You don't know what a relief it is for me to have such a stimulating philosophical discussion.
The story that introduces Ace and dismisses Mel. I have been intrigued about this story as it has popped up a lot recently. Probably the most interesting discussion was an argument between two people as to whether it was the worst story of Season 24 or not. The argument there being that Time and the Rani had the good sense to know it was bad and that it had to be made in such a time crunch whereas Dragonfire had neither excuse. As I've never seen anything of this story apart from the scene of the Doctor dangling from his umbrella referenced in The Name of the Doctor, I'm going in to this one with a fairly open mind.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Mel travel to Iceworld, a layover station for interstellar travel. Stopping in to the local restaurant, they run into Sabalom Glizt, last seen in The Ultimate Foe. Glitz has just sold his crew to the head of the station, Mr. Kane, and is working on a new scheme. However, he restrained by the authorities and ordered to refund the money he was paid for a shoddy product delivery. Having lost the money he was paid in a game of cards, the authorities seize his ship, giving him 72 hours to repay what he owes.
Glitz asks the Doctor’s help as he has recently won a treasure map in another game of cards to a treasure located on Iceworld. At the mention of the treasure map, the waitress, a girl named Ace, pipes in and asks to come along, being familiar with Glitz already. The Doctor, his curiosity piqued by the legend of a dragon, agrees to help Glitz. Glitz however, demands the girls not come along. Ace fumes and returns to work. Mel agrees to stay behind.
Unknown to Glitz, he was allowed to win the map and it contains a tracking device put in my Mr. Kane. He purchased Glitz’s crew and is building an army of mercenaries that are placed in cryo-freeze. His deputy, Belazs, suggests that she might take Glizt’s ship but Kane reminds her of her obligation to him and gives and order to destroy the ship. However, Belazs later countermands that order while Kane is undergoing a freezing treatment.
Ace, still miffed at being left behind, pours a milkshake on a customer when the customer objects to the quality of the milkshake. She is immediately fired and Mel, who had tried to stick up for her, is thrown out as well. They return to Ace’s quarters where Mel learns that Ace is from Earth but was transported to Iceworld in a timestorm. Ace has also developed a more concentrated version of nitro-glycerin she calls Nitro-9. She takes Mel out to show its effects on an ice jam that the local authorities have yet to respond to.
Ace sets up to bottles of the Nitro-9 in front of the jam and blows it apart. As her action was unauthorized though, Belazs has her arrested and brought to Kane. Kane, impressed by her explosive work, offers her a chance to come work for him in a Faustian bargain. Mel urges Ace not to do it and Ace responds by slapping the marking coin away and threatening everyone with being blown up via her explosive. She and Mel run into the caves where they see a dragon-like creature approaching. The creature shoots a laser from it's eyes and the two women run off in the opposite direction.
Glitz and the Doctor progress steadily through Iceworld using the map. They pass various markers but become separated at one point. The Doctor, looking for Glitz off a ledge, attempts to climb down but loses his grip and slips down his umbrella, risking falling into the depths below. Glitz finds him hanging and helps him off by pulling him on to the narrow ledge below. Frustrated at his inability to find the treasure, Glitz offers the map to the Doctor in exchange for helping him to take back his ship. The Doctor reluctantly agrees.
The Doctor distracts the guard on Glitz's ship with a discussion on philosophy while Glitz sneaks aboard. However, Belazs is there waiting for him, having heard his conversation with the Doctor over the bugged map. She prepares to kill him but the Doctor comes aboard, distracting her enough for Glitz to knock the gun out of her hand. The two flee the ship, taking her gun with them. They end up running into the same creature Mel and Ace ran into and it too fires a bolt at them. They had back through a door which the creature cuts through. Glitz aims to shoot it, but the Doctor slaps the gun away from him, refusing to kill it. The creature then turns away and leaves them alone.
Kane, hearing of Glitz's attempt to leave, revives several members of his old crew and set them off to kill him. The zombified crew run into Ace and Mel, who are looking for the Doctor and Glitz. They run from them but Mel slips on the ice and hits her head on a set of stairs. Ace pulls the groggy Mel under the stairs to hide and the pursuing men pass them. The two women pause for a breather with Ace revealing that her real name is Dorothy.
Belazs, convinced by the Doctor during their conversation on Glitz's ship that Kane will never allow her to leave, convinces a fellow servant, Officer Kracauer, to try and kill Kane. Kracauer, using information given by Belazs, sneaks into Kane's chamber while he is in his freezing pod. Kracauer raises the overall temperature to above freezing. Kane emerges from his pod, agitated and unable to breathe. He sees the ice statue of his partner Xana melting and he attacks and kills Kracauer. He lowers the temperature of the room and begins to stabilize. He emerges from his chamber and kills Belazs for her treachery.
The Doctor and Glitz run into Mel and Ace in the corridors where they are attacked by one of Glitz's old crewmembers. The creature emerges and kills the crewman before he can kill them. They follow the creature down to the singing crystal room which is in fact a computerized archive. The creature activates the computer and the computer reveals that Kane is a criminal who was exiled to Iceworld for his crimes. He had an accomplice, Xana, who was killed in the final battle that captured Kane, hence his devotion to her statue. The Doctor realizes that the treasure is actually contained within the creature, which is something Kane cannot approach due to the heat it generates. The creature opens it's head, revealing a computer powered by the Dragonfire crystal, a powerful energy source.
Kane overhears them due to the bugged map and orders two of his guards to go kill the creature and bring back it's head. He also orders the rest of his guards to chase off the visitors to Iceworld and herd them on to Glitz's ship, the Nosfaratu.
The Doctor and the creature head deeper into the ice computer to consult a set of star charts while Glitz heads back to his ship to collect some explosives. Mel and Ace wait by the computer. Glitz is caught up in the rush of people driven out of Iceworld but is unable to get aboard his ship before it is sealed off. He watches as the ship takes off and then explodes.
The Doctor and the creature consult star charts but the charts are out of date and the Doctor decides to head back to the TARDIS. He and the creature are separated by the two guards looking for the creature. They ignore the Doctor and he heads back to collect Ace and Mel. Together they enter the TARDIS and the Doctor is further confused when his own star charts don't match the information given. The trio heads back to find the creature but Ace heads back to her own quarters to collect more Nitro-9. There she is captured by Kane.
Glitz heads back down and reunites with the Doctor. They discover that Ace is missing and that the creature has been killed by the guards, but they in turn were killed when the Dragonfire crystal discharged after they cut off the creature's head. They remove the crystal and hear Kane speaking to them over the speakers to bring the crystal where he will exchange Ace for it.
They meet Kane in his lair and make the exchange. Kane uses the Dragonfire crystal to supply power to the colony which is actually a spacecraft in disguise. He launches the ship and flies back to his home planet. However, the Doctor discloses that his home planet isn't there anymore. Their sun went supernova two thousand years ago. Kane, refusing to believe that his revenge will be unfulfilled, opens the shield window where he is caught in a blast of unfiltered sunlight, vaporizing him.
Glitz takes over the ship which he renames the Nosfaratu 2. Mel decides to leave the Doctor and instead travel around with Glitz, keeping him in line. She also suggests that the Doctor take Ace as a new companion. The Doctor offers and Ace readily agrees.
Analysis
I'm not going to lie, this story is deserving of the terrible reputation it has. The story had some potential in it's initial set up and even through the first couple of episodes, I could see some small good bits. But it all came crashing down in the end into a terrible hot mess.
There was some small amount of good. We had Ace introduced, although she wasn't that good in this story, but other writers did better with her so we'll give this story a little prop there. I did enjoy the Seventh Doctor in this story. He had some bad moments too, but his performance was still mostly enjoyable so he gets a small boost there. I enjoyed the performance of Belasz, who was fairly conniving as a secondary antagonist. Her performance was enjoyable. I will also give this story credit for at least giving all the information. In a number of Seventh Doctor stories, there are obvious cuts made that leave you confused as to what is going on. Here, you get the full story, shoddy as it may be, so there is nothing left unanswered and that is a point in this story's favor.
Unfortunately, that is where the good things end. Nearly everything else in this story is just bad. The scene wasn't bad, but it was a bit overlit so that instead of that icy, crystalline feel you get from Superman's Fortress of Solitude, you get a glassy or plastic-y feel to everything. It also didn't help that Sylvester McCoy was the only actor who seemed to be treating the set as if it were actually made of ice. You would see him pretend to slip and use his umbrella to steady himself in a way that was trying to sell the set. However, no one else did the same thing, so whatever illusion he was trying to foster went away quickly.
The acting performances of nearly everyone were pretty bad. Glitz was his usual roguish self, but without someone to play off of, he becomes a lot less charming and more of a dumb con-man. He was also given some pretty terrible expositional dialogue that the actor just couldn't make work. Instead of being fun comic relief, he was just a dumb bore.
Mel was also pretty bad. She was her usual perky self, which wasn't bad per se, but she had absolutely nothing to do and what little dialogue she was given was flat and uninteresting. Ace likewise was also rather badly written. It was very clear that she was written by someone who thinks they might know what teenagers sound and act like rather than someone who actually knows. Her performance wasn't horrendous, but it was all over the map in terms of emotions and attitude.
Her worst moment was when she was being held by Kane in exchange for the Dragonfire crystal. Here she begged for the Doctor to give in to Kane's demands as she was afraid to die. This is contrast not only to the fighter Ace we know in later stories, but also to the Ace we saw at the end of Episode One. There she stood up to Kane and fought back with perhaps false bravado, but still a form of bravado. The character we were shown in the earlier part of the story, would not have begged for her life and cowered in fear when threatened.
Kane himself wasn't overly terrible, but he was very one-dimensional. He also seemed rather incompetent as the story progressed. He enslaves others to build his army, but is nearly thwarted at several different occasions, mostly by his own henchmen. His only really good scene is when he kills Belasz and even there, I'd chalk that up to her performance rather than his as it was pretty obvious to what is coming. I would compare him to Rupert Everett's performance as Dr. Claw in the terrible Inspector Gadget movie. It is just that one-note.
Tone was a big problem for this story. The story couldn't fully decide if it was going to be a comedy or an action/horror story. Bits like the Doctor slipping around, Ace dumping a milkshake on her boss' head and the philosophy discussion with one of the Iceworld guards are clearly meant as comedy pieces. However, there are violent action scenes interspersed throughout: the fighting with the creature, Kane's freeze death touch and Kane's Raiders of the Lost Ark melting death. If that wasn't whiplash enough, you have the very odd cut scenes of the little girl in Episode Three where she is strolling around Iceworld acting like it's her plaything while death and destruction reign around. The acting of her mother is actually worse as supposedly Kane's men are killing everyone around and she stops Glitz at one point to mildly ask if he has seen her daughter, like she has been playing hide-and-seek too long. It is just a terrible performance and another indication that both the writer and director had no idea what tone they were supposed to use.
While on the subject of the child, I cannot figure out what the point of her was. She was used as the object that got Ace fired in Episode One as it was her mother that complained about the milkshakes. Fine. She randomly comes back in Episode Three and hides from Kane's men. Also fine, the producers could justify this by not even wanting to allude to the idea that a child died in the explosion of the Nosfaratu. But why keep cutting back to her throughout the rest of Episode Three? She could have been shown emerging from hiding after everything was over and it would have been a simple happy ending. Instead, she wanders through the corridors, almost getting shot by Kane's guard, finds her way into Kane's lair and puts her teddy to bed in Kane's freezing chamber; all for absolutely no point. Her wandering had no payoff except to cut into the run time and cut away from the main action. I can only think that she was someone's daughter who really wanted to be shown in the show because there is no other point that I can think of to having her in the story.
Another fault of this story was it's very haphazard use of metaphor. Ace being lifted from Perivale to Iceworld via a time storm and her own proper name of Dorothy is a not so subtle reference to The Wizard of Oz. Likewise, with a villain named Kane, his slaves take his frozen brand or "mark of Cain" if you prefer. Some small bits of metaphor are okay but generally it is nice to have a point behind it. The mark of Cain is fine although a bit over the top since it was pretty obvious Kane is the bad guy. The Wizard of Oz stuff though doesn't make a lot of sense though. Not only is it a pointless metaphor that doesn't really go anywhere, but it also creates a dumb situation of how Ace got to Iceworld in the first place. One that later writers went to try and explain and failed even then (in my opinion).
My final rant on this story is with Mel's leaving scene. I doubt that Ian Briggs was allowed to write that final scene, especially as there was a bit of internal debate on whether Ace or Ray from Delta and the Bannermen was going to succeed Mel as companion when the script was likely submitted. Andrew Cartmel was officially on as script editor, but given the rush of Season 24 and the significance of changing companions, I suspect that John Nathan Turner actually wrote this scene and boy does it show. Mel is given absolutely no reason to leave. They are not back on Earth and Mel has shown no inclination that she is tired of traveling with the Doctor. What's more, there is no hint that she has any chemistry or desire to interact with Glitz, either in this story or back in The Trial of a Timelord: The Ultimate Foe. She drops the idea of leaving like there was some monumental moment that occurred but nothing happened. It was the lamest excuse of writing out a companion that I've ever seen. Leela deciding to stay with Andred might be the dumbest companion departure, but at least there was a fig leaf of a romance that we apparently never saw. This was just Mel up and decided that it was time that she and the Doctor parted ways and that Ace should take her place. Ace coming along was fine but there was no reason the Doctor couldn't travel with both of them. Her leaving was not necessary.
The playing out of the scene was also pretty bad. Mel drops her bomb about leaving and that apparently flusters the Doctor to the point of nearly having a regeneration crisis. He babbles incoherently, flustered by Mel leaving and doesn't cotton on to the idea to ask Ace until Mel nearly kicks him in the butt. Then you have Ace's acting which is probably her worst portrayal of an eager teenager throughout the story. The Doctor recovers it a bit with his three rules bit but her reaction doesn't play right. It just made the last five minutes of the story absolutely painful to watch.
I'm sorely tempted to give this a score of 0. Nearly everything about it was terrible and whatever good in the story was displayed in Episodes One and Two, was washed completely away by the end of Episode Three. But I don't think I can go quite that harsh. Still, this is going to be near the bottom of my list. It is shoddily produced, poorly acting and badly written. What's more, unlike Time and the Rani, this was the last story of the season so there should have been time to do a little clean up here and there to make it at least marginally more palatable. I can't imagine voluntarily watching this one again and would not recommend it to anyone else to watch.
Overall personal score: 0.5 out of 5
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
The Savages
They are men. Human beings like you and me; although it appears at the moment you are behaving in a rather subhuman fashion.
The Savages is a story you don't hear about much which is rather surprising given that it is Steven's departure story. Some of that stems from it being all recon and probably also that with much of Steven's performances lost, he is viewed as a lesser companion among some groups of fans. I happen to enjoy Steven and was rather curious about this somewhat overlooked story.
Plot Summary
The Doctor lands on a planet set in the far future. He heads out to take some scientific readings while Steven and Dodo wait outside the TARDIS. The Doctor is observed by men dressed in skins and armed with spears and clubs. They make to attack him but retreat when soldiers with laser guns appear. The soldiers welcome the Doctor, informing him that his movements have been tracked by the city elders and they wish to welcome him. The Doctor agrees to go with him and one of the soldiers named Exorse is sent to collect Steven and Dodo.
Steven, growing worried, scouts for the Doctor but is called back by Dodo screaming that she saw a savage man. The men reappear and hurl spears at them but Steven and Dodo take cover behind the TARDIS. The savages retreat when Exorse appears and takes the pair to the city.
At the city, the elders proclaim the Doctor an honorary elder and wish to discuss science with him. They are surprised at the arrival of Steven and Dodo as they had not expected companions, but they are given gifts and taken to another part of the city to enjoy refreshment. The Doctor sits with the elders and inquires about their source of energy, to which the elders both boast but are also vague about.
Meanwhile, city soldiers head out on patrols. The savages, observing from hidden locations, send messengers to warn their people to hide. One of the messengers is a woman named Nanina. She is captured by Exorse and taken back to the city where she is given over to a group of scientists. The scientists release a different savage whom they have just finished with and take Nanina down to the lab. The released savage, exhausted and dazed, walks slowly to the exit.
Steven and Dodo are escorted around the city but Dodo becomes suspicious as their two guides, Avon and Flower, take pains to ensure Dodo cannot see anything they do not want her to see. She sneaks a peek out a window and observes Exorse leading Nanina in to the city. Seeing him emerge from a room later, she manages to sneak away from the group and explore on her own. While walking down a passage, she runs into the savage just released from the lab. He ignores her and shuffles out through a door that leads outside the city. Outside, he is collected by the savage leaders.
The scientists place Nanina in a machine and begin to extract energy from her. Dodo, hearing Nanina's screams, makes her way into the lab to observe. She is grabbed and dragged into an adjoining chamber by the assistants who mistake her for another savage to be processed. Dodo however, fights back, threatening to destroy the equipment.
Steven, Avon and Flower finally notice that Dodo has gone missing and go to look for her. They interrupt the Doctor and elders to tell them but the Doctor dismisses their concerns as he trusts Dodo to take care of herself. The elders order guards to assist with the search. The guard believes that she may have gone down a restricted corridor. He prepares to go after her and threatens Steven that he is not go down the corridor either.
Dodo's actions arouse the awareness of the chief scientist Senta. He learns that she is not a savage and one of the Doctor's companions. He pulls her aside as the guard enters. The guard takes her back to Steven while Senta ends the extraction of Nanina. Nanina is then taken by the guards and released outside the city.
Dodo is taken back to Steven and the two of them are taken back to the Doctor. A guard then comes and arrests Avon and Flower for their negligence. The Doctor finishes his conversation with the elders and offers to show them some of his charts on time travel. He takes Steven and Dodo with him and heads back to the TARDIS. The chief elder, Jano, worried about what Dodo saw and suspects, orders the guard captain Edal to follow them.
The group heads back towards the TARDIS where the Doctor confirms to Dodo that he suspects something foul afoot as well. They find the man Dodo ran into earlier lying on the ground. The Doctor sends Steven and Dodo back to the TARDIS for medicine while he attends to him. Edal comes across them and tries to drive the man away. The Doctor resists and decries the practices used by the citizen of the city. Edal, worried about the Doctor's attitude, takes him back to the city under force.
Steven and Dodo return and give the man two capsules that help reenergize him. However, they are soon surrounded by other savages who mean to kill them. The man they helped protests, proclaiming them friends. He also tells them of how the Doctor was taken away when he stood for him. Steven and Dodo try to convince the savages to help them rescue the Doctor, but they protest, fearing how they are overmatched.
In the city, Jano tries to convince the Doctor of the good of their method but the Doctor still decries it and vows to fight them. Jano orders the Doctor taken to the lab where he is forcibly placed into the extraction machine. Senta begins to transfer energy from the Doctor into their vats. The operation successful, the Doctor is pulled out and sent to a cell to recover. Jano then states that he will take all the Doctor's vitality, not wanting to risk anyone else. He also orders Edal to find and bring back the Doctor's companions for similar treatment.
The savage leader Chal takes Steven and Dodo into a cave which is their refuge to escape the guards, whom they have learned are pursuing them. The guard Exorse learns of their location and follows them into the cave. Chal takes Steven and Dodo down a passage, hoping to discourage Exorse in his pursuit. Exorse cows the remaining savages in the cave and one reveals which passage the companions went down and he follows them.
The passage ends in a dead end and Chal gives themselves up as lost. Steven however, learns from Chal that the light guns may be vulnerable to reflection. He takes the jeweled mirror that Dodo was given and orders the other two to lie down. As Exorse approaches, he activates the light gun. As he does so, Steven lifts the mirror and the light shines back, freezing Exorse. Steven picks the gun up and pushes Exorse back to the main chamber, suspended in his own beam. The savages look with wonder on Steven turning the tables on the guard.
With the gun in his possession, Steven asks for help to get into the city. Chal agrees to lead them to the door the savages are expelled from after extraction. Steven also orders that no harm come to Exorse unless he tries to escape. A savage named Tor, drunk on the victory, ignores this and attacks Exorse. He wounds him but his blow is defected by Nanina who insists they listen to Steven. She then tends to Exorse's wound and he is softened by her kindness and humanity.
After dismissing the assistants Senta places Jano in the receiving chamber. He switches it on and transfers the Doctor's vitality into Jano. Jano emerges after the procedure, talking and acting like the Doctor for several moments before attempting to reassert his own mind. He tells Senta that the procedure was hard on him and needs rest. Senta agrees and leaves Jano alone in the lab with orders not to be disturbed.
Steven surprises a the guard at the city door and knocks him out when the light gun hits him in the eyes. Chal agrees to wait outside while Steven and Dodo enter the city to find the Doctor. Their entrance is monitored by Edal who orders the Doctor be placed at the end of the passage for them to find. Their transmissions are also monitored by Jano. Upon finding the Doctor, they attempt to lead him out of the city, but the Doctor merely shuffles about like a zombie. Edal orders the doors closed and the passageway flooded with gas. The gas renders the light guns inert and the group begins to choke on the gas.
Edal orders them to drop their guns and Dodo complies. Steven refuses and Jano, under the influence of the Doctor's mind, opens the door behind them. Dodo takes the Doctor out while the sudden rush of air, clears the passage of the gas, allowing Steven to fire his gun at Edal and his men. Steven retreats out through the door and Jano closes the door.
Edal prepares to go after the group and Jano declares that he will lead the patrol. He orders one set of guards to head to the TARDIS while the others head towards the caves. Steven and Dodo meet up with Chal and Chal and Dodo take the Doctor back to the caves. Steven stays behind to delay the patrol. He fires at the patrol from the undergrowth, scattering the guards and retreating steadily. Once Jano has a shot on Steven but declines to take it, his mind still struggling against the Doctor's.
Chal, Dodo and the Doctor arrive at the caves just as Tor is preparing to fight Nanina over the life of Exorse. Steven arrives with the guards directly behind him. They see Jano leading the patrol and Steven makes an effort to take him down. Suddenly the Doctor speaks, ordering Steven not to harm Jano. Steven complies and the group retreats in to the cave. Jano's patrol then breaks off the attack, but Jano stays behind.
The Doctor slowly begins to come around. He states that they cannot leave and leave the savages in their current state. He proposes to destroy the transference machine with help from inside the city. As darkness approaches, Jano enters the cave, just as the Doctor had told them he would. Jano, in taking the Doctor's vitality all to himself, has absorbed thoughts and grown a conscious. He agrees that they must change their ways and offers to help destroy the transference machine.
While Jano is talking, Exorse manages to free himself and flees into the jungle. Nanina follows and begs him not to betray them. She also points out that he owes her his life. Exorse acknowledges this but continues to the city.
Edal returns to the city and informs Senta of what happened. Senta believes Jano may have absorbed some of the Doctor's ideas and tells him and the other elders of the transference. Edal declares martial law and takes command. Exorse enters and informs them that he was captured but escaped. He also tells them that Jano was around but does not reveal Jano's plan. Edal is suspicious and orders Exorse taken away to be interrogated later.
Jano returns to the city with the Doctor and his companions as well as some of the savages posing as his prisoners. He denounces Edal and his attempt at seizing power and orders his arrest. Senta and the elders side with Jano and Edal is taken away. Once out of the room, Jano attempts to convince Senta to dismantle the transference machine. Senta is taken back by this and refuses. Jano then releases his "prisoners" and the group falls upon the machine and destroys it.
The guards burst in with Edal back in command and enraged at Jano's treason he prepares to shoot him. Steven however anticipates this and shoots Edal down instead. As the smoke clears from the destruction of the machine, Jano and Chal agree that they must have a neutral mediator to help both sides accept the other. They ask the Doctor to stay but he refuses. Chal then declares that Steven is the man they will accept. Jano, already in Steven's debt agrees. Steven protests but the Doctor insists that he is prepared to accept the challenges offered.
Steven agrees and after saying goodbye to the Doctor and a tearful Dodo, heads up to the main chamber to meet with both sides. Dodo asks if they will see him again and the Doctor offers a hope given the nature of their travels. He and Dodo then depart in the TARDIS.
Analysis
I must say that I was quite surprised by how much I liked this story. Generally when a story is generally overlooked by fans, you expect it to be more of the middling variety; something that doesn't sway people much one way or the other. Instead, I found this to be a very engaging and well acted story. There was tension as well as good action that actually translated fairly well to an audio only format and I'm sure looked pretty good on screen.
I must first praise the acting, especially of the Doctor. In the first episode and a half, he is very subtle. It would be easy to think him impressed and awed by the fawning attention he is getting. But there is a note in his voice indicating that he is well aware that something rotten is going on. He is certainly much more aware than Steven who is easily taken in by the wonders of the city. But the Doctor's best moments are his stands first again Edal and then Jano in defiance of their practices. It is an excellent denouncement of what they are doing. and very engaging. The Doctor has less to do in the following two episodes but what he does do is both well acted and entertaining. He is the Doctor who is in full command of the situation and he lets you know it.
Steven and Dodo do well here as well. Steven is a little off character in the first episode as he is normally not that trusting but he comes around as the proper man of action. Dodo is also engaging as she finally gets some proper spunk in her investigating as well as proper action sequences both with Steven and in helping the Doctor. She also has a nice emotional reaction in Steven's departure as someone clearly losing a good friend.
Most of the guest cast was pretty good. I especially enjoyed Jano both in his noble, yet barbaric mind but even more so when channeling the Doctor at the end of Episode Three. I found his impression to be quite impressive and I can imagine the bit of joking there was on set in his performance. The others were pretty good too, although I didn't really care for Tor. He seemed a bit too stereotypical young hothead and I didn't really buy his performance. There was no subtlety to it and his scenes mostly went nowhere except to create false tension that wasn't really needed.
Something else that is somewhat interesting is the carryover in production from the original title. It is fairly well known that the working title of this story was The White Savages, giving the impression that if that moniker is left off, the natural inclination toward savages is to imagine someone of non-Caucasian stock. More intelligent minds prevailed and the story was retitled. However it is interesting to note that all of the important players among the city dwellers are blacked up. Jano is the darkest but other characters are definitely wearing darker foundation than their natural skin tone. About the only ones who aren't are Avon, Flower, and Exorse. I am not sure if this was some sort of social commentary or if it was an expression of natural racism. In the end, it didn't bother me and if I hadn't been aware of the working title, I might not have paid much attention to it. Of course, the lack of moving pictures also helps to overlook it. If it were more visible, it might have stuck out more and perhaps affected my enjoyment of the story but I cannot say at this time.
One of the things that I found myself imagining with this story while watching it is that while the Doctor recovers from his vitality extraction, he loses a measure of his life to the machine. The First Doctor only lasts for an additional three stories before regenerating at the end of The Tenth Planet. I've not seen The Smugglers yet but in both The War Machines and The Tenth Planet, the First Doctor is clearly beginning to ail. Behinds the scenes, it is well known that the producer Innes Lloyd was actively working to both sideline and potentially replace William Hartnell. He gets a bit of a reprieve in both The Gunfighters and here, but throwing in a plot element about having part of your life sapped away to be playing in Lloyd's mind as another potential way of getting rid of Hartnell.
Unfortunately I can't speak to the production values too much for this story given that we can't see it. But the costuming and set design that we can see looks fairly decent. The helmets and light guns are a bit odd but that's pretty well par for the course in any 1960's Sci-Fi story. At the very least, nothing looked so odd or out of place that it distracted from the overall story.
One thing I do remember being brought up in a discussion of this story that I listened to was why the city dwellers didn't domesticate the savages and create less work for themselves. I think the answer is two-fold to that question. First, as anyone who works with animals will tell you, a wild animal will have more vitality and vigor than a domesticated one. This is even more true with animals that are not naturally domesticated and attempting to keep a group of humans locked away would probably diminish their overall vitality beyond what was needed. The Doctor and his companions would have been exceptions to this (and they were planning to keep them prisoner) but only because they got such a high yield of vitality from the Doctor and presumably would have from Steven and Dodo.
The second reason is actually alluded to in the story. While the people of the city had an idea of what was going on, they were clearly discouraged from discussing it and kept in the dark about the full nature of the procedures. This is demonstrated in Avon and Flower's evasiveness in answering Dodo's questions as well as trying to shield her from evidence of the truth. How much harder would it be to keep the people fully in the dark if a large farm of caged humans were kept nearby. What's more, continuous exposure to the savages would have risked exposing that they were not that different from the city dwellers and a genuine risk of savage rights activists might have appeared. Keeping the savages at a distance and letting them loom over as a threat to those who would go outside the city allowed the elders to maintain the fiction of their intellectual and cultural superiority over the masses as well as continue to encourage the idea that an armed state was necessary for defense.
On the whole, I enjoyed this one. I think it fair to say that I enjoyed it enough that I think I could sit through it again as a reconstruction and enjoy it. Obviously I'd prefer to see it fully realized and if it does manage to come back, I'd be happy to sit through it a second time. There are a couple of niggles outside of the limitations of it being a recon that knocked it down a touch but on the whole, this was a good one and unfortunately overlooked.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
The Savages is a story you don't hear about much which is rather surprising given that it is Steven's departure story. Some of that stems from it being all recon and probably also that with much of Steven's performances lost, he is viewed as a lesser companion among some groups of fans. I happen to enjoy Steven and was rather curious about this somewhat overlooked story.
Plot Summary
The Doctor lands on a planet set in the far future. He heads out to take some scientific readings while Steven and Dodo wait outside the TARDIS. The Doctor is observed by men dressed in skins and armed with spears and clubs. They make to attack him but retreat when soldiers with laser guns appear. The soldiers welcome the Doctor, informing him that his movements have been tracked by the city elders and they wish to welcome him. The Doctor agrees to go with him and one of the soldiers named Exorse is sent to collect Steven and Dodo.
Steven, growing worried, scouts for the Doctor but is called back by Dodo screaming that she saw a savage man. The men reappear and hurl spears at them but Steven and Dodo take cover behind the TARDIS. The savages retreat when Exorse appears and takes the pair to the city.
At the city, the elders proclaim the Doctor an honorary elder and wish to discuss science with him. They are surprised at the arrival of Steven and Dodo as they had not expected companions, but they are given gifts and taken to another part of the city to enjoy refreshment. The Doctor sits with the elders and inquires about their source of energy, to which the elders both boast but are also vague about.
Meanwhile, city soldiers head out on patrols. The savages, observing from hidden locations, send messengers to warn their people to hide. One of the messengers is a woman named Nanina. She is captured by Exorse and taken back to the city where she is given over to a group of scientists. The scientists release a different savage whom they have just finished with and take Nanina down to the lab. The released savage, exhausted and dazed, walks slowly to the exit.
Steven and Dodo are escorted around the city but Dodo becomes suspicious as their two guides, Avon and Flower, take pains to ensure Dodo cannot see anything they do not want her to see. She sneaks a peek out a window and observes Exorse leading Nanina in to the city. Seeing him emerge from a room later, she manages to sneak away from the group and explore on her own. While walking down a passage, she runs into the savage just released from the lab. He ignores her and shuffles out through a door that leads outside the city. Outside, he is collected by the savage leaders.
The scientists place Nanina in a machine and begin to extract energy from her. Dodo, hearing Nanina's screams, makes her way into the lab to observe. She is grabbed and dragged into an adjoining chamber by the assistants who mistake her for another savage to be processed. Dodo however, fights back, threatening to destroy the equipment.
Steven, Avon and Flower finally notice that Dodo has gone missing and go to look for her. They interrupt the Doctor and elders to tell them but the Doctor dismisses their concerns as he trusts Dodo to take care of herself. The elders order guards to assist with the search. The guard believes that she may have gone down a restricted corridor. He prepares to go after her and threatens Steven that he is not go down the corridor either.
Dodo's actions arouse the awareness of the chief scientist Senta. He learns that she is not a savage and one of the Doctor's companions. He pulls her aside as the guard enters. The guard takes her back to Steven while Senta ends the extraction of Nanina. Nanina is then taken by the guards and released outside the city.
Dodo is taken back to Steven and the two of them are taken back to the Doctor. A guard then comes and arrests Avon and Flower for their negligence. The Doctor finishes his conversation with the elders and offers to show them some of his charts on time travel. He takes Steven and Dodo with him and heads back to the TARDIS. The chief elder, Jano, worried about what Dodo saw and suspects, orders the guard captain Edal to follow them.
The group heads back towards the TARDIS where the Doctor confirms to Dodo that he suspects something foul afoot as well. They find the man Dodo ran into earlier lying on the ground. The Doctor sends Steven and Dodo back to the TARDIS for medicine while he attends to him. Edal comes across them and tries to drive the man away. The Doctor resists and decries the practices used by the citizen of the city. Edal, worried about the Doctor's attitude, takes him back to the city under force.
Steven and Dodo return and give the man two capsules that help reenergize him. However, they are soon surrounded by other savages who mean to kill them. The man they helped protests, proclaiming them friends. He also tells them of how the Doctor was taken away when he stood for him. Steven and Dodo try to convince the savages to help them rescue the Doctor, but they protest, fearing how they are overmatched.
In the city, Jano tries to convince the Doctor of the good of their method but the Doctor still decries it and vows to fight them. Jano orders the Doctor taken to the lab where he is forcibly placed into the extraction machine. Senta begins to transfer energy from the Doctor into their vats. The operation successful, the Doctor is pulled out and sent to a cell to recover. Jano then states that he will take all the Doctor's vitality, not wanting to risk anyone else. He also orders Edal to find and bring back the Doctor's companions for similar treatment.
The savage leader Chal takes Steven and Dodo into a cave which is their refuge to escape the guards, whom they have learned are pursuing them. The guard Exorse learns of their location and follows them into the cave. Chal takes Steven and Dodo down a passage, hoping to discourage Exorse in his pursuit. Exorse cows the remaining savages in the cave and one reveals which passage the companions went down and he follows them.
The passage ends in a dead end and Chal gives themselves up as lost. Steven however, learns from Chal that the light guns may be vulnerable to reflection. He takes the jeweled mirror that Dodo was given and orders the other two to lie down. As Exorse approaches, he activates the light gun. As he does so, Steven lifts the mirror and the light shines back, freezing Exorse. Steven picks the gun up and pushes Exorse back to the main chamber, suspended in his own beam. The savages look with wonder on Steven turning the tables on the guard.
With the gun in his possession, Steven asks for help to get into the city. Chal agrees to lead them to the door the savages are expelled from after extraction. Steven also orders that no harm come to Exorse unless he tries to escape. A savage named Tor, drunk on the victory, ignores this and attacks Exorse. He wounds him but his blow is defected by Nanina who insists they listen to Steven. She then tends to Exorse's wound and he is softened by her kindness and humanity.
After dismissing the assistants Senta places Jano in the receiving chamber. He switches it on and transfers the Doctor's vitality into Jano. Jano emerges after the procedure, talking and acting like the Doctor for several moments before attempting to reassert his own mind. He tells Senta that the procedure was hard on him and needs rest. Senta agrees and leaves Jano alone in the lab with orders not to be disturbed.
Steven surprises a the guard at the city door and knocks him out when the light gun hits him in the eyes. Chal agrees to wait outside while Steven and Dodo enter the city to find the Doctor. Their entrance is monitored by Edal who orders the Doctor be placed at the end of the passage for them to find. Their transmissions are also monitored by Jano. Upon finding the Doctor, they attempt to lead him out of the city, but the Doctor merely shuffles about like a zombie. Edal orders the doors closed and the passageway flooded with gas. The gas renders the light guns inert and the group begins to choke on the gas.
Edal orders them to drop their guns and Dodo complies. Steven refuses and Jano, under the influence of the Doctor's mind, opens the door behind them. Dodo takes the Doctor out while the sudden rush of air, clears the passage of the gas, allowing Steven to fire his gun at Edal and his men. Steven retreats out through the door and Jano closes the door.
Edal prepares to go after the group and Jano declares that he will lead the patrol. He orders one set of guards to head to the TARDIS while the others head towards the caves. Steven and Dodo meet up with Chal and Chal and Dodo take the Doctor back to the caves. Steven stays behind to delay the patrol. He fires at the patrol from the undergrowth, scattering the guards and retreating steadily. Once Jano has a shot on Steven but declines to take it, his mind still struggling against the Doctor's.
Chal, Dodo and the Doctor arrive at the caves just as Tor is preparing to fight Nanina over the life of Exorse. Steven arrives with the guards directly behind him. They see Jano leading the patrol and Steven makes an effort to take him down. Suddenly the Doctor speaks, ordering Steven not to harm Jano. Steven complies and the group retreats in to the cave. Jano's patrol then breaks off the attack, but Jano stays behind.
The Doctor slowly begins to come around. He states that they cannot leave and leave the savages in their current state. He proposes to destroy the transference machine with help from inside the city. As darkness approaches, Jano enters the cave, just as the Doctor had told them he would. Jano, in taking the Doctor's vitality all to himself, has absorbed thoughts and grown a conscious. He agrees that they must change their ways and offers to help destroy the transference machine.
While Jano is talking, Exorse manages to free himself and flees into the jungle. Nanina follows and begs him not to betray them. She also points out that he owes her his life. Exorse acknowledges this but continues to the city.
Edal returns to the city and informs Senta of what happened. Senta believes Jano may have absorbed some of the Doctor's ideas and tells him and the other elders of the transference. Edal declares martial law and takes command. Exorse enters and informs them that he was captured but escaped. He also tells them that Jano was around but does not reveal Jano's plan. Edal is suspicious and orders Exorse taken away to be interrogated later.
Jano returns to the city with the Doctor and his companions as well as some of the savages posing as his prisoners. He denounces Edal and his attempt at seizing power and orders his arrest. Senta and the elders side with Jano and Edal is taken away. Once out of the room, Jano attempts to convince Senta to dismantle the transference machine. Senta is taken back by this and refuses. Jano then releases his "prisoners" and the group falls upon the machine and destroys it.
The guards burst in with Edal back in command and enraged at Jano's treason he prepares to shoot him. Steven however anticipates this and shoots Edal down instead. As the smoke clears from the destruction of the machine, Jano and Chal agree that they must have a neutral mediator to help both sides accept the other. They ask the Doctor to stay but he refuses. Chal then declares that Steven is the man they will accept. Jano, already in Steven's debt agrees. Steven protests but the Doctor insists that he is prepared to accept the challenges offered.
Steven agrees and after saying goodbye to the Doctor and a tearful Dodo, heads up to the main chamber to meet with both sides. Dodo asks if they will see him again and the Doctor offers a hope given the nature of their travels. He and Dodo then depart in the TARDIS.
Analysis
I must say that I was quite surprised by how much I liked this story. Generally when a story is generally overlooked by fans, you expect it to be more of the middling variety; something that doesn't sway people much one way or the other. Instead, I found this to be a very engaging and well acted story. There was tension as well as good action that actually translated fairly well to an audio only format and I'm sure looked pretty good on screen.
I must first praise the acting, especially of the Doctor. In the first episode and a half, he is very subtle. It would be easy to think him impressed and awed by the fawning attention he is getting. But there is a note in his voice indicating that he is well aware that something rotten is going on. He is certainly much more aware than Steven who is easily taken in by the wonders of the city. But the Doctor's best moments are his stands first again Edal and then Jano in defiance of their practices. It is an excellent denouncement of what they are doing. and very engaging. The Doctor has less to do in the following two episodes but what he does do is both well acted and entertaining. He is the Doctor who is in full command of the situation and he lets you know it.
Steven and Dodo do well here as well. Steven is a little off character in the first episode as he is normally not that trusting but he comes around as the proper man of action. Dodo is also engaging as she finally gets some proper spunk in her investigating as well as proper action sequences both with Steven and in helping the Doctor. She also has a nice emotional reaction in Steven's departure as someone clearly losing a good friend.
Most of the guest cast was pretty good. I especially enjoyed Jano both in his noble, yet barbaric mind but even more so when channeling the Doctor at the end of Episode Three. I found his impression to be quite impressive and I can imagine the bit of joking there was on set in his performance. The others were pretty good too, although I didn't really care for Tor. He seemed a bit too stereotypical young hothead and I didn't really buy his performance. There was no subtlety to it and his scenes mostly went nowhere except to create false tension that wasn't really needed.
Something else that is somewhat interesting is the carryover in production from the original title. It is fairly well known that the working title of this story was The White Savages, giving the impression that if that moniker is left off, the natural inclination toward savages is to imagine someone of non-Caucasian stock. More intelligent minds prevailed and the story was retitled. However it is interesting to note that all of the important players among the city dwellers are blacked up. Jano is the darkest but other characters are definitely wearing darker foundation than their natural skin tone. About the only ones who aren't are Avon, Flower, and Exorse. I am not sure if this was some sort of social commentary or if it was an expression of natural racism. In the end, it didn't bother me and if I hadn't been aware of the working title, I might not have paid much attention to it. Of course, the lack of moving pictures also helps to overlook it. If it were more visible, it might have stuck out more and perhaps affected my enjoyment of the story but I cannot say at this time.
One of the things that I found myself imagining with this story while watching it is that while the Doctor recovers from his vitality extraction, he loses a measure of his life to the machine. The First Doctor only lasts for an additional three stories before regenerating at the end of The Tenth Planet. I've not seen The Smugglers yet but in both The War Machines and The Tenth Planet, the First Doctor is clearly beginning to ail. Behinds the scenes, it is well known that the producer Innes Lloyd was actively working to both sideline and potentially replace William Hartnell. He gets a bit of a reprieve in both The Gunfighters and here, but throwing in a plot element about having part of your life sapped away to be playing in Lloyd's mind as another potential way of getting rid of Hartnell.
Unfortunately I can't speak to the production values too much for this story given that we can't see it. But the costuming and set design that we can see looks fairly decent. The helmets and light guns are a bit odd but that's pretty well par for the course in any 1960's Sci-Fi story. At the very least, nothing looked so odd or out of place that it distracted from the overall story.
One thing I do remember being brought up in a discussion of this story that I listened to was why the city dwellers didn't domesticate the savages and create less work for themselves. I think the answer is two-fold to that question. First, as anyone who works with animals will tell you, a wild animal will have more vitality and vigor than a domesticated one. This is even more true with animals that are not naturally domesticated and attempting to keep a group of humans locked away would probably diminish their overall vitality beyond what was needed. The Doctor and his companions would have been exceptions to this (and they were planning to keep them prisoner) but only because they got such a high yield of vitality from the Doctor and presumably would have from Steven and Dodo.
The second reason is actually alluded to in the story. While the people of the city had an idea of what was going on, they were clearly discouraged from discussing it and kept in the dark about the full nature of the procedures. This is demonstrated in Avon and Flower's evasiveness in answering Dodo's questions as well as trying to shield her from evidence of the truth. How much harder would it be to keep the people fully in the dark if a large farm of caged humans were kept nearby. What's more, continuous exposure to the savages would have risked exposing that they were not that different from the city dwellers and a genuine risk of savage rights activists might have appeared. Keeping the savages at a distance and letting them loom over as a threat to those who would go outside the city allowed the elders to maintain the fiction of their intellectual and cultural superiority over the masses as well as continue to encourage the idea that an armed state was necessary for defense.
On the whole, I enjoyed this one. I think it fair to say that I enjoyed it enough that I think I could sit through it again as a reconstruction and enjoy it. Obviously I'd prefer to see it fully realized and if it does manage to come back, I'd be happy to sit through it a second time. There are a couple of niggles outside of the limitations of it being a recon that knocked it down a touch but on the whole, this was a good one and unfortunately overlooked.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
The Twin Dilemma
I am the Doctor, whether you like it or not.
In just about every episode list that Doctor Who fans put together, three stories consistently sit at the bottom: Time-Flight, The Twin Dilemma and Time and the Rani. The Twin Dilemma is additionally exacerbated given that it is the immediate follow up to The Caves of Androzani, a story that is usually put near the top of most lists. So, taking that all into account, is this story as bad as it's reputation suggests?
Plot Summary
The Doctor, having just regenerated, prepares for a new adventure. Peri, unfamiliar with regeneration is skeptical and is wary of the new version of the Doctor. As he decides on a new outfit, the Doctor begins to go through crisis. He has mental lapses where wild emotion takes control. This blows up in a fit of paranoia where, believing that she is an evil fairy, the Doctor attacks and tries to strangle Peri. She manages to throw him off and when he wakes up to what he has done, decides that he must live as a hermit for a while, setting course for the asteroid Titan 3.
Meanwhile two mathematically gifted twins, Romulus and Remus Sylveste, are attending to their lessons, having been left alone for the evening by their parents. They are visited by an old man named Professor Edgeworth who uses a patch to hypnotize them and transports them to an alien spacecraft. Edgeworth has the boys locked in a room and contacts his employer, Mestor a giant slug, who orders them to head to the base on Titan 3.
The boy's father, Professor Sylveste, returns early and finds the boys gone. He also discovers a trace element in the floor and alerts the authorities that the boys have been kidnapped. The authorities launch an immediate search and one patrol ship discovers the freighter the boys are on. They are immediately alerted as the freighter was reported destroyed earlier that year and then jumps into warp drive, despite not being equipped with that capability.
The fighter squadron follows the freighter. When the freighter lands on Titan 3, the boys are taken the base. Mestor contacts Edgeworth and orders the boys to work. He also orders Edgeworth to destroy the pursuing fighters. Edgeworth does so though the squad leader, Lt. Lang, survives the crash. Disturbed by the loss of the squadron, the ministry on Earth orders any further pursuit called off.
The Doctor and Peri find Lang and bring him into the TARDIS. The Doctor chastises Peri for wanting to leave before they found him. Peri angrily rebuffs the Doctor for his own posturing. The noise of the argument brings Lang to his senses and he pulls a gun on the Doctor, believing him to be reason his squadron was destroyed. Peri pleads with Lang, who then collapses again. The Doctor takes away his gun and orders Peri to hide the power cell. At her urging, he reluctantly begins to tend to the man to save his life.
Professor Edgeworth sets the twins to a new set of calculations while he also sets his crew about to inspect the ship and the base. He updates Mestor on their progress as well and is ordered to come back to Jocanda once the ship is repaired. The twins balk at their assignments, but Mestor, who is telepathic, enters their minds and threatens their lives if they do not work.
Having tended to Lt. Lang's life, the Doctor and Peri leave the TARDIS and proceed to the hidden base. They discover a service passage and enter. In the corridors, the Doctor has a regeneration fit and the noise and his subsequent inaction attracts the attention of the Jacondans sent to make repairs. They take the Doctor and Peri back to Edgeworth in the main control room, where Edgeworth has just finished a cycle of cellular reconstruction in a side machine.
The Doctor recognizes Edgeworth as Azmael, the former ruler of Jocanda whom he befriended as the Fourth Doctor. Edgeworth does not recognize the Doctor but believes him and elects to merely leave him prisoner on Titan 3. This angers Noma, Edgeworth's second-in-command and he silently triggers the self destruct system for the base. Edgeworth, the twins and the Jocandans teleport to their ship, having locked the Doctor in and scrambled the teleporter.
The Doctor begins to try and figure the combination for the lock when Peri discovers the self destruct mechanism. The Doctor then changes plans and reconfigures the cellular reconstructor to act as a time teleporter which will carry them back to the TARDIS. He sends Peri first and then attempts to time his own jump to arrive at the same time as her.
On the TARDIS, Lt. Lang wakes and finds his gun. He realizes the power pack is missing and goes to find it. He enters the wardrobe and selects a new shirt to replace his damaged one. In the pocket of this new shirt, he finds the power pack. Fully armed, he attempts to figure out how to leave the TARDIS when Peri materializes near the console. She ignores him and turns on the scanner to see the base explode. The Doctor materializes moments later, telling her that he mistimed his jump due to the watch he was using being broken.
The two finally notice Lt. Lang and they bring him up to speed on the situation. He reluctantly agrees to work with them to rescue the twins. The Doctor then takes the TARDIS to Jaconda and is shocked to find the once green world a wasteland. Seeing petrified slime trails, the Doctor realizes that the planet has been taken over by a race of humanoid slugs that were thought to only be part of Jacondan legend.
Reverting into a fit, the Doctor argues against going to the palace to rescue the twins but Lt. Lang forces the Doctor to go. He lands in the basement and the group begins to sneak about, the Doctor pointing out carvings that relay the legend of the slug invasion. The Doctor figures that one of the slug eggs must have survived the great purge many years ago and the slugs grew in force until they could take over. Confirming this theory, two slugs pass by. The group manages to avoid being seen but Lang accidently steps in the slime trail and is stuck, forcing him to try and cut himself out.
Edgeworth and his group land on Jaconda where he sets the twins to work on his plan to bring two outer planets into orbit around Jaconda to act as greenhouses to continuously supply food to Jaconda. Mestor comes down to check on them and attempt to show that his aims are benevolent. Mestor reluctantly agrees to give the twins a full day to work and will refrain from telepathically monitoring Edgeworth. Edgeworth is left alone with the boys and a Jacondan named Drak who is sympathetic to Edgeworth.
Lang manages to cut himself free, but the Doctor goes on ahead of them, still in his regeneration fit. Lang and Peri are discovered by Jacondan guards. Lang is knocked out but Peri is taken to Mestor. Meanwhile the Doctor discovers Edgeworth's lab and attacks him. Drak manages to pull him off and the fit passes. Edgeworth tells the Doctor his plan for moving the planets when a revived Lang burst in, telling the Doctor of Peri's capture. The Doctor, moves to go rescue her but is restrained by Lang and Edgeworth so as to not expose them.
Mestor elects not to kill Peri but does probe her mind and sends his guards to Edgeworth's lab. The guards arrest the Doctor and take him to Mestor, although they miss Lang. In the throne room, the Doctor offers his services to help move the planets based on his experience. Mestor is suspicious but agrees, sending the Doctor and Peri back to the lab.
In the lab, the twins finish their calculations but the Doctor points out a flaw in the plan. As the planets are of lower mass, moving them closer to the sun will eventually cause their orbits to degrade and plunge into the sun. Edgeworth agrees, kicking himself for not seeing this flaw. The Doctor asks to see the hatchery to try and determine what Mestor's real plan is. The eggs seem odd to him and they only respond when heat is applied. He realizes that Mestor's plan is to have the two outer planets plunge into the sun with the resulting plasma explosion destroying Jaconda and sending the now heat bathed eggs across the universe to hatch and infect other worlds.
The Doctor orders the twins to erase their calculations, keeping the knowledge in their heads alone. He orders Lang to take the twins and Peri back to the TARDIS while he and Edgeworth take on Mestor. The Doctor tells Drak to go with Lang but finds Drak dead, Mestor having burned out his mind using him to monitor them. The two groups head out in separate directions, the Doctor taking two vials of chemicals with him.
Lang's group wanders the tunnels looking for the TARDIS. As they approach, the run into Noma and two other guards, sent by Mestor. The twins jump in front, knowing that Mestor needs them alive. The Jacondan hesitation allows Lang to shoot the two guards. Noma gets a shot off and wounds Lang, but he is able to return fire and shoot the gun from Noma's hand. Peri and the twins pick up the dropped guns and hold Noma prisoner.
The Doctor and Edgeworth head to the throne room and the Doctor throws one of his vials at Mestor. Mestor activates a force field to protect himself. He then threatens to take over the Doctor's mind but the Doctor mocks him and invites him. However, instead of the Doctor, Mestor transfers his mind to Edgeworth. Edgeworth fights him and tells the Doctor to destroy Mestor's original body. The Doctor throws his second vial of chemicals, melting Mestor's body. Mestor and Edgeworth continue to fight mentally but the strain is too much and Edgeworth collapses. Unable to retreat to his own body, Mestor's consciousness is ejected from Edgeworth's body and he dissipates, causing all the controlled Jacondans to be released to their normal selves. Edgeworth dies in the Doctor's arms, having used all his regenerations prior to this body.
The Doctor returns to the TARDIS and offers to take the twins back to Earth. Lang elects to stay and become the new Master of Jaconda. Peri wishes him well but the Doctor dismisses him. As they leave in the TARDIS, Peri asks if the Doctor is having another fit to be so rude. The Doctor states that his mind has stabilized and that she is going to have to accept his new brusquer, alien personality.
Analysis
While The Twin Dilemma is not the horrible dreck it is occasionally made out to be, it is not by any means good. The story itself isn't too bad, and there is some potential both in the overall plan and the introduction of the Doctor, but it falls apart in so many other ways that those overwhelm the good aspects of the story.
The limited amount of good things in this story are pretty much the story concept, some of the language structure of the script and the performance of Edgeworth. I did enjoy him throughout the story as he begins with a quiet sinisterness; someone who does not want to harm but will if the situation is necessary. He evolves into a more sympathetic character, having compassion but also still understanding that hard choices must be made. I did enjoy his performance, although his death scene was a bit hokey.
That hokey-ness is just one of the myriad of flaws this story has. You would think that a story that has the Doctor attempting to strangle a companion could only improve from that point, but the story actually gets worse in later episodes. I thought the Doctor's fits were over the top acting but that he was somewhat restrained when operating in his "normal" mode in the beginning. His pomposity was actually somewhat amusing as you adjusted to it. But even his non-fit moments started to take on a silly over-the-top-ness as the story progressed. It then all came to a crashing end in the final scene.
There are certain stories that have been described by fans as moments where the show was overly arrogant in that fans would just accept anything put out by the producers. The final scene of the Doctor talking to Peri is probably one of the worst moments. The Doctor doesn't look directly at the camera like he does at the end of The Caves of Androzani but his telling of Peri that she has no choice and must just accept him is a jab in the eye at the people who watched the show. Even worse is that there is total tone confusion in the scene. As the Doctor speaks, the music goes full minor, giving a dark edge to the scene, almost like a villain making a threat to a hostage. But then he smiles slightly and Peri responds like she just got the joke and that throws further confusion in to the scene. Is she going Stockholm Syndrome? Is this some sort of private joke between them? The scene just doesn't make any sense in what it is trying to accomplish other than to tell people to shut up and not whine about the new Doctor. It is just highly off-putting.
The acting outside of the Doctor and Edgeworth is a real mixed bag. Mestor, although limited by his costume, does a fairly good job. He comes across as fairly sinister and has a real Jabba the Hut angle going, although I think he seems more competent than Jabba. Lang was okay, although not overly memorable. Noma, likewise, did a decent job as the lackey, although I wouldn't call anything about his performance overly distinguishing. The twins were not good, although I didn't think they were as bad as fans say. They seemed like prototypical child actors, limited in scope and emotion, thus coming across as fairly bland. I wouldn't call their performance bad, just boring. As children, that earns them a bit of a pass in my book where as you would be harder on a similar performance from an adult.
Unquestionably, the worst acting comes from Peri. She never, ever, loses the whiney wibble in her voice and she seems genuinely stunted in her emotional range while trying to maintain the American accent. The script takes her all over the place, going from confused, to defiant, to back to submissive. The worst moment is the cliffhanger to Episode Two where she thinks the Doctor has been blown up. She scrunches up her face like she is about to cry but it comes across as so fake looking. I think I have seen better acting in high school dramas for that emotion. It is just absolutely terrible. Her only good moments come when she is standing up and fighting with the Doctor, calling him out on his crap. But she then either retreats too quickly into diminutive status or presses too hard and maintains the anger when it is not required that the overall effect of that momentary good bit is lost in the overplaying of the whole.
The set design wasn't bad, albeit very 1980's and I actually thought the Jacondans didn't look too bad. They had a more real look that you might expect for painting the face of an actor silver. Not the best alien ever seen on the show but far from the worst. Mestor on the other hand was terrible. The slugs in general weren't very good as there should have been a better attempt at making them look like they are slithering rather than shuffling. But Mestor himself was so limited by the terribleness of his mask. The worst part was the large plastic eyes that never moved. So much acting happens in the eyes and to have a creature that is supposed to be this sinister and cunning just stare half cross-eyed whenever being addressed. The costume would have been better served to eliminate any traces of eyes in the front and pretend that his eyes were on the stalks protruding from his head like slugs actually do. That would have made him slightly more unnerving to look at and emphasized his alien-ness. It also doesn't help that after visiting with the twins in Episode Three, you can see several Jacondan extras helping Mestor up the stairs by grabbing his arms. It either is a breaking of the illusion by the acting needing help just to get off the set, or it weakens Mestor's credibility as a villain as he cannot even leave a room without help.
Overall, I can't say that I enjoyed this story. I was feeling open-minded about this story at first and thought that it might be able to overcome some of it's limitations in the beginning. In the first episode and a half, I thought that maybe that fans were a little harsh on this story and that something could be salvaged by it, perhaps able to shoot for something in the 2 to 2.5 range. But it just continued to decline and by the end, I was just glad to be done with it. A decent story attempt but bad acting, mediocre direction, and inconsistency in production drug it down to the depths. Again, I will say that it is not a total loss or that it is dreck of the caliber of Dimensions in Time, but I can't think of any good reason why someone would want to watch this story for a second time. Definitely a poor start for the Sixth Doctor and an awful chaser to the prior story.
Overall personal score: 0.5 out of 5
In just about every episode list that Doctor Who fans put together, three stories consistently sit at the bottom: Time-Flight, The Twin Dilemma and Time and the Rani. The Twin Dilemma is additionally exacerbated given that it is the immediate follow up to The Caves of Androzani, a story that is usually put near the top of most lists. So, taking that all into account, is this story as bad as it's reputation suggests?
Plot Summary
The Doctor, having just regenerated, prepares for a new adventure. Peri, unfamiliar with regeneration is skeptical and is wary of the new version of the Doctor. As he decides on a new outfit, the Doctor begins to go through crisis. He has mental lapses where wild emotion takes control. This blows up in a fit of paranoia where, believing that she is an evil fairy, the Doctor attacks and tries to strangle Peri. She manages to throw him off and when he wakes up to what he has done, decides that he must live as a hermit for a while, setting course for the asteroid Titan 3.
Meanwhile two mathematically gifted twins, Romulus and Remus Sylveste, are attending to their lessons, having been left alone for the evening by their parents. They are visited by an old man named Professor Edgeworth who uses a patch to hypnotize them and transports them to an alien spacecraft. Edgeworth has the boys locked in a room and contacts his employer, Mestor a giant slug, who orders them to head to the base on Titan 3.
The boy's father, Professor Sylveste, returns early and finds the boys gone. He also discovers a trace element in the floor and alerts the authorities that the boys have been kidnapped. The authorities launch an immediate search and one patrol ship discovers the freighter the boys are on. They are immediately alerted as the freighter was reported destroyed earlier that year and then jumps into warp drive, despite not being equipped with that capability.
The fighter squadron follows the freighter. When the freighter lands on Titan 3, the boys are taken the base. Mestor contacts Edgeworth and orders the boys to work. He also orders Edgeworth to destroy the pursuing fighters. Edgeworth does so though the squad leader, Lt. Lang, survives the crash. Disturbed by the loss of the squadron, the ministry on Earth orders any further pursuit called off.
The Doctor and Peri find Lang and bring him into the TARDIS. The Doctor chastises Peri for wanting to leave before they found him. Peri angrily rebuffs the Doctor for his own posturing. The noise of the argument brings Lang to his senses and he pulls a gun on the Doctor, believing him to be reason his squadron was destroyed. Peri pleads with Lang, who then collapses again. The Doctor takes away his gun and orders Peri to hide the power cell. At her urging, he reluctantly begins to tend to the man to save his life.
Professor Edgeworth sets the twins to a new set of calculations while he also sets his crew about to inspect the ship and the base. He updates Mestor on their progress as well and is ordered to come back to Jocanda once the ship is repaired. The twins balk at their assignments, but Mestor, who is telepathic, enters their minds and threatens their lives if they do not work.
Having tended to Lt. Lang's life, the Doctor and Peri leave the TARDIS and proceed to the hidden base. They discover a service passage and enter. In the corridors, the Doctor has a regeneration fit and the noise and his subsequent inaction attracts the attention of the Jacondans sent to make repairs. They take the Doctor and Peri back to Edgeworth in the main control room, where Edgeworth has just finished a cycle of cellular reconstruction in a side machine.
The Doctor recognizes Edgeworth as Azmael, the former ruler of Jocanda whom he befriended as the Fourth Doctor. Edgeworth does not recognize the Doctor but believes him and elects to merely leave him prisoner on Titan 3. This angers Noma, Edgeworth's second-in-command and he silently triggers the self destruct system for the base. Edgeworth, the twins and the Jocandans teleport to their ship, having locked the Doctor in and scrambled the teleporter.
The Doctor begins to try and figure the combination for the lock when Peri discovers the self destruct mechanism. The Doctor then changes plans and reconfigures the cellular reconstructor to act as a time teleporter which will carry them back to the TARDIS. He sends Peri first and then attempts to time his own jump to arrive at the same time as her.
On the TARDIS, Lt. Lang wakes and finds his gun. He realizes the power pack is missing and goes to find it. He enters the wardrobe and selects a new shirt to replace his damaged one. In the pocket of this new shirt, he finds the power pack. Fully armed, he attempts to figure out how to leave the TARDIS when Peri materializes near the console. She ignores him and turns on the scanner to see the base explode. The Doctor materializes moments later, telling her that he mistimed his jump due to the watch he was using being broken.
The two finally notice Lt. Lang and they bring him up to speed on the situation. He reluctantly agrees to work with them to rescue the twins. The Doctor then takes the TARDIS to Jaconda and is shocked to find the once green world a wasteland. Seeing petrified slime trails, the Doctor realizes that the planet has been taken over by a race of humanoid slugs that were thought to only be part of Jacondan legend.
Reverting into a fit, the Doctor argues against going to the palace to rescue the twins but Lt. Lang forces the Doctor to go. He lands in the basement and the group begins to sneak about, the Doctor pointing out carvings that relay the legend of the slug invasion. The Doctor figures that one of the slug eggs must have survived the great purge many years ago and the slugs grew in force until they could take over. Confirming this theory, two slugs pass by. The group manages to avoid being seen but Lang accidently steps in the slime trail and is stuck, forcing him to try and cut himself out.
Edgeworth and his group land on Jaconda where he sets the twins to work on his plan to bring two outer planets into orbit around Jaconda to act as greenhouses to continuously supply food to Jaconda. Mestor comes down to check on them and attempt to show that his aims are benevolent. Mestor reluctantly agrees to give the twins a full day to work and will refrain from telepathically monitoring Edgeworth. Edgeworth is left alone with the boys and a Jacondan named Drak who is sympathetic to Edgeworth.
Lang manages to cut himself free, but the Doctor goes on ahead of them, still in his regeneration fit. Lang and Peri are discovered by Jacondan guards. Lang is knocked out but Peri is taken to Mestor. Meanwhile the Doctor discovers Edgeworth's lab and attacks him. Drak manages to pull him off and the fit passes. Edgeworth tells the Doctor his plan for moving the planets when a revived Lang burst in, telling the Doctor of Peri's capture. The Doctor, moves to go rescue her but is restrained by Lang and Edgeworth so as to not expose them.
Mestor elects not to kill Peri but does probe her mind and sends his guards to Edgeworth's lab. The guards arrest the Doctor and take him to Mestor, although they miss Lang. In the throne room, the Doctor offers his services to help move the planets based on his experience. Mestor is suspicious but agrees, sending the Doctor and Peri back to the lab.
In the lab, the twins finish their calculations but the Doctor points out a flaw in the plan. As the planets are of lower mass, moving them closer to the sun will eventually cause their orbits to degrade and plunge into the sun. Edgeworth agrees, kicking himself for not seeing this flaw. The Doctor asks to see the hatchery to try and determine what Mestor's real plan is. The eggs seem odd to him and they only respond when heat is applied. He realizes that Mestor's plan is to have the two outer planets plunge into the sun with the resulting plasma explosion destroying Jaconda and sending the now heat bathed eggs across the universe to hatch and infect other worlds.
The Doctor orders the twins to erase their calculations, keeping the knowledge in their heads alone. He orders Lang to take the twins and Peri back to the TARDIS while he and Edgeworth take on Mestor. The Doctor tells Drak to go with Lang but finds Drak dead, Mestor having burned out his mind using him to monitor them. The two groups head out in separate directions, the Doctor taking two vials of chemicals with him.
Lang's group wanders the tunnels looking for the TARDIS. As they approach, the run into Noma and two other guards, sent by Mestor. The twins jump in front, knowing that Mestor needs them alive. The Jacondan hesitation allows Lang to shoot the two guards. Noma gets a shot off and wounds Lang, but he is able to return fire and shoot the gun from Noma's hand. Peri and the twins pick up the dropped guns and hold Noma prisoner.
The Doctor and Edgeworth head to the throne room and the Doctor throws one of his vials at Mestor. Mestor activates a force field to protect himself. He then threatens to take over the Doctor's mind but the Doctor mocks him and invites him. However, instead of the Doctor, Mestor transfers his mind to Edgeworth. Edgeworth fights him and tells the Doctor to destroy Mestor's original body. The Doctor throws his second vial of chemicals, melting Mestor's body. Mestor and Edgeworth continue to fight mentally but the strain is too much and Edgeworth collapses. Unable to retreat to his own body, Mestor's consciousness is ejected from Edgeworth's body and he dissipates, causing all the controlled Jacondans to be released to their normal selves. Edgeworth dies in the Doctor's arms, having used all his regenerations prior to this body.
The Doctor returns to the TARDIS and offers to take the twins back to Earth. Lang elects to stay and become the new Master of Jaconda. Peri wishes him well but the Doctor dismisses him. As they leave in the TARDIS, Peri asks if the Doctor is having another fit to be so rude. The Doctor states that his mind has stabilized and that she is going to have to accept his new brusquer, alien personality.
Analysis
While The Twin Dilemma is not the horrible dreck it is occasionally made out to be, it is not by any means good. The story itself isn't too bad, and there is some potential both in the overall plan and the introduction of the Doctor, but it falls apart in so many other ways that those overwhelm the good aspects of the story.
The limited amount of good things in this story are pretty much the story concept, some of the language structure of the script and the performance of Edgeworth. I did enjoy him throughout the story as he begins with a quiet sinisterness; someone who does not want to harm but will if the situation is necessary. He evolves into a more sympathetic character, having compassion but also still understanding that hard choices must be made. I did enjoy his performance, although his death scene was a bit hokey.
That hokey-ness is just one of the myriad of flaws this story has. You would think that a story that has the Doctor attempting to strangle a companion could only improve from that point, but the story actually gets worse in later episodes. I thought the Doctor's fits were over the top acting but that he was somewhat restrained when operating in his "normal" mode in the beginning. His pomposity was actually somewhat amusing as you adjusted to it. But even his non-fit moments started to take on a silly over-the-top-ness as the story progressed. It then all came to a crashing end in the final scene.
There are certain stories that have been described by fans as moments where the show was overly arrogant in that fans would just accept anything put out by the producers. The final scene of the Doctor talking to Peri is probably one of the worst moments. The Doctor doesn't look directly at the camera like he does at the end of The Caves of Androzani but his telling of Peri that she has no choice and must just accept him is a jab in the eye at the people who watched the show. Even worse is that there is total tone confusion in the scene. As the Doctor speaks, the music goes full minor, giving a dark edge to the scene, almost like a villain making a threat to a hostage. But then he smiles slightly and Peri responds like she just got the joke and that throws further confusion in to the scene. Is she going Stockholm Syndrome? Is this some sort of private joke between them? The scene just doesn't make any sense in what it is trying to accomplish other than to tell people to shut up and not whine about the new Doctor. It is just highly off-putting.
The acting outside of the Doctor and Edgeworth is a real mixed bag. Mestor, although limited by his costume, does a fairly good job. He comes across as fairly sinister and has a real Jabba the Hut angle going, although I think he seems more competent than Jabba. Lang was okay, although not overly memorable. Noma, likewise, did a decent job as the lackey, although I wouldn't call anything about his performance overly distinguishing. The twins were not good, although I didn't think they were as bad as fans say. They seemed like prototypical child actors, limited in scope and emotion, thus coming across as fairly bland. I wouldn't call their performance bad, just boring. As children, that earns them a bit of a pass in my book where as you would be harder on a similar performance from an adult.
Unquestionably, the worst acting comes from Peri. She never, ever, loses the whiney wibble in her voice and she seems genuinely stunted in her emotional range while trying to maintain the American accent. The script takes her all over the place, going from confused, to defiant, to back to submissive. The worst moment is the cliffhanger to Episode Two where she thinks the Doctor has been blown up. She scrunches up her face like she is about to cry but it comes across as so fake looking. I think I have seen better acting in high school dramas for that emotion. It is just absolutely terrible. Her only good moments come when she is standing up and fighting with the Doctor, calling him out on his crap. But she then either retreats too quickly into diminutive status or presses too hard and maintains the anger when it is not required that the overall effect of that momentary good bit is lost in the overplaying of the whole.
The set design wasn't bad, albeit very 1980's and I actually thought the Jacondans didn't look too bad. They had a more real look that you might expect for painting the face of an actor silver. Not the best alien ever seen on the show but far from the worst. Mestor on the other hand was terrible. The slugs in general weren't very good as there should have been a better attempt at making them look like they are slithering rather than shuffling. But Mestor himself was so limited by the terribleness of his mask. The worst part was the large plastic eyes that never moved. So much acting happens in the eyes and to have a creature that is supposed to be this sinister and cunning just stare half cross-eyed whenever being addressed. The costume would have been better served to eliminate any traces of eyes in the front and pretend that his eyes were on the stalks protruding from his head like slugs actually do. That would have made him slightly more unnerving to look at and emphasized his alien-ness. It also doesn't help that after visiting with the twins in Episode Three, you can see several Jacondan extras helping Mestor up the stairs by grabbing his arms. It either is a breaking of the illusion by the acting needing help just to get off the set, or it weakens Mestor's credibility as a villain as he cannot even leave a room without help.
Overall, I can't say that I enjoyed this story. I was feeling open-minded about this story at first and thought that it might be able to overcome some of it's limitations in the beginning. In the first episode and a half, I thought that maybe that fans were a little harsh on this story and that something could be salvaged by it, perhaps able to shoot for something in the 2 to 2.5 range. But it just continued to decline and by the end, I was just glad to be done with it. A decent story attempt but bad acting, mediocre direction, and inconsistency in production drug it down to the depths. Again, I will say that it is not a total loss or that it is dreck of the caliber of Dimensions in Time, but I can't think of any good reason why someone would want to watch this story for a second time. Definitely a poor start for the Sixth Doctor and an awful chaser to the prior story.
Overall personal score: 0.5 out of 5
Monday, October 3, 2016
Kinda
You will agree to be me, sooner or later, this side of Magnus or the other.
Kinda is another one of those stories that seems to leave fandom fairly divided. The story is fairly deep and somewhat surrealistic, not something that is going to immediately appeal to kids, hence it's divided reputation. Limitations to the set design and props budget also drag this story down in the eyes of some fans. I however am always up for a good bit of surrealism so let's see what we can make of this one.
Plot Summary
The Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric land on the planet Deva Loka following Nyssa's fainting spell. The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to set up a delta wave generator and puts Nyssa to sleep for 48 hours. While she sleeps, the others walk through the jungle and come across a set of crystalline wind chimes. Adric wanders off the Doctor follows but Tegan stays by the chimes, the music having a hypnotic effect on her, lulling her to sleep.
Adric and the Doctor find a mobile exo-suit which Adric accidentally activates. The suit escorts them to an outpost where they are taken in by a military expedition. The expedition is led by Sanders, an old military man. The security chief is Hindle and the scientist is a woman named Todd. Three other people came on the expedition but have disappeared, one of whom left the suit that escorted them there.
Sanders and Todd take the Doctor and Adric in and inform them both of their mission (scouting for possible colonization) and the concerns for the missing crew members. Hindle, growing increasingly erratic as the mission progresses, is deeply distrustful of the newcomers. Todd shows the Doctor two of the locals (the Kinda) that they have taken hostage. The Kinda never speak and live a primitive lifestyle, but they are decorated with the image of the double helix, suggesting a less primitive mind than initial impressions give.
Tegan, still entranced in the jungle, goes into her own mind where she becomes lost in darkness with shadow images questioning reality. She is confronted by a young man with a snake tattoo who pushes his mind on hers, going so far as to create an identical Tegan and posing the question as to which Tegan is real and which is his creation.
Hindle calls Todd and the Doctor back to the main hall but becomes enraged after they leave, smashing most of her lab. He becomes mesmerized by the two Kinda hostages when he views them in a mirror and releases them from their cell. Sanders leaves to go on patrol and leaves Hindle in charge over the objections of Todd. After Sanders leaves, Hindle arrests the three of them, pulling a gun on them as well as arming the two Kinda. He places them in the holding cell overnight.
In the jungle, an old blind woman named Panna is waiting with a young girl. Unlike the other Kinda, she speaks and expresses the danger of the non-Kinda (referred to as the "not-we"). One young man named Aris, who had been spying the expedition as his brother was taken as a hostage, comes to the old woman who warns him to stay away and be patient. He leaves as the sound of Sanders' exo-suit approaches. As he enters the clearing, the young girl gives Sanders a wooden box. He hesitantly accepts it and opens it.
Back in the habitat, Hindle allows the prisoners to come out to see if they will join him. He declares that the trees are going against them and that they will have to sterilize at a radius of 50 miles using fire and acid. The Doctor tries to talk Hindle down but as he is clearly unhinged but Hindle refuses to listen. Adric says that he will help Hindle and he is allowed to stay and work while the Doctor and Todd are returned to the cell.
In Tegan's mind, she continues to struggle with her identity. The young man plays with her some more and then disappears, as she loses herself in the dark. Frightened, Tegan calls out and agrees to the young man's demands. He reappears and shakes her hand. As he does so, the image of the snake on his arm crosses over to hers. She wakes up in the jungle with the image of the snake on her arm. She wanders around the site until Aris appears. He too becomes mesmerized by the chimes and Tegan surprises him. She speaks to him, telling him that she can give him the power to rescue his brother. He accepts and she takes his hand, allowing the snake to pass from her arm to his.
In the control room, Adric palms a set of key cards from Hindle's desk. He attempts to pass them to the Doctor, but is spotted by Hindle. All are taken out of the cage to watch as Adric is punished for theft. Sanders then returns, catching Hindle off guard. As Sanders enters, he is not his normal self. He is much happier and looser. He gives Hindle the same wooden box and tells him to open it. Hindle refuses and further unnerved by this, he locks Sanders up along with the Doctor and Todd. Over the video, he orders the Doctor to open the box.
At first the box seems to contain nothing other than a spring joke. However, both Todd and the Doctor feel a surge of energy. It drains power from the base and opens the cage. They both have a vision of the Kinda and the old woman Panna beckoning them to her cave. Taking advantage of the loss of power and Hindle's location in the main control room, Todd and the Doctor flee into the jungle, Sanders being left behind in a trance.
As the power comes back, Hindle becomes even more concerned about the outside world. He orders that explosives be set up around the base to prevent anyone from attacking as they and all of them will be blown up. Sanders gleefully helps, having been taken out of his normal mind by the powers of the box. Adric tries to object and even leave but he is kept in place by the Kinda guards.
The Doctor and Todd wander through the jungle until they come upon the Kinda. They make friendly with a jester to show they are friendly, which pleases the Kinda. However, Aris comes upon them and orders their capture and death. The Kinda are taken back as no man has the power of speech. The Kinda become convinced that Aris is the fulfillment of a prophecy saying that a man would be given a voice when the "not we" arrive. The girl who helped Panna doesn't believe it and takes the Doctor and Todd to Panna's cave.
Arriving at the cave, Panna takes Todd in but is confused by the Doctor being able to receive the vision as well. She refers to him as an idiot and brings him inside as well. Before she can begin her ritual, Aris and the other Kinda arrive. The girl joins them after opening her mind and being overcome by the power of Aris' thought. Aris then leaves, planning to destroy the base and the "not we".
The Doctor notes the snake marking on Aris' arm and Panna states that it is the sign of the Mara, a legend the Doctor is familiar with. Panna begins a vision for the Doctor and Todd where they see clocks ticking down and violence beginning to consume the Kinda, leading to their destruction. They emerge from the vision to find that Panna is dead. However, the girl returns and takes Panna's staff and beckons them on, having become the new repository for Panna's consciousness.
The group makes their way towards the base but pass near the wind chimes to find Tegan, still asleep. They wake her and discern that the Mara seems to have fully passed out of her. She reluctantly tells them of her dreams, including a hazy vision of when she was fully possessed by the Mara. Using her story, they confirm that the Mara has entered and is in full control of Aris.
In the base, Hindle, Sanders, and Adric continue to build a model city. Adric becomes more and more agitated with their behavior and manages to slip away. Sanders follows but as he is also witless, he makes no effort to stop him and returns to Hindle. Adric slips in to the exo-suit and leaves the base.
Aris leads the Kinda outside the base and has them build a box similar to the exo-suit out of wood. As Adric emerges, the Kinda move to engage it, but unfamiliar with fighting, they run away when Adric panics and engages the weapons system. Aris' box is damaged and he runs into the jungle. Adric is unable to stop the exo-suit but the Doctor manages to pull him before he injures himself or others. The young girl, Karuna, gathers the scattered Kinda while the Doctor, Todd, Adric and Tegan enter the base.
The Doctor and Todd confront Hindle while Adric and Tegan wait in the bay, Adric agitated at his inability to disarm the explosives. The Doctor and Todd try to calm Hindle down by complimenting his new city but he is wise to their attempts to take the detonator. He admits that he is able to control the two captive Kinda through a mirror which they believe had trapped their souls. The Doctor makes a grab for the detonator, which knocks down part of the model city but also destroys the mirror.
Angry at the partial destruction of the city, Hindle threatens to activate the explosives when Todd discovers the box given by the Kinda. She tricks Hindle into opening it and the psychic power within knocks him out but also drives the madness from his mind. The Doctor disarms the explosives and the two captive Kinda flee outside to the rest of their people.
The mirror gives the Doctor an idea and Adric shows the Doctor to a storage bay filled with solar collector panels. He gives the panels to the Kinda and has them lure Aris into the middle of a circle of them. Once in the circle, the Kinda flip the panels and they become a circle of mirrors. The Mara, unable to look at itself thrashes and leaves Aris' body. Two Kinda pull his body from the circle while the Doctor closes the gap. The Mara snake inflates, trying to find a way out of the circle but cannot. Unable to look at itself, it loses power and disappears back into the realm of thought.
Karuna restores sanity to Hindle and Sanders and Todd prepares a final report noting that the planet is unsuitable for colonization, although Sanders makes noises about retiring here. The Doctor, Adric and Tegan head back to the TARDIS where Nyssa has just woken. The group then departs, filling Nyssa in on their adventure.
Analysis
There are two general categories of Doctor Who stories, whether you like that particular story or not: ones that you can pop in at any time and enjoy and ones that you have to be in a specific mood for. Kinda might be the extreme example of a story that you have to be in the right mood for. This is a deep story with a lot of the plot and development left to the audience to figure out. I like that, but I can see how someone would decide that they are not in the mood for that at any particular point.
There were two movies that popped into my head while I was watching this story. Tegan's surrealistic dreams reminded me a great deal of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead with the absurdism and yet sinister surrealism. The scene of the circle of mirrors driving the snake out of Aris struck me strongly of the knight of the mirrors scene in the movie version of Man of La Mancha where Don Quixote is forced to confront the reality of who he actually is by viewing himself in a circle of mirrors. As I enjoy both of those movies, I didn't see a detriment to either comparison.
Overall, this story is quite good. It is well acted for the most part while the story is complex but doesn't feel the need the lead you by the nose. If I were more versed in Eastern philosophy and mysticism, I would probably understand a bit more of the story, but I enjoyed it well enough even without it.
The women were the real stars of this story. Todd worked very well as the Doctor's pseudo-companion, to the point that I think many would have been happy if she had come along and Tegan and Adric got left behind. Todd is inquisitive as a companion should be, but she has a strong independent streak. She also has an instantly good rapport with the Doctor, to the point that they trust and interact well with each other in a very short span of time. In many ways, Todd was channeling the stronger companions of the Fourth Doctor era as she seemed a nice blend of the spunkiness of Sarah Jane and the intelligence and logic of Romana.
I also really enjoyed Panna. She was direct and had a "I'm too old to take your s***" vibe. I loved the fact that not only did she constantly call the Doctor and idiot, but she didn't even allow him to go into his jokes about being an idiot. The first time she did, I couldn't help but think of the Twelfth Doctor's speech near the end of Death in Heaven where he confesses that he is an idiot in a box.
This was also a decent story for Tegan, although only in the first two episodes. Attempting to find logic and devolving into a panicked state actually made sense in her nightmare. I also thought she played well off the trickster form of the Mara who had a bit of a King Joffery vibe going on, although in much more psychological way. I also enjoyed possessed Tegan as it gave her a few scenes of sinister fun. Her chucking apples at Aris was also a fun bit of Biblical parallel given her femininity and the snake symbolism.
Unfortunately, Tegan's good run comes to an end once the Mara enters Aris. She gets a good little nap in Episode Three and then is back to her normal self in Four. I think she is attempting to express shame, though not really knowing why but her interaction with the Doctor still seems rather odd. Her scenes with Adric in the dome are also pretty bad but Adric bears more of the blame for the quality of those scenes.
The expedition men are pretty good as well. Sanders is old school colonel at first like you would expect in some Agatha Christie movie. Then he turns on a dime to a playful child who enjoys building castles out of boxes. Hindle is also quite good. He edges close to the line of overdoing the performance of a madman at a few points but he dials it back now and again. There is an interesting inconsistence in his performance as well. When threatened, he goes into hysterical shrieking about how everyone (including the trees) is against him. But in a secure moment, he lapses into a child-like state about how they are going to fix everything. It feels more genuine because you can't predict what form the madness is going to take. One of the best moments, both in performance and because of how it expresses the situation, is when the castle is knocked over and one of the paper men is torn. Hindle is broken up and when Todd suggests they can fix it, Hindle shrieks about how you can't fix people. It sums up the whole moment in one quick scene.
Unfortunately, like many of the Fifth Doctor stories, a strong pseudo-companion and good guest cast means that the regular companions are once again shown to be terrible. Tegan does a bit better but her interaction with Adric brings her back to the annoying level of whininess that we have seen in prior stories. Nyssa is non-descript as Christopher Bailey wrote the script without knowing that she would be a companion. So she is conveniently left in the TARDIS for the whole story. That you don't miss her speaks volumes of the typical contributions of her character.
Adric is also not in a good state in this one. He doesn't listen to the Doctor and despite earning the confidence of the Doctor to be left behind, does nothing with it. He contributes nothing in his plan to gain Hindle's confidence and ends up spending all that time just trying to escape himself. When he does finally succeed, the Doctor is forced to rescue him before he kills someone and harms himself in the process. The worst moment though is waiting in the bay with Tegan. Adric whines like a spoiled child about being left behind and lashes out at Tegan. I'm actually surprised that Tegan doesn't slap him silly for his arrogance and blame-shifting.
I like the overall story. I like an enemy that is more abstract and less corporeal. I don't quite get why the Kinda would have the wind chime area given that the Mara could manifest in those unprepared by the powers of the chimes. Perhaps it was a prison set up for the Mara and only when outsiders came in was there a risk of escape for the Mara. But regardless, an enemy working from within to destroy innocence strictly as a means to manifest evil is an interesting concept for a story.
It is also interesting to juxtapose the imagery of the Mara attempting to drive Tegan man into accepting it and then the madness manifested in it's possession of Aris with Hindle's genuine madness through mental overtaxing. Despite the Mara being the enemy, Hindle always seems to be more of the threat as his madness is inherently both self-destructive and uncontrollable. It is a pure representation of chaos while the Mara is an agent of chaos but still bound by the limits of the vessel in which it operates. When Aris leads the Kinda, there is an implied threat but the actions of Aris are shown to be incompetent and the Kinda desert him when their own innocence is threatened by something they don't understand. Although threatening, the Mara seems weak and the battle against the Mara is more for the saving of Aris and potentially others like him rather than for the society of the Kinda as is implied in Episode Three.
Now, on the subject of the Mara, that ties in to one of the limitations of this story: the effects. The setting of the story isn't bad nor are the costumes, but there does seem to be some problem with the atmosphere. It is very hard to shake the feeling that all of this is taking place in a studio and I'm not sure if it's the set design or the lighting or what, but there are moments where you are taken out by something that doesn't seem right. There is also a very 1980's look to everyone that I'm sure is difficult to avoid, but it still looks a bit off.
But the worst offender from an effects standpoint is the final manifestation of the Mara. The Mara emerges from Aris and the team does a decent job with a rubber snake to give it a real and thrashing look. However, the snake continues to grow and it looks like the inflated balloon that it is. There are flashes and quick cuts that help, but it still is pretty obvious that the Mara is closely related to an inflatable streamer seen outside a used car lot. I'm sure they were attempting to make the Mara scary but even if the effects are good, there is a logical flaw. If the Mara is towering over the Kinda mirrors, how is it still managing to look at itself? At that size and height, it should have been able to break eye contact with the mirrors and break out of the circle. The story and effect would work much better if a smaller snake (perhaps like a python) were thrashing about but still contained within the height of the mirrors. I can handle less than stellar effects but this was just a point that didn't seem to make sense from a logic point of view.
Taking the story as a whole, this was quite good. Again, I can understand why some might not care for it and I also would have to say that I would need to be in more of a thinking mood rather than a more mindless mood to enjoy it. But I did enjoy it this time around and I see no reason why I wouldn't continue to enjoy it a second time around. It's not a perfect story, but it is nice to get a real thinker of a story now and again. I'm sure on a second pass I would get even more out of it knowing what little things to look for.
Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5
Kinda is another one of those stories that seems to leave fandom fairly divided. The story is fairly deep and somewhat surrealistic, not something that is going to immediately appeal to kids, hence it's divided reputation. Limitations to the set design and props budget also drag this story down in the eyes of some fans. I however am always up for a good bit of surrealism so let's see what we can make of this one.
Plot Summary
The Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric land on the planet Deva Loka following Nyssa's fainting spell. The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to set up a delta wave generator and puts Nyssa to sleep for 48 hours. While she sleeps, the others walk through the jungle and come across a set of crystalline wind chimes. Adric wanders off the Doctor follows but Tegan stays by the chimes, the music having a hypnotic effect on her, lulling her to sleep.
Adric and the Doctor find a mobile exo-suit which Adric accidentally activates. The suit escorts them to an outpost where they are taken in by a military expedition. The expedition is led by Sanders, an old military man. The security chief is Hindle and the scientist is a woman named Todd. Three other people came on the expedition but have disappeared, one of whom left the suit that escorted them there.
Sanders and Todd take the Doctor and Adric in and inform them both of their mission (scouting for possible colonization) and the concerns for the missing crew members. Hindle, growing increasingly erratic as the mission progresses, is deeply distrustful of the newcomers. Todd shows the Doctor two of the locals (the Kinda) that they have taken hostage. The Kinda never speak and live a primitive lifestyle, but they are decorated with the image of the double helix, suggesting a less primitive mind than initial impressions give.
Tegan, still entranced in the jungle, goes into her own mind where she becomes lost in darkness with shadow images questioning reality. She is confronted by a young man with a snake tattoo who pushes his mind on hers, going so far as to create an identical Tegan and posing the question as to which Tegan is real and which is his creation.
Hindle calls Todd and the Doctor back to the main hall but becomes enraged after they leave, smashing most of her lab. He becomes mesmerized by the two Kinda hostages when he views them in a mirror and releases them from their cell. Sanders leaves to go on patrol and leaves Hindle in charge over the objections of Todd. After Sanders leaves, Hindle arrests the three of them, pulling a gun on them as well as arming the two Kinda. He places them in the holding cell overnight.
In the jungle, an old blind woman named Panna is waiting with a young girl. Unlike the other Kinda, she speaks and expresses the danger of the non-Kinda (referred to as the "not-we"). One young man named Aris, who had been spying the expedition as his brother was taken as a hostage, comes to the old woman who warns him to stay away and be patient. He leaves as the sound of Sanders' exo-suit approaches. As he enters the clearing, the young girl gives Sanders a wooden box. He hesitantly accepts it and opens it.
Back in the habitat, Hindle allows the prisoners to come out to see if they will join him. He declares that the trees are going against them and that they will have to sterilize at a radius of 50 miles using fire and acid. The Doctor tries to talk Hindle down but as he is clearly unhinged but Hindle refuses to listen. Adric says that he will help Hindle and he is allowed to stay and work while the Doctor and Todd are returned to the cell.
In Tegan's mind, she continues to struggle with her identity. The young man plays with her some more and then disappears, as she loses herself in the dark. Frightened, Tegan calls out and agrees to the young man's demands. He reappears and shakes her hand. As he does so, the image of the snake on his arm crosses over to hers. She wakes up in the jungle with the image of the snake on her arm. She wanders around the site until Aris appears. He too becomes mesmerized by the chimes and Tegan surprises him. She speaks to him, telling him that she can give him the power to rescue his brother. He accepts and she takes his hand, allowing the snake to pass from her arm to his.
In the control room, Adric palms a set of key cards from Hindle's desk. He attempts to pass them to the Doctor, but is spotted by Hindle. All are taken out of the cage to watch as Adric is punished for theft. Sanders then returns, catching Hindle off guard. As Sanders enters, he is not his normal self. He is much happier and looser. He gives Hindle the same wooden box and tells him to open it. Hindle refuses and further unnerved by this, he locks Sanders up along with the Doctor and Todd. Over the video, he orders the Doctor to open the box.
At first the box seems to contain nothing other than a spring joke. However, both Todd and the Doctor feel a surge of energy. It drains power from the base and opens the cage. They both have a vision of the Kinda and the old woman Panna beckoning them to her cave. Taking advantage of the loss of power and Hindle's location in the main control room, Todd and the Doctor flee into the jungle, Sanders being left behind in a trance.
As the power comes back, Hindle becomes even more concerned about the outside world. He orders that explosives be set up around the base to prevent anyone from attacking as they and all of them will be blown up. Sanders gleefully helps, having been taken out of his normal mind by the powers of the box. Adric tries to object and even leave but he is kept in place by the Kinda guards.
The Doctor and Todd wander through the jungle until they come upon the Kinda. They make friendly with a jester to show they are friendly, which pleases the Kinda. However, Aris comes upon them and orders their capture and death. The Kinda are taken back as no man has the power of speech. The Kinda become convinced that Aris is the fulfillment of a prophecy saying that a man would be given a voice when the "not we" arrive. The girl who helped Panna doesn't believe it and takes the Doctor and Todd to Panna's cave.
Arriving at the cave, Panna takes Todd in but is confused by the Doctor being able to receive the vision as well. She refers to him as an idiot and brings him inside as well. Before she can begin her ritual, Aris and the other Kinda arrive. The girl joins them after opening her mind and being overcome by the power of Aris' thought. Aris then leaves, planning to destroy the base and the "not we".
The Doctor notes the snake marking on Aris' arm and Panna states that it is the sign of the Mara, a legend the Doctor is familiar with. Panna begins a vision for the Doctor and Todd where they see clocks ticking down and violence beginning to consume the Kinda, leading to their destruction. They emerge from the vision to find that Panna is dead. However, the girl returns and takes Panna's staff and beckons them on, having become the new repository for Panna's consciousness.
The group makes their way towards the base but pass near the wind chimes to find Tegan, still asleep. They wake her and discern that the Mara seems to have fully passed out of her. She reluctantly tells them of her dreams, including a hazy vision of when she was fully possessed by the Mara. Using her story, they confirm that the Mara has entered and is in full control of Aris.
In the base, Hindle, Sanders, and Adric continue to build a model city. Adric becomes more and more agitated with their behavior and manages to slip away. Sanders follows but as he is also witless, he makes no effort to stop him and returns to Hindle. Adric slips in to the exo-suit and leaves the base.
Aris leads the Kinda outside the base and has them build a box similar to the exo-suit out of wood. As Adric emerges, the Kinda move to engage it, but unfamiliar with fighting, they run away when Adric panics and engages the weapons system. Aris' box is damaged and he runs into the jungle. Adric is unable to stop the exo-suit but the Doctor manages to pull him before he injures himself or others. The young girl, Karuna, gathers the scattered Kinda while the Doctor, Todd, Adric and Tegan enter the base.
The Doctor and Todd confront Hindle while Adric and Tegan wait in the bay, Adric agitated at his inability to disarm the explosives. The Doctor and Todd try to calm Hindle down by complimenting his new city but he is wise to their attempts to take the detonator. He admits that he is able to control the two captive Kinda through a mirror which they believe had trapped their souls. The Doctor makes a grab for the detonator, which knocks down part of the model city but also destroys the mirror.
Angry at the partial destruction of the city, Hindle threatens to activate the explosives when Todd discovers the box given by the Kinda. She tricks Hindle into opening it and the psychic power within knocks him out but also drives the madness from his mind. The Doctor disarms the explosives and the two captive Kinda flee outside to the rest of their people.
The mirror gives the Doctor an idea and Adric shows the Doctor to a storage bay filled with solar collector panels. He gives the panels to the Kinda and has them lure Aris into the middle of a circle of them. Once in the circle, the Kinda flip the panels and they become a circle of mirrors. The Mara, unable to look at itself thrashes and leaves Aris' body. Two Kinda pull his body from the circle while the Doctor closes the gap. The Mara snake inflates, trying to find a way out of the circle but cannot. Unable to look at itself, it loses power and disappears back into the realm of thought.
Karuna restores sanity to Hindle and Sanders and Todd prepares a final report noting that the planet is unsuitable for colonization, although Sanders makes noises about retiring here. The Doctor, Adric and Tegan head back to the TARDIS where Nyssa has just woken. The group then departs, filling Nyssa in on their adventure.
Analysis
There are two general categories of Doctor Who stories, whether you like that particular story or not: ones that you can pop in at any time and enjoy and ones that you have to be in a specific mood for. Kinda might be the extreme example of a story that you have to be in the right mood for. This is a deep story with a lot of the plot and development left to the audience to figure out. I like that, but I can see how someone would decide that they are not in the mood for that at any particular point.
There were two movies that popped into my head while I was watching this story. Tegan's surrealistic dreams reminded me a great deal of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead with the absurdism and yet sinister surrealism. The scene of the circle of mirrors driving the snake out of Aris struck me strongly of the knight of the mirrors scene in the movie version of Man of La Mancha where Don Quixote is forced to confront the reality of who he actually is by viewing himself in a circle of mirrors. As I enjoy both of those movies, I didn't see a detriment to either comparison.
Overall, this story is quite good. It is well acted for the most part while the story is complex but doesn't feel the need the lead you by the nose. If I were more versed in Eastern philosophy and mysticism, I would probably understand a bit more of the story, but I enjoyed it well enough even without it.
The women were the real stars of this story. Todd worked very well as the Doctor's pseudo-companion, to the point that I think many would have been happy if she had come along and Tegan and Adric got left behind. Todd is inquisitive as a companion should be, but she has a strong independent streak. She also has an instantly good rapport with the Doctor, to the point that they trust and interact well with each other in a very short span of time. In many ways, Todd was channeling the stronger companions of the Fourth Doctor era as she seemed a nice blend of the spunkiness of Sarah Jane and the intelligence and logic of Romana.
I also really enjoyed Panna. She was direct and had a "I'm too old to take your s***" vibe. I loved the fact that not only did she constantly call the Doctor and idiot, but she didn't even allow him to go into his jokes about being an idiot. The first time she did, I couldn't help but think of the Twelfth Doctor's speech near the end of Death in Heaven where he confesses that he is an idiot in a box.
This was also a decent story for Tegan, although only in the first two episodes. Attempting to find logic and devolving into a panicked state actually made sense in her nightmare. I also thought she played well off the trickster form of the Mara who had a bit of a King Joffery vibe going on, although in much more psychological way. I also enjoyed possessed Tegan as it gave her a few scenes of sinister fun. Her chucking apples at Aris was also a fun bit of Biblical parallel given her femininity and the snake symbolism.
Unfortunately, Tegan's good run comes to an end once the Mara enters Aris. She gets a good little nap in Episode Three and then is back to her normal self in Four. I think she is attempting to express shame, though not really knowing why but her interaction with the Doctor still seems rather odd. Her scenes with Adric in the dome are also pretty bad but Adric bears more of the blame for the quality of those scenes.
The expedition men are pretty good as well. Sanders is old school colonel at first like you would expect in some Agatha Christie movie. Then he turns on a dime to a playful child who enjoys building castles out of boxes. Hindle is also quite good. He edges close to the line of overdoing the performance of a madman at a few points but he dials it back now and again. There is an interesting inconsistence in his performance as well. When threatened, he goes into hysterical shrieking about how everyone (including the trees) is against him. But in a secure moment, he lapses into a child-like state about how they are going to fix everything. It feels more genuine because you can't predict what form the madness is going to take. One of the best moments, both in performance and because of how it expresses the situation, is when the castle is knocked over and one of the paper men is torn. Hindle is broken up and when Todd suggests they can fix it, Hindle shrieks about how you can't fix people. It sums up the whole moment in one quick scene.
Unfortunately, like many of the Fifth Doctor stories, a strong pseudo-companion and good guest cast means that the regular companions are once again shown to be terrible. Tegan does a bit better but her interaction with Adric brings her back to the annoying level of whininess that we have seen in prior stories. Nyssa is non-descript as Christopher Bailey wrote the script without knowing that she would be a companion. So she is conveniently left in the TARDIS for the whole story. That you don't miss her speaks volumes of the typical contributions of her character.
Adric is also not in a good state in this one. He doesn't listen to the Doctor and despite earning the confidence of the Doctor to be left behind, does nothing with it. He contributes nothing in his plan to gain Hindle's confidence and ends up spending all that time just trying to escape himself. When he does finally succeed, the Doctor is forced to rescue him before he kills someone and harms himself in the process. The worst moment though is waiting in the bay with Tegan. Adric whines like a spoiled child about being left behind and lashes out at Tegan. I'm actually surprised that Tegan doesn't slap him silly for his arrogance and blame-shifting.
I like the overall story. I like an enemy that is more abstract and less corporeal. I don't quite get why the Kinda would have the wind chime area given that the Mara could manifest in those unprepared by the powers of the chimes. Perhaps it was a prison set up for the Mara and only when outsiders came in was there a risk of escape for the Mara. But regardless, an enemy working from within to destroy innocence strictly as a means to manifest evil is an interesting concept for a story.
It is also interesting to juxtapose the imagery of the Mara attempting to drive Tegan man into accepting it and then the madness manifested in it's possession of Aris with Hindle's genuine madness through mental overtaxing. Despite the Mara being the enemy, Hindle always seems to be more of the threat as his madness is inherently both self-destructive and uncontrollable. It is a pure representation of chaos while the Mara is an agent of chaos but still bound by the limits of the vessel in which it operates. When Aris leads the Kinda, there is an implied threat but the actions of Aris are shown to be incompetent and the Kinda desert him when their own innocence is threatened by something they don't understand. Although threatening, the Mara seems weak and the battle against the Mara is more for the saving of Aris and potentially others like him rather than for the society of the Kinda as is implied in Episode Three.
Now, on the subject of the Mara, that ties in to one of the limitations of this story: the effects. The setting of the story isn't bad nor are the costumes, but there does seem to be some problem with the atmosphere. It is very hard to shake the feeling that all of this is taking place in a studio and I'm not sure if it's the set design or the lighting or what, but there are moments where you are taken out by something that doesn't seem right. There is also a very 1980's look to everyone that I'm sure is difficult to avoid, but it still looks a bit off.
But the worst offender from an effects standpoint is the final manifestation of the Mara. The Mara emerges from Aris and the team does a decent job with a rubber snake to give it a real and thrashing look. However, the snake continues to grow and it looks like the inflated balloon that it is. There are flashes and quick cuts that help, but it still is pretty obvious that the Mara is closely related to an inflatable streamer seen outside a used car lot. I'm sure they were attempting to make the Mara scary but even if the effects are good, there is a logical flaw. If the Mara is towering over the Kinda mirrors, how is it still managing to look at itself? At that size and height, it should have been able to break eye contact with the mirrors and break out of the circle. The story and effect would work much better if a smaller snake (perhaps like a python) were thrashing about but still contained within the height of the mirrors. I can handle less than stellar effects but this was just a point that didn't seem to make sense from a logic point of view.
Taking the story as a whole, this was quite good. Again, I can understand why some might not care for it and I also would have to say that I would need to be in more of a thinking mood rather than a more mindless mood to enjoy it. But I did enjoy it this time around and I see no reason why I wouldn't continue to enjoy it a second time around. It's not a perfect story, but it is nice to get a real thinker of a story now and again. I'm sure on a second pass I would get even more out of it knowing what little things to look for.
Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Invasion of the Dinosaurs
They went to their golden age. I hope they enjoy it.
Invasion of the Dinosaurs is the last Malcolm Hulke story and it gets generally mixed reviews. Conventional fan wisdom derides the story for bad special effects and dinosaurs that actually look worse than those seen in the 1933 version of King Kong. However, another group exists that praises the story as one of the best written of the Hulke stories and one that shouldn't be judged by limited effects. Being a bit of a contrarian, my initial inclination is to give the effects a pass, especially since I can accept bad effects when I know the limitations are in the technology rather than in the efforts applied.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Sarah arrive in a nearly deserted London. Unable to find anyone, they begin to walk towards the city center where they are nearly run over by a car. Following it, they find a man stealing jewelry. He holds them off with a gun and drives away but crashes, killing himself.
The Doctor and Sarah continue through empty London and follow another car into a garage. This time it's a small gang of robbers. The Doctor fights them but they manage to knock him down and run away, leaving their car with it's stolen goods. They enter the car to drive to UNIT headquarters when they are attacked by two pterosaurs. They drive away quickly to escape their attackers.
The Doctor and Sarah drive until they reach an army checkpoint where their car is searched and stolen goods found. The pair is immediately arrested. They are photographed and placed in holding with another thief to await military tribunal.
At UNIT headquarters, the Brigadier is overseeing the final evacuation of London as well as dealing with gangs of looters and the dinosaurs. He puts a request for more men to General Finch, who agrees. After Finch leaves, the Brigadier is informed of another batch of looters being caught and Sargent Benton notices the Doctor and Sarah Jane among the pictures. The Brigadier immediately leaves go collect the Doctor.
The military tribunal commences and all three are quickly found guilty, despite the Doctor's insistence on seeing Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. They are sentenced to be sent to a military camp until the crisis ends and they can be tried in a civilian court. The three hatch a plan to escape but the other thief turns on them. The Doctor knocks him out as well and he and Sarah try to commandeer a military vehicle. However, it is the camp transport and they are recaptured and placed in the back.
The truck drives through London but is stopped when a Tyrannosaurus Rex, driven away by one patrol, appears in the street in front of them. The two guards get out to drive it off while the Doctor and Sarah use the opportunity to jump out the back and run away. They duck into a nearby shed where the Doctor is able to free them from their handcuffs.
Shortly afterwards, they are accosted by a peasant from the era of King Richard I who believes the Doctor is a wizard. Panicking, the peasant attacks the Doctor but a time eddy kicks in and the peasant disappears. Confused, the Doctor and Sarah hear movement outside and try to hide but it's the Brigadier who brings the Doctor back to headquarters.
At UNIT HQ, the Brigadier brings the Doctor up to speed on how they've evacuated London and the patterns of the dinosaur movement. The Doctor proposes capturing one of the dinosaurs so that he can study it and see if he can determine how it got there. General Finch is skeptical but the Brigadier heads out with a Doctor when a new animal is reported nearby. Sarah stays behind with Finch's attaché, Captain Mike Yates, who transferred to regular army service following the events of The Green Death.
The Doctor and the UNIT men find a stegosaurus walking in an alley and the Doctor has the military bring him some rope. However, before they capture it, the animal is caught in a time eddy as seen earlier and disappears. The military men don't notice the effects of the eddy and think it just vanished into thin air. The Doctor however, does observe the effects and figures the someone is pulling the dinosaurs from the past for a brief time and then sending them back as a means of creating a panic to empty London.
The Doctor heads back to UNIT HQ where he rigs up a set of sensors that will allow him to get detailed information on the time eddy. He can then use that to determine the source of the power that is pulling the creatures forward in time. Unbeknownst to him, Captain Yates is working with the people involved. Learning of the Doctor's plans, they give him a device to sabotage the Doctor's efforts to capture a dinosaur, delaying their discovery.
The Doctor learns of the appearance of a brontosaurus and heads back out with his new equipment. He intends to stun the animal and then set up the monitoring equipment. Upon reaching the animal, he moves to use his stun gun but the animal disappears before he can fire. Then a Tyrannosaurus appears and the Doctor moves to stun it but his gun doesn't work. He drops it and tries to run but is knocked down by the concussion of grenades that the Brigadier has thrown to try and stop the animal. Yates dashes forwards, removes the sabotage device and stuns the animal. The Doctor thanks Yates for his efforts and the Brigadier transports the animal to a nearby warehouse where the Doctor sets up his equipment.
Yates, angry at the group's attempt to kill the Doctor, reports back that he will not do such a thing again. The group tells him to simply sabotage his equipment so that he cannot take measurements of their location and Yates does agree to that. Sarah meanwhile does some independent digging and discovers a professor Whitaker who disappeared six months ago and had rather radical ideas on time travel. She presents these findings to the Doctor and Sir Charles Grover, the minister left to supervise London. Sir Charles dismisses Sarah's theory, saying that he reviewed Whitaker's work and found it rubbish.
Annoyed, Sarah turns back to her regular journalism work. She is granted a special pass by General Finch to bring a camera in and document the dinosaurs. He then has his driver take her back to the warehouse with the Tyrannosaurus. She takes some pictures of the animal but it wakes up and moves to attack her. She tries to flee but finds the door locked. She bangs on it while the dinosaur thrashes about the warehouse trying to get out. The Doctor, returning to the lab, discovers her and pulls her out. The dinosaur breaks free of the warehouse but disappears shortly afterward.
The Doctor takes Sarah back to UNIT HQ to treat her head wound and they report this to the Brigadier, the Doctor noting that both the chains holding the animal had been cut and that the Doctor's equipment had been sabotaged so that he had no readings. The Doctor goes to build a mobile tracking device that will be less accurate but should still give them an estimate on where to go. Sarah tries to follow them but is told to stay behind and rest.
Frustrated, Sarah gets an idea. She heads to Sir Charles's office and asks about a government plan to build small nuclear reactors in underground bunkers in the event of nuclear war. Sir Charles does remember the plan and takes her to a records room where they find the plans detailing the building of the bunker in that very building. Sir Charles then opens a secret passage to the bunker, letting her know that he is a part of the conspiracy group.
Sarah is taken to a room and locked in with a set of pulsating lights. The lights knock her out. She wakes to the image of a friendly man who informs her that they are on a spaceship that left Earth three months ago, heading for a new colony world. Stunned, she is introduced to a celebrated athlete, novelist, and doctor, who have all abandoned their previous lives to join an ecology movement.
The Doctor, having finished his detector, drives around London in his newly designed Whomobile. He traces a signal to an Underground station and observes a man entering an elevator hidden as a janitorial closet. The Doctor follows but he is detected by Professor Whitaker and his assistant. They close off the various corridors, forcing the Doctor to head back up. They summon a pterosaur from the past to attack the Doctor but he manages to fight it off with a map. He then returns with the Brigadier but finds the elevator controls disabled, making it an ordinary closet.
Back on the ship, Sarah begins to remember that she did not come voluntarily and begins to argue with the others about how they plan to run their new society. The leader, Ruth, has Sarah taken to the reeducation room, to bring her back into line. Sarah is bombarded with propaganda about the evils man is doing to the environment. The athlete, Mark, brings her food and reports back to the others that she is resisting. Ruth informs the others that if she will not subject herself, she will need to be destroyed.
The Doctor and the Brigadier go to see Sir Charles about the hidden base but Sir Charles claims the project was abandoned. He also claims that he showed this to Sarah and had his driver take her back to base. The driver comes in and verifies it but he is Professor Whitaker's assistant.
The conspirators, including General Finch and Captain Yates assemble in the power room to discuss the Doctor as Sir Charles doesn't believe he convinced the Doctor. Yates refuses to use lethal force and Sir Charles agrees as he doesn't want to descend to the levels they are trying to escape from. Professor Whitaker calls the Doctor at UNIT HQ and claims that he was held prisoner but managed to escape to the lab the Doctor used earlier. He requests the Doctor to come and help him alone.
The Doctor agrees but when he reaches the lab, he finds it empty save for a mechanical device. The device activates and a Stegosaurus appears in the adjoining room. General Finch bursts in with the Brigadier and arrests the Doctor, claiming to have caught him in the act of summoning the dinosaurs. They take him back to UNIT HQ where he is put under the guard of Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton.
The Doctor appeals to Yates but Yates skittishly orders him placed in a cell and leaves. The Doctor realizes that Yates is the mole. Benton orders the other two guards to prepare a cell, leaving him and the Doctor alone. Benton asks the Doctor what is going on and the Doctor informs him of Finch and Yates working with Sir Charles on the plot. Benton suggests that the Doctor overpower him and turns his back. The Doctor knocks Benton out and escapes in a jeep.
On the ship Mark enters the reeducation room to check on Sarah. She darts past him and locks him in. She heads to the bridge to try and signal for help or change course but none of the controls work. She heads back, frees Mark and shows him the dead controls. She states that this combined with her bruised head demonstrates that she has only been here a few hours and they are not in space at all. He doesn't believe her so she opens an airlock that should exit into space but instead, calmly walks into the underground bunker. Mark tries to follow but he meets Adam who was going to have a talk with Sarah and he is forced to stall him to allow Sarah to escape.
Sarah walks through the bunker, overhearing Professor Whitaker and his assistant discuss their plans. She escapes through the elevator in Sir Charles' office and makes her way back to UNIT HQ. However, everyone is gone save one lone soldier. She leaves a note for the Brigadier when General Finch arrives. Unaware of his involvement, she tells him of Sir Charles' involvement. Feigning skepticism, he suggests they go investigate it.
They return to the office and when she activates the elevator taking them back down to the base, Finch pulls a gun on her. He takes her to Sir Charles who had been observing one of Whitaker's experiments involving time. He informs Sarah that they intend to rewind time to an earlier age of ecological purity and refound the human race, saving the future by rewriting history. As Sir Charles explains, Whitaker pulls a large number of dinosaurs forward to make a final push for the complete evacuation of London.
The Doctor meanwhile evades several patrols and manages to trick the forces searching for him that he had been captured at one point, giving him more breathing room. He arrives in front of the Underground station as more dinosaurs, including a T-Rex appear around him. The Doctor flees as the dinosaurs fight each other and runs into two patrols, one led by General Finch and the other by the Brigadier. The Brigadier takes the Doctor under the pretense of arresting him and head back to UNIT HQ.
In the bunker, Sarah is locked into a spare room to wait until the plan has been executed. She finds an air duct large enough for her to crawl through, pulls off the cover and slips out. She makes her way back to the fake spaceship where she tells Mark what is going on. They attempt to tell the colonists, who are being woken up by Ruth and Adam but Ruth has both of them locked into the reeducation chamber. Adam, beginning to question things, signals what he believes is another ship and requests Sir Charles to come aboard and reassure the colonists.
Back at UNIT HQ, the Doctor finds Sarah's note and begs the Brigadier to come and blow a hole in the station. The Brigadier decides to call Geneva and request greater authority but the call is cancelled by Captain Yates who holds them all at gunpoint. Yates is surprised by a soldier entering with some tea the Brigadier requested and the Brigadier knocks Yates out. He and the Doctor then leave for the Underground with the intention of finding the base. Sergeant Benton is left behind and ordered to round up all available patrols to come to the Underground as back up.
Sir Charles enters the mock spaceship wearing a space suit and reassures the colonists that all is well. He goes to the reeducation room where Sarah and Mark are being held and informs them that they will be brought along and will come to accept that what the group has done is for the right reasons. This conversation is overheard by Adam who frees Sarah and Mark after Sir Charles leaves. Sarah heads back out to the main room with the revived colonists and opens the airlock, demonstrating that it is all a fake.
The Brigadier and the Doctor arrive at the Underground station and the Doctor blows a hole in the janitorial closet while the Brigadier distracts a Triceratops wandering through the tunnels. Having opened a hole, the Doctor heads down while the Brigadier radios Benton to come with the reinforcements. Benton is distracted by General Finch who pulls a gun on him but Benton manages to disarm Finch and knock him out.
Sarah and the colonists enter the control room with Professor Whitaker and Sir Charles demanding an explanation. The Doctor enters a moment later, having knocked out Whitaker's assistant in the hallway. The Brigadier follows with his troops a minute later. Whitaker manages to break free of the men holding him and engages the time travel lever. Everyone is frozen save the Doctor who is resistant. He manages to disengage the lever with the group having gone back in time only a few minutes. He then alters the programing of the computer.
Sir Charles, believing the Doctor is trying to destroy the machine, lunges for the lever. Whitaker, aware that the Doctor has reversed the polarity of the machine tries to stop him. Sir Charles manages to pull the lever with Whitaker grabbing him. The two men and the machine disappear into the past and with no power source, they are trapped there.
General Finch and Whitaker's assistant are arrested however the Brigadier gives Yates an extended leave, allowing him to resign quietly. The Brigadier goes to help return the residents of London while the Doctor tempts Sarah with another trip in the TARDIS to a garden planet.
Analysis
This is a very good story. It has just about everything you could want out of a Doctor Who story: good acting, action scenes, a high concept, interesting twists and people who actually do things to try and solve the problem rather than just waste time. There are some negatives to be sure, but the positives well outweigh the negatives.
First lets get one thing out of the way, the dinosaurs look pretty bad. The pterosaurs are shot fairly well, most in the dark and only partially exposed, but even then they have a bit of a rubbery look. The brontosaurus and the stegosaurus are also not completely terrible as they don't move too much and are mostly just gaped at by the people like anything else on a CSO screen. The T-Rex is where things really fall apart. It suffers from several issues. One, it stands upright as was the misguided belief in the 1970's. Two, the model looks cheap and very rubbery. Three, to be threatening, it needs to interact more with the people and that sets up actors trying to interact with a CSO screen and all the problems you get in trying to do that. Early in Episode Two you see two soldiers firing grenades at the T-Rex, yet they are looking at the wrong part of the screen. It is a nice idea, but the technology required for it's proper execution just didn't exist at the time.
Now on to the good stuff and there is a lot of it. The acting of all the principles is top notch and even the extras do a good job in their various roles. Most of the story is played with a strong level of seriousness that would be easy to lose in dealing with green screened model dinosaurs. But there is also just a bit of levity thrown in here and there to keep the story from becoming too serious and enamored with itself.
My personal favorite is where the Doctor is explaining his detection device to Yates, an important scene as it leads in to the reveal of Yates as a mole, but it is played as comedy as the Doctor has to reshare some of this information with Sarah and then after dismissing her, the Brigadier enters and asks the same questions, giving the Doctor a wonderful exasperated look. As someone who has dealt with multiple people asking for things at once, I can appreciate how the Doctor felt at that moment.
The story itself is quite impressive in it's imagination. You would think that dinosaurs appearing in London would lend itself to a very silly and action based story. However, the dinosaurs become secondary to a rogue intelligence plot you might see in some spy thriller. It is even more interesting in that the secret plot is for a cause that many would agree with, reducing pollution and preserving the resources available on this planet. However, he takes them to the Soviet degree, using "reeducation" to silence dissenting voices and mass extermination as billions of people will be wiped from existence with a resettling of colonists millions of years in the past.
Given their plan, it is rather interesting to see the differing moral views that emerge. Finch, Whitaker, and his assistant are all coldly logical and are prepared to kill the Doctor openly. Yet, they value Sarah and bring her into the colony, despite the fact that killing her would be better for their overall safety. Sir Charles and Yates sit on the hypocritical side of the fence. They abhor killing, working to preserve both Sarah and the Doctor's life, yet they have no compunction about erasing billions from existence. I suppose that mimics reality where a person has no problem with the death of many in the abstract but can't handle the responsibility of the death of an individual when it is a cold reality that involves them directly.
One little plot hole that does niggle my brain is how the ecologists planned to avoid the time paradox they were creating. Whitaker's machine would create a time bubble, preserving those inside it from the travel. However, once the travel had been completed, their actions would destroy the development of humanity as it happened. Thus, they would destroy the elements that would enable their original existence. What's more, if they had succeeded and managed to create and preserve their ecological paradise, their descendants would be unaware of the need to go back in time to recreate the events that set up their world in the first place.
The only way I can get around this in my head is to imagine that Whitaker's machine is not actually full time travel but would instead move them to an alternate reality or universe. That would allow the preservation of their existence and the reality which motivated them to such extremes, while at the same time allowing them to create a past that prevents the future they left. Of course, as their plan failed, so the question is moot. With no women being sent into the past with Sir Charles and Whitaker, they would have lived and died with negligible impact on the overall timeline. Depending on when they arrived, you can even imagine them becoming dinosaur food within a short span of their arrival.
As well written and entertaining as this story is, it is a touch too long. I would imagine that Hulke probably wrote a four episode treatment and was asked to expand it to six. This story would have been a well packed four-parter so it expands fairly well to six. But it is difficult not to see that Episode Five is complete filler with the Doctor spending the whole episode evading patrols and Sarah escaping the fake ship only to be recaptured and brought back. Even the ending has time for a two-minute summary of what happened with the Doctor setting up his and Sarah's next adventure.
However, I will say that even when you know it is filler, Episode Five is very entertaining filler. There is witty dialogue, excellent direction and actually good special effects as there are no dinosaurs actually involved here. I found that it was actually Episode Six that started to bog down for me but I suspect that was because I had a good guess where they were going and wanted to get on with it. Still, there are a number of stories that are absolutely dreadful in their expansion to six or more episodes and this is not one of them.
Overall I would have to say that this story is much better than it's reputation. Yes, the dinosaur effects are bad, but there are so many bad effects in Doctor Who and Seventies television in general that I don't see any reason to punish this story as a result. It is well done outside of those effects and the quality of the story is excellent. I would easily pull this off the shelf for another watch at some point in the future. I would even go so far as to say that this is my favorite Third Doctor story to date. Granted, I have a number of stories to go, but this one rates pretty high for me.
Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5
Invasion of the Dinosaurs is the last Malcolm Hulke story and it gets generally mixed reviews. Conventional fan wisdom derides the story for bad special effects and dinosaurs that actually look worse than those seen in the 1933 version of King Kong. However, another group exists that praises the story as one of the best written of the Hulke stories and one that shouldn't be judged by limited effects. Being a bit of a contrarian, my initial inclination is to give the effects a pass, especially since I can accept bad effects when I know the limitations are in the technology rather than in the efforts applied.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Sarah arrive in a nearly deserted London. Unable to find anyone, they begin to walk towards the city center where they are nearly run over by a car. Following it, they find a man stealing jewelry. He holds them off with a gun and drives away but crashes, killing himself.
The Doctor and Sarah continue through empty London and follow another car into a garage. This time it's a small gang of robbers. The Doctor fights them but they manage to knock him down and run away, leaving their car with it's stolen goods. They enter the car to drive to UNIT headquarters when they are attacked by two pterosaurs. They drive away quickly to escape their attackers.
The Doctor and Sarah drive until they reach an army checkpoint where their car is searched and stolen goods found. The pair is immediately arrested. They are photographed and placed in holding with another thief to await military tribunal.
At UNIT headquarters, the Brigadier is overseeing the final evacuation of London as well as dealing with gangs of looters and the dinosaurs. He puts a request for more men to General Finch, who agrees. After Finch leaves, the Brigadier is informed of another batch of looters being caught and Sargent Benton notices the Doctor and Sarah Jane among the pictures. The Brigadier immediately leaves go collect the Doctor.
The military tribunal commences and all three are quickly found guilty, despite the Doctor's insistence on seeing Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. They are sentenced to be sent to a military camp until the crisis ends and they can be tried in a civilian court. The three hatch a plan to escape but the other thief turns on them. The Doctor knocks him out as well and he and Sarah try to commandeer a military vehicle. However, it is the camp transport and they are recaptured and placed in the back.
The truck drives through London but is stopped when a Tyrannosaurus Rex, driven away by one patrol, appears in the street in front of them. The two guards get out to drive it off while the Doctor and Sarah use the opportunity to jump out the back and run away. They duck into a nearby shed where the Doctor is able to free them from their handcuffs.
Shortly afterwards, they are accosted by a peasant from the era of King Richard I who believes the Doctor is a wizard. Panicking, the peasant attacks the Doctor but a time eddy kicks in and the peasant disappears. Confused, the Doctor and Sarah hear movement outside and try to hide but it's the Brigadier who brings the Doctor back to headquarters.
At UNIT HQ, the Brigadier brings the Doctor up to speed on how they've evacuated London and the patterns of the dinosaur movement. The Doctor proposes capturing one of the dinosaurs so that he can study it and see if he can determine how it got there. General Finch is skeptical but the Brigadier heads out with a Doctor when a new animal is reported nearby. Sarah stays behind with Finch's attaché, Captain Mike Yates, who transferred to regular army service following the events of The Green Death.
The Doctor and the UNIT men find a stegosaurus walking in an alley and the Doctor has the military bring him some rope. However, before they capture it, the animal is caught in a time eddy as seen earlier and disappears. The military men don't notice the effects of the eddy and think it just vanished into thin air. The Doctor however, does observe the effects and figures the someone is pulling the dinosaurs from the past for a brief time and then sending them back as a means of creating a panic to empty London.
The Doctor heads back to UNIT HQ where he rigs up a set of sensors that will allow him to get detailed information on the time eddy. He can then use that to determine the source of the power that is pulling the creatures forward in time. Unbeknownst to him, Captain Yates is working with the people involved. Learning of the Doctor's plans, they give him a device to sabotage the Doctor's efforts to capture a dinosaur, delaying their discovery.
The Doctor learns of the appearance of a brontosaurus and heads back out with his new equipment. He intends to stun the animal and then set up the monitoring equipment. Upon reaching the animal, he moves to use his stun gun but the animal disappears before he can fire. Then a Tyrannosaurus appears and the Doctor moves to stun it but his gun doesn't work. He drops it and tries to run but is knocked down by the concussion of grenades that the Brigadier has thrown to try and stop the animal. Yates dashes forwards, removes the sabotage device and stuns the animal. The Doctor thanks Yates for his efforts and the Brigadier transports the animal to a nearby warehouse where the Doctor sets up his equipment.
Yates, angry at the group's attempt to kill the Doctor, reports back that he will not do such a thing again. The group tells him to simply sabotage his equipment so that he cannot take measurements of their location and Yates does agree to that. Sarah meanwhile does some independent digging and discovers a professor Whitaker who disappeared six months ago and had rather radical ideas on time travel. She presents these findings to the Doctor and Sir Charles Grover, the minister left to supervise London. Sir Charles dismisses Sarah's theory, saying that he reviewed Whitaker's work and found it rubbish.
Annoyed, Sarah turns back to her regular journalism work. She is granted a special pass by General Finch to bring a camera in and document the dinosaurs. He then has his driver take her back to the warehouse with the Tyrannosaurus. She takes some pictures of the animal but it wakes up and moves to attack her. She tries to flee but finds the door locked. She bangs on it while the dinosaur thrashes about the warehouse trying to get out. The Doctor, returning to the lab, discovers her and pulls her out. The dinosaur breaks free of the warehouse but disappears shortly afterward.
The Doctor takes Sarah back to UNIT HQ to treat her head wound and they report this to the Brigadier, the Doctor noting that both the chains holding the animal had been cut and that the Doctor's equipment had been sabotaged so that he had no readings. The Doctor goes to build a mobile tracking device that will be less accurate but should still give them an estimate on where to go. Sarah tries to follow them but is told to stay behind and rest.
Frustrated, Sarah gets an idea. She heads to Sir Charles's office and asks about a government plan to build small nuclear reactors in underground bunkers in the event of nuclear war. Sir Charles does remember the plan and takes her to a records room where they find the plans detailing the building of the bunker in that very building. Sir Charles then opens a secret passage to the bunker, letting her know that he is a part of the conspiracy group.
Sarah is taken to a room and locked in with a set of pulsating lights. The lights knock her out. She wakes to the image of a friendly man who informs her that they are on a spaceship that left Earth three months ago, heading for a new colony world. Stunned, she is introduced to a celebrated athlete, novelist, and doctor, who have all abandoned their previous lives to join an ecology movement.
The Doctor, having finished his detector, drives around London in his newly designed Whomobile. He traces a signal to an Underground station and observes a man entering an elevator hidden as a janitorial closet. The Doctor follows but he is detected by Professor Whitaker and his assistant. They close off the various corridors, forcing the Doctor to head back up. They summon a pterosaur from the past to attack the Doctor but he manages to fight it off with a map. He then returns with the Brigadier but finds the elevator controls disabled, making it an ordinary closet.
Back on the ship, Sarah begins to remember that she did not come voluntarily and begins to argue with the others about how they plan to run their new society. The leader, Ruth, has Sarah taken to the reeducation room, to bring her back into line. Sarah is bombarded with propaganda about the evils man is doing to the environment. The athlete, Mark, brings her food and reports back to the others that she is resisting. Ruth informs the others that if she will not subject herself, she will need to be destroyed.
The Doctor and the Brigadier go to see Sir Charles about the hidden base but Sir Charles claims the project was abandoned. He also claims that he showed this to Sarah and had his driver take her back to base. The driver comes in and verifies it but he is Professor Whitaker's assistant.
The conspirators, including General Finch and Captain Yates assemble in the power room to discuss the Doctor as Sir Charles doesn't believe he convinced the Doctor. Yates refuses to use lethal force and Sir Charles agrees as he doesn't want to descend to the levels they are trying to escape from. Professor Whitaker calls the Doctor at UNIT HQ and claims that he was held prisoner but managed to escape to the lab the Doctor used earlier. He requests the Doctor to come and help him alone.
The Doctor agrees but when he reaches the lab, he finds it empty save for a mechanical device. The device activates and a Stegosaurus appears in the adjoining room. General Finch bursts in with the Brigadier and arrests the Doctor, claiming to have caught him in the act of summoning the dinosaurs. They take him back to UNIT HQ where he is put under the guard of Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton.
The Doctor appeals to Yates but Yates skittishly orders him placed in a cell and leaves. The Doctor realizes that Yates is the mole. Benton orders the other two guards to prepare a cell, leaving him and the Doctor alone. Benton asks the Doctor what is going on and the Doctor informs him of Finch and Yates working with Sir Charles on the plot. Benton suggests that the Doctor overpower him and turns his back. The Doctor knocks Benton out and escapes in a jeep.
On the ship Mark enters the reeducation room to check on Sarah. She darts past him and locks him in. She heads to the bridge to try and signal for help or change course but none of the controls work. She heads back, frees Mark and shows him the dead controls. She states that this combined with her bruised head demonstrates that she has only been here a few hours and they are not in space at all. He doesn't believe her so she opens an airlock that should exit into space but instead, calmly walks into the underground bunker. Mark tries to follow but he meets Adam who was going to have a talk with Sarah and he is forced to stall him to allow Sarah to escape.
Sarah walks through the bunker, overhearing Professor Whitaker and his assistant discuss their plans. She escapes through the elevator in Sir Charles' office and makes her way back to UNIT HQ. However, everyone is gone save one lone soldier. She leaves a note for the Brigadier when General Finch arrives. Unaware of his involvement, she tells him of Sir Charles' involvement. Feigning skepticism, he suggests they go investigate it.
They return to the office and when she activates the elevator taking them back down to the base, Finch pulls a gun on her. He takes her to Sir Charles who had been observing one of Whitaker's experiments involving time. He informs Sarah that they intend to rewind time to an earlier age of ecological purity and refound the human race, saving the future by rewriting history. As Sir Charles explains, Whitaker pulls a large number of dinosaurs forward to make a final push for the complete evacuation of London.
The Doctor meanwhile evades several patrols and manages to trick the forces searching for him that he had been captured at one point, giving him more breathing room. He arrives in front of the Underground station as more dinosaurs, including a T-Rex appear around him. The Doctor flees as the dinosaurs fight each other and runs into two patrols, one led by General Finch and the other by the Brigadier. The Brigadier takes the Doctor under the pretense of arresting him and head back to UNIT HQ.
In the bunker, Sarah is locked into a spare room to wait until the plan has been executed. She finds an air duct large enough for her to crawl through, pulls off the cover and slips out. She makes her way back to the fake spaceship where she tells Mark what is going on. They attempt to tell the colonists, who are being woken up by Ruth and Adam but Ruth has both of them locked into the reeducation chamber. Adam, beginning to question things, signals what he believes is another ship and requests Sir Charles to come aboard and reassure the colonists.
Back at UNIT HQ, the Doctor finds Sarah's note and begs the Brigadier to come and blow a hole in the station. The Brigadier decides to call Geneva and request greater authority but the call is cancelled by Captain Yates who holds them all at gunpoint. Yates is surprised by a soldier entering with some tea the Brigadier requested and the Brigadier knocks Yates out. He and the Doctor then leave for the Underground with the intention of finding the base. Sergeant Benton is left behind and ordered to round up all available patrols to come to the Underground as back up.
Sir Charles enters the mock spaceship wearing a space suit and reassures the colonists that all is well. He goes to the reeducation room where Sarah and Mark are being held and informs them that they will be brought along and will come to accept that what the group has done is for the right reasons. This conversation is overheard by Adam who frees Sarah and Mark after Sir Charles leaves. Sarah heads back out to the main room with the revived colonists and opens the airlock, demonstrating that it is all a fake.
The Brigadier and the Doctor arrive at the Underground station and the Doctor blows a hole in the janitorial closet while the Brigadier distracts a Triceratops wandering through the tunnels. Having opened a hole, the Doctor heads down while the Brigadier radios Benton to come with the reinforcements. Benton is distracted by General Finch who pulls a gun on him but Benton manages to disarm Finch and knock him out.
Sarah and the colonists enter the control room with Professor Whitaker and Sir Charles demanding an explanation. The Doctor enters a moment later, having knocked out Whitaker's assistant in the hallway. The Brigadier follows with his troops a minute later. Whitaker manages to break free of the men holding him and engages the time travel lever. Everyone is frozen save the Doctor who is resistant. He manages to disengage the lever with the group having gone back in time only a few minutes. He then alters the programing of the computer.
Sir Charles, believing the Doctor is trying to destroy the machine, lunges for the lever. Whitaker, aware that the Doctor has reversed the polarity of the machine tries to stop him. Sir Charles manages to pull the lever with Whitaker grabbing him. The two men and the machine disappear into the past and with no power source, they are trapped there.
General Finch and Whitaker's assistant are arrested however the Brigadier gives Yates an extended leave, allowing him to resign quietly. The Brigadier goes to help return the residents of London while the Doctor tempts Sarah with another trip in the TARDIS to a garden planet.
Analysis
This is a very good story. It has just about everything you could want out of a Doctor Who story: good acting, action scenes, a high concept, interesting twists and people who actually do things to try and solve the problem rather than just waste time. There are some negatives to be sure, but the positives well outweigh the negatives.
First lets get one thing out of the way, the dinosaurs look pretty bad. The pterosaurs are shot fairly well, most in the dark and only partially exposed, but even then they have a bit of a rubbery look. The brontosaurus and the stegosaurus are also not completely terrible as they don't move too much and are mostly just gaped at by the people like anything else on a CSO screen. The T-Rex is where things really fall apart. It suffers from several issues. One, it stands upright as was the misguided belief in the 1970's. Two, the model looks cheap and very rubbery. Three, to be threatening, it needs to interact more with the people and that sets up actors trying to interact with a CSO screen and all the problems you get in trying to do that. Early in Episode Two you see two soldiers firing grenades at the T-Rex, yet they are looking at the wrong part of the screen. It is a nice idea, but the technology required for it's proper execution just didn't exist at the time.
Now on to the good stuff and there is a lot of it. The acting of all the principles is top notch and even the extras do a good job in their various roles. Most of the story is played with a strong level of seriousness that would be easy to lose in dealing with green screened model dinosaurs. But there is also just a bit of levity thrown in here and there to keep the story from becoming too serious and enamored with itself.
My personal favorite is where the Doctor is explaining his detection device to Yates, an important scene as it leads in to the reveal of Yates as a mole, but it is played as comedy as the Doctor has to reshare some of this information with Sarah and then after dismissing her, the Brigadier enters and asks the same questions, giving the Doctor a wonderful exasperated look. As someone who has dealt with multiple people asking for things at once, I can appreciate how the Doctor felt at that moment.
The story itself is quite impressive in it's imagination. You would think that dinosaurs appearing in London would lend itself to a very silly and action based story. However, the dinosaurs become secondary to a rogue intelligence plot you might see in some spy thriller. It is even more interesting in that the secret plot is for a cause that many would agree with, reducing pollution and preserving the resources available on this planet. However, he takes them to the Soviet degree, using "reeducation" to silence dissenting voices and mass extermination as billions of people will be wiped from existence with a resettling of colonists millions of years in the past.
Given their plan, it is rather interesting to see the differing moral views that emerge. Finch, Whitaker, and his assistant are all coldly logical and are prepared to kill the Doctor openly. Yet, they value Sarah and bring her into the colony, despite the fact that killing her would be better for their overall safety. Sir Charles and Yates sit on the hypocritical side of the fence. They abhor killing, working to preserve both Sarah and the Doctor's life, yet they have no compunction about erasing billions from existence. I suppose that mimics reality where a person has no problem with the death of many in the abstract but can't handle the responsibility of the death of an individual when it is a cold reality that involves them directly.
One little plot hole that does niggle my brain is how the ecologists planned to avoid the time paradox they were creating. Whitaker's machine would create a time bubble, preserving those inside it from the travel. However, once the travel had been completed, their actions would destroy the development of humanity as it happened. Thus, they would destroy the elements that would enable their original existence. What's more, if they had succeeded and managed to create and preserve their ecological paradise, their descendants would be unaware of the need to go back in time to recreate the events that set up their world in the first place.
The only way I can get around this in my head is to imagine that Whitaker's machine is not actually full time travel but would instead move them to an alternate reality or universe. That would allow the preservation of their existence and the reality which motivated them to such extremes, while at the same time allowing them to create a past that prevents the future they left. Of course, as their plan failed, so the question is moot. With no women being sent into the past with Sir Charles and Whitaker, they would have lived and died with negligible impact on the overall timeline. Depending on when they arrived, you can even imagine them becoming dinosaur food within a short span of their arrival.
As well written and entertaining as this story is, it is a touch too long. I would imagine that Hulke probably wrote a four episode treatment and was asked to expand it to six. This story would have been a well packed four-parter so it expands fairly well to six. But it is difficult not to see that Episode Five is complete filler with the Doctor spending the whole episode evading patrols and Sarah escaping the fake ship only to be recaptured and brought back. Even the ending has time for a two-minute summary of what happened with the Doctor setting up his and Sarah's next adventure.
However, I will say that even when you know it is filler, Episode Five is very entertaining filler. There is witty dialogue, excellent direction and actually good special effects as there are no dinosaurs actually involved here. I found that it was actually Episode Six that started to bog down for me but I suspect that was because I had a good guess where they were going and wanted to get on with it. Still, there are a number of stories that are absolutely dreadful in their expansion to six or more episodes and this is not one of them.
Overall I would have to say that this story is much better than it's reputation. Yes, the dinosaur effects are bad, but there are so many bad effects in Doctor Who and Seventies television in general that I don't see any reason to punish this story as a result. It is well done outside of those effects and the quality of the story is excellent. I would easily pull this off the shelf for another watch at some point in the future. I would even go so far as to say that this is my favorite Third Doctor story to date. Granted, I have a number of stories to go, but this one rates pretty high for me.
Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5
Friday, September 23, 2016
Under the Lake/Before the Flood
Cass, you are the smartest person in the room when I'm not in it.
Under the Lake is Doctor Who's version of a haunted house story. It incorporates many haunted house tropes including isolation, ghosts coming out at "night" and a slow pick off of the people trapped in the station.
Plot Summary
The crew of an underwater oil drilling station in 2119 has recovered an alien space ship. Inside, they find it empty save for some strange markings on the wall. The company representative, Pritchard, checks a control panel which suddenly activates and the engine ignites. The crew commander, Moran, shoves a crewman out of the way and is caught in the exhaust stream, incinerating him. However, he reappears a moment later as an apparition with blacked out eyes.
Several days later, the TARDIS arrives. The Doctor is uneasy as the TARDIS was resistant to come to this location. They find the Moran specter who leads them to the bay with the ship. They go inside and also see the markings on the side. Emerging from the ship, the Moran ghost reappears along with the ghost of a Tivolian in a Victorian style outfit. Both ghosts grab metal objects and attack them. They run through the base and the crew urges them into a Faraday cage which keeps the ghosts out.
In the cage, the Doctor and Clara are introduced to the rest of the crew who bring them up to date on what happened. The station switches to day mode and the crew leaves the cage as the ghosts don't appear during day mode. They return to the control station where the Doctor starts to investigate what is going on. In the ship, he finds the suspended animation chamber is missing as well as one of the power cells. Pritchard, hearing how valuable the cell might be, slips out of the station in a exterior suit to look around for it.
The station suddenly switches from day to night mode and the ghosts reappear. O'Donnell, the tech operator, manages to revert things back to day mode but not before they attack and kill Pritchard returning from his exterior explorations, adding a third ghost to the mix.
Cass, the new base commander, decides they need to signal the surface for extraction. However, when they signal the surface, they find the sub was already signaled and coming down. The Doctor order the sub to immediately return the to the surface and declares quarantine on the base as the ghosts had signaled the sub. Frustrated by a lack of information, the Doctor hatches a plan and has O'Donnell revert the station to night mode.
Once the ghosts reappear, crew members lure the ghosts down the corridors towards the Faraday cage. The Pritchard ghost breaks off briefly to chase Cass's signer Lunn but despite cornering him, he does not kill him. Instead he reunites with the other two who are lured into the Faraday cage with a hologram of Clara. Once locked inside, the Doctor enters and has Cass read their lips. She reads four words repeated continuously. The Doctor figures that they are space coordinates, pinpointing the location of a building on Earth.
Prior to the valley being flooded, there was a mock town built for military training, including a church. Using the information given, the crew sends out a reconnaissance sub to the remains of the church and discovers the missing suspended animation chamber, active. It is brought back to the base but before they can examine it fully, the station power supply suffers a malfunction and the base begins to flood.
O'Donnell manages to isolate the flooding to a central corridor but it threatens to cut them off from the TARDIS. Everyone races towards it but Clara, Cass and Lunn are separated from the Doctor, O'Donnell and Bennett. The Doctor elects to travel back in the TARDIS to before the valley flooded and try to figure things out so that he can rescue the others. As the TARDIS disappears, a new ghost appears in the water outside of the Doctor.
The Doctor, O'Donnell and Bennett travel back to 1980 just after the Tivolian ship lands. There they meet Prentis, a Tivolian funeral director transporting the body of the Fisher King, the recently deposed overlord of the Tivolians. His ship lacks the markings that are causing the ghost phenomena so the Doctor heads back to the TARDIS to check in with Clara.
Clara informs the Doctor that a ghost of him has appeared but unlike the others, he is saying a list of names. The ghost Doctor enters and releases the ghosts from the Faraday cage, also changing his words to when the suspended animation chamber will open. With the ghosts free, Clara, Cass and Lunn run back to the Faraday cage but pose Clara's phone outside on a ledge in case the Doctor needs to contact her again.
The Doctor and crew head out again, although tries to convince O'Donnell to stay in the TARDIS. She refuses. They find that the Fisher King has reanimated, carved the words in the wall and killed Prentis. Hearing him approach, they duck into a nearby building to hide, but O'Donnell is discovered and killed. Bennett angrily confronts the Doctor for not trying harder to save her as her name was next in the list recited by the ghost Doctor.
Back at the station, the ghost of O'Donnell appears. She cannot get into the cage but she takes Clara's phone. Clara, realizing that the ghosts won't kill Lunn because he hasn't seen the figures, convinces him to go out and retrieve it, much to the resentment of Cass. Lunn obtains the phone but the ghosts lock him into the mess hall.
With Clara's name next on the list, the Doctor heads back to the TARDIS to try and rescue her but the TARDIS refuses to go and instead lands them back at the time they arrived the first time. Bennett tries to warn O'Donnell while their past selves are talking with Prentice but the Doctor stops him, warning him of dangers of screwing with time. While the Fisher King kills Prentice, the Doctor sends Bennett back to the TARDIS to wait for him. The Doctor grabs one of the power cells from the ship while the Fisher King drags the suspended animation chamber to the church.
The Doctor enters the church and confronts the Fisher King. The Fisher King recognizes the Doctor as a Time Lord and prepares to kill him to make more ghosts. The Doctor however tells him that he has destroyed the writing, meaning that the Doctor will not become a transmission ghost. Angrily, the Fisher King bats him aside and heads back to the ship to recreate the writing. He finds the Doctor has lied and the writing still there. He turns back to the church just as the power cell the Doctor stole explodes at the base of the dam. The dam breaches and the valley floods, killing the Fisher King. As it does so, an automatic return program is triggered sending Bennett and the TARDIS back to the base.
Realizing that Lunn has been gone too long, Cass and Clara head out to find him. Avoiding the ghosts, they discover him in the mess hall. The ghosts attack and the group runs into the bay just as the suspended animation chamber deactivates and opens. The Doctor pops out, having stored himself when the Fisher King left the church. The Doctor activates a signal, causing his ghost to send the call of the Fisher King, luring the other ghosts back into the Faraday cage where the are locked in. As they do so, his ghost (in actuality a hologram) disappears.
With the ghosts contained, the Doctor informs the crew that UNIT will move in and ship the Faraday cage to space where the ghosts will eventually fade away. Cass and Lunn begin a relationship and the Doctor and Clara leave for their next adventure.
Analysis
Taken as a whole, this may be my favorite overall story of Series 9. Heaven Sent was the best episode but I don't think the overall three part story of Face the Raven/Heaven Sent/Hell Bent is as good as Under the Lake and Before the Flood.
Much like Flatline, Under the Lake is a good horror tale. Better than modern horrors in most regards, it focuses on suspense, fear of what might happen, and character development rather than jump scares and gore. In addition to good acting, there is excellent mood lighting and set design. In many ways, the story borrows from Alien with it's blue collar crew and industrial setting. In doing so, it uses limitations to it's advantage, using the same corridor set to both give the station a large empty feel and yet also feel closed in and claustrophobic. Everything about the setting feels creepy and unsettling.
I also appreciate that despite the ghost's menace, they only successfully kill one person and that both crew deaths in the first part are bloodless. Again, this puts more emphasis on suspense and that threat of danger rather than a body count that has to be satisfied with elevating levels of gore and splatter. Later we have the Fisher King actually killing people with his gun but that is also handled fairly well, though I felt that O'Donnell's death was a bit overplayed.
Despite it being a horror theme, the story was also cut with some good levity. My personal favorite is the Doctor becoming so excited by the ghosts that he is forced to use cue cards to not appear a totally insensitive jerk. There is also a lot of quick contradictory humor where the Doctor raises someone to only cut them a moment later: "Who's in charge so I know who to ignore," for example. The comedy did a good job of cutting the tension just enough so that it did not become overbearing when the horror elements picked up again in the next scene.
The acting of all the characters was pretty good. I really enjoyed the concept of the Doctor having a groupie with O'Donnell and her holding it in until the Doctor had gone with the TARDIS being "bigger on the inside" was particularly amusing. Prichard also does a good job in satisfying the stereotypical company man, more concerned with money than anything else. He is strongly reminiscent of Paul Reiser's character in Aliens.
Of all of them, I actually liked Cass the best. Being a deaf actress, she is forced to put emphasis through facial expression and in how her hand move while signing and both of these played very well with getting across her intensity for the crew. The rapport that she developed with the Doctor is very natural and the conversations she has with him in educating the rest of the crew are particularly engaging. I also enjoyed how she didn't take crap from either the Doctor or Clara. She tells the Doctor off about wanting to stay before they learn they can't leave. Her telling off Clara for her rather cavalier attitude towards the danger Lunn may be in is also very well done. I actually laughed out loud when she cussed out Clara in sign after Lunn leaves the Faraday cage, with Clara immediately getting the point.
Clara is actually one of the weaker points for me in this story. This series as a whole was heavy handed about Clara's departure and it came across way too heavy in this story. Clara was aggressive in the adventure to the point of being reckless and it made Cass's telling her off for being so cavalier about the lives of others that much more satisfying.
The conversation Clara had with Doctor about not accepting death and breaking the rules to prevent it was also very heavy handed. It emphasized everything I didn't like in Hell Bent and reminded me how important it is to accept that the rules of the game must be played and how it takes proper cleverness to manipulate the rules to allow you to win rather than breaking the rules for selfish gain. That it took the TARDIS refusing to allow the Doctor to go back and break the rules of time was probably another warning signal that is only truly visible in hindsight.
One thing that I know that divides fans is the opening to Before the Flood where the Doctor breaks the fourth wall to explain the Bootstrap Paradox. I personally enjoyed it, although I have a sense that it was added mostly as padding since the explanation of it and the Doctor's summary of his ghost using the Bootstrap Paradox at the end are entirely superfluous to the overall story. Of course, I give it an extra pass because I love Capaldi's performance of the opening of Beethoven's 5th and the subsequent rock version of the opening theme. So that's all good from my point of view.
Aside from Clara, the only thing that I felt was lacking in this story was the Doctor's meeting with the Fisher King. I feel like this conversation was too short. The Doctor confronts him in the church and you immediately recognize that the Fisher King is aware that something is different about the Doctor as he engages with the Doctor rather than killing him outright as he did with Prentis and O'Donnell. There is a dark refinement in how the Fisher King speaks and when he identifies the Doctor as a Time Lord, a race that he both has contempt and admiration for, you can feel this extra sense of malice as he relishes victory over the Doctor. Likewise, you can hear his anger and contempt when he realized the Doctor lied to him after heading back to the ship. I enjoyed and appreciated these scenes enough that I felt that there should be more of them. There wasn't enough time to savor the Fisher King and the potential he offered as a foe and that was a bit disappointing.
Overall this is an excellent story and I would highly recommend watching it again. The story is scary but with a proper amount of levity to cut it. The story has a nice science fiction bent with that extra dose of time travel that you expect from Doctor Who, going so far as to indulge in paradox as well. The ending is fairly satisfying though some elements of the second part are not quite the payoff you were hoping for. Nevertheless, I was quite excited to sit down with this story when it became available for rewatch and would happily sit with it again.
Overall personal score: Under the Lake - 5 out of 5; Before the Flood - 4.5 out of 5
Under the Lake is Doctor Who's version of a haunted house story. It incorporates many haunted house tropes including isolation, ghosts coming out at "night" and a slow pick off of the people trapped in the station.
Plot Summary
The crew of an underwater oil drilling station in 2119 has recovered an alien space ship. Inside, they find it empty save for some strange markings on the wall. The company representative, Pritchard, checks a control panel which suddenly activates and the engine ignites. The crew commander, Moran, shoves a crewman out of the way and is caught in the exhaust stream, incinerating him. However, he reappears a moment later as an apparition with blacked out eyes.
Several days later, the TARDIS arrives. The Doctor is uneasy as the TARDIS was resistant to come to this location. They find the Moran specter who leads them to the bay with the ship. They go inside and also see the markings on the side. Emerging from the ship, the Moran ghost reappears along with the ghost of a Tivolian in a Victorian style outfit. Both ghosts grab metal objects and attack them. They run through the base and the crew urges them into a Faraday cage which keeps the ghosts out.
In the cage, the Doctor and Clara are introduced to the rest of the crew who bring them up to date on what happened. The station switches to day mode and the crew leaves the cage as the ghosts don't appear during day mode. They return to the control station where the Doctor starts to investigate what is going on. In the ship, he finds the suspended animation chamber is missing as well as one of the power cells. Pritchard, hearing how valuable the cell might be, slips out of the station in a exterior suit to look around for it.
The station suddenly switches from day to night mode and the ghosts reappear. O'Donnell, the tech operator, manages to revert things back to day mode but not before they attack and kill Pritchard returning from his exterior explorations, adding a third ghost to the mix.
Cass, the new base commander, decides they need to signal the surface for extraction. However, when they signal the surface, they find the sub was already signaled and coming down. The Doctor order the sub to immediately return the to the surface and declares quarantine on the base as the ghosts had signaled the sub. Frustrated by a lack of information, the Doctor hatches a plan and has O'Donnell revert the station to night mode.
Once the ghosts reappear, crew members lure the ghosts down the corridors towards the Faraday cage. The Pritchard ghost breaks off briefly to chase Cass's signer Lunn but despite cornering him, he does not kill him. Instead he reunites with the other two who are lured into the Faraday cage with a hologram of Clara. Once locked inside, the Doctor enters and has Cass read their lips. She reads four words repeated continuously. The Doctor figures that they are space coordinates, pinpointing the location of a building on Earth.
Prior to the valley being flooded, there was a mock town built for military training, including a church. Using the information given, the crew sends out a reconnaissance sub to the remains of the church and discovers the missing suspended animation chamber, active. It is brought back to the base but before they can examine it fully, the station power supply suffers a malfunction and the base begins to flood.
O'Donnell manages to isolate the flooding to a central corridor but it threatens to cut them off from the TARDIS. Everyone races towards it but Clara, Cass and Lunn are separated from the Doctor, O'Donnell and Bennett. The Doctor elects to travel back in the TARDIS to before the valley flooded and try to figure things out so that he can rescue the others. As the TARDIS disappears, a new ghost appears in the water outside of the Doctor.
The Doctor, O'Donnell and Bennett travel back to 1980 just after the Tivolian ship lands. There they meet Prentis, a Tivolian funeral director transporting the body of the Fisher King, the recently deposed overlord of the Tivolians. His ship lacks the markings that are causing the ghost phenomena so the Doctor heads back to the TARDIS to check in with Clara.
Clara informs the Doctor that a ghost of him has appeared but unlike the others, he is saying a list of names. The ghost Doctor enters and releases the ghosts from the Faraday cage, also changing his words to when the suspended animation chamber will open. With the ghosts free, Clara, Cass and Lunn run back to the Faraday cage but pose Clara's phone outside on a ledge in case the Doctor needs to contact her again.
The Doctor and crew head out again, although tries to convince O'Donnell to stay in the TARDIS. She refuses. They find that the Fisher King has reanimated, carved the words in the wall and killed Prentis. Hearing him approach, they duck into a nearby building to hide, but O'Donnell is discovered and killed. Bennett angrily confronts the Doctor for not trying harder to save her as her name was next in the list recited by the ghost Doctor.
Back at the station, the ghost of O'Donnell appears. She cannot get into the cage but she takes Clara's phone. Clara, realizing that the ghosts won't kill Lunn because he hasn't seen the figures, convinces him to go out and retrieve it, much to the resentment of Cass. Lunn obtains the phone but the ghosts lock him into the mess hall.
With Clara's name next on the list, the Doctor heads back to the TARDIS to try and rescue her but the TARDIS refuses to go and instead lands them back at the time they arrived the first time. Bennett tries to warn O'Donnell while their past selves are talking with Prentice but the Doctor stops him, warning him of dangers of screwing with time. While the Fisher King kills Prentice, the Doctor sends Bennett back to the TARDIS to wait for him. The Doctor grabs one of the power cells from the ship while the Fisher King drags the suspended animation chamber to the church.
The Doctor enters the church and confronts the Fisher King. The Fisher King recognizes the Doctor as a Time Lord and prepares to kill him to make more ghosts. The Doctor however tells him that he has destroyed the writing, meaning that the Doctor will not become a transmission ghost. Angrily, the Fisher King bats him aside and heads back to the ship to recreate the writing. He finds the Doctor has lied and the writing still there. He turns back to the church just as the power cell the Doctor stole explodes at the base of the dam. The dam breaches and the valley floods, killing the Fisher King. As it does so, an automatic return program is triggered sending Bennett and the TARDIS back to the base.
Realizing that Lunn has been gone too long, Cass and Clara head out to find him. Avoiding the ghosts, they discover him in the mess hall. The ghosts attack and the group runs into the bay just as the suspended animation chamber deactivates and opens. The Doctor pops out, having stored himself when the Fisher King left the church. The Doctor activates a signal, causing his ghost to send the call of the Fisher King, luring the other ghosts back into the Faraday cage where the are locked in. As they do so, his ghost (in actuality a hologram) disappears.
With the ghosts contained, the Doctor informs the crew that UNIT will move in and ship the Faraday cage to space where the ghosts will eventually fade away. Cass and Lunn begin a relationship and the Doctor and Clara leave for their next adventure.
Analysis
Taken as a whole, this may be my favorite overall story of Series 9. Heaven Sent was the best episode but I don't think the overall three part story of Face the Raven/Heaven Sent/Hell Bent is as good as Under the Lake and Before the Flood.
Much like Flatline, Under the Lake is a good horror tale. Better than modern horrors in most regards, it focuses on suspense, fear of what might happen, and character development rather than jump scares and gore. In addition to good acting, there is excellent mood lighting and set design. In many ways, the story borrows from Alien with it's blue collar crew and industrial setting. In doing so, it uses limitations to it's advantage, using the same corridor set to both give the station a large empty feel and yet also feel closed in and claustrophobic. Everything about the setting feels creepy and unsettling.
I also appreciate that despite the ghost's menace, they only successfully kill one person and that both crew deaths in the first part are bloodless. Again, this puts more emphasis on suspense and that threat of danger rather than a body count that has to be satisfied with elevating levels of gore and splatter. Later we have the Fisher King actually killing people with his gun but that is also handled fairly well, though I felt that O'Donnell's death was a bit overplayed.
Despite it being a horror theme, the story was also cut with some good levity. My personal favorite is the Doctor becoming so excited by the ghosts that he is forced to use cue cards to not appear a totally insensitive jerk. There is also a lot of quick contradictory humor where the Doctor raises someone to only cut them a moment later: "Who's in charge so I know who to ignore," for example. The comedy did a good job of cutting the tension just enough so that it did not become overbearing when the horror elements picked up again in the next scene.
The acting of all the characters was pretty good. I really enjoyed the concept of the Doctor having a groupie with O'Donnell and her holding it in until the Doctor had gone with the TARDIS being "bigger on the inside" was particularly amusing. Prichard also does a good job in satisfying the stereotypical company man, more concerned with money than anything else. He is strongly reminiscent of Paul Reiser's character in Aliens.
Of all of them, I actually liked Cass the best. Being a deaf actress, she is forced to put emphasis through facial expression and in how her hand move while signing and both of these played very well with getting across her intensity for the crew. The rapport that she developed with the Doctor is very natural and the conversations she has with him in educating the rest of the crew are particularly engaging. I also enjoyed how she didn't take crap from either the Doctor or Clara. She tells the Doctor off about wanting to stay before they learn they can't leave. Her telling off Clara for her rather cavalier attitude towards the danger Lunn may be in is also very well done. I actually laughed out loud when she cussed out Clara in sign after Lunn leaves the Faraday cage, with Clara immediately getting the point.
Clara is actually one of the weaker points for me in this story. This series as a whole was heavy handed about Clara's departure and it came across way too heavy in this story. Clara was aggressive in the adventure to the point of being reckless and it made Cass's telling her off for being so cavalier about the lives of others that much more satisfying.
The conversation Clara had with Doctor about not accepting death and breaking the rules to prevent it was also very heavy handed. It emphasized everything I didn't like in Hell Bent and reminded me how important it is to accept that the rules of the game must be played and how it takes proper cleverness to manipulate the rules to allow you to win rather than breaking the rules for selfish gain. That it took the TARDIS refusing to allow the Doctor to go back and break the rules of time was probably another warning signal that is only truly visible in hindsight.
One thing that I know that divides fans is the opening to Before the Flood where the Doctor breaks the fourth wall to explain the Bootstrap Paradox. I personally enjoyed it, although I have a sense that it was added mostly as padding since the explanation of it and the Doctor's summary of his ghost using the Bootstrap Paradox at the end are entirely superfluous to the overall story. Of course, I give it an extra pass because I love Capaldi's performance of the opening of Beethoven's 5th and the subsequent rock version of the opening theme. So that's all good from my point of view.
Aside from Clara, the only thing that I felt was lacking in this story was the Doctor's meeting with the Fisher King. I feel like this conversation was too short. The Doctor confronts him in the church and you immediately recognize that the Fisher King is aware that something is different about the Doctor as he engages with the Doctor rather than killing him outright as he did with Prentis and O'Donnell. There is a dark refinement in how the Fisher King speaks and when he identifies the Doctor as a Time Lord, a race that he both has contempt and admiration for, you can feel this extra sense of malice as he relishes victory over the Doctor. Likewise, you can hear his anger and contempt when he realized the Doctor lied to him after heading back to the ship. I enjoyed and appreciated these scenes enough that I felt that there should be more of them. There wasn't enough time to savor the Fisher King and the potential he offered as a foe and that was a bit disappointing.
Overall this is an excellent story and I would highly recommend watching it again. The story is scary but with a proper amount of levity to cut it. The story has a nice science fiction bent with that extra dose of time travel that you expect from Doctor Who, going so far as to indulge in paradox as well. The ending is fairly satisfying though some elements of the second part are not quite the payoff you were hoping for. Nevertheless, I was quite excited to sit down with this story when it became available for rewatch and would happily sit with it again.
Overall personal score: Under the Lake - 5 out of 5; Before the Flood - 4.5 out of 5
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