Marco Polo

If I win, perhaps I can have my caravan back again?

Marco Polo is considered by many to be the holy grail of missing stories. It is the longest and the first in that stretch. It was also done in an era when the show was still focused very heavily on teaching so a great deal of effort was put in to it's visual style. As a story it's not too bad, but watching the recons forces one's attention away from the supposedly impressive set design, costumes and directions and instead towards the story and that is where problems start to crop up.

Plot Summary

The TARDIS arrives on the top of a mountain where the crew discovers large footprints in the snow. The Doctor emerges in a foul mood as one of the power circuits has failed rending them without the ability to heat the TARDIS. The Doctor and Susan examine the damage while Ian and Barbara go to look for fuel to make a fire.

While searching, Barbara sees a man skulking among the rocks. She and Ian head back to tell the Doctor, who is increasingly worried as it will take him several days to fix the circuit. Upon hearing of men, they decide to head down the mountain to find these people and shelter. Reaching the same spot, they are set upon by a group of Mongols. The leader, believing they are evil spirits decides to kill them but his hand is stayed by a European who orders them brought back to camp in the name of Kublai Khan.

In camp, the European is revealed to be Marco Polo and he is on a mission to return to Shangdu with the ambassador warlord Tegana and the lady Ping Cho where she is to be married to a lord of the court. Polo offers the TARDIS crew shelter but Tegana remains wary of them.

Polo orders the TARDIS brought down from the mountain top and into camp. He informs the TARDIS crew that they will be coming with them as they head towards the supply town of Lop. Because of the fears that they are spirits among the Mongols, Polo orders that no one enters the TARDIS while they journey and the Doctor agrees.

The caravan travels along the Silk Road until they reach Lop on the edge of the Gobi Desert. The Doctor attempts to enter the TARDIS but is restricted by the Mongols. Polo then reveals to them that he is homesick but has not been permitted to leave by Kublai Khan. Polo intends to give the TARDIS to Kublai Khan in exchange for his release from service. He offers to take the Doctor and his party back to Venice where they can make another TARDIS. They argue with him but Polo has made up his mind. The Doctor is so aghast that he begins to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.

Tegana meanwhile hatches a plan to poison the water supply of Polo's caravan and seize the TARDIS for his own use to overthrow Kublai Khan. The caravan sets out across the Gobi desert with Tegana planning to poison the water after three days travel into the desert.

The Doctor continues to pout and his actions upset Susan. Barbara consoles Susan while Ian builds friendship with Polo. Susan heads to her tent but she and Ping Cho leave to go look at the desert stars. While out there, they spy Tegana and follow him. But they soon fall behind and go to turn back but are caught in a sandstorm.

Hunkering down, Ian, Barbara, and Marco discover that Tegana, Ping Cho, and Susan are gone. They call out into storm but cannot find them. However, their yells attract Tegana who finds the girls and brings them back into the camp.

They set off again and that evening Tegana brings attention to the water that he poisoned the previous night. Marco suspects bandits and will not head back to Lop, fearing they will be set upon. Ian suggests heading north to an oasis and Marco agrees, though he doesn't favor their chances. Tegana tries to refuse to go and head back to Lop but Marco orders him to stay. They head north but their weakened condition forces them into a slower and slower pace each day. Tegana rides ahead, promising to bring back water. He reaches the oasis but after refreshing himself remains there to wait for the caravan's death.

The Doctor collapses from the heat and lack of water and the others convince Marco to let him enter the TARDIS to rest. He relents and Susan is allowed to go with him. The rest of the caravan continue on through the night and rest in the morning. In the TARDIS, the Doctor and Susan wake to find condensation has formed on the walls of the TARDIS and they move quickly to collect it. Marco Polo doesn't believe them at first and accuses the Doctor of hording water but he becomes convinced when the Doctor and Susan drink it without harm.

Renewed, they press on to the oasis where they find Tegana. Tegana claims he was forced to wait due to bandits and when he had collected water for them, he saw them coming over the hills and waited there. They opt to stay one day with Barbara and Ian becoming suspicious of Tegana. As a safety precaution, Marco insists the Doctor turn over the TARDIS key to him.

The continue and arrive at the next city, a tourist destination with the Temple of a Thousand Buddhas and the Cave of 500 Eyes. The Doctor prepares to work in repairing the circuit, revealing to Ian that he gave Marco a fake key while he kept the original. They are all distracted at that moment as Ping Cho settles in to tell a story of the Hashashin, inspired by the tale of the Cave of 500 Eyes.

Tegana slips away and meets messengers from his lord in the Cave of 500 Eyes. He learns that his lord has assembled an army and is awaiting a time to attack. Tegana informs the messenger of the TARDIS and believes it can be used as a weapon. Tegana suggests that they attack the caravan on the road posing as bandits to take the TARDIS and kill the rest. They are interrupted when one detects Barbara in the outer cave, having followed Tegana out. She is captured and Tegana returns to the inn.

The group discovers Barbara missing and Marco organizes search parties to look for her. Susan and Ping Cho inform the Doctor that they think Barbara may have gone to the Cave of 500 Eyes. The three set off to the cave using information supplied by the innkeeper. The innkeeper then goes and tells Tegana that the Doctor, Susan and Ping Cho have gone to the cave. Angry, Tegana sets off after them. The innkeeper also tells Ian and Marco who also set out after them.

In the cave, they find Barbara's scarf and begin calling out for her. Tegana find them and suggests they leave to avoid the evil spirits. The Doctor laughs him off and shows him Barbara's scarf as proof she was here. Ian and Marco arrive shortly after and they to are shown the scarf. Susan points out a point in the cave where she saw the eyes move and Ian and Marco discover a hidden room in the cave.

They find Barbara being held by a man with a knife to her throat but they kill him before he can strike her down. They return to the inn where Tegana suggests they rid themselves of the TARDIS crew as they are diving the loyalties of the caravan. Tegana also suggests that the Doctor is lying to Marco about not having access to the TARDIS. Barbara enters and tells Marco that she followed Tegana to the cave though he denies it. Fearful of Tegana's warning, Marco refuses to believe Barbara and separates Susan and Ping Cho form rooming together.

They continue on, following the river. The Doctor makes progress in the circuit repairs but is fearful that Ping Cho will inform on them. Ping Cho herself is also sad as she does not want to lose Susan as a friend. At the next stop, Ping Cho recalls Tegana's words about never having visited the Cave of 500 Eyes before, despite his knowledge of the passage. She tells Marco but he reacts angrily and dismisses her.

In town, Tegana meets with the messengers again. He sets up an ambush in the approaching bamboo forest with promises to kill the Doctor and to deliver the TARDIS.

The Doctor sneaks into the TARDIS to continue his work but is observed by Tegana. Barbara sees this and tells Ian and Susan. Ian moves to distract Marco and appeals to him against Tegana. Tegana approaches and tells Marco that the Doctor has reentered the TARDIS with a second key. The trio head out in front of the TARDIS and catch the Doctor locking the door as he leaves, having finished the repairs. Tegana wrestles the key away and gives it to Marco. The Doctor refuses to tell Marco how to enter the TARDIS, even with the key and the TARDIS crew is placed under guard.

The TARDIS crew plans an escape. Breaking a plate, Ian uses the shard to cut a hole in the tent allowing him to slip out. Ian moves to knock out the guard but finds him already dead. Ian runs out to Marco's test to tell him that bandits are preparing to attack. They deploy the remaining guards and the Doctor urges them to escape in the TARDIS. Tegana, already thwarted in his ambush attack, urges Marco not to go into the TARDIS. Marco agrees and refuses the Doctor. Ian suggests they pile bamboo on the fire to create a noise to scare the bandits off.

Tegana's allies grow impatient and decide to attack at moonrise whether Tegana signals them or not. Tegana continues to scoff as Ian and Marco make preparations. Ian also confesses to Marco that they intended to escape. Despite Tegana's protests, the soldiers attack and Tegana kills the leader to cover his involvement. The exploding bamboo and the leader's death drive off the other soldiers.

Marco repeals the restrictions on the TARDIS crew in gratitude but keeps control of the TARDIS keys. Tegana is increasingly hostile towards the TARDIS crew and their suspicions of him are confirmed with the Doctor sure that he is after the TARDIS.

A courier arrives from Shangdu summoning Marco Polo to the summer palace. The group heads to the next city and the baggage, including the TARDIS are separated to travel with a trade caravan. Polo and the rest of the group will travel via horseback at a faster pace starting the following morning.

Tegana arranges with a local bandit to steal the TARDIS that night. Ping Cho meanwhile heads to Marco's room to inform him of dinner and steals one of the TARDIS keys. She gives it to Susan but is observed by Tegana heading to meet the bandit captain.

The TARDIS crew sets out from the inn with Ian first distracting then knocking out the guard. Susan doubles back, looking to say goodbye to Ping Cho. The other three make it into the TARDIS and realize that Susan is gone. Susan meanwhile is trapped trying to avoid Tegana but he grabs her as she tries to make a dash for the TARDIS. Ian comes out to help her but Tegana holds a knife to her and orders the Doctor and Barbara to come out as well. Marco arrives to see the situation and Tegana notes their escape attempt. Marco has the Doctor hand over the key in exchange for Susan. When pressed about where they got the key, Ian covers for Ping Cho by claiming he stole it.

In the morning, the group departs for Shangdu. While stopping at a rest area, Ian attempts to persuade Marco to give them back the TARDIS by telling him the truth about it. Marco doesn't believe him but does figure out that Ian lied about stealing the key and that Ping Cho was responsible.

Ping Cho, fearing the discovery and desperate to avoid her arranged marriage, sneaks away in the night to head back to Samarkand. Discovering her disappearance, Ian offers to go back for her and Marco agrees as he must push on for Shangdu. Ian discovers Ping Cho at the previous inn, having just lost her money to the same thief that Tegana hired to steal the TARDIS. Ian discovers that the TARDIS has been stolen when the real caravan driver shows up.

Tegana quarrels with Marco, desiring to go and look for the TARDIS and Ping Cho himself. Marco refuses until he learns that Barbara and Susan oppose Ping Cho's marriage. Learning that all of them oppose it, Marco authorizes Tegana to go after her, fearing that Ian has abandoned the search for Ping Cho and only gone after the TARDIS.

Ian and Ping Cho suspect that the bandits have taken the TARDIS to Karakorum. They set out after it along that road. On the road, they discover both the TARDIS and the bandit leader. Ian gets the drop on the bandit leader who confesses that he stole the TARDIS on orders from Tegana. At that moment, Tegana arrives, prepared to kill all three of them and take the TARDIS for himself.

Marco and the rest of the Doctor's party arrive in Shangdu and are allowed audience with Kublai Khan. The Doctor objects to bowing before Kublai Khan and is unable to fully bow before Khan due to his ailing back. Khan becomes sympathetic to the Doctor due to sympathetic pains. Marco also learns from Khan that Tegana's master Nogai has assembled his army at Karakorum and that they are to leave for Peking in the morning.

As Tegana moves to kill Ian, Kublai Khan's soldiers arrive. Tegana kills the bandit leader as he tries to flee to avoid exposure. Ian and Tegana accuse each other of attempting to steal the TARDIS but the guard captain, who is the same man as brought Khan's summons to Marco, orders that all three and the TARDIS be brought to Peking for Kublai Khan to judge.

In Peking, the Doctor plays backgammon with Kublai Khan and the Doctor keeps winning. They are interrupted by the arrival of the empress, who henpecks her husband over his losses. The Doctor offers to play one more game where he would give all that he has won back in exchange for the TARDIS. Khan reluctantly agrees and informs Marco of this as he informs Khan that Tegana has arrived. Unfortunately, the Doctor loses.

Marco is informed that Ian and Ping Cho are being held under suspicion of theft, accused by Tegana. Marco goes to Ian to hear for himself. Ping Cho validates Ian's story but the captain cannot. Ian is informed that he will have to stand with his word against Tegana as Ping Cho's fiancé has promised to take her away after the marriage ceremony tomorrow.

Tegana attempts to undermine Marco by noting that the Doctor attempted to steal the TARDIS back several times which Marco did not mention. Khan calls Marco out and Marco confesses his hope to bribe the Khan for his freedom. Khan laughs him off and orders the key brought to him, informing Marco that he won the TARDIS in a game of chance with the Doctor.

Ping Cho is informed that during the celebratory banquet, her fiancé died during the feast. Ping Cho is offered the chance to stay at court or to return to Samarkand. Ping Cho accepts the chance to stay. As she leaves, Khan orders Marco to give him the key and bring the Doctor after he meets with Tegana.

The Doctor and his friends realize that the Tegana is planning to kill Khan and allow Nogai to march his army into Peking and take over the empire. To warn Khan, they subdue the guard and rush to the hallway where they are rearrested by Marco. They warn him just as another guard informs him of Nogai's army approaching Peking. They are returned to their room while Marco runs to the throne room.

In the throne room, Tegana attempts to kill Khan but Marco interrupts. The two men fight in the chamber. Khan comes to and summons the guards who try to arrest him. Rather than be caught, Tegana falls on his sword.

Marco slips Ian the key in the confusion and the Doctor and his friends head quickly into the TARDIS and disappear. Marco apologizes to Khan but the Khan waves it off believing that the Doctor would have won it back eventually. Marco, finally believing Ian, idly wonders where they have gone.

Analysis

I've heard this story described as a road trip story and that does apply. It's a series of adventures that happen as the crew travels across China with not a lot of connective tissue in between each installment. Your enjoyment of that is going to be directly tied to whether you are in for an one episode at a time bit or if you are going to try and absorb the story as a whole. I tend to prefer taking the story in larger chunks and in doing so it goes over fairly well but it is not without issues.

Before delving into anything else, I would be very curious to know if this story existed, would it get the same treatment as The Talons of Weng Chiang from a race angle. Despite being set in China, there are almost no Asian actors in the entire story. The only Asian actor in any significant role is Ping Cho. All other actors are European. However, unlike The Talons of Weng Chiang, there is no real attempt to "yellow" any of the actors apart from the facial hair style. There also seems to be less effort to make an attempt at any stereotypical Asian accents either. Kublai Khan does a little vocal trick, but the actor is Eastern European and some of the accent may be native to him. The innkeeper does an accent as well, but it's more of the sycophantic fop rather than anything attempting Chinese. But Tegana, the guards and nearly all the other secondary characters merely speak in their proper theatrical voices.

So does that make the story more or less racist? There were probably east-Asian actors that could have been found but would they have performed as well as the ones they got? Given that you have European actors playing Asian roles, is it better to leave them European looking or would be better to go the Li H'sen Chang route and "yellow" them to make it appear more authentic? I don't know. I think the performances were fine and stressing too much over these type of things diminishes the overall take of the story. If it is something that others do have problems with, then note it as such and pass over the story.

On to the actual story. I think things worked out fairly well but even with the road trip aspect, I think the story goes on too long. The big hang up I have is Marco's continued trust of Tegana, juxtaposed with his on and off trust of Ian. I think it is quite clear that he never really trusts the Doctor and only Ian gains his actual friendship. The story does a fairly good job of showing why Marco trusts Tegana initially and Tegana's constant failures to kill the party or capture the TARDIS are given fairly believable reasons both in why they fail and why he suffers no significant suspicion from Marco.

However, the constant level of coincidence does build and the real breaking point comes after the incident with the Cave of Five Hundred Eyes in Episode Four where Susan and Ping Cho accuse Tegana. Marco may have no good reason to trust Susan, but he should trust Ping Cho and himself. Ping Cho and Susan point out a fallacy in Tegana's own story. I can buy that Marco would not have immediately moved against Tegana as this is only a small bit of evidence. But there is no reason not to believe them and he certainly shouldn't have lashed out at them as if they were accusing his best friend of treachery. Marco should have taken their statement with quiet contemplation and it would have added to the slow deterioration of relations between Marco and Tegana as well as fueling Tegana's own mild hysteria against the TARDIS crew. But instead, things keep reverting back to where they were at the start of the story with Marco fully trusting Tegana and not trusting the Doctor and his companions. It is wheel spinning at it's worst and it just doesn't make sense. A slow build of trust between Marco and the TARDIS crew coinciding with a distrust of Tegana would have paid off better and made complete sense as to why Marco finally gives Ian the TARDIS key in the end. As is, Marco is suddenly repaying Ian for being right all along and that somehow overrules his desires and the Khan's right of ownership? It does not feel earned in that way.

A second issue noted about this story is the number of little threats teased at here and there that just don't pay off. Ping Cho's arranged marriage does nothing except provide a reason for her and Ian to be back at the inn to see the TARDIS stolen. The Doctor losing the TARDIS at backgammon does nothing except keep them in Peking for another day to stop Tegana from assassinating the Khan. Even Tegana's own machinations seem overly complicated. His job is to delay Marco to give Nogai time to move his army. He alters these plans in order to steal the TARDIS, but if he is open to killing the party as is implied in the first couple of episodes, why does he continue to create elaborate schemes to hide his own complicity? Tegana should have just gathered his men, laid an ambush and killed everyone there. He comes closest to this in the bamboo forest in Episodes Four and Five, but even there, he is trying to hide his own involvement and possibly keep Marco alive so that he can continue with his mission to kill Kublai Khan. They work as little adventures to be thwarted by the TARDIS crew but make no sense in the long run.

On the plus side, I can say that this story is clearly well acted with everyone giving their all in various roles. This is also the story where you can see the Doctor shift from being a grump to being a bit more open and friendly. This makes his character much more pleasant to be around although he still doesn't get a whole lot of focus in the story apart from the TARDIS repairs. But all the other characters get nice moments throughout, with the focus of the story mostly on Marco and Tegana, both of whom play their roles well.

I can't speak to the direction of the story as their are only still pictures, but the costuming and set design seem quite well realized. The sets seem fairly elaborate, even when out in the desert and especially at the Khan's palace. Likewise the costuming is elaborate and well tailored. Perhaps it was because this is still the first season, but the show seems to have a lot more money than we are used to seeing them work with. It might also be that they were able to poach some things from other productions to cut costs. But it does make for some nice visuals, what little you are able to see in the recons.

One last gripe about this story is something that is unfortunately common: the rushed ending. With seven episodes to play with you would think that some set up could be made towards the ending as noted earlier with the potential build between Marco and Ian. But instead, we get a first half of the Doctor losing the TARDIS playing backgammon and Tegana ingratiating himself in court. It is only when we get the offstage death of Ping Cho's fiancé that the ending begins. There is the dawning realization between the TARDIS team that Tegana is about to assassinate the Khan (something they should have realized before then) and then the rush to tell Marco, the fight and the departure. All of this is compressed into a span of less than ten minutes and it feels just as rushed as described.

This rush off not only feels like a bit of a cheat at the end, but it leaves a hollow feeling. Tegana dies quickly after a fight and after he has actually made an attempt to kill Kublai Khan. Likewise, Marco slips Ian the key without any real reason given except that it is the right thing to do. This completely undercuts the whole premise that we have gone through the last six episodes four. It gives the viewer the impression of being cheated. Why go through so much if it ultimately didn't matter because of how slipshod things finished?

I think the proper summary of this story is actually best shown in the Wife in Space blog entry for Marco Polo. Neil shows Sue a 30 minute reconstruction of the whole story. She gets it and enjoys it. If you compress the whole thing, there is a lot more to enjoy with this story, but as is, it is long and it drags at times. If you put some space in between each episode, the enjoyment factor will probably go up, but trying to take it in only one or two sittings is a bit much as the wheel spinning becomes very apparent. If this were found I would not hesitate to watch it again to see what is missing by not having moving pictures, but in recon form, it's just too much padding to take in and properly enjoy on any kind of regular basis. It just feels like something to be gotten through.

Overall personal score: 2 out of 5

Delta and the Bannermen

Actually, I may have gone a step too far.

For this story, I am grateful to have seen the 1950's episode of The Supersizers. Holiday camps are things that generally unknown to Americans and having the basic outline of how they developed known helps a bit in establishing the setting. One thing that I specifically watched out for was to see if Burton was a former military man and it turned out that he is so score one there. As for the story itself, I've been pleasantly surprised as I'm now halfway through the dreaded Season 24 and it hasn't been the slog or dreck that fan wisdom suggested that it would be.

Plot Summary
A woman named Delta is under attack along with her soldiers. She is the queen of a race known as the Chimeron and her people are being massacred by a man named Gavrok and his soldiers, the Bannermen. Her men are cut down but she manages to flee aboard one of the Bannermen's ships. She is pursued to a space port on a nearby planet. At this spaceport, the Doctor and Mel have arrived and won a trip to 1959 Disneyland with a group of alien tourists. Mel rides the bus but the Doctor opts to follow behind in the TARDIS. Delta lands her ship and gets aboard the bus just before it takes off.

On Earth, two American agents are traveling in Wales and have been instructed to observe a satellite in orbit. This same satellite accidently collides with the touring bus as it approaches Earth. The Doctor manages to save the bus from crashing using the TARDIS but is forced to land just outside a holiday camp called Shangri-La in south Wales. The Doctor and the driver Murray begin to repair the bus but the power crystal will need to be regrown for a day before they can leave. The group then registers to stay the night at the holiday camp, where they are warmly received by the camp director, Major Burton.

Delta is roomed with Mel but she is cold and paranoid towards her. She closely guards a crystalline orb brought along from the battle. She does begin to soften when she attracts the attention of Billy, the young maintenance man of the camp. The Doctor also makes friends with Ray, a young woman very taken with Billy, but whose affections are not reciprocated.

The group attends a welcoming dance where Billy makes his affections for Delta known. Ray is upset by this and runs off. The Doctor goes after her and offers some comfort as she cries in the laundry. They are interrupted by a bounty hunter sneaking in and signaling Gavrok of Delta's location. The Doctor accidently gives away that they are listening and the bounty hunter prepares to kill them both. Gavrok however, once he has locked on to the bounty hunter's location, sends an ionizing pulse that kills the bounty hunter, saving him paying the reward money. Both the Doctor and Ray are knocked out by the blast.

Delta and Mel head back to their room where the crystalline orb hatches, producing a green infant. Billy, attracted by the noise of Mel's shock, enters and Delta explains to both of them that she is queen and the last survivor of her people. Billy takes it in stride while Mel falls asleep. Billy offers to take Delta and the baby out for a ride away and she agrees.

The Doctor and Ray come to and realize that though the bounty hunter is dead, the Bannermen will be arriving shortly. The Doctor wakes Mel and has her warn Murray. Murray begins to assemble all the offworlders to reboard the bus. The Doctor and Ray go to Major Burton and explain to him that he needs to evacuate the camp. Burton scoffs but becomes convinced when the Doctor allows him to enter the TARDIS. He then arranges for all his staff to leave on a separate bus, although he stays behind to watch the camp.

Worried at Delta's disappearance, the Doctor and Ray take her scooter around the countryside looking for Delta and Billy. While they are gone, the staff evacuates and Murray replaces the power crystal in the space bus. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ray find Billy and Delta and warn them of the Bannermen's approach. The group immediately heads back to the camp.

The Bannerman warship lands and the group take the two American agents prisoner, leaving two soldiers to guard them. They approach the camp and destroy the space bus as it begins to take off. Mel is the only survivor as she opted to stay behind and travel with the Doctor in the TARDIS. Mel tries to claim that Delta was killed but Gavrok sees the approaching bikes and orders his men to fire on them. The party flees and Gavrok is about to kill Mel when Burton intervenes suggesting she be used as hostage. Gavrok orders Burton and Mel tied up to be used as bait.

Delta detects the call of bees who summon her to safety. They head to a local beekeeper who offers them shelter. The Doctor turns around and heads back under a flag of truce. He offers Gavrok a chance to surrender and face justice but Gavrok laughs him off. The Doctor unties Mel and Burton but the Bannermen turn their weapons on the Doctor. However, Gavrok elects to let the Doctor, Mel and Burton go and instead fires a flare into the air. The flare signals the two soldiers guarding the Americans. They bind the Americans and move to the road where they fire a tracking dart into the motorcycle. Aware of the tracking dart, the Doctor ducks into a local field and attaches the tracker to a goat.

While the guards are away, Ray manages to free the Americans and takes them back to the bee farm. The Doctor also takes his charges back there once free of the tracker. They are pursued by the two guards, but the princess, having progressed to the next stage in her growth, sees them and sends out a warning cry. The cry inflicts pain on the Bannermen so they begin to retreat, although Delta manages to gun one down as they flee.

Before leaving the camp, Gavrok sets up a booby trap around the TARDIS. The Bannermen follow the tracker to the field where Gavrok is less than pleased to find he has been tricked. The surviving soldier returns and informs Gavrok of their location and they head to the farm.

Aware of the impending attack, the Doctor sets up a trap and then has the entire party head back to the holiday camp. While setting up the trap, Billy steals some of the princess’s food and begins to drink it himself, to transform himself into a Chimeron.

Gavrok and his men attack, but find the farm deserted. They follow a trail left by the Doctor into the barn where old jars of honey drop on them. The honey attracts the local bees who attack the Bannermen, driving them further from the farmhouse.

Back at the camp, the Doctor spies the booby trapped TARDIS and elects to set up another trap for the Bannermen. He rigs the camp loudspeaker to amplify a signal and works with Billy to set up an additional speaker on the roof.

When the Bannermen attack, he gives a signal and Delta instructs the princess to give her warning cry. The cry is amplified all over the camp causing the Bannermen to collapse in pain. Gavrok collapses backwards into the range of the TARDIS booby trap and is killed by his own device. Ray and the two Americans come out of hiding and tie up the stunned Bannermen. They are then loaded onto their own ship for transport back for trial.

Delta, the princess and Billy, now partially transformed into a Chimeron, board the ship and leave for their new home. Billy leaves his motorcycle with Ray and the Doctor hands over the fallen satellite to the two Americans. With the booby trap discharged by Gavrok, Mel and the Doctor leave in the TARDIS just as another group of tourists arrive.

Analysis

I think the best way to describe this story would be fun silliness. The story is completely off the wall and the alien costuming is bizarre but it is entertaining and the characters are mostly fairly enjoyable. Still, that does not excuse some bizarre choices and some downright painful acting.

The Doctor is good in this story and has a nice balance of comedy and figuring out what is going on. He doesn't have the all-knowing presence that he does in later stories but with only three episodes to play with, he doesn't do much bumbling about. His give away with the bounty hunter at the end of Episode One is probably the worst he gets of it. After that, it's a good bit of run around. The closest he gets with the run around is his direct confrontation with Gavrok at the end of Episode Two. It's probably closer to a poker read in that he is gambling that Gavrok sees the value in leaving him alive rather than just killing him outright and that does pay off. It's actually amusing to a degree given that Gavrok is painted so one-note that a key plot point revolves around him acting with a level of intelligence so far not yet seen.

Mel got a bit of short shrift in this story. Aside from making acquaintances with Delta, she does nearly nothing in this story. She is a by-stander and hostage through most of it much like Major Burton. But Burton has bravado and he also stands up to Gavrok, suggesting that they are more valuable alive while Mel just sits there and spits at him.

The real companion work is done by Ray who is very enjoyable as a character. Having read about this story ahead of time, I was expecting a harder edge to her and was quite surprised as her softness. I also found that I greatly enjoyed her accent, but that's just personal preference. But she was spunky and resourceful, two things that Mel was not, although Mel did retain her fairly positive tone throughout. But it just felt like Ray was much more reliable. This is somewhat understandable as the decision had been made to get rid of Mel and Ray was one of the two options. The production team ended up going with Ace (see next story: Dragonfire) but I think the volume of Ray in this story is directly tied to the potential of her being the next companion. I don't know how they would have written out Mel though if Ray had been the next companion. Perhaps she would have stayed behind to help Major Burton run the camp.

I must speak well of the use of location in this story. The cinematography is quite 80's but I like the use of an actual holiday camp and outdoor shooting as it gave the story a much more expansive look. They also went minimalist on the effects shots for the space ships and the guns but in neither case would I call that a bad thing. The mind filled in the gaps quite well and it reduced the cheap effect look that this story could have had if there were more attempted.

If there is one thing I have trouble with regarding effects and costuming it is the design of the Chimeron people. In the initial battle, Delta stands out as human looking while she is surrounded by what look like green army men. This continuing of the green, reptilian man form is continued throughout to Delta's daughter and Billy once he begins to transform but even there it is inconsistent. In the baby stage it is painfully obvious that it is just a baby with it's face smudged green in a green dinosaur suit. Later, as her daughter grows, the costuming gets a bit better as she magically assumes a white smock dress, but her face waffles between being painted green or not. I understand that they wanted to ensure the alienness, especially as the Bannermen are not particularly alien looking, but this was an odd choice as it was a lot of work and young children are not going to cooperate much when it comes to makeup application. Something a little simpler would probably have been better, especially it would have made the child more consistent with Delta, who has almost no alien characteristics at all.

I am hit or miss with the Bannermen themselves. Gavrok wasn't bad but he is very one-note evil. I did enjoy the fact that they don't bother with a backstory. Gavrok and the Bannermen are there to destroy the Chimerons and that is it. No tempering of explanation. Just bad guys committing genocide. I also enjoyed the fact that the Bannermen were somewhat competent soldiers, although once on Earth they seemed to develop Stormtrooper aim. All that being said, it was a little disappointing that they were defeated so easily. Gavrok more or less does the Disney villain death, being taken out by his own trap and the rest of the Bannermen just falling to pieces once their leader was dead. It makes their defeat a bit unsatisfying.

There were some significant sour notes when it came to the acting. Delta is a bit stiff throughout the story. It works well enough in the first couple of episodes where she is on her guard, but when she is interacting with Billy, she keeps that same stiffness and it becomes just a bad portrayal. Billy himself is also pretty bad. He falls for Delta more or less because the script tells him to and he goes further and further to the extreme in his devotion to her while maintaining a performance that is as bland and stiff as a board. He and Delta have zero chemistry and the fortunately few scenes they have together are just dreck.

But, the worst aspect for me was the two Americans. Their accents were so broad and over the top that it was painful to listen to. The commander’s accent from Tomb of the Cybermen was better than that. Worse was the fact that they actually were Americans. They must have had some awful advice from the director. As if their accents weren’t bad enough, Weismuller was dressed like Yogi Berra during his managerial days as if to emphasize further that he was American. I have the impression that these two were supposed to be a bumbling comedy duo, but their shtick was so broad and over the top that I found zero humor in anything they did and it was all I could do not to cringe in pain.

One bit of positivity, I rather enjoyed the music for this story. Keff McCulloch gets slagged for his musical choices in other stories and probably rightly so. But I rather enjoyed the feel of it in this story and didn't even mind that it was dialed up to eleven in a few places, especially the chase scenes.

If you keep in mind that this is a romp-y bit of fun, this story can be enjoyed. I can and did enjoy it for the most part. But the bad acting is hard to ignore and the quick ending for the Bannermen give the story a bit of an anti-climatic feel. The somewhat heavy handed nature comparing Delta and the Chimerons to bees is also a bit of a drawback, but I understand that kids might not have picked up on anything quite the subtle. Still, it's not a bad story nor is it poorly done. It wouldn't be my first Seventh Doctor choice, but for a quick run with the Doctor, it is perfectly serviceable.

Overall personal score: 2 out of 5

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

Are you my mummy?

Enter Steven Moffat. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances is the Moff's first entry to writing for Doctor Who and it also is probably a pretty good summation of his overall view of the show and how he conducted thing as show runner: scary, funny and just a little too fearful to go overly dark. In the end, everyone lives and that is both the blessing and curse of the Moffat era.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Rose respond to a distress signal by an alien ship. The ship is caught in the time vortex and crashes in London in 1941 during the Blitz. The Doctor and Rose land the TARDIS about a month after the crash. The Doctor slips into a nightclub to see if anyone knows about the ship crash while Rose waits outside. There he learns of the time period to which they have landed.

While waiting for the Doctor, Rose spots a young boy in a gas mask calling for his mother on the roof of a building. She climbs up to try and help him but when climbing on the anchor line of a barrage balloon the balloon frees and she is carried away across London as the German planes approach. She manages to hold on for a bit but eventually slips off. Her fall is arrested by a tractor beam from the ship of a 51st century time agent named Captain Jack Harkness.

Captain Jack pulls Rose aboard his ship and believing her to be a time agent, proceeds to make an offer of sale for a crashed Chulan warship. Rose plays along, intrigued by Jack but tells him that only her partner is authorized to make payment. They then scan about looking for the Doctor.

The Doctor emerges from the club to find Rose gone. He is distracted by the phone in the TARDIS door ringing. He is warned not to answer it by a passing girl named Nancy but does so anyway, hearing the voice of a child asking for his mother. He follows Nancy into a home where the family is hiding in the air raid shelter and Nancy is leading a group of homeless children in partaking of the large set dinner table.

The Doctor asks about them but they are interrupted by the boy in the gas mask knocking on the door and calling for mummy. The children flee but the Doctor looks to help. Nancy again warns him before running and the Doctor is further alarmed as the child's voice comes over the phone and the speaker of the radio. He opens the door only to find the child gone.

The Doctor follows Nancy to her hideaway and asks further about the fallen spacecraft. She tells him where it is but tells him to see the doctor in the hospital near the crash site first. She also confesses that she does what she does as she feels guilty over the death of her little brother Jamie who was killed in an air raid when he followed her out.

The Doctor heads to the hospital, observing the crashed ship under guard of the British Army. In the hospital he finds hundreds of people in bed, all with the same injuries and all with gas masks fused to their faces. Doctor Constantine tells him of an original patient, a small boy and that everyone else was infected after touching him or one of the subsequent patients. Doctor Constantine also reveals that they are not dead but respond occasionally as he himself begins to transform with a gas mask face and the same injuries.

Rose and Jack find the Doctor shortly afterwards in the hospital. At the same time Nancy reenters the house to find more food and is confronted by the child in the gas mask, whom she recognizes as Jamie. Jamie calls out to her asking her if she is his mommy. This triggers the people in the hospital who begin advancing on the Doctor, Rose and Jack. The Doctor tells them off by telling them that he is cross and they need to go to their room. Both Jamie and the people accept this. The people go back to bed while Jamie heads out of the house.

At this point, Jack realizes that the Doctor and Rose are not time agents and he comes clean about the ship. It was an ambulance that he poached and was going to con them into buying just before it was destroyed by a German bomb. Annoyed by Jack and his carelessness (as he suspects the ship is the source of the plague) the Doctor heads upstairs to the patient zero room. They find toys and drawings of the child's mom. They also listen to a tape recording of the child asking for his mom.

Jamie, ordered by the Doctor to go to his room, enters the room and summons all the other infected people. The three flee through the hospital until they are finally able to barricade themselves into a storage room. Out of escape options, Jack teleports himself back to his ship and sends a signal via the radio that he will transport them once he's changed the ship's settings. The Doctor and Rose banter a bit until Jack pulls them out of the hospital and they head back to the scene of the crash.

Nancy is caught trying to escape the house but blackmails the husband into letting her go when she threatens to expose him for sleeping with the butcher. She stops by the group of kids and tells them that she is going to stop the attacks by the masked child. She then cuts her way through the military perimeter but is caught. She is handcuffed to a table under guard, but the guard is showing signs of transformation.

The Doctor and his party approach the compound and when Jack greets the captain in charge, the captain also begins to transform. They rush past him and find Nancy singing to the transformed guard, who has been lulled to sleep. The Doctor frees her and begins to examine the ambulance. Attempting to open it triggers an alarm and all the masked people begin to advance on them. The assemble but hold until Jamie arrives.

The Doctor confronts Jack, informing him that the ship was full of nanogenes, tiny medical robots. Upon crashing, the nanogenes found Jamie's dead body but didn't have a human pattern to work from so only brought him back to life in his state. His touch spread the nanogenes who rewrote the human DNA in favor of their repairs. Jack transports back to the ship to stop the German bomb from destroying the ship and spreading the nanogenes.

The Doctor looks at Nancy as Jamie and his hordes approach and realizes that Jamie is not her brother but in fact her son. Knowing this, he encourages her to go to him. She confesses to him that she is his mother and hugs him. The nanogenes read the parent DNA and correct their earlier mistake. Jamie returns to himself and the Doctor takes his mask off to reveal a normal boy underneath. He then sends out the nanogenes who repair all those affected by the earlier mistake, some to a point of improvement beyond their original condition.

The German bomb is released by Jack catches it in his tractor beam and puts it in stasis. The Doctor and Rose head back to the TARDIS to celebrate. They then rendezvous with Jack's ship which is about to be destroyed as the bomb is losing it's stasis field. They take Jack with them and all three have a dance in the TARDIS.

Analysis

This story is Steven Moffat in miniature. About the only thing missing from it is anything that is "timey-whimy." But the simple horror elements are there, along with drama and emotional manipulation. You also have the saccharine and a few pacing problems as well.

The best part of this story is the child himself and the Doctor's reaction to him. The child is both creepy and also very sympathetic. When he calls out to the Doctor through the door of the house in The Empty Child, you both hear and feel a lost, scared child who you should bend over backwards to help. That you are also afraid of this child creates an odd dichotomy in your brain that you wrestle with. I personally felt even worse when the Doctor told him to go to his room. He is looking at Nancy and as it registers, you see his head droop and you can almost feel the sadness welling up inside him as he doesn't know why he is being punished.

Nancy and the rest of the kids were also fine but I felt Nancy was a bit stiff at times. Some of that might have been trying to pull the stiff upper lip and all, but her confession regarding Jamie seemed like it should have been a bit more emotional for her than it was. The other children didn't have much time to be more than children, which is exactly how it should be. Too much time with children and their lack of acting experience starts to show and that can hurt a story.

I quite enjoyed Jack. He skirts the line with his cockiness and it is very close to descending into cliché at times, but he is still a very enjoyable character. I actually like him even better when he is less sure of himself and begins to cow to the Doctor a bit, although that's a good payoff solely because of the dick measuring going on between them. The Doctor's embarrassment over the sonic screwdriver relative to Jack's squarness gun is quite funny and one of the few times the Doctor is put on his heels with regard to it.

Rose on the other hand, is not that enjoyable. She never seems to come across as particularly serious in this episode. You would think that flying over London in the Blitz would temper her a bit but she goes along with it and is all pally and flirty with Jack. I do like that she gets called out with regard to Mickey and how she is more or less using him to make herself feel better but is always looking to drop him. Her one decent moment is her quiet talk with Nancy and the reassurance she offers that the Allies win the war. It is a nice moment and reflects how low the spirits of the British people must have been given that Nancy takes it as a given that the Germans will eventually win and that Rose is lying, not because she has reservations about time travel, but because Rose isn't German.

The overall look of the story is pretty good. The only real point where they didn't quite pull things off was in the scenes from the Blitz where Rose is hanging from the balloon. The CGI is pretty thick there and it gets a bit of a cartoon-y look the longer Rose is up there. I understand the idea, but they don't quite pull it off. You can definitely see how far the show is come by pulling that scene next to a similar sequence in Victory of the Daleks. But other than that, the production looks pretty good. The transformation of Doctor Constantine being an excellent example of a well done CG effect that helped a great deal with the horror element of the story.

Aside from the niggles noted above, there are three points of the story that didn't really work for me. The first was the pacing, especially in The Empty Child. The cutaways to Rose and Jack didn't do much for me and they felt like distraction and filler. The tension was with the Doctor and his interactions with Nancy and Jamie. That built the scariness and any cut away from that felt not like relief but instead like a distraction. I didn't care about champagne on the roof of a cloaked ship. I cared about the Doctor's unease.

The second was the Doctor's over enthused reaction to everybody living after the nanogenes correct their mistake. He is saying this in the middle of a German air raid where potentially thousands of people are dying. Doctor Constantine also pointed out that none of the people infected were dead anyway. They were alive but transformed. So it wasn't like they were brought back or that they were in danger of dying. Yet many people are dying around him. It is an out of place moment that just clangs. It feels like an extra load of syrup on what should be a normal happy ending and it just gags.

The third thing that bugged me was the dance discussions between the Doctor and Rose. Unlike a lot of fans, I don't have a problem with a sexual Doctor. He obviously had a relationship with Susan's grandmother and several other females in the past to say nothing of what he would do in the future as the Tenth Doctor. But what starts as a little bit of coy innuendo just gets beaten to death as the episode goes on. I don't care much for Rose bringing it up in the first place as it adds to her very cavalier attitude towards the situation they are in. But to take something that should have stayed in that room and dragged it out across the whole rest of the story just got tiring. I think Moffat thought he was being clever but it just seems overly silly.

As an aside, I noticed while watching this one that Moffat was able to slip his traditional "Doctor Who" joke in. Nice to know that some things always stay the same.

Overall, I think the goodness of the episode is spread well and it covers the more negative aspect of this story. I was a little surprised at how balanced both stories were. I generally expect one episode to be stronger than the other, but this one was fairly well balanced. I knew I was going to have a favorable opinion of the first episode as I enjoy the scene between the Doctor and Doctor Constantine so much, but I had forgotten that the second part didn't go downhill as I misremembered it doing so. This is another reason why I'm making a point to go back and rewatch these early stories and not relying on my own faulty memory. In the end, I'd say it's definitely worth watching multiple times. It may not be the apex of the First Series that other fans are inclined to think of it as, but it is one of the higher points.

Overall personal score: The Empty Child - 4 out of 5; The Doctor Dances - 4 out of 5

The Talons of Weng-Chiang

The bird has flown the coop. One of us is yellow.

The Hinchcliffe era officially ends with the Doctor and Leela doing Sherlock Holmes. Hinchcliffe gave the BBC something of a middle finger with this story, blowing his budget completely out of the water on costuming and set design, both of which have been well praised by fans. However, the story is also well known for being mired in racism both deliberate, as would have been appropriate for the time, and natural.

Plot Summary

Following a show in Victorian London by illusionist Li H'sen Chang, he is confronted by an angry man whose wife was used as a model in his show and subsequently disappeared. Chang denies all knowledge and the man leaves to go see the police. As he walks down the alley, he is attacked by Chang's ventriloquist dummy, Mr. Sin.

The Doctor and Leela arrive as this is happening intent on taking in a show. They arrive at the scene of the attack with several Chinese men taking the body away. The men attack the Doctor and Leela but the pair manage to hold their own. The men flee with the body when they hear police whistles but Leela manages to trip one up and capture him. The police take all three back to the station for questioning.

During a later performance of Chang's show, the theater owner, Henry Gordon Jago, observes blood dripping off Mr. Sin's arm. He dismisses it but he is also unsettled by one of the stagehand's stories of large rats in the basement, though he dismisses the claims.

The Doctor and Leela have their information taken down by the police sergeant, though he is somewhat dismissive of them. Mr. Chang arrives shortly afterwards to serve as an interpreter, despite the Doctor catching the man off-guard by speaking Chinese. Chang slips the man a poison capsule and he dies quickly. Chang leaves, although the Doctor is suspicious.

The Doctor and Leela then head to the mortuary to have a look at the body, which the Doctor is convinced was killed by poison. He noticed that the man was a member of the Scorpion Tongs, a sect devoted to the god Weng-Chiang who was prophesied to return. In the mortuary, he finds Professor Litefoot doing an autopsy on the man whose body was being taken at the beginning. He had been fished out of the Thames but there were large bites on his body like those done by large rodents. He also finds long rat hairs on his clothes.

The Doctor and Leela then head down into the sewers to where the body was likely dumped. There they are confronted by a large rat, grown to nearly ten feet in length. The Doctor sets of a small flash which temporarily blinds the rat, giving them time to get back up to the surface. The Doctor figures the rat is guarding something and sets back to the police station for a plan of the sewers.

Back at the theater, Mr. Jago and the stage hand check the basement to make sure it is clear and find a woman's glove. Jago pockets it and then dismisses the stage hand. After he leaves, Jago sees Chang who then hypnotizes Jago into forgetting the angry man who came earlier. Jago is then sent back to his office.

Chang heads to the basement and then through a secret hole into a hidden lab. There he meets with a masked figure who demands additional people to experiment on to cure a disease the man is suffering from. Chang warns the figure of the Doctor but the masked figure dismisses him as a threat. The two then ascend into the street.

Back at the police station, the Doctor is left a note by Professor Litefoot. The Doctor meets up with him as he is preparing to leave and Litefoot confirms the Doctor's theory that the victim was gnawed on by a large rodent. He also notes that the man who killed him must have been of small stature based on the angle of the stab. Litefoot then invites the Doctor to dinner to discuss things further.

The Doctor and Leela take a cab with Litefoot back to his house but the Doctor leaves halfway there to stop at the Palace Theater. Litefoot and Leela instead enjoy a buffet meal alone, with Litefoot being amused at Leela's complete lack of table manners.

Chang, Mr. Sin and the mysterious figure arrive outside Litefoot's home. They have tracked the figure's time cabinet to this neighborhood but are unsure of what house it is in. Chang and Sin leave to investigate while the figure heads back to the theater.

In the theater, the Doctor undoes the hypnotism performed by Chang on Jago. Using Jago's returned memories the Doctor puts together more of the story. They search the theater, discovering a hologram which created the stagehand's ghost story. The Doctor also detects that a lair must be hidden here, although he is unable to find the entrance. The masked figure reappears and the Doctor chases him through the theater but he is able to escape. The Doctor instructs Jago to watch and gather information while he heads to Professor Litefoot's home.

At the home, Litefoot and Leela finish dinner but Litefoot detects movement outside. Peering through the window, he catches a glimpse of Chang and heads out with a pistol to chase him off. He does a circuit around the house but doesn't find anything. Reentering the house, he is knocked out by Mr. Sin who then advances on Leela. She throws a carving knife into Sin's neck but he continues to advance. She then dives out through the window where the just arriving Doctor finds her. The noise catches the attention of the police and Chang recalls Sin and the two disappear, though having discovered Weng-Chiang's time cabinet. The Doctor goes in to help Litefoot but Leela jumps on the back of the cab to follow Chang.

Litefoot is groggy but unharmed. The Doctor also discovers the time cabinet, which Litefoot purchased while living in China with his father. The Doctor makes a plan of the sewer system while Litefoot recovers and figures the location of the hidden lair under the theater. He then borrows a Chinese cannon gun from Litefoot and asks his help in getting to the sewers from the Thames.

In London, Chang hypnotizes a prostitute and brings her back to the theater. He stashes her in his dressing room and then hypnotizes one of the cleaning women. Whilst doing this, Leela substitutes herself for the hypnotized prostitute. Chang then takes both women, unaware of the switch, to the figure's lair. Chang promises the time cabinet that night but the figure is angry at his repeated mistakes and dismisses him.

The figure places the cleaning woman in a machine where she is enveloped by gas. Leela strikes out, knocking the figure down and turning off the machine, but the cleaning woman has already had her essence drained. The figure fires a ray gun at Leela but misses. She then escapes into the sewer but the figure uses a gong to summon the huge rats guarding the entrance.

She runs through the sewer pursued by one. It catches up and attacks her, only to be shot down by the Doctor, who had entered the sewer earlier via a boat from Litefoot. He takes Leela back to the boat and the trio head back to Litefoot's house where he supplies her with a fresh outfit. The Doctor then proposes to go to the theater to ferret out the mysterious figure. Aware of the danger, the Doctor orders Litefoot to be ready and has a police officer stationed outside.

Chang learns from overhearing Jago that the Doctor has returned and warns his master. The figure still waives off Chang from his service, though he begins to pack his lair. In the theater, Chang enlists the Doctor in his act. The Doctor enters, but avoids Chang's first attempt to trap him. Instead, he uses his own assistant in the trick. But when it ends, rather than the assistant emerging, the dead body of a stagehand emerges, killed by the mysterious figure.

Chang runs to the lair, where he is pursued by the Doctor, Leela and Jago. The figure and his equipment are gone and the Doctor realizes that he intends to set up shop elsewhere. Chang admits to discovering the figure, whom he believes to be the god Weng-Chiang, when he appeared in the time cabinet in rural China. However, as Chang nursed the man back to health, the authorities took the time cabinet and the two have been tracking it ever since. Chang then runs into the sewers where he is attacked by the giant rats.

Back at Litefoot's house, a band of Chinese men kill the police officer standing guard. Inside the house, Mr. Sin emerges from a fresh basket of laundry and knocks out Litefoot again. He opens the door and the group carry away the time cabinet with the mysterious figure in the same cab. They bring the cabinet to a hidden lair but in doing so, the figure is told that one bag with vital equipment was left at the theater. The figure in enraged and kills the man who forgot. He then orders his men to recover it.

The Doctor and Leela return to Litefoot's house and discover the break-in. They treat Litefoot and the Doctor discovers the attacker's method of entrance. The Doctor also figures that Mr. Sin is a well known robot with the cerebral cortex of a pig developed as a toy in the year 5000 but that turned against humanity and disappeared. The Doctor and Leela then head to the laundry to hunt for the attackers.

The bag with the missing components is discovered in the theater by Jago who then takes it to Professor Litefoot's house. Litefoot, upon learning of this, has Jago leave the bag with a note for the Doctor and the pair head out to the theater, figuring that the gang will return and can be followed back to their lair. They do indeed follow the gang but are discovered and captured. Under threat of Jago's life, Litefoot confesses that the bag is back at his house. They are then locked up, to be executed later.

The Doctor and Leela arrive at the laundry and break in. It is deserted and they sneak into an opium den in the back and find Chang. He survived the rat attack but lost his leg and is dying, easing his pain with opium. He reveals that the man posing as Weng-Chiang had a second lair where he would return to the future. However, he dies before he can tell the Doctor where it is.

The Doctor and Leela return to Litefoot's house to find the bag and the note. In the bag is the key to the time cabinet. The Doctor takes it and deduces that Jago and Litefoot went out after the gang. Suspecting that they will be captured and reveal the location of the key, he and Leela prepare defenses for the house. However, as they prepare, the masked figure attacks Leela from inside the house. She spins away, ripping off his mask to reveal a disfigured man. But his attack worked and she loses consciousness.

The Doctor returns to the room where he reveals that he has the time cabinet key. He strikes a bargain with the figure that in exchange for the key, they will head back to the hideout where Jago and Litefoot will be freed. The Doctor also insists that Leela be left behind. The figure reluctantly agrees. As they leave, Leela comes to and follows behind them.

Once at the lair, the figure is revealed as Magnus Greel, a war criminal from the 51st century. Jago and Litefoot are brought out but they inform the Doctor that two women are being held prisoner as well and the Doctor insists on them being freed too. Angry at this push, Greel orders Mr. Sin to fire a laser cannon hidden in the eyes of a dragon statue to which he has snuck behind. The Doctor is knocked out by the blast and Greel orders the three relocked up as he intends to squeeze the Doctor for knowledge of the future.

The Doctor wakes in the room being used as a cell with Jago, Litefoot and the two women. He wakes them and proceeds to set up a makeshift gas bomb using the pipes and a linen bag.

Back in the main room Leela, having killed one guard, sneaks in and attacks Greel. She nearly kills him but is pulled off by his Chinese followers. He has Leela tied to his life extractor machine and then orders the guards to get the other two women. As the guards enter the room, the Doctor sets off the gas bomb. The guards are knocked out and the five prisoners escape, the two women running out of the building entirely. Entering the room, the Doctor throws an axe, disabling the machine before it can kill Leela.

The Doctor frees Leela and Greel orders Mr. Sin to shoot them. Sin begins to fire at them and they take cover behind furniture. The Doctor breaks off and begins to make make-shift repairs to Greel's extractor machine while Greel himself tries to get to his time cabinet. Guards enter the room, but Sin's animal nature take effect and he guns them down, thinking only to kill all humans.

Leela grabs a pistol dropped by one of the guards and empties it into the dragon statue's head, disabling the laser. Greel attempts to activate the time cabinet but the Doctor realizes that if he does so, it will be overpowered and destroy itself and the whole building. He attacks Greel and throws him into the life extractor machine which has been reactivated. His body crumbles to dust once the machine has finished it's cycle.

Mr. Sin emerges from the statue and attacks the Doctor with a knife. Leela, Jago and Litefoot help get him off the Doctor and the Doctor pulls a fuse from his back, deactivating him. The Doctor then destroys the time cabinet key.

With the gang destroyed, Jago and Litefoot prepare to go to the police to close the case. The Doctor and Leela leave in the TARDIS, Leela being very confused by Litefoot's explanation of the protocols of tea drinking.

Analysis

I highly enjoyed this story. If it wasn't for the racism angle, it would probably be regarded as one of the best stories in the canon and quite a few view it that way anyway. But the racism angle cannot be ignored so let's start with that caveat.

There are three forms of racism indulged in in this story: colloquial racism normal for the Victorian era, supplemental racism added by Robert Holmes when none was required and portrayal racism, mostly in the form of John Bennett's portrayal of Li H'sen Chang. The first form is fairly easy to dismiss. In fact, if you had a man like Henry Gordon Jago not calling the Chinese "Celestials" or other slightly derogatory terms, it would have felt out of place. As much as we might not like the history of racism, to endow characters of a particular time with modern sensibilities just strikes a false note. A good example of that is Mel Gibson's southern plantation owner who only uses free black labor in The Patriot. No one did this and such a man would have been ostracized by all his neighbors. It jut feels wrong even though it was made to make him more sympathetic to our sensibilities. So I don't have a problem with the small doses of the first type.

Indeed, Chang actually makes use of established racism to both make a point in suggesting that all Chinese look alike to the Doctor and then later puns on the term yellow as both a descriptor of East Asian people and cowards. Both of these are excellent moment both in terms of undercutting the norms of the day and providing character depth. I especially like Chang's rebuke of the Doctor in Episode One as in one phrase, it undercuts the Doctor's flippancy towards the racism of the day and also establishes that Chang is not on the same level as the henchmen he and Leela encountered earlier. Chang is established quickly as an intellect and a more worthy adversary for the Doctor.

The second type is where things start to get dicey. Nearly all of these are little asides and jokes made by the Doctor. Most of them are height jokes and all are delivered in a corny joke form. He does throw in a couple of harsh barbs, implying that savagery committed by Chinese is somehow more barbaric than that committed by Europeans. To give him a little credit, these harsher barbs are delivered to a character (Litefoot in both cases I believe) who would readily agree with him. But even in a jokey sense and through asides to sympathetic characters, this is a bit discomforting. The Fourth Doctor is flippant and often mildly offensive if you actually listen to what he says, but that does not excuse the degree to which Robert Holmes went in with these. Again, most are dismissive, especially as the Doctor delivers them in that bad joke fashion but even one clanger is enough to give you a bit of pause.

Then there is Li H'sen Chang himself. I'm very torn on this one myself. John Bennett is clearly giving it his all in this performance and he does very well both when he is in conspiring villain mode and playing coy for Jago and the other Victorians. There is poignancy in his performance, especially the scenes of his rejection by Greel and in his death where he comes to grips with being played by a false god. But, you cannot deny that it is an English actor in yellow face and with the Far Eastern stereotypical lisp. It's obviously not as bad as Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffanys, but it is still an obvious indulgence in stereotype. Especially when you have authentically East Asian actors playing all other Chinese roles.

All that being said, Bennett does well enough that you can forget about the yellow face as the performance goes on. This is especially true in later episodes where he loses the cool veneer and allows the emotions of fear and regret to seep through. By the time you see him wasting away, stoned on opium, it is very easy to see only the broken man and not the yellowed stereotype. That you can take moments to forget the makeup and see only the portrayal says a great deal about the quality of the acting.

Steering away from the racism angle, there is an awful lot to enjoy in this story. The Doctor is on point here. He has his typical flippancy but he also gets serious when the situation calls for it. He manages to avoid dipping into the anger that the Fourth Doctor can sometimes get in to as well. His relationship with Leela is also interesting to watch as he clearly displays a level of trust in her so far unseen and unfortunately not indulged in much afterwards.

This may be Leela's best story. Holmes clearly weaves a number of lines and elements from the character of Eliza Doolittle (My Fair Lady) into Leela's dialogue. Yet Leela does not lose her savage edge. She still fights back at every alternative and displays courage often not seen in male companions.

The first of my two personal favorite scenes of hers are when she picks up the side of meat and begins to eat it. Litefoot is taken aback but he is still so charmed by this naiveté that he does the same thing to another side of meat. In fact, the only time he corrects her manners is to use a napkin rather than wiping on the tablecloth (more of an evidence of how much he fears the wrath of his housekeeper). It is just endearing for both characters.

The second of my favorite Leela scenes is when she changes clothes following the giant rat attack. Litefoot gives her a dress and ushers her to another room to change. Up until now, Leela had been wearing an outfit fitting to her more athletic temperament. However, when she emerges in the dress, there is a softness introduced to her. That it impresses Litefoot is not surprising. However, it is the reaction of the Doctor that what make the scene. For the very first time, he is caught by the fact that his companion is attractive. It is subtle and the Doctor never moves or acts on it, but the fact that for the very first time in the series he is moved by the appearance of a companion is very enjoyable to watch. That it would devolve into the mess with Rose in the new series is regrettable but I thought it excellently played here.

The only downside with Leela was near the end when she is sneaking up on Greel. In all reality, Leela would have been able to bury that knife in his back from across the room and probably should have. She only snuck up on him and failed in her attack because the story couldn't end ten minutes sooner and the show needs at least one instance of the Doctor rescuing Leela rather than the other way around as is often the case. Even still, she probably should have been successful in slitting his throat, but again, the story needed ten more minutes and this is tea time drama, no matter how I might imagine it.

Another of the enjoyable aspects of this story are the characters of Jago and Litefoot. These characters became so popular that they even got their own Big Finish spinoff series as a detective duo. In this story, they each serve as Watson to the Doctor's Sherlock Holmes. What is more interesting is that each plays a different form of Watson.

Jago is the more stereotypical Watson as became well known through the Basil Rathbone movies. His Watson is more of the bumbling assistant, desperately trying to keep up with Holmes and generally viewed as comic relief. Litefoot on the other hand, is more of the original Doyle Watson that wasn't portrayed as such much until the Jeremy Brett version of Sherlock Holmes came about. In fact, the Edward Hardwicke version of Watson is strikingly similar to Litefoot in many ways. There is a calm reserve, much more quiet courage than seen in the standard Watson portrayal and a sharper mind than is often initially seen.

I've never listened to the Big Finish audios so I don't know how those typically go but two work well together in the last two episodes of this story. Litefoot takes the more Holmesian lead role with Jago falling in to the comedic sidekick role. That being said, it is Jago and not Litefoot who displays the courage to attract Sin's attention long enough for Leela to get the gun. So, unlike when they are paired with the Doctor, there is not a distinct Holmes-Watson comparison but more of two balancing forces both entertaining and intellectual.

I would be remiss if I didn't also discuss the atmosphere of this story. The costuming, set design and overall atmosphere of this story are about as perfect as you can get. There is night shooting on film, wonderful costuming, elaborate sets. It is as period as you can get with the BBC and that is saying something given the BBC's expertise in Victoriana. Of course, Philip Hinchcliffe broke the bank on this one and put his successor Graham Williams in a real hole. That explains some of the corner cutting seen in Season 15, to it's unfortunate detriment.

Overall, I'd say the good of this story way outweighs the bad. Despite the racism, I'd happily watch this one a second time around. It is paced well and quite exciting. It is only because of the racism that a moment's pause is even required. Still, I mark stories based on how I enjoy them and while the racism does give pause, I enjoyed the story, acting and style too much to be overly bothered by it.

Overall personal score: 5 out of 5

The Awakening

I'm being bullied, coerced, forced against my will. I've had enough for one day.

The Awakening is a quick story of only two parts. Given that it doesn't have to fill time, it races along much like a new series story would, with only a few quick moments of exposition between characters. It does fairly well, but I suspect that the story was a bit ambitious for what was capable both in terms of the two episode allotment and the production design.

Plot Summary

The Doctor, Tegan and Turlough are traveling to the town of Little Hodcombe in 1984 to visit Tegan's grandfather, Andrew Verney. At this time the local magistrate, Sir George Hutchinson, is holding a series of war game reenactments celebrating an English Civil War battle that destroyed the town in 1643. However, his men are beginning to take the games too seriously and have began acting too much like their historical counterparts. The lone objector is the local school teacher, Jane Hampden, but Sir George keeps blowing her off.

The Doctor and crew land in the church after encountering a time distortion and pursue a figure who they worry may have been injured in the cave in. Outside they are taken by Sir George's men and taken to Sir George. Sir George is worried both about their presence and the fact that they are looking for Andrew Verney, who disappeared several days ago. Upset at this news, Tegan runs out to look for him and Turlough chases after her.

Stopping outside a barn to orient herself, Tegan's purse is stolen by the one-eyed man who ran away from them earlier. She chases him into the barn but is locked in. In the barn, she begins to see a manifestation of an old man. Frightened, she tries to get out but is only freed when Turlough unbolts the door from outside.

The Doctor vaguely answers Sir George's questions and then bolts out when their guard is down. He heads to the village to look for Tegan and runs into her purse thief. The man blips away towards the church and the Doctor begins to suspect trouble. He arrives in the church to find the man gone but a boy, Will Chandler, breaks out of a crack in the wall convinced that it is still 1643. Tegan and Turlough arrive at the church shortly after and the Doctor informs them that there is a time disruption going on. He tells them to wait in the TARDIS while he sorts things out with Will.

The Doctor and Will first go towards town but are distracted and end up in a crypt. Exploring the legend of the Malus, the Doctor discovers a secret passage from the crypt to Colonel Ben Wolsey's house, which Sir George had been using as headquarters and Jane had been held under guard. She had found the other end of the passage and the three hid from pursing guards in the passage. The Doctor also finds a sample of alien metal, confirming his suspicions.

Tegan and Turlough head to the TARDIS but on seeing another projection, head back to warn him. They encounter more guards and split up. Tegan is captured and brought to Colonel Wolsey's house. There she is ordered to change into a period dress and is subsequently proclaimed the Queen of the May.

The Doctor, Jane and Will emerge back in the church where he fills Jane in that an alien probe ship landed in 1643 and that it picked up the Malus during it's travels. That same Malus was projecting it's time into the current time, blending the two streams. A crack opens further in the church wall and the Doctor is engulfed in smoke emanating from the crack. Jane pulls him back to reveal the statued face of the Malus waking while Will flees in terror.

The Malus manifests the one-eyed man, who then transforms into an old man with a sword. The man attacks but the Doctor and Jane run from him and he disappears. Realizing that the Malus is feeding on Sir George and the war games for psychic energy, the Doctor and Jane head back into the secret passage.

Turlough sneaks up on the preparations for the Queen of the May event but is captured. He is locked in a small house with Andrew Verney. Verney relates how he discovered the Malus and when Sir George was told, Sir George's greed allowed the Malus to feed off of him to the point where the Malus has taken over. With no other options, Turlough and Verney work to smash the door down.

Emerging from the secret passage, the Doctor confronts Sir George, who is having it out with Wolsey about reading Tegan. Sir George becomes angry and threatens to shoot the Doctor but leaves, ordering Wolsey to take care of the Doctor. Wolsey, now convinced that Sir George is mad, refuses to carry out the order and prepares to help Tegan escape.

The Doctor finds Will cowering near a building and asks his help in stopping the Queen of the May festival, which results in the burning of the Queen. The Doctor is captured as he approaches and Sir George decides to force him to watch the ceremony. However, when Wolsey drives up in the Queen's carriage, only a dummy is seen. Sir George is enraged and orders his men after Wolsey, who drives off. Will then runs up and fends off the other guards with a torch, freeing the Doctor.

All parties run back to the church where the Malus is further waking. They head down into the TARDIS and find that as Tegan and Turlough left the doors open, the Malus has manifested in there. The Doctor uses this to his advantage and works to block the link between the Malus and the villagers.

Sensing this danger, two guards enter the church and use fallen stones to try and bash their way into the TARDIS. Turlough and Verney, having broken out of the house, come upon the guards and knock them out. The Doctor then succeeds in isolating the Malus so that it cannot draw energy from the village. The manifestation in the TARDIS then begins to die.

Emerging from TARDIS, the group heads upstairs with Turlough and Verney to see if the Malus is dying there as well. It calls upon reserves of energy to manifest three swordsmen who advance on the party. However, one of the soldiers knocked out outside the TARDIS awakes and goes to see what is happening. The swordsmen turn on him, killing him. This uses too much energy and the soldiers fade from existence.

Sir George enters the church and threatens to attack them. Wolsey appeals to him and Sir George begins to crack, resisting the Malus' direction. Will then attacks Sir George, knocking him through the wall and into the void of the Malus. The loss of Sir George destroys the last remnants of energy available to the Malus and it begins to self destruct, pulling down the church with it.

The whole group runs into the TARDIS and the Doctor takes off as the church and the Malus are destroyed. The Doctor is then coerced into heading back and staying for a bit of a holiday in the village. He does promise to take Will back to 1643 when it is all over as well.

Analysis

In the two previous 5th Doctor seasons, a random two-part story was commissioned to fill the allotment of required episodes. This gave us Black Orchid in Season 19, The King's Demons in Season 20 and The Awakening in Season 21. It is a good story but someone should have probably told Eric Pringle a little sooner because this story reads like something intended for four parts. It doesn't suffer too badly from it's paring, but I have a feeling that it would have reached it's ideal state in three parts.

Still, I wouldn't say this is a bad thing. I would rather have too much story crammed into too small a space than the other way around. What's more, unlike Ghost Light or The Curse of Fenric, there is not so much story cut out that you feel lost and confused. Here you just have things packed very tightly. About the only thing that is noted as evidence to cut story is the Doctor's throw away line about needing to research why the aliens never invaded after sending the scout probe. But even here, that's not really that important to the overall story. It's a hint to a larger backstory that is simply undisturbed.

I did find it interesting that even with the shifting of companions to Tegan and Turlough, the Fifth Doctor is still doing most of his work with the pseudo-companions of Jane and Will. Will even gives a heavy Adric vibe, although it is an understandable fear that drives him rather than Adric's smugness. Jane on the other hand is more of the traditional companion. Someone who doesn't know what is going on and has to ask questions to get the Doctor to explain the plot.

Tegan is the contrivance to get the Doctor here and then becomes the damsel. Her status in this story is close to useless, much to her detriment. Turlough is also fairly useless as he runs around and gets locked up until the end as well. Arguably he has a slightly better arc as he actually finds Verney and knocks out the guards attacking the TARDIS, although I'm not sure they were ever seen as a credible threat given what the TARDIS has endured up to now.

I enjoyed the Doctor in this story. He was compassionate and intuitive. He was also to the point which is something rather lacking in the drawn out Fifth Doctor stories. I do like the fact that there was no negotiating or waffling. It was simply a declaration that the Malus was evil and must be stopped. Likewise it was try to appeal to Sir George and once that failed, thwart him. There was no mourning for him when Will killed him either. It was just a matter of pragmatism with Will even giving the line about how Sir George was better off in death than to be a slave to the Malus.

One other thing that amused me was the fact that the whole story was set in 1984, yet if it hadn't been for the paved roads and slightly later construction of the village, you could have easily pegged this story as a period piece. Sir George and his men never take off their period clothes. Likewise, they never switch to cars or modern firearms although those would have been available to him. In the church, Sir George threatens the Doctor with two flintlock guns. Yet there are six people standing in front of them, one of whom (Wolsey) is wearing a breastplate. Sir George is not in a position of authority. At best, he would shoot two of them, but the others would take him quickly. I suppose it is a sign of how much control the Malus had and how the Malus had to maintain the tie to 1643, but the juxtaposition of events just amused me.

The two great offenders of this story are the compression of the story and the special effects. I didn't have any trouble following the story as a whole, but there were a number of details that were rattled off very quickly that I'm not sure I got. I'm still unclear if the original probe was sent by the Terileptils or some other race. I also am a little unclear as to whether the Malus was part of the whole plan or if it just latched on to the probe and started it's own little party. These points are not critical to the overall enjoyment of the story, but a little more breathing space would have allowed these details to be presented better or at least in a more spread out manner.

The period special effects are pretty good and I also thought the psychic manifestations brought out by the Malus were done fairly well, although a little too deliberate when the swordsmen were used. However, the face in the wall is just dumb looking. It looks like a bad prop used on a kids adventure show and at no point does it look scary or threatening. The lizard/human manifestation in the TARDIS was better, but it still just sat there and didn't do anything. I'm sure the production folks were limited but there had to have been a better way to show the Malus and make him appear more threatening. A man in a mask or makeup hidden in the wall a la The Cask of Amontillado would have been so much more threatening and realistic looking. This was a big whiff in my opinion.

Overall, the good outweighs the bad in this story. At only two episodes, it is a quick watch and will keep you engaged. It also won't lose you too much as the various extra details are glossed over. It could have been better with a little more time and dedication, but it is still an enjoyable time.

Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5

The Chase

No, what is that other awful noise?

There is a small bit of irony in The Chase. Doctor Who is probably one of the best known shows to have episodes wiped from BBC archives. However, this story escaped wiping and contains a clip of the Beatles from their appearance on Top of the Pops. The irony is that the remainder of that episode of Top of the Pops was wiped and this little bit from The Chase is the only surviving footage.

That amusement aside, The Chase is fairly derided among fans as being a boring and rambling mess. At the very least, it was a bit of a jumble behind the scenes as Peter Purvis, who appears as Morton Dill in Episode Three, was subsequently recast as the new companion Steven in less than three weeks. That gives light to some of the other little problems that cropped up along the way.

Plot Summary
While relaxing on the TARDIS, the Doctor develops a time-space visualizer, allowing the crew to witness any event that has happened in the past. Ian observes the Gettysburg Address, Barbara observes Queen Elizabeth talking with Shakespeare and Vicki observes a performance by The Beatles.

They then land on the desert planet of Aridius. Barbara and the Doctor relax around the TARDIS while Ian and Vicki go exploring. Vicki and Ian discover a trail of what appears to be blood and follow it, unaware that something is starting to follow them.

Barbara overhears the visualizer and when she goes to turn it off, she observes a group of Daleks entering a time machine in pursuit of the Doctor. Realizing the danger, the Doctor and Barbara head out after Ian and Vicki so they can all leave before the Daleks arrive. However, night falls and they are forced to hunker down amid some rocks due to a sandstorm.

As night is falling, Ian and Vicki decide to turn around, but Ian finds a ring protruding out of the sand. He pulls it and opens a hatch in the sand. He and Vicki head down the hatch but turn to find that it has been closed behind them by a tentacled creature that had been pursing them.

As day breaks, Barbara and the Doctor emerge from the sand, unsure of where to go. They are forced to hunker down again as a Dalek also emerges from the sand. They overhear the Dalek plans to search for the TARDIS and it's occupants and begin to creep away. In doing so, they run into a small group of Aridians, a fish people with underground cities. The Aridians offer to take the Doctor and Barbra to their city to look for Ian and Vicki.

Vicki and Ian flee through the tunnels away from the various tentacled creatures, called Mire Beasts by the Aridians. They are nearly caught however above ground a Aridian sets off an explosion designed to trap the Mire Beasts in the abandoned parts of the city and the resulting rock fall, knocks Ian out and kills the attacking creature. Vicki continues through the tunnels to find help for Ian.

The Daleks discover the TARDIS buried in the sand. They capture a group of Aridians and force them to dig it out. Once finished, they kill the Aridians and attempt to destroy the TARDIS. However, it is immune to their weapons. They instead set guards over it. Vicki emerges from one tunnel near the TARDIS to see the Daleks guarding it and heads back for Ian.

Back in the main part of the city, the Doctor and Barbara are informed that the Aridians have been contacted by the Daleks and ordered to give the Doctor and his party over by sunset. The elders are forced to agree as they cannot fight the Daleks. Vicki is captured by an Aridian and brought into the chamber with the Doctor and Barbara to be handed over. She tells them that she found the TARDIS and that Ian had apparently woken up and was wandering in the tunnels.

As the Aridians prepare to hand the Doctor over, a Mire Beast breaks through one of the walled off sections and attacks the Aridians. In the confusion, the Doctor and his friends run though the tunnels to the exit Vicki told them about. There they find Ian, setting a trap for the Dalek guard. Using the Doctor's coat and Barbara's sweater, he creates a tiger trap and lures the Dalek guard over. The Dalek falls into the tunnel pit and the group runs to the TARDIS and take off. The Daleks, seeing their escape, move to pursue in their own timeship.

Temporarily elated at their escape, the crew soon realizes that the Daleks are pursuing. They rematerialize on the observation deck of the Empire State Building in 1966, hoping to replot and lose the Daleks. There, they meet a man from Alabama named Morton Dill who assumes they are Hollywood performers. They quickly leave and Dill then sees the arrival of the Daleks. Still amused, he tells the Daleks that the other performers have already left and the Daleks depart once more.

Trying again to replot, the TARDIS lands on the deck of an American cargo schooner. Barbara walks about and is mistaken for a stowaway by the mate. Before he can take her below, Vicki hits him on the back of the head with a club, knocking him out. She mistakenly does the same to Ian when he comes up to tell them they are ready to depart. The two women then assist a groggy Ian back to the TARDIS, which then departs.

The Daleks materialize on the ship just after the mate has woken up and set the alarm among the crew about a stowaway. Upon seeing the Daleks, the crew panics, screaming about the "white terror." The entire crew, including the captain's wife and child, jump overboard to escape the Daleks. In the pursuit, one Dalek also accidentally falls overboard. The Daleks realize the TARDIS has left again and depart, leaving the abandoned ship (shown to be the Mary Celeste).

Checking the instruments, the Doctor sees that the Daleks are still pursuing and are actually gaining on them each time they replot their course. He sets down with the intension of finding a place to fight the Daleks and the group finds themselves in a derelict mansion. The Doctor and Ian head upstairs to see about defenses while Barbara and Vicki remain downstairs with the TARDIS.

Ian and the Doctor discover a lab with a Frankenstein type monster, which begins to rise to pursue them. This causes them to double back and head back downstairs. Meanwhile Vicki and Barbara see someone claiming to be Count Dracula and get separated in different areas of the house. Ian and the Doctor come back downstairs but discover the Daleks have landed, causing them to run back upstairs. They once again enter the lab and arouse the Monster, who advances on the pursuing Dalek, unaffected by it's gun.

Doubling back downstairs, the Doctor and Ian are reunited with Vicki and Barbara who were merely lost. The remaining Daleks advance on them but they are distracted when Count Dracula appears again, immune to their guns. The Doctor, Ian and Barbara dart into the TARDIS and the Doctor takes off. Vicki however is overcome with fear and doesn't move. The Daleks move to kill her but are distracted once again as the Frankenstein Monster emerges and attacks another Dalek. Vicki finally runs and hides in the Dalek time machine. As the Daleks withdraw to pursue the Doctor, a sign shows that the place was an elaborate haunted fun house on Earth.

On the TARDIS, the crew suddenly realize that Vicki was left behind. Unable to direct the TARDIS back there, they decide to make a stand wherever they land, defeat the Daleks and use their time machine to go back and rescue Vicki. They land in a swamp on a planet identified as Mechanus.

In the Dalek ship, Vicki tries to signal the TARDIS but gets no response. The Daleks, frustrated with their failure, create a robot duplicate of the Doctor to act as an infiltrator and assassin. As they land, they send the robot out while they patrol the jungle looking for the Doctor and his team. Vicki also slips out in search of the TARDIS.

The Doctor and his team are accosted by giant mushrooms but the fungi retreat when a series of lights are activated. The lights form a path and the crew follows it to a cave in the cleft of the cliff face. They hunker down and prepare to fight the Daleks. Barbara also finds the control rod for the lights and she deactivates it. The extinguishing of the lights causes the mushrooms to move in and attack Vicki. They hear her scream and the Doctor and Ian go looking for her.

While they are gone, the robot Doctor enters the cave and convinces Barbara to follow him out to look for Ian, claiming they were separated. The real Doctor, Ian and Vicki come back and after a moment's disbelief, informs them of the robot Doctor. Ian heads out again and finds the robot Doctor as it is attacking Barbara. The robot flees and Ian takes Barbara back to the cave. The real Doctor had also slipped out to look for Barbara and as they approach the cave, both Doctors arrive, each accusing the other. Ian begins to attack the real Doctor but they soon realize that it is the wrong Doctor. The two Doctors engage each other but the real Doctor gets the upper hand and disables the robot. Exhausted, the group returns to the cave and falls asleep.

In the morning, the Doctor and Ian spy a city built high above the forest. However, the Daleks attack before they can move and the retreat in to the cave. The Doctor attempts to fool the Daleks by posing as the robot but the Daleks realize it is him and attack, forcing him to duck back in to the cave. As they prepare to make a last stand, an elevator door opens and a robot bids them enter. They quickly do so and are taken up into the city.

In the city, the robot places them in a large room with Steven Taylor, an astronaut who crashed on the planet two years ago. He tells them the robots are called Mechanoids and were sent to the planet to prepare it for colonization. However, the colonization never happened and without the trigger code, the Mechanoids treat all life as potentially hostile. If no defined threat is observed, they enclose it for study as Steven and the TARDIS crew now are. Showing them around, they get on to the roof and find a spool of power cable. With Ian to help, the group decides to try and escape.

The Daleks invade the cave but find it empty. They determine that their prey escaped up to the city and they pursue, summoning all Daleks from the time ship. The Daleks attack the Mechanoids and the Mechanoids fight back. The Doctor also contributes to the fight by leaving his bomb which destroys the lead Dalek. The fight escalates and the city begins to burn as both Mechanoids and Daleks are destroyed in the fighting.

The group begins to lower each one down to the ground but Steven runs back into the holding cell to rescue his stuffed panda Hi-Fi. Not knowing his fate, the group flees back to the TARDIS. Steven actually does escape but is behind the group and out of sight. The TARDIS crew find the Dalek time ship and discover that it is empty with all the Daleks killed in the battle. As they examine it, Ian and Barbara realize they can use the ship to get back home.

Their suggestion angers the Doctor and he initially refuses to help them but Vicki calms him down and reluctantly agrees, warning them of the risks. They accept that and disappear in the machine. They arrive back in London in 1965, nearly two years after they left. The Doctor observes them on the time-space visualizer, whispering how he will miss them. He and Vicki then take off, unaware that Steven has snuck aboard.

Analysis

There are two caveats required to enjoy The Chase. First, because each episode is so radically different from the last in both story and tone, it must be watched in episodic fashion. The mind needs time to process each episode and then compartmentalize it before moving on to the next part of the story. Second, do not apply any primary sense of logic. Much like Silver Nemesis, many parts of this story are built to be a fun thrill ride and will fall completely to pieces if you try to put any sense of either cohesion or intellectual thought into it. Many of the character's moods and behaviors will change from episode to episode as the situation warrants it. They aren't bad from an overall perspective, but it is another reason to put some space between each episode.

Looking back over the whole thing, I imagine that Terry Nation had a four-part story in mind with Episodes One and Two, then followed by Episodes Five and Six. These four seem to have a bit more flow together and use each location on a longer term. Whether it was his idea or the production team, the story was expanded to six episodes and it then gets very weird. I believe that Terry Nation was still looking to get a science fiction series of his own off the ground in the United States (either with or without the Daleks) and the radical change in tone and style shown in each of the episodes feels a bit like an audition of the various types of episodes he felt he could write.

Episode One is a happy jaunt showing the crew in a holiday like setting. Episode Two becomes bleak with Aridians murdered at will by the Daleks and only a bit of chance sparing the crew from being turned over by the helpless Aridians. Episode Three becomes light again with the cornpone Morton Dill and the silly reactions of the crew of the Mary Celeste. Episode Four is horror with a genuinely creepy haunted house, straight out of Scooby Doo. Episodes Five and Six veer back into the adventure tone with Five having a spy flavor and Six being an all out war, punctuated by Ian and Barbara's departure.

You would think, given the way I railed against the tone shifts of The Romans that these radical shifts would really bother me. However, in The Chase, the tone is consistent through the episode, unlike The Romans, which oscillated within the episode. I found that this made the changes much easier to digest, especially, as I mentioned earlier, if you watch and episode and then give a little time to digest it before jumping in to the next one. It is still jarring and doesn't make for a great overall story, but it at least doesn't produce whiplash while watching an episode.

The production values in this story were not great. Normally I don't have a problem with them in 1960's stories but were so many in this one that they just stood out to me. The Dalek emerging from the sand in Episode One is obviously evoking The Dalek Invasion of Earth Dalek emerging from the water. However, that doesn't do it any favors as in that story, it was a full Dalek that was submerged and this is obviously a little model placed in a sand box. In Episode Two, you can see the flap of the skull cap worn to give the Aridian's their top fin peeling up. There is little done to hide the obvious backdrops, giving the story a penned in feel. It doesn't help that in Episode Five there is a strong focus downward in several shots, clearly showing the crew walking on a stage floor rather than earth. There is also something that appears in the cave when Barbara finds the rod controlling the lights that looks suspiciously like a microphone of some kind. Perhaps it was supposed to be something of the Mechanoids, but it looked more like a busted shot to me.

However, I think the worst aspect of production error was in how Edmund Warwick was shot. Warwick played the robot version of the Doctor and while he did a serviceable job as a stand-in, it is painfully obvious that he is not William Hartnell. So why isn't Hartnell used for the face shots and Warwick kept for the rear and double shots? Hartnell's voice is used throughout, although it is very obviously prerecorded. But even in distance shots, like the closing of Episode Four, it is so obvious that that is not William Hartnell. It actually gets worse in the final confrontation when Ian fights the Doctor. He is clearly fighting William Hartnell while Edmund Warwick is shown in medium shot next to Vicki and Barbara. These are cut shots and there is no reason you couldn't have had William Hartnell in both places. If that was too difficult due to time constraints, then the robot plot needed to have been dropped or at the very least, reworked so that only William Hartnell's face was shown at any one time.

There was one subtlety in Episode Three that caught my eye and I'm not sure what to make of it. Near the beginning of the story, a New York stereotype is giving a tour and a large man in a white hat comes over to listen. As he walks into shot, he give an African-American woman standing nearby a hard elbow in the back to get her out of the way. I would love to know whether this was a motion suggested by the director or if it was something done by the actors independently. Morton Dill is such an "aw shucks" kind of Southerner that it is interesting that to contrast this, a shot of hard racism is thrown in as well. What's more that it is done with subtlety and not splashed as a hard point is also quite a contrast with the rest of the episode.

Earlier I mentioned needing to turn off the logical center of the brain to enjoy this story. I think that is at it's greatest point in Episode Four. The explanation offered for the haunted house just doesn't make any sense. Dracula was played as you would expect a fun house robot to be. Likewise the ghost that crossed Ian's path. However, neither the ghoulish woman nor Frankenstein's monster act as fun house robots. Both move independently and change direction based on stimuli. The monster goes one step beyond and actively attacks the Daleks, both in their entry in to the lab and then afterward in the main hall. No fun house robot is going to have that level of independent thought and action. Yet the sign outside make it clear that they are only robots. I would also like to know why these robots are immune to the Dalek lasers but the Mechanoid robots are not. Also, if there is a great entrance to the fun house just beyond the hall, why didn't Barbara or Vicki see it when they were in the hall by the TARDIS. Heck, why didn't Ian and the Doctor see it when they were coming back down the stairs. I would have much preferred it if Ian's suggestion that they had come to a region of space where thoughts were manifested were the real one. That that idea ended up being the basis for The Mind Robber demonstrated that it would have been a perfectly valid one.

Finally, there is the Ian and Barbara goodbye. It is pretty good and spends a good amount of time with them as deserved. I think the most interesting thing about it is the Doctor's actual reaction. With Susan, there was this sense of inevitability and letting go as a parent (or grandparent) would. Here, the Doctor is angry and his anger turns him back into a petulant child. That it takes Barbara getting angry in turn with him shows the emotional level the First Doctor still is at despite his seasoning through the show.

I think it is also reflective of the fact that with someone you are rearing, there is an expectation that they will grow up and leave eventually. You don't have that with someone you see as a friend. You expect friends to stay as long as possible. What's worse for the Doctor is that Ian and Barbara are leaving voluntarily. In a way, you can imagine the Doctor questioning whether they ever considered him a friend if their only hope was to get back to mid-60's London as soon as they were whisked away back in An Unearthly Child. That would make the wound the Doctor feels by their leaving so much worse. But it is fairly well done: staying with them for a bit but not overly sentimental. It is possibly the best part of the story.

So where to come down on this one. I'm not going to lie, I wouldn't watch this one again without good cause. It is too disjointed episode to episode to form a cohesive story. That being said, in each individual episode the story zips along fairly well and you never get a sense of boredom that you do in some stories. That's not enough to save it but if you do sit down with it, the story will keep you engaged. Given that's the same saving grace I gave to Silver Nemesis, I'd say it deserves the same score.

Overall personal score: 1.5 out 5