Doctor Who: Terror of the Zygons

Part One

“My family have served this country for seven centuries, but that seems not to count these days, does it?”

This was my first ever BBC video and the first ever “old” story I ever saw. I’ve seen this many, many times but never before in episodic format. And it’s good to see the short clip from Disney Time as well as the BBC globe.

This is great from the beginning, with an oil rig being destroyed to the sound of some fantastic incidental music. It’s great to see the Brig (in a kilt!) and Benton again. I can’t help thinking though- was there really enough time to install a space-time telegraph at the end of Robot?

The Doctor’s attitude is interesting- in this incarnation he feels much less attached to UNIT and 20^th century Earth, and has a bit of a go at the Brigadier for recalling him only to change his mind suddenly when reminded of the loss of life. This Doctor is fascinating- more individualistic and Bohemian than his predecessor, but with the same underlying principles. And there’s something very charismatic about his changes of mood. I love the oil speech.

It’s great to see Angus Lennie, of off of of The Great Escape, as the very Hammeresque pub landlord. And this is just so well directed by Douglas Camfield- the moor sets a real mood, and our first shot of the Zygons hands and eyes is great. Suddenly we have a story of tightly edited scenes and a very nice moment where the injured Harry cries “No… no…” as the Zygon advances on him, and we then cut to the Doctor on the phone calmly saying “No… no…”. This is top stuff.

Part Two

“Asleep? Impossible, I was on duty!"

The whole organic look of the Zygon ship is great- original and a triumph of both design and lighting. And there’s more great directing on show as we dissolve between the faces of Sarah and the Doctor as he hypnotises her to avoid asphyxiation. This is so well directed it almost distracts from the fact the Doctor seems to have acquired yet another superpower, one he’s never bothered to use before in similar circumstances for some reason.

We get lots of atmosphere with the fog and the great music, a bit of actual journalisting from Sarah, and generally enough excellence on show that I’ve decided to completely ignore the fact that the Skarasen looks crap.

Part Three

“Aliens! With wireless sets?”

The Doctor is saved by Harry! Yay! This man is great. And Sarah shows how great she is, too, in discovering the Duke’s secret passage to the Zygon ship, swiftly rescuing Harry and returning in time for tea. Unlike the Doctor, who attempts the same thing and promptly gets captured.

I love the Doctor’s line “Sounds like the Brigadier” as UNIT merrily lob bombs into the loch. It’s sad that this is the last ever “regular” UNIT story, but at least they’re going out on a high.

Part Four

“Was that bang big enough for you, Brigadier?”

There’s some great modelwork on show with the Zygon ship, especially the landing scene. And it’s good to get a reason for the fact that, as the Doctor points out, there are only about six Zygons. It seems their home planet was “destroyed in a recent catastrophe” and that Broton wants to terraform the Earth for the benefit of other Zygons who are to arrive in “many centuries”.

The prime minister is apparently a woman (Thatcher was already Tory leader at the time) so it seems Jeremy must have lost an election. 

The Doctor nearly loses his life by underestimating the power of organic crystallography- a common error, to be fair. I’ve almost lost count of the number of times I’ve done the same thing myself. Still, he manages eventually to escape, gleefully vandalise the Zygon ship, and release all the Zygons’ prisoners, although the bit with him operating the Zygons’, er, interestingly shaped controls certainly caused me to raise an eyebrow.

Fittingly for his last regular story, the Brig at last gets to shoot an alien baddie dead with an ordinary bullet. We finish with the Doctor claiming he’ll be able to make the short hop to London in the TARDIS an d offering a lift to both Sarah and Harry. Of course, it’s understood by everyone that the TARDIS will be doing nothing of the sort. Harry stays behind in an understated leaving scene, a little disappointing but probably in keeping with the stiff-upper-lip nature of the man, but Sarah, being fab, signs up for some further adventures in time and space.

Brilliant. Not only an easy 5/5, but the third best so far. Great story, great performances, awesomely well directed. This is Doctor Who at its very finest.

Doctor Who: The Ice Warriors

Part One


"Everything here is computerised."

"Oh, never mind."


Back to video, strangely enough for the first time since Troughton took over, about halfway through his tenure. And we get the kind of flashy visual representations of the story title as last seen in The Tenth Planet. The music and the ice is very effective.

Everyone's wearing very... interesting futuristic clothes, but we very quickly come to understand the central dilemma here- people are in thrall to the computer and its scheduling. Unfortunately this central theme has dated more than little- the computer as a vast centralised machine at the centre of the room making decisions- but as we'll see the theme is very well developed.

It's ages until we see the TARDISeers, and the Ship has landed on its side for some reason. I like Jamie's comment about the cold, looking back to the previous story. They're at an odd angle to climb out of the TARDIS, though. I'd like to see this scene from inside the TARDIS, mind- presumably ropes and grappling hooks were involved?

There are a lots of good character scenes between the guest characters, something which was notably missing from The Abominable Snowmen. Clent and Arden's antagonism here is nicely done and helps to develop the story's theme.

It's good to see a very young-looking Peter Sallis and good old Angus Lennie, who seems to be playing a somewhat hairier version of Ives from The Great Escape here.

The science behind this new ice age is odd, and probably seemed plausible at the time, but can't help seeming absurd today. Artificial food leads to plant growth being kept to a minimum, so no carbon dioxide gets into the atmosphere and there's a runaway greenhouse effect? Riiight...

(ETA: I've just started to read the rest of this thread, and realised that I'm just about the only person not to spot the obvious total wrongness of the way photosynthesis is described here. Duh!)

More good stuff fills out the episode, establishing the shape of the story to come. We get some stock footage of an avalanche- we'll be seeing a lot more of that. The Doctor quickly establishes his usefulness to Clent, and easily fends off questions by claiming to have been "in retreat" in Tibet. And, of course, it's made plain that the Doctor isn't at all keen on this reliance on computers.


Part Two


"We are part of the world plan."



Back to the recon, and at first I wasn't sure I had the right episode, as there seems to be no reprise and Victoria is captured very quickly. It's odd to think that Varga is played by Bernard Bresslaw- it certainly doesn't show, and frankly I'm mystified as to why they cast someone so high profile in such a role!

Not much is happening, but in a good way- there's good character stuff going on all the time. Arden says of Clent that he "should have been born a robot"! And the Doctor gets a couple of nicely done individual chats with both Clent and Penley, establishing the differences between them, essentiality individualism versus conformity.


Part Three


"Save the world? That has a nice Clentian ring to it!"


Peter Barkworth is superb as Clent, giving the character physical and vocal quirks which really make him come alive. The clumsy way Clent tries to convince Arden to not blame himself for unleashing Varga is a superb piece of acting. Meanwhile, Penley gets a great line: "Clent doesn't need me. He just needs a mirror. Preferably rose-tinted."

I love the scene where, having refused to use a computer for his calculations (!), the Doctor tells Clent he has a very important request- a pencil!

Victoria gets very hysterical indeed at the end of the episode- she's having quite a traumatic time so far.



Part Four


"Well, you don't expect me to face Clent alone? That mouthpiece of the computer? He's got a printed circuit where his heart should be!"



All footage from now on. Hooray! Unfortunately, it becomes increasingly apparent from this point on that the scenes "outside" with "walls of ice" are in fact taking place in rather small sets!

Nice touch that Jamie's pleased to hear fellow Scot Storr call himself a "loyalist"! Otherwise, character moments are not so frequent this episode, mainly because things are actually happening and the pieces are beginning to move into place. It's become increasingly apparent that the Ice Warriors are hostile mainly because they mistakenly believe the ionizer to be a weapon. Then again, they do kill Storr, so they're not exactly nice!



Part Five


"Our trust is in the Great Computer."


While the Doctor kills some time with the Ice Warriors, Jamie and Penley spend some time on film watching some stock footage of wolves, in the only episode to show any blatant padding. Still, there's still plenty of good stuff. It's notable that, while the Doctor is able to defiantly tell the Ice Warriors early on that "I always live in hope", Penley accuses Clent of behaving very differently: "You mean hope happens to be inconvenient. You've got to stick to your precious schedule, is that it?"

This theme of whether to accept the computer's direction is really coming to the fore now, not that it's ever exactly been subtext. But although the theme is well done it's unfortunately dated, not only in terms of computer technology but in terms of its implications of a planned society.

Oh, and why does one of the Ice Warriors seem to have a bigger helmet than all the others?

I like the scenes of Victoria pretending to cry- Deborah Watling is essentially acting someone who's acting badly, and doing it very well!


Part Six


"Computer says no!"


Everything comes to a very neat conclusion here in a more than usually satisfying finale, as Clent and Miss Garrett's almost religious faith in the computer is finally tested to destruction. It's nicely done how Walters' rant against the computer at the start of the episode is counterbalanced by a later rant from Clent. And the reconciliation between Clent and Penley is nicely understated but well done.

Hang on, why is the TARDIS suddenly vertical at the end?



Overall, most enjoyable. For the second time in a row we get a six parter which more or less justifies its length. It's interesting how the flaws and virtues of The Abominable Snowmen- great concepts and atmosphere versus often bland guest characters- are reversed here, where a fairly standard base-under-siege story is made to work through good characterisation of both the regulars and the guest cast. 4/5.