Jamie, Doctor... friends.
This is the last of the Second Doctor stories for me to review and I was planning on holding off on it a bit longer, but with the news of Deborah Watling's passing, I couldn't think of a more apt time to revisit it. I say revisit as I have actually seen it once before. I recall it being interesting but a bit drug out, being seven parts. But perhaps that was also in how I watched it as I tend to watch recons in large chunks rather than spacing them out as I do with most classic stories. We'll see how it goes a second time around.
Plot Summary
At the airport following Ben and Polly's departure, the Doctor and Jamie see the TARDIS being hauled away on the back of a truck. They head to a hanger and talk to a man in maintenance coveralls called Hall. Hall notes the taking of the TARDIS but only comes alive when the Doctor mentions getting the police. He give them a fake delivery company name and they leave. Hall then contacts a fellow conspirator named Kennedy who was watching from a distance.
The Doctor and Jamie duck behind some pumps and watch Hall leave. The Doctor suspects something and follows Hall's car in a cab. Kennedy also leaves and meets with Hall at a prearranged meeting point. He pays Hall for his job of posing as a worker and tries to get him to knock the Doctor and Jamie out. Hall refuses so Kennedy knocks Hall out instead and then bolts out of the room when Jamie and the Doctor enter. They find a matchbook for a coffee bar with the name of The Tricolour on it. Hall wakes and runs out of the room. Jamie and the Doctor try to follow but lose him. With no other options, they head to the coffee bar. Kennedy, watching from the shadows, leaves by another route.
Kennedy reports to his employer, Professor Waterfield, who sells Victoriana. Waterfield is pleased that the Doctor is heading to the bar and opts not to worry about Hall's flight to the north of England. Waterfield calls in his shop manager, Perry, and asks him to go to the coffee bar and request that the Doctor and Jamie meet at his shop at 10pm that night, giving Perry pictures of the Doctor and Jamie. Perry agrees and sets off while Waterfield heads into a locked back room filled with futuristic equipment where he demands answers from an unseen entity.
The Doctor and Jamie arrive at the bar and ask about the man named Kennedy. They have no luck but are approached by Perry who delivers Waterfield's request. Jamie and the Doctor agree to come by that evening. Perry tells Waterfield who in turn orders Kennedy to prepare. Waterfield leaves to change his clothes as well but Kennedy slips into Waterfield's office after he leaves. Kennedy finds the key to the secret room and enters. He activates the machines before discovering the safe. While he cracks the safe, a Dalek materializes from the machine behind him and demands to know who he is.
Kennedy tries to run but the Dalek kills him just as he exits the room. Waterfield comes in and finds the body and the Dalek. He is appalled but the Dalek threatens him and orders him to continue. Waterfield then takes a picture of the Doctor and tears it in half. He puts one half in Kennedy's hand and the other sticking out of a box next to the machine with a glass vial inside.
The Doctor and Jamie sneak into Waterfield's shop at 9:30 to find extra information. They quickly deduce that Waterfield may actually be from the Victorian era as his antiques seem genuine but brand new. The hear a noise and hide as Perry enters to listen at the door. They surprise him and he tells them about taking the TARDIS. They are about to go and try to recover it when the study door opens.
Inside the study, they find Kennedy's body. Perry tries to call the police but the phone is giving off static. He heads out to find a policeman while the Doctor examines the body. He finds the picture and deduces that there must be a hidden room behind the bookcase. They search and find the keyhole. While searching for the key the door opens. They enter and Jamie sees the other half of the picture. When he pulls it, the lid of the box pops open and releases gas from the vial. The gas knocks out both of them. Waterfield emerges from his hiding spot and closes the box. He then activates the machine and all three of them disappear.
The Doctor wakes the next morning in the house of Theodore Maxtible, Waterfield's backer in his time experiments. After a maid revives the Doctor, Maxtible and Waterfield take the Doctor down to the lab where they explain that while they were experimenting, they accidently opened a doorway for the Daleks. The Daleks captured Waterfield's daughter Victoria and forced him to steal the TARDIS and kidnap the Doctor. A Dalek appears from the cabinet where Waterfield's machine is located and tells the Doctor that they will be putting Jamie through a test and extracting a human factor from the results.
Jamie wakes from the gas but before he is fully roused, a thug named Toby enters and knocks him back out. He also knocks out the maid and then takes Jamie out of the house. He takes him to a nearby barn where Toby is paid off by Arthur Terrall, fiancé to Ruth Maxtible. Arthur seems to be under some sort of mind control and has occasional fits where he is able to fight it off. Relapsing, he leaves as the Doctor enters and takes Jamie back to the house.
The Doctor allows Jamie to overhear him talking to Waterfield about the experiment the Daleks are setting up. Meanwhile, preparations are being made for the test. The Daleks move Victoria from her regular cell to a locked room in the south wing of the house. Maxtible also takes a mute strongman Turk named Kemel and sets him as a guard inside the first door of the passage, gives him a picture of Jamie and tells him to fight him off if he arrives.
Angry at what he feels is a trick by the Doctor, Jamie argues with the Doctor and Waterfield and storms off. The Doctor however, manipulated his words and is confident that Jamie will ultimately take the noble action and try to rescue Victoria. He is justified a while later when Maxtible informs the Daleks that Jamie has moved just outside the entrance to the south wing.
Jamie meets the maid, Mollie, outside the door and she gives him a plan of the house as he requested. They hear a scream (the Daleks just murdered Toby who had snuck back to the house to steal more money) and Jamie orders Molly back to her room. He opens the first door and eludes a booby trap of spikes falling from the doorway. He proceeds through where he meets Kemel at the end of the passage.
Kemel and Jamie fight but Jamie manages to stun Kemel and gets past him. Kemel follows Jamie but Jamie locks himself into a storage room looking for a weapon. Kemel rushes the door and Jamie sidesteps it, allowing Kemel to burst through. Kemel's momentum carries him out a window where he grabs the edge of a gutter. Jamie grabs a rope and hauls him back into the room. Once Kemel is safe, Jamie moves on to look for Victoria. He spies a handkerchief in Victoria's old cell and bends down to look at it. Kemel rushes in and pushes Jamie just as another booby trap falls on the spot.
The Doctor points out that Jamie's act of mercy saved his life to a skeptical Dalek. Meanwhile, Waterfield and Maxtible find Toby's body. Waterfield wants to tell the Doctor but the Daleks insist on disposing it. Waterfield admits he can't take it and will confess his crimes when Victoria is rescued. Maxtible takes a gun from a drawer and follows Waterfield. In the barn, Maxtible berates Waterfield for his weakness while Arthur listens in the shadows. As Waterfield heads back to the house, Maxtible turns to shoot him but Arthur grabs him and insists it not happen yet.
Jamie and Kemel become friendly and Kemel insists on helping Jamie to rescue her. They head down the corridors, following the occasional Dalek. Jamie sets off another booby trap, which they manage to avoid. The Doctor points out that instinct is also necessary rather than a cold reliance on logic.
A Dalek calls out and forces Victoria to state her name. Jamie and Kemel spot her and plan her rescue. While they do so, Arthur catches Mollie who had heard Victoria calling her name. Arthur angrily dismisses her when Ruth enters and stops his tirade. She tries to get him to leave but he rejects her.
Maxtible tries to get the Daleks to leave and hold up their end of the bargain. The Dalek dismisses Maxtible but does state that they will share a specific secret with him. As it leaves, Ruth enters and demands to know what is going on. Maxtible does not come clean but states that soon he will know the secret of transforming ordinary metal into gold. As he does so, he takes on the appearance of a man becoming unhinged.
A Dalek calls for Victoria to stand for inspection a second time. As that completes, Jamie and Kemel pull a rope across the room and crash it into the fireplace. They then throw the rope up to the banister allowing Jamie to climb the rope up to Jamie's room. Kemel follows him up the rope. Jamie knocks on the door but as he does so, a Dalek emerges with a second entering the area below. Jamie pulls the rope around and uses it to send the Dalek crashing to the floor below. He and Kemel then run into Victoria's room and bar themselves in.
In the kitchen, the Doctor gets himself something to drink and runs into Arthur. The Doctor talks with him but notes that he doesn't eat or drink. He also magnetizes metal objects when he holds them. The Doctor returns to the lab as Arthur struggles again with his natural mind and the programing the Daleks have placed on him. He heads into the hall where he finds Maxtible hypnotizing Mollie and urging her that all that happened was a dream. When she returns to her room, he tells Arthur to retrieve Victoria from her prison via a secret passage.
Having isolated Jamie's emotional responses, the Doctor sets about implanting them in the dormant Dalek brains brought to him. Waterfield fears that the new Daleks will become a superior race and will destroy all of humanity. He tries to stop the Doctor, but the Doctor restrains him, noting that the Daleks still have Victoria and Jamie.
The Daleks begin to melt their way through the door to Victoria's room. While Jamie and Kemel try to block the door with additional rubbish, Arthur opens a secret passage and grabs Victoria. She cries out in the passage just enough for Jamie to realize that there is a secret door. He manages to open it and he and Kemel run down the passage after her. Victoria manages to get loose from Arthur at a fork and runs down the other passage. Arthur, knowing he is pursued, runs the other way. At the fork, Jamie and Kemel split up.
Jamie emerges in the trophy room and is attacked by Arthur with a sword. He manages to duck and grabs a sword of his own. They fight in the room, their clashing blades attracting the attention of Ruth and Mollie. Ruth sends Mollie for the Doctor while imploring Arthur to stop. As the Doctor enters, Jamie catches Arthur in the back with his blade, loosening a small control box. Arthur immediately drops to the ground as the Dalek control over him is lost. The Doctor urges Ruth and Mollie to take Arthur in the carriage and get away from the house as fast as possible.
Kemel emerges in the lab and find Victoria unconscious. He bends over her as a Dalek emerges from the cabinet. The Dalek orders Kemel to take Victoria into the cabinet. He hesitates but finally does what they say. A few minutes later, Jamie, the Doctor and Maxtible enter the lab. Jamie is still angry at the Doctor and implies that he will leave due to the Doctor's callousness. The Doctor urges Jamie to have patience and see what has happened. He unveils three Daleks that have been implanted with the "human factor". They push their way towards the Doctor and take him for a ride around the lab, playing a game with him.
After finishing their games, the Daleks enter the cabinet to return to Skaro. The Doctor and Jamie leave to go find Victoria, unaware that she and Kemel have been taken to Skaro. Maxtible meanwhile tries to dismiss Waterfield's concerns about Victoria, implying that she has been freed by the Daleks and must be wandering about the house. He shoos Waterfield away but Waterfield stays near and overhears Maxtible insisting that the Daleks give him the formula to transmute metal into gold. The Daleks ignore him and insist he bring the Doctor to them while setting up a device in the lab.
After the Dalek leaves, Waterfield attacks Maxtible but Maxtible knocks him down. Realizing that the Daleks have planted a bomb, Maxtible rails against what the Daleks are doing and chases them through the cabinet. The Doctor and Jamie find Waterfield and the bomb. They grab Waterfield and the three of them also head into the cabinet to travel through the machine to Skaro, just before the bomb destroys the entire house.
The Daleks are angry with Maxtible for not bringing the Doctor with him and they imprison him with Victoria and Kemel. Shortly afterwards, an alarm is triggered when the Doctor, Jamie and Waterfield enter an access tunnel to try and sneak into the Dalek city. Discovering that the Doctor has named the three human factor Daleks, one of the Daleks attempts to pose as a human factor Dalek to trap the Doctor. The Doctor however realizes the deception and pushes it off a cliff.
The Daleks next force Maxtible to shock Victoria into screaming. The sound carries and the trio follows it to a passageway where they are intercepted by other Daleks. The Daleks take the trio into the main chamber where the Emperor Dalek is waiting. The Emperor informs the Doctor that they used his experiment to create a specific Dalek factor and they now insist that he spread it through humanity with the TARDIS, which they have also taken to Skaro.
The Doctor refuses but is told that he will and they are sent to the same prison cell as Victoria, Kemel and Maxtible. The Daleks later open the door and show a machine that appears to turn iron into gold. Maxtible runs through the door towards the machine but as he does so, he is hit with a wave across the door and infused with the Dalek factor. He becomes a mindless servant of the Daleks.
Maxtible returns to the cell and encourages the Doctor to come with him as the TARDIS has been taken out of the city. Steeling himself, the Doctor walks though the doorway and is also hit with the Dalek factor. He appears to be like Maxtible but stops to examine the machines the produce the Dalek factor and will be used to spread it to Earth. Maxtible leaves and the Doctor, now acting as his normal self, switches a pod in the control panel from the Dalek factor to the human factor he developed in Maxtible's lab. He whispers to Jamie to not be afraid to walk through when he returns. A Dalek enters and he is taken to see the Emperor.
In the main chamber, the Emperor is informed that the Daleks infused with the human factor have been questioning orders. The Doctor, pretending he is under Dalek control, suggest that the Daleks pass through the doorway to overwrite the human factor and reinfuse the Dalek factor. The Emperor orders it and several Daleks pass through the corridor, becoming infused with the human factor.
The newly infused Daleks begin to question orders from a regular Dalek and it shoots one of the new Daleks. The other human infused Daleks respond and destroy the initial Dalek. The Doctor returns to the room and orders Jamie, Waterfield, Victoria and Kemel out of the city to the TARDIS. He leaves but Waterfield follows him while the others leave the city. The Doctor points out another attack by a regular Dalek and tells the human-infused Daleks that they might fight to survive.
A regular Dalek sees the Doctor and shoots at him but Waterfield steps into the beam and is killed. The Dalek is then destroyed by the other faction. The human-infused Daleks push into the main chamber where the Emperor is destroyed in the crossfire.
Maxtible runs after Jamie, Victoria and Kemel where he attacks Kemel, screaming like a Dalek about killing. He pushes Kemel off the cliff, killing him and then runs back to the city to enter the fight. He slips past the Doctor, who is hiding behind a grate. After Maxtible goes past, the Doctor runs and catches up with Jamie and Victoria. They reach the TARDIS and observe the two factions of Daleks destroying each other.
Analysis
If The Evil of the Daleks kept the pacing and mystery of the first two episodes (and kept itself to four or five parts) I have no doubt that genuine debates would be had between fans as to whether it was the best Dalek story of all time. Unfortunately, it does not and starting in Episode Three, it begins to fall off from it's gripping beginning. It does start to pick itself back up but it does have a bit of a lull in the middle. I suspect the lull wouldn't be quite as pronounced if the episodes existed but it is there.
Now, to be fair, I think the effort to infuse the middle lull with action and plot development does succeed on some level. This is the Second Doctor in a state that I really enjoy: caught flat-footed initially, but now working on a plan to escape the situation. He manipulates Jamie into carrying out the task (which is also a testament to his faith in Jamie's ability to rescue Victoria) and he has an almost smug attitude towards the Daleks as Jamie advances. He's nearly mocking the Daleks for not seeing both the admirable traits in Jamie that are allowing him to succeed and the fact that he is going to create Daleks that will upend the order of the Daleks. This is the Second Doctor at his best, not all-seeing, but quick-thinking and with the ability to create plans that require patience and will result in the total destruction of the enemy.
Although Victoria is introduced in this story, she is a prisoner during the whole and does not function in a companion role. So this is the first story of the Second Doctor run where Jamie is the only companion (The Wheel in Space being the other). Frankly, he's good enough that I think they could have had a full season with just the two of them. Their dynamic might have gotten stale towards the end, but they play so well off each other that I think it would have worked. It certainly does here as Jamie goes the whole gambit of emotions with the Doctor: loyalty, feelings of betrayal, Watsonian assistant, and dashing hero. Jamie is constantly enjoyable in what he does.
Most of the other guest cast is pretty good as well. The person the most short-changed is Kemel as he is silent and that doesn't do much in a recon. Fortunately, there are some telesnaps so you can see that he was visually expressive. Arthur and Ruth were the most superfluous as I never really understood what was going on with Arthur. He was being controlled by the Daleks but for what purpose? Waterfield was controlled via the threat to Victoria and Maxtible was deep in a belief that the Daleks would give him the ability to make gold. So why have Arthur under spell? My guess would be that the Daleks wanted a mobile spy and Arthur was convenient, but that doesn't fully explain all his actions. Why send the thug Toby to kidnap Jamie? Why prevent Maxtible for killing Waterfield once the Doctor has arrived? I have a feeling that more was intended with Arthur but that subplot was dropped in favor of more action scenes with Jamie and Kemel and then Arthur, Ruth and Mollie are drop kicked out of the story just to ensure they don't die when the Daleks destroy the house.
Despite Arthur and Ruth being a bit of a dead end, the real weakest character is actually Victoria. Victoria is not a terrible companion but this story does foreshadow her primary function and that is to be the screaming damsel in distress for most of the run. She has almost no personality development aside from being generally kind-hearted in her feeding of the birds and her treatment of Kemel. She does fight Arthur when he tries to kidnap her so she must have some spirit, but nothing else is really done for her, unlike Samantha in The Faceless Ones, who was clearly being groomed to be a companion. If you didn't already know that Victoria was going to be a companion, the viewer would likely dismiss her out of hand.
The Daleks were quite good in this story. They were not as devious as in The Power of the Daleks but they didn't need to be. They held all the cards and could impose their will as they saw fit. Yet, it was not the mindless killing that we usually get from the Daleks. They had a plan and displayed cunning, both in their trap to lure the Doctor as well as the maze they led Jamie into. Even their final plan was a bit deeper than expected. So much time is spent on the idea of infusing the Daleks with a factor of humanity that it is a bit of shock to learn that it's really a means of honing the purity of a Dalek and then conquering humanity by making them more Dalek-like. I also like to think that this infusion of humanity and it's counter for genetic purity is what starts the factional fighting that first pops up in Resurrection of the Daleks, although since I haven't seen that one yet, I can't confirm that part of my head cannon.
It is a real shame that this doesn't exist as Episode Two is nicely framed and shows some interesting directorial ideas. I was completely surprised when one transition was made using a circle wipe as that seemed rather extravagant for Doctor Who. There's also so much of this story that is clearly done with visual media that you just can't capture with pictures, computer regenerations and replacement actors with their heads not showing. It's all a noble effort but it just makes you pine for the moving images that much more. The final battle in Episode Seven would be worth watching as you get enough from the behind the scenes footage available on the Lost in Time DVD to wet your appetite that much more.
As far as the overall story, you have three phases. There is the mystery in Episodes One and Two and that is the most engaging part to me. You have the testing of Jamie and his little adventures which cover Episodes Three, Four and Five. Then you have the final confrontation on Skaro which is set up in Episode Six and carried out in Seven. Jamie's test is the most padded and where the lull really kicks in. It's not boring (or at least not to me) but you can feel the padding going on. The testing of Jamie and the development of the human factor could easily have been cut down to one or one and a half episodes. In fact, I think this would have been a really tight five-part story, especially if you drop Arthur and Ruth wholesale. Still, the two extra episodes of padding are reasonably well rounded and I think they are only a serious problem if you are watching them all back-to-back with no break. Putting a day between each, eases out the padding and makes it a bit more interesting, in my opinion.
There are recon stories out there that can feel like a real slog. To me, this is not one of them. I enjoyed this story even more the second time around and I think my spacing of the padding in Episodes Three through Five had a lot to do with it. It's not perfect and being a recon does knock it down a peg in my book, but it is a good story and will appeal to most people if they can get past the recon aspect of it. If this were animated, I think it would draw a lot of folks in. It is slightly unfortunate that Victoria is introduced so quietly, but she does come around and has some good moments in Season Five. But I think it's fair to say that I rather enjoyed this one and would revisit it. That is more than doubly so if any part of it was recovered.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Showing posts with label Victoria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Victoria. Show all posts
Friday, July 28, 2017
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
Fury From the Deep
I was fond of her too you know Jamie
A grand bit of thanks must be given to the Australian censors regarding Fury From the Deep. For whatever reason, the censors in that country cut a number of action bits involving the seaweed attacks, giving a surprising amount of recovered material for six episodes of recons. What's more, they added a nice spice to a story that would have worked fairly well as a radio play, given the amount of interactive dialogue.
Plot Summary
The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria land off the coast of England in the North Sea. They paddle to the shore and play for a moment in a large amount of foam on the shore. Jamie notices the foam appearing to come from a pipe nearby. The Doctor investigates, noticing a rather odd noise coming from the pipe. After investigating, the three are gunned down by a stun beam.
The three wake in the control room of a gas pumping station. The commander of the station, Robson, believes they were trying to sabotage the pipe, which has seen a drop in efficiency. They have also lost contact with an offshore crew, putting Robson in an even fouler mood. The three are taken to a spare room and locked in. However, they managed to escape when Victoria picks the lock.
The chief scientist, Harris, is concerned with what the Doctor told him about the noise coming from the pipe. He asks his wife Maggie, who is living on station, to recover a file for him from his office. She does so but is accidentally stung by a bit of seaweed in the file.
The Doctor and his companions overhear Robson speaking to a serviceman about a noise in the pipes. The Doctor and Jamie go to investigate but they tell Victoria to head back to the bunkroom. Victoria leaves but goes in another direction. Seeing someone in the corridor, Victoria ducks into a room and sees a man in a gas mask sabotaging the equipment. The man ducks past her and locks her in. He then opens the flow valve, causing foam to begin to seep in through the duct.
In the impeller room, the Doctor and Jamie listen to sounds in the pipe similar to what they heard earlier. They then hear Victoria screaming and rush off to free her. Her screaming also attracts Robson and others. Upon being released, Victoria tells them that she saw a creature draped in seaweed in the foam but that it swam away when the door was opened.
Jamie and Victoria are sent to the control room to be watched while the Doctor stays with Robson. Harris however comes in and asks for the Doctor as his wife has become ill and foam has appeared around the seaweed that stung her. Robson reluctantly agrees and the Doctor heads off with Harris.
In the apartment, Maggie has recovered slightly and lets in two odd maintenance workers named Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill. The two workers feed the seaweed and the foam begins to expand. The two men then release gas from their mouths, knocking Maggie unconscious. Fortunately, the Doctor, his companions and Harris arrive in time to ventilate the room before the gas kills her. Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill have already left.
Back in the control room, a spike in pipe pressure is observed and Robson orders the pipe vented while still refusing to stop the flow of gas. The pressure drops back to normal but the rate of inflow continues to decrease. Robson argues with the Dutch observer Mr. Van Lutyens but they are cut off when the impeller stops and a beating sounds is heard.
Back in the apartment, the Doctor, Jamie, Victoria and Harris observe watch over Maggie. They find the piece of seaweed from before although the foam has gone away leaving it still wet. The Doctor and Harris determine that the seaweed had been planted in the file when it was stolen from his briefcase. The seaweed trap was meant for Harris. Jamie also recalls that seaweed was covering the pipe they investigated at the start.
Van Lutyen and the chief engineer speculate on the source of the blockage and Van Lutyen wants to send a team to check. Robson still refuses to check when they hear a noise like a heartbeat coming from the pipes again. The impeller briefly starts again but once again fails.
The Doctor bags the seaweed carefully without touching it. He sends Harris off to get medical help for his wife. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria then head back to the TARDIS to do experiments in his lab. In the TARDIS, they discover the seaweed is alive. It is feeding off natural gas and expelling toxic gas. It also displays a level of sentience as it attempts to get out of the tank the Doctor has placed it in and retreats when Victoria screams in recognition of it. The Doctor and Jamie seal it in it's tank and head back to the base to tell the staff.
Harris sends for a medical team but Van Lutyens forces him to stay in the control room to take charge. They and the chief engineer try to convince Robson to allow them to check the pipes for blockage but Robson again refuses, growing increasingly hostile to the threat of his authority. He storms off to his quarters to rest.
Outside his quarters, Mr. Oak locks Robson in and engages the gas. Foam seeps in and a creature like Victoria saw tries to worm it's way in through the vent. Robson flees in terror as Harris responds to his screams and sees the creature retreating back into the vents.
The Doctor and his companions return to the Harris quarters to find it filled with foam. A creature reaches out through the foam and they retreat. The Doctor and Victoria flee to another room but Jamie is trapped in the kitchen. The Doctor and Victoria climb outside and open a skylight to pull Jamie out and away from the foam.
They return to the control room where Harris and Van Lutyens have taken over with Robson's disappearance. They informed their various governments of the situation and are anticipating inspectors to arrive. The Doctor informs them that the seaweed is sentient and attacking. The also learn that Maggie hadn't been taken by the medical staff meaning that she has disappeared as well. Maggie later appears giving instructions to Robson. She then walks into and disappears under the sea.
The control staff continues to try and reach the crews on the off-shore rigs but with no success. Harris meanwhile discovers Robson on the beach but he walks away in a dazed state. Victoria also is growing increasingly panicked over the situation and travels with the Doctor in general.
Van Lutyens decides to head down and inspect the base of the impeller against the warnings of the Doctor. At the base, the seaweed reaches out of the foam and pulls him in. Hearing his screams, the Doctor and Jamie head down after him. Harris returns and is informed of what they have done. The Doctor and Jamie find Van Lutyens' flashlight and keep exploring.
The director, Megan Jones arrives and Harris and the chief engineer go to explain the situation to her leaving control of the elevator to Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill. Ms. Jones doesn't believe Harris about the situation and orders him to send the company helicopter to the off-sea rigs to check on the men there. She is also informed of Robson's disappearance.
At the base of the shaft, the foam bubbles up and the Doctor and Jamie desperately call for the elevator but it doesn't come as Quill and Oak ignore the signal and leave the room. Hurriedly, the Doctor and Jamie climb the emergency ladder and find the impeller room empty with even Victoria gone.
The helicopter radios back that all the lost contact rigs are covered in seaweed and foam with no signs of the crews. Harris urges Ms. Jones to evacuate and destroy the rigs. Robson then bursts in, refusing to let them destroy what is his. He runs out again and the Doctor comes in, informing them that Robson is being controlled by the seaweed. He then fills in Ms. Jones with all the information he has. As he does, the control rig radios in as it is taken over by the seaweed.
Jamie searches the station for Victoria. He finds her knocked out in the pump room. As she wakes, she tells Jamie that Quill and Oak knocked her out. They then hear the weed and see it coming through the pipes. They call the Doctor who realizes that the weed is making it's move to form a full independent colony. It continues to spread, taking over all the offshore rigs.
Working through how the attacks have happened, the Doctor comes to the conclusion that pure oxygen might be fatal to the weed. This alerts Oak and Quill, who head down to the oxygen supply room to destroy the supply.
Word also is sent that Robson has been found and put into his quarters under guard. Ms. Jones heads down to speak with him, hoping to break through his control. Robson has a brief moment of lucidity but then goes catatonic. Ms. Jones leaves him and returns to the control room. Robson wakes and receives instructions from the weed. He knocks out the guard and leaves him room.
Discovering the oxygen supply destroyed, the crew realizes that there is another agent of the weed in the facility. Quill and Oak leave but are spotted by Jamie and Victoria. Oak escapes but Jamie knocks Quill down as Victoria screams.
Before they can investigate further, the weed expands and blows out the containment pipe. In the confusion, Robson grabs Victoria and drags her away. He also locks the impeller room doors but the Doctor manages to force one door open for a short time allowing himself and Jamie to escape. They run looking for Victoria.
Robson takes Victoria away in a waiting car. He drives her out to the company helicopter and places her inside. He then takes off and flies out to the control rig. The Doctor tries to talk to him but Robson sends back that Victoria will be killed unless the Doctor comes out as well. The Doctor agrees thinking that this will lead him to the nerve center of the weed.
The Doctor and Jamie follow Robson in another company helicopter. Tracking Robson on radar, the Doctor's helicopter heads to the control rig complex. They spy one tower covered in foam and realize that it is the nerve center of the weed. He and Jamie leave the helicopter via rope ladder and enter the foam covered tower.
The Doctor and Jamie hear Victoria but suspect a trap. They enter a room filled with foam to find Robson taken over and waiting for them. Robson attacks the Doctor and Jamie finds Victoria. Seeing Robson attack, she screams which drives back Robson. Recalling Victoria's scream causing the weed to recoil in the TARDIS. He tells Victoria to keep screaming. Robson retreats into the foam away from the Doctor and his companions.
The three return to the roof but their helicopter doesn't see them. They instead head to the helicopter that Robson took and take off from the rig with the Doctor flying. Their original helicopter sees them and walks the Doctor through the procedure on how to fly back to the base.
The Doctor returns with a plan. Upon arriving, the Doctor checks in on Quill and finds him nearly cured due to Victoria's screaming. He informs Harris and Ms. Jones of this and makes a plan. He has Victoria scream into a tape recorder and they create a loop of this sound. He then sets up speakers along the various pipes to transmit the sound. The foam and weed push through trying to take over the base.
The Doctor sets up a machine that will focus the sound into a beam for transmission through the base and the pipes back to the nerve center on the rig. The crew uses sound speakers to hold back the weed while the Doctor activates his machine. The beam passes through the pipes and the weed flops around and falls over dead.
They radio the rigs and find the weed dead and the crews (including Robson and Maggie) alive and safe. As they celebrate, the Doctor concludes that Victoria wants to stay behind as she has become overwrought with travelling from danger to danger. He arranges that she can stay with Mr. and Mrs. Harris. Victoria has a quiet goodbye with Jamie that night. She waves the Doctor off from the beach the following morning as he and Jamie head back to the TARDIS.
Analysis
I was a bit surprised at how much I enjoyed this story. When you see a six-episode story and it's all recon, you tend to roll your eyes and figure that you'll have to power through. But the story was fairly well developed and had a pretty good progressive flow. I don't even recall too many moments where there was clear back and forth padding, which there often is in a six-parter.
Having now seen all of Victoria's stories, I can't say that I was unhappy to see the back of her. She worked fairly well for the roll she was asked to play, but she was often written as a shriek-y, timid, damsel-in-distress. Granted, if you took a 17-year old girl from Victorian London and plopped her in the situations seen, that would be a pretty realistic development. But it doesn't make for the most enjoyable experience with a companion. She wasn't too bad in this one as she was certainly less hysterical than in The Ice Warriors and her screaming actually served a plot purpose. But it was still quite a contrast to the wit and smarm that will come with Zoe.
I don't mind that they broadcast heavily that she was leaving as it was far different than the short shrift most companions (Ben and Polly being the most recent examples) got in leaving the show. It was a little drawn out with several repeats of it. The scene Jamie had with Victoria early in Episode Four was probably all the foreshadowing that was really needed rather than the constant whimpering that she did. But, I really did like the quiet scene she had with Jamie at the end of Episode Six. It gave a nice poinency to her time and Jamie's feelings towards her, which seem tinged with a slight romance as opposed to the very brother/sister dynamic he has with Zoe.
The Doctor was quite good in this story as he took a very understated role. I got the impression that he cottoned on to the seaweed as the source of the problem very early but didn't reveal his cards until he had more evidence and it was necessary to show the full problem. Even after the problem had been diagnosed, the Doctor remained understated until the very end when the actual fight came. I like the Doctor, especially the Second Doctor, when he is more observational and only steps in to solve the problem when people are ready to listen.
The secondary cast was all pretty good to. You had a nice good cop/bad cop dynamic with Harris and Robson and some good support work from the Chief Engineer and Van Lutyens. Even the later arriving Ms. Jones was quite good. It was nice to see a professional woman who both listened to the Doctor and also stood her ground.
Going further along this, it was interesting to see how Harris and Jones each replaced the other as the voice of reason with listening to the Doctor. Harris stood up for the Doctor against Robson. However, once Robson's blustering antagonism was gone, Harris wilted into someone a bit more fearful and concerned for the crew. That's not a bad thing but his fear nearly overwhelmed him in Episode Six. Jones however steps in and becomes the rational voice, still adhering to the Doctor. Although Harris had been the Doctor's ally in the beginning, it is Jones who backs the Doctor in the final battle against the weed while Harris is all for retreat in the face of danger. It is a nice change in the dynamic and it adds an extra depth to Robson's character as well since it was his bluster that gave Harris what little spine he had.
The one principle thing I would have liked clarification on was just exactly when Robson had been taken over. After known possession, Robson becomes quite docile, even catatonic at points, suggesting that there is a part of him that is fighting the weed's control. This suggests that he is not under the weed's control until the end of Episode Three. I can only guess that he was actually stung by the weed when it burst into his room and before he was able to break the door open and flee.
This actually disappoints me a bit. A very big deal was made of how Robson worked and lived for four years out on the offshore rigs. I think it would have been a bit more interesting if he had become infected by the weed while working out there and slowly building up the weed as he gained power over the whole system. A bit of a mole used to grow the enemy, which would have explained his irrational action of refusing to shut down the flow of gas, being used to both feed and hide the weed.
Instead, the implication we get is that Oak and Quill were the first ones infected and they were assisting the weed the whole time. It still works from an overall plot, but Robson being the focal point of the weed's control would have been a touch more interesting given his screen time and presence. You can almost imagine that an infected Robson comes back and dispatches Quill and Oak to his old station to infect them while he works to feed the weed. Once they are back, he works though them to ensure the growth of the weed, to destroy any weaknesses and to infect others. Again, it still works with Oak and Quill as the quiet drones, but it's a little less satisfying given their limited screen time in the beginning.
One other little thing that is a bit odd is the casual dismissal of Mrs. Harris. She's a rather important point through the first half of this story as she is infected rather than her husband. Quill and Oak attempt to kill her and when that fails, the weed fully takes over. But at the end of Episode Three, she is unceremoniously dropped by swimming into the sea. It is even odder in the fact that she seems to be further engrained into the hive mind than Robson, giving him instructions before she swims off. Granted there was little to be done with her character at that point, especially with the more commanding Ms. Jones entering, but it still seemed like a very odd dismissal of a character who then randomly shows up at the end to give the happy ending.
As mentioned above, this story is not overly hurt by only being available as a recon as much of the story is driven though interactive dialogue like a radio play. However, the limited footage that does exist due to the Australian censors and enthusiastic fans is very helpful. It is especially nice in that portions of the battle with the weed in Episode Six can be seen. In addition to this being the action portion of the story, making it nice to see, it shows that the work they did with the special effects regarding the weed worked fairly well. The foam can look a bit silly, especially when they land on the platform at the beginning of Episode Six but the end confrontation with the weed lashing out like the squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea looked pretty good.
Another thing that would have been good to see was the full effect of the slow build. Like Jaws, the seaweed benefits from being more implied rather than seen. A small glimpse through the ductwork in Episodes One and Three work fairly well and the use of the foam to hide the weed until it lashes out like a snake makes it all the more scary. In many ways, this story borrows heavily from suspense/horror work for a nice slow building tension. The recon does a decent job of portraying that, but it would have been nice to see the full effect given that facial reaction/body language sells a good portion of that. Still, it is a format that does not suffer as greatly from being consigned to recon status.
On the whole, I'd recommend this story. It's not bad as a recon and I think it would only improve if it were ever found. It was a nice goodbye for Victoria and gave her character some dignity that it was occasionally lacking during her tenure. Being able to savor her goodbye with the quiet scene between her and Jamie in the garden was also very nice and added a nice cap to the story. Even as a recon I think I would pull this out again and watch it. Obviously I would all for seeing it again if it were ever found.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
A grand bit of thanks must be given to the Australian censors regarding Fury From the Deep. For whatever reason, the censors in that country cut a number of action bits involving the seaweed attacks, giving a surprising amount of recovered material for six episodes of recons. What's more, they added a nice spice to a story that would have worked fairly well as a radio play, given the amount of interactive dialogue.
Plot Summary
The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria land off the coast of England in the North Sea. They paddle to the shore and play for a moment in a large amount of foam on the shore. Jamie notices the foam appearing to come from a pipe nearby. The Doctor investigates, noticing a rather odd noise coming from the pipe. After investigating, the three are gunned down by a stun beam.
The three wake in the control room of a gas pumping station. The commander of the station, Robson, believes they were trying to sabotage the pipe, which has seen a drop in efficiency. They have also lost contact with an offshore crew, putting Robson in an even fouler mood. The three are taken to a spare room and locked in. However, they managed to escape when Victoria picks the lock.
The chief scientist, Harris, is concerned with what the Doctor told him about the noise coming from the pipe. He asks his wife Maggie, who is living on station, to recover a file for him from his office. She does so but is accidentally stung by a bit of seaweed in the file.
The Doctor and his companions overhear Robson speaking to a serviceman about a noise in the pipes. The Doctor and Jamie go to investigate but they tell Victoria to head back to the bunkroom. Victoria leaves but goes in another direction. Seeing someone in the corridor, Victoria ducks into a room and sees a man in a gas mask sabotaging the equipment. The man ducks past her and locks her in. He then opens the flow valve, causing foam to begin to seep in through the duct.
In the impeller room, the Doctor and Jamie listen to sounds in the pipe similar to what they heard earlier. They then hear Victoria screaming and rush off to free her. Her screaming also attracts Robson and others. Upon being released, Victoria tells them that she saw a creature draped in seaweed in the foam but that it swam away when the door was opened.
Jamie and Victoria are sent to the control room to be watched while the Doctor stays with Robson. Harris however comes in and asks for the Doctor as his wife has become ill and foam has appeared around the seaweed that stung her. Robson reluctantly agrees and the Doctor heads off with Harris.
In the apartment, Maggie has recovered slightly and lets in two odd maintenance workers named Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill. The two workers feed the seaweed and the foam begins to expand. The two men then release gas from their mouths, knocking Maggie unconscious. Fortunately, the Doctor, his companions and Harris arrive in time to ventilate the room before the gas kills her. Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill have already left.
Back in the control room, a spike in pipe pressure is observed and Robson orders the pipe vented while still refusing to stop the flow of gas. The pressure drops back to normal but the rate of inflow continues to decrease. Robson argues with the Dutch observer Mr. Van Lutyens but they are cut off when the impeller stops and a beating sounds is heard.
Back in the apartment, the Doctor, Jamie, Victoria and Harris observe watch over Maggie. They find the piece of seaweed from before although the foam has gone away leaving it still wet. The Doctor and Harris determine that the seaweed had been planted in the file when it was stolen from his briefcase. The seaweed trap was meant for Harris. Jamie also recalls that seaweed was covering the pipe they investigated at the start.
Van Lutyen and the chief engineer speculate on the source of the blockage and Van Lutyen wants to send a team to check. Robson still refuses to check when they hear a noise like a heartbeat coming from the pipes again. The impeller briefly starts again but once again fails.
The Doctor bags the seaweed carefully without touching it. He sends Harris off to get medical help for his wife. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria then head back to the TARDIS to do experiments in his lab. In the TARDIS, they discover the seaweed is alive. It is feeding off natural gas and expelling toxic gas. It also displays a level of sentience as it attempts to get out of the tank the Doctor has placed it in and retreats when Victoria screams in recognition of it. The Doctor and Jamie seal it in it's tank and head back to the base to tell the staff.
Harris sends for a medical team but Van Lutyens forces him to stay in the control room to take charge. They and the chief engineer try to convince Robson to allow them to check the pipes for blockage but Robson again refuses, growing increasingly hostile to the threat of his authority. He storms off to his quarters to rest.
Outside his quarters, Mr. Oak locks Robson in and engages the gas. Foam seeps in and a creature like Victoria saw tries to worm it's way in through the vent. Robson flees in terror as Harris responds to his screams and sees the creature retreating back into the vents.
The Doctor and his companions return to the Harris quarters to find it filled with foam. A creature reaches out through the foam and they retreat. The Doctor and Victoria flee to another room but Jamie is trapped in the kitchen. The Doctor and Victoria climb outside and open a skylight to pull Jamie out and away from the foam.
They return to the control room where Harris and Van Lutyens have taken over with Robson's disappearance. They informed their various governments of the situation and are anticipating inspectors to arrive. The Doctor informs them that the seaweed is sentient and attacking. The also learn that Maggie hadn't been taken by the medical staff meaning that she has disappeared as well. Maggie later appears giving instructions to Robson. She then walks into and disappears under the sea.
The control staff continues to try and reach the crews on the off-shore rigs but with no success. Harris meanwhile discovers Robson on the beach but he walks away in a dazed state. Victoria also is growing increasingly panicked over the situation and travels with the Doctor in general.
Van Lutyens decides to head down and inspect the base of the impeller against the warnings of the Doctor. At the base, the seaweed reaches out of the foam and pulls him in. Hearing his screams, the Doctor and Jamie head down after him. Harris returns and is informed of what they have done. The Doctor and Jamie find Van Lutyens' flashlight and keep exploring.
The director, Megan Jones arrives and Harris and the chief engineer go to explain the situation to her leaving control of the elevator to Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill. Ms. Jones doesn't believe Harris about the situation and orders him to send the company helicopter to the off-sea rigs to check on the men there. She is also informed of Robson's disappearance.
At the base of the shaft, the foam bubbles up and the Doctor and Jamie desperately call for the elevator but it doesn't come as Quill and Oak ignore the signal and leave the room. Hurriedly, the Doctor and Jamie climb the emergency ladder and find the impeller room empty with even Victoria gone.
The helicopter radios back that all the lost contact rigs are covered in seaweed and foam with no signs of the crews. Harris urges Ms. Jones to evacuate and destroy the rigs. Robson then bursts in, refusing to let them destroy what is his. He runs out again and the Doctor comes in, informing them that Robson is being controlled by the seaweed. He then fills in Ms. Jones with all the information he has. As he does, the control rig radios in as it is taken over by the seaweed.
Jamie searches the station for Victoria. He finds her knocked out in the pump room. As she wakes, she tells Jamie that Quill and Oak knocked her out. They then hear the weed and see it coming through the pipes. They call the Doctor who realizes that the weed is making it's move to form a full independent colony. It continues to spread, taking over all the offshore rigs.
Working through how the attacks have happened, the Doctor comes to the conclusion that pure oxygen might be fatal to the weed. This alerts Oak and Quill, who head down to the oxygen supply room to destroy the supply.
Word also is sent that Robson has been found and put into his quarters under guard. Ms. Jones heads down to speak with him, hoping to break through his control. Robson has a brief moment of lucidity but then goes catatonic. Ms. Jones leaves him and returns to the control room. Robson wakes and receives instructions from the weed. He knocks out the guard and leaves him room.
Discovering the oxygen supply destroyed, the crew realizes that there is another agent of the weed in the facility. Quill and Oak leave but are spotted by Jamie and Victoria. Oak escapes but Jamie knocks Quill down as Victoria screams.
Before they can investigate further, the weed expands and blows out the containment pipe. In the confusion, Robson grabs Victoria and drags her away. He also locks the impeller room doors but the Doctor manages to force one door open for a short time allowing himself and Jamie to escape. They run looking for Victoria.
Robson takes Victoria away in a waiting car. He drives her out to the company helicopter and places her inside. He then takes off and flies out to the control rig. The Doctor tries to talk to him but Robson sends back that Victoria will be killed unless the Doctor comes out as well. The Doctor agrees thinking that this will lead him to the nerve center of the weed.
The Doctor and Jamie follow Robson in another company helicopter. Tracking Robson on radar, the Doctor's helicopter heads to the control rig complex. They spy one tower covered in foam and realize that it is the nerve center of the weed. He and Jamie leave the helicopter via rope ladder and enter the foam covered tower.
The Doctor and Jamie hear Victoria but suspect a trap. They enter a room filled with foam to find Robson taken over and waiting for them. Robson attacks the Doctor and Jamie finds Victoria. Seeing Robson attack, she screams which drives back Robson. Recalling Victoria's scream causing the weed to recoil in the TARDIS. He tells Victoria to keep screaming. Robson retreats into the foam away from the Doctor and his companions.
The three return to the roof but their helicopter doesn't see them. They instead head to the helicopter that Robson took and take off from the rig with the Doctor flying. Their original helicopter sees them and walks the Doctor through the procedure on how to fly back to the base.
The Doctor returns with a plan. Upon arriving, the Doctor checks in on Quill and finds him nearly cured due to Victoria's screaming. He informs Harris and Ms. Jones of this and makes a plan. He has Victoria scream into a tape recorder and they create a loop of this sound. He then sets up speakers along the various pipes to transmit the sound. The foam and weed push through trying to take over the base.
The Doctor sets up a machine that will focus the sound into a beam for transmission through the base and the pipes back to the nerve center on the rig. The crew uses sound speakers to hold back the weed while the Doctor activates his machine. The beam passes through the pipes and the weed flops around and falls over dead.
They radio the rigs and find the weed dead and the crews (including Robson and Maggie) alive and safe. As they celebrate, the Doctor concludes that Victoria wants to stay behind as she has become overwrought with travelling from danger to danger. He arranges that she can stay with Mr. and Mrs. Harris. Victoria has a quiet goodbye with Jamie that night. She waves the Doctor off from the beach the following morning as he and Jamie head back to the TARDIS.
Analysis
I was a bit surprised at how much I enjoyed this story. When you see a six-episode story and it's all recon, you tend to roll your eyes and figure that you'll have to power through. But the story was fairly well developed and had a pretty good progressive flow. I don't even recall too many moments where there was clear back and forth padding, which there often is in a six-parter.
Having now seen all of Victoria's stories, I can't say that I was unhappy to see the back of her. She worked fairly well for the roll she was asked to play, but she was often written as a shriek-y, timid, damsel-in-distress. Granted, if you took a 17-year old girl from Victorian London and plopped her in the situations seen, that would be a pretty realistic development. But it doesn't make for the most enjoyable experience with a companion. She wasn't too bad in this one as she was certainly less hysterical than in The Ice Warriors and her screaming actually served a plot purpose. But it was still quite a contrast to the wit and smarm that will come with Zoe.
I don't mind that they broadcast heavily that she was leaving as it was far different than the short shrift most companions (Ben and Polly being the most recent examples) got in leaving the show. It was a little drawn out with several repeats of it. The scene Jamie had with Victoria early in Episode Four was probably all the foreshadowing that was really needed rather than the constant whimpering that she did. But, I really did like the quiet scene she had with Jamie at the end of Episode Six. It gave a nice poinency to her time and Jamie's feelings towards her, which seem tinged with a slight romance as opposed to the very brother/sister dynamic he has with Zoe.
The Doctor was quite good in this story as he took a very understated role. I got the impression that he cottoned on to the seaweed as the source of the problem very early but didn't reveal his cards until he had more evidence and it was necessary to show the full problem. Even after the problem had been diagnosed, the Doctor remained understated until the very end when the actual fight came. I like the Doctor, especially the Second Doctor, when he is more observational and only steps in to solve the problem when people are ready to listen.
The secondary cast was all pretty good to. You had a nice good cop/bad cop dynamic with Harris and Robson and some good support work from the Chief Engineer and Van Lutyens. Even the later arriving Ms. Jones was quite good. It was nice to see a professional woman who both listened to the Doctor and also stood her ground.
Going further along this, it was interesting to see how Harris and Jones each replaced the other as the voice of reason with listening to the Doctor. Harris stood up for the Doctor against Robson. However, once Robson's blustering antagonism was gone, Harris wilted into someone a bit more fearful and concerned for the crew. That's not a bad thing but his fear nearly overwhelmed him in Episode Six. Jones however steps in and becomes the rational voice, still adhering to the Doctor. Although Harris had been the Doctor's ally in the beginning, it is Jones who backs the Doctor in the final battle against the weed while Harris is all for retreat in the face of danger. It is a nice change in the dynamic and it adds an extra depth to Robson's character as well since it was his bluster that gave Harris what little spine he had.
The one principle thing I would have liked clarification on was just exactly when Robson had been taken over. After known possession, Robson becomes quite docile, even catatonic at points, suggesting that there is a part of him that is fighting the weed's control. This suggests that he is not under the weed's control until the end of Episode Three. I can only guess that he was actually stung by the weed when it burst into his room and before he was able to break the door open and flee.
This actually disappoints me a bit. A very big deal was made of how Robson worked and lived for four years out on the offshore rigs. I think it would have been a bit more interesting if he had become infected by the weed while working out there and slowly building up the weed as he gained power over the whole system. A bit of a mole used to grow the enemy, which would have explained his irrational action of refusing to shut down the flow of gas, being used to both feed and hide the weed.
Instead, the implication we get is that Oak and Quill were the first ones infected and they were assisting the weed the whole time. It still works from an overall plot, but Robson being the focal point of the weed's control would have been a touch more interesting given his screen time and presence. You can almost imagine that an infected Robson comes back and dispatches Quill and Oak to his old station to infect them while he works to feed the weed. Once they are back, he works though them to ensure the growth of the weed, to destroy any weaknesses and to infect others. Again, it still works with Oak and Quill as the quiet drones, but it's a little less satisfying given their limited screen time in the beginning.
One other little thing that is a bit odd is the casual dismissal of Mrs. Harris. She's a rather important point through the first half of this story as she is infected rather than her husband. Quill and Oak attempt to kill her and when that fails, the weed fully takes over. But at the end of Episode Three, she is unceremoniously dropped by swimming into the sea. It is even odder in the fact that she seems to be further engrained into the hive mind than Robson, giving him instructions before she swims off. Granted there was little to be done with her character at that point, especially with the more commanding Ms. Jones entering, but it still seemed like a very odd dismissal of a character who then randomly shows up at the end to give the happy ending.
As mentioned above, this story is not overly hurt by only being available as a recon as much of the story is driven though interactive dialogue like a radio play. However, the limited footage that does exist due to the Australian censors and enthusiastic fans is very helpful. It is especially nice in that portions of the battle with the weed in Episode Six can be seen. In addition to this being the action portion of the story, making it nice to see, it shows that the work they did with the special effects regarding the weed worked fairly well. The foam can look a bit silly, especially when they land on the platform at the beginning of Episode Six but the end confrontation with the weed lashing out like the squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea looked pretty good.
Another thing that would have been good to see was the full effect of the slow build. Like Jaws, the seaweed benefits from being more implied rather than seen. A small glimpse through the ductwork in Episodes One and Three work fairly well and the use of the foam to hide the weed until it lashes out like a snake makes it all the more scary. In many ways, this story borrows heavily from suspense/horror work for a nice slow building tension. The recon does a decent job of portraying that, but it would have been nice to see the full effect given that facial reaction/body language sells a good portion of that. Still, it is a format that does not suffer as greatly from being consigned to recon status.
On the whole, I'd recommend this story. It's not bad as a recon and I think it would only improve if it were ever found. It was a nice goodbye for Victoria and gave her character some dignity that it was occasionally lacking during her tenure. Being able to savor her goodbye with the quiet scene between her and Jamie in the garden was also very nice and added a nice cap to the story. Even as a recon I think I would pull this out again and watch it. Obviously I would all for seeing it again if it were ever found.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Friday, July 29, 2016
The Ice Warriors
I never answer questions until I am addressed properly.
The Ice Warriors is a very standard Second Doctor story with a literal base-under-siege story and a hulking alien menace. In fact, as the New Series took off, the Ice Warriors themselves became something of a touchstone joke in that if they were brought back, it would be the end of the show as they were reverting to the stereotypical "man in rubber suit" monster. Given the Slytheen, I think that was a bit of a dumb joke to begin with and Cold War was an excellent revival of the Ice Warriors, killing the joke even further. As for the original story that spawned them...
Plot Summary
The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria materialize upside down in snow station. Entering the base, the Doctor assists the team in preventing the reactor from exploding. The team is in charge of using ionizing radiation to push back the spread of glaciers, threatening to overwhelm Earth. Director Clent thanks the Doctor for his help and then asks him to come talk to him while he rests.
Meanwhile, a survey team from the base discovers a body frozen in the glacier. They cut it out and bring it back to the base for study. One of the team is lost in an avalanche but the others survive. They are observed by two men who have gone feral, one of whom breaks his arm in the avalanche.
In Director Clent's room, the Doctor learns that the spread of the glaciers came about due to a major decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide and that the team uses ionizing radiation to carefully melt the encroaching ice. He impresses Clent who asks the Doctor to stay on as the former chief scientist has disappeared (he is one of the feral men outside). The Doctor agrees to help.
The survey team arrives and the body begins to thaw. The team thinks it might be some early civilization but the Doctor is concerned as he observes futuristic elements on the body's armor. He follows Clent and the team out and as Jamie and Victoria chat, the Ice Warrior begins to wake up. He knocks Jamie down and drags Victoria out, questioning her as to the state of things.
The Doctor warns the station crew of what he has found when Jamie enters telling them that the creature has escaped. The scientist Arden and Jamie are dispatched to find both Victoria and the Ice Warrior's ship as the ionizer could cause it's engines to explode which could contaminate the whole region in radiation.
The rogue scientist Penley sets the arm of his companion Storr in a plant museum where they are hiding out. Penley decides to head back to Britannia Base to get medical supplies for Storr. Upon entering, he sees the Ice Warrior (named Varga) drag Victoria back to the medical bay. Victoria sees him but manages to avoid having him discovered. In the medical bay, Victoria and Varga find the electrical equipment which revived him. They are happened upon by Clent but Varga knocks him out and leaves, taking Victoria as a hostage.
Penley enters the medical bay and grabs the drugs he needs. He also grabs smelling salts to revive Clent when the Doctor enters. The Doctor takes the salts and works on Clent. He asks Penley to stay and help but Penley dismisses him, noting that Storr will die without his help. As Clent comes around, the technician Miss Garrett enters to inform them that the Varga and Victoria broke through the perimeter and are heading to the glacier. Clent elects to wait until morning to redirect Arden and Jamie due to the dangers of night travel.
Taking the equipment, Varga finds the location of his ship and his crew members. He uses the electrical equipment to begin to revive them. Once the crew is revived, Varga orders his men to make a tunnel in the ice to the ship and to lay a trap for the humans.
Penley and Storr are visited by Miss Garrett who tries to convince Penley to come back and help. Penley refuses, noting Clent's slavish routine to computers and his own desire to keep his humanity. After she leaves, Penley goes to investigate the Ice Warriors.
Arden and Jamie discover the cave the Ice Warriors have created and are gunned down. Arden is killed but Jamie is only wounded. The Warriors leave the bodies to see if any other humans come. Penley sees the attack and drags Jamie back to the plant museum. Storr is unhappy about it but Penley nurses Jamie who repeatedly tries to get up to rescue Victoria. He eventually passes out from the pain.
Back at the base, the Doctor successfully solves the ionizing problem with the help of some of Penley's notes. Clent is happy and tries to implement things immediately but the Doctor and Miss Garrett stop him as they still don't know where the Ice Warrior ship is. They try to raise Arden on the communicator but get no response from him. They do get a response from Victoria who has snuck out of the ship. She tells them that Arden was killed but she doesn't know about Jamie. The Ice Warriors watch her and prepare to kill her with the exterior gun.
Varga intercedes and orders them to keep her alive for information as they are out of fuel and will need more. He sends a warrior out to collect her but she runs into an ice tunnel. The tunnel dead ends and when the warrior catches her, she screams causing a small cave in. The warrior is buried but she only partially. However, she still is caught in his grip and calls out for help.
Back at the base the Doctor decides to go out to the ship himself, arming himself only with a radio and a vial of ammonium sulfate. At the same time, Storr elects to go to the Ice Warriors for help with Jamie, believing that they were provoked by the men at the base. Penley goes after him, convinced the Ice Warriors are hostile.
Storr hears Victoria's cries for help and goes down the passage to look for her. Penley does not and proceeds on to the ship entrance where he meets the Doctor. He tells him that they rescued Jamie and Penley and the Doctor head back to the plant museum. There the Doctor examines Jamie and asks Penley to take him back to the base for full treatment as he has to go back to the ship.
Storr frees Victoria but goes on with her to the ship where the Ice Warriors take her back inside. When they learn that Storr is only a Luddite local, they kill him as he brings them no value.
The Doctor arrives shortly after this and gains entry to the ship. The Ice Warriors take him prisoner and he is reunited with Victoria. The Doctor learns that there is risk if the Ice Warrior ship is hit by the ionizer but he also learns they are out of fuel. The Ice Warriors decide to attack the base with their sonic gun to force the humans to yield the fuel they need.
Penley drags Jamie across the ice in a sled. They are briefly impeded by a bear but make it to the base. Once inside, Jamie pleads for them to help the Doctor and Victoria while Penley confronts Cleff on his slavish devotion to the computer decrees. Cleff is paralyzed with indecision as the computer will not offer a solution to either using the ionizer and risking blowing up the Martian ship or standing down and letting the glacier crush the base. Penley and Jamie are stunned and taken to the medical bay.
The Doctor uses his ammonium sulfate to knock out the Ice Warrior guarding them but he still manages to fire the sonic gun, damaging the base. Oblivious to the Doctor's release, Varga leads his remaining men into the base to take the reactor fuel for their own engines. Cleff tries to stall for time, but cowers as the warriors take control.
The Doctor rewires the sonic gun to a higher pitch to use against the Ice Warriors. At the same time, Penley turns up the heat, disorienting the warriors. The Doctor fires, injuring the warriors and knocking the humans unconscious. He signals the base, making Varga aware of what happened. As Varga and his men retreat to the ship, the Doctor destroys the sonic gun and he and Victoria flee to the base.
With the glacier almost on top of them, the Doctor informs Cleff that they have no choice but to use the ionizer and take the risk that they won't set off a nuclear explosion. Cleff still demurs so Penley takes the controls and uses the ionizer. The Ice Warriors make the mistake that the heat signature is a small amount of remaining fuel powering the engine up. However the ionizer eventually melts the ice and the ship, killing the Ice Warriors inside. Because it was out of fuel, the explosion only releases a small amount of background radiation, easily absorbed by the atmosphere.
Cleff leaves Penley in command as he prepares to file a report on what happened. When the look to see if the Doctor will consult, they find he has gone along with Victoria and a recovered Jamie. The TARDIS subsequently disappears.
Analysis
I would say that The Ice Warriors has good points and bad points. Despite their clunky design, the Ice Warriors are a fairly menacing villain. They don't feel over the top evil, but cold and calculating with little regard for humans. What's more, there are almost no points where they seem dumb so that someone can get the drop on them. The Doctor knocking out the gunner is played for comedy and there is one point where Victoria should clearly have been seen when fleeing from the pursuing warrior, but these are small exceptions. I didn't particularly care for the constant hissing voice but it did seem less noticeable when the warriors were incorporated more fully into the scenes starting in Episode Four.
The Doctor and the supporting cast were all pretty good as well. The weakest link was Victoria who was absolutely useless in this story. She was whiney and shriek-y for the entire story. I know she was the damsel-in-distress for pretty much the whole story, but the intonation of her voice and her constant speech as though on the verge of tears was just tiresome to listen to.
I actually would have liked more development with Cleff and his love affair with the computer. I get that his deferment to the computer to make decisions was a driving factor in why Penley was on the outside and against him, but I feel like the story would have benefited with a bit more development along this line. I get the feeling that there was commentary being made of society at the time, especially with mid-level manager types, like Cleff, who are useless administrators unless someone or something clearly gives them orders to do so. There is a kernel of an interesting idea with Cleff so dependent on technology that he ceases to function mentally without it. I would have liked more of that.
I will say that this story is rather padded. It is six episodes with Episodes Two and Three only available in recon (or animation). But there is a recon that combines Episode Two and Three into one 15 minute episode. The fact that the BBC could do that demonstrates how much filler there is. I think this story could easily have been cut to four episodes and still had time to develop the situation with Cleff's dependency.
I was actually comparing this story to The Sensorites in my mind, having just watched it recently. The Sensorites is also six episodes and it can be argued that it too has filler in the middle. But in The Sensorites I felt a natural flow from one crisis to another as they worked to resolve the overall story. There wasn't a whole lot of doubling back and giving characters a run around just for the sake of filling time. In The Ice Warriors, you get a bit of that. There is no point in Victoria's escape except to ensure that Penley runs into the Doctor by himself. Storr would have been killed by the Ice Warriors either way and Victoria ends up a prisoner again at the end of it. It was just a way to give an action sequence as well as a cliff hanger that filled additional time.
Taking a more positive tack, the writing was fairly sharp I thought. The interaction between the characters was witty and there weren't a lot of scenes where characters would just talk for the purposes of exposition. There were the occasional clunkers with Penley and Storr's conversation in the plant museum or Miss Garrett and her rather fawning ways over both Cleff and the computer, but these are exceptions. My own favorite moment was when the Doctor was preparing to head to the Ice Warrior ship but talked about how urgently he needed something from the chemical producer and it ended up being a glass of water. It was a good moment of levity and well played by the actors both building tension and then defusing it with a dry joke.
As far as an overall recommendation, I'm a bit torn. There is a lot of positivity to the story and I never felt like it was bad when I watched it. However, the padding and the problems I had with the sound made watching it a bit of a struggle at times as I found myself starting to lose interest at a couple of points. Unfortunately, I think I need to go on the lower end of the scale, especially as I found Victoria just so unappealing in this story. Again, it's not bad and I wouldn't object to watching it again, but there are so many better Second Doctor stories to choose from, even with 2/3s of this story existing.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
The Ice Warriors is a very standard Second Doctor story with a literal base-under-siege story and a hulking alien menace. In fact, as the New Series took off, the Ice Warriors themselves became something of a touchstone joke in that if they were brought back, it would be the end of the show as they were reverting to the stereotypical "man in rubber suit" monster. Given the Slytheen, I think that was a bit of a dumb joke to begin with and Cold War was an excellent revival of the Ice Warriors, killing the joke even further. As for the original story that spawned them...
Plot Summary
The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria materialize upside down in snow station. Entering the base, the Doctor assists the team in preventing the reactor from exploding. The team is in charge of using ionizing radiation to push back the spread of glaciers, threatening to overwhelm Earth. Director Clent thanks the Doctor for his help and then asks him to come talk to him while he rests.
Meanwhile, a survey team from the base discovers a body frozen in the glacier. They cut it out and bring it back to the base for study. One of the team is lost in an avalanche but the others survive. They are observed by two men who have gone feral, one of whom breaks his arm in the avalanche.
In Director Clent's room, the Doctor learns that the spread of the glaciers came about due to a major decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide and that the team uses ionizing radiation to carefully melt the encroaching ice. He impresses Clent who asks the Doctor to stay on as the former chief scientist has disappeared (he is one of the feral men outside). The Doctor agrees to help.
The survey team arrives and the body begins to thaw. The team thinks it might be some early civilization but the Doctor is concerned as he observes futuristic elements on the body's armor. He follows Clent and the team out and as Jamie and Victoria chat, the Ice Warrior begins to wake up. He knocks Jamie down and drags Victoria out, questioning her as to the state of things.
The Doctor warns the station crew of what he has found when Jamie enters telling them that the creature has escaped. The scientist Arden and Jamie are dispatched to find both Victoria and the Ice Warrior's ship as the ionizer could cause it's engines to explode which could contaminate the whole region in radiation.
The rogue scientist Penley sets the arm of his companion Storr in a plant museum where they are hiding out. Penley decides to head back to Britannia Base to get medical supplies for Storr. Upon entering, he sees the Ice Warrior (named Varga) drag Victoria back to the medical bay. Victoria sees him but manages to avoid having him discovered. In the medical bay, Victoria and Varga find the electrical equipment which revived him. They are happened upon by Clent but Varga knocks him out and leaves, taking Victoria as a hostage.
Penley enters the medical bay and grabs the drugs he needs. He also grabs smelling salts to revive Clent when the Doctor enters. The Doctor takes the salts and works on Clent. He asks Penley to stay and help but Penley dismisses him, noting that Storr will die without his help. As Clent comes around, the technician Miss Garrett enters to inform them that the Varga and Victoria broke through the perimeter and are heading to the glacier. Clent elects to wait until morning to redirect Arden and Jamie due to the dangers of night travel.
Taking the equipment, Varga finds the location of his ship and his crew members. He uses the electrical equipment to begin to revive them. Once the crew is revived, Varga orders his men to make a tunnel in the ice to the ship and to lay a trap for the humans.
Penley and Storr are visited by Miss Garrett who tries to convince Penley to come back and help. Penley refuses, noting Clent's slavish routine to computers and his own desire to keep his humanity. After she leaves, Penley goes to investigate the Ice Warriors.
Arden and Jamie discover the cave the Ice Warriors have created and are gunned down. Arden is killed but Jamie is only wounded. The Warriors leave the bodies to see if any other humans come. Penley sees the attack and drags Jamie back to the plant museum. Storr is unhappy about it but Penley nurses Jamie who repeatedly tries to get up to rescue Victoria. He eventually passes out from the pain.
Back at the base, the Doctor successfully solves the ionizing problem with the help of some of Penley's notes. Clent is happy and tries to implement things immediately but the Doctor and Miss Garrett stop him as they still don't know where the Ice Warrior ship is. They try to raise Arden on the communicator but get no response from him. They do get a response from Victoria who has snuck out of the ship. She tells them that Arden was killed but she doesn't know about Jamie. The Ice Warriors watch her and prepare to kill her with the exterior gun.
Varga intercedes and orders them to keep her alive for information as they are out of fuel and will need more. He sends a warrior out to collect her but she runs into an ice tunnel. The tunnel dead ends and when the warrior catches her, she screams causing a small cave in. The warrior is buried but she only partially. However, she still is caught in his grip and calls out for help.
Back at the base the Doctor decides to go out to the ship himself, arming himself only with a radio and a vial of ammonium sulfate. At the same time, Storr elects to go to the Ice Warriors for help with Jamie, believing that they were provoked by the men at the base. Penley goes after him, convinced the Ice Warriors are hostile.
Storr hears Victoria's cries for help and goes down the passage to look for her. Penley does not and proceeds on to the ship entrance where he meets the Doctor. He tells him that they rescued Jamie and Penley and the Doctor head back to the plant museum. There the Doctor examines Jamie and asks Penley to take him back to the base for full treatment as he has to go back to the ship.
Storr frees Victoria but goes on with her to the ship where the Ice Warriors take her back inside. When they learn that Storr is only a Luddite local, they kill him as he brings them no value.
The Doctor arrives shortly after this and gains entry to the ship. The Ice Warriors take him prisoner and he is reunited with Victoria. The Doctor learns that there is risk if the Ice Warrior ship is hit by the ionizer but he also learns they are out of fuel. The Ice Warriors decide to attack the base with their sonic gun to force the humans to yield the fuel they need.
Penley drags Jamie across the ice in a sled. They are briefly impeded by a bear but make it to the base. Once inside, Jamie pleads for them to help the Doctor and Victoria while Penley confronts Cleff on his slavish devotion to the computer decrees. Cleff is paralyzed with indecision as the computer will not offer a solution to either using the ionizer and risking blowing up the Martian ship or standing down and letting the glacier crush the base. Penley and Jamie are stunned and taken to the medical bay.
The Doctor uses his ammonium sulfate to knock out the Ice Warrior guarding them but he still manages to fire the sonic gun, damaging the base. Oblivious to the Doctor's release, Varga leads his remaining men into the base to take the reactor fuel for their own engines. Cleff tries to stall for time, but cowers as the warriors take control.
The Doctor rewires the sonic gun to a higher pitch to use against the Ice Warriors. At the same time, Penley turns up the heat, disorienting the warriors. The Doctor fires, injuring the warriors and knocking the humans unconscious. He signals the base, making Varga aware of what happened. As Varga and his men retreat to the ship, the Doctor destroys the sonic gun and he and Victoria flee to the base.
With the glacier almost on top of them, the Doctor informs Cleff that they have no choice but to use the ionizer and take the risk that they won't set off a nuclear explosion. Cleff still demurs so Penley takes the controls and uses the ionizer. The Ice Warriors make the mistake that the heat signature is a small amount of remaining fuel powering the engine up. However the ionizer eventually melts the ice and the ship, killing the Ice Warriors inside. Because it was out of fuel, the explosion only releases a small amount of background radiation, easily absorbed by the atmosphere.
Cleff leaves Penley in command as he prepares to file a report on what happened. When the look to see if the Doctor will consult, they find he has gone along with Victoria and a recovered Jamie. The TARDIS subsequently disappears.
Analysis
I would say that The Ice Warriors has good points and bad points. Despite their clunky design, the Ice Warriors are a fairly menacing villain. They don't feel over the top evil, but cold and calculating with little regard for humans. What's more, there are almost no points where they seem dumb so that someone can get the drop on them. The Doctor knocking out the gunner is played for comedy and there is one point where Victoria should clearly have been seen when fleeing from the pursuing warrior, but these are small exceptions. I didn't particularly care for the constant hissing voice but it did seem less noticeable when the warriors were incorporated more fully into the scenes starting in Episode Four.
The Doctor and the supporting cast were all pretty good as well. The weakest link was Victoria who was absolutely useless in this story. She was whiney and shriek-y for the entire story. I know she was the damsel-in-distress for pretty much the whole story, but the intonation of her voice and her constant speech as though on the verge of tears was just tiresome to listen to.
I actually would have liked more development with Cleff and his love affair with the computer. I get that his deferment to the computer to make decisions was a driving factor in why Penley was on the outside and against him, but I feel like the story would have benefited with a bit more development along this line. I get the feeling that there was commentary being made of society at the time, especially with mid-level manager types, like Cleff, who are useless administrators unless someone or something clearly gives them orders to do so. There is a kernel of an interesting idea with Cleff so dependent on technology that he ceases to function mentally without it. I would have liked more of that.
I will say that this story is rather padded. It is six episodes with Episodes Two and Three only available in recon (or animation). But there is a recon that combines Episode Two and Three into one 15 minute episode. The fact that the BBC could do that demonstrates how much filler there is. I think this story could easily have been cut to four episodes and still had time to develop the situation with Cleff's dependency.
I was actually comparing this story to The Sensorites in my mind, having just watched it recently. The Sensorites is also six episodes and it can be argued that it too has filler in the middle. But in The Sensorites I felt a natural flow from one crisis to another as they worked to resolve the overall story. There wasn't a whole lot of doubling back and giving characters a run around just for the sake of filling time. In The Ice Warriors, you get a bit of that. There is no point in Victoria's escape except to ensure that Penley runs into the Doctor by himself. Storr would have been killed by the Ice Warriors either way and Victoria ends up a prisoner again at the end of it. It was just a way to give an action sequence as well as a cliff hanger that filled additional time.
Taking a more positive tack, the writing was fairly sharp I thought. The interaction between the characters was witty and there weren't a lot of scenes where characters would just talk for the purposes of exposition. There were the occasional clunkers with Penley and Storr's conversation in the plant museum or Miss Garrett and her rather fawning ways over both Cleff and the computer, but these are exceptions. My own favorite moment was when the Doctor was preparing to head to the Ice Warrior ship but talked about how urgently he needed something from the chemical producer and it ended up being a glass of water. It was a good moment of levity and well played by the actors both building tension and then defusing it with a dry joke.
As far as an overall recommendation, I'm a bit torn. There is a lot of positivity to the story and I never felt like it was bad when I watched it. However, the padding and the problems I had with the sound made watching it a bit of a struggle at times as I found myself starting to lose interest at a couple of points. Unfortunately, I think I need to go on the lower end of the scale, especially as I found Victoria just so unappealing in this story. Again, it's not bad and I wouldn't object to watching it again, but there are so many better Second Doctor stories to choose from, even with 2/3s of this story existing.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Dimensions In Time
I've seen them thrown out of the Vic, but never dragged in.
So how bad is Dimensions in Time? Pretty bad. It's actually even worse if, like me, you know nothing about East Enders and wouldn't know any of the characters if they walked up and introduced themselves. Despite everything that had gone on in the past, you do have to give JNT credit for trying to put together something fun for the thirtieth anniversary, but this is pretty bad.
Plot Summary
The special opens with the Third Doctor visiting the set of Noel's House Party and showing everyone the new special (including 3-D effects). They then cut to the Rani who has exiled the First and Second Doctor to a loop in time, leaving their projected heads swirling around her TARDIS.
The Fourth Doctor sends out a distress signal as the Rani prepares to trap the remaining Doctors in the time loop. She targets the TARDIS and the Seventh Doctor and Ace materialize in 1973 London instead of China as intended. Blips in time begin to show as the Seventh Doctor gives way to the Sixth Doctor.
Time continues to slip mixing Doctors with companions at various points in time. The Third Doctor with Mel, the Sixth Doctor with Susan, the Third Doctor with Sarah Jane; all the while, the Doctor and companions interact with characters from East Enders. The Doctors realize that a time loop is oscillating things in twenty year spans, 1973, 1993, and 2013.
Fearing that the Doctor is on to her plan, the Rani releases specimens from her collection to deal with the Doctor. A Cyberman and an Ogron attack the Fifth Doctor, Peri and Nyssa. Other monsters materialize to chase them and the Rani herself materializes as the program breaks.
The audience in invited to vote for a helper for the Doctor: either Mandy or Big Ron. The show resumes the next day with Mandy as the winner of the audience poll.
The Fifth Doctor summons his other selves upon seeing the Rani. The Third Doctor appears with Liz Shaw. Liz charges the Rani to attack but is thrown off by a passer-by (Mandy). Captain Yates rolls up in Bessie to take the Third Doctor to the TARDIS as the Rani flees. The Brigadier lands in a helicopter, meeting the Sixth Doctor.
The Rani, having retreated to her TARDIS, prepares to materialize in the loop. Romana (II) appears to help but is pulled into the pub to keep her out of the way. The Third Doctor is back outside the TARDIS with Victoria. The Doctor takes the TARDIS to the Greenwich Meridian. The Rani's TARDIS appears nearby as the Seventh Doctor emerges from the TARIDS. Leela emerges from the Rani's TARDIS, having escaped but saying that she was cloned. The Doctor realizes that she is planning to open the time tunnel along the Meridian giving her control of the development of the universe.
Knowing that the Rani has a copy of Romana's brain print to work with, the Seventh Doctor sets up a feedback loop to pull the Rani's TARDIS in the time loop she has created with K-9 assisting. The Doctor's plan works, releasing the First and Second Doctor and pulling her TARDIS in. The Seventh Doctor and Ace prepare to leave with the time stream returned to normal.
Analysis
If you were to create a list of the things that I dislike in television stories, Dimensions in Time would probably hit all of them. Poor writing: check. Poor acting: check. Poor pacing: check. Poor visual effects: check. I'm sure their heart was in the right place, but this story is appallingly bad.
John Nathan-Turner was not a writer for the show and the fact that he gets co-writing credit on this shows why he didn't write. The story is overly confusing with a desperate attempt to cram as many cameos by past companions and East Enders characters in as possible. That actually is the primary motivation of the story and the Rani's plan, nor the Doctor's solution is ever really explained as to what they are doing.
Then the acting. Tom Baker is the worst as he isn't even half-assing it. Most of the other Doctor's do fairly well, although it's pretty obvious that Jon Pertwee can barely move due to the condition of his back. The companions fair less well with most of them failing to add any depth or energy to the wooden lines. Ace does well as her dialogue actually makes sense and Sarah Jane falls back into her role with ease. The Brig also comes across decent, although that is due more to his gravitas rather than anything special in the acting or writing. The East Enders folks are even worse with cornball lines thrown in an attempted jokey fashion that just sound stupid.
The camera work isn't bad as there is a lot of circling around in a way that would have made Aaron Sorkin proud, but the overall pacing is not particularly good. It is jump cut after jump cut after jump cut. I think they were trying to get a frenetic feeling but instead it gave it an overly rushed feeling. Characters are given one line to hurrily insert or a Doctor gets thirty seconds to cram as much exposition in as possible. Then at random moments, it slows down to give the wooden dialogue even more time to set it. It's just painful to watch.
The visual effects scream no money as well. They also scream early '90s and I'm willing to cut a little slack for that, much like I give Noel Edmonds a bit of a break for the shirts he is wearing. But they are still pretty darn bad. The dummy heads of the First and Second Doctors floating around set a bad tone. What's probably the actual worst is when the various enemies make cameo appearances. These are obviously recycled costumes and puppets from earlier episodes but the lighting and camera angles used make them look even more fake than when they were originally on. Going back to pacing, it's obvious that there is this desperate push to get as many villain cameos in as quick as possible in the 45 seconds allotted to the Fifth Doctor, Peri and Nyssa running through the square and it exposes the poor quality, much of which probably looks worse just because of natural deterioration.
I can see what JNT was going for as he obviously wanted something fun and fan service-y for the thirtieth anniversary but this is of the level of a student film. While I'm sure he had almost no budget to make this, they did have professional cameras and experience that should have put them over a student level production. Certainly having another writer take a second or third stab at the script also would have helped some.
But what still makes no sense is why an anniversary special for Doctor Who was paired for a crossover with East Enders. That would be like having an anniversary special of Star Trek where Kirk and his crew interacted with folks on Dallas. The two settings are at cross purposes and I can't see how either fan base would be interested in the overall story.
I will say that for more casual fans at the time, it probably felt good to see the old characters again. Hardcore fans were probably appalled at the lack of quality and it would have seemed like a horrible way to watch the show you loved disappear into the darkness. For someone watching from the future, it just seems silly and poorly done. I would say that anyone who enjoys Doctor Who should watch it at least once, just for the experience and to get an added perspective on not only how good the new series is, but even on how bad things really could have been during the low points of the mid/late-'80's. But once you've seen it once, that's more than enough unless you intend to go full MST3K.
Overall personal score: 0 out of 5
So how bad is Dimensions in Time? Pretty bad. It's actually even worse if, like me, you know nothing about East Enders and wouldn't know any of the characters if they walked up and introduced themselves. Despite everything that had gone on in the past, you do have to give JNT credit for trying to put together something fun for the thirtieth anniversary, but this is pretty bad.
Plot Summary
The special opens with the Third Doctor visiting the set of Noel's House Party and showing everyone the new special (including 3-D effects). They then cut to the Rani who has exiled the First and Second Doctor to a loop in time, leaving their projected heads swirling around her TARDIS.
The Fourth Doctor sends out a distress signal as the Rani prepares to trap the remaining Doctors in the time loop. She targets the TARDIS and the Seventh Doctor and Ace materialize in 1973 London instead of China as intended. Blips in time begin to show as the Seventh Doctor gives way to the Sixth Doctor.
Time continues to slip mixing Doctors with companions at various points in time. The Third Doctor with Mel, the Sixth Doctor with Susan, the Third Doctor with Sarah Jane; all the while, the Doctor and companions interact with characters from East Enders. The Doctors realize that a time loop is oscillating things in twenty year spans, 1973, 1993, and 2013.
Fearing that the Doctor is on to her plan, the Rani releases specimens from her collection to deal with the Doctor. A Cyberman and an Ogron attack the Fifth Doctor, Peri and Nyssa. Other monsters materialize to chase them and the Rani herself materializes as the program breaks.
The audience in invited to vote for a helper for the Doctor: either Mandy or Big Ron. The show resumes the next day with Mandy as the winner of the audience poll.
The Fifth Doctor summons his other selves upon seeing the Rani. The Third Doctor appears with Liz Shaw. Liz charges the Rani to attack but is thrown off by a passer-by (Mandy). Captain Yates rolls up in Bessie to take the Third Doctor to the TARDIS as the Rani flees. The Brigadier lands in a helicopter, meeting the Sixth Doctor.
The Rani, having retreated to her TARDIS, prepares to materialize in the loop. Romana (II) appears to help but is pulled into the pub to keep her out of the way. The Third Doctor is back outside the TARDIS with Victoria. The Doctor takes the TARDIS to the Greenwich Meridian. The Rani's TARDIS appears nearby as the Seventh Doctor emerges from the TARIDS. Leela emerges from the Rani's TARDIS, having escaped but saying that she was cloned. The Doctor realizes that she is planning to open the time tunnel along the Meridian giving her control of the development of the universe.
Knowing that the Rani has a copy of Romana's brain print to work with, the Seventh Doctor sets up a feedback loop to pull the Rani's TARDIS in the time loop she has created with K-9 assisting. The Doctor's plan works, releasing the First and Second Doctor and pulling her TARDIS in. The Seventh Doctor and Ace prepare to leave with the time stream returned to normal.
Analysis
If you were to create a list of the things that I dislike in television stories, Dimensions in Time would probably hit all of them. Poor writing: check. Poor acting: check. Poor pacing: check. Poor visual effects: check. I'm sure their heart was in the right place, but this story is appallingly bad.
John Nathan-Turner was not a writer for the show and the fact that he gets co-writing credit on this shows why he didn't write. The story is overly confusing with a desperate attempt to cram as many cameos by past companions and East Enders characters in as possible. That actually is the primary motivation of the story and the Rani's plan, nor the Doctor's solution is ever really explained as to what they are doing.
Then the acting. Tom Baker is the worst as he isn't even half-assing it. Most of the other Doctor's do fairly well, although it's pretty obvious that Jon Pertwee can barely move due to the condition of his back. The companions fair less well with most of them failing to add any depth or energy to the wooden lines. Ace does well as her dialogue actually makes sense and Sarah Jane falls back into her role with ease. The Brig also comes across decent, although that is due more to his gravitas rather than anything special in the acting or writing. The East Enders folks are even worse with cornball lines thrown in an attempted jokey fashion that just sound stupid.
The camera work isn't bad as there is a lot of circling around in a way that would have made Aaron Sorkin proud, but the overall pacing is not particularly good. It is jump cut after jump cut after jump cut. I think they were trying to get a frenetic feeling but instead it gave it an overly rushed feeling. Characters are given one line to hurrily insert or a Doctor gets thirty seconds to cram as much exposition in as possible. Then at random moments, it slows down to give the wooden dialogue even more time to set it. It's just painful to watch.
The visual effects scream no money as well. They also scream early '90s and I'm willing to cut a little slack for that, much like I give Noel Edmonds a bit of a break for the shirts he is wearing. But they are still pretty darn bad. The dummy heads of the First and Second Doctors floating around set a bad tone. What's probably the actual worst is when the various enemies make cameo appearances. These are obviously recycled costumes and puppets from earlier episodes but the lighting and camera angles used make them look even more fake than when they were originally on. Going back to pacing, it's obvious that there is this desperate push to get as many villain cameos in as quick as possible in the 45 seconds allotted to the Fifth Doctor, Peri and Nyssa running through the square and it exposes the poor quality, much of which probably looks worse just because of natural deterioration.
I can see what JNT was going for as he obviously wanted something fun and fan service-y for the thirtieth anniversary but this is of the level of a student film. While I'm sure he had almost no budget to make this, they did have professional cameras and experience that should have put them over a student level production. Certainly having another writer take a second or third stab at the script also would have helped some.
But what still makes no sense is why an anniversary special for Doctor Who was paired for a crossover with East Enders. That would be like having an anniversary special of Star Trek where Kirk and his crew interacted with folks on Dallas. The two settings are at cross purposes and I can't see how either fan base would be interested in the overall story.
I will say that for more casual fans at the time, it probably felt good to see the old characters again. Hardcore fans were probably appalled at the lack of quality and it would have seemed like a horrible way to watch the show you loved disappear into the darkness. For someone watching from the future, it just seems silly and poorly done. I would say that anyone who enjoys Doctor Who should watch it at least once, just for the experience and to get an added perspective on not only how good the new series is, but even on how bad things really could have been during the low points of the mid/late-'80's. But once you've seen it once, that's more than enough unless you intend to go full MST3K.
Overall personal score: 0 out of 5
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
The Abominable Snowmen
They came to get their ball back.
The introduction of the Great Intelligence, the Yeti and the Second Doctor in probably his most recognizable costume. I actually did this one backwards as I saw The Web of Fear before The Abominable Snowmen. Of course, I actually saw The Snowmen before in The Web of Fear so I'm all kinds of backwards with this adversary.
Plot Summary
The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe land in the Himalayas in the first half of the twentieth century. The Doctor, recognizing the area, opts to return a holy bell to the local Buddhist monastery that he had gotten possession of three hundred years earlier. Jamie and Victoria also look about, despite the Doctor instructing them to stay in the TARDIS. Upon reaching the monastery, the Doctor is accused of being a newspaper spy by an explorer named Travers. He is accused of also killing Travers' companion. The monks also accuse the Doctor of controlling the Yeti who have attacked the monastery recently. The monks decide to tie the Doctor to the gate to see if the Yeti will attempt to rescue him.
Meanwhile, Jamie and Victoria find a cave with a stack of metal spheres. Jamie takes one and they are attacked by a Yeti. Jamie caves part of the roof in on it and they escape before it can dig itself out. They make their way to the monastery where they convince Travers they are not a rival expedition. A younger monk named Thonmi took the bell from the Doctor and presented it to the Abbot who orders the Doctor released. The Doctor has Jamie set a trap and they capture one of the Yeti, which goes inert when it's program sphere is knocked out. The Doctor examines and realizes the Yeti are robots and are controlled through the spheres. The Yeti retrieve the knocked out sphere before the Doctor can retrieve it and the one Jamie removed from the cave activates and rolls away.
Travers leaves the monastery and follows the Yeti. The Doctor also convinces the monks that if he and Jamie go back to the TARDIS, they can get equipment that will help them track the spheres. Meanwhile, the Abbot sneaks out of the monastery with an electronic prism. He meets the Yeti with the extra sphere and places both on the stack in the cave, observed at a distance by Travers. The Doctor and Jamie get their equipment and after dodging a few Yeti, return to the monastery.
Meanwhile, the sphere Jamie took inserts itself into the inert Yeti and reactivates it. It fights its way out and because Victoria saw it rise, she is accused of reactivating it. She is imprisoned with Thonmi, who stood up for her, but she manages to escape. The returning Abbot orders the monastery to be evacuated and confines the Doctor and Jamie due to Victoria's escape. Victoria sneaks into the sacred place and meets with the holy one, Padmasambhava. There she is hypnotized.
Padmasambhava sends the Yeti to attack, killing one monk, and convincing all that they must leave. Victoria is sent out under the control of Padmasambhava, reassuring the monks that they must leave and take the Doctor, Travers, and the two companions with them. Victoria also implores the Doctor to take her away. The Doctor realizes that she is under the control of some force and suspects that Padmasambhava may also be under the control of something as he appears to be the same man who gave the Doctor the holy bell three hundred years prior. He goes to Padmasambhava who appears to die as he is confessing that something terrible is coming. The Doctor then attends to Victoria, bringing her out of her hypnosis with some of his own.
The Doctor and Travers take another set of readings and learn that the control of the Yeti is coming from the monastery itself and Travers suddenly remembers that he saw the Abbot with the Yeti at the cave. The chief warrior Khrisong goes to confront the Abbot but is killed. The Doctor sees this and the Abbot is subdued. Under hypnosis the Abbot tells the Doctor about the Yeti controls. Travers and one monk head towards the cave to destroy the pyramid while the other monks leave the monastery. The Doctor, Jamie, Victoria and Thonmi head into the inner chamber with Padmasambhava.
Inside the chamber, the Doctor locks wills with the Intelligence controlling Padmasambhava. Jamie and Thomni rush in and smash the controls in a secret room beyond but the Intelligence is unaffected. He summons the Yeti. The Doctor calls for Victoria to destroys the control pieces but she is also neutralized. Jamie destroys the Yeti control sphere which stops them but the Intelligence itself is still in command. Travers enters and attempts to shoot Padmasambhava but he is unaffected and taunts Travers. But his taunt triggers an idea and the Doctor shouts at Jamie to destroy anything that looks like a pyramid. Jamie destroys it and the Intelligence shrieks as its power disappears. Padmasambhava dies and the control unit in the cave also is destroyed. The monks return to the abbey, Travers spies a genuine Yeti and goes to investigate while the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria head back to the TARDIS.
Analysis
Like a lot of six-parters, this was a bit slow to start and it being mostly a recon didn't help. It did flow a bit better in Episode Two (which is the only existing episode) but even then, there was a feel of a long set up. Fortunately, that set up was fairly evenly paced so that although it was slow going until Episode Six, it was a steady build and did not leave you with the feeling that any particular episode should have been cut.
There was a nice balance of characters in this story. No one felt underdeveloped (except maybe the Abbot) and everyone had an understandable role in the story. Khrisong and Travers did a little bit of "the enemy of the Doctor becomes a loyal friend" that is a bit of a trope in 60's Doctor Who but their conversion is done a bit better in this story rather than others.
It would have been nice to have a better view of the final confrontation between the Great Intelligence and the Doctor. Being a recon always has it's drawbacks but the final fight seen would have been very energetic with a lot of facial acting from Patrick Troughton that is a shame that we cannot see it.
Other than that, I can't think of much more to say about the episode. The Yeti are what they are given that this is the season of monsters (or men dressed up as monsters). I give the production team credit for trying a more nebulous concept like the Great Intelligence as an adversary. Of course there were the Yeti to fall back on, but to have an enemy that you cannot see and exists more as an idea is a fairly radical idea and it plays out rather well given that there is little to latch on to.
I would like to see this one again if found to see how that improves engagement. It does well, but at six episodes I feel that it is just too slow for casual enjoyment without the visuals to engage you. Not bad, but not overly compelling either.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
The introduction of the Great Intelligence, the Yeti and the Second Doctor in probably his most recognizable costume. I actually did this one backwards as I saw The Web of Fear before The Abominable Snowmen. Of course, I actually saw The Snowmen before in The Web of Fear so I'm all kinds of backwards with this adversary.
Plot Summary
The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe land in the Himalayas in the first half of the twentieth century. The Doctor, recognizing the area, opts to return a holy bell to the local Buddhist monastery that he had gotten possession of three hundred years earlier. Jamie and Victoria also look about, despite the Doctor instructing them to stay in the TARDIS. Upon reaching the monastery, the Doctor is accused of being a newspaper spy by an explorer named Travers. He is accused of also killing Travers' companion. The monks also accuse the Doctor of controlling the Yeti who have attacked the monastery recently. The monks decide to tie the Doctor to the gate to see if the Yeti will attempt to rescue him.
Meanwhile, Jamie and Victoria find a cave with a stack of metal spheres. Jamie takes one and they are attacked by a Yeti. Jamie caves part of the roof in on it and they escape before it can dig itself out. They make their way to the monastery where they convince Travers they are not a rival expedition. A younger monk named Thonmi took the bell from the Doctor and presented it to the Abbot who orders the Doctor released. The Doctor has Jamie set a trap and they capture one of the Yeti, which goes inert when it's program sphere is knocked out. The Doctor examines and realizes the Yeti are robots and are controlled through the spheres. The Yeti retrieve the knocked out sphere before the Doctor can retrieve it and the one Jamie removed from the cave activates and rolls away.
Travers leaves the monastery and follows the Yeti. The Doctor also convinces the monks that if he and Jamie go back to the TARDIS, they can get equipment that will help them track the spheres. Meanwhile, the Abbot sneaks out of the monastery with an electronic prism. He meets the Yeti with the extra sphere and places both on the stack in the cave, observed at a distance by Travers. The Doctor and Jamie get their equipment and after dodging a few Yeti, return to the monastery.
Meanwhile, the sphere Jamie took inserts itself into the inert Yeti and reactivates it. It fights its way out and because Victoria saw it rise, she is accused of reactivating it. She is imprisoned with Thonmi, who stood up for her, but she manages to escape. The returning Abbot orders the monastery to be evacuated and confines the Doctor and Jamie due to Victoria's escape. Victoria sneaks into the sacred place and meets with the holy one, Padmasambhava. There she is hypnotized.
Padmasambhava sends the Yeti to attack, killing one monk, and convincing all that they must leave. Victoria is sent out under the control of Padmasambhava, reassuring the monks that they must leave and take the Doctor, Travers, and the two companions with them. Victoria also implores the Doctor to take her away. The Doctor realizes that she is under the control of some force and suspects that Padmasambhava may also be under the control of something as he appears to be the same man who gave the Doctor the holy bell three hundred years prior. He goes to Padmasambhava who appears to die as he is confessing that something terrible is coming. The Doctor then attends to Victoria, bringing her out of her hypnosis with some of his own.
The Doctor and Travers take another set of readings and learn that the control of the Yeti is coming from the monastery itself and Travers suddenly remembers that he saw the Abbot with the Yeti at the cave. The chief warrior Khrisong goes to confront the Abbot but is killed. The Doctor sees this and the Abbot is subdued. Under hypnosis the Abbot tells the Doctor about the Yeti controls. Travers and one monk head towards the cave to destroy the pyramid while the other monks leave the monastery. The Doctor, Jamie, Victoria and Thonmi head into the inner chamber with Padmasambhava.
Inside the chamber, the Doctor locks wills with the Intelligence controlling Padmasambhava. Jamie and Thomni rush in and smash the controls in a secret room beyond but the Intelligence is unaffected. He summons the Yeti. The Doctor calls for Victoria to destroys the control pieces but she is also neutralized. Jamie destroys the Yeti control sphere which stops them but the Intelligence itself is still in command. Travers enters and attempts to shoot Padmasambhava but he is unaffected and taunts Travers. But his taunt triggers an idea and the Doctor shouts at Jamie to destroy anything that looks like a pyramid. Jamie destroys it and the Intelligence shrieks as its power disappears. Padmasambhava dies and the control unit in the cave also is destroyed. The monks return to the abbey, Travers spies a genuine Yeti and goes to investigate while the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria head back to the TARDIS.
Analysis
Like a lot of six-parters, this was a bit slow to start and it being mostly a recon didn't help. It did flow a bit better in Episode Two (which is the only existing episode) but even then, there was a feel of a long set up. Fortunately, that set up was fairly evenly paced so that although it was slow going until Episode Six, it was a steady build and did not leave you with the feeling that any particular episode should have been cut.
There was a nice balance of characters in this story. No one felt underdeveloped (except maybe the Abbot) and everyone had an understandable role in the story. Khrisong and Travers did a little bit of "the enemy of the Doctor becomes a loyal friend" that is a bit of a trope in 60's Doctor Who but their conversion is done a bit better in this story rather than others.
It would have been nice to have a better view of the final confrontation between the Great Intelligence and the Doctor. Being a recon always has it's drawbacks but the final fight seen would have been very energetic with a lot of facial acting from Patrick Troughton that is a shame that we cannot see it.
Other than that, I can't think of much more to say about the episode. The Yeti are what they are given that this is the season of monsters (or men dressed up as monsters). I give the production team credit for trying a more nebulous concept like the Great Intelligence as an adversary. Of course there were the Yeti to fall back on, but to have an enemy that you cannot see and exists more as an idea is a fairly radical idea and it plays out rather well given that there is little to latch on to.
I would like to see this one again if found to see how that improves engagement. It does well, but at six episodes I feel that it is just too slow for casual enjoyment without the visuals to engage you. Not bad, but not overly compelling either.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Tomb of the Cybermen
You belong to us. You shall be like us.
I had seen enough clips of Tomb of the Cybermen to have a pretty good idea of the plot before I had even watched the whole thing. I was really interested in this one because the opening clips and the music reminded me very strongly of The Twilight Zone. So it was quite a different viewing experience when I finally was able to sit down and watch the episode.
Plot Summary
The Doctor, Jamie and a newly added Victoria land on the planet Telos where they meet up with an expedition from Earth looking for the lost city of the Cybermen. The Doctor soon recognizes that the scientific leader Eric Klieg and his colleague Kaftan (who are funding the expedition) are hoping to revive the Cybermen and use them to gain domination of the world. The Doctor manipulates the situation to allow Klieg to awaken the Cybermen from hibernation, confirming his suspicions about him. The Cybermen attempt to break out of the caverns with Klieg still believing that if he aids the Cybermen, they will take orders from him. The Doctor manages to trick the Cybermen to go back into their hibernation state and the Cyber Controller is killed when the tombs are resealed. Most of the expedition was also killed in the battle with the Cybermen and the survivors fly back to Earth while the Doctor and his party leave in the TARDIS.
Analysis
I enjoyed this story, but I was also a little let down by it. Part of that was the build up, but it was also due to the relative incompetence of both Klieg and the Cybermen. The Doctor is the one who ends up allowing the expedition into the Cybermen's base and then is also the one who allows them access to the hibernation chambers. What's more, it is not until the end of Episode Two that Klieg manages to awaken the Cybermen and he is promptly slapped aside by the Cyber Controller.
The Cybermen themselves don't do very much. It is only the Cyber Controller who ever engages in a fight and that is mostly with the mute servant Toberman after Toberman breaks free of the Cyberman mind control. There is also the attack by the Cybermats. This is actually somewhat creepy, despite the fact that the Cybermats themselves look a little silly. However, once the initial wave is thwarted, the attack is over and it becomes an internal watch again.
The story has moments of action, but it also has some slow moments. There is a touching scene between the Doctor and Victoria about family since Victoria is still mourning the death of her father from the previous story (The Evil of the Daleks), but aside from that, most of the slow moments come across as a bit dull with not enough character study to liven the mood.
One other unsatisfying thing is the dispatching of Klieg. Like most classic Doctor Who stories, Klieg is undone by his actions and killed by the Cybermen. However, this is done in his second attempt to gain control of the Cybermen when he believes he can take over as Cyber Controller. The Cybermen do not accept this (Cyber Control was merely stunned rather than killed) and Klieg is knocked to the side once again and the Cybermen kill him off-screen. I understand that as the show was intended for a family audience, the producers couldn't show Klieg killed in a gruesome manner, but it still felt unsatisfying to simply see him fly to the side, a couple of Cybermen move towards him and then zoom in on Victoria's horrified face.
I wish this story had had a bit more action and that either Klieg or the Cybermen were presented as a more formidable villain. It's entertaining enough, but I just have this sense that this story could have been so much better given the set up it had. I would watch it again given the opportunity but there are certainly better Second Doctor stories out there to enjoy.
Overall personal score: 3 out of 5
I had seen enough clips of Tomb of the Cybermen to have a pretty good idea of the plot before I had even watched the whole thing. I was really interested in this one because the opening clips and the music reminded me very strongly of The Twilight Zone. So it was quite a different viewing experience when I finally was able to sit down and watch the episode.
Plot Summary
The Doctor, Jamie and a newly added Victoria land on the planet Telos where they meet up with an expedition from Earth looking for the lost city of the Cybermen. The Doctor soon recognizes that the scientific leader Eric Klieg and his colleague Kaftan (who are funding the expedition) are hoping to revive the Cybermen and use them to gain domination of the world. The Doctor manipulates the situation to allow Klieg to awaken the Cybermen from hibernation, confirming his suspicions about him. The Cybermen attempt to break out of the caverns with Klieg still believing that if he aids the Cybermen, they will take orders from him. The Doctor manages to trick the Cybermen to go back into their hibernation state and the Cyber Controller is killed when the tombs are resealed. Most of the expedition was also killed in the battle with the Cybermen and the survivors fly back to Earth while the Doctor and his party leave in the TARDIS.
Analysis
I enjoyed this story, but I was also a little let down by it. Part of that was the build up, but it was also due to the relative incompetence of both Klieg and the Cybermen. The Doctor is the one who ends up allowing the expedition into the Cybermen's base and then is also the one who allows them access to the hibernation chambers. What's more, it is not until the end of Episode Two that Klieg manages to awaken the Cybermen and he is promptly slapped aside by the Cyber Controller.
The Cybermen themselves don't do very much. It is only the Cyber Controller who ever engages in a fight and that is mostly with the mute servant Toberman after Toberman breaks free of the Cyberman mind control. There is also the attack by the Cybermats. This is actually somewhat creepy, despite the fact that the Cybermats themselves look a little silly. However, once the initial wave is thwarted, the attack is over and it becomes an internal watch again.
The story has moments of action, but it also has some slow moments. There is a touching scene between the Doctor and Victoria about family since Victoria is still mourning the death of her father from the previous story (The Evil of the Daleks), but aside from that, most of the slow moments come across as a bit dull with not enough character study to liven the mood.
One other unsatisfying thing is the dispatching of Klieg. Like most classic Doctor Who stories, Klieg is undone by his actions and killed by the Cybermen. However, this is done in his second attempt to gain control of the Cybermen when he believes he can take over as Cyber Controller. The Cybermen do not accept this (Cyber Control was merely stunned rather than killed) and Klieg is knocked to the side once again and the Cybermen kill him off-screen. I understand that as the show was intended for a family audience, the producers couldn't show Klieg killed in a gruesome manner, but it still felt unsatisfying to simply see him fly to the side, a couple of Cybermen move towards him and then zoom in on Victoria's horrified face.
I wish this story had had a bit more action and that either Klieg or the Cybermen were presented as a more formidable villain. It's entertaining enough, but I just have this sense that this story could have been so much better given the set up it had. I would watch it again given the opportunity but there are certainly better Second Doctor stories out there to enjoy.
Overall personal score: 3 out of 5
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
The Web of Fear
Thank you Doctor for being so cooperative.
The Web of Fear is the sequel to The Abominable Snowmen as is possibly one of the best "base under siege" stories of the Second Doctor era.
This story was lost for a long time and then recently found again along with The Enemy of the World. Episode two is still missing unfortunately but that the majority of it is still there is very nice.
In the story, the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria land in the London Underground in the early 1970's. London has been evacuated due to a mysterious mist covering parts of the city while pockets of the British Army are fighting mechanical Yeti who are spreading a web-like substance through the tunnels. While there, the Doctor meets Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart and uses the experiences of his men with the Yeti to battle the Great Intelligence. Things are complicated as the Doctor soon discovers that someone in their party has been taken over by the Great Intelligence and is working against them. Eventually the Doctor gains control of one of the Yeti and is planning to trick the Great Intelligence into destroying itself but Jamie and the rest of the party get in the way. The Great Intelligence is defeated, but it escapes from the Doctor's plan to destroy it entirely.
Most "base under siege" stories have the outside threat which occasionally makes forays against the Doctor and his party to build tension. This one has that as well, but it also makes excellent use of the "traitor among us" theme to add an extra level of fear. The dark enclosed atmosphere of the Underground tunnels and the base add to the feeling of claustrophobia that pervades the story. That the Doctor keeps his companions (and by extension the audience) in the dark of his plan also keeps everyone on edge as they wait to see what is going to happen.
Probably one of the best things to come out of the story being discovered is the full realization of the battle in Episode Four. For about half the episode, Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart takes nearly the entire squad from the base up to ground level to fight against the Yeti. They fight well, but are overwhelmed. It is one of the best close quarters battle scenes I've seen. It is shot better than many urban battle sequences in WWII movies in my opinion. It is intense and you feel for these troops who you have come to like be taken down by the Yeti robots all while also feeling them close in on the survivors. The story was shot by Douglas Camfield and his excellent direction comes to the forefront in this battle sequence.
Now there are a few small flaws with this story, although two of those are not the story's fault. The biggest problem I have that there was some control over was the fact that the Doctor is not in episode two. Patrick Troughton was on holiday for that week so the Doctor disappears from the story. In the First Doctor era, this wasn't as big a deal as Ian, and later Steven then Ben, could be counted on to drive the story without him. But when the Second Doctor was absent, Jamie and the other companion were not of the same caliber so the story would slow with placeholder information. In this case, we see sporadic fighting and the introduction of several characters, but nothing that couldn't have been compressed within other episodes if the Doctor had not been absent.
That was the only real flaw that was part of the story itself. The second nit to pick is just the fact that Episode Two is still missing. It's an annoying interruption, made worse by the fact that the Doctor isn't there so moving pictures might have helped keep the flow of the story going. Also, Episode Two is where Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart is introduced in this episode and it just feels wrong that such a major character's first appearance is only in still form. That's no one's fault, but it is still aggravating
The colonel also is the basis of my third and final nit. I mentioned earlier that there is a "traitor among us" element to this story in the middle stages. Throughout the story, three characters are thrust prominently forward as being the candidate for the traitor. The first is the reporter Chorley. He's a bit of a jerk and you want it to be him, but he legs it about halfway through and gets dropped as a candidate. Driver Evans is also put forward as he is something of a coward and wants nothing to do with the fighting. He is played with a slight over-the-topness to make you think it's him in the classic red herring style. Kids would have keyed on that, but anyone familiar with this style would have easily seen this as a misdirection. That leaves Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart and there is a lot of subtle suspicion placed on him. The viewer is clearly meant to suspect him from the start and then get gobsmacked by the true reveal at the end. Of course, anyone who knows anything about Doctor Who knows about how Lethbridge-Stewart will be promoted to the head of UNIT and become a great friend of the Doctor. It's an unfortunate side effect of knowing the future that undercuts both good direction and good acting in this story. That's obviously not the story's fault, it's just a fault of future developments.
All in all, this is a very good story and I'd happily watch it again. The lack of Episode Two and the absence of the Doctor drags it down from ideal, but still something that's quite watchable a few times around.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
The Web of Fear is the sequel to The Abominable Snowmen as is possibly one of the best "base under siege" stories of the Second Doctor era.
This story was lost for a long time and then recently found again along with The Enemy of the World. Episode two is still missing unfortunately but that the majority of it is still there is very nice.
In the story, the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria land in the London Underground in the early 1970's. London has been evacuated due to a mysterious mist covering parts of the city while pockets of the British Army are fighting mechanical Yeti who are spreading a web-like substance through the tunnels. While there, the Doctor meets Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart and uses the experiences of his men with the Yeti to battle the Great Intelligence. Things are complicated as the Doctor soon discovers that someone in their party has been taken over by the Great Intelligence and is working against them. Eventually the Doctor gains control of one of the Yeti and is planning to trick the Great Intelligence into destroying itself but Jamie and the rest of the party get in the way. The Great Intelligence is defeated, but it escapes from the Doctor's plan to destroy it entirely.
Most "base under siege" stories have the outside threat which occasionally makes forays against the Doctor and his party to build tension. This one has that as well, but it also makes excellent use of the "traitor among us" theme to add an extra level of fear. The dark enclosed atmosphere of the Underground tunnels and the base add to the feeling of claustrophobia that pervades the story. That the Doctor keeps his companions (and by extension the audience) in the dark of his plan also keeps everyone on edge as they wait to see what is going to happen.
Probably one of the best things to come out of the story being discovered is the full realization of the battle in Episode Four. For about half the episode, Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart takes nearly the entire squad from the base up to ground level to fight against the Yeti. They fight well, but are overwhelmed. It is one of the best close quarters battle scenes I've seen. It is shot better than many urban battle sequences in WWII movies in my opinion. It is intense and you feel for these troops who you have come to like be taken down by the Yeti robots all while also feeling them close in on the survivors. The story was shot by Douglas Camfield and his excellent direction comes to the forefront in this battle sequence.
Now there are a few small flaws with this story, although two of those are not the story's fault. The biggest problem I have that there was some control over was the fact that the Doctor is not in episode two. Patrick Troughton was on holiday for that week so the Doctor disappears from the story. In the First Doctor era, this wasn't as big a deal as Ian, and later Steven then Ben, could be counted on to drive the story without him. But when the Second Doctor was absent, Jamie and the other companion were not of the same caliber so the story would slow with placeholder information. In this case, we see sporadic fighting and the introduction of several characters, but nothing that couldn't have been compressed within other episodes if the Doctor had not been absent.
That was the only real flaw that was part of the story itself. The second nit to pick is just the fact that Episode Two is still missing. It's an annoying interruption, made worse by the fact that the Doctor isn't there so moving pictures might have helped keep the flow of the story going. Also, Episode Two is where Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart is introduced in this episode and it just feels wrong that such a major character's first appearance is only in still form. That's no one's fault, but it is still aggravating
The colonel also is the basis of my third and final nit. I mentioned earlier that there is a "traitor among us" element to this story in the middle stages. Throughout the story, three characters are thrust prominently forward as being the candidate for the traitor. The first is the reporter Chorley. He's a bit of a jerk and you want it to be him, but he legs it about halfway through and gets dropped as a candidate. Driver Evans is also put forward as he is something of a coward and wants nothing to do with the fighting. He is played with a slight over-the-topness to make you think it's him in the classic red herring style. Kids would have keyed on that, but anyone familiar with this style would have easily seen this as a misdirection. That leaves Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart and there is a lot of subtle suspicion placed on him. The viewer is clearly meant to suspect him from the start and then get gobsmacked by the true reveal at the end. Of course, anyone who knows anything about Doctor Who knows about how Lethbridge-Stewart will be promoted to the head of UNIT and become a great friend of the Doctor. It's an unfortunate side effect of knowing the future that undercuts both good direction and good acting in this story. That's obviously not the story's fault, it's just a fault of future developments.
All in all, this is a very good story and I'd happily watch it again. The lack of Episode Two and the absence of the Doctor drags it down from ideal, but still something that's quite watchable a few times around.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Monday, October 19, 2015
The Enemy of the World
Sometimes we do what we have to do, not what we want to do.
One of the advantages of being a bit of a late-comer to Doctor Who is that I get to enjoy newly found episodes without having to have dealt with the recons. Enemy of the World is a prime example of that. The majority of this story was lost and then it was found along with most of The Web of Fear (hooray!). I hadn't got around to it while it was still lost so only the found footage for me.
This story hinges greatly on your appreciation of Patrick Troughton as an actor. As I enjoy Mr. Troughton's work and consider the Second Doctor to be my favorite of the classic era, this story was a big plus in my column. The premise is pretty straight forward. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria land in the future where the Doctor is mistaken for a man who is pushing to become dictator of the world. He is captured by a group of rebels and persuaded to act as an impersonator while they move against him. Of course, there are a few little twists here and there and the Doctor is shown to once again be a master manipulator of events to his own advantage.
There is not a lot bad to say about this story. For a sixties era story, the production values look sold with very few shoddy moments. There are a few bits, especially with the underground workers, that seem a little off but that is to be expected with a story that takes a couple left turns through it's six episodes. When viewed as a whole, there are likely enough places that things could have been cut to make a five-part story, but I don't recall feeling any significant bloat with this story. I still might not recommend sitting down and watching all six episodes in one go, but I wouldn't call it filled either.
The acting is also quite good with Patrick Troughton doing double duty. His accent as Salamander is a little off at points, but trying to evoke a Mexican accent without sounding like Speedy Gonzales was probably a tall order. He is supported by a reasonably strong cast that is clearly working to keep the tone of the story up. Even Victoria is given a few things to do and doesn't completely devolve into the whimpering uselessness that she does in other stories.
Definitely one to go back and watch again.
Overall personal score: 5 out of 5
One of the advantages of being a bit of a late-comer to Doctor Who is that I get to enjoy newly found episodes without having to have dealt with the recons. Enemy of the World is a prime example of that. The majority of this story was lost and then it was found along with most of The Web of Fear (hooray!). I hadn't got around to it while it was still lost so only the found footage for me.
This story hinges greatly on your appreciation of Patrick Troughton as an actor. As I enjoy Mr. Troughton's work and consider the Second Doctor to be my favorite of the classic era, this story was a big plus in my column. The premise is pretty straight forward. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria land in the future where the Doctor is mistaken for a man who is pushing to become dictator of the world. He is captured by a group of rebels and persuaded to act as an impersonator while they move against him. Of course, there are a few little twists here and there and the Doctor is shown to once again be a master manipulator of events to his own advantage.
There is not a lot bad to say about this story. For a sixties era story, the production values look sold with very few shoddy moments. There are a few bits, especially with the underground workers, that seem a little off but that is to be expected with a story that takes a couple left turns through it's six episodes. When viewed as a whole, there are likely enough places that things could have been cut to make a five-part story, but I don't recall feeling any significant bloat with this story. I still might not recommend sitting down and watching all six episodes in one go, but I wouldn't call it filled either.
The acting is also quite good with Patrick Troughton doing double duty. His accent as Salamander is a little off at points, but trying to evoke a Mexican accent without sounding like Speedy Gonzales was probably a tall order. He is supported by a reasonably strong cast that is clearly working to keep the tone of the story up. Even Victoria is given a few things to do and doesn't completely devolve into the whimpering uselessness that she does in other stories.
Definitely one to go back and watch again.
Overall personal score: 5 out of 5
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)