He's free to come and go where he pleases and I'm stuck here on Earth... with you Brigadier!
The Mind of Evil was one of those stories that never seemed to get talked about very much. I suppose it got lost in the shuffle of all the Master stories of Season Eight and doesn't have that memorable hook item or character like others. It also is rather notable in that there isn't any real monster. Yes, there is a parasite in the Keller Machine, but the visible antagonists are just ordinary men, which probably makes this story probably the closest Doctor Who got to being a James Bond rip-off in the Bond-like Third Doctor era.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Jo head to a high security prison where a new method of treating prisoners is being demonstrated. Dr. Kettering demonstrates the Keller Machine on a prisoner named Barnham, explaining that the evil thoughts are drained from a man's mind, leaving him safe for society. The Doctor is skeptical and becomes concerned when Barnham seems to have a bad reaction, leaving him with the mind of a child. While examining him in another room, another observer of the machine is found dead of heart failure, his face covered in bites and scratches.
The man's body is examined and it is suspected that he died due to fright. His medical records indicate an extreme fear of rats, which were consistent with the marks on his face. Dr. Kettering dismisses this and insults the Doctor's scientific prowess. However, a short time later, Dr. Kettering himself is found dead with symptoms consistent with drowning.
At the same time, the Brigadier is overseeing security at a UN peace conference in London. He is informed that he is also to provide security for a shipment of a missile scheduled for destruction, a task he delegates to Captain Yates. He is then informed by the head of the Chinese delegation's security, Captain Chin Lee, that important papers are missing. The Brigadier instigates a search for them while Captain Lee heads out and burns a set of papers, seemingly under the influence of a metallic orb behind her ear.
The Brigadier's men conduct their search but find nothing. They are soon informed that a member of the Chinese delegation has been murdered. The Brigadier conducts an investigation but finds an inconsistency in Captain Lee's story about finding the body and suspects her of murder. He also sends a request for the Doctor to join him at the conference.
After examining Dr. Kettering's body, Dr. Summers and the Governor of the prison agree to suspend use of the Keller Machine but lack the authority to dismantle it. The Doctor sets about examining the machine, hoping to get proof for it's destruction. As he examines it, he begins to envision himself on fire. Jo comes in and breaks the connection between the Doctor and the machine. The Doctor relates how the machine conjured a memory of seeing a planet on fire and projected it on him.
Captain Yates enters and informs the Doctor that he is to come to the peace conference to help investigate the murder of the Chinese general. Annoyed, the Doctor agrees and tells Jo to order the prison governor to have the room sealed, to which she agrees.
In London, Captain Lee uses the power of the Keller Machine, through the implant behind her ear to cause Sargent Benton, who had been tailing her, to pass out. She then slips away into the crowd. She passes a man setting up a tap line to a phone junction box. The man then ducks into a tent and is revealed as the Master. He then heads to a limo where he listens on Captain Yates' plan to escort the missile to it's drop off point.
After dressing down Benton, the Brigadier speaks with the Doctor. He agrees to the Doctor's demand to dismantle the Keller machine once the peace conference is over. He then takes the Doctor to meet the new Chinese delegate, Fu Peng. The Doctor ingratiates himself with Fu Peng as they chat in Mandarin. Peng eventually invites the Doctor to come back for dinner and the Doctor departs, leaving the Brig annoyed at the slow pace of discussion.
Afterwards, the Brigadier informs the Doctor that they are searching for Captain Lee on suspicion of murder and the Doctor becomes convinced that she is the same Chinese woman who assisted Professor Keller in the installation of the Keller Machine. Captain Lee meanwhile goes to see the Master. He reinforces his hypnotic control over her and orders her to kill the American delegate.
Back at the prison, a new cell is being prepared and the janitor slips a revolver under the pillow. When the new prisoner, Mailer, is brought in, he grabs the planted gun and takes the guards hostage. He heads down to the infirmary and takes Dr. Summers and Jo hostage as well.
Captain Lee calls the American delegate, Senator Alcott, over to have a secret discussion with the Chinese delegation. Alcott enters the darkened suite where Chin Lee projects a dragon fear into him using the Keller Machine. At that moment, the Doctor, the Brigadier and Fu Peng enter for their prearranged dinner. The Brigadier sees the dragon and tries to shoot it but the Doctor deflects his shot. The gunshot however does break the connection between Chin Lee and the Keller Machine and she resumes normal form and passes out. Senator Alcott also survives.
Fu Peng heads back to his embassy while the Brigadier heads back to the office. The Doctor removes her implant and lets her recover on the couch. In the morning, having convinced her that he is on her side, he takes her to see the Brigadier. She relates that she met Professor Keller at a diplomatic conference and he invited her to go with him to the prison to learn about the process. After their arrival, her memories become fuzzy. From her description, the Doctor becomes convinced that Professor Keller is the Master, intent on starting a war on Earth.
Aware that Chin Lee's hypnosis was broken, the Master monitors communications more closely and becomes aware of the Doctor's theories about his machine. He heads up to the prison to wait for him.
Mailer attempts to negotiate with the governor for his and the other prisoner's release. The governor resists, going so far as to inform UNIT of Jo's capture. This arouses the Doctor and he departs for the prison. Eventually the governor agrees to talk to the prisoners. Mailer tries to set up for him but in a moment of distraction, Jo disarms him and the guards swarm in and subjugate the prisoners. Mailer is returned to his cell as are the other prisoners.
The Master arrives and offers to fix the Keller Machine but asks to see Mailer, who was next on the list for Keller Machine treatment, first. Alone with him, he gives him a gun and a gas mask and the two of them create a mass breakout with the guards either knocked out due to gas or shot in the chaos. Jo and Dr. Summers are once again captured and placed in a cell. The prisoners take the guard uniforms and take their places.
The Doctor arrives and is brought in under guard to see the Master. The Master informs him that while he intends to kill him, he needs his help to fix the Keller Machine. He also informs the Doctor that he intends to steal the missile being transported by Yates and Benton and use it to destroy the peace conference and thus start a war.
The Doctor kicks over the desk and runs out, evading the prisoner guards. Hearing Jo and Summers crying out to him from a cell, the Doctor cuts through the Keller Machine room where the Master and Mailer are waiting for him. The Master cuffs the Doctor and hooks him to the machine, which he has temporarily repaired. He then turns on the machine and leaves the room while the Doctor begins to see visions of previous monsters he has faced.
One of the Doctor's hearts stop and he passes out. However the power of the Keller Machine expands to the rest of the prison and the Master is forced to rush back in and shut it down. He restarts the Doctor's heart and has Mailer drag him to the cell with Jo and Dr. Summers. Summers looks him over and is then taken to another part of the prison. Before passing out, the Doctor warns Jo that the Keller Machine in inhabited by a mental parasite, feeding off dark thoughts.
The Master heads back to check on the Keller Machine but finds that the creature inside the machine is not bending to his will. The creature projects the Master's fear and an apparition of the Doctor appears, laughing derisively at the Master. The Master flees the room and bars the door, determined to starve the creature into submission.
Meeting in the governor's office later, Mailer demands to know the Master's plan as to why they don't just escape. The Master informs Mailer that he plans to send the prisoners out to steal the missile being transported. He tells Mailer that he intends to threaten the peace conference and hold London hostage. In the morning sends them out to a specified location to set an ambush.
Jo calls to the guards for breakfast and the guard brings in some food. Jo attacks him and the Doctor knocks out the other guard. They hide in the governor's office and observe the prisoners and the Master leaving the prison.
The prisoners attack the convoy, killing or wounding most of the escort and knocking out Yates' radio, although he does get a distress signal off. Yates plays dead for a bit and then follows the stolen missile on a motorcycle. He spies them hiding it in a warehouse but is seen and captured before he can ride off.
Alerted by Yates' signal, the Brigadier and UNIT drive up to find the ambush. A recovering Benton tells the Brigadier that he saw a police van as part of the ambush and the Brigadier immediately suspects it came from the prison where the Doctor was headed.
In the prison, the creature in the Keller Machine manages to teleport itself out of the room and kills one of the prisoners guarding the room. His screams attract both Jo and the Doctor and Mailer and another prisoner. They enter the room to find the holding jar gone, although it quickly reappears. It kills the other prisoner and then attacks Mailer, the Doctor and Jo at once. Mailer flees and the machine goes after him, being a stronger source of evil. The Doctor and Jo head for an exit where they spy a UNIT helicopter with the Brigadier in it. They wave at it but are recaptured by the prisoners before they can do anything else.
Mailer, who escaped the machine, calls the Master and demands he come back. The Master reluctantly agrees, though he is not yet finished setting up the missile. He leaves Captain Yates as a hostage in the event something goes wrong with the missile. After he leaves, Yates manages to free himself, knock out his guard, and flee the warehouse.
The Master arrives at the prison and forces the Doctor to assist him in bringing the creature in the Keller Machine to heel. The Doctor rigs a device mimicking the wave patterns of a human brain and is able to place the signaler around the creature's dome before being overwhelmed by thoughts of his enemies. He warns the Master that it is only a temporary solution and the Master takes him back to his cell to rest, where he relates his meeting with Sir Walter Raleigh to Jo.
Convinced the missile has been stored at the prison, the Brigadier plans to assault the prison. He splits his forces into two groups. He poses as a delivery man bringing food to the prison. As he is let in, soldiers leap out the back of the truck and overwhelm the guards. They fight their way in but get pinned down in the courtyard. A second group, led by Benton, sneaks through an old underground passage and catches the prisoners from the rear. With the courtyard secure, the Brigadier opens the gates to let more soldiers in.
Mailer, hearing the soldiers overwhelm his men, grabs Jo and the Doctor as hostages. He pulls them out and Jo tries to get a drop on him on the stairs. She fails and Mailer prepares to shoot the Doctor, needing only one hostage. However, the Brigadier enters and shoots Mailer first. They have secured the prison but the Master escaped. The Doctor also tells the Brigadier that the missile is not at the prison.
After taking the surviving prisoners back to their cells, the Doctor and the Brigadier examine a map to figure out where the Master might have stored the missile. They receive a call from Captain Yates who tells them of the missile location. The Brigadier leaves Benton in charge the prison and heads down to take care of the missile. The Doctor stays behind with Jo to try and figure out how to stop the creature in the Keller Machine.
The creature manages to overload the machine the Doctor has created and it teleports outside the room and kills two guards. The Doctor and Jo discover the murder and head back to the room to investigate. The Keller Machine reappears and attacks them but it's attack is thwarted when Barnham wanders into the room looking for Jo, to whom he has developed a bond since his incapacitation. The Doctor realizes that since Barnham has already had his evil thoughts eaten by the creature, he acts as a neutralizing agent against it. The Doctor order Jo to keep Barnham in the room with the creature while he gets equipment to kill it.
While in the governor's office with Benton, the Master calls and discovers that UNIT has retaken the prison. The Master speaks with the Doctor, informing him of his intentions. The Doctor offers the Master a deal: he will return the dematerialization circuit he stole from the Master's TARDIS in exchange for the missile. The Master agrees but says he will launch the missile if any attack is made. The Doctor calls the Brigadier who calls off his planned attack and also sends a man to UNIT HQ to retrieve the circuit.
The Doctor gets an idea of how to destroy the creature and the Master. He and Jo have Barnham carry the creature into a van and they ride with it to see the Brigadier, who gives him the circuit. The Brigadier also informs the Doctor that the missile is equipped with a self destruct but that it has been disabled by the Master.
The Doctor drives to the airfield in the van with Jo, Barnham and the creature hidden in the back. As he distracts the Master with the circuit, Jo and Barnham slip out carrying the creature. The Doctor disarms the Master and knocks him down while Jo and Barnham run to the side, leaving the Master with the creature. The creature attacks the Master and he is unable to stop the Doctor running in to the hanger to reactivate the self destruct. A helicopter arrives and the Doctor and Jo run to board it. Barnham also runs but in his child-like state, he tries to help the Master. He blocks the influence of the creature and the Master gets up and climbs into the van. He runs over Barnham and flees the field.
The Doctor and Jo run back to find the impact has killed Barnham and they flee back to the helicopter. As they take off, the Brigadier activates the self destruct and the missile explodes, destroying the hanger and the creature in the Keller Machine.
Afterwards, the Doctor discovers the circuit has fallen out of his pocket. He receives a call from the Master who informs him that he has recovered the circuit and will be leaving for a while but will be back.
Analysis
The Mind of Evil is decent overall. It has some good moments and some not so good moments. It has a good amount of action, but it also has a lot of padding. Overall, I'd say it's good, but I can understand why it gets lost in the shuffle and is never really picked out as anyone's favorite Third Doctor story.
I think my highest enjoyment came from the Master in this story. He doesn't appear until halfway through Episode Two so there is a bit of a mystery about him and unlike some of his other plans, this is actually a well thought out idea of his. He screws it up of course as he fails to see that he will lose control of the mind parasite, though he does seem to have anticipated that it would grow stronger and require him to return. Still, he is not randomly siding with the Doctor or begging for the Doctor's help as in other stories. He does use the Doctor but only while he has the upper hand and is threatening Jo. In this story at least, the Master is more akin to a slightly more competent Bond villain.
For only her second story, this one was a real boost for Jo. Unlike Terror of the Autons, Jo never succumbs to mind control, she is caring and competent in her duties and she has several strong action scenes. At no point does Jo make a major contribution to the overall plot resolution, but she does her job well and does not provide any level of harm to the plans. I found Jo quite enjoyable here.
The Doctor is fairly good here, but he is a real ass as well. He starts off wrong by being openly rude about the Keller Machine. If he knew, or even suspected that it was dangerous, he should have been softer and less of a jerk and maybe they would have believed him sooner. Similarly, despite her best efforts and a lack of mistakes, the Doctor is rather rude to Jo. It is still clear that while he cares for her in a fatherly sort of way, he still does not respect her and can be overly short and snide with her. His pomposity might be alright if he was in control of the situation but for nearly the whole story, he's playing catch-up to the Master and the inmates of the prison. Arrogance comes across rather badly when you're being thwarted by others.
I rather liked that there wasn't much of a alien villain in this one. Yes, the Keller Machine parasite was of alien origin but it wasn't this lumbering monster. It wasn't even the main focus for several parts of the story as things shifted to the Master and the prisoner's plans to take the missile. I do wish the prisoners had a bit more depth to them. Mailer was the primary focus but he seemed a bit of a one-note tough and that got a bit boring after awhile. The Master was better, having more nuance in his performance, even if his plans were fairly simple.
There was padding in this story but not to an egregious degree. I think the biggest point of padding was in how much back and forth there was in how the prison was taken over, order restored, retaken over, etc. As much as I liked Jo's bit of kick ass in suppressing the initial prison uprising prior to the Master's arrival, that was clearly a point where a concept had been stretched out. I'm guessing in the initial treatment, the prison uprising didn't actually happen until after the Master arrived. Similarly, there is a lot of capture, escape and recapture by the Doctor that I'm sure was initially just one incident in the original idea. Like most Third Doctor stories, there is enough in this one that it could be pared down to four episodes and you'd lose very little in terms of story content.
I thought the direction of the story was ok. The fight scene where the prisoners take the missile was very well done with some nice location shooting. Some of the prison scenes were nice but others were somewhat bland. I'd say that this particular director had a good eye for action but was a bit drab in the standard part of the story. But I saw more positive than negative. At no point did I ever think of a shot as being bad, save the tilting and whirling of the Keller Machine escaping the Doctor's ring trap. I actually had to look away from the screen at that point as the visual was making me motion sick. But at worst, all the other shots were simply non-notable, which is still better than being outright bad.
I think this would be a fine story to show someone not familiar with the Third Doctor era or the Delgado Master as they will be reasonably entertained by it. However, there still remains the lack of a good hook and the somewhat unlikable nature of the Third Doctor in this story. The good outweighs the bad but it's not a story that you're going to put high on the re-watch list as there are better interactions between the Doctor and the Master I think.
Overall personal score: 3 out of 5
Monday, February 20, 2017
Thursday, February 16, 2017
The Beast Below
Of course, once you've stopped torturing the pilot.
The Beast Below was a curious follow up to The Eleventh Hour. It was more in the generic monster-mystery style but the bigger thing for me was that after defining himself so well, the Eleventh Doctor had a relapse into Tenth Doctor mode. When I watched this the first time around several years ago, I was quite surprised at how unpleasant the Eleventh Doctor appeared when he tried to channel the Tenth Doctor's dark rage. It just didn't work for me. Sitting down with it several years later, it went down a bit better, but still not great.
Plot Summary
On a floating city in space, a boy named Timmy receives a bad mark in class, earning a reprimand from a statue in class. His friend Mandy warns him to walk home but he takes the elevator. As he does, the floor drops out and he falls into a pit.
The Doctor and Amy fly nearby in the TARDIS and the Doctor observes Mandy crying on the scanner. He goes out to comfort her but she runs away. Amy follows and the Doctor becomes distracted by a glass of water. He gives Amy Mandy's pass and tells her to follow her while he investigates another issue.
Amy follows Mandy and meets her outside a tent blocking off a damaged bit of street. Defying warnings, Amy picks the lock and enters the tent where she finds a snake-like tendril sticking up. She backs out and is surrounded by guards. They take her to a voting booth where she will watch a video. If she accepts it, she will vote to forget what she watched while the alternative is to file a protest. Amy watches the video and wakes to find that she has voted to forget and filmed a short video warning her to get the Doctor away.
The Doctor makes his way to the engine room where he is shocked to find no hookups and evidence that there is no engine at all. He is met by a mysterious masked woman called Liz Ten who echoes his suspicions. She gives him a tracker to help him find Amy, whom she has learned is in trouble.
The Doctor locates Amy's voting cube as she finishes watching her warning video. Mandy was waiting outside. The Doctor enters but cannot vote as he does not register as human. Curious, he votes to protest and the floor drops out. He and Amy fall through a tube into a large mouth, resting on the tongue. The Doctor triggers an upset stomach in the beast and a wave of vomit erupts from the stomach, pushing them back up to a service passage.
The Doctor attempts to open the door but it will only open if he presses a forget button. When he refuses, two smiler statues emerge from their kiosks and attack him and Amy. The door opens and Liz Ten pops out and shoots both robots. She and Mandy found the Doctor as he was still carrying her tracker. Liz Ten takes them out where she reveals herself as Elizabeth X, queen of Spaceship UK, a ship crafted to escape the Earth when it was devastated by solar flares in the 29th century.
Liz takes them to her apartment where she and the Doctor figure out that the ship is being transported by a large beast and that people are being fed to it. Her chamberlain, Hawthorne, has her guard enter and escort her to the control tower. There she watches a video made by herself that the creature is a star whale who came towards Earth during the time of the flares and they built their escape ship on it's back. The Doctor further reveals that she has also had her metabolism slowed so that she is actually 300 years old and votes to forget what they have done.
An angry Doctor amplifies the sound coming from one of the tendrils to show that the whale is screaming in pain from the electrical shocks they keep pumping into it's brain to keep it moving. He also turns on Amy, realizing that she told herself to get him away because he would be forced to either let the whale live in agony or condemn the colony to destruction. He decides to try a third option of sending a huge electrical shock into it's brain, rendering it a vegetable, depriving it of pain but keeping it alive to keep the ship alive. But he is furious with the choice and informs Amy that he will be taking her home after he has finished.
Amy is distracted by a group of children entering carrying tools. Hawthorne notes that the whale does not eat children that fall into it's mouth. She also sees the tendril playfully tap Mandy and tease her hair. Amy suddenly shouts for the Doctor to stop. She grabs Liz's hand and forces her to slap the abdicate button. The electrical impulses into the whale's brain stop but rather than it shaking the ship loose and destroying it, the whale increases it's speed.
Amy tells the astonished crowd that the whale came because it was alone and could not bear the cries of the children. It came to help and the humans were only holding it back in their misunderstanding of it's intentions. Liz thanks her and drops the mask, vowing to deal openly with the people for the rest of their journey.
Later, the Doctor asks Amy how she realized the nature of the whale. She responds that she saw similar patterns in how the Doctor behaved with Mandy. They head back to the TARDIS where the phone is ringing. Amy answers it to find Winston Churchill on the other end. He asks the Doctor to come to London to help him and the Doctor agrees.
Analysis
There is something off on this story and I quite put my finger on it. It has a moderately threatening villain, mystery and relatively quick pace. Yet I find myself being bored by it.
The Doctor is a little off in this story. He's not bad but he's not the full Eleventh Doctor that we grow accustomed to. I think that he might actually be trying a bit too hard here, which is rather interesting given that this story was shot after Flesh and Stone and The Time of Angels. But to me, he feels like he's trying a bit too hard at the whimsy or strange bits and then he goes way over the top with the anger at the end. In that scene in the tower, he feels like someone trying to do the Tenth Doctor rather than the Eleventh Doctor and it just does not work.
His vindictive spite towards Amy for trying to deceive him prior to her memory erasure at that moment is also very uncharacteristic. It recalls the contempt the Ninth Doctor had towards Adam after augmenting himself or he had briefly towards Rose when she saved her father. But in both those cases, there was a deliberate screwing or potential screwing with the flow of time. Here, he is just mad that Amy thought to keep the Doctor from a terrible choice. Terminating her travelling with him for that seems excessive even by other Doctor standards. It is a solidly unlikeable moment for the Eleventh Doctor and one for which he does not apologize. He simply moves on because Amy found an alternate solution.
Amy is pretty good in this. She has that starry-eyed whimsy going that you would expect from a first adventure out. She is compassionate and adventurous at the same time. She also employs the Doctor's technique of observation to solve the problem, something that the Doctor himself should have done if he didn't have his head up his ass at the end.
Liz Ten is about the only other member of the cast of note as Mandy is a pretty generic girl through the story. Liz Ten is alright but I felt like they were trying to hard with her. Her talking of herself as a badass was amusing but it had an over-the-top quality that I didn't quite care for. I also thought it a little lame that it repeatedly took her more than ten years to figure out the nature of the secret. Someone as sharp and as determined as she is portrayed to be should have put the pieces of the puzzle together much quicker. There is just a disconnect between the character as portrayed and what we are told about the character and it creates a schism for me.
I liked how the ship was laid out with the slightly grimy quality of it. It wasn't full Alien levels of grime but it had a lived in quality that made it believable. The smilers were something of a red herring and I couldn't figure out why Timmy was sent to the mouth of the whale in the beginning. It is one thing if a person votes to protest and may spill the beans, but scoring poorly in school and taking an elevator when told to walk home doesn't seem like proper justification for attempting to murder a child, especially when you know the whale doesn't eat children. It creates more of a headache to start. If you think he is going to be trouble, why not wipe his memory and then return him to society? It's a plot hole that is needed to get things started but it just sticks with me.
I think the story was pretty straight forward and reasonably well told so I don't think the script is really to blame for this not working. There are some lines that fed into how the characters were formed and that obviously contributed, but I think the overarching story was fine for a simple space adventure. It wasn't deep but second episode stories usually aren't meant to be.
In the end, this story didn't gel for me. It should work, not as a great story but one that works fairly well and it just didn't. I think it was just in how the characters were and interacted and the little problems that built up over time. It's a reasonable adventure and works fine as a have it on in the background story, but for me it just work and I felt a bit unsatisfied at the end.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
The Beast Below was a curious follow up to The Eleventh Hour. It was more in the generic monster-mystery style but the bigger thing for me was that after defining himself so well, the Eleventh Doctor had a relapse into Tenth Doctor mode. When I watched this the first time around several years ago, I was quite surprised at how unpleasant the Eleventh Doctor appeared when he tried to channel the Tenth Doctor's dark rage. It just didn't work for me. Sitting down with it several years later, it went down a bit better, but still not great.
Plot Summary
On a floating city in space, a boy named Timmy receives a bad mark in class, earning a reprimand from a statue in class. His friend Mandy warns him to walk home but he takes the elevator. As he does, the floor drops out and he falls into a pit.
The Doctor and Amy fly nearby in the TARDIS and the Doctor observes Mandy crying on the scanner. He goes out to comfort her but she runs away. Amy follows and the Doctor becomes distracted by a glass of water. He gives Amy Mandy's pass and tells her to follow her while he investigates another issue.
Amy follows Mandy and meets her outside a tent blocking off a damaged bit of street. Defying warnings, Amy picks the lock and enters the tent where she finds a snake-like tendril sticking up. She backs out and is surrounded by guards. They take her to a voting booth where she will watch a video. If she accepts it, she will vote to forget what she watched while the alternative is to file a protest. Amy watches the video and wakes to find that she has voted to forget and filmed a short video warning her to get the Doctor away.
The Doctor makes his way to the engine room where he is shocked to find no hookups and evidence that there is no engine at all. He is met by a mysterious masked woman called Liz Ten who echoes his suspicions. She gives him a tracker to help him find Amy, whom she has learned is in trouble.
The Doctor locates Amy's voting cube as she finishes watching her warning video. Mandy was waiting outside. The Doctor enters but cannot vote as he does not register as human. Curious, he votes to protest and the floor drops out. He and Amy fall through a tube into a large mouth, resting on the tongue. The Doctor triggers an upset stomach in the beast and a wave of vomit erupts from the stomach, pushing them back up to a service passage.
The Doctor attempts to open the door but it will only open if he presses a forget button. When he refuses, two smiler statues emerge from their kiosks and attack him and Amy. The door opens and Liz Ten pops out and shoots both robots. She and Mandy found the Doctor as he was still carrying her tracker. Liz Ten takes them out where she reveals herself as Elizabeth X, queen of Spaceship UK, a ship crafted to escape the Earth when it was devastated by solar flares in the 29th century.
Liz takes them to her apartment where she and the Doctor figure out that the ship is being transported by a large beast and that people are being fed to it. Her chamberlain, Hawthorne, has her guard enter and escort her to the control tower. There she watches a video made by herself that the creature is a star whale who came towards Earth during the time of the flares and they built their escape ship on it's back. The Doctor further reveals that she has also had her metabolism slowed so that she is actually 300 years old and votes to forget what they have done.
An angry Doctor amplifies the sound coming from one of the tendrils to show that the whale is screaming in pain from the electrical shocks they keep pumping into it's brain to keep it moving. He also turns on Amy, realizing that she told herself to get him away because he would be forced to either let the whale live in agony or condemn the colony to destruction. He decides to try a third option of sending a huge electrical shock into it's brain, rendering it a vegetable, depriving it of pain but keeping it alive to keep the ship alive. But he is furious with the choice and informs Amy that he will be taking her home after he has finished.
Amy is distracted by a group of children entering carrying tools. Hawthorne notes that the whale does not eat children that fall into it's mouth. She also sees the tendril playfully tap Mandy and tease her hair. Amy suddenly shouts for the Doctor to stop. She grabs Liz's hand and forces her to slap the abdicate button. The electrical impulses into the whale's brain stop but rather than it shaking the ship loose and destroying it, the whale increases it's speed.
Amy tells the astonished crowd that the whale came because it was alone and could not bear the cries of the children. It came to help and the humans were only holding it back in their misunderstanding of it's intentions. Liz thanks her and drops the mask, vowing to deal openly with the people for the rest of their journey.
Later, the Doctor asks Amy how she realized the nature of the whale. She responds that she saw similar patterns in how the Doctor behaved with Mandy. They head back to the TARDIS where the phone is ringing. Amy answers it to find Winston Churchill on the other end. He asks the Doctor to come to London to help him and the Doctor agrees.
Analysis
There is something off on this story and I quite put my finger on it. It has a moderately threatening villain, mystery and relatively quick pace. Yet I find myself being bored by it.
The Doctor is a little off in this story. He's not bad but he's not the full Eleventh Doctor that we grow accustomed to. I think that he might actually be trying a bit too hard here, which is rather interesting given that this story was shot after Flesh and Stone and The Time of Angels. But to me, he feels like he's trying a bit too hard at the whimsy or strange bits and then he goes way over the top with the anger at the end. In that scene in the tower, he feels like someone trying to do the Tenth Doctor rather than the Eleventh Doctor and it just does not work.
His vindictive spite towards Amy for trying to deceive him prior to her memory erasure at that moment is also very uncharacteristic. It recalls the contempt the Ninth Doctor had towards Adam after augmenting himself or he had briefly towards Rose when she saved her father. But in both those cases, there was a deliberate screwing or potential screwing with the flow of time. Here, he is just mad that Amy thought to keep the Doctor from a terrible choice. Terminating her travelling with him for that seems excessive even by other Doctor standards. It is a solidly unlikeable moment for the Eleventh Doctor and one for which he does not apologize. He simply moves on because Amy found an alternate solution.
Amy is pretty good in this. She has that starry-eyed whimsy going that you would expect from a first adventure out. She is compassionate and adventurous at the same time. She also employs the Doctor's technique of observation to solve the problem, something that the Doctor himself should have done if he didn't have his head up his ass at the end.
Liz Ten is about the only other member of the cast of note as Mandy is a pretty generic girl through the story. Liz Ten is alright but I felt like they were trying to hard with her. Her talking of herself as a badass was amusing but it had an over-the-top quality that I didn't quite care for. I also thought it a little lame that it repeatedly took her more than ten years to figure out the nature of the secret. Someone as sharp and as determined as she is portrayed to be should have put the pieces of the puzzle together much quicker. There is just a disconnect between the character as portrayed and what we are told about the character and it creates a schism for me.
I liked how the ship was laid out with the slightly grimy quality of it. It wasn't full Alien levels of grime but it had a lived in quality that made it believable. The smilers were something of a red herring and I couldn't figure out why Timmy was sent to the mouth of the whale in the beginning. It is one thing if a person votes to protest and may spill the beans, but scoring poorly in school and taking an elevator when told to walk home doesn't seem like proper justification for attempting to murder a child, especially when you know the whale doesn't eat children. It creates more of a headache to start. If you think he is going to be trouble, why not wipe his memory and then return him to society? It's a plot hole that is needed to get things started but it just sticks with me.
I think the story was pretty straight forward and reasonably well told so I don't think the script is really to blame for this not working. There are some lines that fed into how the characters were formed and that obviously contributed, but I think the overarching story was fine for a simple space adventure. It wasn't deep but second episode stories usually aren't meant to be.
In the end, this story didn't gel for me. It should work, not as a great story but one that works fairly well and it just didn't. I think it was just in how the characters were and interacted and the little problems that built up over time. It's a reasonable adventure and works fine as a have it on in the background story, but for me it just work and I felt a bit unsatisfied at the end.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
Friday, February 10, 2017
The Stolen Earth/Journey's End
The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth Doctor, you take ordinary people and fashion them into weapons.
As has been stated by many others besides me, The Stolen Earth and Journey's End were the real goodbye stories for Russell T. Davies. Yes he stuck around for another year but he tried to replicate these in a way with The End of Time and it didn't really work. These were much more of a natural end with the old sitcom style of bringing back cast that had left the show and having a big send off at the end. But even in that, it is not without it's flaws.
Plot Summary
Having been warned of trouble at the end of Turn Left, the Doctor and Donna arrive back on Earth but find everything seemingly normal. However, upon going back in the TARDIS, the Earth is instantaneously transported away and the TARDIS is left in space. Around the world, reactions are observed by Martha with UNIT in Manhattan, Jack Harkness and his fellow Torchwood team Ianto Jones and Gwen Cooper in Cardiff, Sarah Jane with her son Luke and supercomputer, Mr. Smith, in London and Wilfred and Sylvia also in London. As people notice the change in sky, Rose teleports in, just outside Wilfred and Sylvia's home.
Unable to figure out what happened, the Doctor and Donna travel to the Shadow Proclamation where they learn of twenty four other planets disappearing. While going over the list, Donna recalls that the hatchery planet of the Adipose and the planet of the Pyroviles was also missing. The Doctor adds those to the list along with the lost moon of Poosh and they are projected outward and reform themselves into a perfect engine alignment.
Above Earth, the Daleks prepare an invasion force and move towards Earth, attacking the various armed installations and rounding up humans for transport back to the Dalek command ship, the Crucible. Martha' command post is Manhattan is overrun and the commanding general fits her with a experimental teleport based off Sontaran technology. He also gives her a command disk called the Osterhagen Key. She then teleports to her mother's place in London. With the defenses down, Earth surrenders.
The Doctor and Donna try to figure out how to trace the missing planets and Donna mentions the stories of the missing bees. This triggers an idea as a certain alien insect interbreeds with Earth bees and may have warned them. They scan for signals and trace the alien signature to just outside the Medusa Cascade. The Shadow Proclamation tries to requisition the Doctor but he and Donna leave in the TARDIS before they can take control. They reappear outside the Medusa Cascade but find nothing and the end of the signal trail.
Wilfred and Sylvia step out to fight the Daleks but are rescued by Rose, looking for the Doctor. They head back to their home where Rose detects a signal from Wilfred's computer. It doesn't have a webcamera so she can only receive and not transmit. She observes as Harriet Jones, former PM, sends a signal over the subwave network and contacts Torchwood, Sarah Jane and Martha. She networks with Mr. Smith and the Cardiff rift power source to boost the phone signal to call the Doctor, which succeeds but also alerts the Daleks to Harriet Jones' location. She transfers control to Captain Jack at Torchwood just before the Daleks break into her home and kill her.
The Doctor receives the signal and contacts with Jack, Martha and Sara Jane. Wilfred and Sylvia are relieved to see Donna just behind the Doctor. As they talk, the signal is overridden by The Crucible and the Doctor sees Davros, who was rescued from death in the Time War by Dalek Caan, after escaping the events of Evolution of the Daleks. The Doctor deactivates and lands on Earth in London. The Daleks also send an attack force to the new subwave control center at Torchwood.
After landing, the Doctor and Donna exit and spot Rose who left Wilfred and Sylvia's house. The Doctor runs towards her but is shot down by a passing Dalek. The Dalek is destroyed by Jack who teleports in to help. He and Rose drag the Doctor into the TARDIS where he begins to regenerate. However, after healing the wound, the Doctor transfers the regeneration energy into the severed hand cut off by the Sycorax and recovered from the Master following Last of the Time Lords. The Daleks meanwhile move and surround the TARDIS.
Sarah Jane leaves her house to go help the Doctor but runs into a Dalek patrol. They mean to kill her but are destroyed by Mickey and Jackie Tyler who teleport in from the parallel dimension. They approach the TARDIS and see it placed in a temporal lock which drains it's power. It is then taken up to The Crucible. Knowing it's the only way to get on to the ship, Sarah Jane, Mickey and Jackie surrender to the Daleks and are put with a group of human prisoners for transport.
On The Crucible, the Daleks deactivate the defenses of the TARDIS and order the people out. The Doctor, Rose and Jack all come but Donna is distracted by a heartbeat and the TARDIS door shuts before she can follow. Suspecting treachery, the Supreme Dalek drops the TARDIS into the core of The Crucible where the TARDIS will be destroyed. As the TARDIS begins to burn, Donna touches the hand filled with regeneration energy. It explodes out of it's case and a clone of the Doctor materializes. The clone brings up the TARDIS' power and dematerializes, making it look like the TARDIS was destroyed.
Jack attacks the Supreme Dalek but is gunned down. The Doctor observes him quietly coming back to life but plays along, though Rose is unaware of Jack's ability and thinks him really dead. The Doctor and Rose are taken to Davros' lair while Jack's body is dumped in the incinerator. He escapes and crawls through the ducts while the Doctor and Rose are placed in isolation cells.
As the humans arrive on The Crucible, a woman falls over, distracting the Daleks. Sarah Jane and Mickey make a dash and hide behind a door but Jackie is left in the crowd. The Supreme Dalek orders a test and Davros informs the Doctor of the new weapon, the reality bomb, which destroys the electrical connection between atoms, reducing all matter in it's field to subatomic particles. As it prepares to fire on the crowd, the thirty minute recharge on Jackie's teleport ends and she is able to teleport to Mickey and Sarah Jane while the rest of the humans are disintegrated. Jack pops out of a duct and Sarah Jane gives him a warp star that had been presented to her in the past and Jack hooks it up, preparing to destroy the ship.
On Earth, Martha teleports to Germany where she enters and activates one of the Osterhagen key stations. She radios out to the other stations and two other stations respond: one in China and the other in Africa. They ready their stations, which will trigger twenty-five nuclear warheads buried in the crust, cracking it and destroying the Earth.
At nearly the same time, Martha and Jack radio The Crucible and threaten to activate their weapons if the Daleks do not release the Doctor and return their planets. The Daleks however lock on to the signaling locations and teleport Martha, Jack, Sarah Jane and Mickey to Davros' lair. All four are placed in isolation cells similar to the Doctor and Rose. The Supreme Dalek then orders the powering of the reality bomb to full power to destroy the universe while the Daleks fall back to the protection of The Crucible.
With the failure of other options, the clone Doctor builds a small weapon and rematerializes the TARDIS in Davros' lair. He bursts out but Davros stuns him with a burst of electricity. Donna runs out to grab the weapon and Davros electrocutes her as well. Unbeknownst to him though, the electrical burst energizes the regeneration energy she absorbed from the Doctor's hand, giving her and infusion of the Doctor's mind.
Donna, with the Doctor's mind, access the control panel and deactivates the reality bomb. She then neutralizes Davros' and the Dalek's weaponry. She frees the prisoners who push the Daleks out of the way and she, the Doctor and the clone Doctor return the planets to their proper locations. Davros manages to destroy part of the control panel before they can return the Earth but he is neutralized once again. The Supreme Dalek comes down to attack but it is destroyed by a shot from Mickey.
The Doctor runs back into the TARDIS and contacts Torchwood, who had been caught in a time bubble to protect them from the Dalek attack, and Luke and Mr. Smith. Together they plan to create a reinforced energy line between the Earth and the TARDIS, allowing the TARDIS to pull the Earth across space. To access the TARDIS mainframe, Sarah Jane activates K-9, who feeds the TARDIS information to Mr. Smith. As the Doctor does this, Donna and the clone Doctor realize that the Daleks will still come after them and are highly dangerous. The clone Doctor activates a feedback loop which destroys the Dalek fleet and sets The Crucible on fire.
The Doctor hurries everyone into the TARDIS and appeals to Davros to come with them. Davros curses him and refuses. Dalek Caan, who had arranged everything to ensure the destruction of his own race, shouts a warning that one of his companions still must die. The TARDIS leaves The Crucible as it explodes and pulls the Earth across space and places it back in it's proper orbit.
The Doctor lands on Earth and drops of Martha, Jack, and Sarah Jane. Mickey also comes with them as his grandmother has passed away in the parallel dimension and he feels he has no place there. The Doctor then lands the TARDIS in the parallel dimension in Bad Wolf Bay to return Rose and Jackie, informing them that access between the dimensions will be sealed once more. He also sends the clone Doctor, who, being half human, will age and not regenerate. Rose accepts him as a substitute for the Doctor and the three are left as the TARDIS takes off again.
On the TARDIS, Donna's mind begins to become overwhelmed as the Doctor's mind is too great for her human brain. Knowing that she will die if he doesn't, though she begs him not to, he purges her mind of her knowledge of him, leaving her as she was before being transported to the TARDIS at the beginning of The Runaway Bride. He returns her to Wilfred and Sylvia's and tells them that they must never reveal what happened to her.
Donna wakes and assumes that she missed things once again. She dismisses the Doctor with a bare glance and he leaves the house. Wilfred however sees him off, saluting him as he goes. The Doctor then dematerializes in the TARDIS, alone once more.
Analysis
It's a bit cliché to talk again about how RTD starts off a story like a house on fire but always peters out. But the cliché does apply to this story as it has in previous ones. However, I would note that I don't think the fall off here was as bad as some fans make it. It is still a good story and still fundamentally entertaining even if there are some sour notes in the second half.
I'll just go ahead and cut to the chase, the problem in Journey's End is the tone shift. The Stolen Earth and the first 30 minutes or so of Journey's End played like a solid sci-fi adventure story. There was a small cheese factor but the overall tone was mostly dark and serious with some real weight behind the various moments such as the Doctor getting shot by a stray Dalek, the Daleks destroying a house with a family inside it and the death of Harriet Jones.
That tone continued until the arrival of Doctor-Donna. While I love Donna, the flippancy that suddenly took over regarding the situation and her own cavalier attitude towards the situation was just so jarring. Millions of people had died and they are laughing and pushing the Daleks and Davros around like the props they actually are. I don't even mind the usual complaint people have about the shut down being a single button on a panel in Davros' lair. For me, it is all about the flippancy of the moment.
The silliness gets compounded with the TARDIS towing the Earth across space. That just seems a bridge too far and how do you reconcile that silly, cartoony tone with the idea of Daleks mowing people down or even what happens to Donna later? The story was dark and brooding, then it got silly, then pukingly saccharine, then dark and depressing again. It's just so inconsistent in what it thinks the audience should feel about it that it becomes aggravating.
So let's jump to the saccharine moment: leaving Rose on Bad Wolf bay a second time. I'm fairly open about not liking Rose very much but I appreciated the emotion of that scene in Doomsday. There was raw feeling and even if you didn't like Rose, you could appreciate the loss she was feeling with regard to the Doctor. Fast forward two years later and while Rose is dropped off again, she now gets the clone Doctor to grow old with while keeping her parents and little brother. Not only did this throw all the emotion of the first scene into the garbage, it wasn't done particularly well because it was noticeable dubbed with studio recordings (presumably due to the wind issues). It was just the show bending over backwards once more to give the spoiled brat that is Rose whatever she wants.
I say spoiled brat because while Rose was improved in most of her appearances in Series Four, the scene where she is listening to the discussion between Harriet Jones and the others, she can't help but talk about how she was important as well. Her resentment about the status of Martha as a companion of the Doctor who has gone on to better things shows that petulant side of Rose that I couldn't stand when she was a regular companion.
A third point where Rose bothered me was when the Doctor was preparing to regenerate. Of the three of them, Rose should have been the least bothered by his regeneration. She was close to the Ninth Doctor, who selected her in the first place. Her mourning over the potential loss of the Tenth Doctor spoke to her shallowness regarding the Tenth Doctor. She knew that the Doctor would still be the Doctor, but it was the physical appearance and nuances of the Tenth Doctor's personality that she really liked. She mourned over the potential death of the Tenth Doctor because it was that form and not the Doctor himself that she desired. Again, it was just a reinforcement of the shallowness of Rose.
As for the Doctor himself, I quite liked him in this. He got dark and brooding and I always appreciate him in those situations. I also liked that, unlike Rose, he balanced out praise for everyone. He lavishes praise twice on Donna for her contributions when the try to figure things out at the Shadow Proclamation. He praises Martha and all the other contributors in their fight against the Daleks, showing no favoritism and working together. I would have liked to see him offer a bit more of a contribution in the final equation but it all works fairly well in the end.
All of the rest of the companions do well. I remember watching this story for the first time and actually thinking about watching Torchwood because I enjoyed Ianto and Gwen in this story. Other information I heard about Torchwood dissuaded me but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. I liked Jack a bit more than Martha but both were still good. Jackie and Mickey didn't do much except for rescue Sarah Jane at the beginning of Journey's End so they were a bit wasted but that's not the actor's fault. Donna also was pushed into the background a bit after leaving the Shadow Proclamation but with so many others pulling focus, that a bit understandable. I did enjoy the scene between her and the clone Doctor as he mimics her outrage and speech patterns. That was an amusing little scene.
The clone Doctor was fine. I don't really understand why people get bent out of shape about him. Obviously they had to avoid the proper regeneration of the Tenth Doctor and funneling the regeneration energy into a clone seemed perfectly fine. I also appreciated that he did what the regular Doctor could not and that was to destroy the Daleks properly. The Doctor is outraged at what the clone has done, but he raises a good point in that there are millions of Daleks, just as dangerous as before and now no Time Lords to oppose them. Genocide may be a sin in the eyes of the damaged Tenth Doctor, but how many lives would have been lost if the Daleks been permitted to continue? I side with the clone in this case. That he gets stuck with Rose is not his fault.
This story also saw the return of Davros and he had both excellent and silly moments. In a way, he was a microcosm of the whole story. Some of my favorite moments are Davros quietly taunting the Doctor, exposing him to his true nature. But then he goes and dials it up to eleven and goes way over-the-top. I compare it to not being able to fully decide whether to channel the Davros from Genesis of the Daleks or to give over to the ranting Davros of Revelation of the Daleks. I'm also not sure why he suddenly got Emperor Palpatine power in the form of projected lightening. That seemed a bit odd. Overall good, but not without flawed moments.
The overall story as I said worked well aside from the tone shifts. I felt bad for Donna but understood why they had to write her out the way she was. Whether you liked the Doctor Donna or not, Donna was fully prepared to keep travelling with the Doctor in either capacity. Only her outright death or other great tragedy would have stopped her. I suspect that her outright death was debated but that would have vindicated Sylvia and crushed Wilfred so I can understand keeping her alive. Those final moments between the Doctor and Wilf were very good and the clear impetus in making Wilf a proper companion in The End of Time. That everyone agrees that those moments between him and the Doctor were the best parts of The End of Time justifies that decision.
So overall, I'd say that the story is fun but the first part outpaces the second. As much as I dislike Rose and as much as I dislike the hokey tone the story takes for those few minutes, the majority of both parts work very well. I would also say that Journey's End does well in that it ends on a true and somber note and that does quite a bit to mitigate the overt silliness of the previous fifteen minutes.
This is the proper RTD farewell and he does a good job with that send off. Obviously there are better Tenth Doctor stories but it handles the epic scope fairly well and will give you a pretty good ride, even if there are a few bumps in the road here and there.
Overall personal score: The Stolen Earth - 4.5 out of 5; Journey's End - 3 out of 5
As has been stated by many others besides me, The Stolen Earth and Journey's End were the real goodbye stories for Russell T. Davies. Yes he stuck around for another year but he tried to replicate these in a way with The End of Time and it didn't really work. These were much more of a natural end with the old sitcom style of bringing back cast that had left the show and having a big send off at the end. But even in that, it is not without it's flaws.
Plot Summary
Having been warned of trouble at the end of Turn Left, the Doctor and Donna arrive back on Earth but find everything seemingly normal. However, upon going back in the TARDIS, the Earth is instantaneously transported away and the TARDIS is left in space. Around the world, reactions are observed by Martha with UNIT in Manhattan, Jack Harkness and his fellow Torchwood team Ianto Jones and Gwen Cooper in Cardiff, Sarah Jane with her son Luke and supercomputer, Mr. Smith, in London and Wilfred and Sylvia also in London. As people notice the change in sky, Rose teleports in, just outside Wilfred and Sylvia's home.
Unable to figure out what happened, the Doctor and Donna travel to the Shadow Proclamation where they learn of twenty four other planets disappearing. While going over the list, Donna recalls that the hatchery planet of the Adipose and the planet of the Pyroviles was also missing. The Doctor adds those to the list along with the lost moon of Poosh and they are projected outward and reform themselves into a perfect engine alignment.
Above Earth, the Daleks prepare an invasion force and move towards Earth, attacking the various armed installations and rounding up humans for transport back to the Dalek command ship, the Crucible. Martha' command post is Manhattan is overrun and the commanding general fits her with a experimental teleport based off Sontaran technology. He also gives her a command disk called the Osterhagen Key. She then teleports to her mother's place in London. With the defenses down, Earth surrenders.
The Doctor and Donna try to figure out how to trace the missing planets and Donna mentions the stories of the missing bees. This triggers an idea as a certain alien insect interbreeds with Earth bees and may have warned them. They scan for signals and trace the alien signature to just outside the Medusa Cascade. The Shadow Proclamation tries to requisition the Doctor but he and Donna leave in the TARDIS before they can take control. They reappear outside the Medusa Cascade but find nothing and the end of the signal trail.
Wilfred and Sylvia step out to fight the Daleks but are rescued by Rose, looking for the Doctor. They head back to their home where Rose detects a signal from Wilfred's computer. It doesn't have a webcamera so she can only receive and not transmit. She observes as Harriet Jones, former PM, sends a signal over the subwave network and contacts Torchwood, Sarah Jane and Martha. She networks with Mr. Smith and the Cardiff rift power source to boost the phone signal to call the Doctor, which succeeds but also alerts the Daleks to Harriet Jones' location. She transfers control to Captain Jack at Torchwood just before the Daleks break into her home and kill her.
The Doctor receives the signal and contacts with Jack, Martha and Sara Jane. Wilfred and Sylvia are relieved to see Donna just behind the Doctor. As they talk, the signal is overridden by The Crucible and the Doctor sees Davros, who was rescued from death in the Time War by Dalek Caan, after escaping the events of Evolution of the Daleks. The Doctor deactivates and lands on Earth in London. The Daleks also send an attack force to the new subwave control center at Torchwood.
After landing, the Doctor and Donna exit and spot Rose who left Wilfred and Sylvia's house. The Doctor runs towards her but is shot down by a passing Dalek. The Dalek is destroyed by Jack who teleports in to help. He and Rose drag the Doctor into the TARDIS where he begins to regenerate. However, after healing the wound, the Doctor transfers the regeneration energy into the severed hand cut off by the Sycorax and recovered from the Master following Last of the Time Lords. The Daleks meanwhile move and surround the TARDIS.
Sarah Jane leaves her house to go help the Doctor but runs into a Dalek patrol. They mean to kill her but are destroyed by Mickey and Jackie Tyler who teleport in from the parallel dimension. They approach the TARDIS and see it placed in a temporal lock which drains it's power. It is then taken up to The Crucible. Knowing it's the only way to get on to the ship, Sarah Jane, Mickey and Jackie surrender to the Daleks and are put with a group of human prisoners for transport.
On The Crucible, the Daleks deactivate the defenses of the TARDIS and order the people out. The Doctor, Rose and Jack all come but Donna is distracted by a heartbeat and the TARDIS door shuts before she can follow. Suspecting treachery, the Supreme Dalek drops the TARDIS into the core of The Crucible where the TARDIS will be destroyed. As the TARDIS begins to burn, Donna touches the hand filled with regeneration energy. It explodes out of it's case and a clone of the Doctor materializes. The clone brings up the TARDIS' power and dematerializes, making it look like the TARDIS was destroyed.
Jack attacks the Supreme Dalek but is gunned down. The Doctor observes him quietly coming back to life but plays along, though Rose is unaware of Jack's ability and thinks him really dead. The Doctor and Rose are taken to Davros' lair while Jack's body is dumped in the incinerator. He escapes and crawls through the ducts while the Doctor and Rose are placed in isolation cells.
As the humans arrive on The Crucible, a woman falls over, distracting the Daleks. Sarah Jane and Mickey make a dash and hide behind a door but Jackie is left in the crowd. The Supreme Dalek orders a test and Davros informs the Doctor of the new weapon, the reality bomb, which destroys the electrical connection between atoms, reducing all matter in it's field to subatomic particles. As it prepares to fire on the crowd, the thirty minute recharge on Jackie's teleport ends and she is able to teleport to Mickey and Sarah Jane while the rest of the humans are disintegrated. Jack pops out of a duct and Sarah Jane gives him a warp star that had been presented to her in the past and Jack hooks it up, preparing to destroy the ship.
On Earth, Martha teleports to Germany where she enters and activates one of the Osterhagen key stations. She radios out to the other stations and two other stations respond: one in China and the other in Africa. They ready their stations, which will trigger twenty-five nuclear warheads buried in the crust, cracking it and destroying the Earth.
At nearly the same time, Martha and Jack radio The Crucible and threaten to activate their weapons if the Daleks do not release the Doctor and return their planets. The Daleks however lock on to the signaling locations and teleport Martha, Jack, Sarah Jane and Mickey to Davros' lair. All four are placed in isolation cells similar to the Doctor and Rose. The Supreme Dalek then orders the powering of the reality bomb to full power to destroy the universe while the Daleks fall back to the protection of The Crucible.
With the failure of other options, the clone Doctor builds a small weapon and rematerializes the TARDIS in Davros' lair. He bursts out but Davros stuns him with a burst of electricity. Donna runs out to grab the weapon and Davros electrocutes her as well. Unbeknownst to him though, the electrical burst energizes the regeneration energy she absorbed from the Doctor's hand, giving her and infusion of the Doctor's mind.
Donna, with the Doctor's mind, access the control panel and deactivates the reality bomb. She then neutralizes Davros' and the Dalek's weaponry. She frees the prisoners who push the Daleks out of the way and she, the Doctor and the clone Doctor return the planets to their proper locations. Davros manages to destroy part of the control panel before they can return the Earth but he is neutralized once again. The Supreme Dalek comes down to attack but it is destroyed by a shot from Mickey.
The Doctor runs back into the TARDIS and contacts Torchwood, who had been caught in a time bubble to protect them from the Dalek attack, and Luke and Mr. Smith. Together they plan to create a reinforced energy line between the Earth and the TARDIS, allowing the TARDIS to pull the Earth across space. To access the TARDIS mainframe, Sarah Jane activates K-9, who feeds the TARDIS information to Mr. Smith. As the Doctor does this, Donna and the clone Doctor realize that the Daleks will still come after them and are highly dangerous. The clone Doctor activates a feedback loop which destroys the Dalek fleet and sets The Crucible on fire.
The Doctor hurries everyone into the TARDIS and appeals to Davros to come with them. Davros curses him and refuses. Dalek Caan, who had arranged everything to ensure the destruction of his own race, shouts a warning that one of his companions still must die. The TARDIS leaves The Crucible as it explodes and pulls the Earth across space and places it back in it's proper orbit.
The Doctor lands on Earth and drops of Martha, Jack, and Sarah Jane. Mickey also comes with them as his grandmother has passed away in the parallel dimension and he feels he has no place there. The Doctor then lands the TARDIS in the parallel dimension in Bad Wolf Bay to return Rose and Jackie, informing them that access between the dimensions will be sealed once more. He also sends the clone Doctor, who, being half human, will age and not regenerate. Rose accepts him as a substitute for the Doctor and the three are left as the TARDIS takes off again.
On the TARDIS, Donna's mind begins to become overwhelmed as the Doctor's mind is too great for her human brain. Knowing that she will die if he doesn't, though she begs him not to, he purges her mind of her knowledge of him, leaving her as she was before being transported to the TARDIS at the beginning of The Runaway Bride. He returns her to Wilfred and Sylvia's and tells them that they must never reveal what happened to her.
Donna wakes and assumes that she missed things once again. She dismisses the Doctor with a bare glance and he leaves the house. Wilfred however sees him off, saluting him as he goes. The Doctor then dematerializes in the TARDIS, alone once more.
Analysis
It's a bit cliché to talk again about how RTD starts off a story like a house on fire but always peters out. But the cliché does apply to this story as it has in previous ones. However, I would note that I don't think the fall off here was as bad as some fans make it. It is still a good story and still fundamentally entertaining even if there are some sour notes in the second half.
I'll just go ahead and cut to the chase, the problem in Journey's End is the tone shift. The Stolen Earth and the first 30 minutes or so of Journey's End played like a solid sci-fi adventure story. There was a small cheese factor but the overall tone was mostly dark and serious with some real weight behind the various moments such as the Doctor getting shot by a stray Dalek, the Daleks destroying a house with a family inside it and the death of Harriet Jones.
That tone continued until the arrival of Doctor-Donna. While I love Donna, the flippancy that suddenly took over regarding the situation and her own cavalier attitude towards the situation was just so jarring. Millions of people had died and they are laughing and pushing the Daleks and Davros around like the props they actually are. I don't even mind the usual complaint people have about the shut down being a single button on a panel in Davros' lair. For me, it is all about the flippancy of the moment.
The silliness gets compounded with the TARDIS towing the Earth across space. That just seems a bridge too far and how do you reconcile that silly, cartoony tone with the idea of Daleks mowing people down or even what happens to Donna later? The story was dark and brooding, then it got silly, then pukingly saccharine, then dark and depressing again. It's just so inconsistent in what it thinks the audience should feel about it that it becomes aggravating.
So let's jump to the saccharine moment: leaving Rose on Bad Wolf bay a second time. I'm fairly open about not liking Rose very much but I appreciated the emotion of that scene in Doomsday. There was raw feeling and even if you didn't like Rose, you could appreciate the loss she was feeling with regard to the Doctor. Fast forward two years later and while Rose is dropped off again, she now gets the clone Doctor to grow old with while keeping her parents and little brother. Not only did this throw all the emotion of the first scene into the garbage, it wasn't done particularly well because it was noticeable dubbed with studio recordings (presumably due to the wind issues). It was just the show bending over backwards once more to give the spoiled brat that is Rose whatever she wants.
I say spoiled brat because while Rose was improved in most of her appearances in Series Four, the scene where she is listening to the discussion between Harriet Jones and the others, she can't help but talk about how she was important as well. Her resentment about the status of Martha as a companion of the Doctor who has gone on to better things shows that petulant side of Rose that I couldn't stand when she was a regular companion.
A third point where Rose bothered me was when the Doctor was preparing to regenerate. Of the three of them, Rose should have been the least bothered by his regeneration. She was close to the Ninth Doctor, who selected her in the first place. Her mourning over the potential loss of the Tenth Doctor spoke to her shallowness regarding the Tenth Doctor. She knew that the Doctor would still be the Doctor, but it was the physical appearance and nuances of the Tenth Doctor's personality that she really liked. She mourned over the potential death of the Tenth Doctor because it was that form and not the Doctor himself that she desired. Again, it was just a reinforcement of the shallowness of Rose.
As for the Doctor himself, I quite liked him in this. He got dark and brooding and I always appreciate him in those situations. I also liked that, unlike Rose, he balanced out praise for everyone. He lavishes praise twice on Donna for her contributions when the try to figure things out at the Shadow Proclamation. He praises Martha and all the other contributors in their fight against the Daleks, showing no favoritism and working together. I would have liked to see him offer a bit more of a contribution in the final equation but it all works fairly well in the end.
All of the rest of the companions do well. I remember watching this story for the first time and actually thinking about watching Torchwood because I enjoyed Ianto and Gwen in this story. Other information I heard about Torchwood dissuaded me but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. I liked Jack a bit more than Martha but both were still good. Jackie and Mickey didn't do much except for rescue Sarah Jane at the beginning of Journey's End so they were a bit wasted but that's not the actor's fault. Donna also was pushed into the background a bit after leaving the Shadow Proclamation but with so many others pulling focus, that a bit understandable. I did enjoy the scene between her and the clone Doctor as he mimics her outrage and speech patterns. That was an amusing little scene.
The clone Doctor was fine. I don't really understand why people get bent out of shape about him. Obviously they had to avoid the proper regeneration of the Tenth Doctor and funneling the regeneration energy into a clone seemed perfectly fine. I also appreciated that he did what the regular Doctor could not and that was to destroy the Daleks properly. The Doctor is outraged at what the clone has done, but he raises a good point in that there are millions of Daleks, just as dangerous as before and now no Time Lords to oppose them. Genocide may be a sin in the eyes of the damaged Tenth Doctor, but how many lives would have been lost if the Daleks been permitted to continue? I side with the clone in this case. That he gets stuck with Rose is not his fault.
This story also saw the return of Davros and he had both excellent and silly moments. In a way, he was a microcosm of the whole story. Some of my favorite moments are Davros quietly taunting the Doctor, exposing him to his true nature. But then he goes and dials it up to eleven and goes way over-the-top. I compare it to not being able to fully decide whether to channel the Davros from Genesis of the Daleks or to give over to the ranting Davros of Revelation of the Daleks. I'm also not sure why he suddenly got Emperor Palpatine power in the form of projected lightening. That seemed a bit odd. Overall good, but not without flawed moments.
The overall story as I said worked well aside from the tone shifts. I felt bad for Donna but understood why they had to write her out the way she was. Whether you liked the Doctor Donna or not, Donna was fully prepared to keep travelling with the Doctor in either capacity. Only her outright death or other great tragedy would have stopped her. I suspect that her outright death was debated but that would have vindicated Sylvia and crushed Wilfred so I can understand keeping her alive. Those final moments between the Doctor and Wilf were very good and the clear impetus in making Wilf a proper companion in The End of Time. That everyone agrees that those moments between him and the Doctor were the best parts of The End of Time justifies that decision.
So overall, I'd say that the story is fun but the first part outpaces the second. As much as I dislike Rose and as much as I dislike the hokey tone the story takes for those few minutes, the majority of both parts work very well. I would also say that Journey's End does well in that it ends on a true and somber note and that does quite a bit to mitigate the overt silliness of the previous fifteen minutes.
This is the proper RTD farewell and he does a good job with that send off. Obviously there are better Tenth Doctor stories but it handles the epic scope fairly well and will give you a pretty good ride, even if there are a few bumps in the road here and there.
Overall personal score: The Stolen Earth - 4.5 out of 5; Journey's End - 3 out of 5
Thursday, February 9, 2017
Frontios
Tegan: Doctor then do something!
Doctor: Oh I am. Lots of things. Nothing that fits the gravity of the situation.
Plot Summary
The TARDIS flies near the planet of Frontios, a planet settled by a colony of humans fleeing the destruction of Earth. The settlement has been having hard times as they run low on supplies and more and more people and equipment are sucked down into the Earth. The Doctor attempts to stay away from the planet, not wanting to get involved in human development, but the TARDIS is caught in a meteor storm and pulled in to the planet.
Upon landing, they help various colonists into the caves away from the meteors and the Doctor opts to give medical assistance. There is poor light in the caves and no electricity. Seeing a generator, he hopes to get it running but has no power. The medical officer, Range, assists him and his daughter Norna recalls that there is a basic battery generator in the remains of the colony ship. Tegan and Turlough go with her to help carry it.
The colony ship is outlawed territory, the local authority trying to preserve supplies, and the three are forced to sneak into the ship. Meanwhile the military authority, Brazen, alerts the colony leader, Plantagenet, of the new arrivals and they are immediately suspicious that the Doctor is part of an invasion force. Plantagenet has only recently taken command from his father, Captain Revere.
The three young people manage to recover the battery, though they are forced to knock out one of the guards to do it. They return with the battery to the infirmary, much to the Doctor's appreciation. Range informs the Doctor, as Plantagenet bears down on them, that they had no trouble on the planet for ten years, attempting to grow crops and survive. But for the last thirty years, they've been attacked by some unseen force pulling in meteors at them.
Plantagenet accuses the Doctor of being the fore of an invasion force and the Doctor offers to show him the TARDIS as proof that they are just travelers who didn't mean to stop there. They are halted by another round of meteor strikes which forces everyone back into the caves. As it stops, the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough race back, hoping to leave in the TARDIS. However, they find the TARDIS gone, apparently destroyed.
Plantagenet arrests the Doctor and prepares to have him shot but Turlough steps in, grabbing the Doctor's hat rack and pretending it is the weapon which summons the meteors. The Doctor attempts to assuage the people that he will only help. Tegan is sent with Range back to help the wounded while the Doctor, Turlough, Norna, Plantagenet and Brazen head to the sealed science lab to run tests on the rocks, though the work had been stopped by Plantagenet's father.
As they enter the lab, Plantagenet attacks the Doctor with a club from a soldier. The Doctor defends himself and Plantagenet is knocked to the ground. His heart begins to go erratic and the Doctor and Brazen carry him back to the infirmary. In the infirmary, the Doctor creates a makeshift defibrillator and settles his heart. Brazen becomes more convinced that the Doctor is actually here to help.
In the lab, Norna runs tests but Turlough is more curious about the source of the rocks, given that Norna told him that the quarry had been outlawed years ago. Examining the block and tackle they used earlier to get the battery, he discovers a secret passage out of the lab through the floor. He and Norna head down to investigate and find themselves in smoothed tunnels. Turlough becomes increasingly nervous and recalls things from his past, including the name "Tractators."
The Doctor and Range return to the lab while Tegan watches over Plantagenet. While talking, Tegan let's slip that she has learned of uncategorized deaths in the records, causing Brazen to begin to question her. While distracted, Plantagenet slips off his cot and disappears into the ground. Both Tegan and Brazen are shocked by this but their investigation is cut short when a group of people, fearing Plantagenet has died come in to see. Brazen chases them out, leaving Tegan a chance to slip free of the guard. When Brazen reenters the infirmary, she braces the door with piece of metal.
The Doctor and Range enter the lab and discover it empty and the tunnel. The Doctor heads down, telling Range to stay behind, but Range disobeys and follows him, running into him later. Tegan also enters the lab and subsequently the tunnels.
While exploring, the Doctor and Range run into Turlough who is fleeing in a state of panic. They catch him and can get nothing out of him except for Tractators. The Doctor orders Range to look after Turlough while he finds Norna. He comes across Norna being held in a field, surrounded by large, roly-poly type creatures. He sees Tegan from across the cave and motions for her to stay down. He is seen though and the Tractators encase him in the field with Norna.
Tegan throws her lamp and the chemicals explode in a flash of light. The Tractators scatter and the three head back up the tunnels. After reuniting with Range and the still shocked Turlough, the Doctor heads back into the tunnels. Tegan and Range go after him. The Doctor is caught in a Tractator gravity beam along with Tegan. He orders Range to head back to the lab with his daughter and Turlough.
Brazen and his men manage to get out of the infirmary and set about restoring order. Brazen finds one of his officers named Cockerill looting food. He is arrested and exiled outside the camp with others considered Retrogrades. The Retrogrades attack Cockerill, stealing his food and leaving him half dead.
Brazen heads to the lab where he finds Range, Norna and Turlough returning from the tunnels. He arrests Range for withholding information about mysterious deaths from the authorities. Range protests, stating that he was given orders to not speak of them and only catalogued the disappearances. During the discussion, Brazen becomes aware of Turlough speaking from repressed race memory about the Tractators and he begins to question him.
The Doctor and Tegan are pulled further into the tunnels but they again destroy a lamp when approaching the Tractators to blind the creatures and flee. They wander about the tunnels trying to find a way out and wondering about the nature of the Tractators. They come across one who is using a gravity beam towards the surface. It is pulling the half-dead Cockerill down. The Doctor distracts it and it breaks the beam, allowing Cockerill to escape. His escape is met with wonder by the Retrogrades as they had never seen someone escape the ground before and he is taken in.
After questioning Turlough, Brazen takes Range, Norna and Turlough to a part of the quarry where he shows Range the location where he saw Captain Revere pulled under the earth. Knowing that there are others, he assembles a squad and heads into the tunnels with Range to combat the creatures. Norna and Turlough stay behind but Turlough, near recovered, feels ashamed of his own cowardice and heads in after them.
The Doctor and Tegan follow the sound of a mechanical drill and discover the central lair of the Tractators, overseen by their leader, the Gravis. They also see Plantagenet being held in a cage. The Tractators use active minds to run their machines and they call in one drilling machine, fitted with the near drained mind of Captain Revere.
The Gravis comes forward and releases Revere. He recognizes the Doctor as a Time Lord and assumes that the Time Lords have come to take stock. The Doctor plays along, pretending that Tegan is actually a defective service robot, much to her annoyance. She is suspended in a gravity field while Plantagenet is taken from his cage and hooked up to the drilling machine. The Doctor whispers in his ear to play along until he has an opportunity.
Range, Brazen and his men stop in the tunnels as Range has lost his way. Turlough comes upon them and offers to help. Range panics at Norna being left alone and heads back up the tunnels, only just managing to avoid capture by a Tractator while doing so. Turlough is also grabbed by a Tractator but Brazen and his men subdue the creature and free him. They burst into the central lair and pull Plantagenet out. The Gravis tries to stop them but an electrical discharge is made and the Gravis is knocked out. The other Tractators flee leaving the humans alone. Turlough is strangely drawn to the machine but the Doctor and Brazen pull him away. However, Brazen is caught in the machine's grip and cannot pull himself out. He instead orders the others to run while he uses his mind to fight and destroy the machine.
In the lab, Norna is attacked by a looter and tied up while he looks for scavenge. He is in turn jumped by Cockerill who knocks him out. Cockerill and the rest of Retrogrades take over, plundering what they can. Norna manages to free herself and tells the group that Plantagenet isn't dead and shows them tunnel where the group went down. Range appears at the tunnel entrance, telling them that the Tractators are everywhere and moving towards them. Cockerill decides to take some men and attack.
As the Doctor and the humans flee, Turlough's memory comes back and he tells the Doctor that the Tractators are harmless without the Gravis to lead them. It is he that is driving the plan to turn Frontios into a mobile base that will allow them to scavenge other planets. They hear screaming as Cockerill and his men run into other Tractators and press on. Tegan however discovers a separated bit of the TARDIS. She is spotted by a revived Gravis who advances on her. She ducks through the TARDIS doors to find the others in the console room.
The Doctor orders them to hide and opens the door, displaying the TARDIS console room. The Gravis, consumed with greed when he realizes what it is, exercises all his gravitational power to pull the disparate pieces of the TARDIS back together. The act exhausts him and he collapses on the console and with the TARDIS back together, he is cut off dimensionally from the other Tractators.
Plantagenet and Turlough head back to the surface where the restore order. The Doctor and Tegan take the Gravis to an isolated, uninhabited planet where his power is limited. The Doctor returns and picks up Turlough, intending to return to Gallifrey, although he begs Plantagenet to never say a word of his involvement in the affair. As they leave, the TARDIS is caught in a time corridor which pulls them away from Gallifrey and toward the center of the galaxy.
Analysis
I never watched Tachyon TV but I heard a mock song they put out once about how boring Christopher Bidmede's writing was. I'm not sure Frontios is deserving of that level of mockery, but it is a rather dull story with a lot of little things that don't make much sense.
The Doctor is very good in this story with a strong sense of urgency most of the time. It is a bit odd that he seems so worried about getting in trouble with the Time Lords about interfering but that point is discarded fairly early. He has a nice interaction with Range and I also liked his witticisms that he would crack now and again. I don't recall the Fifth Doctor doing that that often and it was a bit of a throw back to the Fourth Doctor's style in dealing with high pressure situations. About the only thing I didn't care for was his almost cavalier attitude toward the destruction of the TARDIS. He seemed a bit too blasé about the prospect of being marooned on Frontios, to say nothing of losing that level of a companion, though the Fifth Doctor was probably the most distant from the TARDIS as a living thing.
Tegan and Turlough weren't bad but they had their faulty moments as well. Tegan did a lot of running around and helping here and there but after she rescues the Doctor and Norna, she doesn't seem to do much of anything except be there. I did like her indignation when the Doctor passes her off as a discount servo droid.
Turlough was fine, especially when he was clearly working to overcome his cowardice after returning to the lab with Norna. However I did not like the race memory bit. The acting was alright, if a bit over-the-top, but the explanation of it that Turlough's people kept deep memories of the Tractators and what they are that could be called upon in moments of trauma seemed like the flimsiest of writer's cheats. Granted it made Turlough more important and kept the Gravis from going off on a Bond-villain explanation speech, but it was still a very convenient dropping by the exposition fairy and I didn't care for it.
Most of the rest of the case did fine in a serviceable way, but no one really stood out. Range was probably the closest one as he had a nice rapport with the Doctor and got a lot of time to settle into various character moments. Most of the rest though were fairly one note, with Brazen and Plantagenet being the worst. Brazen was at least consistent in his firm military mind and bulldog attitude.
Plantagenet on the other had seemed rather fickle and changed his mind so easily. Worse, he gave off a feeling of weakness which undercut the idea that it was by his will and the promise of his leadership that the colony held together. I could buy that idea about his father, but a weak presence seemed at odds with what we are being told is happening in the script and it felt jarring to me. He also seemed to have rather rapid and unwarranted attitude swings as the plot shifted from him being either a help or a hindrance to the Doctor.
The Tractators were a fairly interesting idea, although I'm not sure they were well executed. There are limits to the costumes and they seemed overly stiff and a bit too much like a man inside a lumbering suit. The gravity power bit was also very weird. Having technological minds and developing engines I can understand. That seemed well thought out and believable. But that they had an almost magical power of creating gravity fields seemed very strange. It also felt a bit weak that they were actually a benevolent race who were being led astray by one bad leader. I'm not big on stories where everything falls into place with a quick decapitation. Yes sometimes it works but more often than not, it feels like a quick way out of a situation.
I'm also a bit non-plussed about the casual power the Tractators have to destroy and rebuilt the TARDIS. Why was the TARDIS separated into pieces simply by pulling it underground? Why did the Gravis have the power to pull it together, especially if pulling it back together made it trans-dimensional again? That seems to give the Tractators a level of power that would have made them strong enough to battle the Time Lords. If that were the case, I would thing they would have actively sent the Doctor to take out the Gravis much like they did on other missions. It was an unneeded plot device as the TARDIS could simply have been pulled into the tunnels whole and the Gravis tricked into entering and then subdued, allowing the natural trans-dimensionality of the TARDIS, cut off his power from his own kind. The pull-apart was completely unnecessary.
The story was fairly well directed and well lit. I thought the production team did a nice job in trying to stretch what they had and make it look like a believable place. I'm actually surprised they didn't try to film any part of this story in a quarry as it would have fit in well with the mood, but the studios were well dressed here anyway.
Aside from the powers of the Tractators, I think the biggest problem with this story was that it was large in ideas and short on scope. There was a tremendous amount of backstory for all the character and a lot of threads that could have been elaborated on. But most of those were not explored, leaving a lot of questions. Yet despite that, the flow of the story felt padded with a lot of running around, escapes, recaptures and just little things that didn't matter much. This gave it the disadvantage of being both boring to watch and frustrating in a lack of answers, which is strange for a writer who likes to go on about how a thing is scientifically possible.
Overall, I can't say that I enjoyed this story that much. It had some good moments but the overall story just seemed to drag and left too many things up in the air and against the common logic of the show. I wouldn't protest overly if someone pulled if off the shelf to watch, but I certainly wouldn't seek it out or put it in the top tier of Fifth Doctor stories to recommend.
Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5
Doctor: Oh I am. Lots of things. Nothing that fits the gravity of the situation.
Plot Summary
The TARDIS flies near the planet of Frontios, a planet settled by a colony of humans fleeing the destruction of Earth. The settlement has been having hard times as they run low on supplies and more and more people and equipment are sucked down into the Earth. The Doctor attempts to stay away from the planet, not wanting to get involved in human development, but the TARDIS is caught in a meteor storm and pulled in to the planet.
Upon landing, they help various colonists into the caves away from the meteors and the Doctor opts to give medical assistance. There is poor light in the caves and no electricity. Seeing a generator, he hopes to get it running but has no power. The medical officer, Range, assists him and his daughter Norna recalls that there is a basic battery generator in the remains of the colony ship. Tegan and Turlough go with her to help carry it.
The colony ship is outlawed territory, the local authority trying to preserve supplies, and the three are forced to sneak into the ship. Meanwhile the military authority, Brazen, alerts the colony leader, Plantagenet, of the new arrivals and they are immediately suspicious that the Doctor is part of an invasion force. Plantagenet has only recently taken command from his father, Captain Revere.
The three young people manage to recover the battery, though they are forced to knock out one of the guards to do it. They return with the battery to the infirmary, much to the Doctor's appreciation. Range informs the Doctor, as Plantagenet bears down on them, that they had no trouble on the planet for ten years, attempting to grow crops and survive. But for the last thirty years, they've been attacked by some unseen force pulling in meteors at them.
Plantagenet accuses the Doctor of being the fore of an invasion force and the Doctor offers to show him the TARDIS as proof that they are just travelers who didn't mean to stop there. They are halted by another round of meteor strikes which forces everyone back into the caves. As it stops, the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough race back, hoping to leave in the TARDIS. However, they find the TARDIS gone, apparently destroyed.
Plantagenet arrests the Doctor and prepares to have him shot but Turlough steps in, grabbing the Doctor's hat rack and pretending it is the weapon which summons the meteors. The Doctor attempts to assuage the people that he will only help. Tegan is sent with Range back to help the wounded while the Doctor, Turlough, Norna, Plantagenet and Brazen head to the sealed science lab to run tests on the rocks, though the work had been stopped by Plantagenet's father.
As they enter the lab, Plantagenet attacks the Doctor with a club from a soldier. The Doctor defends himself and Plantagenet is knocked to the ground. His heart begins to go erratic and the Doctor and Brazen carry him back to the infirmary. In the infirmary, the Doctor creates a makeshift defibrillator and settles his heart. Brazen becomes more convinced that the Doctor is actually here to help.
In the lab, Norna runs tests but Turlough is more curious about the source of the rocks, given that Norna told him that the quarry had been outlawed years ago. Examining the block and tackle they used earlier to get the battery, he discovers a secret passage out of the lab through the floor. He and Norna head down to investigate and find themselves in smoothed tunnels. Turlough becomes increasingly nervous and recalls things from his past, including the name "Tractators."
The Doctor and Range return to the lab while Tegan watches over Plantagenet. While talking, Tegan let's slip that she has learned of uncategorized deaths in the records, causing Brazen to begin to question her. While distracted, Plantagenet slips off his cot and disappears into the ground. Both Tegan and Brazen are shocked by this but their investigation is cut short when a group of people, fearing Plantagenet has died come in to see. Brazen chases them out, leaving Tegan a chance to slip free of the guard. When Brazen reenters the infirmary, she braces the door with piece of metal.
The Doctor and Range enter the lab and discover it empty and the tunnel. The Doctor heads down, telling Range to stay behind, but Range disobeys and follows him, running into him later. Tegan also enters the lab and subsequently the tunnels.
While exploring, the Doctor and Range run into Turlough who is fleeing in a state of panic. They catch him and can get nothing out of him except for Tractators. The Doctor orders Range to look after Turlough while he finds Norna. He comes across Norna being held in a field, surrounded by large, roly-poly type creatures. He sees Tegan from across the cave and motions for her to stay down. He is seen though and the Tractators encase him in the field with Norna.
Tegan throws her lamp and the chemicals explode in a flash of light. The Tractators scatter and the three head back up the tunnels. After reuniting with Range and the still shocked Turlough, the Doctor heads back into the tunnels. Tegan and Range go after him. The Doctor is caught in a Tractator gravity beam along with Tegan. He orders Range to head back to the lab with his daughter and Turlough.
Brazen and his men manage to get out of the infirmary and set about restoring order. Brazen finds one of his officers named Cockerill looting food. He is arrested and exiled outside the camp with others considered Retrogrades. The Retrogrades attack Cockerill, stealing his food and leaving him half dead.
Brazen heads to the lab where he finds Range, Norna and Turlough returning from the tunnels. He arrests Range for withholding information about mysterious deaths from the authorities. Range protests, stating that he was given orders to not speak of them and only catalogued the disappearances. During the discussion, Brazen becomes aware of Turlough speaking from repressed race memory about the Tractators and he begins to question him.
The Doctor and Tegan are pulled further into the tunnels but they again destroy a lamp when approaching the Tractators to blind the creatures and flee. They wander about the tunnels trying to find a way out and wondering about the nature of the Tractators. They come across one who is using a gravity beam towards the surface. It is pulling the half-dead Cockerill down. The Doctor distracts it and it breaks the beam, allowing Cockerill to escape. His escape is met with wonder by the Retrogrades as they had never seen someone escape the ground before and he is taken in.
After questioning Turlough, Brazen takes Range, Norna and Turlough to a part of the quarry where he shows Range the location where he saw Captain Revere pulled under the earth. Knowing that there are others, he assembles a squad and heads into the tunnels with Range to combat the creatures. Norna and Turlough stay behind but Turlough, near recovered, feels ashamed of his own cowardice and heads in after them.
The Doctor and Tegan follow the sound of a mechanical drill and discover the central lair of the Tractators, overseen by their leader, the Gravis. They also see Plantagenet being held in a cage. The Tractators use active minds to run their machines and they call in one drilling machine, fitted with the near drained mind of Captain Revere.
The Gravis comes forward and releases Revere. He recognizes the Doctor as a Time Lord and assumes that the Time Lords have come to take stock. The Doctor plays along, pretending that Tegan is actually a defective service robot, much to her annoyance. She is suspended in a gravity field while Plantagenet is taken from his cage and hooked up to the drilling machine. The Doctor whispers in his ear to play along until he has an opportunity.
Range, Brazen and his men stop in the tunnels as Range has lost his way. Turlough comes upon them and offers to help. Range panics at Norna being left alone and heads back up the tunnels, only just managing to avoid capture by a Tractator while doing so. Turlough is also grabbed by a Tractator but Brazen and his men subdue the creature and free him. They burst into the central lair and pull Plantagenet out. The Gravis tries to stop them but an electrical discharge is made and the Gravis is knocked out. The other Tractators flee leaving the humans alone. Turlough is strangely drawn to the machine but the Doctor and Brazen pull him away. However, Brazen is caught in the machine's grip and cannot pull himself out. He instead orders the others to run while he uses his mind to fight and destroy the machine.
In the lab, Norna is attacked by a looter and tied up while he looks for scavenge. He is in turn jumped by Cockerill who knocks him out. Cockerill and the rest of Retrogrades take over, plundering what they can. Norna manages to free herself and tells the group that Plantagenet isn't dead and shows them tunnel where the group went down. Range appears at the tunnel entrance, telling them that the Tractators are everywhere and moving towards them. Cockerill decides to take some men and attack.
As the Doctor and the humans flee, Turlough's memory comes back and he tells the Doctor that the Tractators are harmless without the Gravis to lead them. It is he that is driving the plan to turn Frontios into a mobile base that will allow them to scavenge other planets. They hear screaming as Cockerill and his men run into other Tractators and press on. Tegan however discovers a separated bit of the TARDIS. She is spotted by a revived Gravis who advances on her. She ducks through the TARDIS doors to find the others in the console room.
The Doctor orders them to hide and opens the door, displaying the TARDIS console room. The Gravis, consumed with greed when he realizes what it is, exercises all his gravitational power to pull the disparate pieces of the TARDIS back together. The act exhausts him and he collapses on the console and with the TARDIS back together, he is cut off dimensionally from the other Tractators.
Plantagenet and Turlough head back to the surface where the restore order. The Doctor and Tegan take the Gravis to an isolated, uninhabited planet where his power is limited. The Doctor returns and picks up Turlough, intending to return to Gallifrey, although he begs Plantagenet to never say a word of his involvement in the affair. As they leave, the TARDIS is caught in a time corridor which pulls them away from Gallifrey and toward the center of the galaxy.
Analysis
I never watched Tachyon TV but I heard a mock song they put out once about how boring Christopher Bidmede's writing was. I'm not sure Frontios is deserving of that level of mockery, but it is a rather dull story with a lot of little things that don't make much sense.
The Doctor is very good in this story with a strong sense of urgency most of the time. It is a bit odd that he seems so worried about getting in trouble with the Time Lords about interfering but that point is discarded fairly early. He has a nice interaction with Range and I also liked his witticisms that he would crack now and again. I don't recall the Fifth Doctor doing that that often and it was a bit of a throw back to the Fourth Doctor's style in dealing with high pressure situations. About the only thing I didn't care for was his almost cavalier attitude toward the destruction of the TARDIS. He seemed a bit too blasé about the prospect of being marooned on Frontios, to say nothing of losing that level of a companion, though the Fifth Doctor was probably the most distant from the TARDIS as a living thing.
Tegan and Turlough weren't bad but they had their faulty moments as well. Tegan did a lot of running around and helping here and there but after she rescues the Doctor and Norna, she doesn't seem to do much of anything except be there. I did like her indignation when the Doctor passes her off as a discount servo droid.
Turlough was fine, especially when he was clearly working to overcome his cowardice after returning to the lab with Norna. However I did not like the race memory bit. The acting was alright, if a bit over-the-top, but the explanation of it that Turlough's people kept deep memories of the Tractators and what they are that could be called upon in moments of trauma seemed like the flimsiest of writer's cheats. Granted it made Turlough more important and kept the Gravis from going off on a Bond-villain explanation speech, but it was still a very convenient dropping by the exposition fairy and I didn't care for it.
Most of the rest of the case did fine in a serviceable way, but no one really stood out. Range was probably the closest one as he had a nice rapport with the Doctor and got a lot of time to settle into various character moments. Most of the rest though were fairly one note, with Brazen and Plantagenet being the worst. Brazen was at least consistent in his firm military mind and bulldog attitude.
Plantagenet on the other had seemed rather fickle and changed his mind so easily. Worse, he gave off a feeling of weakness which undercut the idea that it was by his will and the promise of his leadership that the colony held together. I could buy that idea about his father, but a weak presence seemed at odds with what we are being told is happening in the script and it felt jarring to me. He also seemed to have rather rapid and unwarranted attitude swings as the plot shifted from him being either a help or a hindrance to the Doctor.
The Tractators were a fairly interesting idea, although I'm not sure they were well executed. There are limits to the costumes and they seemed overly stiff and a bit too much like a man inside a lumbering suit. The gravity power bit was also very weird. Having technological minds and developing engines I can understand. That seemed well thought out and believable. But that they had an almost magical power of creating gravity fields seemed very strange. It also felt a bit weak that they were actually a benevolent race who were being led astray by one bad leader. I'm not big on stories where everything falls into place with a quick decapitation. Yes sometimes it works but more often than not, it feels like a quick way out of a situation.
I'm also a bit non-plussed about the casual power the Tractators have to destroy and rebuilt the TARDIS. Why was the TARDIS separated into pieces simply by pulling it underground? Why did the Gravis have the power to pull it together, especially if pulling it back together made it trans-dimensional again? That seems to give the Tractators a level of power that would have made them strong enough to battle the Time Lords. If that were the case, I would thing they would have actively sent the Doctor to take out the Gravis much like they did on other missions. It was an unneeded plot device as the TARDIS could simply have been pulled into the tunnels whole and the Gravis tricked into entering and then subdued, allowing the natural trans-dimensionality of the TARDIS, cut off his power from his own kind. The pull-apart was completely unnecessary.
The story was fairly well directed and well lit. I thought the production team did a nice job in trying to stretch what they had and make it look like a believable place. I'm actually surprised they didn't try to film any part of this story in a quarry as it would have fit in well with the mood, but the studios were well dressed here anyway.
Aside from the powers of the Tractators, I think the biggest problem with this story was that it was large in ideas and short on scope. There was a tremendous amount of backstory for all the character and a lot of threads that could have been elaborated on. But most of those were not explored, leaving a lot of questions. Yet despite that, the flow of the story felt padded with a lot of running around, escapes, recaptures and just little things that didn't matter much. This gave it the disadvantage of being both boring to watch and frustrating in a lack of answers, which is strange for a writer who likes to go on about how a thing is scientifically possible.
Overall, I can't say that I enjoyed this story that much. It had some good moments but the overall story just seemed to drag and left too many things up in the air and against the common logic of the show. I wouldn't protest overly if someone pulled if off the shelf to watch, but I certainly wouldn't seek it out or put it in the top tier of Fifth Doctor stories to recommend.
Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Hide
I am the Doctor and I am afraid.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Clara arrive at an old house in 1974 where an ex-spy, Professor Palmer, and his assistant, Emma Grayling, are attempting to communicate with a ghost documented in the house. Emma is a emotional sensitive and Palmer has her attempt to contact the ghost of the house. The Doctor poses as an inspector from the ministry and is very intrigued at what the two are doing. After assuring Palmer that the Doctor is not there to steal his work, the Doctor and Clara are given leave to explore.
They head to the music room where the Doctor discovers a cold spot. Clara feels increasing agitated and there is a surge of power. They run out and get an additional scare when Clara thinks the Doctor is holding her hand but he isn't. The extra power surges into the room and a black disk appears. The ghost image also appears and the Doctor grabs Palmer's camera, taking pictures both of the image and the disk. There is a shriek and the disk collapses but an image of "help me" appears burned on the wall.
The Doctor and Palmer develop the pictures while Clara helps Emma recover a bit, having been emotionally disturbed by the ghost's outburst. Developing the pictures, the Doctor gets an idea and borrows Palmer's camera. He and Clara go into the TARDIS and travel back to the dawn of Earth. They then travel forward in time taking pictures at distinct intervals, ending in the final days of the Earth. Clara is overwhelmed by seeing the lifespan of the Earth but snaps herself back as they arrive back at the house in 1974.
The Doctor presents a slide show of the pictures he took, showing the ghost is actually a woman named Hila who was sent on a time travel experimental mission. She is now in a pocket universe, moving at a different time pace. The Doctor rigs a device and hooks it to the TARDIS. He amplifies the psychic energy of Emma with the device and uses her to reopen the wormhole. Once open he jumps through with a length of rope.
The Doctor finds himself in a misty wood where Hila runs into him, pursued by some creature. They run away from it but lose the location of the rope in the mist. Emma envisions the house and it appears in the mist. They run to it and manage to keep the creature at bay as they do. They find the rope and Hila is pulled up and out. However the strain is too much for Emma and the portal collapses before the Doctor can come through.
Clara urges Emma to reopen the portal but she is exhausted. Clara then runs out to the TARDIS to try and rescue him herself. The TARDIS holographic interface kicks on with an image of Clara appearing. The TARDIS notes the likelihood of failure and destruction of the TARDIS but Clara appeals anyway. The TARDIS lets her in and takes off at the same as Emma decides to try and open the porthole again with Hila and Palmer providing mental support.
In the forest, the Doctor is initially overcome by fear but opts to confront the creature. As he does so, the creature leaps on him. At that moment, the TARDIS flies in with Clara barely holding on inside. The Doctor grabs the exterior of the TARDIS and it flies through the porthole and rematerializes in the house just as Emma collapses a second time.
The next day, the Doctor reveals to Emma the real reason he came to see her and that was to ask about Clara. Emma is slightly confused and tells him that she is an ordinary girl with no special powers or abilities. Slightly disappointed, the Doctor reveals that Hila strong connection to Emma and Palmer was that she is descended from them and that blood called to blood.
He and Clara are about to leave when the Doctor realizes that there is a second creature that is living in the shadows of the house, which scared them during their first look around. He also realizes that the creature in the pocket universe was looking for it's mate and not attacking either him or Hila. He asks Emma to open the porthole one last time and flies in with the TARDIS, inviting the creature back to reunite with his mate.
Analysis
I sincerely doubt there are many people out there that would compare Hide and Victory of the Daleks but there was something that struck me as being similar between the two. In both stories, you have a decent premise and things start off very well. However, in both stories things go downhill until you reach an end that you are unsatisfied with. For me, the downward trajectory of Victory of the Daleks was much sharper and finished in a far lower spot, but Hide did finish in a lower position that it started for me.
Now, that is not to say that Hide is bad. Far from it actually. But the first ten to fifteen minutes of the story are about as good as you can get with a creepy, ghost-horror genre and still be family friendly. From the start to the point where Clara and the Doctor run screaming back to the lab set up is about as thrilling as you could possibly ask for. From that point, although still good in most areas, it doesn't quite keep that same level of interest and the story suffers for it, despite its still high quality.
The Eleventh Doctor is quite entertaining here despite fan obsession over his pronunciation of "Metebelis." He is whimsical but also serious. He also has a high sense of alien-ness that provides a high amount of levity when things get a bit serious. But he also does scarred very well. His reaction at the start when he and Clara get freaked out in the music room is done well to convey a real sense of fear. He also does very well when cut off in the pocket universe and confronting the unknown and his level of fear there.
Clara was pretty good as well. Again, Clara is best when she is on the wrong foot, which she is more often than not when paired with the Eleventh Doctor. It is also amusing to see her interaction with the TARDIS and the TARDIS' open hostility towards her, including the fun little dig of using Clara's own image as the holographic interface that she will actually pay attention to. But Clara is in more of a traditional companion role here and I think she is better for it.
Palmer and Emma are also quite good in this one. Palmer does very well in showing a man haunted by his deeds of the past and trying to make up for it. Emma also does well in her empathy and the mixed emotions of trying to figure if Palmer cares for her or not. Theirs' is the one romantic sub-plot that I actually buy. I'm also mildly amused that the actress who plays Emma will be going on to play Verity Lambert in only a short span of time after this in An Adventure in Space and Time.
The sets and production values were also well done with the misty island being quite creepy and the old house also being very well done. The whole episode was shot with tight, dark shots that amplified the creepiness. There were also a few instances of scenes being done at a very slightly odd angle that I think contributed to a feeling of wrongness and helped keep the audience on edge.
So with all that, why does the story go downhill? Part of it is inevitable as a scary story naturally becomes less interesting the more you reveal. The unknown is what is truly scary so as soon as the Doctor returns with details of Hila and the pocket universe, it is instantly less scary because there is a handle on what the nature of the scare is. That's not a problem that can be avoided so deflation is inevitable. There is also a shift where the first fifteen minutes are more of a Hitchcockian thriller and the later portion becomes a scary monster to be avoided. Focusing the point of fear on a monster, which is very similar to other Doctor Who, also causes the episode to lose steam because a monster can be avoided or dealt with in a tangible way. It does not take the all consuming tactic that an unknown sense can take.
Even with those, I think this story does very well but it really cuts itself down with the romance bit at the end. Suddenly its not a monster looking to eat or feeding off fear, but instead a misunderstood creature just looking for it's mate. It's a tacked on, saccharine ending that just ruins the whole mood of the previous 40 minutes. It's not an episode killer for me, but it renders all the fear and suspense of the previous time moot and it makes the episode as a whole feel more like a wild goose chase. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, especially as it's a tack on that only spools itself out for an additional minute. There is no reunion scene or any breadcrumbs of the connection aside from the flash glimpses of the other creature in the house in the first fifteen minutes.
On the whole, the good outweighs the bad but the bad is the last thing you're left with and that is just unfortunate. I would never advocate turning a story off before it was done but I could see people stop watching just before the Doctor walks into the TARDIS and having a higher opinion of it. I still have a high opinion of it and would easily give the first fifteen minutes full marks. The rest drags it down but it's still an overly enjoyable story to watch and a highly rated one for Series 7B.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Clara arrive at an old house in 1974 where an ex-spy, Professor Palmer, and his assistant, Emma Grayling, are attempting to communicate with a ghost documented in the house. Emma is a emotional sensitive and Palmer has her attempt to contact the ghost of the house. The Doctor poses as an inspector from the ministry and is very intrigued at what the two are doing. After assuring Palmer that the Doctor is not there to steal his work, the Doctor and Clara are given leave to explore.
They head to the music room where the Doctor discovers a cold spot. Clara feels increasing agitated and there is a surge of power. They run out and get an additional scare when Clara thinks the Doctor is holding her hand but he isn't. The extra power surges into the room and a black disk appears. The ghost image also appears and the Doctor grabs Palmer's camera, taking pictures both of the image and the disk. There is a shriek and the disk collapses but an image of "help me" appears burned on the wall.
The Doctor and Palmer develop the pictures while Clara helps Emma recover a bit, having been emotionally disturbed by the ghost's outburst. Developing the pictures, the Doctor gets an idea and borrows Palmer's camera. He and Clara go into the TARDIS and travel back to the dawn of Earth. They then travel forward in time taking pictures at distinct intervals, ending in the final days of the Earth. Clara is overwhelmed by seeing the lifespan of the Earth but snaps herself back as they arrive back at the house in 1974.
The Doctor presents a slide show of the pictures he took, showing the ghost is actually a woman named Hila who was sent on a time travel experimental mission. She is now in a pocket universe, moving at a different time pace. The Doctor rigs a device and hooks it to the TARDIS. He amplifies the psychic energy of Emma with the device and uses her to reopen the wormhole. Once open he jumps through with a length of rope.
The Doctor finds himself in a misty wood where Hila runs into him, pursued by some creature. They run away from it but lose the location of the rope in the mist. Emma envisions the house and it appears in the mist. They run to it and manage to keep the creature at bay as they do. They find the rope and Hila is pulled up and out. However the strain is too much for Emma and the portal collapses before the Doctor can come through.
Clara urges Emma to reopen the portal but she is exhausted. Clara then runs out to the TARDIS to try and rescue him herself. The TARDIS holographic interface kicks on with an image of Clara appearing. The TARDIS notes the likelihood of failure and destruction of the TARDIS but Clara appeals anyway. The TARDIS lets her in and takes off at the same as Emma decides to try and open the porthole again with Hila and Palmer providing mental support.
In the forest, the Doctor is initially overcome by fear but opts to confront the creature. As he does so, the creature leaps on him. At that moment, the TARDIS flies in with Clara barely holding on inside. The Doctor grabs the exterior of the TARDIS and it flies through the porthole and rematerializes in the house just as Emma collapses a second time.
The next day, the Doctor reveals to Emma the real reason he came to see her and that was to ask about Clara. Emma is slightly confused and tells him that she is an ordinary girl with no special powers or abilities. Slightly disappointed, the Doctor reveals that Hila strong connection to Emma and Palmer was that she is descended from them and that blood called to blood.
He and Clara are about to leave when the Doctor realizes that there is a second creature that is living in the shadows of the house, which scared them during their first look around. He also realizes that the creature in the pocket universe was looking for it's mate and not attacking either him or Hila. He asks Emma to open the porthole one last time and flies in with the TARDIS, inviting the creature back to reunite with his mate.
Analysis
I sincerely doubt there are many people out there that would compare Hide and Victory of the Daleks but there was something that struck me as being similar between the two. In both stories, you have a decent premise and things start off very well. However, in both stories things go downhill until you reach an end that you are unsatisfied with. For me, the downward trajectory of Victory of the Daleks was much sharper and finished in a far lower spot, but Hide did finish in a lower position that it started for me.
Now, that is not to say that Hide is bad. Far from it actually. But the first ten to fifteen minutes of the story are about as good as you can get with a creepy, ghost-horror genre and still be family friendly. From the start to the point where Clara and the Doctor run screaming back to the lab set up is about as thrilling as you could possibly ask for. From that point, although still good in most areas, it doesn't quite keep that same level of interest and the story suffers for it, despite its still high quality.
The Eleventh Doctor is quite entertaining here despite fan obsession over his pronunciation of "Metebelis." He is whimsical but also serious. He also has a high sense of alien-ness that provides a high amount of levity when things get a bit serious. But he also does scarred very well. His reaction at the start when he and Clara get freaked out in the music room is done well to convey a real sense of fear. He also does very well when cut off in the pocket universe and confronting the unknown and his level of fear there.
Clara was pretty good as well. Again, Clara is best when she is on the wrong foot, which she is more often than not when paired with the Eleventh Doctor. It is also amusing to see her interaction with the TARDIS and the TARDIS' open hostility towards her, including the fun little dig of using Clara's own image as the holographic interface that she will actually pay attention to. But Clara is in more of a traditional companion role here and I think she is better for it.
Palmer and Emma are also quite good in this one. Palmer does very well in showing a man haunted by his deeds of the past and trying to make up for it. Emma also does well in her empathy and the mixed emotions of trying to figure if Palmer cares for her or not. Theirs' is the one romantic sub-plot that I actually buy. I'm also mildly amused that the actress who plays Emma will be going on to play Verity Lambert in only a short span of time after this in An Adventure in Space and Time.
The sets and production values were also well done with the misty island being quite creepy and the old house also being very well done. The whole episode was shot with tight, dark shots that amplified the creepiness. There were also a few instances of scenes being done at a very slightly odd angle that I think contributed to a feeling of wrongness and helped keep the audience on edge.
So with all that, why does the story go downhill? Part of it is inevitable as a scary story naturally becomes less interesting the more you reveal. The unknown is what is truly scary so as soon as the Doctor returns with details of Hila and the pocket universe, it is instantly less scary because there is a handle on what the nature of the scare is. That's not a problem that can be avoided so deflation is inevitable. There is also a shift where the first fifteen minutes are more of a Hitchcockian thriller and the later portion becomes a scary monster to be avoided. Focusing the point of fear on a monster, which is very similar to other Doctor Who, also causes the episode to lose steam because a monster can be avoided or dealt with in a tangible way. It does not take the all consuming tactic that an unknown sense can take.
Even with those, I think this story does very well but it really cuts itself down with the romance bit at the end. Suddenly its not a monster looking to eat or feeding off fear, but instead a misunderstood creature just looking for it's mate. It's a tacked on, saccharine ending that just ruins the whole mood of the previous 40 minutes. It's not an episode killer for me, but it renders all the fear and suspense of the previous time moot and it makes the episode as a whole feel more like a wild goose chase. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, especially as it's a tack on that only spools itself out for an additional minute. There is no reunion scene or any breadcrumbs of the connection aside from the flash glimpses of the other creature in the house in the first fifteen minutes.
On the whole, the good outweighs the bad but the bad is the last thing you're left with and that is just unfortunate. I would never advocate turning a story off before it was done but I could see people stop watching just before the Doctor walks into the TARDIS and having a higher opinion of it. I still have a high opinion of it and would easily give the first fifteen minutes full marks. The rest drags it down but it's still an overly enjoyable story to watch and a highly rated one for Series 7B.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Friday, February 3, 2017
Galaxy 4
Oh look it's got a sort of... chumbly movement.
Galaxy 4 is up there with Enlightenment in my having difficulty getting a copy of. I was able to watch an animated recon of the first episode (Four Hundred Dawns) but it was close to terrible in terms of quality. I scavenged around some more and finally was able to locate some of the Loose Cannon versions which made watching the story so much easier. It also helped that Episode Three (Airlock) has been found as getting a moving episode break in a recon story helps so much more.
Plot Summary
The Doctor, Steven and Vicki land on an unknown planet that despite being conducive to life, does not appear to have any. They prepare to go out but stop when hearing a strange beeping sound. A machine is bumping it's way around the TARDIS, investigating. Vicki seems amused by the machine and dubs it a Chumbly. The Chumbly sends a signal and then rolls off.
The three exit the TARDIS to explore. They find a Chumbly with a gun pointed at them. Though blind, the machine is sensitive to their movements. It demonstrates the power of it's gun and then herds the three across the landscape. As they walk, two women emerge and cast a metal net over the Chumbly, causing it to shut down.
The women identify themselves as Drahvins. They desire to take the Doctor and his companions to their leader, Maaga. They also warn the three against the masters of the Chumblies, the Rills. Vicki hesitates but when more Chumblies arrive, the group dashes off, forced to leave the metal net behind. The other Chumblies pull the net off the trapped Chumbly, freeing it.
The party arrives at the Drahvin's ship and Maaga enters. She is pleased at the capture of the Doctor and his party but angry at the loss of the metal net. She dismisses the guards and speaks of the Drahvin's war with the Rills. She also notes that the planet they are on will explode in fourteen dawns. She plans to take over the Rill ship as her ship was damaged in a firefight with the Rill ship while on a scout mission, looking for additional territory.
A Chumbly approaches her ship and Maaga fires the ship's lasers at it. The Chumbly is undamaged but flees the ship. The Doctor offers to head back to the TARDIS to see if the information the Rills have given the Drahvins about the expected death of the planet is true. Maaga accepts but demands a hostage to ensure the Doctor's return. Vicki volunteers and the Doctor and Steven leave. After they leave, Vicki overhears Maaga berating her soldiers for the loss of the metal net.
As they approach the TARDIS, they see a Chumbly circling around it, trying to gain access. Eventually it leaves and the Doctor and Steven enter the TARDIS. The Doctor checks his instruments and verifies what the Rills have said. He also notes that their timing is off and that the planet will actually explode tomorrow after only two dawns.
They attempt to leave the TARDIS but are forced to wait by the return of the Chumbly. The Chumbly again tries to enter the TARDIS, this time by detonating explosives around it. The Doctor and Steven are rocked but unharmed. The Chumbly retreats in failure and Steven and the Doctor return to the Drahvin ship. Before entering, the Doctor notes that the Drahvin ship is poorly made and not really fit for space travel. He suspects the Drahvins are not particularly technologically advanced.
Meeting again with Maaga, the Doctor lies and tells her what she originally told him: that the planet would explode after fourteen dawns rather than the two he discovered. Maaga demands that they help her take the Rill ship by force. The Doctor refuses but Maaga threatens to kill them if they don't. Steven tries to disarm her but a patrol returns and he is subdued. The Doctor agrees and he and Vicki leave to investigate the Rill ship with Steven being left behind as a hostage.
Steven attempts to incite an uprising among the Drahvin soldiers by pointing out the inequality between them and Maaga. He then tries to trick a soldier into giving him her gun and her taking Maaga's more powerful gun while on patrol. Maaga however enters and reprimands the soldier for nearly being tricked. Steven retreats to side and pretends to go to sleep so as to listen on other conversations.
The Doctor and Vicki find the Rill ship being patrolled by Chumblies. Vicki does a quick experiment and discovers that the Chumblies do not sense what is behind them. She and the Doctor follow a Chumbly until they can duck into the ship. The Doctor immediately notices that the Rill ship is a much higher technology level than the Drahvin ship. Vicki also notes a strong smell of ammonia in the air.
As Vicki and the Doctor continue to explore, Vicki is startled when she sees a Rill looking at them from the other side of a door. They flee the room but run into a Chumbly, forcing them back into the ship. They hide and evade the Chumbly and run to the edge of the ship. The Doctor gets through the gate but Vicki is trapped. The Chumblies arrive and take Vicki while the Doctor works on modifying the outside exchanger which converts the air into ammonia for the Rills to breathe.
Maaga is confronted by her drone soldiers about going on patrol. She rues their lack of intelligence and overrides their patrol order to ensure Steven is kept prisoner. Maaga plots to take the Rill ship, leaving the Doctor's company and the Rills to die in the planetary explosion. Steven overhears this but continues to pretend to sleep.
Vicki in brought back into the ship where she is confronted by a Rill through the compartment. Vicki tells the Rill that she and the Doctor were sent by the Drahvins to take the ship due to their companion being held prisoner. The Rill denies killing a Drahvin but is not surprised at the Drahvin's use of them. The Rill tells Vicki that Drahvins attacked them in space but they shot down the Drahvin ship as well. The Rill tells Vicki that they encountered a wounded Drahvin after crashing and tried to help her but Maaga shot at them and they retreated. They then saw Maaga kill the wounded Drahvin.
Steven notices his guard has fallen asleep and overpowers her, stealing her gun. He runs out of the ship, holding Maaga and another soldier at bay with the captured gun. However a Chumbly arrives outside the ship and he is forced back into the airlock. Maaga orders Steven to drop his weapon and enter. When he refuses, she orders a soldier to empty the oxygen from the airlock.
Realizing that the Rills are friendly, Vicki runs out to stop the Doctor from finishing his sabotage of the air filtration machine outside. She stops the Doctor and leads him inside. The Doctor informs the Rills that their calculations are off and that the planet will explode in one more dawn. The Rill admits that is not enough time to get power from drilled gas. The Doctor offers to help the rill build their power supplies. They also receive word from one of the Chumblies about Steven's escape attempt and his cries of distress.
The Rills tell the Doctor and Vicki to take two Chumblies and save Steven. They are stopped a soldier on patrol who doesn't trust them. They trick the soldier into believing they have captured the Chumblies and then disarm her. They continue towards the Drahvin ship.
Steven decides to take his chances with the Chumbly but finds the pressure has decreased too much for the outer door to open. He starts to collapse due to oxygen depravation. As he does, a Chumbly fires a projectile, smashing the ship window and flooding the Drahvin ship with gas. The Chumbly breaks open the airlock and Steven revives with the atmosphere rushing back in. The Doctor takes hold of him pulls him away from the Drahvin ship, helping him to get his breath back.
Maaga clears the air and orders her soldiers to arm and advance on the Doctor and the Chumblies. The Rills, speaking through the Chumblies, order Maaga and her soldiers back. The group withdraws to the Rill ship with two Chumblies providing cover. The Drahvins withdraw back to their ship and plan a night attack on the Rill ship.
Back at the Rill ship, the Doctor continues to work on transferring power from the TARDIS to the Rill ship. Vicki and the Doctor head out to the TARDIS to complete the transfer. Steven stays behind in the Rill ship to recover and look around. Steven is skeptical of the Rills motives but the Rills tell Steven that if the Doctor is wrong about the time required, they will send the Doctor, Steven and Vicki away in their ship. Chagrined, Steven apologizes and tells the Rills of Maaga's plan to take the Rill ship and leave them to die on the planet. Steven and a Chumbly then begin work on the cables in the Rill ship.
One of the Drahvin soldiers exits the ship from the rear entrance and sneaks up behind the guarding Chumbly. She manages to destroy it with a piece of pipe. Maaga then takes the other two soldiers out and they march towards the Rill ship.
The Doctor and Vicki arrive back at the TARDIS and set up the cable between it and the Rill ship. They return, followed closely by the Drahvins. One of the soldiers enters the ship just as the Doctor and Steven activate the power transfer. A Chumbly paralyzes the Drahvin soldier and the Doctor and his companions are pulled inside the inner sanctum for their safety where they see the Rills unobscured.
The Rills dispatch more Chumblies to keep the Drahvins at bay. Maaga fires at them but they are forced to stay under cover. When the power transfer is complete, the Doctor, Steven and Vicki say goodbye to the Rills with a Chumbly to escort them. As they leave, the Rill ship takes off.
Terrified, the Drahvins try to head towards the TARDIS but the Chumbly escort beats them back. The Doctor and his companions enter the TARDIS and the Chumbly powers itself down. The TARDIS disappears as the planet begins to erupt. On the scanner, they observe the planet explode into dust.
As they travel, the Doctor remarks how he could do with a rest. They turn on the scanner and Vicki makes an idle comment about a planet they are passing. The scene then shifts to the planet Kimbel where a member of the Space Patrol wakes in a thick jungle.
Analysis
Galaxy 4 may hold an interesting distinction as the only story I've seen where it actually went down in my estimation when I could see it move. Most of the time, movement will draw you further into the story, but in this case, direction choices by Derek Martinus actually pulled me further out of the story rather than further in.
One of the few things I think I can that I liked about this story is the Doctor. The Doctor is a lot more perceptive than he is shown to be on the surface. It is tempered with his mischievous, almost doddering nature, but he is still thinking well ahead of the Drahvins and not taken in by them at all. Of course he also still has a few foolish moments that keep him in that silly vein, but overall, I enjoyed the Doctor here.
Steven and Vicki weren't bad here but neither gave a particularly good performance. It is fairly well known that when this story was originally written, it was written with Ian and Barbara in mind so Steven ended up playing more of Barbara's role and Vicki absorbed some of Ian's more action oriented scenes (such as disarming the guard when going to rescue Steven). Vicki's Ian moments are actually pretty good as she sounds like a rational, thinking person. It's the overly silly and cutesy lines (such as creating the Chumbly name) where she is actually just annoying.
Steven is far more passive than he should be, although it does demonstrate that Barbara was not a wilting violet in Steven's escape attempt. His performance on the whole wasn't bad overall, even in this more passive state, with the strong exception of his being left alone with the Rills early in Episode Four. Whomever it was written for, Steven's scene where the Rills convince him of their decent nature is pretty painful for him. Cynicism is one thing, but that scene plays into a near racist trope. Even if you wanted to think of Steven (or Barbara) as having racist tendencies, to be that openly hostile about it and to have the Rills put such a strong emotional slapdown on it is just painful to watch.
The Rills aren't bad but they are a bit too noble for my taste. It's something of a cliché to talk about ugly on the outside but good on the inside and vice versa and this story is all about that. I would have liked a touch more nuance with the Rills, even if it was a developed coldness towards the Drahvins as being deserving of death for murdering their own kind. It would have been just a touch of grey that would have done well I think.
The Drahvins are boring. There is some light potential there with the three soldiers being tube manufactured drones with no intelligence and Maaga being the only one with the ability to think. That could have been explored both in the maintaining of military order but also in the shortfalls of having only one thinker in the form of the commander. However, it is only implied at best given the Drahvin's limited technology and very black hat attitude.
That actually was one of the worst scenes in the recovered episode: Maaga's soliloquy of evil to the camera. There started to be some nuance in her performance but it quickly devolved into how she will kill the others in their escape and how great she is because she can envision it in her mind. I suspect they were going for an Iago style moment where the darkness of the mind would be made manifest. It even had the background turn dark and her silhouetted as though alone in her mind. But the decision for her to look directly in camera and just stare at it while fantasying just didn't work for me at all. She was stepping out as though trying to scare the audience rather than muse on her thoughts and I found it to be a huge distraction with her performance.
There is a bit of a reputation for the last story in a season of Doctor Who to look a bit bad because the budget has run out and that does seem to apply to Galaxy 4 as well. Galaxy 4 actually led off Season 3 but it was filmed at the end of Season 2 so it was subject to the money issues. But the story just looks cheap. The Chumblies do not look very robust, especially with all the interaction they have to go through. The backdrop was clearly visible and the sets for both ships seemed flimsy. It just looked very much like a story on a studio set and a small one at that.
The overall story was very simple and it got a bit boring at times. There were sections in every episode where someone would go on a long talk that usually was only a bit of superfluous backstory. Many of these scenes were with Maaga and the other Drahvins but there were moments where the Doctor and Vicki would be shown in a little scene and it had nothing to do except pad the story's run time. When the story is that simple and you drag it out even longer, it becomes tedious and not having any interesting visuals to go with it only makes it worse.
Overall, I can't recommend this one. If it is was found, I might try to watch it again as maybe Episode Three was an aberration in the direction, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Aside from the acting of the Doctor and a few little nuances here and there, there's not a lot to enjoy with this one. I think even if there was an improvement in the directing in the other three episodes, there still wouldn't be a whole lot to pull the story up. So, I wouldn't worry about this one if you have trouble finding it. It's not worth the effort.
Overall personal score: 1 out of 5
Galaxy 4 is up there with Enlightenment in my having difficulty getting a copy of. I was able to watch an animated recon of the first episode (Four Hundred Dawns) but it was close to terrible in terms of quality. I scavenged around some more and finally was able to locate some of the Loose Cannon versions which made watching the story so much easier. It also helped that Episode Three (Airlock) has been found as getting a moving episode break in a recon story helps so much more.
Plot Summary
The Doctor, Steven and Vicki land on an unknown planet that despite being conducive to life, does not appear to have any. They prepare to go out but stop when hearing a strange beeping sound. A machine is bumping it's way around the TARDIS, investigating. Vicki seems amused by the machine and dubs it a Chumbly. The Chumbly sends a signal and then rolls off.
The three exit the TARDIS to explore. They find a Chumbly with a gun pointed at them. Though blind, the machine is sensitive to their movements. It demonstrates the power of it's gun and then herds the three across the landscape. As they walk, two women emerge and cast a metal net over the Chumbly, causing it to shut down.
The women identify themselves as Drahvins. They desire to take the Doctor and his companions to their leader, Maaga. They also warn the three against the masters of the Chumblies, the Rills. Vicki hesitates but when more Chumblies arrive, the group dashes off, forced to leave the metal net behind. The other Chumblies pull the net off the trapped Chumbly, freeing it.
The party arrives at the Drahvin's ship and Maaga enters. She is pleased at the capture of the Doctor and his party but angry at the loss of the metal net. She dismisses the guards and speaks of the Drahvin's war with the Rills. She also notes that the planet they are on will explode in fourteen dawns. She plans to take over the Rill ship as her ship was damaged in a firefight with the Rill ship while on a scout mission, looking for additional territory.
A Chumbly approaches her ship and Maaga fires the ship's lasers at it. The Chumbly is undamaged but flees the ship. The Doctor offers to head back to the TARDIS to see if the information the Rills have given the Drahvins about the expected death of the planet is true. Maaga accepts but demands a hostage to ensure the Doctor's return. Vicki volunteers and the Doctor and Steven leave. After they leave, Vicki overhears Maaga berating her soldiers for the loss of the metal net.
As they approach the TARDIS, they see a Chumbly circling around it, trying to gain access. Eventually it leaves and the Doctor and Steven enter the TARDIS. The Doctor checks his instruments and verifies what the Rills have said. He also notes that their timing is off and that the planet will actually explode tomorrow after only two dawns.
They attempt to leave the TARDIS but are forced to wait by the return of the Chumbly. The Chumbly again tries to enter the TARDIS, this time by detonating explosives around it. The Doctor and Steven are rocked but unharmed. The Chumbly retreats in failure and Steven and the Doctor return to the Drahvin ship. Before entering, the Doctor notes that the Drahvin ship is poorly made and not really fit for space travel. He suspects the Drahvins are not particularly technologically advanced.
Meeting again with Maaga, the Doctor lies and tells her what she originally told him: that the planet would explode after fourteen dawns rather than the two he discovered. Maaga demands that they help her take the Rill ship by force. The Doctor refuses but Maaga threatens to kill them if they don't. Steven tries to disarm her but a patrol returns and he is subdued. The Doctor agrees and he and Vicki leave to investigate the Rill ship with Steven being left behind as a hostage.
Steven attempts to incite an uprising among the Drahvin soldiers by pointing out the inequality between them and Maaga. He then tries to trick a soldier into giving him her gun and her taking Maaga's more powerful gun while on patrol. Maaga however enters and reprimands the soldier for nearly being tricked. Steven retreats to side and pretends to go to sleep so as to listen on other conversations.
The Doctor and Vicki find the Rill ship being patrolled by Chumblies. Vicki does a quick experiment and discovers that the Chumblies do not sense what is behind them. She and the Doctor follow a Chumbly until they can duck into the ship. The Doctor immediately notices that the Rill ship is a much higher technology level than the Drahvin ship. Vicki also notes a strong smell of ammonia in the air.
As Vicki and the Doctor continue to explore, Vicki is startled when she sees a Rill looking at them from the other side of a door. They flee the room but run into a Chumbly, forcing them back into the ship. They hide and evade the Chumbly and run to the edge of the ship. The Doctor gets through the gate but Vicki is trapped. The Chumblies arrive and take Vicki while the Doctor works on modifying the outside exchanger which converts the air into ammonia for the Rills to breathe.
Maaga is confronted by her drone soldiers about going on patrol. She rues their lack of intelligence and overrides their patrol order to ensure Steven is kept prisoner. Maaga plots to take the Rill ship, leaving the Doctor's company and the Rills to die in the planetary explosion. Steven overhears this but continues to pretend to sleep.
Vicki in brought back into the ship where she is confronted by a Rill through the compartment. Vicki tells the Rill that she and the Doctor were sent by the Drahvins to take the ship due to their companion being held prisoner. The Rill denies killing a Drahvin but is not surprised at the Drahvin's use of them. The Rill tells Vicki that Drahvins attacked them in space but they shot down the Drahvin ship as well. The Rill tells Vicki that they encountered a wounded Drahvin after crashing and tried to help her but Maaga shot at them and they retreated. They then saw Maaga kill the wounded Drahvin.
Steven notices his guard has fallen asleep and overpowers her, stealing her gun. He runs out of the ship, holding Maaga and another soldier at bay with the captured gun. However a Chumbly arrives outside the ship and he is forced back into the airlock. Maaga orders Steven to drop his weapon and enter. When he refuses, she orders a soldier to empty the oxygen from the airlock.
Realizing that the Rills are friendly, Vicki runs out to stop the Doctor from finishing his sabotage of the air filtration machine outside. She stops the Doctor and leads him inside. The Doctor informs the Rills that their calculations are off and that the planet will explode in one more dawn. The Rill admits that is not enough time to get power from drilled gas. The Doctor offers to help the rill build their power supplies. They also receive word from one of the Chumblies about Steven's escape attempt and his cries of distress.
The Rills tell the Doctor and Vicki to take two Chumblies and save Steven. They are stopped a soldier on patrol who doesn't trust them. They trick the soldier into believing they have captured the Chumblies and then disarm her. They continue towards the Drahvin ship.
Steven decides to take his chances with the Chumbly but finds the pressure has decreased too much for the outer door to open. He starts to collapse due to oxygen depravation. As he does, a Chumbly fires a projectile, smashing the ship window and flooding the Drahvin ship with gas. The Chumbly breaks open the airlock and Steven revives with the atmosphere rushing back in. The Doctor takes hold of him pulls him away from the Drahvin ship, helping him to get his breath back.
Maaga clears the air and orders her soldiers to arm and advance on the Doctor and the Chumblies. The Rills, speaking through the Chumblies, order Maaga and her soldiers back. The group withdraws to the Rill ship with two Chumblies providing cover. The Drahvins withdraw back to their ship and plan a night attack on the Rill ship.
Back at the Rill ship, the Doctor continues to work on transferring power from the TARDIS to the Rill ship. Vicki and the Doctor head out to the TARDIS to complete the transfer. Steven stays behind in the Rill ship to recover and look around. Steven is skeptical of the Rills motives but the Rills tell Steven that if the Doctor is wrong about the time required, they will send the Doctor, Steven and Vicki away in their ship. Chagrined, Steven apologizes and tells the Rills of Maaga's plan to take the Rill ship and leave them to die on the planet. Steven and a Chumbly then begin work on the cables in the Rill ship.
One of the Drahvin soldiers exits the ship from the rear entrance and sneaks up behind the guarding Chumbly. She manages to destroy it with a piece of pipe. Maaga then takes the other two soldiers out and they march towards the Rill ship.
The Doctor and Vicki arrive back at the TARDIS and set up the cable between it and the Rill ship. They return, followed closely by the Drahvins. One of the soldiers enters the ship just as the Doctor and Steven activate the power transfer. A Chumbly paralyzes the Drahvin soldier and the Doctor and his companions are pulled inside the inner sanctum for their safety where they see the Rills unobscured.
The Rills dispatch more Chumblies to keep the Drahvins at bay. Maaga fires at them but they are forced to stay under cover. When the power transfer is complete, the Doctor, Steven and Vicki say goodbye to the Rills with a Chumbly to escort them. As they leave, the Rill ship takes off.
Terrified, the Drahvins try to head towards the TARDIS but the Chumbly escort beats them back. The Doctor and his companions enter the TARDIS and the Chumbly powers itself down. The TARDIS disappears as the planet begins to erupt. On the scanner, they observe the planet explode into dust.
As they travel, the Doctor remarks how he could do with a rest. They turn on the scanner and Vicki makes an idle comment about a planet they are passing. The scene then shifts to the planet Kimbel where a member of the Space Patrol wakes in a thick jungle.
Analysis
Galaxy 4 may hold an interesting distinction as the only story I've seen where it actually went down in my estimation when I could see it move. Most of the time, movement will draw you further into the story, but in this case, direction choices by Derek Martinus actually pulled me further out of the story rather than further in.
One of the few things I think I can that I liked about this story is the Doctor. The Doctor is a lot more perceptive than he is shown to be on the surface. It is tempered with his mischievous, almost doddering nature, but he is still thinking well ahead of the Drahvins and not taken in by them at all. Of course he also still has a few foolish moments that keep him in that silly vein, but overall, I enjoyed the Doctor here.
Steven and Vicki weren't bad here but neither gave a particularly good performance. It is fairly well known that when this story was originally written, it was written with Ian and Barbara in mind so Steven ended up playing more of Barbara's role and Vicki absorbed some of Ian's more action oriented scenes (such as disarming the guard when going to rescue Steven). Vicki's Ian moments are actually pretty good as she sounds like a rational, thinking person. It's the overly silly and cutesy lines (such as creating the Chumbly name) where she is actually just annoying.
Steven is far more passive than he should be, although it does demonstrate that Barbara was not a wilting violet in Steven's escape attempt. His performance on the whole wasn't bad overall, even in this more passive state, with the strong exception of his being left alone with the Rills early in Episode Four. Whomever it was written for, Steven's scene where the Rills convince him of their decent nature is pretty painful for him. Cynicism is one thing, but that scene plays into a near racist trope. Even if you wanted to think of Steven (or Barbara) as having racist tendencies, to be that openly hostile about it and to have the Rills put such a strong emotional slapdown on it is just painful to watch.
The Rills aren't bad but they are a bit too noble for my taste. It's something of a cliché to talk about ugly on the outside but good on the inside and vice versa and this story is all about that. I would have liked a touch more nuance with the Rills, even if it was a developed coldness towards the Drahvins as being deserving of death for murdering their own kind. It would have been just a touch of grey that would have done well I think.
The Drahvins are boring. There is some light potential there with the three soldiers being tube manufactured drones with no intelligence and Maaga being the only one with the ability to think. That could have been explored both in the maintaining of military order but also in the shortfalls of having only one thinker in the form of the commander. However, it is only implied at best given the Drahvin's limited technology and very black hat attitude.
That actually was one of the worst scenes in the recovered episode: Maaga's soliloquy of evil to the camera. There started to be some nuance in her performance but it quickly devolved into how she will kill the others in their escape and how great she is because she can envision it in her mind. I suspect they were going for an Iago style moment where the darkness of the mind would be made manifest. It even had the background turn dark and her silhouetted as though alone in her mind. But the decision for her to look directly in camera and just stare at it while fantasying just didn't work for me at all. She was stepping out as though trying to scare the audience rather than muse on her thoughts and I found it to be a huge distraction with her performance.
There is a bit of a reputation for the last story in a season of Doctor Who to look a bit bad because the budget has run out and that does seem to apply to Galaxy 4 as well. Galaxy 4 actually led off Season 3 but it was filmed at the end of Season 2 so it was subject to the money issues. But the story just looks cheap. The Chumblies do not look very robust, especially with all the interaction they have to go through. The backdrop was clearly visible and the sets for both ships seemed flimsy. It just looked very much like a story on a studio set and a small one at that.
The overall story was very simple and it got a bit boring at times. There were sections in every episode where someone would go on a long talk that usually was only a bit of superfluous backstory. Many of these scenes were with Maaga and the other Drahvins but there were moments where the Doctor and Vicki would be shown in a little scene and it had nothing to do except pad the story's run time. When the story is that simple and you drag it out even longer, it becomes tedious and not having any interesting visuals to go with it only makes it worse.
Overall, I can't recommend this one. If it is was found, I might try to watch it again as maybe Episode Three was an aberration in the direction, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Aside from the acting of the Doctor and a few little nuances here and there, there's not a lot to enjoy with this one. I think even if there was an improvement in the directing in the other three episodes, there still wouldn't be a whole lot to pull the story up. So, I wouldn't worry about this one if you have trouble finding it. It's not worth the effort.
Overall personal score: 1 out of 5
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Warriors' Gate
It's like talking with a Cheshire Cat.
Now the conclusion of the E-space trilogy and the departure of Romana and K-9. I've heard mixed things about this one and I think it is generally regarded as the weakest of the trilogy. All I really know about it is that involves time-sensitive lion-men so I'm coming into this one as a fairly blank slate.
Plot Summary
An Earth ship is attempting to go into warp drive. It is carrying a group of sedated humanoid lions called Tharls aboard and using one of the Tharls, named Biroc, as it's unwilling navigator. The ship is damaged an stuck in a neutral space between E- and N-space. Biroc appears to pass out and the captain, Rorvik, orders him taken below. Biroc comes to and shakes off his custodians, running out into a white void.
On the TARDIS, the Doctor and Romana debate about how to get back to N-space while Adric listens quietly. The Doctor suggests just pushing random buttons to see if anything will happen, though Romana restrains him. Adric however, does push a random button and the TARDIS flies off. Their flight is intercepted by Biroc, who appears out of phase. His appearance also opens the TARDIS to time winds which damage K-9.
Biroc guides the TARDIS to the null space and then leaves, although giving a warning about the people they will soon meet. Seeing K-9 damaged, the Doctor has Romana start to repair him while the Doctor leaves the TARDIS to follow Biroc. The Doctor and Romana also note that they are in a bridge of space between E- and N-space.
The TARDIS shows up on the scanner of the human ship. Already thinking of leaving to find Biroc rather than attempting to wake another Tharl and potentially killing others (and cutting into their profits), Rorvik and two others leave the ship to investigate the TARDIS. They find it and attempt to gain entrance.
The Doctor follows Biroc through the void to a small castle gate. Inside is an old hall, covered in dust and cobwebs. Biroc finds a mirror and passes through it. The Doctor enters and starts looking around. As he does so, one of the suits of armor comes to life and lifts its sword to attack him. The Doctor dodges it but the armor continues to pursue him, soon joined by a second.
To determine if Rorvik and his crew are friendly or not, Romana leaves the TARDIS but gives Adric warning to wait for her signal. She converses with Rorvik, who becomes suspicious that she might be a time sensitive person and invites her back to his ship to examine the damage. Romana sends gives a signal for Adric to be cautious and wait in the TARDIS and then goes off with them.
Adric however, does not obey and instead waits a few minutes and then decides to head off looking for her and the Doctor with K-9. K-9 is still damaged and they soon get lost in the void. Adric gets an idea to help K-9, removing one of his ears to help him triangulate better. It helps K-9 but Adric becomes lost himself.
The Doctor manages to corner himself in such a way that the two robotic suits of armor damage themselves. He opens up their circuits and begins to interrogate them. They are Gundan warrior robots, designed to guard the gate. They lose power before they can elaborate leaving the Doctor frustrated. However, K-9 arrives at the gate and the Doctor decides to hook him up to give a temporary power boost to the robots.
On Rorvik's ship, he grabs Romana and hooks her up to the navigation unit. She is unable to provide complete navigation but she does give enough for the castle gate to show up on the scanner as a physical location. Rorvik decides to head out to investigate with most of the crew. He orders two crew members to bring out one of the Tharls to be woken up on his return.
Rorvik and his men arrive at the gate just as the Doctor is getting information about there being three gates and they all being one. They threaten him to reveal more but are distracted by one of the robots suddenly getting up and passing through the gate. The Doctor grabs K-9 and dodges through the fortress. At risk of being cornered again, he leaves K-9 and passes through the gate, leaving Rorvik and his crew alone with K-9.
The two remaining crewmen on Rorvik's ship pull out one of the Tharls but against orders, try to revive him. They end up electrocuting him instead and leave the body for someone else. However, the Tharl is not dead. He gets up and makes his way to the bridge where he finds Romana bound to the navigation chair. He loosens the straps but has to hide before undoing them completely as the two crewmen left behind enter.
The two men debate what to do with her and are startled by her opening her eyes and asking questions. They leave her on the bridge as Rorvik calls them over the radio to ready a piece of heavy equipment called the M-Z for transport. Romana then slips out of her loosened bonds and hides under a tarp in the equipment bay.
Rorvik and his men fire at the mirror gate but their weapons bounce back at them. Rorvik sends three men back to the ship while he radios to prep the M-Z. K-9 follows, attempting to get new masters but he is unceremoniously tossed out of the ship when he attempts to enter.
While the door is open, Adric slips in and hides under the same tarp as Romana. The tarp covers the M-Z, which is rolled out of the ship. However, it is left while the engineer, Lane, looks over the damaged warp drive. Romana and Adric slip out and look at the ship, discovering it is made of dwarf-star alloy. K-9 rolls up shrieking about the mass contraction of the null space. His warning alerts the crew and Romana is recaptured though Adric and K-9 run escape.
Romana is taken back inside the ship while the rest of the crew push the M-Z to the gate. Inside the ship, the loose Tharl, named Lazlo, emerges and knocks out Romana's guard. He takes her and they vanish to the gate and pass through it. They emerge in the upper balcony, watching Rorvik and his men.
After passing through the gate, the Doctor meets Biroc who appears to be waiting for him. Biroc informs him that although K-9 will be repaired, only organic matter may pass through the gate. The Doctor follows Biroc through a series of gardens until the both reemerge in the fortress at an earlier time. The Tharls are feasting about the table while being served by human slaves.
The Doctor realizes that the Tharls were the slave masters who ruled a great empire and built the Gundans. He also notes they show as little compassion for their slaves as did the human crew who has now enslaved the Tharls. The dinner is interrupted by a squad of Gundans who break in and attack the party. Romana, sensing danger, runs down to the Doctor. The Doctor is then instantly transported back to the present where Rorvik and his men surround the Doctor and Romana at the table.
Rorvik demands to know the secret of the mirror, believing it to be the way out, and refuses to believe that it can only be accessed by the Tharls or other time sensitives. K-9 Enters and warns the Doctor of the null space collapsing on itself. The Doctor is confused but Romana tells him that Rorvik's ship is made of dwarf star alloy, making it a matter sink in the void.
K-9 attempts to pass through the mirror but loses power. The Doctor runs toward him and Rorvik, frustrated at the lack of answers, prepares to shoot him. Through the mirror, the Doctor sees Biroc, admitting that the Tharls were wrong in their enslavement of others. He now plans to change the future.
Before Rorvik can fire, Adric appears from behind the M-Z device, threatening to fire it. The Doctor runs up and mans the controls, ordering Romana and Adric out while carrying K-9. He follows shortly after and all four reenter the TARDIS. Rorvik starts to pursue but decides not to bother. He fires the M-X at the mirror but the blast rebounds, destroying the device. Rorvik, becoming unhinged, leads his men back to the ship.
Once on the ship, Rorvik turns the ship so that it's engines point toward the fortress. He intends to create a back blow from the engines and try to shatter the mirror that way. The Doctor sees this on the scanner and heads out to stop him, fearing the rebound will destroy everything in the void. Romana comes with him to help.
Rorvik observes the Doctor and Romana entering the outer hull of the ship and goes after them. He also orders his men to wake the remaining Tharls. As Rorvik exits the ship, Biroc and Lazlo are hiding near it. Biroc follows while Lazlo enters the ship. Rorvik catches up to the Doctor and stops him from creating a power drain on the engine. Romana starts the process but Rorvik knocks her aside and stops the drain. Biroc appears beside them and tells the two Time Lords that they should do nothing. He takes their hands and the trio disappears as Rorvik gloats.
Inside the ship, the two low levels who tried to reanimate Lazlo, Sagan and Aldo, beg off and Royce tries to reanimate the Tharls. He electrocutes three of them and is preparing a fourth when Lazlo comes up behind him. Royce attacks him but Lazlo overpowers him, electrocuting him with a severed cable. Lazlo then begins to wake the other Tharls.
Biroc, Romana and the Doctor appear outside the TARDIS. The Doctor enters but Romana refuses, electing to stay in E-space with the Tharls rather than return to Gallifrey. The Doctor gives her K-9, telling her to fix him. The Doctor dematerializes in the TARDIS while Biroc, Romana and K-9 enter the fortress and pass through the mirror.
The human ship discharges it's engines but the blast rebounds off the mirror. Much of the fortress is destroyed along with the human ship. However, out of the wrecked hull, the reanimated Tharls emerge and pass through the mirror. The TARDIS briefly materializes in the Tharl's garden before disappearing again and returning to N-space. Romana and K-9 watch and the walk way with Biroc, promising to help him pass through time and free his remaining enslaved people.
Analysis
I think it is safe to say that Warriors' Gate is weird. In many ways, it reminds me of The Curse of Fenric in that there is more story here but that there wasn't enough time to put it down. Unlike Fenric though, I doubt any of that extra material was ever filmed.
First I must praise both the direction and conception of the story. The direction was very well done and you felt instantly in good hands with the opening tracking shot leading from the sleeping Tharls to the bridge. There were a lot of good camera shots and interesting points of view throughout the story. The conception was also quite good as the whiteness of the void gave it a surrealistic feel. Yet at the same time, there was a feeling of being grounded in reality with the realism of the crew and even the Tharl's abandoned fortress. The gardens were also bathed in surrealism, keeping the watcher heavily off-balance as to what was really going on. So from a visual point of view, this story is excellent.
I also enjoyed the acting for the most part as well. The Doctor had a bit of a minimal role in this one and was off on his own quite a lot. In many ways, this was Romana's story and she did very well. Her confidence was well on display and she held her own very well against the human crew, who also acted fairly well although with a caveat or two.
Adric was also pretty good, being used lightly and mostly for comic relief. Contrasting earlier Adric stories with later ones, the key for him is in limiting his screen time. He should always be a junior companion, with a stronger character taking the main companion role. The problems arose when he was elevated to senior companion in the Fifth Doctor era and tried to hold his own against Tegan and Nyssa. It was in this overexposure that his character flaws, as well as the limits of Matthew Waterhouse's acting, rose to the surface and made him unlikeable.
Rorvik dominates among the crew and he does fairly well, especially as his mania to escape grows. He does lose it in his final gloat scene. That was over-the-top and poorly acted in contrast to his excellent earlier performance. It leaves an unfortunate bad aftertaste.
The rest of the crew is also pretty good, although fairly unremarkable. I got the feeling that there might have been a bit more backstory with Sagan and Aldo as these two were clearly designed to be a comic relief team in the Robert Holmes double act vein. However, they don't do much other than look disinterested in Rorvik's orders and bow out whenever it comes to doing anything that might inflict actual harm on anyone. Their repugnance as electrocuting Lazlo is shown and you can see that humanitarian side when they beg off attempting another revival. But without time or development, they just sort of are there and you don't feel that bad for them after they are blown up with the rest of the ship.
So you have good acting and good visuals. The problems with this story arise in the storytelling. I can handle weird just fine, Kinda being a prime example of an excellent but off-the-wall story. Warriors' Gate however suffers from a lack of focus. Surreal and odd is fine, if it is held in a tight focus or gives something that allows the audience to grab on to at the end to try and make a measure of sense of it. The Mind Robber would probably be a good example of surrealism explained.
However, in this story, the focus shifts all over the place. There are sidebars with minor characters and the main thrust of the Tharl's story is split between the more standard adventures with Romana and the highly surrealistic adventures with the Doctor. I think the ultimate problem is time. There is more to the story and that was cut out of it. I'd be curious if the cuts were made from the original run or if additional cuts had to be made because of the Romana leaving inclusion. Either way, the fall of the Tharls, their enslavement and the source of their power are never really resolved. Nor is it ever really addressed as to how the return of the Tharls to their gardens allows the TARDIS to pass through the gate and back into N-space. It just leaves you hanging and that leaves a bit of a bad aftertaste with the story.
I also wish Romana had been given a bit more time in her leaving. It was hinted at with her reluctance to return to Gallifrey at the end of Meglos and it returned here in Episode One where she expresses disdain at the idea. So her leaving is not out of the blue. However, it is so rushed that it just feels almost backhanded. I know that they were up against the clock but I would have liked a moment between the two Time Lords in the Tharl gardens. It would have also could have provided a better explanation as to how the Doctor and Adric got to N-space through some action of Biroc's or the like. Of course, the episode was running long so that was essentially impossible, but I think it would have made for a more palatable end.
Overall, I'm torn. The story looked good and was well acted. But the pacing got too fast at the end and the story had too many holes and loose threads. It is enjoyable enough and I would not call it bad, but there is not enough to compel me to actively seek this one out to watch again. But for the visuals and portrayals, I'll easily sit through it and find enjoyment in that.
Overall personal score: 3 out of 5
Now the conclusion of the E-space trilogy and the departure of Romana and K-9. I've heard mixed things about this one and I think it is generally regarded as the weakest of the trilogy. All I really know about it is that involves time-sensitive lion-men so I'm coming into this one as a fairly blank slate.
Plot Summary
An Earth ship is attempting to go into warp drive. It is carrying a group of sedated humanoid lions called Tharls aboard and using one of the Tharls, named Biroc, as it's unwilling navigator. The ship is damaged an stuck in a neutral space between E- and N-space. Biroc appears to pass out and the captain, Rorvik, orders him taken below. Biroc comes to and shakes off his custodians, running out into a white void.
On the TARDIS, the Doctor and Romana debate about how to get back to N-space while Adric listens quietly. The Doctor suggests just pushing random buttons to see if anything will happen, though Romana restrains him. Adric however, does push a random button and the TARDIS flies off. Their flight is intercepted by Biroc, who appears out of phase. His appearance also opens the TARDIS to time winds which damage K-9.
Biroc guides the TARDIS to the null space and then leaves, although giving a warning about the people they will soon meet. Seeing K-9 damaged, the Doctor has Romana start to repair him while the Doctor leaves the TARDIS to follow Biroc. The Doctor and Romana also note that they are in a bridge of space between E- and N-space.
The TARDIS shows up on the scanner of the human ship. Already thinking of leaving to find Biroc rather than attempting to wake another Tharl and potentially killing others (and cutting into their profits), Rorvik and two others leave the ship to investigate the TARDIS. They find it and attempt to gain entrance.
The Doctor follows Biroc through the void to a small castle gate. Inside is an old hall, covered in dust and cobwebs. Biroc finds a mirror and passes through it. The Doctor enters and starts looking around. As he does so, one of the suits of armor comes to life and lifts its sword to attack him. The Doctor dodges it but the armor continues to pursue him, soon joined by a second.
To determine if Rorvik and his crew are friendly or not, Romana leaves the TARDIS but gives Adric warning to wait for her signal. She converses with Rorvik, who becomes suspicious that she might be a time sensitive person and invites her back to his ship to examine the damage. Romana sends gives a signal for Adric to be cautious and wait in the TARDIS and then goes off with them.
Adric however, does not obey and instead waits a few minutes and then decides to head off looking for her and the Doctor with K-9. K-9 is still damaged and they soon get lost in the void. Adric gets an idea to help K-9, removing one of his ears to help him triangulate better. It helps K-9 but Adric becomes lost himself.
The Doctor manages to corner himself in such a way that the two robotic suits of armor damage themselves. He opens up their circuits and begins to interrogate them. They are Gundan warrior robots, designed to guard the gate. They lose power before they can elaborate leaving the Doctor frustrated. However, K-9 arrives at the gate and the Doctor decides to hook him up to give a temporary power boost to the robots.
On Rorvik's ship, he grabs Romana and hooks her up to the navigation unit. She is unable to provide complete navigation but she does give enough for the castle gate to show up on the scanner as a physical location. Rorvik decides to head out to investigate with most of the crew. He orders two crew members to bring out one of the Tharls to be woken up on his return.
Rorvik and his men arrive at the gate just as the Doctor is getting information about there being three gates and they all being one. They threaten him to reveal more but are distracted by one of the robots suddenly getting up and passing through the gate. The Doctor grabs K-9 and dodges through the fortress. At risk of being cornered again, he leaves K-9 and passes through the gate, leaving Rorvik and his crew alone with K-9.
The two remaining crewmen on Rorvik's ship pull out one of the Tharls but against orders, try to revive him. They end up electrocuting him instead and leave the body for someone else. However, the Tharl is not dead. He gets up and makes his way to the bridge where he finds Romana bound to the navigation chair. He loosens the straps but has to hide before undoing them completely as the two crewmen left behind enter.
The two men debate what to do with her and are startled by her opening her eyes and asking questions. They leave her on the bridge as Rorvik calls them over the radio to ready a piece of heavy equipment called the M-Z for transport. Romana then slips out of her loosened bonds and hides under a tarp in the equipment bay.
Rorvik and his men fire at the mirror gate but their weapons bounce back at them. Rorvik sends three men back to the ship while he radios to prep the M-Z. K-9 follows, attempting to get new masters but he is unceremoniously tossed out of the ship when he attempts to enter.
While the door is open, Adric slips in and hides under the same tarp as Romana. The tarp covers the M-Z, which is rolled out of the ship. However, it is left while the engineer, Lane, looks over the damaged warp drive. Romana and Adric slip out and look at the ship, discovering it is made of dwarf-star alloy. K-9 rolls up shrieking about the mass contraction of the null space. His warning alerts the crew and Romana is recaptured though Adric and K-9 run escape.
Romana is taken back inside the ship while the rest of the crew push the M-Z to the gate. Inside the ship, the loose Tharl, named Lazlo, emerges and knocks out Romana's guard. He takes her and they vanish to the gate and pass through it. They emerge in the upper balcony, watching Rorvik and his men.
After passing through the gate, the Doctor meets Biroc who appears to be waiting for him. Biroc informs him that although K-9 will be repaired, only organic matter may pass through the gate. The Doctor follows Biroc through a series of gardens until the both reemerge in the fortress at an earlier time. The Tharls are feasting about the table while being served by human slaves.
The Doctor realizes that the Tharls were the slave masters who ruled a great empire and built the Gundans. He also notes they show as little compassion for their slaves as did the human crew who has now enslaved the Tharls. The dinner is interrupted by a squad of Gundans who break in and attack the party. Romana, sensing danger, runs down to the Doctor. The Doctor is then instantly transported back to the present where Rorvik and his men surround the Doctor and Romana at the table.
Rorvik demands to know the secret of the mirror, believing it to be the way out, and refuses to believe that it can only be accessed by the Tharls or other time sensitives. K-9 Enters and warns the Doctor of the null space collapsing on itself. The Doctor is confused but Romana tells him that Rorvik's ship is made of dwarf star alloy, making it a matter sink in the void.
K-9 attempts to pass through the mirror but loses power. The Doctor runs toward him and Rorvik, frustrated at the lack of answers, prepares to shoot him. Through the mirror, the Doctor sees Biroc, admitting that the Tharls were wrong in their enslavement of others. He now plans to change the future.
Before Rorvik can fire, Adric appears from behind the M-Z device, threatening to fire it. The Doctor runs up and mans the controls, ordering Romana and Adric out while carrying K-9. He follows shortly after and all four reenter the TARDIS. Rorvik starts to pursue but decides not to bother. He fires the M-X at the mirror but the blast rebounds, destroying the device. Rorvik, becoming unhinged, leads his men back to the ship.
Once on the ship, Rorvik turns the ship so that it's engines point toward the fortress. He intends to create a back blow from the engines and try to shatter the mirror that way. The Doctor sees this on the scanner and heads out to stop him, fearing the rebound will destroy everything in the void. Romana comes with him to help.
Rorvik observes the Doctor and Romana entering the outer hull of the ship and goes after them. He also orders his men to wake the remaining Tharls. As Rorvik exits the ship, Biroc and Lazlo are hiding near it. Biroc follows while Lazlo enters the ship. Rorvik catches up to the Doctor and stops him from creating a power drain on the engine. Romana starts the process but Rorvik knocks her aside and stops the drain. Biroc appears beside them and tells the two Time Lords that they should do nothing. He takes their hands and the trio disappears as Rorvik gloats.
Inside the ship, the two low levels who tried to reanimate Lazlo, Sagan and Aldo, beg off and Royce tries to reanimate the Tharls. He electrocutes three of them and is preparing a fourth when Lazlo comes up behind him. Royce attacks him but Lazlo overpowers him, electrocuting him with a severed cable. Lazlo then begins to wake the other Tharls.
Biroc, Romana and the Doctor appear outside the TARDIS. The Doctor enters but Romana refuses, electing to stay in E-space with the Tharls rather than return to Gallifrey. The Doctor gives her K-9, telling her to fix him. The Doctor dematerializes in the TARDIS while Biroc, Romana and K-9 enter the fortress and pass through the mirror.
The human ship discharges it's engines but the blast rebounds off the mirror. Much of the fortress is destroyed along with the human ship. However, out of the wrecked hull, the reanimated Tharls emerge and pass through the mirror. The TARDIS briefly materializes in the Tharl's garden before disappearing again and returning to N-space. Romana and K-9 watch and the walk way with Biroc, promising to help him pass through time and free his remaining enslaved people.
Analysis
I think it is safe to say that Warriors' Gate is weird. In many ways, it reminds me of The Curse of Fenric in that there is more story here but that there wasn't enough time to put it down. Unlike Fenric though, I doubt any of that extra material was ever filmed.
First I must praise both the direction and conception of the story. The direction was very well done and you felt instantly in good hands with the opening tracking shot leading from the sleeping Tharls to the bridge. There were a lot of good camera shots and interesting points of view throughout the story. The conception was also quite good as the whiteness of the void gave it a surrealistic feel. Yet at the same time, there was a feeling of being grounded in reality with the realism of the crew and even the Tharl's abandoned fortress. The gardens were also bathed in surrealism, keeping the watcher heavily off-balance as to what was really going on. So from a visual point of view, this story is excellent.
I also enjoyed the acting for the most part as well. The Doctor had a bit of a minimal role in this one and was off on his own quite a lot. In many ways, this was Romana's story and she did very well. Her confidence was well on display and she held her own very well against the human crew, who also acted fairly well although with a caveat or two.
Adric was also pretty good, being used lightly and mostly for comic relief. Contrasting earlier Adric stories with later ones, the key for him is in limiting his screen time. He should always be a junior companion, with a stronger character taking the main companion role. The problems arose when he was elevated to senior companion in the Fifth Doctor era and tried to hold his own against Tegan and Nyssa. It was in this overexposure that his character flaws, as well as the limits of Matthew Waterhouse's acting, rose to the surface and made him unlikeable.
Rorvik dominates among the crew and he does fairly well, especially as his mania to escape grows. He does lose it in his final gloat scene. That was over-the-top and poorly acted in contrast to his excellent earlier performance. It leaves an unfortunate bad aftertaste.
The rest of the crew is also pretty good, although fairly unremarkable. I got the feeling that there might have been a bit more backstory with Sagan and Aldo as these two were clearly designed to be a comic relief team in the Robert Holmes double act vein. However, they don't do much other than look disinterested in Rorvik's orders and bow out whenever it comes to doing anything that might inflict actual harm on anyone. Their repugnance as electrocuting Lazlo is shown and you can see that humanitarian side when they beg off attempting another revival. But without time or development, they just sort of are there and you don't feel that bad for them after they are blown up with the rest of the ship.
So you have good acting and good visuals. The problems with this story arise in the storytelling. I can handle weird just fine, Kinda being a prime example of an excellent but off-the-wall story. Warriors' Gate however suffers from a lack of focus. Surreal and odd is fine, if it is held in a tight focus or gives something that allows the audience to grab on to at the end to try and make a measure of sense of it. The Mind Robber would probably be a good example of surrealism explained.
However, in this story, the focus shifts all over the place. There are sidebars with minor characters and the main thrust of the Tharl's story is split between the more standard adventures with Romana and the highly surrealistic adventures with the Doctor. I think the ultimate problem is time. There is more to the story and that was cut out of it. I'd be curious if the cuts were made from the original run or if additional cuts had to be made because of the Romana leaving inclusion. Either way, the fall of the Tharls, their enslavement and the source of their power are never really resolved. Nor is it ever really addressed as to how the return of the Tharls to their gardens allows the TARDIS to pass through the gate and back into N-space. It just leaves you hanging and that leaves a bit of a bad aftertaste with the story.
I also wish Romana had been given a bit more time in her leaving. It was hinted at with her reluctance to return to Gallifrey at the end of Meglos and it returned here in Episode One where she expresses disdain at the idea. So her leaving is not out of the blue. However, it is so rushed that it just feels almost backhanded. I know that they were up against the clock but I would have liked a moment between the two Time Lords in the Tharl gardens. It would have also could have provided a better explanation as to how the Doctor and Adric got to N-space through some action of Biroc's or the like. Of course, the episode was running long so that was essentially impossible, but I think it would have made for a more palatable end.
Overall, I'm torn. The story looked good and was well acted. But the pacing got too fast at the end and the story had too many holes and loose threads. It is enjoyable enough and I would not call it bad, but there is not enough to compel me to actively seek this one out to watch again. But for the visuals and portrayals, I'll easily sit through it and find enjoyment in that.
Overall personal score: 3 out of 5
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