P.R.O.B.E: The Zero Imperative

 "This is a hospital, Miss Shaw. Not Scooby-Doo."

It says a lot about me was that tonight's viewing was a choice between a 1980s BBC TV production of Sophocles' Antigone and this, a straight-to-video Doctor Who spin-off from the wilderness years. My geek side just won out against my pretentious git side... this time!

Thing is, though, this may not be Sophocles but it's a very impressive script from a young Mark Gatiss, a tale of dark, otherworldly forces, possession and family tragedy that is perfectly paced, well characterised and unfolds in a deeply satisfying way, with revelation after revelation. Bill Baggs' direction, too, is impressive, using stylistic camerawork to cover what must have been a tiny budget.

The dialogue is great, as is Caroline John as Liz Shaw, now running her own outfit investigating supernatural weirdness in contrast to "another acronymic organisation from my salad days"- love the pipe.

Nevertheless... although Jon Pertwee, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy (especially towards the end) are all great, I tend to feel that the inclusion of so many former Doctors (although I love Sylv's "Trust me, I'm a Doctor") perhaps undermines Caroline John in what's supposed to be a starring role. Still, that isn't the script's fault, and the overall impression is of a compelling thriller that, very wisely, leads with mood and character as opposed to anything too expensive-looking....

Tales of the TARDIS

 Obviously I haven’t watched the omnibus versions of all these old Doctor Who stories I’ve seen countless times before, just the fabulous new scenes at the beginning and ends. So I’ll say only that the whole omnibus thing makes me nostalgic for the old days of BBC video. Also, The Mind Robber and The Time Meddler have never looked so good. And I’m pleased to see the extended cut was used for The Curse of Fenric.

Earthshock

“Oh, you got old.”

"You didn't."

Of course, we saw Tegan and the Fifth Doctor interact briefly in The Power of the Doctor and ditto for the Seventh Doctor and Ace. These pairings therefore make sense, and this and The Curse of Fenric are the obvious story choices for each respective pairing: bloody good, but also emotionally resonant for the characters. 

So what's going on? This first instalment has to do a bit of exposition on what a "Memory TARDIS" is- part of the TARDIS, although perhaps not a physical location as such. It feeds on memories, so a story has to be told. Wisely, it's all kept a bit vague, and at this point we simplyhandwave over how the Doctor looks visibly older than he was when we saw him succumb to Spectrox Toxaemia with all those heads whizzing around him.

We end with some nicely meta commentary as the two of them mourn Adric. "He loved you", insists Tegan, to which the Doctor responds "Yes, I realise that now." The characters are pretty much acknowledging that the episodic nature of the series back in those days didn't really allow for prolonged dwelling on the characters and their development- but it's not too late to remedy that. It's a lovely sentiment.

We also learn more about what Tegan went on to do, as with many former companions: campaign for environmental causes. Are you listening, Sunak?

The Mind Robber

"I think we're in Heaven."

"I hope not. I'm a very busy woman."

This one was absolutely necessary- the theft of Jamie and Zoe's memories by the Time Lords in The War Games was a truly monstrous crime. It's been left very late in the characters' lives, but at last that great wrong can be righted.

We learn that they've both led good lives- Jamie has fathered a massive family, while Zoe is now president. This one is just vibes, really, but it's lovely. And the chemistry between the actors is as wonderful as ever.

Vengeance on Varos

"The twenty-first century- it feels a lot like Varos."

Both Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are great here but... is it me, or is the chemistry not quite there? Regardless, this one is perhaps not so successful as the others, for reasons that are not really its fault. The decision to have Peri get married to barbarian king Yrcanos was always an outrage, a shameful treatment of a character who had meant so much. RTD has no choice but to spin this as Peri having achieved great things as a "Warrior Queen", but this isn't enough to wash away the sins of his prdedecessors within that very, very dysfunctional Doctor Who office of 1986. Nothing could.

It's good to see the Sixth Doctor rather less garishly dressed, though. It's also heartwarming to see them both resolve to go travelling again, though. So a Memory TARDIS can travel through time and space, maybe...

The Three Doctors

"Did you love him?"

Katy Manning is, of course, the obvious choice here, but who to pair her with? The only real choices from the era would have been John Levene or Richard Franklin and... yeah. So Daniel Anthony as Clyde Langer is the perfect choice. We get a bit more closure on The Sarah Jane Adventures: Clyde is a successful comic book creator; Luke and Sanjay are astronauts; Rani is an activist, like Tegan and Ace.

There's real heart to this one. A recently bereaved Jo is mourning her Cliff, and in a mood not to allow Clyde to miss his own chance for love. RTD does this sort of character stuff very well indeed, and it works.

The Time Meddler

"I mean, can you imagine the Doctor wearing something like this?"

The above is the best joke in all six of these, with Steven commenting on what we know to be the Sixth Doctor's inimitable fashion sense.

And this one is absolutely the best of the lot. Peter Purves is superb but Maureen O'Brien is absolutely wonderful. A couple of years may have passed but she is still absolutely, utterly, brilliantly Vicki, and a real joy.

Both of them are grandparents. Steven is a king. Yet Vicki's departure in The Myth Makers, while not the Peri level of bad, was pretty appalling, a girl from the twenty-fifth century settling in the time just after the Trojan Wars, a time with few creature comforts and much violence and hardships. But RTD very much emphasises that she's had a happy life regardless, and O'Brien's performance convinces us.

I love the ending, a nice touch.

The Curse of Fenric

"Time streams are funny things. In some, I regenerate. In others, I don't."

The above quote, I suppose, is the best we're going to get in terms of explaining why all these Doctors look visibly older. Best not to ask too many questions, I feel.

This one follows on nicely from The Power of the Doctor, and both characters get closure, with the Seventh Doctor admitting that his manipulations would, yust veeery occasionally, you understand, go a little bit too far. I love the revelation that Ace used to see her nan- Kathleen Dudman- in the nursing home. And yes... the Doctor was always a father figure to her.

So off they go on one more journey. This one was wonderful.

So there we are. Just a few minutes per story, yes, but the sort of nice little character moments that Doctor Who coudn't really do when it consisted of twenty-five minute serialised episodes. It's surprising how much of a delight this all is, considering that it isn't much material. But this is whetting my appetite nicely. I trust RTD.

The Stranger: Summoned by Shadows

"I misunderstood the nature of the universe..."

This is, and is not, a Doctor Who spin-off- indeed, it riffs and perhaps relies on that very ambiguity. Please bear with me, non-Doctor Who fans; this is, I fear, something of a niche little short film, made in 1991 during that long hiatus of 1989 to 2005 where, one failed American TV pilot aside, Doctor Who had been cancelled by the BBC, perhaps forever, and it fell to fandom to fill the space with various amateur and, indeed, not so amateur material.

This is the first of several straight-to-video productions by Bill Baggs, and it's a fascinating artifact, very much of its time. The music, the hair, the cinematography, the camera angles- it all screams 1991. Although obviously cheap, the whole thing manages to look good, partly through cleverly relying on intrigue and atmosphere over spectacle. While it stars Colin Baker, the overall mood and effect is strongly evocative of the McCoy years, and of Andrew Cartmel's vision far more than Eric Saward.

It's rather good for what it is- watching it today, the plot feels very much like a New Adventures novel, but such was the zeitgeist. Colin Baker, in particular, is superb as a perhaps later version of hs Doctor, world-weary and far more self-aware. Michael Wisher, always a joy to see, is similarly excellent as the villain.  But this is very much of its time, very much aimed at a telefantasy audience with none of the mass appeal through character drama that RTD would one day bring.

Its a promising and entertaining watch, though, especially for what it is, and very much worthwhile to the Doctor Who completist.

The Airzone Solution

“Have I been scintillating company?”

 Unexpectedly, Amazon Prime is now showing- complete with subtitles- this interesting little piece of wilderness years nostalgia for us Doctor Who fans. It isn't Doctor Who, of course- in 1993 that existed only in a rather good set of novels. But it's made by fans, and stars no fewer than four doctors plus Nicola Bryant- and a very young Alan Cumming in a henchman role. And, most importantly, it’s a bloody gripping environmental thriller to boot, belying it’s low budget.

It’s very 1993, of course. From the opening music to a couple of jarring instances of casual racism that wouldn’t happen nowadays (Ellie does an arse-clenching  Chinese accent after a takeaway, and there’s an equally arse-clenching exchange about “big chief”, “pow wow” and “heap”.), but most of all it’s fascinating  to see how the perceived problems of the environment have changed over the past 26 years- incredibly, global warming isn’t even mentioned; the threat is pollution and- nostalgia alert!- the ozone layer. Remember that?

Jon Pertwee, as he often did later in life, phones it in. But Peter Davison is superb as a crusading journalist, while Sylvester McCoy shines in a slightly under-prominent role as an environmental activist. But the indisputable star is the superb Colin Baker as weatherman Arnie, a nice guy forced against his nature to resist the nefarious Airzone Solution, a very ‘90s exemplar of private sector greed from an age when Thatcherism was still very much a thing. This is an obscure bit of fandom drama, but something obscure can nevertheless be bloody good.

Blake's 7: The City at the Edge of the World

“I am surrounded by cretins!”

So. This is it: the last episode of Blake’s 7 that I’ve seen before. From now on it’s all uncharted territory for me. Exciting, eh?  Know how the series ends, obviously, but aside from that rather huge exception I’m completely spoiler-free.

As Chris Boucher is wont to do, we begin some way into the story, after Tarrant has already done a bit of sniffing around on the planet below. He quite horribly bullies Vila into going down to do a job for the natives, alone and unarmed, in return for some unobtainium crystals, while nobody’s looking. This is fascinating, for two reasons. Firstly, it’s becoming clear that we are not meant to like Tarrant. Secondly, this episode makes him look like both a bully and a pillock; he’s definitely taken down a peg or two.

It’s interesting, in this light, to note how comparatively concerned and caring Avon is made to look in contrast, just before Vila teleports down. It’s Avon who tries to plant a tracer on Vila for his safety, and his disapproval is clear. He and Cally are very much the anti-Tarrant double act here, and Dayna’s not impressed either.

Tarrant is also shown to be naïve and rather stupid in assuming the natives are harmless. It’s not long before Avon (significantly in the context of what seems to be a developing conflict between Tarrant and Avon; this one Avon definitely wins) safely detonates an intended booby trap. And when the rather silent natives finally deliver Avon to his destination, a ruined city, it’s revealed that Tarrant has in fact made a massive, massive cock-up. There are no unobtainium crystals. But there is the splendid Bayban the Butcher, splendidly hammed by the wonderful Colin Baker, and his comedy henchmen. But there’s also, er, a henchwoman, Kerrill, who seems cute and vulnerable beneath the harsh exterior.

It seems there’s a mysterious portal Bayban wishes to penetrate, and he’s conned Tarrant into supplying him with the best locksmith around. The locals (represented by a taciturn Valentine Dyall) apparently say that “It contains this world and the next”. If we’re paying attention then we’ve already guessed that it leads to another world. But all this exposition is delivered amongst a lot of highly entertaining lines from the great Bayban. I love his annoyance at being only second on the Federation’s “most wanted” list after Blake!

Vila has one hour to open the portal, or things look grim. Fortunately, though, he’s a bloody good thief. If this were D&D he’s have a dexterity of 18, without question. He’s not as unlucky as things might seem, especially as Kerrill re-appears, having just happened to put on some rather alluring clothing. Vila quickly manages to impress her by cleverly working out that the portal is in fact a force field, designed to resemble a solid object, which will throw back any energy fired into it. All he needs is a low energy probe, too subtle for it to detect. In love Vila’s sense of rivalry with his opponent.

Suddenly, it opens, and they both go through. And, as every viewer knew it would, it simply closes again. Still, Kerril is getting rather tactile, so Vila is still not necessarily having such a bad time, even if he is becoming rather conscious of being used. He’s about to go back, but her scream brings him back, and the two of them have a lovely little cuddle. They’re aboard a spacecraft, next to the skeletons of two of their predecessors, when they suddenly hear a voice from thirty centuries ago. The planet’s civilisation is at the height of its power, but some local Hari Seldon-type chap has been insisting that for some reason they’re about top collapse into barbarism. The ship is a kind of ark, programmed to find a suitable planet, and the remaining natives have been genetically engineered with a Quatermass and the Pit-style race memory to ensure they continue to behave in ways their rather controlling ancestors would approve of. Once the other end of a teleport is set up, the entire race can migrate. Talk about pushy parenting…

Unfortunately, the ship seems to be in flight, and the air will therefore soon run out. There’s only one thing for it; to have what I imagine would be some lovely, slow, gentle sex. Never mind the fact that, in true TV fashion, the two of them later wake up fully clothed! Still, they’re alive, they’re a really sweet couple, and the ship has landed, after all. Oh, and there are unobtainium crystals everywhere. Shame the planet so obviously looks like a papier-mâché set.

Meanwhile, Avon and co all teleport down, although not before they give Tarrant a hard time. It’s noticeable that Avon is the one in charge as they all rather efficiently work their way towards Bayban. It’s nice that Dayna at last gets to re-use at least one of the character traits established in her first appearance, making use of an exploding remote controlled car that she’s invested. More of this, please: in every episode since Aftermath she’s seemed like just another generic female character. There’s a big fight, and Bayban is sent packing.

Kerrill and Vila are so cute together, but it can’t last; we know that Vila’s a main character in this serial, and that reset button is going to be pressed. It’s done very well, though, with lots of sadness. Especially as Kerrill tells Vila that she loves him. Besotted though he is, he isn’t quite able to say the same; perhaps in the long run they wouldn’t have been so good together. Still, it’s a great episode for Vila; not many end with him being told that he’s “a clever man, and brave”. A wonderful episode.

Doctor Who: Trial of a Time Lord Parts Thirteen and Fourteen: The Ultimate Foe

Part Thirteen

“I’m as truthful, honest, and about as boring as they come.”

The court is back from recess, and who should turn up but James Bree! There’s little time to wallow in nostalgia, though; the main trial plot has stopped treading water and started swimming again, and the Doctor’s in trouble. He’s run out of tricks for his defence, he’s accused of genocide and he’s a hair’s breadth away from being convicted and condemned. So now, of course, is the dramatically appropriate moment for Mel and Glitz to mysteriously turn up to testify in his favour. Glitz, necessarily, has softened from the thug of earlier.

It’s also the dramatically appropriate moment to reveal they’ve been sent by the Master, who is a most suitable means of extracting maximum dramatic potential out of the revelations that follow. Particularly as he turns up from inside the Matrix. Glitz was working for the Master back in parts one to four, and that mysterious box was full of “stuff the secrets had been nicking from the Matrix for years”. And, of course, this being a script by Robert Holmes, a dirty Time Lord cover-up then ensued, involving Earth being naughtily moved across the galaxy to become Ravolox, with enormous collateral damage caused by solar flares. The Doctor gets a great speech after this revelation, describing his own people as “decadent, degenerate and rotten to the core,” although unfortunately this is one of those moments where Colin’s performance suffers a bit of a wobble.

And then the Master casually refers to the Valeyard as “the Doctor” while explaining that he’s been adjusting evidence on behalf of the High Council to ensure the Doctor’s conviction. The Doctor is told that he’s “an amalgamation of the darker sides of your nature, somewhere between your twelfth and final regeneration.” Interesting- this wording, together with the fact he seems to be working for the High Council as some sort of expendable stooge, seems to indicate he’s not so much a future incarnation of the Doctor as a distillation of certain of the Doctor’s qualities, and to some extent an artificial creation of these shadowy Time Lord politicians. This is the Robert Holmes script about corrupt Time Lords to end all Robert Holmes scripts about corrupt Time Lords. Literally.

Oh, and it all seems to make sense, incidentally. The only bits so far that haven’t made sense at all have been in the Pip and Jane Baker episodes, where the workings of the trial seemed to be all over the place and the consequences of the evidence being from the future hadn’t been though through. But the whole business with the sleepers, Ravolox, and the Doctor’s apparent actions on Thoros Beta seem to have been resolved pretty much satisfactorily to me. I don’t think we need to have it spelled out exactly which scenes happened as shown and which didn’t.

Oh, and I haven’t any complaints about Peri’s fate, either. It makes sense, more or less, given her earlier relationship with Yrcanos.

Anyway, Holmes recalls his own script for The Deadly Assassin as the Doctor and Glitz spend the rest of the episode inside the Matrix. Among other things they encounter a number of Mr Popplewicks, all played by Onslow from Keeping Up Appearances, a wonderfully Holmesian satirical dig at bureaucracy.

Part Fourteen

“You are elevating futility to a high art. There’s nothing you can do to prevent the catharsis of spurious morality.”

…So, after a sublime swansong from Holmes, we move to the ridiculous in the shape of this script by Pip and Jane Baker. Sadly, the comparison with their lamented predecessor hardly shows them in a good light.

We get to see the familiar sight of the inside of the Master’s TARDIS. It’s only by doing this marathon that I’ve come to realise just how consistent was its appearance during the ‘80s. We also get an exploding quill pen, by far the coolest thing in this episode. Unfortunately, there’s an awful lot of utter poo here. The Doctor states that “I would trust Mel with my life,” but he’s not even met her yet! I know he’s only pretending to go along with the fake trial, but still. At least I got a cheap laugh out of “Never mind the Sydney Carton heroics,” mind.

This is so poor compared to the previous episode, though. There’s not actually much wrong with the plot, but the dialogue is awful and the characters keep explaining the plot to us in a condescending manner which rubs me up the wrong way. Plus, we get loads of no doubt accurate scientific gobbledygook which reminds me of all the things I didn’t like about the Bidmead scripts. And then the Master, hearing that the High Council has been deposed and insurrection has ensued, actually makes a speech to the Time Lords in the courtroom offering to take control which bears uncanny similarities to a certain speech in Logopolis. Unbelievable.
As a final indignity, the Doctor actually suggests the Inquisitor as a candidate for the presidency. Why? She’s spent the whole season being nothing but an incompetent buffoon.

So, it’s a tale of two episodes. The first part, a worthy swansong from Robert Holmes which fortunately doesn’t leave the plot for Pip n’ Jane to explain, gets 5/5, while the Pip n’ Jane monstrosity gets 2/5. I’m not too bothered about what Eric Saward’s version would have been like, but I’d have loved to have seen Robert Holmes’. I was going to give it a 1/5 but I suppose giving one episode 5/5 and the other 1/5 would have been a bit much.

The last episode aside, though, it’s actually been a damn fine season. I wasn’t actually expecting that I’d be rating this particularly highly until I got to it, but it’s a relief to give a season a good score for once- at 4/5 it’s a creditable joint sixth, which comes as a genuine surprise to me. Who’d have thunk it? Not only is this much-maligned season a triumphant return to form after a poor few years, but it’s the best season of the ‘80s so far by a long way. I suspect the famously diminished presence of Saward may have something to do with it…

Doctor Who: Trial of a Time Lord Parts Nine to Twelve: Terror of the Vervoids

Part Nine

“Let’s exercise the grey cells for once, shall we?”

The Doctor, still very upset at Peri’s death, is nevertheless forced to continue with the trial, and to show some evidence of his own. And this evidence is… from the future. His mind really must be addled by grief. And how does this work anyway? Can’t the Doctor think of anything that’s already happened to him throughout his entire life that will help his case? Why is evidence from the future even admissible? After all, by definition it can only be from a possible future, particularly as it seems at the moment that the Doctor is to be executed long before he ever gets to meet Mel or visit the Hyperion III.

So, it’s 2986, and said ship is travelling between what appear to be the colonial possession of Mogar and Earth- interestingly, given the fact that we appear to be in the same time period as The Mutants. We’re not in the same genre, though; there’s a murderer on board, and the spirit of Agatha Christie hangs in the air. No doubt this’ll be just as good as The Robots of Death, then.

Honor Blackman’s in it. The Doctor’s wearing a yellow cravat. Oh, and there’s a new companion, Mel, or rather there will be once the Doctor actually meets her. I’m enjoying this sort of timey-wimey stuff, much as the trial framing sequence is no longer making any sense. And I like Mel. And I like Bonnie Langford. There, I’ve said it.

Our scheduled broadcast of carrot juice and exercise bikes is interrupted by a mayday call, and our two TARDISeers are, er, embroiled in a web of intrigue. The Doctor and Mel have a great relationship, very tactile, with no serious bickering and a great chemistry. And Mel’s a likeable character who actually seems to enjoy travelling in the TARDIS, which comes as a huge relief. Because arguably no one else really has ever since Romana.

There’s an awful lot of aerobics in this story; it may be the 2980s, but it’s still the ‘80s. It’s all such fun though. I love the novel Professor Lasky’s reading…

We finish with some more apparent evidence that the Matrix has been tempted with. But on the plus side, Mel is definitely great- she can scream in the exact same key as the closing theme…

Part Ten

“The fellow may be a fool but he’s not a criminal.”

We get our first intimations here that there’s a dangerous alien plant species on the loose. And some more stuff happens with the murder mystery plot. But the main distinguishing feature of this episode is that rather cool-looking three dimensional Space Invaders clone the Mogarians are playing. Aside from its obvious coolness, it’s another example of how impressive the effects have been this season. Seldom before have we seen such casual brilliance.

We get a mention of the Black Hole of Tartarus, but we’re assured it’s perfectly safe. It’s definitely not going to be a threat at any point, then. The Mogarians discuss Earth’s plundering of their planet- bit of politics there- and there’s another murder. There’s some rather too heavily telegraphed Poirot stuff from the Doctor in the courtroom as he shows off about the Mogarian translator, but by now the murder mystery plot is bubbling nicely.

Mel screams in exactly the right key again.

Part Eleven

“Never mind the Just So Stories! That guard looks trigger happy to me!”

In a departure from the norm, Mel screams quite early in the episode this time. And narrowly escapes being murdered in true Perils of Pauline fashion. Meanwhile, the Vervoids appear properly and turn out to look fab- once again on the production side things are superb. And they get such naturalistic dialogue, too, with lines such as “We are doing splendidly!” which sound in no way bizarre coming from a talking plant.

Meanwhile the viewer gets confirmation that the Matrix’s pants are well and truly on fire as the Doctor is shown smashing the communications equipment. Much as this may not be anywhere near as well-written as Mindwarp, and the trial sequences make a lot less sense, I must admit that this time at least we know when the Matrix is lying and when it isn’t.

But the trial sequences make no sense at all here. The Investigator implies that the Doctor is guilty until proven innocent, the Valeyard is now trying to condemn the Doctor for things which haven’t actually happened yet and possibly never will, and the Investigator describes the Doctor’s “fair trial” as “an indulgence”. Everything tells us that this is just a show trial, with barely a pretence of justice, yet the Doctor seems to have no objection whatsoever to the Inquisitor’s conduct, and the script seems to assume that the audience are supposed to accept her as a legitimate authority figure, which is absurd.

Part Twelve

“The charge must now be genocide!”

Well, there’s a surprise- the ship’s headed straight for the Black Hole of Tarsarus. Who’d have thunk it? Technically, of course, there’s no danger at all as the Doctor and Mel could simply bundle everyone else in the TARDIS. In fact, that’s definitely what he would have done back when he was Peter Davison, although come to think of it that sort of thing more or less stopped with Planet of Fire.

Anyway, Rudge and the Mogarians slightly irritate our heroes with a fairly crappy hijack attempt. This is soon dealt with, but at least it manages to highlight the rather fantastic looking graphic effect on the screen on the bridge. The Doctor rather cleverly fingers Doland as the killer and turns the tables on him, and Lasky rather suddenly sees the error of her ways. Although she gets killed by the Vervoids anyway in the obligatory “But you can’t kill me! I’m your creator!” scene.

As a final nice touch, the Vervoids’ leaves turn autumnal before they crumble and die. Unfortunately things then start going all arbitrary in the courtroom…

The actual Vervoid story was rather good, I thought- nothing particularly clever, unlike last story, but it was a straightforward adventure done well and there’s nothing wrong with that. And like everything else in this season so far it looks great. It’s just a shame that the trial sequences, rather well-integrated until now, have started to unravel. Still, 4/5.

Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord Parts Five to Eight: Mindwarp

Part Five

“Then where will you be? Dead! No, worse than that. Poor!”

It’s all presented as the next episode, not a new story, but there’s no reprise, and Robert Holmes gives way to Philip Martin. It’s the planet Thoros Beta, the year 2379 and we’re about to see what was happening before the Doctor was taken out of time, or so we’re told. Certainly we see some highly impressive special effects and the most brilliantly realised alien planet yet seen. The pink sea and the ringed planet in the sky are completely unlike anything we’ve ever seen before and somehow manage to give this story a very different feel to usual from the beginning.

Of course, this being Philip Martin, we get a bit of metatextual stuff- the early trial scenes are essentially about directors’ choices of shots and decisions made in the editing! Still, seeing as I got a lot of enjoyment from this sort of thing in Vengeance on Varos I'm a bit disappointed by the relative lack of it in this story.

The Doctor and Peri are here to investigate a bit of naughty arms dealing, while Brian Blessed- in what is surprisingly his first appearance on Doctor Who- lies elsewhere on a table. This planet is ruled by the Mentors, led by a barely recognisable Christopher Ryan as Kiv, and the story is essentially based around mad scientist Crozier as he does loads of unethical experiments in a quest to cure Kiv’s headaches. Frankly, I’m not sure the people who design the headache pills I use are showing quite the same level of commitment.
Oh, and Sil’s back. Yay! I preferred the original costume, mind.

Part Six

“I have a special death reserved for him. He is a traitor known as the Doctor.”

The Doctor can’t seem to remember anything after Sil uses the machine on his brain, which makes the trial somewhat unfair from this point on. And it’s quite surprising that we only get one episode of the Doctor being unambiguously himself- I didn’t recall the stuff about unreliable narration starting so soon.

Brian Blessed, in a surprising departure from his usual type of part, plays Yrcanos as a shouty barbarian king. It’s good to see that his previous work in The Black Adder, Flash Gordon and Blake’s Seven hasn’t typecast him as quiet, nervous types. The character’s just a bit of comic relief, really, but in spite of being a bit of a prat he’s a nice chap really.

The Doctor’s initial betrayal of everyone, and his later betrayal of Peri, comes as a bit of a shock. In the wider context of the show, with the axe hanging over it and the earlier examples of The Twin Dilemma and Attack of the Cybermen, this probably isn’t a great idea. But in the context of this particular story it actually works quite well; with the framing device of the trial it’s allowed to be portrayed in a metatextual way with the reliability of the footage from the Matrix being open to question in spite of the Valeyard’s protestations that the Matrix cannot lie. And it could of course be, partially or wholly, just a clever plan by the Doctor, or a result of what Sil did to his brain earlier.

Be that as it may, the scenes with the Doctor interrogating Peri arguably cross a line. I hope this is the Matrix lying.

Towards the cliffhanger the Inquisitor appears to voice Philip Martin’s own frustrations with the trial scenes as she states that “I do grow tired of these continual interruptions…”

Part Seven

“Today, prudence shall be our watchword. Tomorrow, I shall soak the land in blood.”

Oddly, the Doctor is given a chance to pause the trial but insists on its continuing in spite of the blatant unfairness of the circumstances. By now there is a definite sense of doom surrounding the fate of Peri.

Kiv orders the death of all those who fail to save his life, causing Sil to become quite splendidly panicked. He calms down after the operation’s success, though, claiming that “I endeavour to maintain a certain continuity”, something with which the story is about to start having problems very soon. Still, there’s some good stuff. The scene in which the Doctor uses his knowledge of the future to help Sil make money is a nice touch, but it’s odd this is not immediately seized upon by the Valeyard.

Part Eight

“I thought it was somewhat gratuitous.”

There’s a great scene in which Peri explains love to Yrcanos while he explains his conception of the afterlife, where his destiny is “Why, to fight! What else!” Yrcanos is bonkers, of course, but he’s basically a decent and even innocent fellow underneath all the shouting, and Peri clearly likes him.

Things get even more confused as the Doctor seems to become one of the goodies again, rescuing Yrcanos and endeavouring to save Peri. Yrcanos soon stirs up some real trouble for the Mentors, and Kiv is eventually forced to abandon his business meeting with a pink Terileptil so that he can have his brain transferred into Peri’s body. The operation begins, while elsewhere Yrcanos’ rebellion gets under way- and it’s at this point that the Doctor is taken out of time and we rejoin the first episode of the season.

As a coda we get to see the horrifyingly effective sight of Kiv occupying the body of a bald Peri. Crozier has discovered a way to transplant any mind into any body; practically a form of immortality. To this the Time Lords have to intervene. Presumably if the Doctor hadn’t intervened, Crozier would have failed to save Kiv and been executed by the bodyguards. As it is, the Time Lords now use Yrcanos as an assassin to kill everyone.

So, Peri’s dead. And it’s the most shocking and affecting companion death yet. I certainly hope they don’t retcon it. That would be bad.

So, surprisingly given its reputation, I liked this one. There wasn’t quite as much humour in the metatextual stuff as there was in Martin’s previous effort, but he still managed to use the format of the trial to play some rather enjoyable games with the different layers of narrative, once again giving us a piece of television drama which is fundamentally about the fact that it’s television. I think the broad sweep of what was happening is more or less implied (the Matrix showed the Doctor being a little nastier during his time as a “turncoat” than he was in reality, but broadly speaking it was all his plan) and anyway, I’m sure it’ll all be explained away perfectly satisfactorily at the end of the season. 4/5.

Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord Parts One to Four: The Mysterious Planet

Part One

“I intend to adumbrate two typical instances from separate epistopic interfaces of the spectrum.”

It gives me a warm fuzzy glow, all the ambiguity about the story title. Reminds me of the early Hartnells. (Although, as we’ll see, this reminds me mainly of The Krotons.) And I for one will be taking neither side in the debate as I’m rather fond of shades of grey.

Anyway, the story starts with the most fantastic special effects sequence we have yet seen- something which looks like, yet cannot be, CGI. And while we’ll see nothing as mind-blowing as this for the rest of the four episodes, the production values seem pretty impressive to me, whatever may have been going on behind the scenes. 

The Doctor (now with a red cravat) is put on trial by a bunch of Time Lords in a fairly obvious metaphor for off-screen events- actually a brilliant idea in principle, and something which mostly works very well, at least for these four episodes. This trial is also the last time we’ll ever see many of what have become the essential trappings of Time Lord society- robes, Chancellery Guards and the like.

Lynda Bellingham and Michael Jayston are great as the Inquisitor and Valeyard respectively, which is quite a relief as the story absolutely needs them to be. The Doctor has, of course, been deposed as president, and in the interests of providing a more dramatic narrative he insists on defending himself in spite of having had no chance to do any preparation whatsoever, which is hardly fair. He has no real idea what he’s supposed to be defending himself against either but as the charges against him seem to constantly change arbitrarily throughout the story this hardly seems to matter.

That’s the framing sequence dealt with; the four-parter proper is another good ‘un from Robert Holmes, crammed with great ideas and great dialogue. We have the planet Ravolox in the far future, a planet suspiciously similar to Earth. We have a relationship between the Doctor and Peri where they’re back to being friends, a relief after certain recent stories where their relationship has been decidedly awkward to watch. And we have the fantastic Glitz and Dibber, the, ahem, Holmesian double act at its finest. Their dialogue is fab; the whole riff on the prison psychiatrist is a joy.

The whole script sparkles, with Holmes seemingly in a much lighter mood than he has seemed to be in of late. The postmodern wit is back (“Ancient life on Ravolox by Doctor-“), and so are the great ideas. The Doctor and Peri discover what seem to be the ruins of Marble Arch, and it seems that this could almost be Earth except it’s two million miles out of place, instantly a great concept. And it’s a nice touch that the whole thing is laid out like something that was once a tube station, and its inhabitants call it “Marb Station”. I’m enjoying this hugely, which is more than can be said for the Doctor: “Can’t we just have the edited highlights?”

On top of this we have the village, with Joan Sims as Katryca doing an impressive female version of Brian Blessed. I love her reaction to Glitz’s story- she’s clearly no fool. We also get Balazar and his books, another top comedy moment. And just when you think it’s peaked already, here’s Tom Chadbon…

Part Two

“These bars remind me of home.”

The early courtroom scenes in this episode suddenly make it very clear; Holmes is writing for the Tom Baker Doctor, isn’t he? In fact, it’s mere minutes after this thought occurs to me that the jelly babies come out. And I can’t think of any better way of writing for Colin Baker’ Doctor. Certainly the early wobbles over the character’s instability seem to be long gone by this point, although Colin’s performance seems to wobble a bit at the “I always like to do the unexpected” line.

The Immortal has two human underlings who, much as they remind me of David and Tony from The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, I shall henceforth refer to as Gonds for obvious reasons.

It’s another damn fine episode, with a bit more plot fed out to us amongst all the fun; Drathro and his “secrets” are to do with some “Sleepers” from Andromeda. Drathro’s power comes from a Black Light converter which relies on an aerial in Katryca’s village. An aerial which Dibber blows up, meaning that Marb station is soon going to blow up. Oops.

We also get another mention of Saward’s Speelsnapes, and some great character stuff. Drathro knows perfectly well that there’s rain falling outside and that the solar flares’ effects have been much exaggerated, but continues to ration water because that’s what the plan says, inflexible as any machine. A more sinister example of the same mindset, and the most disturbing aspect of the story, is the “culling” of “work units" above the set quota in spite of the fact this is completely unnecessary.

Part Three

“They are out of control, outside the plan.”

Holmes puts into the Inquisitor’s mouth some ironic commentary on recent off-screen-developments: “Valeyard, I would appreciate it if these brutal and repetitious scenes were kept to a minimum.” I’m tempted to see in this not only the obvious reference to criticism of the previous season but also a nod to the truncated length of this season, although sadly I think that may be a temptation too far. Still, more great dialogue.

It’s confirmed; Ravolox is Earth. And there’s now a race against time to avert a big bang. We get some postmodernism and political commentary too, though; the Matrix scenes are censored, something that can hardly fail to conjure up either recent criticism of the programme’s violence or government cover-ups. Mind you, Glitz and Dibber are blatantly talking about the Matrix.

Part Four

“Oh, the Black Light, yeah. We’ve got so much of that, sometimes we can hardly see.”

The Doctor is frustrated by his failure to persuade the solipsistic Drathro that, as he’s going to die anyway, he might as well allow everyone else to survive. But Drathro insists that “The work units exist only to serve me. Without me they would have no function.” This is a disturbingly accurate prediction of modern management practices…

Fortunately, Glitz’s “low cunning” proves to be more persuasive than the Doctor’s moral arguments and so catastrophe is averted. But still unsolved are three questions; why has Earth been moved two million years through space, and by whom? What are the “secrets” of the Sleepers? And what exactly was the point of the Valeyard showing us all that?

Well, that was great, Holmes at his best. And at this stage at least the trial scenes are fine. 5/5.

Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks

Part One

“You forgot I’m a doctor. When they slice me open I’ll know the name and function of each organ that plops out.”

It’s quite alarming to see Eric Saward’s name in block capitals at the start. Is this the first time the writer’s name has been displayed like this or have I not been paying attention?

Aside from this piece of apparent self-aggrandisement on the part of our glorious script editor, it’s a promising start. The snowy landscape looks great and, uniquely for this season, the TARDIS lands immediately with no faffing about.

This is Necros, and for some reason the Doctor has decided that he and Peri are to attend the funeral of some bloke called Arthur Stengos, which is an odd thing for a time traveller to do; what particular connection does he have to the particular time period where Stengos has just died? Anyway, he and Peri are still keeping up their veggie lifestyle with the Doctor rustling up some nut roll, and Saward mentions his Speelsnapes for the first time.

We meet the embalmers- chiefly Jobel, a git with a toupee, and poor Tasambeker, who bewilderingly has unrequited feelings for this total arse, brilliantly portrayed by Clive Swift. There’s an agreeably realistic undercurrent of gallows humour which helps to carry along the exposition- Glen McCoy could learn a thing or two from this sort of thing.

More groups of characters appear: a couple of infiltrators skulking about; Alexei Sayle being quite brilliant as a DJ and almost making you forget the utter pointlessness of the character, who doesn’t really cut it as Greek chorus material; and Davros (well, above the net) with some white Daleks. Pleasingly we get the traditional Dalek hum which as Deadly Lampshade pointed out (and I unaccountably failed to notice having obsessed about it for every Dalek story thus far) was absent from Resurrection of the Daleks.

The whole thing looks great, and is as brilliantly shot as one would expect from Graeme Harper- the shot where the camera pans down through several floors is magnificent. Admittedly the Dalek voices are a bit crap but I’m sure this is counterbalanced on the sound front by a top drawer rock n’ roll sound track which we’re unable to hear on DVD for sodding copyright reasons.

Eleanor Bron is a delight as Kara, with the mutually insincere conversation between her and Davros being great fun. Thing is, though, with all these different groups of characters it’s noticeable that the Doctor and Peri are being sidelined somewhat, not actually having entered the building where all the stuff is happening by the end of the episode. Still, we learn that the Doctor is now 900 years old. He’s aged a bit since he last mentioned how old he was then- he was 760 when he was Tom Baker, I recall. It seems we can only fit in those extra 140 years by assuming it happened while he was travelling with Romana.

I don’t like the Doctor / Peri relationship here- not only is there too much bickering and, yet again, no indication that they’re friends, but Peri actually seems afraid of his disapproval in a way which makes this feel far too much like an abusive relationship for comfort. For all that this story is very well made and cleverly scripted, it’s entirely lacking in charm or a sense of fun.

The glass Dalek scene is a case in point. Conceptually, yes, it’s great. But Stengos begging his daughter to kill him is not the sort of thing we should be seeing in a teatime adventure serial. Oh, and it’s odd to hear the Stengos Dalek speak of “racial purity” where that’s precisely what isn’t involved in the whole idea of turning humans into Daleks.

I like William Gaunt’s Orcini, a blackly humorous character with a dodgy artificial leg whose prattling on about “honour” does nothing to dissipate the obvious fact he’s going to turn out to be an utter buffoon. The fact that he almost leaves before Kara gives him the sequence for the bomb is highly revealing and a nice touch. Still, this is rather a lot of characters for a story this length, and it’s clear Saward is not going to involve the Doctor any more than he has to.

Isn’t it nice of Davros to cheaply sell his source of protein throughout the galaxy, thereby eliminating famine? I’m sure there’ll be no downside to this at all…

We end with the Doctor and Peri still outside the bloody building, with the Doctor disturbed to discover his own tombstone “as I am now”, meaning he will “never again regenerate”. I’m getting a bit tired with all these frequent and unnecessary references to regeneration we’ve been getting ever since Colin Baker took over- they do real harm in that by reminding us of other Doctors all the bleeding time they give his Doctor a real sense of impermanency which threatens to undermine the character.

Part Two

“But did you ever tell anyone that they might be eating their own relatives?”

“Certainly not! That would have created what I believe is termed ‘consumer resistance’”.

Again we start with some nice touches; Clive Swift quite brilliantly portrays the creepiness of Jobel’s attentions towards Peri, while the computer’s sexy female voice as it speaks to Takis is a nice little detail, and the Doctor’s reaction to the DJ reminds us that this story was made back in the midst of the Dark Ages of Radio One.

But mainly this episode consists of characters double crossing each other and the complex of betrayals untangling itself. It’s all very clever and well plotted, but we get moments of character along the way, such as Eleanor Bron’s brilliant reaction to the extermination of Kara’s secretary, telling us everything we need to know about their relationship. And the conclusion of Davros’s manipulation of Tasambeker and Jobel is horrifyingly predictable, but that doesn’t make it any less gripping as we watch it happen. The way Jobel’s toupee falls off as he dies is an inspired directorial touch.

Orcini and Bostock seem to kill Davros, but it seems that what they killed was only a fake, put there to divert the bullets of potential assassins from their real target- did he and the Borad go to baddie school together? He seems to have survived more or less intact since we last saw him, and is now able to hover in the air and shoot blue lightning from his fingertips like Emperor Palpatine did at the end of Return of the Jedi. It seems he survived by means of an escape pod; the small matter of the Movellan virus is, naturally, glossed over.

It seems that Davros takes the “best” bodies from the Tranquil Repose to become Daleks and uses the rest to feed the galaxy, to let them know it’s Christmas time. Must be an awful lot of bodies then.

It’s a great twist that Takis has invited Daleks from Skaro to arrest Davros, and for the first time since Evil of the Daleks we see a sort of mini-Dalek civil war. Delightfully, this bit gives us some Dalek poetry as the lines “My vision is impaired / I cannot see / My vision is impaired / Emergency” are delivered in perfect iambic pentameter by one of the Daleks.

Echoing the ending of Genesis of the Daleks, the Dalek incubators are finally destroyed by a great big bomb, and the Doctor makes it out by the skin of his teeth. Peri then demands to be taken somewhere fun, and the Doctor resolves to take her to somewhere which may or may not be Blackpool.

This is very well made- Graeme Harper has done an excellent job. The performances are universally great, too, and the script is very cleverly constructed. But the tone is getting quite seriously worrying by this point- this is one story about cannibalism too many; the Doctor is sidelined, appearing far too infrequently and affecting the plot hardly at all; and the Doctor / Peri relationship is by now looking very, very wrong. I can’t give this any more than a 3/5.

As for Season 22- well, with a relatively poor score of 2.571/5 it’s my least favourite so far, and I seem to be making a habit of saying that!

Doctor Who: Timelash

Part One

“Avaunt thee, foul fanged fiend!”

I’ve been particularly looking forward to this one!

The initial faffing about in the TARDIS (a perennial problem with this season) is hardly promising; bickering, pointless mentioning of the Eye of Orion, the Doctor being a git, the fact that the Doctor’s relationship with Peri seems to have regressed to the level of The Mark of the Rani, as they hardly seem to be friends here- but as soon as the focus moves to Karfel the story is a delight from start to finish. I don’t mean to suggest it’s actually good, of course. That would be silly. But few stories are more entertaining, if not necessarily for the right reasons. And yet it wouldn’t be entirely fair to dismiss this story as “so bad it’s good” either.

The sets and costumes on Karfel look good, and although the script and performances are quite wonderfully camp we still get a very effective presentation of a totalitarian society through the depictions of the pressures on the individual to either conform and suppress one’s principles or rebel and suffer the consequences; by ensuring there are close personal links between the rebels and characters close to power we get a real sense of the dilemmas faced by such people in such a society. This is actually good writing from Glen McCoy, using the personal stresses of tyranny on Vena, Myklos and Renis to quickly illustrate the nature of this society. Particularly chilling is the line “It’s a strange feeling, not being monitored.” This is a society so tyrannical that there are CCTV cameras anywhere. Of course, such a terrible thing could never happen in real life.

Unfortunately, although McCoy’s script tends to be unfairly maligned, not only can he not do dialogue, he can’t do dialogue with hilarious consequences. Pieces of exposition are blatantly crowbarred in, a particularly amusing example being the line “Not only is our planet divided, we are under imminent threat of invasion from our former allies, the Bandrils.”

Otherwise, though, the story is solid enough. And there are some effective pieces of dialogue too; when the Borad declares it’s time for an election to be held he then immediately follows this with “Tell Tekker that I have elected him,” evoking the “elections” held in real life dictatorships.

Paul Darrow is quite superb as Tekker. He’s been criticised for hamming up his performance, but there’s simply no other way he could have delivered the dialogue he was given- that’s how the character was written so that’s how he played it. It’s a magnificent performance, quite on a par with Graham Crowden in The Horns of Nimon.

The Borad throws a right mardy as Vena disappears into the Timelash with his precious amulet, but fortunately the Doctor turns up at that precise moment, and Tekker resolves for him to be persuaded to retrieve it. The Doctor’s known on Karfel, which is fortunate as it allows us to skip a whole load of potentially tiresome questions about who he is and where he came from. The Doctor was last here “a regeneration or three back” and Tekker asks whether it’s just the two of them this time.

The Bandril ambassador not only looks wonderfully silly but gets hilariously unnaturalistic dialogue such as “Then it seems we are at war.” And shortly after this we get another “All these corridors look the same to me,” from Peri. This story’s dialogue is just as entertaining as the dialogue from City of Death, if not necessarily for the right reasons.

Just when you think things can’t get any more entertaining, Herbert appears, thinking he’s just summoned Vena with a Ouija board; there’s more puppet fun as Peri is attacked with a Morlox; and more hilariously creaky dialogue ensues as rebels appear and force Peri to identify Jo Grant. Incidentally, I wonder who the other passenger was when the Doctor travelled here before? Benton? Yates? Liz? The Brig?!

The episode ends on a high, as the Doctor angrily calls Tekker a “microcephalic apostate”.

Part Two

“I didn’t realise dying heroically would be such a strain on the nerves.”

The Doctor ventures into the Timelash, which is a great thing to happen as it gives us the line “He’s dangling on the edge of oblivion.” Still, with the help of Herbert, catastrophe is averted and the Doctor is able to start making his cool timey-wimey machine.

This is another episode of top entertainment, with something great happening every couple of minutes, from the nice little temporal paradox of the burning android to Tekker’s delightful betrayal of Tendron. The only niggle I have is the sidelining of Peri for much of this episode.

We finally get to see the Borad’s face, and it’s a triumph. In fact, there’s not a lot wrong with the production of this story at all. Tekker, unexpectedly, dies almost heroically as the Borad’s hilarious plan is revealed; he intends to wipe out all Karfelons by provoking the Bandrils into nuking the planet. This will leave the only survivors, for some reason, as himself, the Morlox, and Peri, who is to be mutated like himself and will no doubt agree to be his consort. A flawless and rational plan, I’m sure you’ll agree. Oh, and of course his dialogue is hilarious; “Another expedition to the realms of duplicity?”

Having apparently killed the Borad, the Doctor, ably assisted by Herbert, must prevent Armageddon by plonking the TARDIS into the path of the approaching nuke. As he tries to impress upon Herbert, this may not be entirely safe. Interestingly, the Doctor seems to imply that the “Laws of Time” are legal, er, laws, rather than physical ones.

The Doctor somehow dodges certain death (“I’ll explain one day.”) and discovers the Borad to still be alive, conveniently having cloned himself. You’ve just got to love this story. Predictably, the Borad ends up in Loch Ness, 1179, and Herbert is revealed to be a personage famed for his Morlocks and time machines.

Oh Timelash, you are awful, but I like you. This is rubbish, of course, but it’s wonderful rubbish, and manages to be an ingenious spoof of the genre without meaning to. Still, although the plot, the concepts, and the treatment of the totalitarian theme are actually pretty good, I can’t in good conscience give this more than a 3/5, cos that would be silly.

Doctor Who: The Two Doctors

Part One

“Look at the size of that thing, Doctor!”

“Yes, it is a big one…”

So, to all intents and purposes the last ever old-fashioned six-parter. Phew!

There’s something rather worrying about a multi-Doctor story coming up at this point- it’s hardly likely to be seen as a vote of confidence in their new Doctor by the production team to pair him up with such a fondly remembered predecessor at this early stage. Still, the opening scene is great; we begin with the Second Doctor, in monochrome, with the old TARDIS console. Of course, the line about Victoria being off somewhere studying graphology is deeply absurd (probably a deliberate mickey take on the part of Robert Holmes, I shouldn’t wonder) and all that nonsense about the Doctor and Jamie working for the Time Lords would have completely broken continuity if Mawdryn Undead hadn’t already smashed it into a thousand pieces. Best not to think about such things. And I’m having none of that “Season 6b” nonsense, as I get my razors from that nice Mr Occam.

Anyway, we get a space station and the immediately fantastic John Stratton as Shockeye the Androgum, a fantastic character of the type we expect from Holmes. If we gloss over the continuity headaches then these opening scenes are great, marred only by the visual gag of the Doctor picking up a cucumber he expected to be a knife. I’m not one for insisting the Doctor should never use weapons but there are limits. And it’s decidedly odd hearing decidedly post- The Deadly Assassin sentiments about Time Lords being uttered by Patrick Troughton!

It’s great to see Jacqueline Pearce as Chessene, a suitably Servalan-esque character whatever the difference in her circumstances. And then we get a bit of proto-CGI applied to some Sontaran ships!

Meanwhile, our current Doctor is fishing while Peri seems bored. But at least their relationship is back on track again after the aberration of Mark of the Rani; they now seem like friends again. I believe this is our first sight of the Doctor’s umbrella? Anyway, I, er, approve of the way Peri is dressed.

The Doctor’s dialogue about fishing, incidentally, seems very much to parallel Shockeye’s earlier dialogue about eating humans. There’ll be a lot more of this sort of thing from our vegetarian scribe. Also disturbing is that they’re still on about the Doctor’s not-so-recent regeneration. It’s time to let it lie; this is the Doctor, full stop. Except that we, er, unaccountably have a multi-Doctor story at this point.

The Doctor collapses (well, a bit) in something of a Five Doctors moment as something apparently happens to his past self. The Doctor and Peri thus head to the space station, now occupied only by corpses. The baddies, meanwhile, head for a hacienda, not in Manchester but in Andalusia- it’s only 1985, after all; they’re about three years too early for Acid House.

Oh, and this is where we famously get introduced to our first Sontaran in long-shot, a fairly appalling lapse from Peter Moffat, who seems oddly sub-par throughout the story. The Sontarans look crap, for a start, and Shockeye’s Androgum make-up is a bit basic.

Towards the end we’re introduced to the lovely Anita and Oscar, who gets a speech on how he loves to kill moths with cyanide. Yep, another parallel with earlier speeches by Shockeye and the Doctor from our vegetarian scribe, methinks.

Part Two

 

“I think your Doctor’s worse than mine.”

Is it me, or have things been a bit slow so far? This is still shaping up to be a good ‘un, with great dialogue and characterisation in spite of some rather worrying flaws which I’ll get back to in a bit, but so far this has been oddly lacking in pace for a Holmes script. Things pick up now, though. It seems the “creature” that attacked Peri is in fact Jamie, and the Doctor becomes convinced that his earlier self has been killed and a time paradox has been created. The dialogue which follows would be embarrassing in the hands of a lesser writer, but we have Holmes instead; the Doctor’s soliloquy on the end of the universe is quite brilliant.

But the Troughton Doctor isn’t dead. He still has disappointingly little to do in this episode other than sit around, though. Meanwhile, Shockeye bites the head off a rat. Lovely. I could mention Ozzy Osborne here but I won’t.

The Doctor- er, the current Doctor- gleans the location of his earlier self with help from the bells of Seville Cathedral but still spares some time to give Jamie some advice about bathing (“You should try it more often”).

Interestingly, Holmes being a writer who first turned up quite late in the Troughton era, here we have the later, “Oh my giddy aunt!” version of the character, rather than the more manipulative character of the earlier stories who turned up again in The Three Doctors. Still, Troughton plays the part as though he’s never been away.

The scene where Shockeye discusses Earth cuisine, Spanish and Chinese recipe books to hand, is where the vegetarian and animal rights subtext stops being “sub” and really starts to intrude into the story. Subtle thematic nods (such as the aforementioned parallel speeches in the last episode) are fine, but by this point we’re really being bashed over the head with it. It doesn’t ruin the episodes (it’s got all of Holmes’ trademark wit and characterisation) but it does mar them somewhat.

Oh, and I love the bit where Peri, asked to provide a diversion for Chessene and co, protests that she doesn’t speak Spanish and the Doctor simply says “That’s all right. Neither do they.”

Part Three

“The nouvelle cuisine has not yet penetrated this establishment.”

I suspect another reason the story as a whole doesn’t quite reach Holmes’ usual standards is that he’s simply been given too many ingredients to deal with; two Doctors, Sontarans, and a Spanish setting (originally supposed to be New Orleans). Still, the final episode pretty much delivers. Early on our two Doctors first meet, but not for long; the Troughton Doctor is to be turned into an Androgum. Meanwhile, the Dastari / Chessene faction and the Sontarans have decided to betray and kill each other.

The whole episode centres around Shockeye and the Troughton Doctor, now an Androgum, heading to a restaurant while everyone else attempts to find them. Troughton as an Androgum is great fun, but it seems an odd decision to deprive us of seeing him playing the Doctor for such a large chunk of time. On the other hand, we do get the line about shepherd’s pie.

The setting moves to Seville (nice to see it) and unfortunately there’s another bit of performance from Colin Baker which doesn’t do it for me- “There’s more than one way to cook a cat”. Still, everything about the Doctor and Shockeye eating in the restaurant, with Oscar as waiter, is great. I love the description of all the courses they’ve consumed- along with their twelve bottles of wine. Unfortunately, Shockeye then kills Oscar, with the Doctor present. I know the Doctor’s not himself, but this is just wrong. He may not be the “current” Doctor but the character should never be put in this position. It’s been obvious Oscar was going to die all along, of course; as soon as his moth-killing activities became known it became clear that Holmes wasn’t going to let him survive.

We get more didactism as Shockeye tortures Jamie, claiming that he’s merely “tenderising the meat” and that “Primitive creatures don’t feel pain as we would.” It’s all far more blatant than I remembered. And it’s paralleled with the Doctor using Oscar’s cyanide to kill Shockeye. So, of our three characters to have made speeches in the first episode which defy Holmes’ vegetarian principles, two are punished by being killed- Shockeye by Oscar's cyandide for his moths and Oscar by Shockeye's knife, so each is killed in the way the other would kill an animal. Poetic justice, no doubt, if you're Robert Holmes. Only the Doctor, the hero of the show, is allowed to survive, albeit wounded by Shockeye's knife. And he’s going veggie to boot.

Oh, and the Second Doctor has a remote control for his TARDIS, does he? Slight problems reconciling that with The War Games, methinks…

Well, that was overly didactic, had too much on the shopping list to be included in the script, wasn’t particularly well directed, and although it was great to be seeing Troughton again this really isn’t the sort of thing to do with a new Doctor who hasn’t quite established himself yet. Still, it’s Holmes, meaning there’s wit and characterisation to see us through. The performances are largely good too; 4/5. It’s just that by Holmes’ standard that’s a sub-par score.

.

Doctor Who: The Mark of the Rani

Part One

“Well, you’ve certainly never done a day’s labour in your life. And I suppose it’s just possible you might even be a gentleman.”

It’s the early nineteenth century, and there’s trouble at t’mill. We start with some location filming outside a coal mine, and some Geordie accents that sound pretty much convincing to this East Midlander, not something I’ll be able to say throughout. But something strange is happening, with a gas in the bathhouse…

The Doctor and Peri leave the TARDIS with what might be considered unseemly haste for this season, observed by a scarecrow which moves as soon as they look away. They’re soon involved in an altercation with some “Luddites”, arriving at the mine to report what has happened. Here the Doctor hears the name of George Stephenson- it’s a celebrity historical!

The quality of the Geordie accent slips a considerable amount when the old crone starts speaking, but, getting ahead of ourselves a bit, is this Kate O’Mara not being able to do a Geordie accent or Kate O’Mara playing the Rani as not being able to do a Geordie accent? I like to think it’s the latter but, alas, I suspect not.

The Master turns up, and promptly manages to persuade a load of psychotic “Luddites” to attack the Doctor instead of, say, himself, and proceeds to introduce himself to the Rani in a way calculated to annoy her as much as possible. The fact that he’s somehow alive again after quite unequivocally getting killed at the end of Planet of Fire is explained by the line “I’m indestructible,” which of course is entirely satisfactory.

The Rani, meanwhile, is a rather different type of villain to the Master; more of a deeply unethical scientist than the universe conquering type, she finds the Master’s moustache twirling antics to be deeply silly. And indeed proceeds to spend the entire remainder of the story seething with irritation at his antics. Oh, and she has a plan about extracting stuff from peoples’ brains, but I shall not dwell on it as it’s deeply boring. It’s with this scene that it occurs to be that Pip and Baker can’t do decent dialogue. Yes, I laughed at “Unfortunate? Fortuitous would be a more apposite epithet,” along with everyone, but bog standard Pip and Jane dialogue is barely tolerable most of the time.

They can’t do characterisation either; the Doctor and Peri are much more shouty and argumentative in this story, and don’t actually seem to like each other very much or to be having much fun travelling the universe. Which is out of character, frankly; however grim recent stories have been there’s always (barring The Twin Dilemma, and at least that has a pretext for it) been an affectionate relationship between the Doctor and Peri and an assumption that travelling the universe is at least supposed to be fun. Here that’s nowhere to be seen.

And for the first time I find Colin Baker’s performance to be a bit off, particularly in the scene where he’s been captured by the Rani. To be fair, he is given awful dialogue.

Part Two

“The tree won’t hurt you.”

Our Perils of Pauline cliffhanger is resolved in the traditional fashion, by blatantly re-editing last week’s final scenes into a situation clearly less perilous. Still, at least we get to meet George Stephenson. And his accent is atrocious. Oh dear.

So, Stephenson’s protégé Luke will “outshine” him, eh? Things are bound to turn out well for him then…

The Master and the Rani are still arguing in much the same way as they have for ages, and it becomes clear horribly early into this episode that there’s no real plot as such; no character has a plan and they’re all just reacting to each other. Consequently there’s no real sense of pace or movement and the story just drifts. This is very dull.

One good thing is the Rani’s TARDIS, mind; it’s refreshingly different from the usual template. But the Rani can control it remotely- I assume this limits its lifespan then, as we were told in The War Games!

The trees are awful, of course, both in appearance and in concept, and it’s a relief when the story ends. We finish with the Doctor explaining what he and Peri do all the time in the TARDIS; “Argue, mainly.” This pretty much shows what a simplistic grasp Pip and Jane seem to have of their characterisation.

A plotless mess with crap dialogue, no sense of pace or direction and poor characterisation. I’ll be generous and give it a 2/5 as visually it looks ok enough.

Doctor Who: Vengeance on Varos

Part One

“When did they last show anything worth watching anyway?”

Now that’s much more like it!

I’m intrigued about watching Philip Martin’s other work after seeing this again. Anyway, we begin with a topless Jason Connery chained to a wall in a nod to the ladies, and as he dodges a laser beam we see that he’s on camera. 8.28 in the Big Brother House and Jondar is dodging laser beams. How prophetic.

We cut to our fantastic Greek chorus of Arak and Etta, whose lines are all brilliant. The first words spoken are “Not him again”! I love this kind of postmodern stuff, especially when done with wit as it is here. They have the right to vote, but this is democracy without liberty, including freedom of speech as Etta makes very clear, much more akin to voting for a reality show than a government. This is grippingly contemporary and already feels like satirical science fiction at its best.

Nabil Shaban as Sil is also superb, the perfect Thatcherite villain for the ‘80s with a great look and played quite brilliantly. And his Yoda-isms I love. His opening scenes with the Governor- Martin Jarvis, also brilliant- is also gloriously satirical in its way, as we learn that the torments of political dissidents and criminals in the Punishment Dome are not only broadcast to the population but are to be sold throughout the galaxy. “Are they really disturbing, these videos you sell?” asks Sil, making explicit the “video nasty” theme said to be behind the script.

If that’s not enough great concepts already, whenever the Governor loses a vote on one of his decisions he’s immediately subjected to a burst of cellular disintegration that can kill him! Already the nightmare of the previous stories feels very different. Oh, this is dark, even cynical, but it’s done with wit and, importantly, purpose.

The Governor survives to this time, to the disappointment of Arak, who reminds me of a number of taxi drivers I’ve known. The Governor needs a crowd-pleasing policy quickly, and an underling called Bax comes up with the answer; a particularly entertaining method of execution for Jondar. “I’m sure the video of his execution would sell” he notes.

We’re introduced to Areta and her oh-so-‘80s hair, as she reveals to us the rather intriguing back-story of the planet; originally a prison colony, it is ruled by a caste descended from the original prison officers. Another brilliant concept.

Meanwhile, after intermittent scenes of moping a\bout in the TARDIS, the Doctor and Peri finally arrive on Varos, in desperate need of the Zeiton 7 it produces. Jondar’s televised execution is being televised and, wonderfully, the TARDIS materialises on camera; the scenes in the punishment dome are being watched by the entire population of Varos, who thus become identified with the viewer. “I like that one, the one in the funny clothes” notes Etta.

I think my love for this episode was finally confirmed by Peri’s line “All these corridors look the same to me” as she and the Doctor run down the exact same set they’ve already run down several times. But even better is the cliffhanger, in which the governor usurps the role of the director: “And cut it… now!”

Part Two

“We’re free!”

“Are we?”

“Yes.”

“What shall we do?”

The acid bath scene is often criticised but personally I see little wrong with it; the Doctor isn’t responsible for anyone’s death and I’m more than prepared to forgive the little quip in the circumstances.

The Doctor, Jondar, and the ex-guard whose name I didn’t catch are to be hanged, and Colin Baker excels in this scene. “Do you always get the priest parts?” he enquires of the man who is to give him the last rites, in a brilliantly witty bit of self-referentialism. Oh, and the deity being appealed to is the “Great Video”. I love this script.

The Doctor, declaring truth on Varos to be a “very flexible commodity” speaks on the gallows of Zeiton 7 and how it is in fact worth a lot more than Sil and his Galatron Corporation masters are telling the Governor. This proves rather fortunate, as it turns out the hanging was a mock execution, and the Governor is now suspicious of what Sil has been telling him.

Peri and Areta are to be transmogrified into a bird and a reptile respectively, so the Doctor and Jondar immediately seize some guns and engineer a hostage situation in order to escape. If there’s one thing this marathon has taught me, it’s that I don’t necessarily have a problem with the Doctor using firepower if it feels right, and this is one of those times.

The Chief, unfortunately, is able to engineer a coup against the Governor and insist upon a compulsory vote, which will inevitably result in his death by cellular disintegration. The Governor’s appeal to the Guard to spare Peri and himself ultimately fails, but shows he has faith in the Doctor.

The ending is neat and satisfying, with the Doctor even getting away with an atrocious pun (“I think he needs more than water, Peri, eh?”

It’s quite a relief, after the worst start of any Doctor’s tenure, to see a Colin Baker story that comes up trumps. Not one of the very best, perhaps, but easily a 5/5.

Doctor Who: Attack of the Cybermen

Part One

“I suddenly feel conspicuous.”

So, now we’re beginning a new 45 minute format, eh? It’ll never catch on. We’re also getting a new writer, apparently, in the shape of Paula Moore.

We begin with the new Doctor being very different from his predecessor- after procrastinating about it ever since Logopolis he’s finally getting around to repairing the Chameleon Circuit. Apparently he’s still a little unstable, which is worrying. This regeneration has been drawn out far too much.

Lytton’s back, still stuck on Earth, planning a heist alongside characters played by Brian Glover and an unmasked Terry Molloy. But mostly we’re just watching the Doctor and Peri hanging about in the TARDIS for ages before they land. They seem to bicker a lot, too. Still, they eventually land, in 76 Totter’s Lane. In spite of the Doctor’s claim that “This looks familiar”, it bears absolutely no relation to the junkyard seen in An Unearthly Child. It hasn’t got a roof for one thing. 

The Doctor and Peri are trying to trace a distress call from an alien being broadcast from Totter’s Lane in 1985, observed by those two policemen from Resurrection of the Daleks. Oh, and the TARDIS is changing it shape in scenes which I think we’re meant to find amusing. But it’s not just Totter’s Lane; this scene alone features a bewildering and self-indulgent excess of fanwank; not only does Peri recite the name of several past companions for no particular reason, but we’re told that the Terrible Zodin was “a woman of rare guile and devilish cunning.” And that’s only the beginning.

You can probably see already that I’m not hugely enamoured with this story, but I’ll defend it for one thing; for all the bickering between the Doctor and Peri it’s obvious that neither of them really means it and they actually come across as quite affectionate with each other, especially through body language. It helps that Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant have good chemistry.

A Cyberman shockingly appears in the sewers- and is immediately shot dead, oozing green, er, ooze. This is a highly appropriate intro for the Cybermen in a story which shows them to be disturbingly easy to kill. We discover that Lytton made contact with their ship behind the dark side of the moon- all very The Invasion. 

It’s nice that cybernisation gets a mention, but then the fanwank continues; the Cyber Controller and Telos are mentioned, and suddenly we switch to an escape attempt on the part of a couple of slaves on Telos- and to be fair the location is a fair match for the Telos we saw in Tomb of the Cybermen. Our two escapers, Stratton and Bates, are very hard-boiled style characters, almost to the point of being characters in a script by Eric Saward. But of course that cannot be, as this story was written by Paula Moore. Definitely.

The Doctor and Peri find Russell, and there follows an amusing scene in which the Doctor and Peri get the gun off him, and the Doctor seems to tell Peri to shoot him. Oddly enough, I don’t have a problem with this in spite of my increasing unease with the tone of the programme. The Doctor’s clearly bluffing and the thing’s carried off with charm and humour- it’s the absence of these things, after all, that have been my main concern with recent scripts.

Russell, it seems, is an undercover copper, and so he joins the Doctor and Peri in venturing into the sewers.

Meanwhile, on Telos, Stratton and Bates seem to be killing Cybermen with the greatest of ease whenever they stop bickering for long enough to do so, while the Cyber Controller directs things. For some reason the rather rotund Michael Kilgariff has been pointlessly recast in the role, in spite of the fact that both here and in Tomb his entire body in covered, and in the earlier story he didn’t even provide the voice. The result of this is, of course, that a certain softly pronounced “c” in the line “It is a fact, Controller” becomes a moment of comedy gold.

The Doctor kills a Cyberman with a sonic lance (guns and the Doctor again!), unfortunately attracting their attention. As the Doctor and Peri return to the TARDIS, accompanied by Russell, who shows the customary lack of surprise at its dimensions for this era, they are attacked by Cybermen…

Part Two

“I can understand why they call them tombs.”

The Doctor queries the Cyber Controller’s survival and is told that he was “merely destroyed.” Er, yes. This begins a running theme of this episode; ridiculous plot points and fanwank references revealed to us by dull and often long-winded exposition. We get detailed references to The Tenth Planet and Tomb early in the episode which must have been utterly alienating to the casual viewer.

The Doctor, Peri and Lytton are stranded and, separately, all make contact with the planet’s indigenous Cryons, played by the likes of Sarah Green, Faith Brown and Esther Freud, all unrecognisable. The Cryons actually look great and, with their groovy hand movements, dignity and wit, are the best thing about this story.

It seems that Lytton was in fact working for the Cryons all along, which of course means he is an entirely a good guy and the fact that hitherto he’s behaved like a total arse in no way diminishes his unambiguously heroic status.

Anyway, the Cybermen want to prevent Mondas from being destroyed, so they’ve travelled back in time to 1985 so that they can use Halley’s Comet to destroy Earth, thereby saving Mondas. This is utter fanwank; the series is now becoming sufficiently self-referential that it’s eating its own tail. What on earth would the casual viewer have made of this?

Still, at least it fundamentally makes sense. Aside, that is, from a couple of tiny little flaws, such as the reason for Mondas’s arrival back in 1986 was that they needed Earth for its energy, and the question of whether the Cybermens’ survival is really served by changing history for the benefit of a completely different bunch of Cybermen and wiping out centuries of their own history.

There’s a nice scene where the Doctor wonders why the Time Lords haven’t sent an agent to help after he warned them earlier, only to realise that he is the Time Lord agent. Sadly, this is soon followed by a discussion of why the Cryons are helping him. As even the script points out, they stand to benefit from the Cybermen changing history as their planet would never have been invaded. The explanation that “The Cryons have accepted their fate” doesn’t really cut it. As for all that frozen explodey stuff that’s being kept in the cell- aaargh!

Things get even worse. I don’t mind violence as long as it’s not done in the service of an overly grim tone, but the scene where Lytton’s hands are crushed is utterly repellent. How was that allowed to get through? Also poor is the Doctor’s statement that the Cybermen “have only one weakness- they respond to the distress of their own kind”. I think, given the number of Cybermen we see being killed in this story, that his mathematical prowess may have deteriorated somewhat since Castrovalva.

More bad stuff rounds out the story; Bates, Stratton and Griffin almost reach the Cybermen’s control centre only to be killed at the last moment- very cynical. The TARDIS is suddenly stuck as a police box again with no explanation whatsoever. And the scene with Lytton begging the Doctor to kill him is just wrong.

Terrible, just terrible. The plot makes no sense, it’s unremittingly grim, the tone is all wrong and it’s all substandard fanwank anyway. 1/5. The nicest thing I can find to say about it is that at least it’s better than Underworld.