails once. She then orders the two women to be taken to the forum for public execution.
Knowing that he would attack him again, the Doctor resticks the Kandy Man to the floor and heads off to find Ace. He learns from posters being put up of Ace's impending execution in the forum. The Doctor signals Earl Sigma who joins up with striking factory workers to head towards the forum. As the Happiness Patrol approaches with Ace, the Doctor breaks into wild laughter. Earl and the strikers approach, also laughing and acting overly silly. With all acting in apparently happiness, the patrol is confused on what to do. The Doctor, Ace, Susan Q and Earl all slip away in a vehicle while the squad leader, Pricilla P turns and arrests her lieutenant Daisy K for her confusion.
Helen A sends Fifi, who survived Ace's Nitro-9 attack, back into the pipes to hunt down the Doctor and his companions. The natives hear Fifi in the pipes and warn the Doctor. The Doctor stops under a factor that has developed a leak and has developed large stalactites of hardened sugar. He has Earl play resonance notes on his harmonica and then runs. The stalactites break off and crush Fifi as she chases them.
Earl and Susan separate from the Doctor and Ace and assist the strikers into becoming full rioters. They overwhelm the Happiness Patrol squads and begin destroying the factories. Helen A recalls Daisy K to the palace, ordering Pricilla P to wait in the holding area. However, Pricilla P is overrun by the rioters and bound before she can regroup the patrol.
The Doctor and Ace head back to the Kandy Kitchen where they overheat the oven and drive the Kandy Man away. He flees into the pipes to escape. The natives enter and take control of the pipes, redirecting fondant through the pipes, destroying the Kandy Man. Seeing his work destroyed, Gilbert M flees the planet with Helen A's husband Joseph C in her private shuttle, leaving her stranded on the planet.
As more factories are destroyed, Helen A flees the palace, leaving Daisy K as the only defense. She is overrun and disarmed by Susan Q. She and Earl Sigma shut down all remaining defenses and controls. The Doctor meanwhile meets Helen A in the streets, confronting her on her desire for happiness. She resists until she sees Fifi's dead body lying near by, brought up by the Doctor. Seeing her beloved pet dead breaks her and Helen A collapses around her pet in a fit of sobbing.
The surviving members of the Happiness Patrol are placed in work gangs and ordered to help clean up the city. The people take control with Earl Sigma noting that he plans to stay and help supervise. The Doctor and Ace then depart in the TARDIS, which has been repainted its original blue.
Analysis
I either read or heard somewhere that there was discussion of possibly filming this story in black and white to add to its film-noir feel. I don't think that would have worked as the washed out color fits the mood of the story better, but this is clearly Doctor Who does film-noir. I liked this one much more than I was originally expecting. It does have flaws and fairly significant ones at that, but it does it's job well and most of those flaws can be overlooked to enjoy the story as a whole.
I really enjoyed the Seventh Doctor. In fact, if the majority of the Seventh Doctor stories had had him like this, I think he would have taken the position as my favorite Doctor from the Second Doctor. He was not the all-knowing Doctor, but came in suspicious. Once he got the bead, he developed a plan and executed it with nearly flawless precision. Some of that plan even involved facing down and taking the measure of the enemy directly.
I think my favorite moment in the entire story was a throw away scene where the Doctor stops two male members of the patrol who are sniping factory strikers. He walks up directly behind the snipers and stares the gunner straight down. He forces the man to look him in the face and dares him to shoot him. It is a challenge to the will of the shooter and reminded me of the scene in The Shawshank Redemption where Andy Dufresne literally wills Captain Hadley not to throw him to his death. It was a very well played scene and showed a strength in the Doctor that is sometimes lacking in other stories.
I enjoyed Ace but she was very underused in this story. When she was with the Doctor, she was a tag team partner at best. When she was away from him, she was being held by the Happiness Patrol for most of the time and didn't do much there either. Her interaction with Susan Q was nice but it was rushed in development and still didn't have a major impact on the overall flow of the story. Nice but ultimately forgettable.
I enjoyed nearly all of the secondary characters. Helen A in particular was quite good in that over the top mad way. Drawing on other media, she reminded me of Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I know she was supposed to be a take on Margaret Thatcher but, not being British, I can't speak to that. I also enjoyed the dry and slightly droll performances of her husband and the Kandy Man's creator. The two men were so dry in their delivery that it stood out as quite funny to me.
I also surprisingly enjoyed the fact that Helen A was not simply gunned down as you might expect in a revolution story, such as The Sunmakers. Instead, being forced to confront the shattering of what she viewed as perfection seemed like a more appropriate punishment. In the end she is not just killed off, but instead forced to deal with the reality of pain and suffering and how they complete us as people. It makes her even more pathetic to see her broken and weeping over the carcass of Fifi than it would be to see her own carcass lying in the street.
Going back to the film noir aspect, I enjoyed how this story was shot. I think it would have looked even better on film, but they did a decent job with what they had. There was a grit in the scenes and the lighting was very muted which gave everyone a washed out look, adding to the disassociation between the requirement of happiness and the reality of the situation. There was also a very good use of shadow to hide various flaws that existed in the scenery and in Fifi herself. I also happened to see this off an old VHS recording and the graininess that exists in that medium actually helped the story in my opinion. If I were to rewatch it in a DVD or Blue Ray, I think the clarity of the picture might actually detract from the story due to too much contrast being introduced.
With all of that good stuff there were some flaws, none of which were enough to ruin the story, but they could have made it better. Going off the previous point of the sets, lighting and direction, all of that couldn't fully hide the limitations of the budget. There is a lot of cast and a lot of set and it is obvious that they had to cut corners here and there. The vehicles are essentially go-karts and the flow of fondant never looked impressive enough to actually kill someone. There were a couple of other points where it was just difficult to contain the idea that this was confined on a soundstage. I think if this story had been shot on location in an abandoned warehouse of factory and dressed up from there, I think it would have covered up some of the cheapness that seeped through.
The second flaw that stood out to me was the pacing. A true film-noir needs time to breathe and this story didn't breathe quite enough. So much story was being told that it often a jump from scene to scene without any real clarity in how they got there. It's not as bad as it is in a few other Seventh Doctor stories (such as Ghost Light), but there is still a rushed feeling that shouldn't be there in a noir piece. I don't think expanding it to four episodes would have been the right move as it would have introduced too much padding, but if a scene or two were trimmed or reedited, I think it would have flowed better.
Probably the best scenes for editing (or even outright excisement) would be the Kandy Man scenes and that is my third and largest flaw in the story. The Kandy Man sticks out in this story as so out of place. While everyone else is human and there is a real level of grit, you introduce this sadistic creature that serves almost no point. He supplies the fondant for the executions but other than that, he does nothing in the story. What's more, he appears to be living confectionary and that just seems so out of left field in what is otherwise not much of a science fiction story.
I could forgive the wackiness of the Kandy Man if he had an actual point. But all of his scenes are just the guardian of the Kandy Kitchen, supplying the fuel of execution. This could have easily just been done by Gilbert M himself and those scenes sharply reduced in length, allowing the rest of the story some breathing room. Imagine for example that in Episode Two, instead of the Doctor freeing the Kandy Man to make him divert the fondant in Susan Q's execution, the Doctor instead sneaks behind Gilbert M and forces him to divert the flow by threatening to expose his own lack of happiness. Not only would it have trimmed the scene and given it a more realistic tone, but it would have given extra motivation for Gilbert's flight at the end of the story. I don't hate the Kandy Man the way some fans seem to, but it's just weirdness for weirdness sake and a character that adds nothing to the story at the expense of other more significant elements.
Overall, I enjoyed this story. It lost me in a couple of places, but reeled me back in with a good noir take. It has it's problems, but much like Paradise Towers and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, the quality of the performances and the atmosphere salvage the overall story, allowing the good to outweigh the bad. I would like to watch this one again, preferably with a higher quality copy to see if that clarity hurts or helps the overall story.
Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5
The Happiness Patrol is a story that seems to rate in the lower middle of most fan's lists. I don't know that I've ever run into anyone that raved over it but I have heard of several fans that despise it, mostly due to the Kandy Man. I've been of a mixed mind on this one as it is hard to overlook a prejudice that significant, but I found that I've had a better appreciation of some of the Seventh Doctor stories than general fandom so I'm trying to keep an open mind.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Ace arrive on the Earth colony of Terra Alpha, which the Doctor had been meaning to look into for a while due to troubling rumors. He and Ace walk around a bit and run into a census taker named Trevor Sigma. When they come back to the TARDIS they find a squad from the Happiness Patrol painting it pink, having just returned from the execution of a killjoy (someone not happy). The Doctor and Ace manage to get themselves arrested and taken to a waiting area.
The colony is run by a woman named Helen A who works with a sadistic henchman called the Kandy Man. Helen A sends out a message of happiness to the citizens before having a man executed by being smothered to death in tube of fondant sent up from the Kandy Man. Her address is watched by another man in the holding area who used to be a joke writer for Helen A. However, he began investigating disappearances in the colony and was sent away. As he relates this to the Doctor and Ace, Helen A sends a charge through the machine he is using and electrocutes him.
The Doctor and Ace disable a booby trap on a patrol cart and leave the waiting area. They soon split up with Ace surrendering to the Happiness Patrol on the pretext of wanting to join them. She is taken back to the Patrol HQ where she befriends a member of the patrol named Susan Q, who is becoming disillusioned with life in the colony and on the patrol.
The Doctor meets a tourist named Earl Sigma who has been trapped on the colony and now working against the regime. To avoid a patrol, they dash into a building only to find that it is the Kandy Man's kitchen where he prepares to use them to experiment on. He places them in chairs for testing his sweets on but the Doctor tricks him into knocking over a bottle of lemonade, which causes his feet to stick to the floor (being made of confectionary). The Doctor and Earl flee into the underground tunnels.
Ace and Susan Q are taken from the Patrol HQ to another waiting area where they are sentenced to execution. This movement is observed by creatures living in the tunnels. The Doctor and Earl run into these creatures, who are the natives of the planet. The Doctor recognizes slogans they picked up from overhearing Ace and they recognize him as a friend.
The natives escort the Doctor through the sewers and let him and Earl out near where Trevor Sigma is conducting business. Earl leaves and the Doctor overrides Trevor and they head off to see Helen A. Helen A greets Trevor warmly but the Doctor takes command and warns Helen A to change how things are done on the colony. She dismisses him and the Doctor walks out.
After meeting the Doctor, one of the natives conducts a raid on the holding area and rescues Ace. Susan Q had already been taken away for execution. Upon learning of the escape, Helen A sends her pet Stigorax, Fifi, into the sewers after them. Ace blows up the tunnel with a can of Nitro-9, before slipping down another shaft.
The Doctor heads back towards the Kandy Kitchen, stopping a pair of snipers who had been firing on a crowd of striking workers on his way. He finds the Kandy Man still suck to the floor where he left him. He offers to free the Kandy Man if he diverts the flow of fondant, preventing another execution. The Kandy Man agrees and changes the flow of the fondant just before Susan Q is to be killed. The change in pipe flow also causes Ace and her native guide to be dropped into the execution area where she is rearrested.
Trevor Sigma informs Helen A that per galactic law, Susan Q and Ace cannot be executed by the same method if it fails once. She then orders the two women to be taken to the forum for public execution.
Knowing that he would attack him again, the Doctor resticks the Kandy Man to the floor and heads off to find Ace. He learns from posters being put up of Ace's impending execution in the forum. The Doctor signals Earl Sigma who joins up with striking factory workers to head towards the forum. As the Happiness Patrol approaches with Ace, the Doctor breaks into wild laughter. Earl and the strikers approach, also laughing and acting overly silly. With all acting in apparently happiness, the patrol is confused on what to do. The Doctor, Ace, Susan Q and Earl all slip away in a vehicle while the squad leader, Pricilla P turns and arrests her lieutenant Daisy K for her confusion.
Helen A sends Fifi, who survived Ace's Nitro-9 attack, back into the pipes to hunt down the Doctor and his companions. The natives hear Fifi in the pipes and warn the Doctor. The Doctor stops under a factor that has developed a leak and has developed large stalactites of hardened sugar. He has Earl play resonance notes on his harmonica and then runs. The stalactites break off and crush Fifi as she chases them.
Earl and Susan separate from the Doctor and Ace and assist the strikers into becoming full rioters. They overwhelm the Happiness Patrol squads and begin destroying the factories. Helen A recalls Daisy K to the palace, ordering Pricilla P to wait in the holding area. However, Pricilla P is overrun by the rioters and bound before she can regroup the patrol.
The Doctor and Ace head back to the Kandy Kitchen where they overheat the oven and drive the Kandy Man away. He flees into the pipes to escape. The natives enter and take control of the pipes, redirecting fondant through the pipes, destroying the Kandy Man. Seeing his work destroyed, Gilbert M flees the planet with Helen A's husband Joseph C in her private shuttle, leaving her stranded on the planet.
As more factories are destroyed, Helen A flees the palace, leaving Daisy K as the only defense. She is overrun and disarmed by Susan Q. She and Earl Sigma shut down all remaining defenses and controls. The Doctor meanwhile meets Helen A in the streets, confronting her on her desire for happiness. She resists until she sees Fifi's dead body lying near by, brought up by the Doctor. Seeing her beloved pet dead breaks her and Helen A collapses around her pet in a fit of sobbing.
The surviving members of the Happiness Patrol are placed in work gangs and ordered to help clean up the city. The people take control with Earl Sigma noting that he plans to stay and help supervise. The Doctor and Ace then depart in the TARDIS, which has been repainted its original blue.
Analysis
I either read or heard somewhere that there was discussion of possibly filming this story in black and white to add to its film-noir feel. I don't think that would have worked as the washed out color fits the mood of the story better, but this is clearly Doctor Who does film-noir. I liked this one much more than I was originally expecting. It does have flaws and fairly significant ones at that, but it does it's job well and most of those flaws can be overlooked to enjoy the story as a whole.
I really enjoyed the Seventh Doctor. In fact, if the majority of the Seventh Doctor stories had had him like this, I think he would have taken the position as my favorite Doctor from the Second Doctor. He was not the all-knowing Doctor, but came in suspicious. Once he got the bead, he developed a plan and executed it with nearly flawless precision. Some of that plan even involved facing down and taking the measure of the enemy directly.
I think my favorite moment in the entire story was a throw away scene where the Doctor stops two male members of the patrol who are sniping factory strikers. He walks up directly behind the snipers and stares the gunner straight down. He forces the man to look him in the face and dares him to shoot him. It is a challenge to the will of the shooter and reminded me of the scene in The Shawshank Redemption where Andy Dufresne literally wills Captain Hadley not to throw him to his death. It was a very well played scene and showed a strength in the Doctor that is sometimes lacking in other stories.
I enjoyed Ace but she was very underused in this story. When she was with the Doctor, she was a tag team partner at best. When she was away from him, she was being held by the Happiness Patrol for most of the time and didn't do much there either. Her interaction with Susan Q was nice but it was rushed in development and still didn't have a major impact on the overall flow of the story. Nice but ultimately forgettable.
I enjoyed nearly all of the secondary characters. Helen A in particular was quite good in that over the top mad way. Drawing on other media, she reminded me of Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I know she was supposed to be a take on Margaret Thatcher but, not being British, I can't speak to that. I also enjoyed the dry and slightly droll performances of her husband and the Kandy Man's creator. The two men were so dry in their delivery that it stood out as quite funny to me.
I also surprisingly enjoyed the fact that Helen A was not simply gunned down as you might expect in a revolution story, such as The Sunmakers. Instead, being forced to confront the shattering of what she viewed as perfection seemed like a more appropriate punishment. In the end she is not just killed off, but instead forced to deal with the reality of pain and suffering and how they complete us as people. It makes her even more pathetic to see her broken and weeping over the carcass of Fifi than it would be to see her own carcass lying in the street.
Going back to the film noir aspect, I enjoyed how this story was shot. I think it would have looked even better on film, but they did a decent job with what they had. There was a grit in the scenes and the lighting was very muted which gave everyone a washed out look, adding to the disassociation between the requirement of happiness and the reality of the situation. There was also a very good use of shadow to hide various flaws that existed in the scenery and in Fifi herself. I also happened to see this off an old VHS recording and the graininess that exists in that medium actually helped the story in my opinion. If I were to rewatch it in a DVD or Blue Ray, I think the clarity of the picture might actually detract from the story due to too much contrast being introduced.
With all of that good stuff there were some flaws, none of which were enough to ruin the story, but they could have made it better. Going off the previous point of the sets, lighting and direction, all of that couldn't fully hide the limitations of the budget. There is a lot of cast and a lot of set and it is obvious that they had to cut corners here and there. The vehicles are essentially go-karts and the flow of fondant never looked impressive enough to actually kill someone. There were a couple of other points where it was just difficult to contain the idea that this was confined on a soundstage. I think if this story had been shot on location in an abandoned warehouse of factory and dressed up from there, I think it would have covered up some of the cheapness that seeped through.
The second flaw that stood out to me was the pacing. A true film-noir needs time to breathe and this story didn't breathe quite enough. So much story was being told that it often a jump from scene to scene without any real clarity in how they got there. It's not as bad as it is in a few other Seventh Doctor stories (such as Ghost Light), but there is still a rushed feeling that shouldn't be there in a noir piece. I don't think expanding it to four episodes would have been the right move as it would have introduced too much padding, but if a scene or two were trimmed or reedited, I think it would have flowed better.
Probably the best scenes for editing (or even outright excisement) would be the Kandy Man scenes and that is my third and largest flaw in the story. The Kandy Man sticks out in this story as so out of place. While everyone else is human and there is a real level of grit, you introduce this sadistic creature that serves almost no point. He supplies the fondant for the executions but other than that, he does nothing in the story. What's more, he appears to be living confectionary and that just seems so out of left field in what is otherwise not much of a science fiction story.
I could forgive the wackiness of the Kandy Man if he had an actual point. But all of his scenes are just the guardian of the Kandy Kitchen, supplying the fuel of execution. This could have easily just been done by Gilbert M himself and those scenes sharply reduced in length, allowing the rest of the story some breathing room. Imagine for example that in Episode Two, instead of the Doctor freeing the Kandy Man to make him divert the fondant in Susan Q's execution, the Doctor instead sneaks behind Gilbert M and forces him to divert the flow by threatening to expose his own lack of happiness. Not only would it have trimmed the scene and given it a more realistic tone, but it would have given extra motivation for Gilbert's flight at the end of the story. I don't hate the Kandy Man the way some fans seem to, but it's just weirdness for weirdness sake and a character that adds nothing to the story at the expense of other more significant elements.
Overall, I enjoyed this story. It lost me in a couple of places, but reeled me back in with a good noir take. It has it's problems, but much like Paradise Towers and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, the quality of the performances and the atmosphere salvage the overall story, allowing the good to outweigh the bad. I would like to watch this one again, preferably with a higher quality copy to see if that clarity hurts or helps the overall story.
Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Dragonfire
You don't know what a relief it is for me to have such a stimulating philosophical discussion.
The story that introduces Ace and dismisses Mel. I have been intrigued about this story as it has popped up a lot recently. Probably the most interesting discussion was an argument between two people as to whether it was the worst story of Season 24 or not. The argument there being that Time and the Rani had the good sense to know it was bad and that it had to be made in such a time crunch whereas Dragonfire had neither excuse. As I've never seen anything of this story apart from the scene of the Doctor dangling from his umbrella referenced in The Name of the Doctor, I'm going in to this one with a fairly open mind.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Mel travel to Iceworld, a layover station for interstellar travel. Stopping in to the local restaurant, they run into Sabalom Glizt, last seen in The Ultimate Foe. Glitz has just sold his crew to the head of the station, Mr. Kane, and is working on a new scheme. However, he restrained by the authorities and ordered to refund the money he was paid for a shoddy product delivery. Having lost the money he was paid in a game of cards, the authorities seize his ship, giving him 72 hours to repay what he owes.
Glitz asks the Doctor’s help as he has recently won a treasure map in another game of cards to a treasure located on Iceworld. At the mention of the treasure map, the waitress, a girl named Ace, pipes in and asks to come along, being familiar with Glitz already. The Doctor, his curiosity piqued by the legend of a dragon, agrees to help Glitz. Glitz however, demands the girls not come along. Ace fumes and returns to work. Mel agrees to stay behind.
Unknown to Glitz, he was allowed to win the map and it contains a tracking device put in my Mr. Kane. He purchased Glitz’s crew and is building an army of mercenaries that are placed in cryo-freeze. His deputy, Belazs, suggests that she might take Glizt’s ship but Kane reminds her of her obligation to him and gives and order to destroy the ship. However, Belazs later countermands that order while Kane is undergoing a freezing treatment.
Ace, still miffed at being left behind, pours a milkshake on a customer when the customer objects to the quality of the milkshake. She is immediately fired and Mel, who had tried to stick up for her, is thrown out as well. They return to Ace’s quarters where Mel learns that Ace is from Earth but was transported to Iceworld in a timestorm. Ace has also developed a more concentrated version of nitro-glycerin she calls Nitro-9. She takes Mel out to show its effects on an ice jam that the local authorities have yet to respond to.
Ace sets up to bottles of the Nitro-9 in front of the jam and blows it apart. As her action was unauthorized though, Belazs has her arrested and brought to Kane. Kane, impressed by her explosive work, offers her a chance to come work for him in a Faustian bargain. Mel urges Ace not to do it and Ace responds by slapping the marking coin away and threatening everyone with being blown up via her explosive. She and Mel run into the caves where they see a dragon-like creature approaching. The creature shoots a laser from it's eyes and the two women run off in the opposite direction.
Glitz and the Doctor progress steadily through Iceworld using the map. They pass various markers but become separated at one point. The Doctor, looking for Glitz off a ledge, attempts to climb down but loses his grip and slips down his umbrella, risking falling into the depths below. Glitz finds him hanging and helps him off by pulling him on to the narrow ledge below. Frustrated at his inability to find the treasure, Glitz offers the map to the Doctor in exchange for helping him to take back his ship. The Doctor reluctantly agrees.
The Doctor distracts the guard on Glitz's ship with a discussion on philosophy while Glitz sneaks aboard. However, Belazs is there waiting for him, having heard his conversation with the Doctor over the bugged map. She prepares to kill him but the Doctor comes aboard, distracting her enough for Glitz to knock the gun out of her hand. The two flee the ship, taking her gun with them. They end up running into the same creature Mel and Ace ran into and it too fires a bolt at them. They had back through a door which the creature cuts through. Glitz aims to shoot it, but the Doctor slaps the gun away from him, refusing to kill it. The creature then turns away and leaves them alone.
Kane, hearing of Glitz's attempt to leave, revives several members of his old crew and set them off to kill him. The zombified crew run into Ace and Mel, who are looking for the Doctor and Glitz. They run from them but Mel slips on the ice and hits her head on a set of stairs. Ace pulls the groggy Mel under the stairs to hide and the pursuing men pass them. The two women pause for a breather with Ace revealing that her real name is Dorothy.
Belazs, convinced by the Doctor during their conversation on Glitz's ship that Kane will never allow her to leave, convinces a fellow servant, Officer Kracauer, to try and kill Kane. Kracauer, using information given by Belazs, sneaks into Kane's chamber while he is in his freezing pod. Kracauer raises the overall temperature to above freezing. Kane emerges from his pod, agitated and unable to breathe. He sees the ice statue of his partner Xana melting and he attacks and kills Kracauer. He lowers the temperature of the room and begins to stabilize. He emerges from his chamber and kills Belazs for her treachery.
The Doctor and Glitz run into Mel and Ace in the corridors where they are attacked by one of Glitz's old crewmembers. The creature emerges and kills the crewman before he can kill them. They follow the creature down to the singing crystal room which is in fact a computerized archive. The creature activates the computer and the computer reveals that Kane is a criminal who was exiled to Iceworld for his crimes. He had an accomplice, Xana, who was killed in the final battle that captured Kane, hence his devotion to her statue. The Doctor realizes that the treasure is actually contained within the creature, which is something Kane cannot approach due to the heat it generates. The creature opens it's head, revealing a computer powered by the Dragonfire crystal, a powerful energy source.
Kane overhears them due to the bugged map and orders two of his guards to go kill the creature and bring back it's head. He also orders the rest of his guards to chase off the visitors to Iceworld and herd them on to Glitz's ship, the Nosfaratu.
The Doctor and the creature head deeper into the ice computer to consult a set of star charts while Glitz heads back to his ship to collect some explosives. Mel and Ace wait by the computer. Glitz is caught up in the rush of people driven out of Iceworld but is unable to get aboard his ship before it is sealed off. He watches as the ship takes off and then explodes.
The Doctor and the creature consult star charts but the charts are out of date and the Doctor decides to head back to the TARDIS. He and the creature are separated by the two guards looking for the creature. They ignore the Doctor and he heads back to collect Ace and Mel. Together they enter the TARDIS and the Doctor is further confused when his own star charts don't match the information given. The trio heads back to find the creature but Ace heads back to her own quarters to collect more Nitro-9. There she is captured by Kane.
Glitz heads back down and reunites with the Doctor. They discover that Ace is missing and that the creature has been killed by the guards, but they in turn were killed when the Dragonfire crystal discharged after they cut off the creature's head. They remove the crystal and hear Kane speaking to them over the speakers to bring the crystal where he will exchange Ace for it.
They meet Kane in his lair and make the exchange. Kane uses the Dragonfire crystal to supply power to the colony which is actually a spacecraft in disguise. He launches the ship and flies back to his home planet. However, the Doctor discloses that his home planet isn't there anymore. Their sun went supernova two thousand years ago. Kane, refusing to believe that his revenge will be unfulfilled, opens the shield window where he is caught in a blast of unfiltered sunlight, vaporizing him.
Glitz takes over the ship which he renames the Nosfaratu 2. Mel decides to leave the Doctor and instead travel around with Glitz, keeping him in line. She also suggests that the Doctor take Ace as a new companion. The Doctor offers and Ace readily agrees.
Analysis
I'm not going to lie, this story is deserving of the terrible reputation it has. The story had some potential in it's initial set up and even through the first couple of episodes, I could see some small good bits. But it all came crashing down in the end into a terrible hot mess.
There was some small amount of good. We had Ace introduced, although she wasn't that good in this story, but other writers did better with her so we'll give this story a little prop there. I did enjoy the Seventh Doctor in this story. He had some bad moments too, but his performance was still mostly enjoyable so he gets a small boost there. I enjoyed the performance of Belasz, who was fairly conniving as a secondary antagonist. Her performance was enjoyable. I will also give this story credit for at least giving all the information. In a number of Seventh Doctor stories, there are obvious cuts made that leave you confused as to what is going on. Here, you get the full story, shoddy as it may be, so there is nothing left unanswered and that is a point in this story's favor.
Unfortunately, that is where the good things end. Nearly everything else in this story is just bad. The scene wasn't bad, but it was a bit overlit so that instead of that icy, crystalline feel you get from Superman's Fortress of Solitude, you get a glassy or plastic-y feel to everything. It also didn't help that Sylvester McCoy was the only actor who seemed to be treating the set as if it were actually made of ice. You would see him pretend to slip and use his umbrella to steady himself in a way that was trying to sell the set. However, no one else did the same thing, so whatever illusion he was trying to foster went away quickly.
The acting performances of nearly everyone were pretty bad. Glitz was his usual roguish self, but without someone to play off of, he becomes a lot less charming and more of a dumb con-man. He was also given some pretty terrible expositional dialogue that the actor just couldn't make work. Instead of being fun comic relief, he was just a dumb bore.
Mel was also pretty bad. She was her usual perky self, which wasn't bad per se, but she had absolutely nothing to do and what little dialogue she was given was flat and uninteresting. Ace likewise was also rather badly written. It was very clear that she was written by someone who thinks they might know what teenagers sound and act like rather than someone who actually knows. Her performance wasn't horrendous, but it was all over the map in terms of emotions and attitude.
Her worst moment was when she was being held by Kane in exchange for the Dragonfire crystal. Here she begged for the Doctor to give in to Kane's demands as she was afraid to die. This is contrast not only to the fighter Ace we know in later stories, but also to the Ace we saw at the end of Episode One. There she stood up to Kane and fought back with perhaps false bravado, but still a form of bravado. The character we were shown in the earlier part of the story, would not have begged for her life and cowered in fear when threatened.
Kane himself wasn't overly terrible, but he was very one-dimensional. He also seemed rather incompetent as the story progressed. He enslaves others to build his army, but is nearly thwarted at several different occasions, mostly by his own henchmen. His only really good scene is when he kills Belasz and even there, I'd chalk that up to her performance rather than his as it was pretty obvious to what is coming. I would compare him to Rupert Everett's performance as Dr. Claw in the terrible Inspector Gadget movie. It is just that one-note.
Tone was a big problem for this story. The story couldn't fully decide if it was going to be a comedy or an action/horror story. Bits like the Doctor slipping around, Ace dumping a milkshake on her boss' head and the philosophy discussion with one of the Iceworld guards are clearly meant as comedy pieces. However, there are violent action scenes interspersed throughout: the fighting with the creature, Kane's freeze death touch and Kane's Raiders of the Lost Ark melting death. If that wasn't whiplash enough, you have the very odd cut scenes of the little girl in Episode Three where she is strolling around Iceworld acting like it's her plaything while death and destruction reign around. The acting of her mother is actually worse as supposedly Kane's men are killing everyone around and she stops Glitz at one point to mildly ask if he has seen her daughter, like she has been playing hide-and-seek too long. It is just a terrible performance and another indication that both the writer and director had no idea what tone they were supposed to use.
While on the subject of the child, I cannot figure out what the point of her was. She was used as the object that got Ace fired in Episode One as it was her mother that complained about the milkshakes. Fine. She randomly comes back in Episode Three and hides from Kane's men. Also fine, the producers could justify this by not even wanting to allude to the idea that a child died in the explosion of the Nosfaratu. But why keep cutting back to her throughout the rest of Episode Three? She could have been shown emerging from hiding after everything was over and it would have been a simple happy ending. Instead, she wanders through the corridors, almost getting shot by Kane's guard, finds her way into Kane's lair and puts her teddy to bed in Kane's freezing chamber; all for absolutely no point. Her wandering had no payoff except to cut into the run time and cut away from the main action. I can only think that she was someone's daughter who really wanted to be shown in the show because there is no other point that I can think of to having her in the story.
Another fault of this story was it's very haphazard use of metaphor. Ace being lifted from Perivale to Iceworld via a time storm and her own proper name of Dorothy is a not so subtle reference to The Wizard of Oz. Likewise, with a villain named Kane, his slaves take his frozen brand or "mark of Cain" if you prefer. Some small bits of metaphor are okay but generally it is nice to have a point behind it. The mark of Cain is fine although a bit over the top since it was pretty obvious Kane is the bad guy. The Wizard of Oz stuff though doesn't make a lot of sense though. Not only is it a pointless metaphor that doesn't really go anywhere, but it also creates a dumb situation of how Ace got to Iceworld in the first place. One that later writers went to try and explain and failed even then (in my opinion).
My final rant on this story is with Mel's leaving scene. I doubt that Ian Briggs was allowed to write that final scene, especially as there was a bit of internal debate on whether Ace or Ray from Delta and the Bannermen was going to succeed Mel as companion when the script was likely submitted. Andrew Cartmel was officially on as script editor, but given the rush of Season 24 and the significance of changing companions, I suspect that John Nathan Turner actually wrote this scene and boy does it show. Mel is given absolutely no reason to leave. They are not back on Earth and Mel has shown no inclination that she is tired of traveling with the Doctor. What's more, there is no hint that she has any chemistry or desire to interact with Glitz, either in this story or back in The Trial of a Timelord: The Ultimate Foe. She drops the idea of leaving like there was some monumental moment that occurred but nothing happened. It was the lamest excuse of writing out a companion that I've ever seen. Leela deciding to stay with Andred might be the dumbest companion departure, but at least there was a fig leaf of a romance that we apparently never saw. This was just Mel up and decided that it was time that she and the Doctor parted ways and that Ace should take her place. Ace coming along was fine but there was no reason the Doctor couldn't travel with both of them. Her leaving was not necessary.
The playing out of the scene was also pretty bad. Mel drops her bomb about leaving and that apparently flusters the Doctor to the point of nearly having a regeneration crisis. He babbles incoherently, flustered by Mel leaving and doesn't cotton on to the idea to ask Ace until Mel nearly kicks him in the butt. Then you have Ace's acting which is probably her worst portrayal of an eager teenager throughout the story. The Doctor recovers it a bit with his three rules bit but her reaction doesn't play right. It just made the last five minutes of the story absolutely painful to watch.
I'm sorely tempted to give this a score of 0. Nearly everything about it was terrible and whatever good in the story was displayed in Episodes One and Two, was washed completely away by the end of Episode Three. But I don't think I can go quite that harsh. Still, this is going to be near the bottom of my list. It is shoddily produced, poorly acting and badly written. What's more, unlike Time and the Rani, this was the last story of the season so there should have been time to do a little clean up here and there to make it at least marginally more palatable. I can't imagine voluntarily watching this one again and would not recommend it to anyone else to watch.
Overall personal score: 0.5 out of 5
The story that introduces Ace and dismisses Mel. I have been intrigued about this story as it has popped up a lot recently. Probably the most interesting discussion was an argument between two people as to whether it was the worst story of Season 24 or not. The argument there being that Time and the Rani had the good sense to know it was bad and that it had to be made in such a time crunch whereas Dragonfire had neither excuse. As I've never seen anything of this story apart from the scene of the Doctor dangling from his umbrella referenced in The Name of the Doctor, I'm going in to this one with a fairly open mind.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Mel travel to Iceworld, a layover station for interstellar travel. Stopping in to the local restaurant, they run into Sabalom Glizt, last seen in The Ultimate Foe. Glitz has just sold his crew to the head of the station, Mr. Kane, and is working on a new scheme. However, he restrained by the authorities and ordered to refund the money he was paid for a shoddy product delivery. Having lost the money he was paid in a game of cards, the authorities seize his ship, giving him 72 hours to repay what he owes.
Glitz asks the Doctor’s help as he has recently won a treasure map in another game of cards to a treasure located on Iceworld. At the mention of the treasure map, the waitress, a girl named Ace, pipes in and asks to come along, being familiar with Glitz already. The Doctor, his curiosity piqued by the legend of a dragon, agrees to help Glitz. Glitz however, demands the girls not come along. Ace fumes and returns to work. Mel agrees to stay behind.
Unknown to Glitz, he was allowed to win the map and it contains a tracking device put in my Mr. Kane. He purchased Glitz’s crew and is building an army of mercenaries that are placed in cryo-freeze. His deputy, Belazs, suggests that she might take Glizt’s ship but Kane reminds her of her obligation to him and gives and order to destroy the ship. However, Belazs later countermands that order while Kane is undergoing a freezing treatment.
Ace, still miffed at being left behind, pours a milkshake on a customer when the customer objects to the quality of the milkshake. She is immediately fired and Mel, who had tried to stick up for her, is thrown out as well. They return to Ace’s quarters where Mel learns that Ace is from Earth but was transported to Iceworld in a timestorm. Ace has also developed a more concentrated version of nitro-glycerin she calls Nitro-9. She takes Mel out to show its effects on an ice jam that the local authorities have yet to respond to.
Ace sets up to bottles of the Nitro-9 in front of the jam and blows it apart. As her action was unauthorized though, Belazs has her arrested and brought to Kane. Kane, impressed by her explosive work, offers her a chance to come work for him in a Faustian bargain. Mel urges Ace not to do it and Ace responds by slapping the marking coin away and threatening everyone with being blown up via her explosive. She and Mel run into the caves where they see a dragon-like creature approaching. The creature shoots a laser from it's eyes and the two women run off in the opposite direction.
Glitz and the Doctor progress steadily through Iceworld using the map. They pass various markers but become separated at one point. The Doctor, looking for Glitz off a ledge, attempts to climb down but loses his grip and slips down his umbrella, risking falling into the depths below. Glitz finds him hanging and helps him off by pulling him on to the narrow ledge below. Frustrated at his inability to find the treasure, Glitz offers the map to the Doctor in exchange for helping him to take back his ship. The Doctor reluctantly agrees.
The Doctor distracts the guard on Glitz's ship with a discussion on philosophy while Glitz sneaks aboard. However, Belazs is there waiting for him, having heard his conversation with the Doctor over the bugged map. She prepares to kill him but the Doctor comes aboard, distracting her enough for Glitz to knock the gun out of her hand. The two flee the ship, taking her gun with them. They end up running into the same creature Mel and Ace ran into and it too fires a bolt at them. They had back through a door which the creature cuts through. Glitz aims to shoot it, but the Doctor slaps the gun away from him, refusing to kill it. The creature then turns away and leaves them alone.
Kane, hearing of Glitz's attempt to leave, revives several members of his old crew and set them off to kill him. The zombified crew run into Ace and Mel, who are looking for the Doctor and Glitz. They run from them but Mel slips on the ice and hits her head on a set of stairs. Ace pulls the groggy Mel under the stairs to hide and the pursuing men pass them. The two women pause for a breather with Ace revealing that her real name is Dorothy.
Belazs, convinced by the Doctor during their conversation on Glitz's ship that Kane will never allow her to leave, convinces a fellow servant, Officer Kracauer, to try and kill Kane. Kracauer, using information given by Belazs, sneaks into Kane's chamber while he is in his freezing pod. Kracauer raises the overall temperature to above freezing. Kane emerges from his pod, agitated and unable to breathe. He sees the ice statue of his partner Xana melting and he attacks and kills Kracauer. He lowers the temperature of the room and begins to stabilize. He emerges from his chamber and kills Belazs for her treachery.
The Doctor and Glitz run into Mel and Ace in the corridors where they are attacked by one of Glitz's old crewmembers. The creature emerges and kills the crewman before he can kill them. They follow the creature down to the singing crystal room which is in fact a computerized archive. The creature activates the computer and the computer reveals that Kane is a criminal who was exiled to Iceworld for his crimes. He had an accomplice, Xana, who was killed in the final battle that captured Kane, hence his devotion to her statue. The Doctor realizes that the treasure is actually contained within the creature, which is something Kane cannot approach due to the heat it generates. The creature opens it's head, revealing a computer powered by the Dragonfire crystal, a powerful energy source.
Kane overhears them due to the bugged map and orders two of his guards to go kill the creature and bring back it's head. He also orders the rest of his guards to chase off the visitors to Iceworld and herd them on to Glitz's ship, the Nosfaratu.
The Doctor and the creature head deeper into the ice computer to consult a set of star charts while Glitz heads back to his ship to collect some explosives. Mel and Ace wait by the computer. Glitz is caught up in the rush of people driven out of Iceworld but is unable to get aboard his ship before it is sealed off. He watches as the ship takes off and then explodes.
The Doctor and the creature consult star charts but the charts are out of date and the Doctor decides to head back to the TARDIS. He and the creature are separated by the two guards looking for the creature. They ignore the Doctor and he heads back to collect Ace and Mel. Together they enter the TARDIS and the Doctor is further confused when his own star charts don't match the information given. The trio heads back to find the creature but Ace heads back to her own quarters to collect more Nitro-9. There she is captured by Kane.
Glitz heads back down and reunites with the Doctor. They discover that Ace is missing and that the creature has been killed by the guards, but they in turn were killed when the Dragonfire crystal discharged after they cut off the creature's head. They remove the crystal and hear Kane speaking to them over the speakers to bring the crystal where he will exchange Ace for it.
They meet Kane in his lair and make the exchange. Kane uses the Dragonfire crystal to supply power to the colony which is actually a spacecraft in disguise. He launches the ship and flies back to his home planet. However, the Doctor discloses that his home planet isn't there anymore. Their sun went supernova two thousand years ago. Kane, refusing to believe that his revenge will be unfulfilled, opens the shield window where he is caught in a blast of unfiltered sunlight, vaporizing him.
Glitz takes over the ship which he renames the Nosfaratu 2. Mel decides to leave the Doctor and instead travel around with Glitz, keeping him in line. She also suggests that the Doctor take Ace as a new companion. The Doctor offers and Ace readily agrees.
Analysis
I'm not going to lie, this story is deserving of the terrible reputation it has. The story had some potential in it's initial set up and even through the first couple of episodes, I could see some small good bits. But it all came crashing down in the end into a terrible hot mess.
There was some small amount of good. We had Ace introduced, although she wasn't that good in this story, but other writers did better with her so we'll give this story a little prop there. I did enjoy the Seventh Doctor in this story. He had some bad moments too, but his performance was still mostly enjoyable so he gets a small boost there. I enjoyed the performance of Belasz, who was fairly conniving as a secondary antagonist. Her performance was enjoyable. I will also give this story credit for at least giving all the information. In a number of Seventh Doctor stories, there are obvious cuts made that leave you confused as to what is going on. Here, you get the full story, shoddy as it may be, so there is nothing left unanswered and that is a point in this story's favor.
Unfortunately, that is where the good things end. Nearly everything else in this story is just bad. The scene wasn't bad, but it was a bit overlit so that instead of that icy, crystalline feel you get from Superman's Fortress of Solitude, you get a glassy or plastic-y feel to everything. It also didn't help that Sylvester McCoy was the only actor who seemed to be treating the set as if it were actually made of ice. You would see him pretend to slip and use his umbrella to steady himself in a way that was trying to sell the set. However, no one else did the same thing, so whatever illusion he was trying to foster went away quickly.
The acting performances of nearly everyone were pretty bad. Glitz was his usual roguish self, but without someone to play off of, he becomes a lot less charming and more of a dumb con-man. He was also given some pretty terrible expositional dialogue that the actor just couldn't make work. Instead of being fun comic relief, he was just a dumb bore.
Mel was also pretty bad. She was her usual perky self, which wasn't bad per se, but she had absolutely nothing to do and what little dialogue she was given was flat and uninteresting. Ace likewise was also rather badly written. It was very clear that she was written by someone who thinks they might know what teenagers sound and act like rather than someone who actually knows. Her performance wasn't horrendous, but it was all over the map in terms of emotions and attitude.
Her worst moment was when she was being held by Kane in exchange for the Dragonfire crystal. Here she begged for the Doctor to give in to Kane's demands as she was afraid to die. This is contrast not only to the fighter Ace we know in later stories, but also to the Ace we saw at the end of Episode One. There she stood up to Kane and fought back with perhaps false bravado, but still a form of bravado. The character we were shown in the earlier part of the story, would not have begged for her life and cowered in fear when threatened.
Kane himself wasn't overly terrible, but he was very one-dimensional. He also seemed rather incompetent as the story progressed. He enslaves others to build his army, but is nearly thwarted at several different occasions, mostly by his own henchmen. His only really good scene is when he kills Belasz and even there, I'd chalk that up to her performance rather than his as it was pretty obvious to what is coming. I would compare him to Rupert Everett's performance as Dr. Claw in the terrible Inspector Gadget movie. It is just that one-note.
Tone was a big problem for this story. The story couldn't fully decide if it was going to be a comedy or an action/horror story. Bits like the Doctor slipping around, Ace dumping a milkshake on her boss' head and the philosophy discussion with one of the Iceworld guards are clearly meant as comedy pieces. However, there are violent action scenes interspersed throughout: the fighting with the creature, Kane's freeze death touch and Kane's Raiders of the Lost Ark melting death. If that wasn't whiplash enough, you have the very odd cut scenes of the little girl in Episode Three where she is strolling around Iceworld acting like it's her plaything while death and destruction reign around. The acting of her mother is actually worse as supposedly Kane's men are killing everyone around and she stops Glitz at one point to mildly ask if he has seen her daughter, like she has been playing hide-and-seek too long. It is just a terrible performance and another indication that both the writer and director had no idea what tone they were supposed to use.
While on the subject of the child, I cannot figure out what the point of her was. She was used as the object that got Ace fired in Episode One as it was her mother that complained about the milkshakes. Fine. She randomly comes back in Episode Three and hides from Kane's men. Also fine, the producers could justify this by not even wanting to allude to the idea that a child died in the explosion of the Nosfaratu. But why keep cutting back to her throughout the rest of Episode Three? She could have been shown emerging from hiding after everything was over and it would have been a simple happy ending. Instead, she wanders through the corridors, almost getting shot by Kane's guard, finds her way into Kane's lair and puts her teddy to bed in Kane's freezing chamber; all for absolutely no point. Her wandering had no payoff except to cut into the run time and cut away from the main action. I can only think that she was someone's daughter who really wanted to be shown in the show because there is no other point that I can think of to having her in the story.
Another fault of this story was it's very haphazard use of metaphor. Ace being lifted from Perivale to Iceworld via a time storm and her own proper name of Dorothy is a not so subtle reference to The Wizard of Oz. Likewise, with a villain named Kane, his slaves take his frozen brand or "mark of Cain" if you prefer. Some small bits of metaphor are okay but generally it is nice to have a point behind it. The mark of Cain is fine although a bit over the top since it was pretty obvious Kane is the bad guy. The Wizard of Oz stuff though doesn't make a lot of sense though. Not only is it a pointless metaphor that doesn't really go anywhere, but it also creates a dumb situation of how Ace got to Iceworld in the first place. One that later writers went to try and explain and failed even then (in my opinion).
My final rant on this story is with Mel's leaving scene. I doubt that Ian Briggs was allowed to write that final scene, especially as there was a bit of internal debate on whether Ace or Ray from Delta and the Bannermen was going to succeed Mel as companion when the script was likely submitted. Andrew Cartmel was officially on as script editor, but given the rush of Season 24 and the significance of changing companions, I suspect that John Nathan Turner actually wrote this scene and boy does it show. Mel is given absolutely no reason to leave. They are not back on Earth and Mel has shown no inclination that she is tired of traveling with the Doctor. What's more, there is no hint that she has any chemistry or desire to interact with Glitz, either in this story or back in The Trial of a Timelord: The Ultimate Foe. She drops the idea of leaving like there was some monumental moment that occurred but nothing happened. It was the lamest excuse of writing out a companion that I've ever seen. Leela deciding to stay with Andred might be the dumbest companion departure, but at least there was a fig leaf of a romance that we apparently never saw. This was just Mel up and decided that it was time that she and the Doctor parted ways and that Ace should take her place. Ace coming along was fine but there was no reason the Doctor couldn't travel with both of them. Her leaving was not necessary.
The playing out of the scene was also pretty bad. Mel drops her bomb about leaving and that apparently flusters the Doctor to the point of nearly having a regeneration crisis. He babbles incoherently, flustered by Mel leaving and doesn't cotton on to the idea to ask Ace until Mel nearly kicks him in the butt. Then you have Ace's acting which is probably her worst portrayal of an eager teenager throughout the story. The Doctor recovers it a bit with his three rules bit but her reaction doesn't play right. It just made the last five minutes of the story absolutely painful to watch.
I'm sorely tempted to give this a score of 0. Nearly everything about it was terrible and whatever good in the story was displayed in Episodes One and Two, was washed completely away by the end of Episode Three. But I don't think I can go quite that harsh. Still, this is going to be near the bottom of my list. It is shoddily produced, poorly acting and badly written. What's more, unlike Time and the Rani, this was the last story of the season so there should have been time to do a little clean up here and there to make it at least marginally more palatable. I can't imagine voluntarily watching this one again and would not recommend it to anyone else to watch.
Overall personal score: 0.5 out of 5
Monday, September 19, 2016
Delta and the Bannermen
Actually, I may have gone a step too far.
For this story, I am grateful to have seen the 1950's episode of The Supersizers. Holiday camps are things that generally unknown to Americans and having the basic outline of how they developed known helps a bit in establishing the setting. One thing that I specifically watched out for was to see if Burton was a former military man and it turned out that he is so score one there. As for the story itself, I've been pleasantly surprised as I'm now halfway through the dreaded Season 24 and it hasn't been the slog or dreck that fan wisdom suggested that it would be.
Plot Summary
A woman named Delta is under attack along with her soldiers. She is the queen of a race known as the Chimeron and her people are being massacred by a man named Gavrok and his soldiers, the Bannermen. Her men are cut down but she manages to flee aboard one of the Bannermen's ships. She is pursued to a space port on a nearby planet. At this spaceport, the Doctor and Mel have arrived and won a trip to 1959 Disneyland with a group of alien tourists. Mel rides the bus but the Doctor opts to follow behind in the TARDIS. Delta lands her ship and gets aboard the bus just before it takes off.
On Earth, two American agents are traveling in Wales and have been instructed to observe a satellite in orbit. This same satellite accidently collides with the touring bus as it approaches Earth. The Doctor manages to save the bus from crashing using the TARDIS but is forced to land just outside a holiday camp called Shangri-La in south Wales. The Doctor and the driver Murray begin to repair the bus but the power crystal will need to be regrown for a day before they can leave. The group then registers to stay the night at the holiday camp, where they are warmly received by the camp director, Major Burton.
Delta is roomed with Mel but she is cold and paranoid towards her. She closely guards a crystalline orb brought along from the battle. She does begin to soften when she attracts the attention of Billy, the young maintenance man of the camp. The Doctor also makes friends with Ray, a young woman very taken with Billy, but whose affections are not reciprocated.
The group attends a welcoming dance where Billy makes his affections for Delta known. Ray is upset by this and runs off. The Doctor goes after her and offers some comfort as she cries in the laundry. They are interrupted by a bounty hunter sneaking in and signaling Gavrok of Delta's location. The Doctor accidently gives away that they are listening and the bounty hunter prepares to kill them both. Gavrok however, once he has locked on to the bounty hunter's location, sends an ionizing pulse that kills the bounty hunter, saving him paying the reward money. Both the Doctor and Ray are knocked out by the blast.
Delta and Mel head back to their room where the crystalline orb hatches, producing a green infant. Billy, attracted by the noise of Mel's shock, enters and Delta explains to both of them that she is queen and the last survivor of her people. Billy takes it in stride while Mel falls asleep. Billy offers to take Delta and the baby out for a ride away and she agrees.
The Doctor and Ray come to and realize that though the bounty hunter is dead, the Bannermen will be arriving shortly. The Doctor wakes Mel and has her warn Murray. Murray begins to assemble all the offworlders to reboard the bus. The Doctor and Ray go to Major Burton and explain to him that he needs to evacuate the camp. Burton scoffs but becomes convinced when the Doctor allows him to enter the TARDIS. He then arranges for all his staff to leave on a separate bus, although he stays behind to watch the camp.
Worried at Delta's disappearance, the Doctor and Ray take her scooter around the countryside looking for Delta and Billy. While they are gone, the staff evacuates and Murray replaces the power crystal in the space bus. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ray find Billy and Delta and warn them of the Bannermen's approach. The group immediately heads back to the camp.
The Bannerman warship lands and the group take the two American agents prisoner, leaving two soldiers to guard them. They approach the camp and destroy the space bus as it begins to take off. Mel is the only survivor as she opted to stay behind and travel with the Doctor in the TARDIS. Mel tries to claim that Delta was killed but Gavrok sees the approaching bikes and orders his men to fire on them. The party flees and Gavrok is about to kill Mel when Burton intervenes suggesting she be used as hostage. Gavrok orders Burton and Mel tied up to be used as bait.
Delta detects the call of bees who summon her to safety. They head to a local beekeeper who offers them shelter. The Doctor turns around and heads back under a flag of truce. He offers Gavrok a chance to surrender and face justice but Gavrok laughs him off. The Doctor unties Mel and Burton but the Bannermen turn their weapons on the Doctor. However, Gavrok elects to let the Doctor, Mel and Burton go and instead fires a flare into the air. The flare signals the two soldiers guarding the Americans. They bind the Americans and move to the road where they fire a tracking dart into the motorcycle. Aware of the tracking dart, the Doctor ducks into a local field and attaches the tracker to a goat.
While the guards are away, Ray manages to free the Americans and takes them back to the bee farm. The Doctor also takes his charges back there once free of the tracker. They are pursued by the two guards, but the princess, having progressed to the next stage in her growth, sees them and sends out a warning cry. The cry inflicts pain on the Bannermen so they begin to retreat, although Delta manages to gun one down as they flee.
Before leaving the camp, Gavrok sets up a booby trap around the TARDIS. The Bannermen follow the tracker to the field where Gavrok is less than pleased to find he has been tricked. The surviving soldier returns and informs Gavrok of their location and they head to the farm.
Aware of the impending attack, the Doctor sets up a trap and then has the entire party head back to the holiday camp. While setting up the trap, Billy steals some of the princess’s food and begins to drink it himself, to transform himself into a Chimeron.
Gavrok and his men attack, but find the farm deserted. They follow a trail left by the Doctor into the barn where old jars of honey drop on them. The honey attracts the local bees who attack the Bannermen, driving them further from the farmhouse.
Back at the camp, the Doctor spies the booby trapped TARDIS and elects to set up another trap for the Bannermen. He rigs the camp loudspeaker to amplify a signal and works with Billy to set up an additional speaker on the roof.
When the Bannermen attack, he gives a signal and Delta instructs the princess to give her warning cry. The cry is amplified all over the camp causing the Bannermen to collapse in pain. Gavrok collapses backwards into the range of the TARDIS booby trap and is killed by his own device. Ray and the two Americans come out of hiding and tie up the stunned Bannermen. They are then loaded onto their own ship for transport back for trial.
Delta, the princess and Billy, now partially transformed into a Chimeron, board the ship and leave for their new home. Billy leaves his motorcycle with Ray and the Doctor hands over the fallen satellite to the two Americans. With the booby trap discharged by Gavrok, Mel and the Doctor leave in the TARDIS just as another group of tourists arrive.
Analysis
I think the best way to describe this story would be fun silliness. The story is completely off the wall and the alien costuming is bizarre but it is entertaining and the characters are mostly fairly enjoyable. Still, that does not excuse some bizarre choices and some downright painful acting.
The Doctor is good in this story and has a nice balance of comedy and figuring out what is going on. He doesn't have the all-knowing presence that he does in later stories but with only three episodes to play with, he doesn't do much bumbling about. His give away with the bounty hunter at the end of Episode One is probably the worst he gets of it. After that, it's a good bit of run around. The closest he gets with the run around is his direct confrontation with Gavrok at the end of Episode Two. It's probably closer to a poker read in that he is gambling that Gavrok sees the value in leaving him alive rather than just killing him outright and that does pay off. It's actually amusing to a degree given that Gavrok is painted so one-note that a key plot point revolves around him acting with a level of intelligence so far not yet seen.
Mel got a bit of short shrift in this story. Aside from making acquaintances with Delta, she does nearly nothing in this story. She is a by-stander and hostage through most of it much like Major Burton. But Burton has bravado and he also stands up to Gavrok, suggesting that they are more valuable alive while Mel just sits there and spits at him.
The real companion work is done by Ray who is very enjoyable as a character. Having read about this story ahead of time, I was expecting a harder edge to her and was quite surprised as her softness. I also found that I greatly enjoyed her accent, but that's just personal preference. But she was spunky and resourceful, two things that Mel was not, although Mel did retain her fairly positive tone throughout. But it just felt like Ray was much more reliable. This is somewhat understandable as the decision had been made to get rid of Mel and Ray was one of the two options. The production team ended up going with Ace (see next story: Dragonfire) but I think the volume of Ray in this story is directly tied to the potential of her being the next companion. I don't know how they would have written out Mel though if Ray had been the next companion. Perhaps she would have stayed behind to help Major Burton run the camp.
I must speak well of the use of location in this story. The cinematography is quite 80's but I like the use of an actual holiday camp and outdoor shooting as it gave the story a much more expansive look. They also went minimalist on the effects shots for the space ships and the guns but in neither case would I call that a bad thing. The mind filled in the gaps quite well and it reduced the cheap effect look that this story could have had if there were more attempted.
If there is one thing I have trouble with regarding effects and costuming it is the design of the Chimeron people. In the initial battle, Delta stands out as human looking while she is surrounded by what look like green army men. This continuing of the green, reptilian man form is continued throughout to Delta's daughter and Billy once he begins to transform but even there it is inconsistent. In the baby stage it is painfully obvious that it is just a baby with it's face smudged green in a green dinosaur suit. Later, as her daughter grows, the costuming gets a bit better as she magically assumes a white smock dress, but her face waffles between being painted green or not. I understand that they wanted to ensure the alienness, especially as the Bannermen are not particularly alien looking, but this was an odd choice as it was a lot of work and young children are not going to cooperate much when it comes to makeup application. Something a little simpler would probably have been better, especially it would have made the child more consistent with Delta, who has almost no alien characteristics at all.
I am hit or miss with the Bannermen themselves. Gavrok wasn't bad but he is very one-note evil. I did enjoy the fact that they don't bother with a backstory. Gavrok and the Bannermen are there to destroy the Chimerons and that is it. No tempering of explanation. Just bad guys committing genocide. I also enjoyed the fact that the Bannermen were somewhat competent soldiers, although once on Earth they seemed to develop Stormtrooper aim. All that being said, it was a little disappointing that they were defeated so easily. Gavrok more or less does the Disney villain death, being taken out by his own trap and the rest of the Bannermen just falling to pieces once their leader was dead. It makes their defeat a bit unsatisfying.
There were some significant sour notes when it came to the acting. Delta is a bit stiff throughout the story. It works well enough in the first couple of episodes where she is on her guard, but when she is interacting with Billy, she keeps that same stiffness and it becomes just a bad portrayal. Billy himself is also pretty bad. He falls for Delta more or less because the script tells him to and he goes further and further to the extreme in his devotion to her while maintaining a performance that is as bland and stiff as a board. He and Delta have zero chemistry and the fortunately few scenes they have together are just dreck.
But, the worst aspect for me was the two Americans. Their accents were so broad and over the top that it was painful to listen to. The commander’s accent from Tomb of the Cybermen was better than that. Worse was the fact that they actually were Americans. They must have had some awful advice from the director. As if their accents weren’t bad enough, Weismuller was dressed like Yogi Berra during his managerial days as if to emphasize further that he was American. I have the impression that these two were supposed to be a bumbling comedy duo, but their shtick was so broad and over the top that I found zero humor in anything they did and it was all I could do not to cringe in pain.
One bit of positivity, I rather enjoyed the music for this story. Keff McCulloch gets slagged for his musical choices in other stories and probably rightly so. But I rather enjoyed the feel of it in this story and didn't even mind that it was dialed up to eleven in a few places, especially the chase scenes.
If you keep in mind that this is a romp-y bit of fun, this story can be enjoyed. I can and did enjoy it for the most part. But the bad acting is hard to ignore and the quick ending for the Bannermen give the story a bit of an anti-climatic feel. The somewhat heavy handed nature comparing Delta and the Chimerons to bees is also a bit of a drawback, but I understand that kids might not have picked up on anything quite the subtle. Still, it's not a bad story nor is it poorly done. It wouldn't be my first Seventh Doctor choice, but for a quick run with the Doctor, it is perfectly serviceable.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
For this story, I am grateful to have seen the 1950's episode of The Supersizers. Holiday camps are things that generally unknown to Americans and having the basic outline of how they developed known helps a bit in establishing the setting. One thing that I specifically watched out for was to see if Burton was a former military man and it turned out that he is so score one there. As for the story itself, I've been pleasantly surprised as I'm now halfway through the dreaded Season 24 and it hasn't been the slog or dreck that fan wisdom suggested that it would be.
Plot Summary
A woman named Delta is under attack along with her soldiers. She is the queen of a race known as the Chimeron and her people are being massacred by a man named Gavrok and his soldiers, the Bannermen. Her men are cut down but she manages to flee aboard one of the Bannermen's ships. She is pursued to a space port on a nearby planet. At this spaceport, the Doctor and Mel have arrived and won a trip to 1959 Disneyland with a group of alien tourists. Mel rides the bus but the Doctor opts to follow behind in the TARDIS. Delta lands her ship and gets aboard the bus just before it takes off.
On Earth, two American agents are traveling in Wales and have been instructed to observe a satellite in orbit. This same satellite accidently collides with the touring bus as it approaches Earth. The Doctor manages to save the bus from crashing using the TARDIS but is forced to land just outside a holiday camp called Shangri-La in south Wales. The Doctor and the driver Murray begin to repair the bus but the power crystal will need to be regrown for a day before they can leave. The group then registers to stay the night at the holiday camp, where they are warmly received by the camp director, Major Burton.
Delta is roomed with Mel but she is cold and paranoid towards her. She closely guards a crystalline orb brought along from the battle. She does begin to soften when she attracts the attention of Billy, the young maintenance man of the camp. The Doctor also makes friends with Ray, a young woman very taken with Billy, but whose affections are not reciprocated.
The group attends a welcoming dance where Billy makes his affections for Delta known. Ray is upset by this and runs off. The Doctor goes after her and offers some comfort as she cries in the laundry. They are interrupted by a bounty hunter sneaking in and signaling Gavrok of Delta's location. The Doctor accidently gives away that they are listening and the bounty hunter prepares to kill them both. Gavrok however, once he has locked on to the bounty hunter's location, sends an ionizing pulse that kills the bounty hunter, saving him paying the reward money. Both the Doctor and Ray are knocked out by the blast.
Delta and Mel head back to their room where the crystalline orb hatches, producing a green infant. Billy, attracted by the noise of Mel's shock, enters and Delta explains to both of them that she is queen and the last survivor of her people. Billy takes it in stride while Mel falls asleep. Billy offers to take Delta and the baby out for a ride away and she agrees.
The Doctor and Ray come to and realize that though the bounty hunter is dead, the Bannermen will be arriving shortly. The Doctor wakes Mel and has her warn Murray. Murray begins to assemble all the offworlders to reboard the bus. The Doctor and Ray go to Major Burton and explain to him that he needs to evacuate the camp. Burton scoffs but becomes convinced when the Doctor allows him to enter the TARDIS. He then arranges for all his staff to leave on a separate bus, although he stays behind to watch the camp.
Worried at Delta's disappearance, the Doctor and Ray take her scooter around the countryside looking for Delta and Billy. While they are gone, the staff evacuates and Murray replaces the power crystal in the space bus. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ray find Billy and Delta and warn them of the Bannermen's approach. The group immediately heads back to the camp.
The Bannerman warship lands and the group take the two American agents prisoner, leaving two soldiers to guard them. They approach the camp and destroy the space bus as it begins to take off. Mel is the only survivor as she opted to stay behind and travel with the Doctor in the TARDIS. Mel tries to claim that Delta was killed but Gavrok sees the approaching bikes and orders his men to fire on them. The party flees and Gavrok is about to kill Mel when Burton intervenes suggesting she be used as hostage. Gavrok orders Burton and Mel tied up to be used as bait.
Delta detects the call of bees who summon her to safety. They head to a local beekeeper who offers them shelter. The Doctor turns around and heads back under a flag of truce. He offers Gavrok a chance to surrender and face justice but Gavrok laughs him off. The Doctor unties Mel and Burton but the Bannermen turn their weapons on the Doctor. However, Gavrok elects to let the Doctor, Mel and Burton go and instead fires a flare into the air. The flare signals the two soldiers guarding the Americans. They bind the Americans and move to the road where they fire a tracking dart into the motorcycle. Aware of the tracking dart, the Doctor ducks into a local field and attaches the tracker to a goat.
While the guards are away, Ray manages to free the Americans and takes them back to the bee farm. The Doctor also takes his charges back there once free of the tracker. They are pursued by the two guards, but the princess, having progressed to the next stage in her growth, sees them and sends out a warning cry. The cry inflicts pain on the Bannermen so they begin to retreat, although Delta manages to gun one down as they flee.
Before leaving the camp, Gavrok sets up a booby trap around the TARDIS. The Bannermen follow the tracker to the field where Gavrok is less than pleased to find he has been tricked. The surviving soldier returns and informs Gavrok of their location and they head to the farm.
Aware of the impending attack, the Doctor sets up a trap and then has the entire party head back to the holiday camp. While setting up the trap, Billy steals some of the princess’s food and begins to drink it himself, to transform himself into a Chimeron.
Gavrok and his men attack, but find the farm deserted. They follow a trail left by the Doctor into the barn where old jars of honey drop on them. The honey attracts the local bees who attack the Bannermen, driving them further from the farmhouse.
Back at the camp, the Doctor spies the booby trapped TARDIS and elects to set up another trap for the Bannermen. He rigs the camp loudspeaker to amplify a signal and works with Billy to set up an additional speaker on the roof.
When the Bannermen attack, he gives a signal and Delta instructs the princess to give her warning cry. The cry is amplified all over the camp causing the Bannermen to collapse in pain. Gavrok collapses backwards into the range of the TARDIS booby trap and is killed by his own device. Ray and the two Americans come out of hiding and tie up the stunned Bannermen. They are then loaded onto their own ship for transport back for trial.
Delta, the princess and Billy, now partially transformed into a Chimeron, board the ship and leave for their new home. Billy leaves his motorcycle with Ray and the Doctor hands over the fallen satellite to the two Americans. With the booby trap discharged by Gavrok, Mel and the Doctor leave in the TARDIS just as another group of tourists arrive.
Analysis
I think the best way to describe this story would be fun silliness. The story is completely off the wall and the alien costuming is bizarre but it is entertaining and the characters are mostly fairly enjoyable. Still, that does not excuse some bizarre choices and some downright painful acting.
The Doctor is good in this story and has a nice balance of comedy and figuring out what is going on. He doesn't have the all-knowing presence that he does in later stories but with only three episodes to play with, he doesn't do much bumbling about. His give away with the bounty hunter at the end of Episode One is probably the worst he gets of it. After that, it's a good bit of run around. The closest he gets with the run around is his direct confrontation with Gavrok at the end of Episode Two. It's probably closer to a poker read in that he is gambling that Gavrok sees the value in leaving him alive rather than just killing him outright and that does pay off. It's actually amusing to a degree given that Gavrok is painted so one-note that a key plot point revolves around him acting with a level of intelligence so far not yet seen.
Mel got a bit of short shrift in this story. Aside from making acquaintances with Delta, she does nearly nothing in this story. She is a by-stander and hostage through most of it much like Major Burton. But Burton has bravado and he also stands up to Gavrok, suggesting that they are more valuable alive while Mel just sits there and spits at him.
The real companion work is done by Ray who is very enjoyable as a character. Having read about this story ahead of time, I was expecting a harder edge to her and was quite surprised as her softness. I also found that I greatly enjoyed her accent, but that's just personal preference. But she was spunky and resourceful, two things that Mel was not, although Mel did retain her fairly positive tone throughout. But it just felt like Ray was much more reliable. This is somewhat understandable as the decision had been made to get rid of Mel and Ray was one of the two options. The production team ended up going with Ace (see next story: Dragonfire) but I think the volume of Ray in this story is directly tied to the potential of her being the next companion. I don't know how they would have written out Mel though if Ray had been the next companion. Perhaps she would have stayed behind to help Major Burton run the camp.
I must speak well of the use of location in this story. The cinematography is quite 80's but I like the use of an actual holiday camp and outdoor shooting as it gave the story a much more expansive look. They also went minimalist on the effects shots for the space ships and the guns but in neither case would I call that a bad thing. The mind filled in the gaps quite well and it reduced the cheap effect look that this story could have had if there were more attempted.
If there is one thing I have trouble with regarding effects and costuming it is the design of the Chimeron people. In the initial battle, Delta stands out as human looking while she is surrounded by what look like green army men. This continuing of the green, reptilian man form is continued throughout to Delta's daughter and Billy once he begins to transform but even there it is inconsistent. In the baby stage it is painfully obvious that it is just a baby with it's face smudged green in a green dinosaur suit. Later, as her daughter grows, the costuming gets a bit better as she magically assumes a white smock dress, but her face waffles between being painted green or not. I understand that they wanted to ensure the alienness, especially as the Bannermen are not particularly alien looking, but this was an odd choice as it was a lot of work and young children are not going to cooperate much when it comes to makeup application. Something a little simpler would probably have been better, especially it would have made the child more consistent with Delta, who has almost no alien characteristics at all.
I am hit or miss with the Bannermen themselves. Gavrok wasn't bad but he is very one-note evil. I did enjoy the fact that they don't bother with a backstory. Gavrok and the Bannermen are there to destroy the Chimerons and that is it. No tempering of explanation. Just bad guys committing genocide. I also enjoyed the fact that the Bannermen were somewhat competent soldiers, although once on Earth they seemed to develop Stormtrooper aim. All that being said, it was a little disappointing that they were defeated so easily. Gavrok more or less does the Disney villain death, being taken out by his own trap and the rest of the Bannermen just falling to pieces once their leader was dead. It makes their defeat a bit unsatisfying.
There were some significant sour notes when it came to the acting. Delta is a bit stiff throughout the story. It works well enough in the first couple of episodes where she is on her guard, but when she is interacting with Billy, she keeps that same stiffness and it becomes just a bad portrayal. Billy himself is also pretty bad. He falls for Delta more or less because the script tells him to and he goes further and further to the extreme in his devotion to her while maintaining a performance that is as bland and stiff as a board. He and Delta have zero chemistry and the fortunately few scenes they have together are just dreck.
But, the worst aspect for me was the two Americans. Their accents were so broad and over the top that it was painful to listen to. The commander’s accent from Tomb of the Cybermen was better than that. Worse was the fact that they actually were Americans. They must have had some awful advice from the director. As if their accents weren’t bad enough, Weismuller was dressed like Yogi Berra during his managerial days as if to emphasize further that he was American. I have the impression that these two were supposed to be a bumbling comedy duo, but their shtick was so broad and over the top that I found zero humor in anything they did and it was all I could do not to cringe in pain.
One bit of positivity, I rather enjoyed the music for this story. Keff McCulloch gets slagged for his musical choices in other stories and probably rightly so. But I rather enjoyed the feel of it in this story and didn't even mind that it was dialed up to eleven in a few places, especially the chase scenes.
If you keep in mind that this is a romp-y bit of fun, this story can be enjoyed. I can and did enjoy it for the most part. But the bad acting is hard to ignore and the quick ending for the Bannermen give the story a bit of an anti-climatic feel. The somewhat heavy handed nature comparing Delta and the Chimerons to bees is also a bit of a drawback, but I understand that kids might not have picked up on anything quite the subtle. Still, it's not a bad story nor is it poorly done. It wouldn't be my first Seventh Doctor choice, but for a quick run with the Doctor, it is perfectly serviceable.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
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