It might take you a while to kill me.
Kill the Moon was not a bad episode, but it suffered from a severe lack of focus. It couldn't seem to decide if it was going to be a scary episode or a philosophical episode.
Plot Summary
The episode opens with Clara confronting the Doctor about filling Courtney Woods' head with notions that she is special. Meeting both in the TARDIS, rather than giving in to Clara's demands to pull Courtney down, the Doctor proposes she become the first woman on the moon.
They land on a shuttle preparing to land on the moon in 2049 with multiple nuclear warheads. The Doctor immediately knows that something is wrong as the gravity is closer to Earth. The crew of three confront them but the Doctor's understanding of the situation causes them to take them with. In addition to solving the gravity issue, a Mexican mining survey team was destroyed ten years prior and the mission is to find out why.
The team enters the old Mexican station, although one crewman surveys the outside of the station. Inside, the station is covered in large cobwebs. Outside, the lone crewman is attacked and killed by a spider-like creature. The creature moves inside where they have managed to get the power back on and found the remains of one of the mining survey team. The spider attacks and kills a second crewman. The Doctor, Clara, and Commander Lundvik escape but Courtney is left in the room with the spider. It attacks her and Courtney grabs a bottle of cleaning fluid to hold it off. The spray kills the creature nearly instantly, much to everyone's surprise.
After the Doctor makes a couple of quick points of investigation, he announces that they have reached a significant point in humanity's history and he is unsure of what the ultimate outcome will be. They head back outside, finding the body of the first crewmember. The Doctor is attacked by a spider, but it retreats when hit by sunlight. The Doctor does another yo-yo test and fluid is released from under a rock. The Doctor jumps into a crevasse to investigate further, ordering them to get back to the shuttle and TARDIS. However, the shuttle falls into another crevasse following a moonquake, along with the TARDIS and Courtney as she is in the TARDIS.
The Doctor reemerges and the three return to the Mexican base where they make contact with Courtney in the TARDIS. The Doctor reveals that the moon is an egg and the creature inside will be hatching shortly. Commander Lundvik wants to kill it to save Earth while Courtney is adamant that it should live. Clara appeals to the Doctor who refuses to commit. He has Courtney recall the TARDIS to him and then leaves the three of them to decide what to do while he jumps forward. Lundivk arms the nuclear bombs while Clara sends a message back to Earth asking for them to vote: lights off for kill, lights on for hatch.
The bomb has a one hour countdown in which they watch and wait for the vote. Steady, the lights turn off on the planet and Lundvik prepares to detonate as the countdown approaches zero. However at the last second, Clara reaches over and hits the abort button. Just then, the TARDIS rematerializes and the Doctor grabs them off the moon. They materialize on Earth and watch the creature hatch. The moon disintegrates as the creature emerges, but it disappears in a fine powder. The creature circles for a bit and lays a new moon egg before flying off into space.
They leave Lundvik on Earth and then drop Courtney back off at school. After she leaves, Clara lashes out at the Doctor for abandoning them and being so patronizing to her. She storms out of the TARDIS and tells Danny everything that happened. She vows to never travel with the Doctor again but he tells her to wait until she wasn't angry to make that decision, then tell him that.
Analysis
This story is a hard one to get a grasp on. The very concept of the moon as an egg is one that is a little hard to swallow so you have to let go of that at first. That's not too hard as we've all gotten used to it over the years with sci-fi. But the first half of the episode is the haunted house monster movie with the spider/bacteria attacks while the second half turns into a philosophical debate on life with the slight bit of added tension about whether the women would be still on the moon when it either hatched or detonated the nuclear warheads. It is just such a shift in tone that it is hard to reconcile when watching it as a single episode. It might have worked better in episodic form like a classic series story.
Taking each section as a whole, the horror element was quite good. The spider-like bacteria were quite creepy and did a pretty good job of being scary. The setting was sufficiently creepy and little time was wasted in dispatching the red shirts. I think that could have been drawn out a little more as I didn't really understand why the third astronaut went wandering outside on the surface other than to be separated an dispatched in the horror trope of wandering off alone.
The philosophical discussion wasn't too bad either. I remember when this story first came out, there was a bit of a heated discussion on whether this was an allegory for an abortion debate. I didn't quite see that but when dealing with killing something before it's born, I can see how it could be read in that way. I did enjoy that there wasn't a grand send up of the qualities of humans in this section. The Earth (or about half of it) universally voted to kill the creature, giving into their fear of potential destruction. It's a cynical view of people that is probably closer to reality than is often portrayed in entertainment. Artists seem to want to believe that people are mostly good and forward thinking. In reality, we are very self absorbed and will typically put our own interests ahead of others. It's nice to see that in sci-fi once in a while.
This was also an homage heavy episode with at least four references to other episodes. The Doctor uses a yo-yo to test the gravity much as the Fourth Doctor did in several previous stories. The Doctor had Courtney put in a DVD to recall the TARDIS to him, going so far as to tell her to hold on to the console or she would be left behind. This is a direct pull from Blink, even explaining why Sally and Larry were left behind. There is a window breach on the moonbase that is sealed with a piece of metal, recalling the tea tray that sealed a similar breach in The Moonbase. In the final scene with the Doctor, he mentions Courtney eventually meeting a man named Blinovitch, calling back to several stories but most notably, Mawdryn Undead. There may have been one or two others but those are the ones that jumped out at me and were nice little touches.
Aside from the shift in tone mid-episode, one of the biggest things that didn't seem to work for me was Courtney's inclusion. I'm skeptical any time a child actor is pulled in just because I doubt they will have the chops to hang with the adult actors, especially when working on a short shooting schedule as this probably was. The actress wasn't bad, but there didn't feel like there was any particular reason why Courtney should be there at all. They tossed in some bit at the end where she would become President at the time of the hatching but that wasn't necessary to the plot. The only reasons I can think of for including her were to put someone else in peril (which could have been done by Clara easily) in the spider attack and to act as an opposite pole to Lundvik in being the strong advocate for the life of the creature. This left Clara as the middle who has the implied authority to ask for advice from Earth and then to ignore it and push the cancel button.
I can understand why an established character like Courtney would have been used since it would have saved time as character development would not have been needed like it would have for a fourth member of the shuttle crew. But I wish the position could have been given to someone with a bit more chops who also would have stayed in the moment. Courtney's argument was lessened because she couldn't help reverting back to the teenager she was. When Lundvik confronts Clara about having children and potentially killing the creature to preserve her possible descendants on the Earth, Courtney gets teasingly girlish, citing "Mr. Pink." Clara is forced to break the moment by telling Courtney to shut up while she advocates her position. Clara needed to be a third person operating between two poles, but I think it would have come across better if it had been an older person. Plus we could have dispensed with all the rest of the Courtney crud, including the hurt feelings about the Doctor not necessarily thinking that she was special at the beginning of the episode. It was a bit too "everyone gets a trophy" for me.
Then there is Clara's big blow up at the end. Some folks love it as they feel it was Clara standing up to the Doctor. Others hate it saying that it came out of nowhere and was a real left turn in Clara's character development. I'm more in the middle. It didn't help me in my opinion of Clara as a companion overall, but I understood exactly where Clara was coming from. To me, this was the Doctor taking a teenager and suddenly putting them behind the wheel of a car in a snowstorm. Clara emerged from the crisis just as the Doctor knew she would, but the crisis scared her and she lashed out at the Doctor, just as a scared teen would lash out at a parent that put them in a potentially dangerous situation.
And like I would at a teen lashing out, I thought Clara was being a baby. One can't always rely on the parent to make the decisions for you and this was well shown in the follow up episodes of Mummy on the Orient Express and Flatline where Clara was first forced to make a decision between two bad choices and then to go so far and lie to people just to give them the hope to keep moving when she knew that survival was going to be limited. I can understand Clara being scared; she would have ben inhuman if she wasn't. But to lash out in anger like that just made her seem even less mature than she liked to pretend she was. To me, Clara's overall journey was one where the show and the Doctor seemed to advocate that she was something special, Doctor-like in many ways. But she is also repeatedly shown up as being less capable than certainly she thinks she is and this early temper tantrum was a notch in the favor that she was not completely up to the snuff that others seemed to think she was. I'm not sure I ever really got over that in my opinion regarding Clara.
So how to grade this. I have to downgrade it on several points including the acting of Courtney, the rushed horror set up and then the about face in tone. I think the best way to say it is that the story is less than the sum of it's parts. Individually, the elements work reasonably well. Together, they seem a bit of a rushed and jumbled mess. I liked it better than The Caretaker but not by much. Having seen it a couple of times, I'm not sure I'd feel any significant pull to watch it again in the near future.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Friday, March 25, 2016
The Romans
She keeps track of the lyres.
The Romans is billed as a comedy and there are certainly a lot of little puns and farcical moments. I personally wonder if there wasn't a bit of an influence from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which debuted in 1962. The Romans doesn't go that broad and perhaps it might be better if it had.
Plot Summary
After falling off a cliff, the TARDIS is shown covered in brambles. Ian and the Doctor are shown relaxing in a Roman villa where they have been staying for the past month. Barbara and Vicki are heading down the road to market. They stop at a cloth merchant where Barbara chastises Vicki for not doing a better job of trying to blend in. The two are spotted by a couple of slave traders who ply the cloth merchant for information and learn how they are squatting in a villa whose owner is currently in Gaul.
Barbara and Vicki head back to the villa. Also traveling on the road is an older man with a lyre. The older man is waylaid and killed in the bushes by a swordsman.
After dinner, Ian asks if they should check on the TARDIS. The Doctor gets annoyed with him for bringing it up and announces that he will be taking a trip to Rome. Vicki asks to come with him as she is bored and the Doctor agrees. Ian suggests that they all go but the Doctor, put off by Ian's talk earlier, resolves to go without him and Barbara. As the Doctor and Vicki walk down the road, they find the body of the old lyre player. The Doctor takes his lyre and upon emerging from the bushes meets a Roman centurion. The centurion asks if the Doctor is the lyrist Maximus Pettulian and the Doctor gives the impression that he is without saying so. The centurion promptly escorts the Doctor and Vicki to Rome to play at the court of Emperor Nero where he had been summoned and was late.
Back at the villa, Ian and Barbara have been drinking wine when they are attacked by the slave traders. They fight them but Barbara accidently knocks out Ian and the two are dragged to the slave line for escort and sale in Rome. Before they leave, the traders are approached by a man who negotiates the purchase of three male slaves. He shows interest in Barbara but the slavers refuse to sell her prior to arrival in Rome. The other man takes two men from Gaul and Ian.
In Rome, the man who killed the real Maximus Pettulian is berated by the centurion who tells him he must have killed the wrong man. He orders him to kill the Doctor or he will lose another body part besides his tongue. The Doctor however sees him before he strikes and disarms him. He then fights him before Vicki enters and stuns him by knocking him on the head with a vase. Stunned, the man hurdles himself out the window to escape. Vicki and the Doctor discuss how he was probably hired by the centurion but the Doctor has made up his mind to head to Rome and Nero's court anyway.
Barbara and the rest of the slaves arrive in Rome and are stored before the slave auction. Barbara's kindness towards one of the other slaves catches the attention of a man, Tavius, who offers to buy her directly. The slave dealer refuses but encourages him to come to the auction. He does and buys her quickly with an excessive bid. He is the slave procurer for the Imperial household and he takes Barbara back to the palace just as the Doctor arrives.
Ian, meanwhile, has been sold as a galley slave. He and his oarmate Delos make an attempt to escape but are beaten back. Later the galley is caught in a storm and driven on the rocks. In the melee, Ian subdues the oar master but is knocked out by a falling timber. Delos drags him ashore and the two men make their way to Rome to find Barbara. In the city, they are captured and given to the slave dealer who plans to have them fight in the arena.
The Doctor and Vicki arrive at Nero's palace and have a quick audience with Nero. The Doctor immediately flatters him and defers his own attempts at playing to Nero. Nero, pleased at having his ego stroked, bids the Doctor be taken care of and will grant him a full audience later. After dismissal, the Doctor and Vicki discover the body of the centurion who escorted them to Rome, something that had been alluded to by Tavius just prior to the Doctor's initial meeting with Nero.
Barbara is presented to Nero's wife Poppaea as a servant and Nero immediately lays eyes on her. Poppaea assigns a task to Barbara and gives her a warning not to advance on Nero. After she leaves, Nero pounces and begins to chase Barbara through the palace. Nero does eventually corner her after being interrupted several times but Poppaea returns before Nero can take advantage of her.
At this same time, the Doctor attempts to get an audience with Nero. Tavius has alluded to a conspiracy and the Doctor is curious if Nero is in on it. While he pursues Nero, Vicki wanders through the palace and meets a woman who brews poisons. Whilst Vicki is visiting, Poppaea, having broken up Nero's attempts on Barbara, enters and has the woman prepare a poisoned wine for Barbara to be paired with a clean one for Nero to be served during the banquet at which the Doctor will play. After preparing the goblets, Vicki sneaks out and switches the goblets to see if she can poison Nero.
Just before the banquet, Nero corners Barbara and offers her a piece of jewelry to which he expects to be rewarded with a kiss and maybe more. The paired goblets arrive and Barbara offers to drink to Nero's health. She downs the unpoisoned one and runs off. But before Nero can drink the poisoned one, the Doctor stops him, Vicki having told him of her switch. Nero thanks him and then test it on his dressing slave. The man promptly dies.
Her plan having failed, Poppaea arrests the poison preparer and sends Barbara back to the apartments to work, keeping her away from the banquet. After eating, Nero has the Doctor play for everyone. The Doctor announces that he will play a tune so delicate that only the most refined ears will be able to hear it. He pretends to play but the audience acts as though they can hear and appreciate it (The Emperor's New Clothes). Angered at the strong reaction the Doctor gets, Nero races back the apartment, grabs Barbara and heads to a small theater where he summons the gladiator master.
Nero orders the gladiator master to prepare the arena for a concert to be given by Maximus Pettulian. In the middle of the concert, lions will be released into the arena to eat him. Nero also orders that a pair of gladiators be brought in for his amusement for that evening. Ian and Delos are brought in and made to fight. Ian disarms Delos briefly but refuses to strike him down. Delos reclaims his sword and this time catches Ian. Nero orders Ian to be killed but Delos refuses and instead goes for the guard. Ian also attacks. The two fend off the soldiers and Ian tries to grab Barbara as well, but Nero has her too tightly. As they run off Nero calls off the pursuit and instead decides to lay a trap for them. Knowing they will return for Barbara, Nero alerts his guards to all the palace gates so that they can arrest them when they come back.
The next morning, Poppaea summons Tavius telling him to dismiss Barbara. Barbara finds him shortly afterward, telling him that Ian will be coming for her and that she will try to escape and that she would appreciate his help. She also informs him of Nero's plan to murder Maximus Pettulian. Tavius thanks her and promises to help her escape if he can.
Tavius approaches the Doctor and warns him about Nero's plan, cautioning him that if he is to kill Nero, it must be done that day. The Doctor then realizes that Maximus Pettulian was an assassin who had been intercepted by the loyal member of Nero's guard who had discovered it. But with the centurion killed, Nero was unaware of the plot against him. Nero enters shortly and the Doctor puts Nero off guard by guessing of the arena concert and throwing in a number of allusions to being eaten as well. While talking, the sun catches the Doctor's glasses behind his back and start a fire on Nero's plans for improvements to Rome.
Seeing the fire, Nero is angered at first that his plans have been burnt but then is overjoyed as he gets the idea that if he burns Rome, he could rebuild it with no one objecting to his plans. He immediately summons a soldier to gather lowlifes from the city and bring them to the palace. With guards around all the entrances, Ian and Delos slip in with the riffraff to gain entrance back to the palace.
Nero gives the men gold and orders them to set fire to the city. While the men line up to get torches, Tavius pulls out Ian and brings him to Barbara. Donning a cloak, the two slip out into the crowd of men. Delos shoves his torch into the guard captain's face and the three break for the outskirts of the city. The Doctor and Vicki also leave in the chaos to avoid Nero's wrath. Tavius watches both groups go, silently biding them well while holding a small cross.
The Doctor and Vicki pause outside of Rome to watch the fire, Vicki ribbing the Doctor that the Great Fire of Rome was his fault. The Doctor argues a bit but seems amused at the idea. Ian and Barbara reach the villa by the morning. They clean up a bit and after refreshing themselves, fall asleep. The Doctor and Vicki find them that evening, believing that they have lounged about the villa the whole time they are gone. Ian and Barbara opt to not tell them and the group returns to the TARDIS. They then leave but the Doctor confides to Ian that some force is pulling the TARDIS towards it.
Analysis
Labeling this story as a farcical comedy does not properly suit it. Yes, the Doctor's scenes are clearly played for comedy to the point of being a farce. But Barbara and Ian's scenes are not. They are played with the same level of seriousness seen in The Reign of Terror. My assumption is that Dennis Spooner (the writer) was attempting to add levity to a potentially dark story by giving the Doctor over to comedy, but in playing the comedy so broadly with the Doctor and giving no levity to Barbara and Ian's scenes, it sets up an almost schizophrenic story.
Episode Three comes closest to being a true farce comedy as Ian is only given a short scene in the middle and then at the end when he and Delos fight before Nero. Barbara's scenes are played for comedy but there is a touch of discomfort in that given that Nero is trying to rape her for the first half and Poppaea is trying to poison her in the second half. Again, it struck me similar to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum with Nero in the role of Senex and Poppaea in the role of Domina, except with a darker flavor.
Nero himself is also played off with him being done as a old fop in Episode Three and then as more of the psychotic he actually was in Episode Four, but with still an air of incompetence about him. The overall focus and tone is hard to truly pick up on throughout.
Making things even more confusing is the way Ian and Barbara play up the ending. When they arrive back at the villa, Barbara lets slip that she was the one that smashed Ian over the head with the vase accidentally. Ian gets indignant and chases after her before forcing her to clean the mess. It's intent is to be played for laughs but there is an air of sexual dominance to the scene as well and that if Ian had done worse than hold Barbara's face into the edge of the fountain, it still would have been seen as justified and perhaps even funny. They also laugh at their adventures after the Doctor and Vicki head back towards the TARDIS, despite the fact that there was nothing funny to Ian and Barbara's side of the story, with a number of people killed or put into great misery around them.
On an overall scale, I think Episode Three was the only one I genuinely liked. I didn't care for the Nero attempting to rape Barbara bit, but there were funny interruptions to the chase and the other parts of that episode, especially involving the Doctor, were quite funny. Episode Four wasn't bad until towards the recap scenes as it took more of a serious tone with comedy only accenting the Doctor and Vicki's scenes rather than creating that sharp contrast in Episodes One and Two. But things went to pot in the end as everyone just dismissed what they had been through with a flip of the hand.
About the only thing I can say for this story was that it was well acted for the most part. Delos and Tavius were enjoyable characters that you were able to get a good bead on through their limited exposure. Nero himself was entertaining in whatever focus he was being pulled by the script. His style was also over the top just enough to fully separate his role in this story from the historical madman, who was much younger and even more bloodthirsty than portrayed here.
I know there are strong defenders of this story and I could see their point if this story had fully decided what it wanted to be. If it was a full farce, I can understand that. If it wanted to be serious, I can understand that too. But stacking farce and drama next to each other just prevents getting a handle on any sort of tone. I could pull down Episode Three and enjoy it for the most part, but if anyone suggested watching the whole thing, I would probably beg off as this one is just not for me.
Overall personal score: 1 out of 5
The Romans is billed as a comedy and there are certainly a lot of little puns and farcical moments. I personally wonder if there wasn't a bit of an influence from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which debuted in 1962. The Romans doesn't go that broad and perhaps it might be better if it had.
Plot Summary
After falling off a cliff, the TARDIS is shown covered in brambles. Ian and the Doctor are shown relaxing in a Roman villa where they have been staying for the past month. Barbara and Vicki are heading down the road to market. They stop at a cloth merchant where Barbara chastises Vicki for not doing a better job of trying to blend in. The two are spotted by a couple of slave traders who ply the cloth merchant for information and learn how they are squatting in a villa whose owner is currently in Gaul.
Barbara and Vicki head back to the villa. Also traveling on the road is an older man with a lyre. The older man is waylaid and killed in the bushes by a swordsman.
After dinner, Ian asks if they should check on the TARDIS. The Doctor gets annoyed with him for bringing it up and announces that he will be taking a trip to Rome. Vicki asks to come with him as she is bored and the Doctor agrees. Ian suggests that they all go but the Doctor, put off by Ian's talk earlier, resolves to go without him and Barbara. As the Doctor and Vicki walk down the road, they find the body of the old lyre player. The Doctor takes his lyre and upon emerging from the bushes meets a Roman centurion. The centurion asks if the Doctor is the lyrist Maximus Pettulian and the Doctor gives the impression that he is without saying so. The centurion promptly escorts the Doctor and Vicki to Rome to play at the court of Emperor Nero where he had been summoned and was late.
Back at the villa, Ian and Barbara have been drinking wine when they are attacked by the slave traders. They fight them but Barbara accidently knocks out Ian and the two are dragged to the slave line for escort and sale in Rome. Before they leave, the traders are approached by a man who negotiates the purchase of three male slaves. He shows interest in Barbara but the slavers refuse to sell her prior to arrival in Rome. The other man takes two men from Gaul and Ian.
In Rome, the man who killed the real Maximus Pettulian is berated by the centurion who tells him he must have killed the wrong man. He orders him to kill the Doctor or he will lose another body part besides his tongue. The Doctor however sees him before he strikes and disarms him. He then fights him before Vicki enters and stuns him by knocking him on the head with a vase. Stunned, the man hurdles himself out the window to escape. Vicki and the Doctor discuss how he was probably hired by the centurion but the Doctor has made up his mind to head to Rome and Nero's court anyway.
Barbara and the rest of the slaves arrive in Rome and are stored before the slave auction. Barbara's kindness towards one of the other slaves catches the attention of a man, Tavius, who offers to buy her directly. The slave dealer refuses but encourages him to come to the auction. He does and buys her quickly with an excessive bid. He is the slave procurer for the Imperial household and he takes Barbara back to the palace just as the Doctor arrives.
Ian, meanwhile, has been sold as a galley slave. He and his oarmate Delos make an attempt to escape but are beaten back. Later the galley is caught in a storm and driven on the rocks. In the melee, Ian subdues the oar master but is knocked out by a falling timber. Delos drags him ashore and the two men make their way to Rome to find Barbara. In the city, they are captured and given to the slave dealer who plans to have them fight in the arena.
The Doctor and Vicki arrive at Nero's palace and have a quick audience with Nero. The Doctor immediately flatters him and defers his own attempts at playing to Nero. Nero, pleased at having his ego stroked, bids the Doctor be taken care of and will grant him a full audience later. After dismissal, the Doctor and Vicki discover the body of the centurion who escorted them to Rome, something that had been alluded to by Tavius just prior to the Doctor's initial meeting with Nero.
Barbara is presented to Nero's wife Poppaea as a servant and Nero immediately lays eyes on her. Poppaea assigns a task to Barbara and gives her a warning not to advance on Nero. After she leaves, Nero pounces and begins to chase Barbara through the palace. Nero does eventually corner her after being interrupted several times but Poppaea returns before Nero can take advantage of her.
At this same time, the Doctor attempts to get an audience with Nero. Tavius has alluded to a conspiracy and the Doctor is curious if Nero is in on it. While he pursues Nero, Vicki wanders through the palace and meets a woman who brews poisons. Whilst Vicki is visiting, Poppaea, having broken up Nero's attempts on Barbara, enters and has the woman prepare a poisoned wine for Barbara to be paired with a clean one for Nero to be served during the banquet at which the Doctor will play. After preparing the goblets, Vicki sneaks out and switches the goblets to see if she can poison Nero.
Just before the banquet, Nero corners Barbara and offers her a piece of jewelry to which he expects to be rewarded with a kiss and maybe more. The paired goblets arrive and Barbara offers to drink to Nero's health. She downs the unpoisoned one and runs off. But before Nero can drink the poisoned one, the Doctor stops him, Vicki having told him of her switch. Nero thanks him and then test it on his dressing slave. The man promptly dies.
Her plan having failed, Poppaea arrests the poison preparer and sends Barbara back to the apartments to work, keeping her away from the banquet. After eating, Nero has the Doctor play for everyone. The Doctor announces that he will play a tune so delicate that only the most refined ears will be able to hear it. He pretends to play but the audience acts as though they can hear and appreciate it (The Emperor's New Clothes). Angered at the strong reaction the Doctor gets, Nero races back the apartment, grabs Barbara and heads to a small theater where he summons the gladiator master.
Nero orders the gladiator master to prepare the arena for a concert to be given by Maximus Pettulian. In the middle of the concert, lions will be released into the arena to eat him. Nero also orders that a pair of gladiators be brought in for his amusement for that evening. Ian and Delos are brought in and made to fight. Ian disarms Delos briefly but refuses to strike him down. Delos reclaims his sword and this time catches Ian. Nero orders Ian to be killed but Delos refuses and instead goes for the guard. Ian also attacks. The two fend off the soldiers and Ian tries to grab Barbara as well, but Nero has her too tightly. As they run off Nero calls off the pursuit and instead decides to lay a trap for them. Knowing they will return for Barbara, Nero alerts his guards to all the palace gates so that they can arrest them when they come back.
The next morning, Poppaea summons Tavius telling him to dismiss Barbara. Barbara finds him shortly afterward, telling him that Ian will be coming for her and that she will try to escape and that she would appreciate his help. She also informs him of Nero's plan to murder Maximus Pettulian. Tavius thanks her and promises to help her escape if he can.
Tavius approaches the Doctor and warns him about Nero's plan, cautioning him that if he is to kill Nero, it must be done that day. The Doctor then realizes that Maximus Pettulian was an assassin who had been intercepted by the loyal member of Nero's guard who had discovered it. But with the centurion killed, Nero was unaware of the plot against him. Nero enters shortly and the Doctor puts Nero off guard by guessing of the arena concert and throwing in a number of allusions to being eaten as well. While talking, the sun catches the Doctor's glasses behind his back and start a fire on Nero's plans for improvements to Rome.
Seeing the fire, Nero is angered at first that his plans have been burnt but then is overjoyed as he gets the idea that if he burns Rome, he could rebuild it with no one objecting to his plans. He immediately summons a soldier to gather lowlifes from the city and bring them to the palace. With guards around all the entrances, Ian and Delos slip in with the riffraff to gain entrance back to the palace.
Nero gives the men gold and orders them to set fire to the city. While the men line up to get torches, Tavius pulls out Ian and brings him to Barbara. Donning a cloak, the two slip out into the crowd of men. Delos shoves his torch into the guard captain's face and the three break for the outskirts of the city. The Doctor and Vicki also leave in the chaos to avoid Nero's wrath. Tavius watches both groups go, silently biding them well while holding a small cross.
The Doctor and Vicki pause outside of Rome to watch the fire, Vicki ribbing the Doctor that the Great Fire of Rome was his fault. The Doctor argues a bit but seems amused at the idea. Ian and Barbara reach the villa by the morning. They clean up a bit and after refreshing themselves, fall asleep. The Doctor and Vicki find them that evening, believing that they have lounged about the villa the whole time they are gone. Ian and Barbara opt to not tell them and the group returns to the TARDIS. They then leave but the Doctor confides to Ian that some force is pulling the TARDIS towards it.
Analysis
Labeling this story as a farcical comedy does not properly suit it. Yes, the Doctor's scenes are clearly played for comedy to the point of being a farce. But Barbara and Ian's scenes are not. They are played with the same level of seriousness seen in The Reign of Terror. My assumption is that Dennis Spooner (the writer) was attempting to add levity to a potentially dark story by giving the Doctor over to comedy, but in playing the comedy so broadly with the Doctor and giving no levity to Barbara and Ian's scenes, it sets up an almost schizophrenic story.
Episode Three comes closest to being a true farce comedy as Ian is only given a short scene in the middle and then at the end when he and Delos fight before Nero. Barbara's scenes are played for comedy but there is a touch of discomfort in that given that Nero is trying to rape her for the first half and Poppaea is trying to poison her in the second half. Again, it struck me similar to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum with Nero in the role of Senex and Poppaea in the role of Domina, except with a darker flavor.
Nero himself is also played off with him being done as a old fop in Episode Three and then as more of the psychotic he actually was in Episode Four, but with still an air of incompetence about him. The overall focus and tone is hard to truly pick up on throughout.
Making things even more confusing is the way Ian and Barbara play up the ending. When they arrive back at the villa, Barbara lets slip that she was the one that smashed Ian over the head with the vase accidentally. Ian gets indignant and chases after her before forcing her to clean the mess. It's intent is to be played for laughs but there is an air of sexual dominance to the scene as well and that if Ian had done worse than hold Barbara's face into the edge of the fountain, it still would have been seen as justified and perhaps even funny. They also laugh at their adventures after the Doctor and Vicki head back towards the TARDIS, despite the fact that there was nothing funny to Ian and Barbara's side of the story, with a number of people killed or put into great misery around them.
On an overall scale, I think Episode Three was the only one I genuinely liked. I didn't care for the Nero attempting to rape Barbara bit, but there were funny interruptions to the chase and the other parts of that episode, especially involving the Doctor, were quite funny. Episode Four wasn't bad until towards the recap scenes as it took more of a serious tone with comedy only accenting the Doctor and Vicki's scenes rather than creating that sharp contrast in Episodes One and Two. But things went to pot in the end as everyone just dismissed what they had been through with a flip of the hand.
About the only thing I can say for this story was that it was well acted for the most part. Delos and Tavius were enjoyable characters that you were able to get a good bead on through their limited exposure. Nero himself was entertaining in whatever focus he was being pulled by the script. His style was also over the top just enough to fully separate his role in this story from the historical madman, who was much younger and even more bloodthirsty than portrayed here.
I know there are strong defenders of this story and I could see their point if this story had fully decided what it wanted to be. If it was a full farce, I can understand that. If it wanted to be serious, I can understand that too. But stacking farce and drama next to each other just prevents getting a handle on any sort of tone. I could pull down Episode Three and enjoy it for the most part, but if anyone suggested watching the whole thing, I would probably beg off as this one is just not for me.
Overall personal score: 1 out of 5
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
The Caretaker
You keep saying these things and it's just not staying in.
When I first watched The Caretaker, it struck me in a rather raw way as I think this is the apex of the unlikeable Doctor. I've softened a bit as time as past and I have seen the whole evolution of the Twelfth Doctor, but he is still rather rough here.
Plot Summary
The episode opens with cut scenes of Clara's double life where she travels with the Doctor, but still tries to maintain a relationship with Danny Pink. The Doctor arrives at her flat and tells her that there will be no adventure for a few day as he is going undercover alone. Clara resolves to devote this free time fully to Danny. She is then shocked to see the Doctor show up at the school posing as the substitute caretaker.
Clara harasses the Doctor, annoyed that he won't tell her what is going on and what the danger is. He continues to blow her off and sets up small devices throughout the school. Setting up the devices, he meets Danny Pink and gives him a hard time as an ex-soldier. He also sees Clara interacting with the other English teacher named Adrian, who looks a bit like the Eleventh Doctor, and mistakenly believes that he is Clara's boyfriend. He gives Clara the impression that he approves of her choice.
Nearby, a warrior robot called a Scovox Blitzer is activated by a policeman entering the building. He sees the policeman and immediately kills him. With the knowledge that the robot is active, the Doctor heads out to lure the robot back to the school where he has set a trap. A series of time mines will explode, sending it billions of years into the future where it will be of no harm to anyone. However, Danny, seeing one of the mines the Doctor placed, removes it, deactivating the whole string.
The Doctor arrives back at the school to see the mines in active. Both Danny and Clara arrive as the Scovox Blitzer prepares to attack the Doctor. Danny attacks the machine with a chair, redirecting it's attack focus to him. The Doctor detonates one of the mines and the Scovox Blitzer is pulled into the vortex. Unfortunately because of the change, it only goes forward a few days. Danny confronts Clara and she tells him about the Doctor eventually, going so far to reveal the TARDIS. The Doctor too is made aware that Danny is her boyfriend and his dislike for Danny grows.
The next day, Clara has Danny wear the Doctor's cloaking watch while she tries to smooth things over with him. The Doctor is aware of the ruse and Danny deactivates the cloak when the Doctor calls her bluff. Danny then gets under the Doctor's skin by referring to him as an officer and repeatedly calling him "sir". The Doctor angrily shoos them away. He is observed by the student Courtney Woods who asks if she could take a trip with him. The Doctor notes that he might have a vacancy later.
That evening during the parent-teacher meetings, the Scovox Blitzer reappears. The Doctor, caught off guard by it's early arrival, summons Clara and has her use his sonic to lure the machine to the caretaker's office where he will deal with it. Danny, although told to stay away, follows using the cloaking watch. Clara does as she's told, but because of the machine's speed, she brings it to the office before the Doctor is fully ready. The Doctor has built a device that causes the machine to think that he is it's superior officer. He orders it to deactivate but in doing so, the machine triggers it's self destruct mechanism. The Doctor needs more time and tells Clara to stall it. Danny then deactivates the cloak and gets the Blitzer's attention. It suspends it's self destruct countdown and attacks Danny. Danny however, avoids its attack by leaping over the machine. This buys the Doctor the time he needs and he redeactivates it and suspends the self destruct.
The Doctor gives Danny a grudging respect as he dismisses him and Clara in their actions. Danny notes that the Doctor is so hard because he wants someone to be worthy of Clara. He drives Clara hard to bring out the best in her. Later he warns Clara that if the Doctor ever makes her cross a line she can't handle, he needs her to come to him or he will break up with her. He notes that he can't help her unless she is truly honest with him. The episode ends with the Doctor dropping the inactive Blitzer in deep space having taken Courtney Woods along for the ride. She responds by throwing up in the TARDIS.
Analysis
I don't dislike this episode as much as I initially did, but I'm still not a fan of it. As noted above, this is the Doctor at his high point of grumpiness. In fact, none of the characters are particularly likeable and that exacerbates the Doctor's own grumpiness. Clara dips into her worst trait in refusing to leave the Doctor alone turns her catty. Danny also, while being sympathetic in terms of being the wronged and confused outsider, also comes across as being a bit dumb in not having picked up on some of this before. And while the Doctor's grumpy rudeness is not a fine quality, Danny's needling of the Doctor as an officer gets under my skin as well given the audience's natural tendency to trust the Doctor. It may be deserved, but there is a sense that if they just left the Doctor alone, he would deal with the issue just fine.
The Scovox Blitzer was an ok villain but a bit simple. It was hard to not make it look like a puppet and because of it's limited screen presence, it never carried quite the dire weight that you might have gotten from other villains. It also didn't help that despite having open shots, it never killed anyone other than the police officer. It took multiple shots at Danny and Clara but missed both in the initial attack. Then, Danny was able to leap over it. This made the Blitzer look less effective and also made the whole scenario seem silly. I can buy that Danny was athletic and a good soldier. However, being a good soldier does not automatically make you an Olympic gymnast, which is what Danny was appearing to be there. If he had ducked behind something and constantly given the Blitzer peek views to keep it's attention, that would have been more believable and consistent with combat tactics that Danny should have been familiar with. Running at a machine gun and then vaulting over it to avoid the line of fire does not seem like a good tactic and just makes things look silly.
One other thing that doesn't help this story too much is that there is a distinct lack of humor in it. What humor there is, seems more of the mean-spirited kind, such as always referring to Danny as a PE teacher rather than a Math teacher. The Doctor's only light-hearted moments are his early moments with Clara where he is clearly enjoying getting a rise out of her as he places the time mines and in his banter with Courtney Woods, whose "disruptive influence" streak he clearly enjoys. But other than that, its all yelling and anger with laughing at rather than laughing with and that just doesn't suit me.
I was curious to watch this one again to see if sat better. It flowed quickly and I can't fault it for boring me at any point. But if you don't care about the characters during the story, what good is it if it does move quickly? Having refreshing myself on it, I can't see myself pulling it off to watch again any time soon. The grumpier Twelfth Doctor works better where he is not being openly provoked. Likewise, Clara is better when she is more reigned in by the Doctor. Giving her freedom without a certain level of instruction minimizes her best characteristics and accentuates her worst.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
When I first watched The Caretaker, it struck me in a rather raw way as I think this is the apex of the unlikeable Doctor. I've softened a bit as time as past and I have seen the whole evolution of the Twelfth Doctor, but he is still rather rough here.
Plot Summary
The episode opens with cut scenes of Clara's double life where she travels with the Doctor, but still tries to maintain a relationship with Danny Pink. The Doctor arrives at her flat and tells her that there will be no adventure for a few day as he is going undercover alone. Clara resolves to devote this free time fully to Danny. She is then shocked to see the Doctor show up at the school posing as the substitute caretaker.
Clara harasses the Doctor, annoyed that he won't tell her what is going on and what the danger is. He continues to blow her off and sets up small devices throughout the school. Setting up the devices, he meets Danny Pink and gives him a hard time as an ex-soldier. He also sees Clara interacting with the other English teacher named Adrian, who looks a bit like the Eleventh Doctor, and mistakenly believes that he is Clara's boyfriend. He gives Clara the impression that he approves of her choice.
Nearby, a warrior robot called a Scovox Blitzer is activated by a policeman entering the building. He sees the policeman and immediately kills him. With the knowledge that the robot is active, the Doctor heads out to lure the robot back to the school where he has set a trap. A series of time mines will explode, sending it billions of years into the future where it will be of no harm to anyone. However, Danny, seeing one of the mines the Doctor placed, removes it, deactivating the whole string.
The Doctor arrives back at the school to see the mines in active. Both Danny and Clara arrive as the Scovox Blitzer prepares to attack the Doctor. Danny attacks the machine with a chair, redirecting it's attack focus to him. The Doctor detonates one of the mines and the Scovox Blitzer is pulled into the vortex. Unfortunately because of the change, it only goes forward a few days. Danny confronts Clara and she tells him about the Doctor eventually, going so far to reveal the TARDIS. The Doctor too is made aware that Danny is her boyfriend and his dislike for Danny grows.
The next day, Clara has Danny wear the Doctor's cloaking watch while she tries to smooth things over with him. The Doctor is aware of the ruse and Danny deactivates the cloak when the Doctor calls her bluff. Danny then gets under the Doctor's skin by referring to him as an officer and repeatedly calling him "sir". The Doctor angrily shoos them away. He is observed by the student Courtney Woods who asks if she could take a trip with him. The Doctor notes that he might have a vacancy later.
That evening during the parent-teacher meetings, the Scovox Blitzer reappears. The Doctor, caught off guard by it's early arrival, summons Clara and has her use his sonic to lure the machine to the caretaker's office where he will deal with it. Danny, although told to stay away, follows using the cloaking watch. Clara does as she's told, but because of the machine's speed, she brings it to the office before the Doctor is fully ready. The Doctor has built a device that causes the machine to think that he is it's superior officer. He orders it to deactivate but in doing so, the machine triggers it's self destruct mechanism. The Doctor needs more time and tells Clara to stall it. Danny then deactivates the cloak and gets the Blitzer's attention. It suspends it's self destruct countdown and attacks Danny. Danny however, avoids its attack by leaping over the machine. This buys the Doctor the time he needs and he redeactivates it and suspends the self destruct.
The Doctor gives Danny a grudging respect as he dismisses him and Clara in their actions. Danny notes that the Doctor is so hard because he wants someone to be worthy of Clara. He drives Clara hard to bring out the best in her. Later he warns Clara that if the Doctor ever makes her cross a line she can't handle, he needs her to come to him or he will break up with her. He notes that he can't help her unless she is truly honest with him. The episode ends with the Doctor dropping the inactive Blitzer in deep space having taken Courtney Woods along for the ride. She responds by throwing up in the TARDIS.
Analysis
I don't dislike this episode as much as I initially did, but I'm still not a fan of it. As noted above, this is the Doctor at his high point of grumpiness. In fact, none of the characters are particularly likeable and that exacerbates the Doctor's own grumpiness. Clara dips into her worst trait in refusing to leave the Doctor alone turns her catty. Danny also, while being sympathetic in terms of being the wronged and confused outsider, also comes across as being a bit dumb in not having picked up on some of this before. And while the Doctor's grumpy rudeness is not a fine quality, Danny's needling of the Doctor as an officer gets under my skin as well given the audience's natural tendency to trust the Doctor. It may be deserved, but there is a sense that if they just left the Doctor alone, he would deal with the issue just fine.
The Scovox Blitzer was an ok villain but a bit simple. It was hard to not make it look like a puppet and because of it's limited screen presence, it never carried quite the dire weight that you might have gotten from other villains. It also didn't help that despite having open shots, it never killed anyone other than the police officer. It took multiple shots at Danny and Clara but missed both in the initial attack. Then, Danny was able to leap over it. This made the Blitzer look less effective and also made the whole scenario seem silly. I can buy that Danny was athletic and a good soldier. However, being a good soldier does not automatically make you an Olympic gymnast, which is what Danny was appearing to be there. If he had ducked behind something and constantly given the Blitzer peek views to keep it's attention, that would have been more believable and consistent with combat tactics that Danny should have been familiar with. Running at a machine gun and then vaulting over it to avoid the line of fire does not seem like a good tactic and just makes things look silly.
One other thing that doesn't help this story too much is that there is a distinct lack of humor in it. What humor there is, seems more of the mean-spirited kind, such as always referring to Danny as a PE teacher rather than a Math teacher. The Doctor's only light-hearted moments are his early moments with Clara where he is clearly enjoying getting a rise out of her as he places the time mines and in his banter with Courtney Woods, whose "disruptive influence" streak he clearly enjoys. But other than that, its all yelling and anger with laughing at rather than laughing with and that just doesn't suit me.
I was curious to watch this one again to see if sat better. It flowed quickly and I can't fault it for boring me at any point. But if you don't care about the characters during the story, what good is it if it does move quickly? Having refreshing myself on it, I can't see myself pulling it off to watch again any time soon. The grumpier Twelfth Doctor works better where he is not being openly provoked. Likewise, Clara is better when she is more reigned in by the Doctor. Giving her freedom without a certain level of instruction minimizes her best characteristics and accentuates her worst.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
The Rescue
So you destroyed an entire planet just to save your own skin?
The introduction of Vicki is an interesting little story. It's just a bit unfortunate that Vicki herself is probably the least interesting thing in it.
Plot Summary
The TARDIS materializes on the planet Dido where an Earth rocket has crashed. Vicki sees the TARDIS on the radar and informs her crewmate Bennett. Vicki thinks it's the rescue ship but Bennett tells her to contact the rescue ship, which informs her that they are still three days away.
Ian and Barbara realize that the TARDIS has landed while the Doctor was sleeping. They wake him and they prepare to investigate the planet. The Doctor initially asks Susan to open the doors before realizing that she isn't there. Ian and Barbara head out to explore the cave they are in while the Doctor grabs a rock to run some experiments. They emerge on a cliff and see a settlement and the crashed rocket ship. Ian decides that it would be good to go get the Doctor and find out who is down there.
They turn around to see an alien life form looking at them. It asks them who they are and where they are from. It also asks them to retrieve their third companion from their ship. Ian heads back to get the Doctor. Barbara is very wary of the creature and when it attempts to grab her, she slips off the edge of the cliff, although she manages to slow her fall by grabbing on to a branch. The creature then takes a tool and causes the cave opening to collapse.
Hearing the collapse, the Doctor emerges from the TARDIS having figured that they are on the planet Dido which he has visited in the past. He finds Ian choking on the cave dust. The Doctor pulls him back and when they find the opening filled, they decide to look for another way out of the cave.
Vicki finds Barbara and helps her back to the ship. Barbara hides when the alien, named Koquillion, arrives. Koquillion informs Vicki that he has killed the travelers who arrived and reminds her that he is her only defense from his people. He then goes in to Bennett's quarters to talk with him. Barbara emerges and Vicki explains that after the ship crashed, the crew went to see the people of Dido. Vicki stayed behind as she was sick with a fever. She heard an explosion and Bennett crawled back shortly afterwards saying that the natives attacked them but one named Koquillion held them off to allow Bennett to return to the ship. Bennett enters Vicki's part of the ship and Vicki shows him that Koquillion did not actually kill all the crew. Barbara is convinced that the Doctor and Ian are still alive but Bennett remains skeptical. The strain of walking was too much and Vicki and Barbara take him back to his bed.
The Doctor and Ian shimmy along a narrow ledge. They come to a wider part but when Ian crosses over, they trigger a booby trap. Sharp bars block each side of Ian while another set of spikes emerge to push him off the cliff where a creature is waiting. Ian then uses his suit coat to protect his hands and swings back around the bars with the Doctor. They reset the ring that triggered the trap and the bars retract. As they reach the cave entrance, the Doctor sees a door in the path that seems to trigger his memory.
Vicki heads out of the ship to gather food. Barbara waits for her in the ship, setting the table. Hearing strange growls, Barbara grabs a flare gun and heads out. She sees a creature emerging from a cave and walking towards Vicki who seems oblivious. Vicki notices at the last minute and yells at Barbara to stop but Barbara shoots the creature with the flare gun, killing it. Vicki screams at Barbara that she killed it and how she trained it to come at eat plants at that time of day. Attracted by the noise, Ian and the Doctor arrive and they all head back to the ship.
Vicki falls in with the Doctor very well and seems to like Ian well enough but she is angry at Barbara. The Doctor sends Ian and Barbara out and has a little talk with Vicki which settles her down and eases her anger. The Doctor then goes to talk to Bennett and discuss things with him. The door is jammed but the Doctor forces it open to find an empty room. The Doctor finds both recording and listening equipment in the room. He also finds a trap door and follows it down.
After patching things up, Ian, Barbara and Vicki go to Bennett's room to see about him and the Doctor. Finding no one, they leave the ship to look for them. The Doctor sets himself down in the Didoan hall of justice. Koquillion emerges and the Doctor addresses him as Mr. Bennett. Koquillion takes off his mask to reveal that he is Bennett. Bennett informs the Doctor that he had been arrested on the ship for murdering a crew member but that his crime was not reported before the crash. After the crash, the crew was being entertained by the natives when Bennett detonated a bomb, killing the village and the crew. He invented Koquillion to convince Vicki of what happened and that she would then verify his story when the rescue ship comes. The Doctor attacks Bennett with his own weapon, setting off a small explosion in the cavern. The two struggle but Bennett overpowers the Doctor. However, two Didoans emerge from the shadows. Bennett, unnerved by seeing people he thought he killed, flees the room but looses his balance on the ledge and falls to his death.
The Doctor sees the Didoans but passes out. He wakes up in the TARDIS, Ian and Barbara having taken him there after finding him. The Doctor surmises that the Didoans will not now allow the rescue ship to land and the three decide to offer Vicki a chance to travel with them. With both her parents dead, Vicki agrees to come with them. They dematerialize as the Didoans destroy the radio sending a signal to the rescue ship. The TARDIS rematerializes on the edge of a cliff and then topples over.
Analysis
You don't always say this about a story in classic Doctor Who, but this story was too short. Obviously this was a quick story invented to introduce Vicki as the replacement for Susan, but the writer actually crafted an interesting mystery that could have played out for another episode and perhaps given Vicki a touch more development.
As of this story, I'm not impressed by Vicki. I know she gets better, having seen other stories with her in them, but she comes off as a bit simple in this story for my tastes. The only bit of proper character development she gets is in the aftermath of Barbara shooting "Sandy". She does instantly have a nice rapport with the Doctor and he in turn clearly takes a shine to her. She has less development with Ian and Barbara although I did greatly enjoy it when she states that Ian and Barbara must be over 500 years old. Barbara looks affronted but it's clear that William Russell actually breaks character as he starts laughing at Jacqueline Hill's face and quickly turns away to hide it and regain his composure. That was unintentionally funny.
I was a bit spoiled going in to this story as I had already known that Bennett and Koquillion were the same person. But, if you hadn't known, any one who had seen a basic mystery should have been able to figure they were the same person by the end of Episode One given that there was the obvious trope of never seeing the characters together, nor of seeing Koquillion leave the ship when Bennett emerges to speak to Vicki and later Barbara. But still, it would have been nice to have played it out a bit more. I'd also have liked to see Koquillion offer a bit more menace than just his appearance. Much of that was due to limited mobility from the costume and stage area I would imagine, but given the style of the costume, he could have been so much scarier if he just had the ability to move with any speed.
One other thing that disappointed me a bit was the confirmation that the Didoans who emerged after Bennett knocked the Doctor down were real. I very much liked the Doctor taking Bennett on as it was a nice change from Ian always being the muscle man. Granted the Doctor didn't win, but it was nice to see him try. I did like the Didoans emerging and more or less scaring Bennett into killing himself, but I think the story would have been a bit more interesting if it had been more ambiguous as to whether those were real Didoans who escaped the bomb or if they were apparitions who were a function of the hall of justice playing on Bennett's own since of guilt. Because with the knowledge that they were real, it draws up questions as to where they have been and why they didn't attack Bennett earlier since he had moments of being exposed earlier when patrolling around the ship and village.
If a bit more depth had been paid, I think I would liked this story a bit more. As is, I'd have to put it in the same average range as most of the rest of the First Doctor era has seemed to fall with me. It's not bad and much of the nit picking comes from a difference in view regarding the era, but there are other stories that just grab you and this is not one of those, although I can see how it could have had that potential. Being as short as it is, I wouldn't have a problem watching it again, but I also wouldn't pull it off to rewatch it without a good reason.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
The introduction of Vicki is an interesting little story. It's just a bit unfortunate that Vicki herself is probably the least interesting thing in it.
Plot Summary
The TARDIS materializes on the planet Dido where an Earth rocket has crashed. Vicki sees the TARDIS on the radar and informs her crewmate Bennett. Vicki thinks it's the rescue ship but Bennett tells her to contact the rescue ship, which informs her that they are still three days away.
Ian and Barbara realize that the TARDIS has landed while the Doctor was sleeping. They wake him and they prepare to investigate the planet. The Doctor initially asks Susan to open the doors before realizing that she isn't there. Ian and Barbara head out to explore the cave they are in while the Doctor grabs a rock to run some experiments. They emerge on a cliff and see a settlement and the crashed rocket ship. Ian decides that it would be good to go get the Doctor and find out who is down there.
They turn around to see an alien life form looking at them. It asks them who they are and where they are from. It also asks them to retrieve their third companion from their ship. Ian heads back to get the Doctor. Barbara is very wary of the creature and when it attempts to grab her, she slips off the edge of the cliff, although she manages to slow her fall by grabbing on to a branch. The creature then takes a tool and causes the cave opening to collapse.
Hearing the collapse, the Doctor emerges from the TARDIS having figured that they are on the planet Dido which he has visited in the past. He finds Ian choking on the cave dust. The Doctor pulls him back and when they find the opening filled, they decide to look for another way out of the cave.
Vicki finds Barbara and helps her back to the ship. Barbara hides when the alien, named Koquillion, arrives. Koquillion informs Vicki that he has killed the travelers who arrived and reminds her that he is her only defense from his people. He then goes in to Bennett's quarters to talk with him. Barbara emerges and Vicki explains that after the ship crashed, the crew went to see the people of Dido. Vicki stayed behind as she was sick with a fever. She heard an explosion and Bennett crawled back shortly afterwards saying that the natives attacked them but one named Koquillion held them off to allow Bennett to return to the ship. Bennett enters Vicki's part of the ship and Vicki shows him that Koquillion did not actually kill all the crew. Barbara is convinced that the Doctor and Ian are still alive but Bennett remains skeptical. The strain of walking was too much and Vicki and Barbara take him back to his bed.
The Doctor and Ian shimmy along a narrow ledge. They come to a wider part but when Ian crosses over, they trigger a booby trap. Sharp bars block each side of Ian while another set of spikes emerge to push him off the cliff where a creature is waiting. Ian then uses his suit coat to protect his hands and swings back around the bars with the Doctor. They reset the ring that triggered the trap and the bars retract. As they reach the cave entrance, the Doctor sees a door in the path that seems to trigger his memory.
Vicki heads out of the ship to gather food. Barbara waits for her in the ship, setting the table. Hearing strange growls, Barbara grabs a flare gun and heads out. She sees a creature emerging from a cave and walking towards Vicki who seems oblivious. Vicki notices at the last minute and yells at Barbara to stop but Barbara shoots the creature with the flare gun, killing it. Vicki screams at Barbara that she killed it and how she trained it to come at eat plants at that time of day. Attracted by the noise, Ian and the Doctor arrive and they all head back to the ship.
Vicki falls in with the Doctor very well and seems to like Ian well enough but she is angry at Barbara. The Doctor sends Ian and Barbara out and has a little talk with Vicki which settles her down and eases her anger. The Doctor then goes to talk to Bennett and discuss things with him. The door is jammed but the Doctor forces it open to find an empty room. The Doctor finds both recording and listening equipment in the room. He also finds a trap door and follows it down.
After patching things up, Ian, Barbara and Vicki go to Bennett's room to see about him and the Doctor. Finding no one, they leave the ship to look for them. The Doctor sets himself down in the Didoan hall of justice. Koquillion emerges and the Doctor addresses him as Mr. Bennett. Koquillion takes off his mask to reveal that he is Bennett. Bennett informs the Doctor that he had been arrested on the ship for murdering a crew member but that his crime was not reported before the crash. After the crash, the crew was being entertained by the natives when Bennett detonated a bomb, killing the village and the crew. He invented Koquillion to convince Vicki of what happened and that she would then verify his story when the rescue ship comes. The Doctor attacks Bennett with his own weapon, setting off a small explosion in the cavern. The two struggle but Bennett overpowers the Doctor. However, two Didoans emerge from the shadows. Bennett, unnerved by seeing people he thought he killed, flees the room but looses his balance on the ledge and falls to his death.
The Doctor sees the Didoans but passes out. He wakes up in the TARDIS, Ian and Barbara having taken him there after finding him. The Doctor surmises that the Didoans will not now allow the rescue ship to land and the three decide to offer Vicki a chance to travel with them. With both her parents dead, Vicki agrees to come with them. They dematerialize as the Didoans destroy the radio sending a signal to the rescue ship. The TARDIS rematerializes on the edge of a cliff and then topples over.
Analysis
You don't always say this about a story in classic Doctor Who, but this story was too short. Obviously this was a quick story invented to introduce Vicki as the replacement for Susan, but the writer actually crafted an interesting mystery that could have played out for another episode and perhaps given Vicki a touch more development.
As of this story, I'm not impressed by Vicki. I know she gets better, having seen other stories with her in them, but she comes off as a bit simple in this story for my tastes. The only bit of proper character development she gets is in the aftermath of Barbara shooting "Sandy". She does instantly have a nice rapport with the Doctor and he in turn clearly takes a shine to her. She has less development with Ian and Barbara although I did greatly enjoy it when she states that Ian and Barbara must be over 500 years old. Barbara looks affronted but it's clear that William Russell actually breaks character as he starts laughing at Jacqueline Hill's face and quickly turns away to hide it and regain his composure. That was unintentionally funny.
I was a bit spoiled going in to this story as I had already known that Bennett and Koquillion were the same person. But, if you hadn't known, any one who had seen a basic mystery should have been able to figure they were the same person by the end of Episode One given that there was the obvious trope of never seeing the characters together, nor of seeing Koquillion leave the ship when Bennett emerges to speak to Vicki and later Barbara. But still, it would have been nice to have played it out a bit more. I'd also have liked to see Koquillion offer a bit more menace than just his appearance. Much of that was due to limited mobility from the costume and stage area I would imagine, but given the style of the costume, he could have been so much scarier if he just had the ability to move with any speed.
One other thing that disappointed me a bit was the confirmation that the Didoans who emerged after Bennett knocked the Doctor down were real. I very much liked the Doctor taking Bennett on as it was a nice change from Ian always being the muscle man. Granted the Doctor didn't win, but it was nice to see him try. I did like the Didoans emerging and more or less scaring Bennett into killing himself, but I think the story would have been a bit more interesting if it had been more ambiguous as to whether those were real Didoans who escaped the bomb or if they were apparitions who were a function of the hall of justice playing on Bennett's own since of guilt. Because with the knowledge that they were real, it draws up questions as to where they have been and why they didn't attack Bennett earlier since he had moments of being exposed earlier when patrolling around the ship and village.
If a bit more depth had been paid, I think I would liked this story a bit more. As is, I'd have to put it in the same average range as most of the rest of the First Doctor era has seemed to fall with me. It's not bad and much of the nit picking comes from a difference in view regarding the era, but there are other stories that just grab you and this is not one of those, although I can see how it could have had that potential. Being as short as it is, I wouldn't have a problem watching it again, but I also wouldn't pull it off to rewatch it without a good reason.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
Flatline
You are monsters! That is the role you seem determined to play so it seems I must play mine; the man that stops the monsters.
Flatline is definitely one of the high points of Series Eight. You'd never realize that it was the Doctor-lite episode of the season given the way they cut the episode but it works very well.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Clara accidently land Bristol when the Doctor detects an energy drain to the TARDIS. Upon emerging, the TARDIS is reduced in size. The Doctor re-enters the TARDIS to monitor while Clara looks around for anything that might lead to the drain. While investigating, she meets a man named Rigsy who is part of a community service work crew to paint over a tunnel. Rigsy protests as the tunnel is covered in murals of people that have recently disappeared.
Clara returns to the TARDIS only to discover that it has shrunk again to a point where Clara can carry it around in her purse. The Doctor equips her with an earpiece and taps in to her eye so he can see as well. He also gives her the psychic paper and sonic screwdriver. Clara poses as a police detective and has Rigsy and a local police officer take her to the apartment of one of the victims.
The Doctor diagnoses that the images on the wall are 2-D slices of a human body and they are dealing with two-dimensional creatures. The police officer is attacked and is pulled into the floor. Other 3-D aspects of the room, such as the door knob are pulled into 2-D space, trapping Clara and Rigsy. The two climb onto a hanging chair and they swing out through the window. They run down to the tunnel to warn the work crew. The murals begin to come to life as the 2-D creatures begin to manipulate their forms to move after them.
The group flees to a warehouse where they attempt to communicate with the creatures. The Doctor even gives Clara a device that will help revert things from 2-D to 3-D space, but it lacks the power of the creatures. The creatures respond by broadcasting a number, the work number of one of the crew. He is then killed and pulled into 2-D space. Rigsy leads the group down into the train tunnels to get away. The creatures begin to take 3-D form through the mural people and in the chase after the crew, the TARDIS falls down onto a track. The Doctor pulls the TARDIS off the track briefly using his hand, but it falls back and he is forced to engage the HADS, saving the TARDIS but cutting him off from communication with Clara.
Clara and Rigsy hijack a train to send after the creatures to buy themselves time, but it is turned 2-D as well. Clara realizes that they need to get power to the TARDIS so they can bring the Doctor back into the fight. She has Rigsy paint a door on the back of a poster and then doubles back, planting it on the wall. The creatures see the door and assume it was a 3-D door they converted and begin attempting to pull it back into 3-D. Clara had placed the TARDIS behind the poster and the influx of energy revives the TARDIS to the point where the Doctor can bring it back to normal size. He sets up an energy field around the creatures and then uses the sonic screwdriver, which Clara gives back to him, to send the creatures back to their own dimension.
The Doctor and Clara deliver Rigsy and the remaining member of the work crew back to their work point. Clara gloats a bit over doing a good job in acting the Doctor. The Doctor slaps her down a notch by noting that while she performed well in his role, being good had nothing to do with it.
Analysis
What I think that Flatline, Mummy on the Orient Express and Listen all have in common is a simple concept foe and a heavy dose of proper scary storytelling. There is humor mixed in as well but it is a generally fearful premise that drives the action. Flatline is probably the scariest that involves a villain you can actually see.
Probably the best aspect of the story is how it turns the Doctor-lite aspect and makes it an asset. The monsters are scarier and the tension greater because the Doctor is not fully available to deal with the problem. He is there to give advice and try things, but without his full array of talents, people are left to their own devices to try and escape. It's made even better by the nature of the monsters as well. A monster you can't see and could attack you from anywhere is far scarier than even something large with lots of teeth right in front of you.
Also in the favorable column is the continued schooling of Clara. Clara was in full high horse mode at the end of Kill the Moon but her failure to learn from that opportunity rebound on her in Mummy and Flatline. Mummy for both the greater good (the greater good) and to choose between two bad options. Flatline continues with that line of thinking in acknowledging that sacrifices must be made of innocents and that not all evil can be reasoned with. Sometimes it must be destroyed as the only way to stop it. To be the Doctor is not necessarily to be good but to do what is right and those can be very different things.
The supporting cast was also very good. Rigsy was quite enjoyable as the stand in companion to Clara's Doctor and the dry humor that came from the interactions with the other workers was also very good. I would also give a serious one up to the effects team. There were a number of simple practical effects that looked good, but there were also a number of digital effects that did a very good job enhancing the story rather than taking away from it as is too easy to do these days. The almost cartoonish, shifting nature of the creatures as they shambled in their 3-D forms was quite good and it gave them a more alien feel than might have otherwise been achieved with a costumed suit.
About the only thing that I think I had a slight problem was with the ease that the Doctor dispatched the creatures upon the enlarging of the TARDIS. Suspending them in a force field is one thing, but then to just send them back to their own dimension with a pulse from the sonic screwdriver seemed a little simple. The Doctor had built Clara a device to undo the 2-D converting and I think it would have been a little better if he had come out with a device that would have done the same thing but not been quite as simple as the sonic. It would have also made it look as though the Doctor hadn't been sitting on his duff since engaging the HADS. I get that they were going for the speech moment and his reemergence as the Doctor and anything other than the sonic would have been out of place, but it still just seemed a little too easy to dispatch the monsters in that way. But that's a pretty small nit to pick.
This episode was a genuinely good one and not only would I easily pull it off for a rewatch, I actually have when I borrowed this disk from the library (Series Eight wasn't on Netflix at that time yet). So I would definitely recommend watching this one if anyone ever asked.
Overall personal score: 5 out of 5
Flatline is definitely one of the high points of Series Eight. You'd never realize that it was the Doctor-lite episode of the season given the way they cut the episode but it works very well.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Clara accidently land Bristol when the Doctor detects an energy drain to the TARDIS. Upon emerging, the TARDIS is reduced in size. The Doctor re-enters the TARDIS to monitor while Clara looks around for anything that might lead to the drain. While investigating, she meets a man named Rigsy who is part of a community service work crew to paint over a tunnel. Rigsy protests as the tunnel is covered in murals of people that have recently disappeared.
Clara returns to the TARDIS only to discover that it has shrunk again to a point where Clara can carry it around in her purse. The Doctor equips her with an earpiece and taps in to her eye so he can see as well. He also gives her the psychic paper and sonic screwdriver. Clara poses as a police detective and has Rigsy and a local police officer take her to the apartment of one of the victims.
The Doctor diagnoses that the images on the wall are 2-D slices of a human body and they are dealing with two-dimensional creatures. The police officer is attacked and is pulled into the floor. Other 3-D aspects of the room, such as the door knob are pulled into 2-D space, trapping Clara and Rigsy. The two climb onto a hanging chair and they swing out through the window. They run down to the tunnel to warn the work crew. The murals begin to come to life as the 2-D creatures begin to manipulate their forms to move after them.
The group flees to a warehouse where they attempt to communicate with the creatures. The Doctor even gives Clara a device that will help revert things from 2-D to 3-D space, but it lacks the power of the creatures. The creatures respond by broadcasting a number, the work number of one of the crew. He is then killed and pulled into 2-D space. Rigsy leads the group down into the train tunnels to get away. The creatures begin to take 3-D form through the mural people and in the chase after the crew, the TARDIS falls down onto a track. The Doctor pulls the TARDIS off the track briefly using his hand, but it falls back and he is forced to engage the HADS, saving the TARDIS but cutting him off from communication with Clara.
Clara and Rigsy hijack a train to send after the creatures to buy themselves time, but it is turned 2-D as well. Clara realizes that they need to get power to the TARDIS so they can bring the Doctor back into the fight. She has Rigsy paint a door on the back of a poster and then doubles back, planting it on the wall. The creatures see the door and assume it was a 3-D door they converted and begin attempting to pull it back into 3-D. Clara had placed the TARDIS behind the poster and the influx of energy revives the TARDIS to the point where the Doctor can bring it back to normal size. He sets up an energy field around the creatures and then uses the sonic screwdriver, which Clara gives back to him, to send the creatures back to their own dimension.
The Doctor and Clara deliver Rigsy and the remaining member of the work crew back to their work point. Clara gloats a bit over doing a good job in acting the Doctor. The Doctor slaps her down a notch by noting that while she performed well in his role, being good had nothing to do with it.
Analysis
What I think that Flatline, Mummy on the Orient Express and Listen all have in common is a simple concept foe and a heavy dose of proper scary storytelling. There is humor mixed in as well but it is a generally fearful premise that drives the action. Flatline is probably the scariest that involves a villain you can actually see.
Probably the best aspect of the story is how it turns the Doctor-lite aspect and makes it an asset. The monsters are scarier and the tension greater because the Doctor is not fully available to deal with the problem. He is there to give advice and try things, but without his full array of talents, people are left to their own devices to try and escape. It's made even better by the nature of the monsters as well. A monster you can't see and could attack you from anywhere is far scarier than even something large with lots of teeth right in front of you.
Also in the favorable column is the continued schooling of Clara. Clara was in full high horse mode at the end of Kill the Moon but her failure to learn from that opportunity rebound on her in Mummy and Flatline. Mummy for both the greater good (the greater good) and to choose between two bad options. Flatline continues with that line of thinking in acknowledging that sacrifices must be made of innocents and that not all evil can be reasoned with. Sometimes it must be destroyed as the only way to stop it. To be the Doctor is not necessarily to be good but to do what is right and those can be very different things.
The supporting cast was also very good. Rigsy was quite enjoyable as the stand in companion to Clara's Doctor and the dry humor that came from the interactions with the other workers was also very good. I would also give a serious one up to the effects team. There were a number of simple practical effects that looked good, but there were also a number of digital effects that did a very good job enhancing the story rather than taking away from it as is too easy to do these days. The almost cartoonish, shifting nature of the creatures as they shambled in their 3-D forms was quite good and it gave them a more alien feel than might have otherwise been achieved with a costumed suit.
About the only thing that I think I had a slight problem was with the ease that the Doctor dispatched the creatures upon the enlarging of the TARDIS. Suspending them in a force field is one thing, but then to just send them back to their own dimension with a pulse from the sonic screwdriver seemed a little simple. The Doctor had built Clara a device to undo the 2-D converting and I think it would have been a little better if he had come out with a device that would have done the same thing but not been quite as simple as the sonic. It would have also made it look as though the Doctor hadn't been sitting on his duff since engaging the HADS. I get that they were going for the speech moment and his reemergence as the Doctor and anything other than the sonic would have been out of place, but it still just seemed a little too easy to dispatch the monsters in that way. But that's a pretty small nit to pick.
This episode was a genuinely good one and not only would I easily pull it off for a rewatch, I actually have when I borrowed this disk from the library (Series Eight wasn't on Netflix at that time yet). So I would definitely recommend watching this one if anyone ever asked.
Overall personal score: 5 out of 5
Friday, March 18, 2016
Terror of the Autons
I am usually known as the Master
A thought occurred to me while watching this story. It is fairly normal for the primary villain of the story to be mentioned or somewhat alluded to in the story title. However, despite being a central antagonist of the Doctor, the Master is never actually mentioned in any story title. The closest I can think of is probably The Witch's Familiar but it's really only by process of elimination that one is able to surmise that Missy is probably the titular witch. I just thought it an interesting bit of trivia.
Plot Summary
The story opens with the Master appearing at a local circus. He hypnotizes the owner and together they steal a Nestene Conscious sphere on loan to a museum from UNIT. Next, the Master breaks into a radio telescope. He kills the operator and hypnotizes the scientist in charge. He hooks up the Nestene sphere and allows it to become fully charged with the Auton consciousness.
The Doctor is given a new assistant, Jo Grant, after Liz Shaw returned to Cambridge. The Doctor doesn't want her but when the Brigadier informs him that he will have to tell her, the Doctor buckles and accepts her. UNIT is informed of the theft of the Nestene sphere as well as the break in at the radio telescope and they go to investigate. While there, the Doctor is met by another Time Lord who informs him that the Master has appeared on Earth and is behind these events.
The Master next hypnotizes the son of a plastics factory owner, Rex, and commissions a large order for a series of plastic dummies. The Doctor urges the Brigadier to check all the plastic factories in looking for the Master. Jo goes along in the hunt and discovers the Master talking with Rex. She accidentally knocks over some crates and is discovered. The Master hypnotizes her and is informed that the Doctor is investigating. He implants a post-hypnotic suggestion in Jo and then sends her back with no memory of these events.
The factory manager confronts Rex on the scale of the order and how there is no paperwork filed for it. Rex goes to see the Master and is shocked to see several dummies come to life. Meanwhile, UNIT soldiers discover the case they shipped the Nestene sphere in and bring it back to headquarters. Jo begins to open it with the Doctor realizing that it is a bomb rigged by the Master. The Doctor grabs the box and throws it out the window where it explodes in the river. The conflict between the Master's instructions and her natural instincts to fight have caused Jo to lapse into a catatonic state but the Doctor slowly brings her around, although she can't remember anything of her experience beyond the fact that it was in an office.
The Master confronts the factory manager and kills him with a living plastic chair. When the factory owner arrives to find out what happened, the Master attempts to hypnotize him as well but he resists. He insists that Rex get rid of the Master and go back to their standard production. The Master plants a mini heat activated auton in the owner's car but the owner turns the heat off before the auton fully activates.
UNIT discovers that near the site of the robbery, there had been a circus. The Doctor travels to this circus at it's next location to see if anyone working there had seen the missing scientist. Despite being told not to go, Jo hides in Bessie's backseat and observes the Doctor asking around with a picture of the scientist.
Back at home, the factory owner tells his wife about what happened and sets the Auton doll to the side. She leaves to make tea. The doll, now near the radiator, comes to live again and kills the owner. The wife hears the commotion and sees her husband dead with the doll lying near by.
At the circus, the Doctor is grabbed by the hypnotized ringmaster and the strong man. Alerted to the Doctor's presence, the Master orders the hypnotized scientist to kill the Doctor. Jo sneaks behind the strong man, knocks him out and frees the Doctor. The scientist comes in with a grenade but the Doctor talks to him and he fights the control. He runs out and tried to get rid of the grenade but it detonates, killing him. The Doctor retrieves the Master's TARDIS key and steals his dematerialization circuit. He and Jo are attacked by the circus workers but are pulled away from the mob a two police officers and put them in their car. The Brigadier and Captain Yates drive up shortly afterwards to see the police car drive off.
The police car pulls into an old quarry and when asking about it, the Doctor discovers the police men are Autons. He distracts the Autons and he and Jo flee the car and hide in the grass nearby. The Brigadier pulls up and attracts the Auton's attention. One UNIT soldier is killed but the soldiers distract the Autons enough to get the Doctor and Jo into the car and drive away.
The Master moves into the next phase of his plan, crafting and giving away plastic daffodils. UNIT continues to search for the factory but has been unable to do so. They do receive a number of death reports, most unrelated. However, the first two are the plastic factory owner and manager killed in the previous episode. The Doctor and Jo ask the widow some questions and take the Auton doll after hearing her story. Leaving the doll and Jo at the lab, the Doctor and the Brigadier head to the plastics factory. While gone, a technician installs a new telephone with a longer cord for the Doctor.
The Doctor and the Brigadier find the plastics factory recently abandoned but their suspicions are confirmed when a safe is opened to reveal and Auton waiting for the Doctor as a booby trap. The Doctor seals it back in and heads back to the lab. While he was out, the Auton doll activated due to being near an active bunson burner. It attacks Jo but Captain Yates shoots it, destroying it. Learning this, the Doctor plans a test and asks everyone to leave the room. Before he can start, the telephone rings. It is the Master, who had posed as the technician. He sends a signal over the phone line and the phone cord comes activates and attacks the Doctor. The Doctor calls for help and the Brigadier bursts into the room and pulls the cord out of the wall, severing the connection.
The van being used by the Master and the Autons to hand out the flowers is spotted in the same quarry the Doctor and Jo had been taken to earlier. UNIT troops head out and the Brigadier calls the RAF requesting an air strike, which will occur in an hour and a half. The Doctor tries to activate the flower with heat but is unable to. He tells Jo to call the Brigadier on the radio to request the air strike be delayed but she is unable to get a signal. Instead, the radio signal activates the flower which then sprays Jo with a plastic film, covering her nose and mouth. The Doctor is able to get it off and the plastic then dissolves when he breathes on it.
The Doctor tells Jo to tell the minister who alerted UNIT of the deaths of this. After she leaves, the Master enters and prepares to kill the Doctor. The Doctor holds him off when he reveals that he is holding the dematerialization circuit from the Master's TARDIS (although it's actually the faulty circuit from the Doctor's TARDIS). The Master threatens to kill Jo unless the Doctor hands it over when she walks back in. The Doctor prepares to concede but the Master changes his mind when Jo slips about the air strike. Instead, the Master forces them to drive to the quarry and enter the van. The Brigadier calls off the air strike just in time.
The Doctor and Jo are tied up but as the Master and Autons are conferring about their next move, the Doctor is able to tap the brake pedal and send the Brigadier a message using the brake lights in code. The Master then drives the bus towards the radio telescope to activate the flowers and bring in the Nestene Consciousness in force. The Doctor and Jo, having managed to free themselves from their bonds, leap from the bus when Rex awakens from being knocked out by the Autons and grabs the wheel to avoid crashing into the gate. They knock him out again and the Autons begin to fire at the UNIT soldiers while the Master runs up to activate the telescope. The Doctor and the Brigadier run after him.
The Master activates the telescope and the Nestene begin to be absorbed into the machinery. The Doctor confronts the Master and makes him realize that the Nestene will turn on him once they are on Earth in force. The two work together to reverse the process. It works and the Nestene Consciousness is sent back into space. It also pulls back the Nestene in bodies and the Autons engaged with the UNIT troops fall over lifeless.
The Master flees back to the van but the troops have him surrounded. He comes out appearing to surrender and then pulls a gun. Captain Yates shoots him down but when the Doctor examines him, he finds that it is Rex in a Master mask, having been rehypnotized. The van then drives away and the Master escapes. Afterwards, the Doctor reveals that he still has the Master's dematerialization circuit so he is trapped on Earth and they should be seeing him again in the future.
Analysis
I'm a little conflicted about this story. On one hand, I was getting a bit bored with the set up and wanted them to get to the primary focus of the Master's plan faster. On the other hand, there were cuts in scenes that were so fast, it felt like there was more there but it was edited out for time. So I can't figure out if this story would have been better or worse if it had been expanded out to five episodes. But as is, it wasn't bad.
Weighing the two, I think I would prefer the five episodes because then a better resolution might have been achieved. I greatly enjoyed the Master and his plan was a fairly sound one. Each plan to kill the Doctor was reasonable and could have worked if it were not for the Doctor's ingenuity or a bit of good luck here and there. However, the Doctor managing to convince the Master in the heat of the moment that the Nestene were going to betray him and him turning on them just didn't work for me. The Master should have anticipated that possibility or even if he hadn't, it should have taken more than a single word from the Doctor to make him change his allegiance. I don't know that having an extra episode would have changed the writing of that outcome, but perhaps it would have given more space to force the Master to see his mistake.
Outside of the ending, the story was pretty good. The set up was a bit slow and I was glad that things finally started to get going in Episode Three regarding the Master's primary plan. I greatly enjoyed all the performances although I think Captain Yates was a bit stiff in his deliveries. Jo was nice and I appreciate her earnestness even if tempered with a little less scientific knowledge and a bit more klutziness.
One other thing that slaps you around in this story is Barry Letts' love of CSO (color separation overlay), an early form of green screening. In some cases it is necessary, such as when the Auton doll comes to life and attacks people. That allowed a little person to play the doll but still make it look doll's size as it moved. However, there are other areas where it just used in the background to make it look like a site is on location when it is in a studio. When you have actual location shots mixed in with the story, these just make the scenes look cheap and not planned well. The two worst ones were when the Master steals the Nestene sphere and when the doll attacks the factory owner.
In the theft scene, CSO is used for the museum backdrop. But because they didn't have the best visual, the guard it shot in close up both in his objection and his being knocked out by the circus ringmaster. It looks very clunky and cheap. In the doll scene, the doll attacks the owner while the wife is in the kitchen. They had a set for the living room and it was mixed with the required CSO around the doll. That was fine, but they cut to a scene of the wife hearing the commotion in the kitchen and that was done in CSO. Cutting between the two, made the kitchen look very odd and badly sized. The wife then bursts into the room and her reaction must have been done in pick up work because CSO was used around her screaming rather than it being on set. It was again the contrast which made it look so odd. It also forced a tight close up shot of her screaming reaction the whole time rather than a zoom to a close up reaction.
Little things like this just chip away at the story and take you out of it, especially when you contrast it with filmed location shoots or conventional studio shooting. The CSO providing the sky background of the telescope control room was a lot more palatable and easy to ignore with the modern eye.
Overall, it was a middling effort. There were portions of the story that were well done but others that fell flat. Some production efforts looked great, others looked cheap. I'm going to have to ding it a little bit extra for the ending though. A better effort could have been there in my opinion. That's actually a bit of a shame because the Master scenes are definitely worth watching again even if the rest falls a touch short.
Overall personal score: 3 out of 5.
A thought occurred to me while watching this story. It is fairly normal for the primary villain of the story to be mentioned or somewhat alluded to in the story title. However, despite being a central antagonist of the Doctor, the Master is never actually mentioned in any story title. The closest I can think of is probably The Witch's Familiar but it's really only by process of elimination that one is able to surmise that Missy is probably the titular witch. I just thought it an interesting bit of trivia.
Plot Summary
The story opens with the Master appearing at a local circus. He hypnotizes the owner and together they steal a Nestene Conscious sphere on loan to a museum from UNIT. Next, the Master breaks into a radio telescope. He kills the operator and hypnotizes the scientist in charge. He hooks up the Nestene sphere and allows it to become fully charged with the Auton consciousness.
The Doctor is given a new assistant, Jo Grant, after Liz Shaw returned to Cambridge. The Doctor doesn't want her but when the Brigadier informs him that he will have to tell her, the Doctor buckles and accepts her. UNIT is informed of the theft of the Nestene sphere as well as the break in at the radio telescope and they go to investigate. While there, the Doctor is met by another Time Lord who informs him that the Master has appeared on Earth and is behind these events.
The Master next hypnotizes the son of a plastics factory owner, Rex, and commissions a large order for a series of plastic dummies. The Doctor urges the Brigadier to check all the plastic factories in looking for the Master. Jo goes along in the hunt and discovers the Master talking with Rex. She accidentally knocks over some crates and is discovered. The Master hypnotizes her and is informed that the Doctor is investigating. He implants a post-hypnotic suggestion in Jo and then sends her back with no memory of these events.
The factory manager confronts Rex on the scale of the order and how there is no paperwork filed for it. Rex goes to see the Master and is shocked to see several dummies come to life. Meanwhile, UNIT soldiers discover the case they shipped the Nestene sphere in and bring it back to headquarters. Jo begins to open it with the Doctor realizing that it is a bomb rigged by the Master. The Doctor grabs the box and throws it out the window where it explodes in the river. The conflict between the Master's instructions and her natural instincts to fight have caused Jo to lapse into a catatonic state but the Doctor slowly brings her around, although she can't remember anything of her experience beyond the fact that it was in an office.
The Master confronts the factory manager and kills him with a living plastic chair. When the factory owner arrives to find out what happened, the Master attempts to hypnotize him as well but he resists. He insists that Rex get rid of the Master and go back to their standard production. The Master plants a mini heat activated auton in the owner's car but the owner turns the heat off before the auton fully activates.
UNIT discovers that near the site of the robbery, there had been a circus. The Doctor travels to this circus at it's next location to see if anyone working there had seen the missing scientist. Despite being told not to go, Jo hides in Bessie's backseat and observes the Doctor asking around with a picture of the scientist.
Back at home, the factory owner tells his wife about what happened and sets the Auton doll to the side. She leaves to make tea. The doll, now near the radiator, comes to live again and kills the owner. The wife hears the commotion and sees her husband dead with the doll lying near by.
At the circus, the Doctor is grabbed by the hypnotized ringmaster and the strong man. Alerted to the Doctor's presence, the Master orders the hypnotized scientist to kill the Doctor. Jo sneaks behind the strong man, knocks him out and frees the Doctor. The scientist comes in with a grenade but the Doctor talks to him and he fights the control. He runs out and tried to get rid of the grenade but it detonates, killing him. The Doctor retrieves the Master's TARDIS key and steals his dematerialization circuit. He and Jo are attacked by the circus workers but are pulled away from the mob a two police officers and put them in their car. The Brigadier and Captain Yates drive up shortly afterwards to see the police car drive off.
The police car pulls into an old quarry and when asking about it, the Doctor discovers the police men are Autons. He distracts the Autons and he and Jo flee the car and hide in the grass nearby. The Brigadier pulls up and attracts the Auton's attention. One UNIT soldier is killed but the soldiers distract the Autons enough to get the Doctor and Jo into the car and drive away.
The Master moves into the next phase of his plan, crafting and giving away plastic daffodils. UNIT continues to search for the factory but has been unable to do so. They do receive a number of death reports, most unrelated. However, the first two are the plastic factory owner and manager killed in the previous episode. The Doctor and Jo ask the widow some questions and take the Auton doll after hearing her story. Leaving the doll and Jo at the lab, the Doctor and the Brigadier head to the plastics factory. While gone, a technician installs a new telephone with a longer cord for the Doctor.
The Doctor and the Brigadier find the plastics factory recently abandoned but their suspicions are confirmed when a safe is opened to reveal and Auton waiting for the Doctor as a booby trap. The Doctor seals it back in and heads back to the lab. While he was out, the Auton doll activated due to being near an active bunson burner. It attacks Jo but Captain Yates shoots it, destroying it. Learning this, the Doctor plans a test and asks everyone to leave the room. Before he can start, the telephone rings. It is the Master, who had posed as the technician. He sends a signal over the phone line and the phone cord comes activates and attacks the Doctor. The Doctor calls for help and the Brigadier bursts into the room and pulls the cord out of the wall, severing the connection.
The van being used by the Master and the Autons to hand out the flowers is spotted in the same quarry the Doctor and Jo had been taken to earlier. UNIT troops head out and the Brigadier calls the RAF requesting an air strike, which will occur in an hour and a half. The Doctor tries to activate the flower with heat but is unable to. He tells Jo to call the Brigadier on the radio to request the air strike be delayed but she is unable to get a signal. Instead, the radio signal activates the flower which then sprays Jo with a plastic film, covering her nose and mouth. The Doctor is able to get it off and the plastic then dissolves when he breathes on it.
The Doctor tells Jo to tell the minister who alerted UNIT of the deaths of this. After she leaves, the Master enters and prepares to kill the Doctor. The Doctor holds him off when he reveals that he is holding the dematerialization circuit from the Master's TARDIS (although it's actually the faulty circuit from the Doctor's TARDIS). The Master threatens to kill Jo unless the Doctor hands it over when she walks back in. The Doctor prepares to concede but the Master changes his mind when Jo slips about the air strike. Instead, the Master forces them to drive to the quarry and enter the van. The Brigadier calls off the air strike just in time.
The Doctor and Jo are tied up but as the Master and Autons are conferring about their next move, the Doctor is able to tap the brake pedal and send the Brigadier a message using the brake lights in code. The Master then drives the bus towards the radio telescope to activate the flowers and bring in the Nestene Consciousness in force. The Doctor and Jo, having managed to free themselves from their bonds, leap from the bus when Rex awakens from being knocked out by the Autons and grabs the wheel to avoid crashing into the gate. They knock him out again and the Autons begin to fire at the UNIT soldiers while the Master runs up to activate the telescope. The Doctor and the Brigadier run after him.
The Master activates the telescope and the Nestene begin to be absorbed into the machinery. The Doctor confronts the Master and makes him realize that the Nestene will turn on him once they are on Earth in force. The two work together to reverse the process. It works and the Nestene Consciousness is sent back into space. It also pulls back the Nestene in bodies and the Autons engaged with the UNIT troops fall over lifeless.
The Master flees back to the van but the troops have him surrounded. He comes out appearing to surrender and then pulls a gun. Captain Yates shoots him down but when the Doctor examines him, he finds that it is Rex in a Master mask, having been rehypnotized. The van then drives away and the Master escapes. Afterwards, the Doctor reveals that he still has the Master's dematerialization circuit so he is trapped on Earth and they should be seeing him again in the future.
Analysis
I'm a little conflicted about this story. On one hand, I was getting a bit bored with the set up and wanted them to get to the primary focus of the Master's plan faster. On the other hand, there were cuts in scenes that were so fast, it felt like there was more there but it was edited out for time. So I can't figure out if this story would have been better or worse if it had been expanded out to five episodes. But as is, it wasn't bad.
Weighing the two, I think I would prefer the five episodes because then a better resolution might have been achieved. I greatly enjoyed the Master and his plan was a fairly sound one. Each plan to kill the Doctor was reasonable and could have worked if it were not for the Doctor's ingenuity or a bit of good luck here and there. However, the Doctor managing to convince the Master in the heat of the moment that the Nestene were going to betray him and him turning on them just didn't work for me. The Master should have anticipated that possibility or even if he hadn't, it should have taken more than a single word from the Doctor to make him change his allegiance. I don't know that having an extra episode would have changed the writing of that outcome, but perhaps it would have given more space to force the Master to see his mistake.
Outside of the ending, the story was pretty good. The set up was a bit slow and I was glad that things finally started to get going in Episode Three regarding the Master's primary plan. I greatly enjoyed all the performances although I think Captain Yates was a bit stiff in his deliveries. Jo was nice and I appreciate her earnestness even if tempered with a little less scientific knowledge and a bit more klutziness.
One other thing that slaps you around in this story is Barry Letts' love of CSO (color separation overlay), an early form of green screening. In some cases it is necessary, such as when the Auton doll comes to life and attacks people. That allowed a little person to play the doll but still make it look doll's size as it moved. However, there are other areas where it just used in the background to make it look like a site is on location when it is in a studio. When you have actual location shots mixed in with the story, these just make the scenes look cheap and not planned well. The two worst ones were when the Master steals the Nestene sphere and when the doll attacks the factory owner.
In the theft scene, CSO is used for the museum backdrop. But because they didn't have the best visual, the guard it shot in close up both in his objection and his being knocked out by the circus ringmaster. It looks very clunky and cheap. In the doll scene, the doll attacks the owner while the wife is in the kitchen. They had a set for the living room and it was mixed with the required CSO around the doll. That was fine, but they cut to a scene of the wife hearing the commotion in the kitchen and that was done in CSO. Cutting between the two, made the kitchen look very odd and badly sized. The wife then bursts into the room and her reaction must have been done in pick up work because CSO was used around her screaming rather than it being on set. It was again the contrast which made it look so odd. It also forced a tight close up shot of her screaming reaction the whole time rather than a zoom to a close up reaction.
Little things like this just chip away at the story and take you out of it, especially when you contrast it with filmed location shoots or conventional studio shooting. The CSO providing the sky background of the telescope control room was a lot more palatable and easy to ignore with the modern eye.
Overall, it was a middling effort. There were portions of the story that were well done but others that fell flat. Some production efforts looked great, others looked cheap. I'm going to have to ding it a little bit extra for the ending though. A better effort could have been there in my opinion. That's actually a bit of a shame because the Master scenes are definitely worth watching again even if the rest falls a touch short.
Overall personal score: 3 out of 5.
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
A Good Man Goes to War
Do you need me to repeat the question?
A Good Man Goes to War was the big mid-series finale that wrapped up most of the loose ends with Amy and Rory's baby and revealed who River was. It is also one of the few stories to actually show the Doctor actually using the fighting fear that he supposedly commanded.
Plot Summary
Amy has given birth to a girl that she has named Melody in her prison on an asteroid called Demons Run. Melody is going to be taken by a woman with an eye patch named Madame Kovarian. She has assembled an army of church soldiers (The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone) and allied them with the headless monks. They are waiting for the Doctor to attack with the intention of destroying him.
Meanwhile, the Doctor is assembling allies. Notable are the members of what will become the Paternoster Gang and Dorium Maldovar. Rory is sent to find out where Amy is being held and to get River. River however refuses to come, knowing that the Doctor must face this event without her.
The Doctor sneaks aboard Demons Run and instigates a fight between the church soldiers and the headless monks. The colonel manages to stop the fight but in doing so, disarms his soldiers who are then surrounded by a combined army of Silurians and Judoon. The Doctor and Rory free Amy and reunite her with Melody and Madame Kovarian is captured. The Judoon escort the surrendered church troops out of the quadrent but the headless monks hide in the station.
The Doctor, Madame Vastra and Dorium hack the computers and discover that Melody's DNA has been altered by exposure to the time vortex which could give her the power to regenerate. The headless monks regroup and prepare to attack while Madame Kovarian escapes. One of the church soldiers (Bucket) who stayed loyal to the Doctor warns the group of Kovarian's trap. The group is attacked by the headless monks and the Doctor is distracted by Madame Kovarian appearing on a screen and mocking the Doctor for being fooled again. Kovarian then awakens the real Melody on her ship and the one Amy is holding melts as it was a flesh avatar.
The Doctor runs down to find that his allies have defeated the headless monks, although soldier Bucket and Dorium are killed and Strax is heavily wounded. Amy is in shock and angry at the Doctor. In midst of this, River arrives. The Doctor angrily confronts her about not being there while she tries to calm him by noting that it couldn't have been stopped. She then subtly reveals who she is to him. Astounded, the Doctor then leaves in the TARDIS, vowing to find Melody. Confused, Amy and Rory ask her what is going on. She gives them the baby leaf that soldier Bucket sewed of Melody's name, noting that her people had no word for pond. The writing translates to River Song and River reveals that she is Melody.
Analysis
Like The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon, this episode takes on a totally different tone once you know the big twist regarding Melody and River. That obviously was designed to floor the audience going into the time off before Let's Kill Hitler. For the most part, I think it holds up rather well even when you know what is coming.
It is rather interesting that the Eleventh Doctor is painted as much more of a fighting Doctor, or at least one who cultivates the fighting legend; and yet the Eleventh Doctor never really pulls off the dark Doctor persona that you would expect would be necessary for this like both the Ninth and Tenth Doctor did. The Eleventh Doctor is a master of talking and letting others do the fighting for him. The Tenth Doctor did also but there were moments where you saw him get his hands dirty.
Obviously the avoidance of any real bloodshed is always a plus (especially in a family program) but it is nice to see that accomplished though overwhelming force rather than just "look at me and how scary I am" such as was done in The Pandorica Opens. My own personal favorite scene is the opening where Rory walks on to the Cybermen's ship and demands to know where his wife is. The Cyber leader asks what the message from the Doctor is and half the Cyberfleet explodes. That is a level of bad ass-ery that is lacking sometimes and I genuinely appreciate it when it does show up. Now, it's rarity does also invoke that when it does happen, the Doctor isn't screwing around so I would not advocate seeing it all that much more. But I did appreciate it this time around.
At the same time, the first half of the story is also very funny as well. The introduction of Strax is very funny and Dorium's protests against being selected are also very funny. Even after the surrender, the Doctor has some nice banter both with Amy and Rory and with the others. The Doctor's awkward conversation with Madame Vastra about Amy and Rory's sex life is quite amusing, especially with Dorium giving silent commentary with his eyebrows. Quite funny.
Where I felt the episode dipped a little bit south was after the initial engagement. I didn't really care for soldier Bucket who was just a little too bland and plot convenient for my taste. I'm also not sure I fully understood what the point was of Madame Kovarian's trap. Yes, she managed to get away with Melody, but her forces were defeated and no characters of significance were killed by the headless monks. The Doctor had already discovered the success of Madame Kovarian's scheme and assisted in Melody's escape, although unless the flesh avatar Amy was relaying information, Madame Kovarian would not have known that at this time. But it still seems like an overly complicated plan just to make sure you get away with a baby.
I also didn't really care for the ending scene that much. Soldier Bucket's death scene seemed a little forced. Likewise, I wasn't really buying the interaction between River and the Doctor in the confrontation. It's hard to put my finger on, but I think there is something in Alex Kingston's acting at that time that just didn't seem right. I think it was trying a little too hard to sound poignant and touching and just came across as soppy. I'm not sure of the best way to improve it, but the way that scene flowed just didn't quite work for me.
I liked this one overall but was somewhat surprised to remember during the rewatch of just how down a note it ends on. Again, with the minor plot holes and the somewhat subpar acting near the end, it falls off a little bit but it's still an enjoyable story. I'd happily watch it again, but it's not the best of the series.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
A Good Man Goes to War was the big mid-series finale that wrapped up most of the loose ends with Amy and Rory's baby and revealed who River was. It is also one of the few stories to actually show the Doctor actually using the fighting fear that he supposedly commanded.
Plot Summary
Amy has given birth to a girl that she has named Melody in her prison on an asteroid called Demons Run. Melody is going to be taken by a woman with an eye patch named Madame Kovarian. She has assembled an army of church soldiers (The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone) and allied them with the headless monks. They are waiting for the Doctor to attack with the intention of destroying him.
Meanwhile, the Doctor is assembling allies. Notable are the members of what will become the Paternoster Gang and Dorium Maldovar. Rory is sent to find out where Amy is being held and to get River. River however refuses to come, knowing that the Doctor must face this event without her.
The Doctor sneaks aboard Demons Run and instigates a fight between the church soldiers and the headless monks. The colonel manages to stop the fight but in doing so, disarms his soldiers who are then surrounded by a combined army of Silurians and Judoon. The Doctor and Rory free Amy and reunite her with Melody and Madame Kovarian is captured. The Judoon escort the surrendered church troops out of the quadrent but the headless monks hide in the station.
The Doctor, Madame Vastra and Dorium hack the computers and discover that Melody's DNA has been altered by exposure to the time vortex which could give her the power to regenerate. The headless monks regroup and prepare to attack while Madame Kovarian escapes. One of the church soldiers (Bucket) who stayed loyal to the Doctor warns the group of Kovarian's trap. The group is attacked by the headless monks and the Doctor is distracted by Madame Kovarian appearing on a screen and mocking the Doctor for being fooled again. Kovarian then awakens the real Melody on her ship and the one Amy is holding melts as it was a flesh avatar.
The Doctor runs down to find that his allies have defeated the headless monks, although soldier Bucket and Dorium are killed and Strax is heavily wounded. Amy is in shock and angry at the Doctor. In midst of this, River arrives. The Doctor angrily confronts her about not being there while she tries to calm him by noting that it couldn't have been stopped. She then subtly reveals who she is to him. Astounded, the Doctor then leaves in the TARDIS, vowing to find Melody. Confused, Amy and Rory ask her what is going on. She gives them the baby leaf that soldier Bucket sewed of Melody's name, noting that her people had no word for pond. The writing translates to River Song and River reveals that she is Melody.
Analysis
Like The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon, this episode takes on a totally different tone once you know the big twist regarding Melody and River. That obviously was designed to floor the audience going into the time off before Let's Kill Hitler. For the most part, I think it holds up rather well even when you know what is coming.
It is rather interesting that the Eleventh Doctor is painted as much more of a fighting Doctor, or at least one who cultivates the fighting legend; and yet the Eleventh Doctor never really pulls off the dark Doctor persona that you would expect would be necessary for this like both the Ninth and Tenth Doctor did. The Eleventh Doctor is a master of talking and letting others do the fighting for him. The Tenth Doctor did also but there were moments where you saw him get his hands dirty.
Obviously the avoidance of any real bloodshed is always a plus (especially in a family program) but it is nice to see that accomplished though overwhelming force rather than just "look at me and how scary I am" such as was done in The Pandorica Opens. My own personal favorite scene is the opening where Rory walks on to the Cybermen's ship and demands to know where his wife is. The Cyber leader asks what the message from the Doctor is and half the Cyberfleet explodes. That is a level of bad ass-ery that is lacking sometimes and I genuinely appreciate it when it does show up. Now, it's rarity does also invoke that when it does happen, the Doctor isn't screwing around so I would not advocate seeing it all that much more. But I did appreciate it this time around.
At the same time, the first half of the story is also very funny as well. The introduction of Strax is very funny and Dorium's protests against being selected are also very funny. Even after the surrender, the Doctor has some nice banter both with Amy and Rory and with the others. The Doctor's awkward conversation with Madame Vastra about Amy and Rory's sex life is quite amusing, especially with Dorium giving silent commentary with his eyebrows. Quite funny.
Where I felt the episode dipped a little bit south was after the initial engagement. I didn't really care for soldier Bucket who was just a little too bland and plot convenient for my taste. I'm also not sure I fully understood what the point was of Madame Kovarian's trap. Yes, she managed to get away with Melody, but her forces were defeated and no characters of significance were killed by the headless monks. The Doctor had already discovered the success of Madame Kovarian's scheme and assisted in Melody's escape, although unless the flesh avatar Amy was relaying information, Madame Kovarian would not have known that at this time. But it still seems like an overly complicated plan just to make sure you get away with a baby.
I also didn't really care for the ending scene that much. Soldier Bucket's death scene seemed a little forced. Likewise, I wasn't really buying the interaction between River and the Doctor in the confrontation. It's hard to put my finger on, but I think there is something in Alex Kingston's acting at that time that just didn't seem right. I think it was trying a little too hard to sound poignant and touching and just came across as soppy. I'm not sure of the best way to improve it, but the way that scene flowed just didn't quite work for me.
I liked this one overall but was somewhat surprised to remember during the rewatch of just how down a note it ends on. Again, with the minor plot holes and the somewhat subpar acting near the end, it falls off a little bit but it's still an enjoyable story. I'd happily watch it again, but it's not the best of the series.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
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