Underworld

The quest is the quest.

I think the only two things I had ever heard about Underworld was that it was a take on Greek myths (especially Jason and the Argonauts) and that it was rather famously shot largely on green screen. Both elements are not exactly the thing that fills you with confidence going into a story but I'm willing to keep an open mind, especially if the quality of the story can keep up with any shortcomings in production.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Leela arrive at the limit of the universe where a nebula is forming. Unwilling to get sucked in, the Doctor has K-9 reroute the TARDIS on to a passing vessel which is also approaching the nebula.

The ship is piloted by a small crew of Minyans, a race of people who were visited by the Time Lords in the past and revered them as gods. Ultimately, they rose up against the Time Lords and drove them off. The captain, Jackson, and his crew have been searching for thousands of years for a ship called the P7E, which contained a race bank and can be used to reconstitute the Minyan race after their home world was destroyed by civil war.

Jackson detects the sound of the TARDIS landing and enters it into the computer which registers it from the days of Time Lord intervention. One crewman, Herrick, is distrustful and thinks they should attack but Jackson is more patient.

The Doctor and Leela emerge from the TARDIS find themselves in a store room. Leela picks up a shield with a laser weapon attached and uses it to blow open the door. They make their way to the bridge, leaving K-9 in the TARDIS. When they arrive at the bridge, the Doctor and Leela are taken captive but in a restrained manner. Leela resists and one of the crew, Orfe, zaps her with a pacifier gun which gives her a calm, almost blasse demeanor for a few minutes. Orfe is forced to use the same gun on Herrick when he tries to attack the Doctor.

Before much can be said on either side, the sole woman crewman, Tala, collapses of what appears to be old age. Orfe and Herrick carry her to the regeneration pods where her youth is restored. She returns to duty and the Doctor is impressed. Jackson tells the Doctor of their question and of the many regenerations they have been through to try and see it through.

The ship becomes caught in the gravity of the nebula and is too damaged to allow full power to be used. The Doctor summons K-9 to the bridge and he and the Doctor conduct quick repairs, restoring power and allowing the ship to escape.

As they do, they detect the signal from the P7E and Jackson orders a turn around back into the nebula. As they enter the nebula, the hull is bombarded with small rocks and other matter and a planetoid skin begins to form around it. Jackson orders the guns to fire and manages to blast a small hole in the skin and the ship emerges from the forming body. However, the maneuver uses up nearly all the fuel and they are unable to redirect the ship as they crash into another planetoid from which the P7E signal is emitting.

In the depths of the planet's core, a rebellion is being suppressed. The underclass, called Trogs, are being put down by a guards. They capture an old man advocating the rebellion and pursue his son through the tunnels as he climbs to higher levels, eventually emerging on the same level as the crashed ship.

Jackson and his crew leave the ship to find the P7E but order the Doctor and Leela to stay behind. The Doctor and Leela wait a couple of minutes and then head out to explore on their own. The Doctor and Leela see the young man pursued by the guards and duck out of sight. He dashes towards the ship and they make a distraction, causing the guards to start following them. They hide in some old ore trams, giving the guards the slip and then head back to the ship.

Jackson and his crew wander through the tunnels until they reach a branch. Jackson sends Herrick on ahead with a radio relay while the others wait for his report. He is attacked by a guard who thinks him a Trog but Herrick rebuffs the guard's weapon with his shield gun. Irritated by the attack, Herrick picks up the radio and sarcastically replies to the call sign. Fearing the Trogs are gaining the upper hand and weapons, the head of the guards orders that area of the tunnels sealed and gas to be pumped into that area.

The Doctor and Leela return to the ship where they find the young man, named Idas, wounded. They tend to his wounds but observe gas being pumped into the tunnels. The Doctor orders Leela to take him onto the bridge and disconnect K-9 while he heads out into the tunnels to deactivate the gas. He finds a relay station and rewires it to suck the gas back rather than pump it out. The gas flows back into the control room where it knocks out the guards.

The Doctor returns to the ship where Idas and Leela are waiting. Idas gives the Doctor a map of the tunnels and speaks of the central room where the Oracle lives much like their own ship. The Doctor grabs K-9 and the four of them head back into the tunnels to travel to the central lair. The Doctor sends K-9 to find Jackson and his team and tell them where they are going while the rest head to the tunnel main entrance.

Leela disables the electronic shield with a spare shield gun from the ship and the three of them descend down the shaft with a gravity cushion. They are captured while boarding the ship and are taken to the control room where they find Idas' father Idmon about to be sacrificed by a hanging sword with it's cord being burned through. Just before the cord snaps, the Doctor lurches forward and pulls Idmon's bier to them. Leela fires a captured gun, knocking down the guards. The group and several other slaves rush back through the ship towards the entrance bridge.

Guards come up and surround them but they are cut down by Herrick who has run ahead of Jackson and the others. He provides cover while the others run back to the bridge. On the edge of the bridge, Jackson urges Herrick to fall back with the rest of them but Herrick impulsively stays to fight. He takes down a number of guards until he is eventually shot down. Stunned, the guards drag him into the ship.

In the tunnels, the group catches their breath. Jackson knows they'll have to reenter the ship but the bridge will be too well guarded to breach by force. Idmon and another slave named Naia tell the Doctor of how they gather ore to be crushed and used as fuel for the operations of the ship. The Doctor gets an idea of how to sneak on to the ship. He and Leela climb in a tram and have Idmon push it as though it's another load of ore to be dumped into the processing chute. As they are dumped, the other Trogs jump out and attack the guards. The guards manage to set off the alarm but are steadily pushed back, overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Herrick is interrogated by two figures known as Seers that work directly for the Oracle. Herrick is tortured and tells the Seers of the quest to find the race bank of the Minyons. The Seers deny that he is of the Minyon race as they are the only survivors but also claim no knowledge of the race banks. They remove their hoods to reveal that they are robots. They overhear that the guards are being overwhelmed but order them to stand and fight. One of the robots then suggests that give Herrick what he wants just have them go away.

The Doctor, Leela and Idas use the cover of the chaos to sneak through the tunnels and back to the ship. As they go, Herrick is released and given two golden cylinders, which he is told are the race memories. He makes his way back to Jackson and the others and together they return to the ship to prepare for departure.

The Doctor, Leela and Idas enter the ship and slip into the Oracle's chamber. The Doctor tricks the Oracle into revealing that the race memories she gave were fakes. He then pries open a hatch and steals the real race memories as she sounds the alarm. The trio retreats back through the shafts as the guards come through. The guards set off a trap and seal the trio into a part of the tunnel by collapsing either side.

Jackson readies the ship for take off despite K-9's warning that the Doctor has not returned. Jackson sends K-9 to find him and finishes the preparations. K-9 frees the Doctor, Leela and Idas and takes them back to the ship. Jackson nearly takes off when the Doctor returns and orders him to stop. He gives Jackson the real race memories and takes the fake ones to K-9 who diagnoses them as powerful fission bombs. The Doctor takes them to get rid of them and orders Jackson to wait for him but to fully prepare the ship.

The Doctor, Leela and Idas head back into the tunnels where the guards have been searching for him and the race memories. He hands them over to the head of the guards who orders him to leave. While those guards are distracted, Idas and Leela knock out other guards and free the working Trogs. The two of them gather up all the Trogs throughout the city and, per the Doctor's orders, have them brought to Jackson's ship.

The Doctor has them all board the ship but Jackson tries to throw them off due to the extra weight. The Doctor overrides him and once everyone is aboard, he orders them to take off. They do so but lack the fuel to achieve breakaway velocity. The begin to orbit the planet but the Doctor tells them to hang on.

The guard brings the cylinders to the Oracle but she recognizes them as the bombs. When told that the other ship has already left, she bows to fate and the Seers open the bombs. The resulting explosion destroys the forming planetoid and the shockwave pushes Jackson's ship out of the nebula. They set course for Minyos II, estimating that it will only take 300 years to get there. The Doctor, Leela and K-9 board the TARDIS and depart with the Doctor making an offhand comment about the parallels between Jackson and the story of Jason and the Argonauts.

Analysis

This was a bit of a disappointment of a story given it's rather interesting premise and a pretty good start with Episode One. But once Jackson's crew arrive on planet, the whole things just starts to crumble.

In many ways, this story was two different stories. The first episode gave so much potential to play with. You had a race of people that were shadows of Greek myths and had versions of Time Lord technology with them, at least a form of regeneration. These were people with whom you would expect to deal with the Doctor on more of an even footing and could be developed well. There were also some rather disturbing ideas as well. I found it very interesting that when Leela came back to herself after having the pacifier used on her, her reaction at that loss of identity was akin to a woman who had been raped. You could see this profound anger at what had been taken from her without her permission. It's a disturbing reaction, especially given Orfe's very casual reaction. But like the regeneration, nothing is done with that past Episode One.

While on the subject of Leela, we can chalk this story up as another wasted opportunity for her. She is written with the emphasis on her savage nature and not her intelligence. She also relegated to the role of bodyguard and messenger girl for the rest of the story. K-9 actually has a more active role than her. She is at least in most scenes so you never confuse the fact that she is the companion but aside from her line about how the Doctor has saved many fathers, after Episode One she could be swapped out for any other character. All semblance of the personality that is truly Leela is absent and that's a real shame.

Aside from the rescue by K-9, this is one of the stories where it could be argued that the Doctor doesn't really need a companion. There's no real deception going on in this story so the Doctor understands everything pretty much from the get go. That's not a bad thing except for what it does to Leela though. The Doctor is pretty much the best thing about this story and he does almost no faffing about either. He helps Jackson land, he helps people, he recovers the race memory, he saves people and he allows the enemies to be destroyed. There is the occasional joke and the general lightheartedness that the Fourth Doctor has during the Graham Williams era but overall it's very direct and you never question the Doctor being in charge. As long as he is the focus, the story is at least somewhat entertaining.

That same cannot be said for the guest cast. There is almost no personality among any of them. Idas spends three episodes with the Doctor as a pseudo-companion and yet he is instantly forgettable. The Trogs are almost never seen and their plight is only given a surface level examination. Even Jackson's crew is boring. Herrick is the only one who is given something resembling a personality and even then, it doesn't do much. His mouth off at the end of Episode Two is mostly to create a conflict for the cliffhanger and his staying behind on the bridge to be captured towards the end of Episode Three makes even less sense. Playing rearguard is fine but it should have been a slow retreat along with everyone else. It's just stupid and lazy writing to have him stay. But everyone else, even if they get lines, are so generic that you question why they are even there except to fill the screen.

These are also the most underdeveloped villains I've seen in quite a while. You have a mad computer (something that's been done a lot), two enforcer robots, a select team of security people and then the Trogs. Why was this society set up this way? Why did the computer go mad? Why does being the protector of the race memory mean that most of the population has to be controlled and culled with occasional cave ins? None of this is explained. You simply have evil because you needed evil to be there. In the original story, Jason defeats the guardians of the Golden Fleece with the help of Medea, the daughter of the king. If the Oracle and the robots represented the guardians of the fleece, then there should have been some backstory about taking possession and either Jackson or the Doctor getting help from someone on the inside and high up in the power structure to represent Medea. That might also have given insight into the motivations of the guardians and why the computer went mad upon having the planet form around the P7E.

But of all the failures of this story, and there are many, the worst has to be how it was shot. As the second to last story of the season, what little budget they had was gone. So the whole thing apart from the bridge of the ship and a couple of corridors was shot on green screen and it looks dreadful. Aside from always being painfully obvious that it is an illusion, green screen forces the camera to stay still, meaning that you can only shoot your actors coming or going and if you want a shift in shot or a zoom you have to cut to a new shot. That can be time consuming and expensive so most of the shooting is done at a distance. For me it felt especially pronounced as it wasn't that long ago where I was watching Revenge of the Cybermen and you had some very nice shots in caves there. That is what being underground should feel like and this just looks and feels awful.

There are other directing faux pas that I can't understand. One of the most prominent is when Leela and Idas free the Trogs. They shoot down one guard but there is another standing right there in the shot. As they free the Trogs he just slowly backs out like he realizes he isn't supposed to be in frame. It's an absolutely terrible shot and it makes it look like no one knew what was going on. There were other bad shots as well but that is the one that really made me question if the director had any idea of what he was doing.

I would argue that this story needed a major rewrite. I doubt there was much anyone could do about the lack of budget though I think it would be interesting to see if it actually might have cost less to back to Wookie Hole and film there rather than on green screen, which would have improved the look. But as for the story, some of the ideas involving the Minyons and the Time Lords should have been dropped to get to the planet sooner. Once there, it should have been a direct line to the ruler of a people who live in fear of the Oracle and her guardianship of the race memory. From that point, you have a representative of these people working with the Doctor, Leela and Jackson's crew where each lets their talents shine to defeat the barriers the Oracle has laid before them. That would have been a more direct rip of the Jason legend (and more akin to the Hinchcliff era) and would have probably streamlined the cast while also giving more attention to each of the characters.

I don't know if this story could ever have been great given the limitations facing it, but the writing and direction only amplified the problems with it. It only gets more disappointing given how well it started. About the only positive things I can say is that each episode is short and when action is happening, things move quickly. I enjoyed watching the Doctor and as bad as things looked, I'm not sure I could ever say that it was boring. So I'm going to give it a small pass in the regard that it generally held my attention which is better than some stories. But as for actively picking this one to watch again, I can't even imagine that it would occur to me to look for it.

Overall personal score: 1 out of 5

Knock Knock

Yes, Dryads. I can't just call them lice now can I?

The fourth story in Series 10 appears to be going back to the haunted house fear fest. It looks fairly interesting from the trailers but that's not saying much since trailers are designed to do that. The big question will be whether this goes the Hide route (scary and then fizzle at the end) or try and stick with the scares all the way to the end (a la Horror of Fang Rock).

Plot Summary

Bill meets with five new friends and together they look for a place to live together. After several unsuccessful attempts with an agent, they are approached by an old man who is looking for tenants for his property. He takes them to an old estate house right out of a gothic horror script. They look it over and immediately agree to move in. One of the boys, Pavel, moves in that evening as his lease has run out. He settles in for the night, listening to music on a record player when he is attacked in his room, causing the record to scratch and be stuck on one small section.

The Doctor assists Bill in moving her things via the TARDIS. They deposit them in her room but the Doctor is on his guard as something is not quite right. Bill shoos him but he sneaks into the basement to explore.

That evening, a few of the people are becoming a bit unnerved by some of the shortcomings of the house, including sounds in the walls and a lack of cell phone reception. Hearing a noise, they go to investigate and find the Doctor emerging from a basement elevator. The landlord appears and he acknowledges their concerns, promising to address them in the morning. The Doctor however corners him and asks him who the Prime Minister is. The landlord begs off without answering the Doctor, his only break in mood to warn them against going in the tower. He then leaves but not before setting a tuning fork against the walls.

Bill tries to shoo the Doctor off again but he refuses. He lightens the mood by stealing Bill's phone and starting her playlist. Two of the tenants, Felicity and Harry, begin to dance around and have fun with the Doctor while Bill, Paul and Shireen take some of the last of their things upstairs. Paul teases the girls slightly but upon entering his room and closing the door, is consumed by the house.

Unnerved by the sounds from Paul's room and the less than reassuring knocks made afterwards, Bill and Shireen head to Pavel's room where his record keeps skipping in place. They find him partially consumed by the wall and seemingly frozen in place. The landlord enters and stops the record, allowing the wall to finish the job and Pavel disappears. Bill and Shireen run out of the room.

Downstairs, the shutters begin to close by themselves and the Doctor, Harry and Felicity find themselves cut off. Felicity manages to get through the kitchen shutters before they can bolt themselves and runs out to the grounds. However, she is consumed by one of the trees outside, which the Doctor had observed earlier to be swaying despite no wind.

The Doctor examines the wall and causes a large, alien woodlouse emerges. More of the creatures emerge and the Doctor and Harry retreat into the basement elevator and descend into it. In the basement they find evidence that the landlord has been inviting youths to stay in the house every twenty years only to have the lice consume them. The landlord enters and claims to do this to protect his daughter who is ill. Harry tries to run but upon touching the wooden stairs is swarmed by the lice and consumed. The Doctor offers to help his daughter and the landlord considers.

Bill and Shireen run though the house looking for an entrance to the tower. They find a trick book which opens a passage into the tower. At the top, they find Eliza, a woman who has been completely converted to wood by the lice to keep her alive from a grave illness she had. In exchange, they must feed the lice every twenty years.

The Doctor and the landlord enter and Shireen is consumed by the lice as the landlord continues with the schedule. Bill however notices a problem with the story as no father would bring his daughter bugs he found in the garden. He also has no sign of any change despite this thing going on for seventy years. The Doctor realizes that the landlord is not Eliza's father but instead her son. Eliza herself had forgotten this as her transformation to wood preserved her body but let her memories fade, allowing them to be filled by the stories of her son.

With this reveal, the landlord becomes more child-like and defiant with Eliza beginning to realize the true scope of the horror he has inflicted on people. She also realizes that he never went out and that what good is living if you stay in prison the whole time. The landlord tries to summon the bugs to eat Bill by using high pitched sound but Eliza is the one that actually controls them. She calls them off, embraces her son and then has the bugs consume them instead.

Before being totally consumed, she orders the bugs to release all of Bill's friends. The Doctor and Bill grab each of them as they emerge from the house and run outside as it collapses.

The Doctor returns to the vault where Nardole is doing some checks. Nardole has observed that the Doctor has given the occupant of the vault a piano as music is emanating. The Doctor dismisses Nardole and brings food to the occupant along with the promise of the tale of his latest adventure. He opens the vault and walks inside.

Analysis

I gathered based on fan reaction that this story was not as popular as the previous ones. For me though, this was the most enjoyable story of the series so far. It was not without it's faults, but it zipped along and kept the watcher engaged. Even the ending, which is where most people lost it, was better than I expected given the track record of Hide, Night Terrors and other pseudo-horror stories.

The horror elements of this story were quite good. I think for more underlying creepiness, I would defer to Night Terrors but this one had the haunted house and carnivorous insects vibe down cold. The landlord as well was a nice touch with his interactions being near perfect to elicit that feeling of cold dread just before the crap hit the fan.

There is however a limit to the scope of horror that can be allowed and that is where things fell apart for most people. At the end of a story, the monster needs to be defeated, things either explained or at least put into state of deferment and then have things return to normal. That last bit can either involve some or all of the guest cast returning from their actual or pseudo-deaths. Most of the time that usually involves an almost "Deus ex Machina" which typically turns people off as too quick and tidy. This story did have that but it also had a twist that helped give a plausible reason why the resolution hadn't happened yet. I at least enjoyed that and it helped me wash over the easy fix.

I enjoyed the Doctor in this story but with so many extras in this story, he got a bit lost at points. This is the first story where the Doctor and Bill have been separated in the heart of an adventure and each have taken on others who know less than them. Bill was a bit of a Doctor type in that she had guesses and intuition that paid off as well as bit more boldness than her fellow tenants. But she was still mostly just operating in the dark where the Doctor was actually looking to solve the problem. Bill could have easily worked in Harry's place but it worked better for the Doctor to actually see the lice consume someone and even though they came back, having the lice consume Bill would have given away the game that they were all going to come back.

Bill did have a nice Watsonian moment where the Doctor is being all clever and she points out flaws in the story because of age issues, something that the Doctor had forgotten about. That is probably one of the best things about Bill in my opinion. She is more observational intelligent rather than genius. In the past, it has been an easy fallback to just make the companion a very smart person who can hang with the Doctor. Bill on the other hand is more of regular smart person who has the added knack of looking at things from a different perspective and noticing things that others missed. Hence her asking a question in every story so far about the nature of the Doctor's life and little things that had never really been examined by the show so far.

The guest cast was pretty good. Bill's five friends all seemed to be enjoyable and had reasonably well fleshed out personalities even though most of them were taken from the screen after only a few minutes. Harry got the longest run being the stand-in for Bill and he did okay, although he did have a moment where his acting went a touch off the rails. But they worked well for the most part.

The highest praise should be reserved for David Suchet. I'm mostly familiar with David Suchet as Poirot and his style and appearance was so different here that I actually didn't recognize him beyond, "That guy looks familiar". But his characterization was quite enjoyable as was his treatment of the character. Since we know that a haunted house story is coming we immediately cotton on to the creepy nature of the character. His appearances and disappearances seemingly without warning got me thinking that he might be some sort of apparition or holographic projection at first.

But the interesting thing came about with the reveal about Eliza being his mother. Up until then he seemed to indulge in the various horror tropes about the butler or caretaker who is in on the attack. But there is always this sort of unsteady quality even in these moment. Once it is revealed that he was the son, he seems to drop all pretense and reverts to the eight-year old boy who wants to save his mother. It gave me a strong Norman Bates quality, except that his mother wasn't a monster. I thought there was a subtlety and dynamic to the performance that was very enjoyable.

Eliza was a bit of a failing for me in the story. The first issue wasn't a fault in the episode but with the BBC in general as Eliza's reveal was shown in the series trailer fairly prominently. As such, it was pretty obvious what was waiting behind the screen when Bill and Shireen enter. I did have a problem with the acting as well though. I'm wondering how much the actress was hampered by the makeup, but she seemed to be very unsure of herself and never really put out any sense of will. There was just something about her performance, especially relative to the strength of David Suchet's that just seemed weak.

The visuals and atmosphere were also done very well and I got the sense that the director has had some horror experience. There was a moment in the story that did bother me and I'm not sure if it was something specific to the episode or if it was the broadcast. At one point, when Bill is trying to get the Doctor to leave, the film speeds up. This is similar to the beginning where they are looking at different places, but that seemed like standard montage stuff. This speedup seemed like everyone was getting a strange Munsters quality for no appreciable reason. I wouldn't put it past BBC America to have tossed in a couple of speed moments just to keep the run time down but on the off chance they were there deliberately, they did not work at all.

One thing that did surprise me both about the story and some of the reaction to it is that with all the little clues and hints to the past that were put in, no one mentioned the Tractators. Granted, I try to avoid talking about Frontios as well, but given that Christopher H. Bidmede specifically mentioned being inspired by seeing woodlice in the garden, I would have thought that some sort of joke or reference would have made itself available. Obviously Ghost Light got the biggest play in most of the references I saw.

We also got a further tease regarding the vault at the end, which was also our only bit of Nardole in the story. There isn't much to say other than I liked the piano playing ability of the person in the vault. It is my understanding that we will probably find out who the vault person is in Episode Six (Extremis) as this is the next story written by Steven Moffat. It's rather pointless to speculate given that it's going to be revealed soon but I think the betting favorite is the John Simm Master given that he was revealed somewhat by accident by the BBC. In fact, I wouldn't be shocked to find that the vault is the Master's TARDIS except that the Doctor has disabled it in some way to both prevent it from taking off and to only allow someone in rather than anyone out. But we'll find out soon enough.

Overall, I enjoyed this story. It was a bit of a letdown at the end, but I think that is almost unavoidable given the nature of the show. But that letdown was not nearly as hard as some of the pseudo-horror stories of the past. In fact, I think if Eliza's acting ability had been a bit better, it might not have had much of a letdown at all. I also appreciated the fairly straightforward nature of the story with just that one little twist at the end to keep it from getting too generic. If you like your Doctor Who a bit scary, this story should work for you. Not perfect, but an enjoyable experience.

Overall personal score: 4 out of 5

Seventh Doctor Summary

I can't say that it comes as a shock that the Seventh Doctor is the third to finish. He has the fourth fewest episodes of any Doctor so that does tend to put him in an obvious place for an overall finish.

As for the Seventh Doctor himself, I think it very important to separate the man from the era. As a personality and Doctor, I'm very close to putting him into second position in my favorite Doctors. Given his similarity to the Second Doctor (who is my number one) that's probably not surprising. I only waver when I consider the nostalgia factor and some genuine fondness for the Fourth Doctor. As much as like the Second and the Seventh, when someone says Doctor Who, the Fourth Doctor is always the first thing that pops in.

But as much as I enjoy the Seventh Doctor, his era was a period of significant ups and downs. Most fans trash Season 24, give passing marks to Season 25 and then start praising Season 26. I'm not so cut and dried. I think Season 24 was actually fair with Dragonfire being the only real bomb and the other three being at least middling with most of the problems due to production or direction. I would actually argue that Season 25 was the best as it had interesting ideas, good acting and a better sense of timing. Season 26 was huge in scope but it tried to cram too many big ideas into too small of a space and suffered as a result. I'm also not a big fan of the Doctor as being all knowing as he is constantly portrayed in Season 26. Like the Second Doctor, I think the Seventh Doctor is at his best when he is reacting and just slightly behind the curve. I like him knowledgeable but still subject to surprise now and then. Looking back on an overall level, Season 24 actually scored better on average for me than Season 26 did.

It is also hard to argue that the Seventh Doctor era does not suffer from production values. They were obviously trying their best and some of it is just the unfortunateness of 1980's television, but you can't deny that the limitation of the budget, to say nothing of the BBC's open attempts to kill the show, don't have an overall effect. You just can't help yourself when you look at something from the Third or Fourth Doctor era and realize that even with the CSO and other limitations they had, some of those stories actually look better and less cheap than those of the Seventh Doctor era. Sometimes that can be overcome, as in Greatest Show in the Galaxy, which I developed a bit of a fondness for, but other times, such as Paradise Towers it just looks bad and things suffer as a result.

Even with the limitations, the Seventh Doctor era has it's charms. There is a lot that doesn't work but there is enough that does to make it worth an overall watch and certain stories worth watching again. Certainly, I'd like to go back and give the extended version of The Curse of Fenric a try to see if it improves the overall story in a significant way. I'm also tempted to go back give Ghost Light a second pass to see if I can overcome Light's damn annoying delivery and appreciate the story for what it is trying to be.

In the end, I think the Seventh Doctor is worth keeping an open mind over. Is it an era that is likely to be up near the top of anyone's list without nostalgia goggles? No. But it is also not the flaming dreck that some fans make it out to be.

Highest Rated Story: Remembrance of the Daleks - 5.0

Lowest Rated Story: Dragonfire - 0.5

Average overall rating: 2.42

Time and the Rani
Paradise Towers
Delta and the Bannermen
Dragonfire
Remembrance of the Daleks
The Happiness Patrol
Silver Nemesis
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
Battlefield
Ghost Light
The Curse of Fenric
Survival
Dimensions in Time

Survival

I have to see a man about a cat.

Survival was the last story of the classic era. Although not the last filmed, it was selected to go last in the season and when word came down that the show was going to be shelved, the final coda of the Seventh Doctor was recorded and dubbed in as he and Ace walk away. I had been holding off on this one, even toying with the idea of making it the last classic era story I would watch. However, given that Rona Munro is coming back to write in Series 10, I thought it best to watch this prior to her return to the show to get a proper feel for her style.

Plot Summary

A young man is washing his mother's care in Ace's hometown of Perivale while being spied on by a black cat. Suddenly a large thing appears and the man tries to run away but is quickly overcome by the thing and he vanishes.

A few moments later, the Doctor and Ace arrive in the TARDIS. Ace had made an offhand comment about seeing some of her old friends and the Doctor indulged her. They head up to an old haunt of hers but find nothing, though the Doctor spies evidence of horses and a black cat observing them.

They then head to the local youth club, which also is missing several of things Ace remembered. Instead they find Sergeant Paterson teaching wrestling to a group of young men. After the lesson, Ace talks to him about some of her old friends. He doesn't know what happened to them but does recall Ace getting in trouble now and then. The Doctor is distracted once more by a presence of cats.

The Doctor and Ace head to the local food mart where the Doctor buys several tins of cat food. He also surprises a black cat that had been hiding among the cans. He warns the two shopkeepers to be on their toes. This is emphasized later as one of them heads to the back room to feed his own cat, Tiger, only to find the animal dead and having been chewed on.

Ace finally meets one of her old friends taking collections outside another store. She tells Ace that most of her old friends have gone. Some have gotten married or moved away but several have simply disappeared. Again, Ace attempts to engage the Doctor but he remains distracted. He finally sets up the cat food, hoping to attract the black cat that keeps crossing their path.

The black cat spies one of the young men who had been wrestling and marks him. A mysterious man in shadow can be seen looking through the cat's eyes and agrees. Again, a figure appears in front of the young man and when he tries to run, he is overtaken and vanishes.

Annoyed with the Doctor and depressed at the changes to her friends, Ace wanders up to the local park. There she finds the black cat and begins to stroke it. The cat leaps out of her grasp and in a flash a humanoid cheetah appears riding on horseback. The cheetah person chases Ace who ducks and hides in the various bits of playground equipment. She eventually breaks into the open but the cheetah person catches up to her and Ace suddenly finds herself in a wasteland on an alien planet.

Hearing Ace's cries, the Doctor comes running but finds Ace gone. He turns his attention back towards the black cat, whom he finally sees eating the cat food. Before he can grab him, Sargent Paterson grabs him and accuses him of being a nuisance. The cat runs off and the Doctor runs after it with Sargent Paterson following.

On the alien planet, Ace spies the body of the man who had been washing a car. She also sees the same cat person on a horse and tries to run. The cheetah person gives chase but is distracted by the young man who had been taken a few moments before Ace. He lunges out after the cheetah person but it knocks him cold. Satisfied with the hunt, it places the young man's body on the back of the horse and rides off. Ace runs in the opposite direction and spots an old friend of hers, Shreela. Shreela pulls her into the woods where she finds her hiding out with an old friend named Midge and another man named Derek.

The Doctor attempts to catch the cat again but again, Sargent Paterson thwarts him. This time they get aggressive towards each other and suddenly find themselves transported to the same alien world. Surrounded by cat people, they are herded towards a tent which the Doctor opens to find the Master welcoming him. The Master tries to spook the Doctor and Paterson into running. Paterson does but this just attracts the attention of the cheetah people who start toying with him. The Doctor grabs a control ball from the Master and distracts the cheetah people long enough to grab a horse, then Paterson and ride away.

Ace rallies her friends into setting up a trap to defend themselves from the cheetah people. One spots the trap and goes through but they find another trap triggered. However, it is the Doctor and Paterson who have sprung it. Banded together now, the Doctor opts to head towards a volcanic ridge nearby. He has observed that the planet is dying and the unstable area around the volcano will keep them from the cheetah people until they can figure how to get back to Earth.

They pass a group of cheetah people lounging in the sun. The Doctor warns them to move slowly and not engage as they will only attack if startled or very hungry. Unfortunately, one of the cheetah people returns from another expedition to Earth with a young man and this stirs up those that had been lounging. Adding to this, when confronted, Paterson and most of the men grab rocks and start flinging them at the cheetah people to drive them off. The Doctor implores them all to stand still and not move but no one listens to him.

The group gets separated with most of the group following Paterson around a ridge. Midge is saved when two cheetah people start fighting with each other over him and Ace runs near a lake after knocking one off a horse. Meanwhile, the Doctor is quietly approached by the Master. Observing the fight over Midge, the Master notes that there is a psychic connection between the cheetah people and the planet. As they fight, the destruction accelerates. He also reveals that the planet takes control the longer people are here. He reveals that he himself has begun to transform into a cat person and can see through the eyes of the regular cat which act as spotters.

The two cheetah people fight to exhaustion while Midge takes a fang from a skeleton and uses it to kill the exhausted cheetah people fighters. The Doctor finds Ace tending to one of the cheetah people who was felled by offering her water. The two make their way back to the others where they find Midge has become more aggressive and is attacking Derek. They stop his attack and the Doctor informs them that since the people here have the ability to jump to Earth to hunt and then bring prey back here, they must find a cheetah person to whom they can link to head back.

The Master overhears this and sets a trap for Midge. When he falls into it, his reaction to fight accelerates the transformation process. The Master ties a rope to him and they disappear as Midge jumps to Earth to hunt.

Paranoia spreads among the group as they fear who will be next. The Doctor tries to stop them from fighting which will advance the transformation when Ace points out an approaching cheetah person. As she turns back the Doctor notices that her eyes have gone yellow like the cheetah people. She runs off with the cheetah girl whose name is Karra. Karra tempts Ace to join in the hunt but the Doctor follows her and brings her back to herself.

With Ace in partial transformation, she is able to send them all back to Perivale. The other three disperse and Ace suggests they leave in the TARDIS but the Doctor is concerned about the Master and heads out after him, deciding to try Midge's house first.

The Master and Midge return to Midge's house where the Master partially suppresses his own transformation but encourages Midge's, furthering his control over Midge. They leave the apartment and first take a couple of motorcycles from a local dealership. They then head to the youth club where Midge and the Master exert control over the boys. They turn them on Paterson and kill him.

At Midge's house, they find a young girl crying over her cat that was killed by Midge. Anger builds in Ace, causing her to slip into cat mind briefly but it also allows her to see where the Master is. They see him assembling the boys on a ridge near the playground. Ace decides to fight but the Doctor warns her that if she does she will slip further into transformation. Instead, the Doctor hops on to a motorcycle left at their end and charges into Midge driving the other motorcycle.

The bikes crash and both are thrown clear. Midge dies of his injuries and the Master sets the other boys on Ace. Resisting the urge to fight back, she calls for help and Karra appears. She drives off the boys in fear but when she attacks the Master, he stabs her with the fang Midge had taken earlier. The Master runs off as the Doctor awakes from a pile of rubbish on which he landed.

Ace mourns for Karra as she turns back from cheetah form to her normal human visage. She then dies and the Doctor comforts Ace about her fate.

The Doctor catches up to the Master, attempting to enter the Doctor's TARDIS. They fight and are transported back to the cheetah person planet, which is now turning into a flaming ruin. The Doctor gets the upper hand on the Master and nearly kills him but he comes to his senses, refusing to fight. As he does, he is transported back to Earth alone.

The Doctor finds Ace again as one last cheetah person comes through. However this one disappears before a hunt can be initiated. The Doctor informs Ace that the planet has been consumed, though she will always carry a part of it in her. They head back to the TARDIS as the Doctor proclaims that there is more work to be done.

Analysis

I must confess that I was disappointed by Survival. I had heard that it was considered decent and not a bad story to go out on. But when watching it, I found it to be trying to hard to be meta while the same time being so shallow on story that the entire middle section felt like filler.

I thought the story began well with a lot of puns, mysterious events happening and a dark figure in the background, whom I already knew to be the Master. But once they got to the planet, the story stalled out. Aside from the exposition by the Master about the planet taking control of it's inhabitants, nothing really happens except a lot of run around. It almost felt like a middle episode of a six-part First Doctor story except that it constitutes one-third of the whole story. Things picked up a bit in Episode Three but even there, it was so unclear as to the purpose and why behind everything that it ultimately left more questions than answers.

The Doctor was pretty good in this as he had stepped back from his all-knowing persona a bit. I believe this story was the second one filmed and it is missing something from the Doctor and Ace interaction that you would expect from having gone through The Curse of Fenric and Ghost Light. Nevertheless, he is still entertaining, especially when he gets very focused on the cats in Episode One. There were two points that I didn't like though. The motorcycle jousting was just bizarre and the Doctor got a little melodramatic in his line delivery in his final fight with the Master. I thought those moments dragged his performance down a bit.

Ace wasn't bad but her delivery wasn't particularly well done overall. Having seen Ace do well in other stories, I'm going to chalk that one up to the thin script and a lack of direction. I get that Ace was supposed to be a bit mournful about the passage of time and the loss of old friends, but how that accelerated her transformation and caused her to bond with Karra was never properly fleshed out. I got the impression that it was unclear for Sophie Aldred as well as she seemed unsure of her style and delivery. It wasn't painfully bad, but for a story that should have centered so much on Ace, her lack of focus was very obvious and detrimental to the overall story.

I recall hearing some people say that they thought this was one of Anthony Ainley's best performances as the Master. I will say that it is probably his most restrained and I could see how that would benefit. But it's also one of the most useless. The Master directs the action in Episode One and gives the only exposition in Episode Two. But talk about control and attempting to force his will over the teenagers in Episode Three seemed jumbled and rather beneath him. In fact, the whole retreat to Earth seemed like a waste of the Master. Rather than confronting and thwarting the Doctor, he runs away and sets the laziest of traps for the Doctor, assuming his return. It just seemed like small potatoes for him. It also seems odd that if the Master wanted to fight and destroy the Doctor, why not engage him directly after the motorcycle crash when the Doctor was woozy? This outing of the Master just felt like a man who had no plan once he had escaped the planet and someone who should have fled the scene immediately once he was safe. I thought the performance by Ainley was fine, but overall an underwhelming performance by the Master.

Rather ironically, one of the things that gets derided the most about this story is something I actually liked: the cheetah people. I didn't really understand the planet turning humans into cheetahs but I thought the costumes were actually pretty good and they seemed like a genuine threat to the Doctor and the other humans. They managed to get a flavor of what a human transformed into a cat would be like but while still maintaining a level of humanity. Again, why cats, but of all the other issues with this story, that's one of the least bothersome.

I criticized the director earlier when it came to Ace but I should point out that the director did do a good job when it came to the environment. I thought there were some nice shots of the action and I thought they did a good job of making the quarry look like an alien planet, even though it is still a quarry. I suspect that the director was focused so much on get the look and action right that they didn't pay as much attention to the actors and the performances suffered. Most of the characters were a bit stiff. Outside of the Doctor and the Master, the only other one I thought that gave a pretty good performance was Paterson.

Paterson's performance overall was decent but I'm not quite sure what the point of his character was after the initial scene in the youth club. His set up lines about "survival of the fittest" played well with the overall theme but aside from causing a distraction to the Doctor when he tried to capture the Master's kitlin, he was a bit of a waste. He was subservient to the Doctor the whole time and did nothing except initiate the fighting when the milkman was brought back. That was something that could easily have been done by one of the others. I actually think the story would have played better if Paterson leaves the club in Episode One after talking all of his "survival of the fittest" bit and then comes in unphased only to be turned into a victim in Episode Three. As it stands, he is in shock and only a shell of his former self when attacked. That makes him easy prey in his scenario but it doesn't play up much for the strength of the Master's will. I think it would have worked better if he hadn't been in it so much, even though his performance was one of the better ones overall.

Overall, I can't say that I thought that this story was particularly good. The acting was ok but dipped into subpar on several occasions. The storyline was very thin and felt like it was trying to disguise it by being about more than it was. But it didn't explain the ideas it had and spent so much time with rather pointless running around instead of addressing the ideas. I have no problem with stories that want to be deep but if they do, they need to get into the them more and not just give lip service. Even doing something more direct like having the Master take on the Doctor in a more head-on fashion prior to the last two minutes of Episode Three would have been an improvement.

I would say that even if this story were great, it almost certainly couldn't be watched in isolation. There is too much build up and the story is aware of it's own weight and it's position. I don't think it needs to be saved as the true final story of a run, but it does need to be watched with awareness of the history of the show. It's definitely not a story to be watched by a new fan or in a casual manner. But given the quality of it, I probably wouldn't watch it again unless I was doing a marathon rewatch and needed that sense of closure.

Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5

Colony In Space

I'm offering you a half-share of the universe.

Colony in Space is the fourth installment of the Master centric Eighth season. It is an obvious take off of the Western genre where a town is threatened by a large corporation, such as a railroad (or in this case, mining), which is something that would have easily been up Malcolm Hulke's alley. I know very little about the story outside of that, except that it is one of the lower rated Hulke stories and is frequently overshadowed by Frontier in Space as the other main off-world adventure that he wrote.

Plot Summary

The Doctor is attempting to create a new dematerialization circuit for the TARDIS. He finishes his latest attempt and shows Jo the inside of the TARDIS. He starts to install it when the TARDIS door close and the TARDIS takes off without his operating the controls. The Doctor figures the Time Lords have hijacked him for a mission.

The Doctor and Jo land on an alien planet that has been settled by a small group of colonists from Earth. The Doctor and Jo leave the TARDIS and the Doctor begins to examine a set of rocks nearby. Jo looks around and finds one of the colonists pointing a gun at them.

They are taken to the central building where they are originally thought to be mineralogists sent by a large mining corporation. The settlers had been looking to settle down on a quiet area and just farm but were wary of a large corporation coming in and seizing their land. The settlers are also worried as recently a large lizard had been spotted nearby that had never been seen before in any of the previous surveys.

The Doctor does manage to convince the people that he is not from a mining company and he further ingratiates himself with the leader, Ashe, by observing that their crop yields are below sustainable levels. He offers to help find a solution and Ashe warms to him. Jo meanwhile is taken by Ashe's daughter Mary into the canteen where she observes how little food their actually is.

As night falls, the settlers return to their individual dwellings. Martin, the colonist who discovered the Doctor returns to his place but heads back out when he hears a noise. He sees a giant lizard and runs back to get his gun while his wife radios for help. Martin shoots but is killed. His wife observes someone entering the home and then she too is killed.

The radio message summons Ashe and the Doctor goes with. He finds scratches that suggest a large lizard creature but also observes that the doorway is undamaged, meaning that no 20 foot creature could have entered. They return to the central dome where Ashe is trying to allay the fears of the colonists. The Doctor also steps in to offer his help in salvaging their crops. This seems to allay the people when a stranger is brought in by a passing patrol.

The stranger is nearly dead on his feet and collapses against a wall. He claims to have come from another colony elsewhere on the planet. He also claims that his colony was destroyed and the people killed by an attack of giant lizards. His story unsettles the colonists and they again mutter among themselves about abandoning the planet.

The Doctor and Ashe head back to the attacked hut to look for evidence. They find two natives poring through the wreckage, looking for things to take. Unbeknownst to the Doctor, they have already taken his TARDIS. Ashe asks the natives to leave and they comply. He tells the Doctor that although they don't speak they seem to understand him. They also have developed a coexistence with the colonists where each more or less leaves the others alone. Ashe is called away and the Doctor examines the hut some more when a large robot enters and attacks the Doctor.

The robot is called off by it's controller, a man named Caldwell. Caldwell is an engineer on an expedition from the mining company and is shocked when the Doctor tells him that two colonists were killed. He takes the Doctor back to his ship to speak with his captain. The Doctor declines at first but Caldwell insists. During the journey to the ship, the Doctor notices that the TARDIS has gone missing as well.

Back at colony headquarters, Jo is engaging herself in the camp and getting along better with them, especially Mary. The lone survivor, Norton, is also recovering although he is now adding that the natives slaughtered those that survived the lizard attack and gets hostile when Ashe brings a native in to give his people food. Norton is disarmed and ordered to avoid the natives when they come into camp.

The Doctor and Caldwell arrive at the ship and the Doctor is put in a waiting area. Caldwell informs Captain Dent about the colonists who were killed and is appalled but it, as their robots and tricks were only to scare the colonists into leaving. Dent is annoyed with Morgan, who was in charge of the scare, but Morgan states that he was seen and had to protect himself. Dent goes to see the Doctor and becomes convinced that the Doctor is a government agent from Earth who will side with the colonists and force the mining corporation off. He assigns Morgan to take the Doctor back and to arrange an accident as well.

Norton discovers during a tour that the colony has only one source of electrical power and that it is being run by an aging engineer and a native who assists him. Norton claims fatigue and leaves to rest but sneaks into the electrical room. He knocks out the native with a blow to the head and then kills the engineer with the native's spear. He then destroys the electrical system. When the other colonists come to see what the problem is, Norton claims he saw the native kill the engineer and then sabotage the system. He claims to have defended himself by knocking out the native.

The Doctor and Morgan are accosted by three natives during their drive back but the Doctor knocks them all out. They return to the scene of the attack where Morgan sets a mining robot with clawed hands on the Doctor, intending to make it look like he was attacked by the same creature as before. The Doctor however disarms Morgan and smashes the robot controls. He then walks back to the colony meeting house.

While the Doctor is walking, Captain Dent flies in his spaceship, pretending to have just arrived. He meets with Ashe, claiming to be unaware that a colony had been established. Both me agree to send for an adjudicator from Earth to settle the law as Dent claims that the IMC has mineral rights to the planet. As Dent prepares to head back to his ship, the Doctor arrives and exposes Dent's scheme to scare the colonists away. Dent denies it and Norton protests, claiming the lizards to be real.

Ashe notes all this but begs the Doctor help repair the power grid to which he readily agrees. Meanwhile, Jo and a colonist named Winton attempt to sneak aboard the mining ship to find evidence but are captured. Dent has then taken to the primitive ruins and tied to a bomb. When the Doctor comes to see Dent after fixing the power grid, Dent informs him of the hostage situation and threatens to kill Jo unless he recants his testimony to the adjudicator when he arrives.

In the hut, Winton finds a spot of grease on the bomb and uses it to lubricate Jo's wrists, allowing her to slip out of her cuffs. She uses a rock to break the chain holding Winton and they make a run for it. The noise attracts a guard and Jo is recaptured. He shoots at Winton, hitting him, but he still is able to get away. The guard radios the situation to Dent who dispatches men to corral Winton. Winton finds refuge with Caldwell, who has established a mineralogy shed nearby and pretends he killed Leeson when the guards approach. He takes Winton inside and patches his wounds.

Winton returns to the meeting house, telling the Doctor about his escape and Jo's recapture. Winton then organizes the colonists into a force to take over the mining ship. The Doctor goes to Caldwell for help. Caldwell refuses to take an active part but does assist with inside details. The Doctor also manages to talk Winton out of a direct frontal assault and instead to take the ship by subterfuge.

As the Doctor and Winton prepare their attack, Jo and her guard are preparing to move to a different location. They are set upon by natives. The guard shoots one and they respond by killing him and taking Jo captive. She is lead out of the ruins and into an underground passage hidden in the rocks.

The Doctor and Winton knock out two guards and take their uniforms. They sneak aboard the ship and take Morgan hostage while the colonists sweep aboard the open door. The Doctor and Winton go to Dent and order his immediate surrender. Dent complies but claims the adjudicator, who is on his way, will side with him. Winton searches through the ship and finds the projector of the giant lizard and the claw hands for the robot to make it look like the lizards were real.

The Doctor and Ashe learn from a guard that the IMC guard for Jo has been killed by the natives and Jo is gone. The Doctor is determined to go after her. Ashe tries to get the Doctor to stay and wait for the adjudicator but he refuses. Ashe then tells the Doctor that he will offer food in exchange for Jo as it is a bargain they have made with the primitives in the past. The Doctor thanks him and leaves.

The Doctor follows the trail from the captive hut to the entrance of the underground city. There he is set upon by the natives who take him below and place him with Jo. The Doctor tells the creatures that he will offer food in exchange for Jo but they do not respond. In the locked room, the Doctor and Jo observe a pictorial chronicle of the natives who once had a great civilization. It collapses after a disaster and they have reverted to a more primitive form.

One of the native elders, who appears to be of a different species, sentences them to be sacrificed. The Doctor and Jo try to escape but are recaptured. They are then taken to a room where a third creature emerges. He tells them that entrance to the city is punishable by death. The Doctor protests, noting that he and Jo were brought unwillingly. He appeals to the creature's logic and morality. Intrigued by the Doctor's intelligence, the leader orders them released, but warns them that they will be killed if they return.

As the adjudicator's ship arrives, Morgan is able to pull a hidden gun and get the drop on Winton. They expel the colonists from the ship and destroy the projector and the claw arms. The adjudicator emerges from his ship and assembles both sides to present their case. Unknown to either group, the adjudicator is actually the Master. Without the evidence from the ship, both sides simply advocate their claims from Earth.

At the end of the hearing, the Doctor and Jo return. The Master is surprised and annoyed to see the Doctor here as well but glosses over it. He rules in favor of IMC but calls Ashe into his office where he asks if he knows of any historical artifacts that may allow the planet to be registered for preservation and allow them to stay as colonists. Ashe tells him of the native ruins and the two work together, despite the Doctor's warnings about the Master.

Winton, angry with the ruling and knowing their ship won't survive another trip, bands the colonists together to rebel and take the IMC weapons. Norton, the IMC plant, tries to warn Dent but he is discovered by another colonist. Norton kills the colonist but his communicator is destroyed in the process. They take positions in the main building and trick Dent into coming with his men by pretending to be the adjudicator.

As Dent and his men enter, Norton calls out that it's a trap. Winton shoots Norton but the warning gives Dent and his men time to grab cover. A shootout ensues and the Master prepares to use it to shoot the Doctor and Jo under the cover of crossfire. Ashe however enters and the Master is forced to refrain to avoid blowing his cover. Winton sneaks out and takes Dent from behind, forcing him to surrender. They remove all the weapons and explosives from the ship and force Dent to take off.

Dent complies but holds in a parking orbit above the planet. He checks records and determines that the Doctor's claims about the adjudicator were correct and that he is an imposter. Dent then orders the ship to land 50km away from the settlement, behind a ridge of hills and retake the colony in a raid.

While the Master has resumed his talks with Ashe, the Doctor and Jo sneak aboard the Master's TARDIS, which is disguised as the adjudicator's ship. While there Jo accidently sets off an alarm and the Master floods the control room with knock out gas. Ashe informs the Master that the Doctor and Jo have been to the native city and the Master tells Ashe that he will consult with the Doctor. The Master returns to the TARDIS where he revives the Doctor and Jo. He locks Jo in a containment tube and then forces the Doctor to take him to the entrance of the native city.

Winton appeals to Ashe to distribute the confiscated guns to the colonists but Ashe thinks it better to keep them locked away. Dent and his forces sneak in to the main building and take back the store of guns and take Ashe hostage. When the colonists realize they are back, they begin fighting but surrender when they realize Ashe is being held hostage.

Using the adjudicator's ruling as cover, Dent proclaims himself governor of the planet and sets a quick show trial. He finds Norton and Ashe guilty of treason and orders their execution. He then stays that execution if they abandon the planet. The two men protest but in the face of execution, they have no choice but to try their luck in their old spacecraft.

Caldwell examines the colonists ship and warns Dent that it might explode on takeoff but Dent merely orders that his men stay clear of the ship when it does launch. He is however concerned about the Doctor and the adjudicator and orders Caldwell and Morgan to check the adjudicator's ship. The two men try to force the doors but can't. Morgan however finds the copy of the key the Doctor had made prior and deliberately dropped outside. Upon entering, they find Jo locked in her isolation tube and try to free her.

The Doctor and the Master approach the entrance and are forced to head on foot when their car is damaged by a native attack. Upon reaching the entrance, the Master is alerted by his alarm system of they IMC men entering. He then prepares to release a toxic chemical to kill Jo but the Doctor kicks the trigger out of his hands. Both men are suddenly swarmed by natives who take them below.

Caldwell and Morgan free Jo and she tells them that the Master and the Doctor went to the native city. She is taken to Dent who orders her put on the colonist's rocket. She pleads with Caldwell for help and he hides her briefly before the two of them take a car and drive to the native city entrance.

While the rest of the colonists board the rocket, Winton hides himself, having Mary cover for him when Morgan asks where he is. Once the colonists are fully loaded, fearing the rocket exploding on launch, the guards pull back. This allows Winton to get the drop on one. With the rocket launch delayed, Dent calls over and Ashe responds that they are fixing an electrical fault and are nearly ready. A few minutes later, the rocket takes off and explodes a few seconds after takeoff.

In their cell, the Master tells the Doctor that the natives once had a powerful civilization that built a doomsday weapon able to destroy stars. He is there to take control of it. He sets off a gas grenade when the natives come to collect them and the Master and the Doctor run out into the corridor and further into the city. They find the control room of the weapon and the Master offers the Doctor control of half the universe if he stands with him. The Doctor refuses.

Interrupting their discussion, the ruling creature that freed the Doctor before emerges. He discovers the Master's plan and steals his weapon, freeing the Doctor. Fearing more people coming for the weapon, the creature orders the Doctor to pull the self destruct lever. He does so and the whole city begins to shake and disintegrate. The Doctor and the Master run out and run into Jo and Caldwell, who had managed to sneak into the city by knocking out a guard. Using the Master's map, the four of them run for the exit. They emerge from the city as it explodes.

The explosion catches the attention of Morgan who had come with a detachment of guards to find Caldwell and Jo. They take Caldwell and prepare to shoot the rest. However, the colonists emerge from a ridge and start firing on them. The Master grabs the car and runs off from the firefight while Morgan and most of his men are cut down. They eventually surrender to Winton, who informs the Doctor and Jo that Ashe took up the rocket alone to continue the deception.

The Master returns to his TARDIS and takes off. The colonists return to base and place all the IMC people except Caldwell under guard. With his career over, Caldwell elects to stay as the colonist's engineer while Winton takes over as head of the colony. They signal Earth for a new adjudicator and present the Doctor with the TARDIS, which was discovered in an abandoned native hut. The Doctor and Jo return to Earth in the TARDIS just a few seconds after they had left, leaving the Brigadier non the wiser about their adventure.

Analysis

I think this story is an unfortunate example of potential mucked up by outside requirements. I have no way of knowing, but I would imagine that Malcolm Hulke had an idea for a Old West showdown in space very much in the vein of the later movie Pale Rider. This was accepted by Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks but he was told to introduce the Master. Introducing the Master as the adjudicator works well, especially with the somewhat surprising reveal in Episode Four. Unfortunately, the Master needs a reason as to why he is there and so the concept of the doomsday weapon is introduced. This is like trying to inject Beneath the Planet of the Apes into the story and it has the effect of essentially ruining both stories, despite Hulke's best efforts.

If you break things down by characters, this works very well. If anything, this may be one of my favorite portrayals of the Roger Delgado Master. At it's basic level, the Master's plan is very simple and straightforward. You can almost imagine him working things behind the scenes to get IMC to lay a claim to the planet while also getting the colonists to go there just so he can step in as the adjudicator. Once there, he rules in favor of IMC but gets the colonists to help him find the city by teasing them with thoughts of historic preservation status. Even the Doctor's presence doesn't really play much into it. His only real miscalculation was in how vicious Dent and his crew would be and how much anger this fostered in the colonists.

On the subject of Dent, he is a right bastard. In the Western genre, it's not unusual to have such a vicious character like Dent leading the attack, but Dent gets extra marks for being so cold and detached about it. He brushes off the murder of the colonists as though it's a minor thing and then has the gall to stand before the Master and plead innocent. He knows the colonists rocket will likely explode, killing them all, but he is indifferent about it, knowing that it will mean less paperwork for him. All this makes for a proper villain but where the story stumbles is that there is no closure. Morgan is seemingly killed in the firefight with the colonists but Dent had been on the ship and we never see him after he dispatches the guards. One might assume that he is under arrest like all the other IMC personnel, but after all that has happened, there needed to be a proper bit of closure with him either shown as arrested or simply being shot. In fact, a real good scene would have been him dispatching more guards to assist and then be shot by Mary in the back. It would have been a fitting end for him.

I did like the Doctor for the most part as he was engaged with the story and didn't spend much time being locked in a prison cell out of the action. However, he did have a few points where he was playing dumb because it was a six-part story. The sub-story with Norton is a prime example. Any idiot could have seen that Norton was a plant and the Doctor should have directly warned Ashe and Winton about him being a plant. Instead he only give a vague warning about watching him. This results in at least two colonist deaths. But aside from that, the Doctor does fairly well. I was a bit disappointed in two of the cliffhangers as it held long on shots where I knew the resolution was going to be an action of the Doctor to disarm the person holding him. I think we all know the Third Doctor well enough for that.

Jo is also a bit of a mixed bag in this story. She is finally treated well by the Doctor who actually seems to show compassion for her (which seems to be a quality of Malcolm Hulke and almost no one else). But at the same time, she is given very little to do and spends much of her time being a prisoner and an object of rescue. She actually instigates hostilities as it is her idea to try and sneak aboard the IMC ship, which delivers a major card into Dent's hand. Had she and Winton stayed off the ship, Dent would have been forced to slow play a bit longer and nothing would have actually happened until the Master arrived. She also gets her and the Doctor captured when they break into the Master's TARDIS. So while she is sympathetic and somewhat entertaining in her dialog, she is a major liability as far as the story goes.

Ashe and Winton are also something I don't quite get. If this were a more conventional Western, or perhaps just an American production, Winton would have defied Ashe and shot at least Morgan if not Dent several times in this story. He had the opportunity in Episode Three when they captured the ship. He could easily and probably should have done it when they captured Dent's forces after declaring rebellion. Shooting Dent and Morgan there and sending back Caldwell to deliver the message would have been a very clear message of their intentions as well as doling out frontier justice. But the thing that I really can't get is why Winton surrendered because Ashe was taken hostage. Ashe may have been their leader but he had been proven as rather ineffective in Winton's mind by that point and even with Ashe as a hostage, Dent and his men were cornered in Ashe's office. Any attempt to break out should have been a duck shoot for the colonists. Winton could easily have cut losses and simply told Dent to go ahead and shoot him. They would simply shoot anyone who came out or wait until Dent and his men starved to death.

When you take a broad look at it, Winton was right at every turn. If he had killed Dent and Morgan in the initial raid on the IMC ship, their men would have been leaderless and justice would have easily been served for the murdered colonists. The same holds true for the second time Dent and his men were captured. Winton is proved right a third time when Ashe refuses to distribute the arms to the colonists. In every turn, Winton is shown to have the better option simply because Dent and his men are so cutthroat as to be unreasonable. Violent resistance is the only viable option. About the only instance where Winton and Dent disagree where Winton could be argued to be wrong is in giving the natives food. Supposedly this keeps the natives in friendly relations, but given that the natives are shown in several instances attacking the Doctor, Jo, the Master or the IMC personnel that are away from the main colony, it is somewhat dubious as to how effective that strategy is. It is a policy of appeasement that seems to have limited results. Far more effective is the direct relations as done between the engineer and the native who assists him. That is a demonstration of effective coexistence.

On the subject of the natives, they started as a bit of a let down and then became my biggest annoyance of the story. The natives start the story as an obvious nod to Native Americans and their interactions with settlers in the Old West. Given that Native Americans have vestiges of more powerful civilizations in their past, the allusion to the natives having once been a great civilization that destroyed itself is also not a problem. They were a bit of a let down in their design as their skin was a little too obviously a body suit that had been painted green and their heads were so overdone as to hide any and all trace of their eyes, which would have been useful in displaying emotion beyond the primitive spear throwing and demonstrations of anger you might expect from a Tarzan movie.

But the source of my annoyance came with the doomsday weapon. First, if the soil was being poisoned by slow leaking radiation, shouldn't the colonists have been able to detect that and not necessarily planted their crops in radioactive soil? Second, the destruction of the weapon does not mean that all that radiation just disappears. That radiation would have to go somewhere and the destruction of the device would actually release larger levels of radiation in a short period of time that would linger in the soil. The soil should have continued to be poisoned until the radiation levels had decreased. Third, why does the leader native opt to commit suicide just because the Master has discovered the weapon? The weapon had been in existence for a long period of time and the leaders had felt no need to destroy it in a safe way prior to that. What's more, he had disarmed the Master and could have easily killed him and the Doctor, causing their knowledge of the weapon to disappear. Or a third option could have been considered where the Master and Doctor could have been enslaved to help disable the weapon in a safe manner that would not have destroyed the city. Instead, the story takes the cheapest and laziest way out by having them destroy the weapon via self-destruct which destroys essentially all of the native population. I can't think of any civilization that would ever do that voluntarily.

It is such a shame that there are so many of these flaws because there is some good acting, some well written scenes and also some good action set pieces. The real problem just seems to be the smashing of two stories into one. If it had stayed the colonist's story, Dent would have been the principle villain and the colonists would have set on him in the final confrontation and problably killed him and Morgan in the third battle. Or had the Master's story been the main focus, the Doctor could have arrived on planet with the Master already there, working as the adjudicator. This would have put Dent or some equivalent of him in a side roll that would have been waved aside after an episode or so with the Master being the principle antagonist the whole time. But instead we have the Old West colonist story hijacked in Episode Four to become the Master's story and even then it doesn't take the full focus. Both stories crash and burn as a result. I find this the most frustrating result of all because both stories have the potential of being good. Or even if one had been bad and that had taken the main focus, it would have had a clear delineation and resolution. The mash up gives neither.

Despite my frustration with the hodgepodge, I can't give this story a terrible score as the acting and story elements that are clear are too good. But I'm not going to pretend that I have any desire to pull this story out to watch it again. I think more than anything, I'd like to pull all the Master bits out and just watch a good Roger Delgado highlight reel. That would highly entertaining. But as for the overall story, it's two decent ideas ruined by a bad smash. The end result is tedium at points and outright frustration at others. It might be the best Master portrayal of Season Eight but it's a lot to slog through for that.

Overall personal score: 2 out of 5

Night Terrors

Please save me from the monsters!

I think it would be fair to say that Mark Gatiss has a rather mixed reception when it comes to his Doctor Who writing credits. The Unquiet Dead and An Adventure in Space and Time sit solidly as very strong contributions. But next to them he has The Idiot's Lantern and Victory of the Daleks so it's easy to see how this ends up as a mixed bag. Night Terrors was his Series Six contribution and it has a decidedly mixed reputation among fans.

Plot Summary

The Doctor receives a message on his psychic paper of a child asking for help from the monsters. The message is from George, an eight-year old boy living in a council estate with his parents and suffering from a profound case of fears. His parents have tried to help by setting up a series of rituals such as flicking the lights five times and putting scary things in the closet. At the time of his message, George is lying in bed while his mom has left for work, leaving his dad who has contacted social services to look into George's fears.

The Doctor, Amy and Rory land outside the council estate and begin knocking on doors, looking for George. George overhears Rory joking about letting the monsters get the boy and reacts when he and Amy get into the elevator (the sound of which also frightens him). As the elevator doors close, there is a flash and a gust of wind which knock Rory and Amy back. They awake to find themselves in a darkened manor house and set off to find out about their new surroundings.

At nearly the same time, a neighbor, Mrs. Rossiter takes her garbage out to pile outside. She moves slow due to bad knees but manages to get the bag on to the pile. As she leaves, she hears a rustling and goes to investigate. As she peers in, she is sucked into the pile of trash bags and also finds herself in the darkened manor house.

The Doctor spies George peaking out his window and knocks on his door. His dad, Alex opens the door and assumes he is from social services. The Doctor goes and talks to George, calming the boy a bit. The Doctor also learns about George's quirks, including putting the scary things in the closet.

Alex is distracted by a knock at the front door and goes to investigate. It is the building manager Purcell and his dog, getting after Alex about the rent. The Doctor takes advantage of the distraction by entertaining George with his sonic screwdriver which he uses to activate his motorized toys. He also uses it to scan the closet and gets an off the scale reading of the level of energy from it. When Alex returns, the Doctor forbids him from opening the closet.

In the manor house, Rory finds lights which offer some illumination but also finds most of the decorations are wood painted to look like things or just painted on decorations. The front door of the house has no knob leaving them trapped. Attracted by a mysterious giggling, they open a closet door to find a peg doll. They walk away, assuming their imaginations are getting the better of them, unaware that the doll has gotten up and is preparing to follow them.

The Doctor takes Alex into the kitchen to look for other evidence of energy and also clues in Alex of his alien monster-fighting nature. Alex initially tries to get him to leave but is convinced to let him stay and help George. Meanwhile, Purcell, having gone back to his own apartment, is pulled into the carpet by a mysterious force.

Purcell arrives in the manor house but runs into the dolls immediately. He runs away and stumbles into Rory and Amy. The dolls catch up to him and upon touching him, they transform him into a peg doll. Rory and Amy run away and barricade themselves in a room, though only temporarily as the door has no locks. Amy decides that they need to burst out and catch the dolls by surprise. They do so, but Amy is grabbed and transformed while Rory gets away.

Knowing he must confront things, the Doctor opens the door to the closet to find only clothes and old toys. But he also hears the sound of the elevator and something clicks for the Doctor. He grabs the photo album that Alex had shown him earlier and points out that only a month before George was born, Claire was not pregnant. Alex bursts out that they weren't able to have children and he reacts with immediate confusion as to how he could have forgotten that. The Doctor realizes that George is not human but has adopted Alex and Claire as his parents, but is still manifesting powers. Frightened by this exchange, both the Doctor and Alex are sucked into the closet and find themselves in the doll house.

In the house, the Doctor tells Alex that he believes George is a Tenza, an alien that bonds with species outside it's own to raise it. Upon overhearing George and Claire talking about getting George help for some of his fears, George's Tenza side began manifesting as a fear of rejection, creating fears on top his basic ones. They are set upon by the peg dolls and run into Rory also fighting back the peg dolls advancing on him.

The Doctor calls out to George that he is the only one who could can help and the only one who can drive the monsters away. Hearing the Doctor, George walks into the closet and finds himself in the doll house. The dolls stop initially, but as George's fears manifest again, the dolls spring to life. Encouraged by the Doctor to reassure his son, Alex runs forward and grabs George, promising to love and protect him. As he says this, everyone is immediately transported back outside the doll house. Rory and Amy find themselves in the elevator, Purcell in his apartment and Mrs. Rossiter outside with the garbage bags.

Claire returns to the apartment in the morning to find Alex and George playing with the Doctor. He assures Claire that George will be better now and takes his leave. Alex asks the Doctor about any other effects but the Doctor assures him that George will be fine, although he does promise to drop by during puberty just to be safe. He meets Rory and Amy who are waiting outside and they take off in the TARDIS.

Analysis

For about 3/4 of this story, an argument could be made that this is just a bit of blood shy of an outright horror movie. The scenes in the doll house and even outside it up until the Doctor and Alex get sucked in would easily fit in just about any horror movie. My own children are not much for scary movies and I would be strongly hesitant to show them this episode at the start. However, the last quarter takes the horror element out and I think because of how saturated the story is in that vein, that is where the fault of the story comes from.

Because the story centers around a child, I think there is a knee-jerk instinct to compare this to Fear Her. I would disagree strongly as the primary mistake of Fear Her was to put so much onus on the child actor. Here, the actor playing George is asked to do almost nothing except act like a scared little boy and he does that well. So whatever fault there is, it is not in the same vein as Fear Her.

The Eleventh Doctor is almost always at his best when dealing with children. He has a playful side and you can see his disarming ways with kids. His interactions with George are quite good, although I think his interactions with Alex are even better. Their interactions are similar to those of the Doctor and Craig in The Lodger and Closing Time but significantly less broad in the humor department. Alex is still clearly the bewildered one and playing catch up most of the time. This more subdued humor still works well in making the Doctor fun to be with.

However, the Doctor is somewhat shortchanged by Rory and Amy. It is difficult for a Doctor Who story to upstage the Doctor unless it is a Doctor-lite story (and even then sometimes not) but as entertaining as the Doctor is, Rory and Amy's story consistently draws the viewer back. Theirs is more vintage horror. Rory does the whistling in the dark bit while Amy plays it more straight. Yet there is the additional level of them not realizing the horror potential of their situation so much of Rory's comments are done in a purer comedic fashion. Additional props go for Rory making a joke about being dead again and then topping that by having Amy be the one to get transformed into a doll rather than the cliché of having Rory fall again. There is almost no point in their story that I do not enjoy and I miss them when not on screen.

There is not much of a supporting cast and even they don't get much to do. With the exception of Alex, everyone else is window dressing or cannon fodder and they do their jobs well enough. Alex is good although I think he wears his concern on his sleeve a little much. I'm not sure that changing anything about him would help or hinder his performance but there were moments where I was just starting to get tired of him. I also don't quite get why he was sucked into the closet. If his fear of rejection is driving his powers, how is putting his dad in the closet going to alleviate that? Doesn't that amplify the idea of being sent away because now the child is rejecting the parent as well?

Before getting in to the points where the story started to fall apart, I do want to point out that the doll scenes were very effective. The dolls were very creepy in a zombie way. Amplifying the creepiness was the nursery rhyme that was constantly going in the background. The child's choir singing in that sinister way just amplified the tension and gave a level of creepiness that was quite unexpected from the idea of being shrunk to doll size and being chased by it's wooden inhabitants.

Now, why is story not considered a new classic? I can't speak for others but I think it falls down a bit when resolving the story. As the world of horror is of George's own creation, it makes sense that he is the only one who can fix it. But it also feels like a Deus Ex Machina cheat just to have George's dad come in, give him a hug and tell him he loves him. It works better than it does in Closing Time because, again, George is the master of the rules of the world, but it also is a much sharper contrast in tone. True horror is upended by a boy being resolved of his daddy issues. While not trying to, it subconsciously seems to spit on the tension of before by dismissing it in such a cavalier fashion.

In my mind, it would have played better if only the Doctor had been sucked into the doll house. Alex runs from the room in fear, now scared of the power of his own son. He creeps back in when he hears the Doctor yelling, comforts George (thus prompting the reassurance) and then urging George that he is the one that must save others from the monsters. It's not much different, but it puts the power more in George's hands and lets the fatherly love and reassurance be the catalyst for change rather than the reason for change. It still would have caught some flak, but not quite as much.

The simple truth is that there was not proper horror movie outlet for this story. In a standard horror movie, the protagonists either kill the monster after a series of trials or they get away. Here, the dolls are the villain but they are driven by George's fears and you can't destroy George nor can you have the Doctor, Rory and Amy simply run away. George is not malevolent, only scared. So you must come back with George putting things right and that will never be as satisfying as when the Doctor or his companions deal with the danger.

Tacking back up the positive path, the direction in this story is excellent. There is a wonderful use of light and shadow and even the non-scary scenes are set in a slightly sickly light that is mildly discomforting. There are a couple of points where CGI could have been used but instead a more practical effect is used and it keeps the tension going where it could have easily fallen away.

Overall, I think this story is better than it's reputation. It falls somewhat flat at the end but that is almost inevitable given the scale of tension that had been ratcheted up. I think the ending could have been done better but at the same time we still would have probably found fault with it. But there is so much to enjoy before that that I think it should be given a fair shake. The only real caveat I would put with this story is to not show it to anyone who might be sensitive to scary things. This goes beyond the normal level of scares and dips into the proper horror genre, even though everyone survives at the end. So if they don't like that, skip this one. But if you do, give this one a second pass. It might be better than you remember.

Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5

Thin Ice

If I don't move on, how many more will die?

Thin Ice is the second offering of Sarah Dollard after Face the Raven. Her first script did fairly well, having been granted the notoriety of also killing off Clara. Face the Raven went up another notch in my book after Steven Moffat elected to use a cheat to keep Clara around in Hell Bent as I appreciated Clara's death that much more. Of course, outside of that, Face the Raven was a very straightforward story so without the benefit of high stakes, how will this story do?

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Bill have arrived during the last days of a Frost Fair where the cold has caused parts of the Thames to freeze over and various circus performers have set up on the ice. The Doctor and Bill make their way through the fair and as they do, they become aware of a set of bioluminescent lights swirling under the surface. When a person becomes isolated, as a man who has become drunk does, they swirl around and then a small hole is punched, allowing the man to fall into the icy water below.

While investigating the lights, Bill and the Doctor are stopped by a girl named Kitty who claims to be looking for a lost dog. While distracted, a boy named Spider picks the Doctor's sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. The Doctor and Bill give chase across the ice until Spider becomes distracted by the swirling lights. A hole is cut in the ice and he falls through, although his hand sticks up. The Doctor recovers his sonic just before the hand gets sucked below.

Bill appeals to the Doctor to save the boy, but he knows that he is gone. Bill stomps off angrily and the Doctor appeals to Kitty for help but she drifts into mist. The Doctor goes to see Bill who confronts him about being callous towards death. The Doctor reasons with her that inaction leads to more deaths. Their argument is interrupted however by Kitty coming back and overhearing about avoiding more deaths.

Kitty takes the Doctor and Bill to her hideout where several urchins live under her eye. They have been hired by a man with a ship tattoo on his hand to get people to come to the fair. Once there they pickpocket for extra money. The Doctor gives them fish pies that he nicked and elects to study the creatures under the ice further.

As night falls, the Doctor and Bill dress in diving suits and walk out on the ice. The lights appear and begin to circle Bill. She gets the Doctor's attention just as she falls through. He dives after her just before the opening closes. On the bottom they see a large fish-like creature chained to the bottom. It eats those that fall through the ice, with the holes being cut through by angler fish type creatures. The creature sees them but doesn't advance on them, instead continuing to wail while trying to get free.

The Doctor and Bill head back to the surface, emerging from a hole where the fish pie merchant is catching the angler fish for his pies. He tells the Doctor about other activity going down around the docks downstream.

The Doctor and Bill head down to the docks in the morning where the Doctor poses as an agent of the owner, Lord Sutcliffe. The foreman shows their progress as they are harvesting the excretions of the creature which burn hotter than coal and in worse conditions. Knowing that the creature is likely of alien origin, the Doctor and Bill head to Sutcliff's mansion to see if he is an alien as well, using the creature to collect spaceship fuel.

Upon meeting Sutcliff, the Doctor immediately determines he is not an alien and punches the man after he insults Bill with a set of racial slurs. Sutcliff's men grab the Doctor and tie him up, including the man with the ship tattoo on his hand. Sutcliff's family captured the creature and have known about it for generations, using the fuel it excretes to power factories and avoid using coal which costs more and is less efficient.

Sutcliff arranges to have the Doctor and Bill taken and tied in a tent with explosives. He intends to arrange a "fireworks accident" which will break the ice and send all the fair goers into the depths to feed the creature. While alone in the tent, Bill manages to pull the Doctor's sonic out and he uses it to help free himself from the ropes. The sonic also attracts the angler fish who begin to swirl. This attracts the tattooed guard who grabs the sonic. The fish start circling him and in a panic he throws the sonic back at the Doctor. The Doctor shuts off the sonic and the guard drops through the hole in the ice.

The Doctor sends Bill who finds Kitty and together they and the other urchins send a panic through the fair goers that the ice is thawing. People flee, though a few remain behind. Sutcliff sees the stream of people and tries to detonate the explosives. However, the Doctor has redirected the charges and placed them around the chains of the creature. As they go off, the creature is freed.

Bill gets the urchins off and sees the emerging from the ice in a dive suit near the dock. Sutcliff meanwhile, hops onto the ice and runs to the tent to find out what went wrong. The creature comes up to the surface and cracks the ice in multiple places. Sutcliff looses his balance and falls into the water. Bill, having run to the Doctor, is pulled off the ice by him just before it cracks under her feet. The creature then swims down the Thames and makes for colder waters up north.

The Doctor invites the urchins to Sutcliff's mansion for a feast. While there, he alters Sutcliff's will in favor of the other boy urchin, allowing him to become the new Lord Sutcliff. They return to the Doctor's office where Bill looks up to find that their plan worked and that the orphans took over Sutcliff's estate.

Nardole enters with the tea he had left to make at the beginning of Smile but realizes they've been off adventuring. He chides the Doctor but the Doctor tricks him into leaving them alone. Annoyed, Nardole goes to check on the vault where a series of knocks begin to come from it. He calls out that he is not going to open the vault just because of the knocks.

Analyis

I am of mixed mind on this story. To be fair, I was very tired when I watched it so this is one of the first stories where I'm looking forward to watching it a second time to see if my initial impressions are valid. On one hand, the story had some decent ideas, nice dialog and a fairly straightforward story. On the other hand, some of flow of certain scenes seemed off either due to writing or direction and also the story was so straightforward as to be almost comically predictable, which in turn led to the latter half of it being a bit boring.

There was very nice interaction between the Doctor and Bill and I found the Doctor to be especially engaging. In fact, there were scenes where he seemed to be cutting in or out (such as with the fish pie seller) where I would have liked to have seen more just for the pleasure of the scene. It even worked well when you knew what was coming as in the case of where the Doctor warns Bill not to rise to the insults of Lord Sutcliff and then he goes and punches him for his attitude. You know it's coming but it is still very enjoyable.

Bill was enjoyable and her comments about race both in her fears and the reality were done quite well. I was a bit mixed on her freak out after Spider's death because it was an understandable reaction and one that needed to be done from a character point of view, but it also felt like a hard freeze in the action for a philosophical discussion. The discussion itself was quite good but there was something about the hard shift that felt just slightly odd. I also think that Bill isn't quite the right character for interacting with children. She's still a bit too young and doesn't quite give off that maternal vibe to be natural with children. She still feels a bit like the older sister who has to watch the younger kids because it's her job.

The kids I thought were pretty good. I couldn't help but love the little blonde one as she was very cute with that "little old me" grin. Kitty was also good, although I think she should have had a slightly harder edge to her. That's very hard to ask a child actor to do but a bit more world-weariness would have sold her character even more. I also really appreciate the fact that they killed off Spider. In many family dramas, you know that whomever else may be killed, the children will get out. Not here. Granted, Spider had actually committed the theft so he had lost his true innocence, but it still is quite a step to go ahead and kill a child character. That also plays in to how a harder edge would have benefitted with Kitty as most of her dialogue has a "Spider's dead so don't worry about him anymore" feel. As the Doctor said, "you move on."

I think my biggest disappointment actually came with the creature. The predictable thing in a normal story is just that there is a creature who is using creatures to pull people through the ice and eating them. Simple. But, the misunderstood monster has become such a trope in Doctor Who that you almost expected to find the beast chained up and forced to eat people just to survive. That it made no effort to eat Bill and the Doctor because it could sense they were still alive took almost all of the menace out of the creature and defused the one major point of tension in the story. I won't even go into the logistics of how Sutcliff's ancestors captured the creature and managed to forge and install a chain to keep it restrained.

Sutcliff himself was also something of an anticlimax. He's a normal aristocratic asshole who simply gathers the fish excrement to make a ton of money through selling it as a coal substitute or using it in his own factories as a coal substitute. No great plan or complex scheme. Yet, despite being a straight forward villain, he still has moments of extreme mustache twirly-ness ("that would work on a man with an ounce of compassion") and over complexity in dealing with the Doctor and Bill. Why take any risk at their escaping by keeping them alive to blow up in the tent? He could simply shoot them and then blow up their dead bodies along with the rest of the fair to feed the beast. He goes extra cartoony as well by walking out on to the ice to examine the explosives after they fail to detonate on the surface and is then killed by falling in when the creature breaks the ice. You could almost imagine a Wile E. Coyote moment where he sees the sonic, his eyes go small and he holds up a sign saying "Yikes!" as the explosions go off under the surface. It just gets overly comical and didn't sit that well with me.

I thought the overall direction was a bit limited. I don't know if there were problems with the stage on which this was filmed but there seemed to be a pronounced effort to not give away how small the set was by having a lot of tight shots on the actors. It made things feel a bit cramped and confusing whenever it did revert over to action, such as when the Doctor and Bill went down to the depths to see the creature. As noted above, I also felt that things were a bit disjointed in how the scenes connected, as though we were coming on a scene a line or two after things had started. I could still follow the scene but I felt like there were a few scenes that just didn't connect as well as they should have.

It is rather interesting when you look back at the casting done in stories like The Girl in the Fireplace, The Shakespeare Code and The Vampires of Venice that the subject of a more multi-ethnic history hasn't come up before. I did enjoy that Bill brought the issue up (why didn't Martha) and that the Doctor dismissed it so easily as how the white upper class did just white-wash most of the non-enslaved minorities out of existence from history. No beating about the bush but also no great lament about it either. It happened, history is not quite what we read, acknowledge that and move on.

I get the feeling that the idea of moving on is sort of a theme for this story and possibly the series as a whole. The Doctor is doing something he normally doesn't do and that is to stay static for a long period. He continues to lecture at the university and is guarding the vault as a promise. He also has Nardole watching over him to ensure his compliance. Yet in the few adventures he has, he continues to express the theme than you can't stay still. Heather had to move on from her promise to Bill, the colonists had to move on from the idea that nanobots were their servants and here Bill has to move on from the idea that everyone can be saved. You can try and you should always work towards saving who or what you can (even if not your own species) but if things don't work, you must move on or other people may die. Yet the Doctor himself is not moving on. That he keeps pictures of River and Susan as well as a cup of old sonics suggests he is mentally dwelling in the past rather than looking forward.

So, how to grade this one? Ultimately, it's just how much you enjoyed the episode overall. I can't help it, I was bored by middle and underwhelmed at the end. There were some nice moments and I liked the characterization between the Doctor and Bill, but the monster bored me, the villain was one-note and cartoonish and no one else really stood out to me as interesting. I might change my mind on second viewing but overall, a bit of a meh.

Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5