Blake's 7: Bounty

“Civilisation has always depended on courtesy rather than truth.”

I shouldn’t really make too much of the alien planet looking just like the South-East of England on a gloomy and wet Autumn day- I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing- but this really takes the biscuit. And to see a fully functioning car from the early twentieth century on what’s supposed to be another planet, many centuries in the future- I’m sorry; that’s just not remotely plausible.

Still, this is a perfectly fine episode, although a little by-the-numbers. By now there’s definitely an element of marking time until the season finale. That’s what happens when you get one writer to do the whole series, I suppose.

Blake and Cally are skulking about, trying to break into the comfortable prison where former President Sarkoff is being held, alongside a young woman called Tyce. Tyce is played by a lady who I thought was Connie Booth until I saw the credits, and Sarkoff is played, very well, by T.P. McKenna. He’s been in exile for seven years, and appears to be a rather tragic, noble but embittered figure. The thing is, the character is superficially interesting, and has some very good lines, but is a bit of a cliché, only saved by McKenna’s performance. The sheer stubborn self-indulgence of the man, given what we’re told about his past and what ultimately happens, doesn’t seem realistic. He seems to be motivated more by the requirements of the plot than anything else.

I almost groaned at the prospect of the Liberator having to go out of teleport range after a ship approaches them, no doubt to return and teleport our heroes back on board only in the nick of time. This has happened too many times recently.

There’s more interestingness surrounding Gan here though; he offers to teleport aboard the ship which seems to be in distress. If it turns out the ship is hostile, he will communicate back to the Liberator and ask Vila to destroy it, with himself aboard. The script emphasises that he really does mean it. It’s strongly implies that he has a death wish, or at least very low self-esteem.

Sarkoff’s first conversation with Blake is fascinating, as he reacts to what he supposes to be his imminent assassination with studied courtesy, indulging his ego by intending to die as the perfect gentleman. It seems he was president of Lindor, a world outside the Federation, for five years. Resisting calls for annexation by the Federation, he stood for re-election, lost, and promptly flounced off to the custody of the Federation, of which he disapproves. Er, why?

Blake insists that Lindor is on the brink of civil war, with the Federation poised to intervene under the guise of “peace-keeping”, annexing the planet by stealth. The election lost by Sarkoff was rigged. Sarkoff struggles to accept all this, choosing to believe what the Federation tells him. He seems awfully naïve and self-indulgent here- hardly the impressive figure we’re being asked to accept.

Blake doesn’t come up smelling of roses either. His vandalising of Sarkoff’s no doubt priceless antiques makes him look like a thug and a bully as well as a fanatic, but then this isn’t the first time he’s shown that he can be all of these things.

This episode gave me one big surprise, I must admit: I never expected to see a car being started with a handle in Blake’s 7. Of course, this sequence, rather less unpredictably, sees all four of Blake, Cally, Sarkoff and Tyce teleported up to the Liberator. We then get a few minutes of excitement, as the ship has been captured by some old smuggler mates of Jenna’s, wanting to claim the reward money from the Federation for turning the fugitives in. For some reason, it seems, the Federation isn’t particularly likely to arrest them, although they’re obviously criminals.

Sarkoff gets a somewhat chance to be decisive, shooting dead the leader of the smugglers, Tarvin, before he gets a chance to shoot Tyce. For some reason it’s only now that we learn she’s his daughter. And for some reason this suddenly turns him into the Sarkoff of old, before he started wallowing in self-pity.

For an episode which resolves around the character and motivations of Sarkoff, this doesn’t really work. McKenna plays him well enough, but unfortunately the character seems to behave as he does purely for the convenience of the plot. Not one of the best episodes.

Blake's 7: Mission to Destiny

Personally, I don’t care if their whole planet turns into a mushroom. I’m staying because I don’t like an unsolved mystery.”

A whodunnit in Blake’s 7 seems rather odd, especially at this early stage. But it works, oddly enough, and lets us have a closer look at Avon. He may be cynical and self-centred (although less so than he likes to present himself), but he’s also intelligent and intellectually curious.

We begin with a ship flying through space in a scene rather reminiscent of a low budget version of the previous year’s Star Wars, and we meet a bloke who is instantly done in. With lead piping, apparently.

In no time at all the Liberator turns up, and Blake, Avon and Cally (the only regulars who get significant screen time) start investigating the mystery. Everyone has been rendered asleep by tranquillising gas, the controls and the communicators have been sabotaged, and the murdered man managed to write “54124” in his own blood before he carked it. Our heroes get well stuck into the mystery, with Blake and Avon even finding themselves on film as they investigate the filters.

Early on we get a typical whodunit scene in which the suspects tell us their names and alibis, and we establish the two obligatory red herrings, Mandrian and Solheim. One of the suspects is played by John “K-9” Leeson, and there’s a missing person, Dortmunn (a very Terry Nation name, that), who apparently has escaped on the life raft. Except he hasn’t, as Cally and the rather pervy Solheim later find his body.

It seems this ship is from Destiny, a frontier world settled a mere century ago and which remains, for the moment at least, outside the Federation. On board is a McGuffin, vital for the future survival of the planet, but also made of priceless unobtainium, and the perfect motive for any greedy person to resort to murder. All the pieces are in place. It’s agreed that Blake will take the McGuffin to Destiny as quickly as they can, while Cally and Avon stay behind. It’s fun seeing how Paul Darrow plays his role here: people may have died but Avon is rather enjoying himself!

Cally sees loads and loads of potentially important stuff happening, much of it on film, while the discovery of Dortmunn’s body leads Avon to call everyone together and do his best Hercule Poirot impersonation. He’s definitely enjoying this.

The Liberator, meanwhile, is faced by a whopping big meteor storm (what, they’re weather phenomena?), and has to choose between going round, which will take ages, and going right through. Blake, of course, chooses the more laddish of the two options.

Avon gets a particularly cool bit of dialogue where he says he thinks Mandrian probably did it, with Sonheim next on the list, but that he’s going by instinct and so is therefore probably wrong. Now there’s a man who understands the tropes of the genre he temporarily finds himself in. Rather less cool is Jenna’s claim, on board the Liberator, that “We’re having to use a lot of power to maintain our speed and heading”. Er, I think you’ll find that in a vacuum you require exactly no power to do that.

Meanwhile, Mandrian is dead, with Sonheim so obviously guilty that he can’t possibly have done it. Avon now realises whodunnit, and assumes the role of the fictional famous Belgian for one final time: it was Sara what done it. She seems to hold all the cards, including the McGuffin, which is not on the Liberator after all. But Blake has realised this, and the Liberator races back to get back to the ship before Sara’s mates do. We end with a budget-friendly, off-screen bang.

I rather enjoyed that, but it will be good to get back to the usual skulduggery surrounding the Federation…

Blake's 7: Time Squad

“I plan to live forever. Or die trying.”

So, we’re now at an interesting point in the series. The crew of the Liberator are now off into the universe, and we can start to find out more about the show. Is it going to focus entirely on the struggle against the Federation? What sci-fi tropes are going to be allowed in this series? Are there aliens, for example? And is there any more evidence of Gan being a sex offender?

Certainly this episode starts like the last one, with a rather naff painted starfield. But now our newly assembled crew are united, sort of. They can fly the ship together. But Avon remains semi-detached, and in his constant alpha male sparring with Blake he remains the most interesting character by far. Gan, on the other hand, is bizarrely uber-loyal to Blake.

Blake, dangerously charismatic as usual, sends them all off to orbit Saurian Major, an essential communications hub for the Federation, to blow some stuff up. Avon points out that his insistence that decisions are made democratically isn’t quite what’s happening.

But there’s a distress call; a small capsule, which Blake and Jenna go to explore together. Not that there’s much to explore. Zen is behaving oddly; is it something to do with the capsule? We know very little about “him” yet. Gan seems to think he has some sort of “limiter”. Hmm.

The crew are dormant; Blake and Jenna seem to believe this is a “cryogenic capsule”, presumably from one of the early space flights “centuries ago”. This is in accordance with what we heard last episode about roughly how far we are into the future, although it’s odd that Blake and Jenna would be able to manipulate this technology so easily if the technological gulf is so vast. I’m getting hints about their relationship, too. Jenna seems to have liked Blake earlier, given her body language and behaviour towards him in earlier episode, but seems to have concluded by now that he’s a bit too intense and, well, weird to be potential boyfriend material.

The air’s running out, and the teleport has shorted. Zen really doesn’t want the capsule on board. Still, Avon gets to manoeuvre it into the hold, thereby both saving Blake and Jenna and managing to look cool at the same time. His reaction to the capsule is interesting, too- he posits that it might be from a “technically backward culture”- aliens? We don’t know yet whether there are supposed to be aliens in this fictional universe. All sorts of rules and limits have to be established.

Blake seems to think it’s ok to re-animate three people while he, Vila and Avon bugger off down to the planet’s surface for a quick spot of terrorist sabotage. Er, OK then. And it seems there’s such a thing as “neutral space” as opposed to Federation territory.

So, Blake’s plan is to hang around being blatantly obvious and hope to be contacted by any passing rebels? Er, OK. He must be really charismatic. Meanwhile, there’s an interesting scene where possible sex attacker Gan and Jenna (who, in case you haven’t noticed, is a woman) are alone together. He’s staying with Blake because “I have to. I want to stay alive, and to do that I need people I can rely on. I can’t be on my own.” This is interestingly ambiguous. His crime, apparently, was to kill a security guard because “he killed my woman”. Is this the whole truth? Is it true at all? Interestingly, after saying this, he has a headache. What induces this?

Never mind that, though; the sleeping beardies are awake, and the directing suddenly goes a bit slasher movie. Only a bit, though. This might be the same year as Halloween but it’s still a late 1970s spaceship corridor with masking tape on the walls.

Gan’s limiter means he can’t kill, apparently. This is a bit awkward, seeing as Jenna rather needs him to drop exactly that to shoot her attacker. Is that all that it limits? Did it give him that headache earlier? Was it because he started having sexually violent thoughts about Jenna and it reacted?

Meanwhile, Blake, on Saurian Major, a planet bathed in permanent red light, encounters Cally, a telepath, and an alien (so there are aliens) from the planet Auronar. Everyone’s acceptance of her, and her involvement with resistance against the Federation, implies that aliens are not entirely unknown, and that at least some of them have some sort of political existence within the Federation. And her alien status has enabled her to rather conveniently be the sole survivor of a rather nasty bout of chemical warfare, thus cutting down on cast members required. Handy, that.

While Jenna and Gan are in a spot of bother with their rather ungrateful guests, Blake and co have reached the Federation communications thingy. The Federation are clearly great fans of 1960s industrial architecture. Few things have dated this episode (aside from Jenna’s hair) more than the use of this location footage to represent an alien planet.

We learn that Vila’s very good at opening doors, Avon’s still good with computers, and things are about to go boom. Gan just manages to teleport them all away at the last possible moment, which is good news for Jenna as Blake proceeds to do the same for her.

Cally joining the ship’s crew gives rise to some resistance from Jenna; it seems aliens aren’t entirely accepted within what is clearly an overwhelmingly human society. But with the addition of Cally and, er, Zen, our gang can indeed now be described as Blake’s seven. That’ll be permanent, right?

Good stuff, although drags a little in places and doesn’t quite maintain the high quality of the previous three eps.

Blake's 7: Space Fall

“They murdered my past, and gave me tranquillised dreams.”

The story follows directly on, but this episode is spent entirely on board ship, and our cast of characters shifts accordingly. We’re on the “Civil Administration Ship” London, staffed by a captain, the competent and ambitious Artix, and the rather unpleasant Raiker, played by Leslie Schofield, who seems to have been in everything in the late ‘70s. It’s amusing to hear some of the series technobabble we’ll presumably be hearing on a regular basis, with all this “hyperdrive speed” and “time distort seven”. Interestingly, even with faster-than-light travel, the journey is to take eight months.

Raiker delivers a nasty speech to the prisoners, in which he warns them of all sorts of arbitrary nastiness which will be coming their way. This, of course, informs the viewer that he’s a right baddie, and is almost certainly get his comeuppance. This becomes all the more certain after his initial attempts to sexually abuse Jenna. As the only woman on board, she’s in a very dangerous and vulnerable position, but shows herself to be extremely dignified and strong. She’s lucky that all of her male fellow prisoners are by some strange coincidence such solidly middle-class RADA-trained types, though.

Blake, of course, is already plotting escape. And there’s a rather interesting new character: a computer expert and fraudster called Kerr Avon. Already he’s by far the most interesting character, and Paul Darrow is just incredible.

Some kind of mysterious space battle nearby somehow causes “turbulence”. Meanwhile, Blake gets a film sequence as he crawls around the ship, looking for the main computer. Meanwhile, in the studio, Vila and some bloke called Gan are distracting a guard in a scene which reminds me of bits of The Great Escape.

Dialogue tells us that four months have suddenly elapsed, long enough for Blake to gather his information and make his plans. All that remains is to persuade Avon, a highly intelligent and fascinating character, do help them. It’s quite gripping to watch the two of them verbally sparring, something we’ll be seeing rather a lot of.

Avon agrees, and is rewarded with a film sequence of his very own as he crawls towards the computer room. A redshirt prisoner follows to see what he’s up to, and rather impudently demands a film sequence hardly befitting to such a minor character. Quite rightly, he soon gets killed. From this point, only Avon (and that bloke he fights) is deemed cool enough to be on film.

Not everything goes well, and we soon have a stalemate. Blake, Jenna, and Avon control the computer, but all the others, including Vila and Gan, are recaptured. At this point we get an intense debate over what to do next, and thus is crucial, establishing the relations between the three of them. Blake admits the true intensity of his desire to overthrow the Federation. Heroic, perhaps. Idealistic, certainly. But Gareth Thomas plays it in such a way that we’re already a little troubled. Has Blake crossed the border into fanaticism? Are his goals at all realistic? Is he, if you’ll excuse the cliché, a freedom fighter or a terrorist?

Avon is quite different, concerned only with his own material welfare. This is amoral and cynical, yes. Self-centred, certainly. But between Avon’s rational self-interest, and criminal activities which could be seen as victimless if one were feeling generous, and Blake’s possible fanaticism, which is likely to do more harm to the innocent bystander? These are very interesting questions.

Jenna’s reaction is interesting, too, and perhaps mirrors ours. She admires Blake, wants to believe him, but isn’t quite convinced.

The impasse is broken by a trick which Nation will re-use the following year for Doctor Who in Destiny of the Daleks. Raiker simply threatens to shoot one prisoner every thirty seconds until Blake gives in. It works, of course, and leads to a lot of whingeing from Avon, but makes the viewer even more convinced that Raiker isn’t going to survive the episode. This is a Terry Nation script, after all.

It looks as though our heroes have lost. But then the London comes across a whopping great ship, apparently something to do with this space battle they came across earlier. Everyone is keen to claim it as a prize (I’m getting echoes of the great Patrick O’Brian here), and so an hilariously flimsy-looking “transfer tube” is sent across. Two redshirts seem to go mad and die. What else to do than to send our three erstwhile mutineers after them? Blake, Jenna and Avon are duly introduced to this ship, and we, the viewers, can see from this shiny and expensive new set that it’s obviously going to be re-used a lot. It’s all a trap, of course, but Blake is able to resist it. I’m sure there’s some sort of Biblical or literary allusion there but I’m buggered if I know what it is.

Raiker gets his long-anticipated come-uppance and our three heroes (well, two heroes and Avon) have a rather splendid ship with which to liberate their mates on Cygnus Alpha…

That was really rather brilliant.

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: Warriors of the Deep

 

Part One

“It’s lethal to marine and reptile life.”

My initial impressions are, firstly, “Johnny Byrne again! Nooo!” and, secondly, that I can actually remember when this first went out on its initial transmission. I was six. I distinctly remember rushing home from swimming lessons in time for episode two.

The early scenes give us a very white looking underwater base which, for all the criticisms of its being overlit, is actually quite effective; its harsh industrial quality gives the story loads of atmosphere just as well or better than the dark corridors of Earthshock. We also meet the Silurians early on- they’re back! Their glowing lights and metallic voices are an annoyingly pointless change from their original appearance, but they certainly both look and sound good. I just wish they didn’t keep dumping us with expository dialogue too obviously there for the viewers’ benefit: “For hundreds of years, our Sea Devil brothers have remained entombed.”

The TARDIS still looks new and shiny, Turlough is still a bit sneaky and the Doctor still seems to doubt he’s really all that brave. The TARDIS computer screens seem to have progressed from a BBC Micro to an Acorn Electron, too. Oh, and Tegan has changed her clothes again. Neither of the other two has bothered though.

There’s lots of intrigue on the seabase, with Maddox the nervous young bloke and obvious skulduggery underfoot with Solow (Ingrid Pitt!) and Nilson. It’s 2084, there’s a cold war underway and it’s all shaping up to be a good old-fashioned base under siege, except with a base commander who seems an unusually sensible chap. He’s a bit hard-boiled, perhaps, but not excessively so considering Eric Saward’s still script editor. I know this story’s not much liked, but I’m rather enjoying this.

Crikey, the Doctor points out the hexachromite gas. I’m sure there must be a reason for that scene. I wonder what it is?

The cliffhanger’s a bit naff (although the portrayal of Turlough as still a bit unheroic is a nice touch) but at least the Doctor acquits himself well in a fight, almost to Pertwee standards, in fact. I’ve been watching these stories with BlueLionSven’s “putz factor” in mind, and usually I tend to find it pretty high, but this story for the first time seems to show Davison’s Doctor with pretty much no more putz qualities than his predecessors had. Is this going to be part of a trend?

Part Two

“Oh dear. It’s the Myrka.”

This is still pretty good, And actually quite exciting. Plus we finally get to see the Sea Devils again, who look so much cooler in their new samurai outfits than those crappy old string vests. Apparently this Icthar bloke is the sole surviving member of some Silurian “Triad” which we’ve never heard of before. Oh, and I love the darker, green-tinged lighting in the Silurians’ base, which makes a nice contrast from the equally harsh whiteness of the humans’ domain.

There’s some suspicion of the TARDISeers on behalf of the occupants of the Seabase, but this is understandable given their political situation and is never allowed to become annoying, playing out as it does entirely through action. As soon as the TARDISeers come to become interrogated, the TARDIS is immediately found to corroborate their story, getting the potentially tiresome suspicions out of the way in a plausible manner so the actual base under siege stuff can actually start. That’s actually very good writing. From Johnny Byrne. Who’d have thunk it?

The Silurians attack, and the Doctor recaps his stuff from back when he was Jon Pertwee about the Silurians being an “honourable” race who only want to “live in peace”. Except that in this story they’re, er, not. Of which more in episode four.

We finish with the Myrka, which is indeed probably the worst monster in all of Doctor Who ever. But I’m still not going to let one bad monster spoil my enjoyment of a story which I’m finding surprisingly good.

Part Three

“The Myrka has been destroyed!”

An exciting episode of pretty much non-stop action begins with Turlough pulling a gun on the seabase personnel to save the Doctor and Tegan. This is a good moment for him and good development of the character, an example of how his default cowardly nature can be overridden by his basic decency. There’s also a nice moment for the commander afterwards, who responds pretty calmly by simply getting Turlough to help defend the bulkhead he’s endangered. No commander of a base under siege would have been so reasonable back in Season Five!

Solow’s death by karate kick provides a bit of comic relief, reminding me of how serious this story is. I think it works without humour just this once, though. The Davison era so far has been a bit humour-lite for my taste, but for this story at least the seriousness works.

Part Four

“You’ll get no help from me, Silurian!”

Turlough prepares to escape by means of, er, a ventilation shaft. Naturally. Clichés- helping Doctor Who stories out of plot difficulties since 1963.

So, the Doctor’s apparently met Icthar before. It’s clearly supposed to have been during Doctor Who and the Silurians, as dialogue indicates the Silurians / Sea Devils have only awoken twice before, but this can’t be the Old Silurian, as he died, and it can’t be the Young Silurian as his personality doesn’t fit. I can only assume there was another Silurian the Doctor only ever encountered off-screen.

It’s a nice touch once again for Turlough that he wants to just return to the TARDIS but is shamed into helping. This kind of genuine struggle of conscience is making him a very interesting character.

The Silurians are by now taking about outright genocide of humanity, speaking of a “final solution”. Yet the Doctor is still upset at the thought of killing them, and behaving as though there were some sort of moral equivalence between them and the humans. But this is utter pants. Unlike previous stories the Silurians want to cause the genocide of all humanity, while the humans merely want to eliminate those specific Silurians proposing to annihilate them, none of whom are civilians. Seems pretty clear-cut to me.

Still, this is a well-paced and exciting final episode, and the ending is effective, with the TARDISeers surrounded by corpses and the Doctor opining that “There should have been another way.”

Surprisingly good, a solid 4/5. An exciting, action-packed base under siege which stands up surprisingly well to its Troughton era predecessors.

Doctor Who: Shada

Part One

“One lump or two?”

“Two please.”

“Sugar?”

For the first time since Underworld, this is a story I haven’t seen (well, I’ve read Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, but…), leaving only Meglos left. And yet frankly I still don’t feel as though I’ve seen it, as there’s so little left, especially towards the end.

Still, this first episode is largely intact. After my comments on The Horns of Nimon I almost burst out laughing to see yet another story start with a spaceship in deep space. It’s an odd beginning, although the roman numerals on the screen are a nice touch. An then we’re off to Cambridge, where we meet Professor Chronotis, who unaccountably has the TARDIS is his study. I love the way this is left unremarked upon for ages, and then Chronotis just casually remarks that “I think someone must have left it there when I was out.”! We also meet Chris Parsons, clearly a prototype of Richard from Dirk Gently.

We then get the familiar scenes of Romana and the Doctor on the Cam, which seem odd in their original context, but soon they turn up at Chronotis’s college. In a nice touch, the Warden knows the Doctor from many previous visits. The scene with Chronotis in his study is hilarious, as is the notion that a Time Lord can quite easily spends three centuries as a Cambridge don without anybody noticing. We also get the funniest line in all of Doctor Who so far, as Chronotis responds to the Doctor’s mention of hearing a “strange babble of inhuman voices” with “Oh, undergraduates talking to each other, I expect. I’m trying to have it banned.”

The first episode judged on its own is an easy 5/5, in much the same way as City of Death. Sadly, it’s the only episode that’s anywhere near complete.

Part Two

“Two lumps, no sugar.” 

This episode introduces us to a load of brilliant sci-fi concepts of the kind we’d expect from the author of The Pirate Planet. A book that’s -20,000 years old, a sphere that steals minds, Chronotis beating his hearts in Morse code. And the dialogue continues to be great. Sadly, there’s a lot less footage here than there was last episode.

Parts Three to Six

And that’s as far as I can go with the individual episodes, as there’s so little that was filmed for the later episodes. I’m watching the video release with Tom Baker narrating the missing bits, and this works well, but I just don’t end up feeling as though I’ve come anywhere close to seeing Shada. I liked what I saw- lots of great dialogue and great concepts- but I just don’t feel competent to judge things like plot and pacing. I’ll give the story a 4/5 for Alinor, but that’s very provisional as I just don’t feel competent to judge. I’m feeling very much inclined to listen to the Paul McGann audio of this story after the TV Movie…

As for Season 17, I’ve already rated it 3/8/5 if Shada’s not included. With Shada it leaps slightly to 3.83/5. But, much as I’ve never been much bothered about what’s “canon” or not, as there’s so little of Shada left I’m not much inclined to think of it as a full Doctor Who story. A shame, as judging by what we’ve got it could have been great.

Doctor Who: The Pirate Planet

Part One
 

“That is a forbidden object.”

“Why?”

“That is a forbidden question. You are a stranger?”

“Yes.”

“Strangers are forbidden.”

For the second story in a row it’s clear that the sometimes embarrassing production values of last season aren’t going to be repeated- the model city is nicely designed, and the sets and costumes are all more than acceptable. But the real joy of this story is the dialogue- Douglas Adams has arrived at last, the Graham Williams era has finally found itself, and there’s a real sense that, after last season’s missteps, things are going to be all right.

Some interesting dialogue in the TARDIS at the start, incidentally- the Doctor’s been operating the TARDIS for 523 years, which would make him 236 when he nicked it, if he is indeed 759 as Romana says (interesting he gets his own age wrong, especially in the light of Steven Moffat’s recent-ish comments that a time traveller would inevitably lose track of their own age). If the Doctor was about 450 in Tomb then he can’t have been more than a few years younger at his regeneration as there have always been companions around who haven’t visibly aged. So the first Doctor was travelling for over 200 years, a long time, and all but the last few of them before An Unearthly Child. No doubt that’s exactly what this production team meant to imply, and it was in no way a throwaway comment…

Anyway, there are great sci-fi concepts all over the place from the very start- the planet Calufrax seems to have gone missing, and for some reason the Captain (great character, great over-the-top performance by Bruce Purchase and a great double act with Mr Fibuli) can occasionally declare a golden age of prosperity at the drop of a hat, following which all the mines on Zanak will fill up with stuff. The population are rich, free from hard work and satisfied with their lot, but they’re not allowed to ask questions and seem to be menaced by the mysterious Mentiads. Great set up. This is all fab so far.

Part Two

“Such hospitality. I’m underwhelmed.”

We got a flavour of Douglas Adams’ dialogue genius last episode, but here’s where it really clicks into gear. Romana’s attitude to being arrested is great for a start, not only because it’s very witty but because it’s possibly the first time we see Romana essentially acting as a female version of the Doctor. We’ll be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing, but this is surprisingly early.

Mostly, though, the lines are just great in themselves: “Standing around all day looking tough must be very wearing on the nerves, hmm? Long hours, violence, no intellectual stimulation…” So good a line, in fact, that Douglas Adams used it twice. And it’s also a bit of a giveaway that he’s more or less writing Ford Prefect and Tom’s Doctor as the same character, and it works.

Of course, we get the big reveal that Zanak has been landing around other planets to mine them dry. As a result, Kimus gets the best line of the story: “Bandraginus Five, by every last breath in my body, you’ll be avenged!” I love this kind of arch silliness where even the character knows full well he’s a cliché and acts accordingly.

Oh, and that nurse hanging around in the background seems to have a fair bit of influence on the Captain…

Part Three

“You mean, they slammed him to the wall with good vibrations?”

“Affirmative.”

Of course, Pralix is now a Mentiad, and they’ve been goodies all along anyway. I love the way this story’s so jammed full of ideas we keep getting big revelations every five minutes. For all the greatness of the dialogue, the plot’s actually pretty great too. And things are happening- the nurse continues to be very mysterious, the relationship between the Captain and Mr Fibuli continues to be comedy gold (“Excellent, Mr Fibuli. Your death shall be delayed.”), and K9 gets to fight that Polyphase Aviton thingy.

The highlight of this episode is the only serious moment in pretty much the entire story though. The whole “Appreciate it?” speech reminds us that the Doctor, bohemian studenty type though he has been of late, still has the same principles and capacity for moral outrage.

All this, and the great ideas keep coming, even this late in the story- Queen Xanxia being suspended in her last few seconds of life is a fantastic concept.

Part Four

“All guards, alert! Someone is using a counter-jamming frequency projector. Find it and destroy it immediately."

"I don't suppose any of the guards know what a counter-jamming frequency projector looks like."

"Destroy everything!”

We’ve had a lot of cliffhanger resolutions over the years, and they fall into a lot of different types. But I think this is our first example of the “everything you thought you knew is wrong” cliffhanger resolution. Brilliant. Suddenly it’s clear that it was Xanxia, not the Captain, who was in charge all along. And she wants immortality. That’ll work out well then.

There’s a typically great scene where Xanxia offhandedly notices the door is open, the Doctor says “I’ll close it”, Xanxia distractedly replies “Thank you”, and the Doctor makes his escape. That’s good writing, both funny and serving the plot.

The ending may be a little weak- the CSO spanner doesn’t look very good, and it’s a bit of a stretch that the Doctor can mentally commune with the Mentiads from inside the TARDIS, especially when close to Earth. But still, a great final episode apart from these minor glitches.

Fantastic. Such a witty script, but all in the service of a great bubbling story bubbling with dozens of great sci-fi concepts. 5/5.

Doctor Who: The Sun Makers

Part One

“Probably too many economists in the government…”

Right from the start it’s very clear indeed that we can’t expect anything at all from the sets and costumes, which are quite as awful as they were in The Invisible Enemy. Fortunately, it’s also clear from the start that the scripts and performances are going to be first class. And we get bombarded with some great concepts- dull modernist tower block this may be, but it’s on a mysteriously oxygenated and moderately temperatured Pluto where wood is a distant fable.

It’s also a world where people are drones working for a mysterious company, worked and taxed until their pips squeak and finally put to death on an appointed “deathday”- perhaps the most fully evoked dystopia yet seen in Doctor Who. Cordo and Gatherer Hade are both well written and well acted characters, perfectly shaped to be interesting whilst given us a load of necessary exposition at the start.

Cordo’s recently euthanized father worked hard as a sweeper of walkways for forty years, but he and his son between them can only just afford a painless death for him (Cordo wasn’t present at the death- no doubt he couldn’t afford that), and now Hade reveals that taxes have recently risen to a level Cordo cannot afford, and it is of course the citizen’s responsibility to be familiar with the tax rates. Cordo, already working double shifts, will now have to work during his remaining three hours’ sleep time to work towards his debt, which with compound interest at 50% he will never repay. This is very dark stuff, and that’s precisely why the humour is so important to sweeten the pill.

With K9 poised to beat the Doctor at chess, the TARDISeers materialise on Pluto, once said to be the outermost body in the Solar system until “Cassius” was discovered. This has all become very dated over the last few years!

K9 stays in the TARDIS for now (“Pluto’s no place for a…”) while the Doctor and Leela immediately prevent Cordo from throwing himself off the building, receiving some exposition in return.

Richard Leech is brilliant as the collector, the style of his performance being perfect for the character. Some of his lines would be just too dark if delivered too seriously- the line about how surviving for three years in the “correction centre” is almost unheard of makes it clear just how horrifyingly totalitarian this regime is.

Interestingly for a story where tax collectors are the bad guys (“Perhaps everyone runs from the taxman”) this doesn’t necessarily come across as a right wing satire- in fact it’s rather typical of Holmes in that, although deeply political, it doesn’t tell us a lot about what his politics were, although at least we’re left in no doubt that he’s no authoritarian. Besides, tax rates in the UK in 1977 were really rather high…

More good stuff- six suns, “the Inner Retinue”, a load of rebels includingVila- an excellent start.

Part Two

“I have the honour to remain, sir, your obedient servant. Etc. Etc.”

I love the friendliness of the Doctor’s cellmate, whose crime was curiosity, casually chatting about the horrors in store for the Doctor and himself- the sort of scene that only Holmes could write. PCM is another 1984-esque idea- an ingredient in the air to spread anxiety and keep the population docile. In fact, for all the surface focus on tax and economics- and there’ll be a lot more of that kind of thing- this is really Doctor Who Does 1984, more concerned with the nature of extreme tyranny than taxation per se. Cordo is quite clearly a Winston Smith figure and the Company is very Big Brother- there are loads of cameras everywhere for a start.

There’s a great scene between the Doctor and Gatherer Hyde, a P45 corridor (!) and we get to see Henry Woolf’s splendidly slimy Collector. Another great episode.

Part Three

“His Excellency has invoiced your execution.”

Another quietly shocking moment, as the Collector notes with incredulity that the captured Leela hasn’t been “numbered” as all “work units” are at birth. But this is where things turn around- I love the scene where the Doctor quickly manoeuvres himself from imminent torture victim to leader of a revolution, and it’s wonderful to see the glee with which everyone responds once persuaded that resistance is not useless after all. For the first time the company is questioned- what’s it for? Who gets all the profit?

I love the collector’s summary of the Doctor, from the company files, as having “a long history of violence and economic subversion.” But it’s not all wit and satire- there’s a real feeling of danger this episode as Leela faces execution by steaming, and this cliffhanger is one of the very best.

Part Four

“The work units are absolutely forbidden to see the light of the sun- it’s far too good for them!”

This whole episode is a joy, aside from a moment of disquiet towards the end. The Collector’s increasingly severe threats to the populace (“Grinding oppression of the masses is the only policy that pays dividends!”), the rebels’ increasing confidence and giddy happiness as they experience life without TCM, Marn joining the revolution to save her skin- very realistic, that!- the Gatherer being thrown off the building. This is Holmes’s swansong as a perm anent fixture of the series, and he really goes out on a high. A magnificent script. And, naturally, the Doctor buggers off immediately as soon as the fun bit finishes!

There’s one disquieting bit, though- I suspect nothing was meant by it, but it probably would have been a good idea not to make the villain a “Usurian”- ie a moneylender- of a different ethnic group to everyone else, as that could be interpreted in unfortunate ways!

Aside from that last point, a brilliant script, and fantastic performances all round. I very nearly gave it a 5/5 but the sets are so appalling I’m going to have to take away a point. 4/5, but a very high one.

Doctor Who: The Face of Evil

Part One

“Now drop your weapons or I’ll kill him with this deadly jelly baby.”

My BBC video starts with an edition of Multi-Coloured Swap Shop from 1977 with Noel Edmonds interviewing Louise Jameson. I don’t remember ordering Noel Edmonds from the cosmos, so fast forward to the story…

We start with Leela’s trial for blaspheming against Xoanon. Not our Xoanon, another one. Anyway, she’s to be exiled outside the barriers which protect this Neolithic-ish tribe, the Sevateem, from the nasty things outside for the crime of suggesting that a seemingly suicidal attack on their enemies the Tesh, ordered by their god Xoanon, is not such a great idea. She is offered the alternative of facing the Horda, whatever they are, but declines it, and it’s clear from her reaction that this is a fearful experience leading to almost certain death. Horribly, her father agrees to take it for her, and is duly killed. This is very dark, illustrating both the horrors of a society which punishes “blasphemers” and the horrible moral complications of resistance to such a society.

The TARDIS lands in an area where we’ve just seen a creature crawling along- a Horda, presumably, going by what we see later. That’s a nice touch. Unfortunately the Doctor, being alone, talks to himself, and indeed the camera, which is very awkward. He needs a new companion to talk to, and sharpish. And right on cue, here’s Leela.

Interestingly, Leela’s fellow Sevateems Calib and Tomas are also sceptical about the upcoming attack, if more cautious about voicing it. This scene does a lot of useful expositing, letting us know all about the planned attack on the Tesh, whereas a later recital by Neeva (my avatarsake!) gives us the mythological version, complete with clues. This is nicely counterpointed by Leela’s reactions to “The Evil One”. There’s also some good character stuff as Leela realises she can trust the Doctor.

The concept behind this story- an apparently stone age tribe on an alien planet using items of spacefaring technology as religious relics, is a brilliant one, and it’s introduced early. There are lots of fun little touches on this theme throughout this episode, such as the motions for checking a spacesuit having changed into a ritual for warding off evil. And of course there’s the panel saying “Survey team 6”- nice!

The Doctor and Leela make a great pairing, and whatever may have happened offscreen, they have great chemistry onscreen. But it’s notable that the Doctor suddenly becomes very stern as soon as Leela starts killing people with Janis thorns.

Part Two

“I like the hat. Very fetching.”

The concepts of the first episode get more development here, with the overall message of the story probably coming through most clearly as the doctor comments that Neeva was seemingly expecting an answer to his prayers. “There wouldn’t be much point in praying if he didn’t.” Only through the medium of the fantastic can such a blatantly atheist subtext excite seemingly no contemporary comment!

Calib gets to be cunning, and the Doctor gets to be very clever indeed, curing Leela from the Janis thorn, and successfully facing the trial of the Horda- I love the moment where he chucks a Horda at the bloke who slaps Leela!

The episode ends with some invisible creatures (well, it’s cheap!) which sound like the Skarasen and look like the Doctor when visible. And what’s that great big carving of the Doctor’s face…?

Part Three

“I don’t believe in ghosts either.”

Now we get to see the Tesh, and how their situation parallels that of the Sevateem. There isn’t the time to develop them as much as the Sevateem- no bad thing as they’re such arrogant arses- but it’s ironic how they think the Sevateem can open the barrier and Xoanon is playing both tribes against each other.

One thing that strikes me- as Xoanon has lifted the barriers and all of his nasties are now able to terrorise the Sevateem, presumably the whole tribe is heading down the Doctor’s throat. And Calib speaks of getting “the men” inside the barrier. Is Leela the only woman then?

Part Four

“We start getting proof and we stop believing.”

“With proof, we don’t have to believe.”

We get our first instance of Leela not suffering cowards gladly as she says to a cowering Tesh “Lying there isn’t going to help, then.” We’ll be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing.

The plot, excellent throughout, is nicely tied up. It’s good to see Neeva being the sacrificial hero in the end, ironically being the only one able to resist Xoanon’s brainwashing. Leela is elected leader, and then immediately scarpers… yes, she’s companion material, all right! Into the TARDIS she goes…

Magnificent, a criminally underrated story. 5/5.