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REVIEW: The Seeds of Doom by Robert Banks Stewart

SERIAL: 4L, 6X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: Yes.


One of Doctor Who's biggest influences has been the Quatermass serials of the 1950s, a fact that annoyed Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale no end. Even so, some of the best serials ever emulated elements of the serials. Quatermass II was echoed most strongly in Spearhead from Space, while Quatermass and the Pit influenced serials like Doctor Who and the Silurians, and The Daemons. The Quatermass Experiment informed The Ark in Space to a degree, but it is in Robert Banks Stewart's The Seeds of Doom that we see more elements emerging...

When a mysterious plant pod is found in the Antarctic permafrost, the Doctor is called in to investigate. But there are a few complications: the pod is an infectious alien plant called a Krynoid; there is a second pod; and a bitter bureaucrat at the World Ecology Bureau has sold information about the Krynoid to plant-obsessed millionaire Harrison Chase. The first pod infects a member of an expedition in Antarctica, and mutates into a monster, while Chase's minions steal the second, and try to destroy the evidence, along with any witnesses. Barely surviving, with the first Krynoid mutant dead, the Doctor and Sarah face a web of deceit and greed while trying to prevent the insane Chase from experimenting on the second pod...

The Seeds of Doom has a fairly different feel to many of the stories around it. Although this might be partly due to the use of video for both location and studio shooting, as well as director Douglas Camfield using Geoffrey Burgon instead of Dudley Simpson, it's more obvious in the script and its style. The Doctor is more of an aggressive action man, parts of the story feel like a science fiction version of a James Bond movie, and the characters are somewhat cartoonish.

And yet...it works. It probably would have worked better (with modifications) in the Pertwee/UNIT era, but even so, while the difference in style is somewhat jarring, it is still an enjoyable Doctor Who story. The characters, despite being to a degree two-dimensional, all work, and the story has an interesting and thrilling progression, even if there is one or two run-arounds. Although much is owed to The Quatermass Experiment, there are also elements from the original movie version of The Thing, The Day of the Triffids, and even an episode of The Avengers. And all these elements work.

While the Doctor and Sarah get a lot to do in the story, there are many places that are jarring with what Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen have established for their characters. The Doctor, at times, is at his most angry, snarling particularly at the character of Scorby, who, while a rather incompetent thug, is brought to life well by John Challis. Tony Beckley plays the role of plant-obsessed misanthrope Harrison Chase well, but it isn't until he is actually controlled by the Krynoid that his performance really shines.

The Krynoid itself is one of the most effective alien creatures to ever appear in Doctor Who, transforming a human into a human-like mass of plant material (although at one stage, it is clearly a repainted Axon from The Claws of Axos), and then into a giant creature. Only the stop-motion effects later used for the creature seem unconvincing. Its ability to control plant life is chilling, and used to great effect, even if the effects for the moving plants themselves are rather naff.

As noted before, there are a few inconsistencies with the tone. While this version of the Doctor is not adverse to using fisticuffs, here, he is like an action hero more than usual, and he has a much more aggressive attitude rather than the usual detached Bohemian Baker usually plays the Doctor as. The characters, as noted, tend to be more cartoonish than usual, more suited to an action film than even Doctor Who.

Still, The Seeds of Doom, despite its faults, is a fairly strong story for the second season of Tom Baker's tenure as the Doctor to go out on. While it doesn't quite feel right in spots, it still is a cracking good yarn.


SCORE: 9/10


Coming soon trailer for the next story, The Masque of Mandragora...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do8-tfUOZDE[/youtube]

REVIEW: The Masque of Mandragora by Louis Marks

SERIAL: 4M, 4X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: No.


Out of the entire Holmes/Hinchcliffe era, the only story I had not watched was The Masque of Mandragora. A tale of superstition and intrigue set in Renaissance Italy, I had not come to it before now, possibly because of availability issues. So, coming to it at long last, does it stand up to the other entries of the Holmes/Hinchcliffe era that I have watched? Or will it perish?

The Doctor and Sarah, while trying out one of the TARDIS' old control rooms, end up trapped briefly in the depths of the Mandragora Helix, a sentient spiral of energy. What is originally considered to be a lucky escape later turns out to be anything but, when they are forced to land in 1492, in the small Italian state of San Martino. There, Count Frederico has designs on the Dukedom that rightfully belongs to his nephew, Giuliano, whose father, supposedly dying because his fate was preordained by astrologer Hieronymous, was really murdered by poison. But there is more at stake than Italian power struggles. The Brethren of the Cult of Demnos are growing in power, and Mandragora energy has hitched a ride with the TARDIS to begin a takeover of the Earth, at a time when superstition is giving way to reason. Can Giuliano succeed in stopping the machinations of his uncle? What is Hieronymous' connection to the Brethren? And why does the Mandragora Helix wish to take over the Earth?

Doctor Who, despite the extreme softness of its science, is always about rationality and science triumphing over superstition, and it is in The Masque of Mandragora that we see this theme perhaps most overtly. Count Frederico would love the peasants under him to be superstitious so that he can have power over them, while Hieronymous has powers granted by the Mandragora Helix who intends to use superstition to check human ambition. On the other side, Count Frederico represents the side of reason and science, without losing human compassion. This is a pseudohistorical story set at a time of underestimated importance to fiction.

The characters are fairly well written and performed, with Gareth Armstrong as Giuliano and Norman Jones as Hieronymous being the standout performers. Frederico could have been written better, more subtle than the Macbeth/Richard III he was done as, but Jon Laurimore puts in a good performance with what he has. Even the Mandragora Helix, on the occasions when it speaks for itself or through its servants, gives a very good explanation for invading Earth at the time it did. Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen do good work, with Baker becoming more playful in the role.

The location work is surprisingly good, with the Welsh village of Portmeirion (more famous for being used in The Prisoner) subtituting well for an Italian town. And for 1970s Who, the special effects are mostly done well. However, the intrigue in the palace is rather simplistic. I would have liked more factions than just Giuliano versus Frederico, the Brethren notwithstanding. And I do have to wonder, in light of what happened in later series, why the Doctor took Sarah's questioning of how they can speak Italian as a sign of mind control. And a few of the special effects, like the whirlpool of the Mandragora Helix and the subsequent model don't look menacing enough, let alone good enough.

Still, The Masque of Mandragora is an intriguing story, and a possibly overlooked one, which is a shame. Given that it embodies one of the key tenets of Doctor Who, it deserves another look from fans that have passed this one over.


SCORE: 9/10

The Brain of Morbius is actually quite a clever story but it's a pity that it was limited by the resources of its day. The alien spaceship graveyard at the beginning would have been so much more creepy if done with better effects (though the mutant in this scene looks better than it did in the lacklustre Pertwee story it originally caame from). The Sisters of Karn too are interesting - and I'll admit to having a bit of a crush (in my schoolboy days) on one of the sisters - not mara the old one.... the 2nd in command with those expressive eyes.

Anyway, done today with the correct references back to the Pythia, the sisters of Karn could have been so much more believable.

Solon is great but Condo... what can you do with a character like that except shoot him. He does have some (unintentionally?) funny dialog though.

I could never get why so many fans used to think that the "other faces" in the machine at the end were past incarnations of the doctor instead of Morbius, though admittedly they look a lot more like BBC production crew


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The Seeds of Doom... now this one is quite violent.... Why does the Colin Baker era always get blamed for being violent?

I can remember playing seeds of doom with my unwrapped easter eggs.... yes, I really was that sad....

Not much more to say about it really... another classic .... and Chase is pretty funny at times too.


----

Masque of Mandragora

I actually went to Portmeirion (because of this story). I'd hazzard a guess that you probably did too. It's a lovely place, very picturesque.

It's this story that first raises the question of translation. For some reason, Ian and Barbara never seemed to wonder why they could speak Aztec and French (and nobody ever wondered about those American accents in the Gunfighters either).

I think that the Doctor assumes that Sarah is being controlled because she figures out that her speech isn't her own. Weird - and not exactly a foregone conclusion. It's a flippant reply which on the one hand undermines the story while on the other opens up a whole unexplored avenue - unexplored until "The Christmas Invasion" really when it really came into its own.

I'd agree that it's often overlooked which is sad because Hieronymous is so funny at times though Giuliano and his (possibly gay) friend are wooden and dull.

and you forgot to mention that this draws most of its influence from Masque of the Red Death and some of those satanist films... I've forgotten the actual film that they ripped off but Vincent Price sent it up nicely in Bloodbath at the house of death - it's almost shot for shot when they take their masks off.

----

While I'd agree that this is a truly classic era of Doctor Who, I'd also have to admit that they stole almost all of their good ideas. There wasn't really a whole lot of imaginative writing going on at the time. Imaginative "fitting into the Doctor Who mythos" perhaps but not exactly "creative writing".

Agreed. And they cut away from it too quickly, along with the establishing shot of Solon's castle, as if too embarassed to show either for long.



You're talking about Ohica, played by Gilly Brown. Well, in one of life's little ironies, Gilly Brown has actually aged less well, in my opinion, than Cynthia Grenville (Maren), as I saw in the DVD documentary, Getting A Head.



But the Pythia stuff was introduced in the novel Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible. The canonicity is debatable, though it would be nice.




Agreed. I thought that they were either past incarnations of Morbius, and/or, as is hinted in Lungbarrow (which opens with a quote from The Brain of Morbius when Morbius is forcing the Doctor back in his mind-wrestling), a face or faces of the Other.




Because it was, but this violence was a little out of keeping with the time. The action violence, anyway. People turning into Krynoids was right up the alley of Holmes and Hinchcliffe.



Oh, dear.



Chase is pretty camp for a Who villain, and seems more at home as a Bond villain, but he's still done well, and his awful plant music is a good case of what TV Tropes calls 'Stylistic Suck'.




No, although I dearly wanted to during the trip I took a couple of years back. A friend of mine, however, has been there.



In the novelisation of The Reign of Terror, it is actually stated that the regulars are capable of speaking French themselves, and one of the characters has to switch from his native French to English to follow a conversation between him and other characters including a British one. But yeah. Although to be honest, it's rarely brought up in series like Star Trek and Blake's 7.




Hmm...Not sure about Giuliano, though I agree that Marco is more wooden (and I've never thought of them as gay, either). But Hieronymous, funny? A large ham, sure, but not quite funny, at least not until he's been taken over completely by the Mandragora energy and confronts the Doctor. THEN he starts leaving bite marks in the scenery.



Never saw those films, and I am not as familiar with them as I would be with, say, Frankenstein or the Mummy films, so I cannot comment on the comparisons. Sorry.



Yes, but sometimes, the originality lies not in the story ideas themselves, but how they are used. In fact, I doubt that a majority of viewers at the time had seen any of the original inspirations for the stories. The Brain of Morbius is probably the most spectacularly unoriginal story of this era. Even Planet of Evil had enough originality in it to be distinct from Forbidden Planet and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Actually, to play devil's advocate here, I think that technique worked well. Because the motifs were there already, they had some ready-made tropes to draw on and, in many cases, subvert. The good ideas wasn't what they stole, but how they played with expectations and the story structure expected. In Pyramids of Mars, the mummies were robots rather than reanimated corpses, and the Egyptian God Sutekh was an alien, albeit a virtually all-powerful one. In The Talons of Weng-Chiang, although it seems at first glance a Yellow Peril story in the mould of Fu Manchu, the Chinese characters in the story are the pawns of a very different person entirely who assumes the guise of a Chinese God, but isn't Chinese himself. In The Hand of Fear, you get the impression, at least at first, that Eldrad, while ruthless, is merely desperate to get back to her home, and is, at least until his/her true nature is revealed, relatively sympathetic. And so on.

BTW, I know it's early days yet, as I'm only about halfway through the classic series, but I want an opinion. Originally, I meant this review blog as a review of the classic series only, but does anyone want me to go onto the new series as well?

Yes.... I didn't think that there would really be an option not to.

Uhhh, my original intent was to go to the TV Movie and stop there.

There's really only two new series stories that I haven't watched all the way through: Love & Monsters, and The Lodger. Some, especially Midnight, I am not looking forward to seeing again. Midnight was absolutely brilliant (Russel T Davies' finest script, even), but very harrowing to watch with the Doctor really losing control of the situation in a way that could have been very fatal for him. It took another character to save his derriere...

BTW, The Hand of Fear is coming soon, and so is another personal favourite from the Holmes/Hinchclife era, The Deadly Assassin...

REVIEW: The Hand of Fear by Bob Baker and Dave Martin

SERIAL: 4N, 4X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: Yes.


Partway through the 14th season came the end of another era in Doctor Who. Elisabeth Sladen, who had played the role of Sarah Jane Smith for over three years, had decided to leave the program. How would the production team handle the departure of one of the longest-serving and best loved companions? One idea, submitted by Who director Douglas Camfield, suggested an alien invasion being opposed by the French Foreign Legion, where Sarah would die heroically. Dramatic, yes, but considering what the future held in store for Sarah, it is just as well that they went for a story by the regular writing team of Bob Baker and Dave Martin...

The Doctor and Sarah land in a rocky, barren landscape, which is not an alien planet, but a quarry on Earth. Caught in rubble from the blast, the Doctor and Sarah are sent to hospital, Sarah clutching a fossilised hand with a strange ring. Possessed by a strange force from the ring, Sarah takes the hand to a nearby nuclear power complex, causing mayhem and havoc along the way, determined to resurrect Eldrad, the being who once possessed the ring. Who is Eldrad? Is he, or even she, a malevolent force, or merely a well-intentioned extremist? And what does this have to do with events that occurred 150 million years ago, on a world that may very well be dead?

Most of the time, Baker and Martin (aka the Bristol Boys) bring in decent scripts, although The Sontaran Experiment was an exception. But they do start off with some pretty good concepts. The concept of a silicon life form is one rarely used in Doctor Who. In fact, offhand, the only other ones I can think of from in the classic series are the Ogri from The Stones of Blood. And the fact that Eldrad can absorb radiation to heal was a masterstroke. So was making Eldrad (initially, if you'll forgive the spoiler) female, as female aliens are rare at this time in the series. Indeed, in this entire Holmes/Hinchcliffe era, there are no other female alien characters, with the exception of the human-like Thal Bettan and the Sisterhood of Karn.

The characters, unfortunately, are varied. Eldrad in female form is a morally ambiguous creature, and while you do have your suspicions about her true motives, it doesn't seem outside the realms of possibility that she is telling the truth, despite the prologue seen in the first episode. A very interesting costume and a good performance from actress Judith Paris sells this. Once Eldrad changes back to his original form, though, he is less well-written (and the costume is a little sillier, with one rather exaggerated jibe being that he looks like a turd in a suit), but performed with aplomb by Stephen Thorn, always a good choice to play a villain. And Roy Skelton as King Rokon, while rather loud and hammy, gets a wonderful line when, via a recording, hails Eldrad as a 'king of nothing'.

However, of the human characters, the only ones to make a real impression are Glyn Houston's Professor Watson (who gets a touching moment when he rings his family to effectively say goodbye to them, when he thinks he's about to die) and Renu Setna as a medical intern who discusses the nature of pain with the Doctor. Dr Carter is rather averagely written, although Rex Robinson does a decent job of playing him, and the other characters don't quite make enough of an impact. While the performances of Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen are mostly on par, there are a few bum notes. Elisabeth Sladen's childlike lilting when she says 'Eldrad must live' undermines the seriousness of what she should be imparting, and the Doctor apparently agreeing to go along with Eldrad's story stretches credulity, especially seeing since the Doctor's own credulity isn't.

The production design is average, and while some elements of Kastria work, others don't. A couple of dodgy special effects rear their ugly heads as well. However, there is some spectacular location work, one of which involves a real quarry explosions (and fans, no, a camera was not destroyed filming that sequence, although it was buried), and the other involves filming in a nuclear power plant, with a significant amount of scale being given.

But of particular note is the departure of Sarah. Elisabeth Sladen didn't want the departure to be the main focus of the story, but I feel that it may have been better that way, if Sarah was getting restless about travelling with the Doctor. Previous companions like Susan, Victoria, and Jo had had such build-up in their last stories, and to have Sarah declare that she was fed up with travelling with the Doctor is slightly out of character, even if she nearly changes her mind. Still, the scene in which the Doctor and Sarah bid each other farewell is done well, with the Doctor and Sarah exchanging farewells, not knowing that, the events of The Five Doctors notwithstanding, it would take a few decades and a few regenerations of the Doctor before they would meet again in School Reunion.

The Hand of Fear is not perfect, and personally, I would have wanted a better story to send off Sarah Jane Smith. Still, it's a decent story, with a good farewell for one of the best-loved companions in the series. With Elisabeth Sladen now deceased, her work remains as a testament to her. The Doctor will not forget about Sarah Jane Smith, and neither shall we.



SCORE: 8.5/10


And now, the DVD trailer for The Deadly Assassin.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7nX8kR_UHM[/youtube]

REVIEW: The Deadly Assassin by Robert Holmes

SERIAL: 4P, 4X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: Yes.


With Elisabeth Sladen gone from the TARDIS, and new companion Leela (as played by Louise Jameson) on the way, Tom Baker wanted to experiment with the format of Doctor Who, confident that he could carry the show by himself without companions. Although Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes never intended to abolish the companions at all, they decided to give Baker's suggestion a chance, and Holmes was given special permission (something that, at the time, a script editor was required to do) to write this experimental story. Set on Gallifrey, amidst political intrigue, this experiment would prove to be one of the most controversial in Doctor Who's history in more ways than one...

Summoned back to Gallifrey, the Doctor receives a series of disturbing visions of the assassination of the President of Gallifrey. What's worse, he appears to be the assassin himself. Escaping the guards sent to capture him for landing his TARDIS unauthorised in the Capitol, the Doctor struggles to warn Castellan Spandrell of the impending death. But when the moment finally comes, the Doctor turns out to have been framed, by the real assassin. And the assassin himself is working with someone who knows the Doctor very well: a decaying, decrepit Master, desperately trying to extend his life. Buying himself time, the Doctor enters the Matrix, the repository of all Time Lord knowledge, and engages in a battle to the death against the deadly assassin. Who killed the President? Can the Doctor clear his name? And why will the Master's plan for immortality affect not only Gallifrey, but other worlds as well?

For its time, The Deadly Assassin was remarkably prescient. It was written several years before the cyberpunk movement took off and the concept of virtual reality became known. The Matrix of the Time Lords preceded that of the Wachowskis by over two decades. And while having a Doctor without a companion was almost unheard-of at the time, it did become used in a number of specials in the new series. And what's more, it began to show the Time Lords in a more complex and less than flattering light that would end with their destruction in the Time War...

Robert Holmes is usually a good writer, but of the scripts I rated highly so far in the previous season that he wrote, both were originally derived from scripts by other writers, Lewis Greifer for Pyramids of Mars, and Terrance Dicks for The Brain of Morbius. This is probably his first purely solo script since The Time Warrior. Even the references to film and horror is mostly absent, with The Manchurian Candidate and the JFK assassination being starting points, but starting points only. Here, he weaves political intrigue, albeit of a relatively simplistic nature.

One of the most notable changes to Doctor Who canon deriving from this story was the de-deification of the Time Lords. While many fans objected to this at the time, I find myself in agreement with Robert Holmes' assertion that godlike aliens tend to get boring time and time again, and after their more deity-like appearances in previous stories, it's nice to see them being more human, and thus full of character. We have pompous video announcer Runcible (mockingly called 'the Fatuous' by the Doctor, and given a wonderful putdown by Borusa), the enigmatic and experienced Borusa, and eager but rather hapless Commander Hildred. All are played well, but of particular note are Who veterans George Pravda as cynical but competent Castellan Spandrell, Erik Chitty as ancient archivist Engin, and Bernard Horsfall putting in a typically fine performance as Chancellor Goth.

Of particular note here is the horror in this story. The Master, played in a mask by the superb Peter Pratt, is one of the most overtly horrific elements of the story. Effectively a living corpse in the image of the Reaper, the Master is perhaps at his most desperate and most dangerous here, as his goals are more to do with survival than with conquest. But there is the psychological battle in the Matrix itself, a psychological horror duel between two psyches that takes on a series of nightmarish images before it becomes a battle to the death between the Doctor and the Master's proxy. It is done extremely well, and the late David Maloney was a great director for the show. It's no wonder Mary Whitehouse complained, although the shot of the Doctor under the water was probably one of the less horrifying images in this story.

I'm not sure that I have any criticisms for this story. There are no real special effect failures, with everything from the staser blasts to the final catastrophe in the climax working well. The only problem seems to be that the Master can't move his mouth much. As for the story, well, it could have been complex (given the nature of the program, examining politics), but not within the episodes allotted to it, and Holmes did well with what he had. And there was that rather irritating cheat where they edited in that shot of the assassin raising a staser pistol into the start of episode 2, while making us think at the end of episode 1 that the Doctor really had shot the President.

Even so, The Deadly Assassin is another example of what happens when everything on Doctor Who comes together. Virtually perfect, and a fine example of Robert Holmes' work, we have an experiment that changed the course of Doctor Who in more ways than one...


SCORE: 10/10

REVIEW: The Robots of Death by Chris Boucher

SERIAL: 4R, 4X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: Yes.


In 1970, the concept of the uncanny valley was introduced by robotics expert Professor Masahiro Mori. As robots become progressively more human-like, empathy towards them increases, until a certain point. After this point, the closer they seem to being human, the more revulsion they arouse in us. While not in widespread use by the public for some time, the concept itself takes on a central theme to the penultimate story of the Holmes/Hinchcliffe era, The Robots of Death, with Grimwade's Syndrome, aka robophobia...

On a desert world far into the future, a group of miners work in a special mobile mining vehicle called the Sandminer. Despite the arduous nature of their work, they live in relative luxury, tended to by robots. However, when one of them is murdered, accusations are quick to fly, especially when the Doctor and his new companion Leela make themselves known. As the bodycount rises, so do the tensions. Working with undercover investigator Poul, the Doctor and Leela soon find out that robots are being reprogrammed to kill. Nothing is what it seems. A mute robot is able to talk and reason for itself, every member of the sandminer crew has a skeleton in the closet, and one of them may very well be insane robot scientist Taren Capel...

Unfortunately, Leela's debut story isn't available on DVD, so this is the first chance I get to evaluate Louise Jameson's acting, as well as the writing of Chris Boucher. Let's start with Boucher. Later, he would go on to script edit (and write a number of episodes for) the series Blake's 7, but he shows here, if not full creativity, then a good sense of structure and giving things a certain amount of background. There is a slight lack of energy here, but that is also partly due to the direction.

The characters are functionally written, and the performances vary. Russell Hunter as Uvanov gives an ambiguity to the character that is needed to cover up the rather jarring change in his attitude, while Pamela Salem takes Toos, a character that could have been done rather coldly, and gives her humanity. David Collings does well as Poul, even if he does go over the top when his character suffers from robophobia, and David Bailie as Dask keeps people guessing. The robots, of necessity, are played rather flat and calmly, but especial praise should go to Miles Fothergill as SV7, as well as Gregory de Polnay, who infuses the role of D84 with a performance that makes the robot seem like it is struggling towards humanity. However, some of the other roles aren't written or acted as well, with Borg's change of opinion about the intruders coming out of the blue. Louise Jameson is doing well as Leela, kicking arse and taking names, and yet still showing that she's more than a mindless savage. However, Tom Baker doesn't seem to be taking the acting seriously in this story, and seems far more flippant than usual.

The production design is rather inconsistent, with very plain and functional sets mixing with the more luxurious crew quarters and their costumes, which seem out of place on a working mobile mine. I know some areas of the Sandminer would have more functional areas, but they designs seem to clash. This isn't to say that the design itself is bad. The costumes and the crew quarters sets are gorgeous, but they clash with other areas. The music is pretty good, but the distinctive heartbeat-like bassline gets irritating rather than suspenseful after a while.

The Robots of Death is by no means a bad story, and it is certainly above average. But there are annoying niggles that prevent it from reaching a status I feel it deserves.


SCORE: 8.5/10


This trailer is for the first Revisitations set, which contains the next story, The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZYaSQLynv4[/youtube]

REVIEW: The Talons of Weng-Chiang by Robert Holmes

SERIAL: 4S, 6X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: Yes.


Amongst its controversies, it's a rarity that Doctor Who is considered racist. However, by today's standards, The Talons of Weng-Chiang would be, if not actually racist, rather insensitive. The Chinese characters are not portrayed in a flattering light, and the main Chinese character is actually portrayed by a European, John Bennett. But is this a deal-breaker for the final story of the Holmes/Hinchcliffe era?

Landing in Victorian London, the Doctor takes Leela to the theatre to show her how her ancestors lived and enjoyed themselves. But they encounter a man being murdered, a cabbie who accosted stage magician Li-H'Sen Chang, whom the cabbie believed responsible for the disappearance of his wife, one of many women gone missing recently. Some think it is Jack the Ripper returned, but the Doctor soon discovers that Chang is abducting these women on behalf of his master, a deformed madman posing as the Chinese god Weng-Chiang. The ersatz god, really a time-traveller, is searching for the Time Cabinet he lost long ago in China, and as it turns out, it belongs to Professor Litefoot, a pathologist the Doctor and Leela meet. With the abducted women meeting a grisly end to prolong Weng-Chiang's life, theatre owner Henry Gordon Jago investigating his cellar and Chang's ventriloquist dummy Mr Sin, and the Doctor, Leela, and Litefoot fighting against the Tong of the Black Scorpion, things will get tricky. For this foe from the future is determined to get his own way, and the talons of Weng-Chiang may dig deep into London before this is over...

Robert Holmes is, at his best, a master storyteller, and this is perhaps his magnum opus. Despite the elements of Yellow Peril stories (this story was partly influenced by the Fu Manchu stories), it is not a truly racist story, even if it is, at times, rather patronising. Far more is owed to the Sherlock Holmes mythos, and the Doctor even dresses like the classic deerstalker-and-cape image of Sherlock Holmes. This is Whovian Victoriana at its finest, with atmosphere you can cut with a knife.

The characters are all done excellently. Litefoot is the very model of a Victorian gentleman, allowing Leela to get away with eating her food without manners in order to avoid embarassing her, and Jago, full of bombast and loquaciousness, proves a perfect foil to both the Doctor and Litefoot. Trevor Baxter and Christopher Benjamin respectively tuck into their roles with aplomb. John Bennett as Li-H'Sen Chang does well with the role, and manages to make the audience feel sympathy for him in the end after his downfall by infusing him with pathos. Magnus Greel is over the top and melodramatic, and in another story might not have worked, but here, he does, with Michael 'Morbius' Spice making the role his own. Both Tom Baker and Louise Jameson give excellent performances, with Leela having an excellent put-down against Greel, even when she is threatened with death.

This seems to be one of those productions where everything comes together. David Maloney's direction, the production design, the music...There are only two bum notes in the whole thing: the aforementioned insensitivity to the Chinese, and the rather badly done giant rat. Neither are deal-breakers. The former has to be viewed in the context of when it was made, and the latter is not on screen long enough to matter.

This is one of the best ever Doctor Who stories to ever be done. Period. Some small nuisances aside, this is as close to perfection as the series can get to.



SCORE: 10/10

PROGRESS REPORT THREE: THE GOLDEN AGE OF DOCTOR WHO, OR, HOLMES, HINCHCLIFFE, AND HORROR

STORIES: Total for this era: 14

Cumulative total: 51. 14 William Hartnell, 6 Patrick Troughton. 17 Jon Pertwee. 14 Tom Baker

TIME: Total for this era: 12 days

Cumulative total: 65 days

PERCENTAGE NEVER WATCHED BEFORE: 1/14, or 7%

Cumulative total: 14/51, or 27%

MILESTONES:

First episode with the fourth Doctor

Departure from UNIT and modern-based stories

First appearance of Davros

First hints of the Time War (in retrospect)

First Master to be played by someone other than Roger Delgado

First appearance of Borusa

First mention of Rassilon

Most noted complaints by Mary Whitehouse (particularly the 'drowning' cliffhanger from The Deadly Assassin)

Three years (1974-1977)

COMPANIONS: Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan, Leela

THOUGHTS: Nobody could have forseen at the time that Tom Baker would become the longest-serving Doctor, and that his first three years would be amongst the most controversial in the series. Under the direction of Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes, Doctor Who would be taken to some dark places indeed, a style that would earn the ire of Mary Whitehouse. However, many consider this period in the history of the show to be the golden age for the show, a sentiment that I share.

It has been pointed out that this era, more than others, took elements from various other sources, particularly gothic horror books and films. While the lack of originality in terms of the origins of the stories must be kept in mind, the fact remains is that the vast majority of stories from this time are of high quality, and maybe this is due to the fact that the stories already had a headstart in terms of the tropes used already, allowing the writers and the script editor to develop stories further, to their full potential.

Tom Baker, while he stamps his eccentricity on the role fairly swiftly, takes a few stories to get used to the role of the Doctor, but soon makes it his own. This is Baker when he is taking the role at its most seriously, before the rot began to set in. He is ably supported by a number of companions. Sarah, of course, leaves, but you get the sense of a real friendship between Sarah and the fourth Doctor, possibly helped by the fact that Elisabeth Sladen, like Tom Baker, came from Liverpool. Harry was a nice try, but while Ian Marter is a good actor, the character, unfortunately, was rather boring, and became superfluous to requirements, as did the rest of the UNIT family. Leela, as played by Louise Jameson, is an interesting new kind of companion, a savage with an aggressive attitude, but still intelligent, despite her primitive ways. While Baker didn't like Leela for her violent ways, I feel that she was a good experiment.

This era shows that it is possible to use horror in Doctor Who, and still keep it as Doctor Who. It is this era that inspired later creations like the Nucleus of the Swarm, the Mara, the Malus, Kroagnon, the Gods of Ragnarok and Fenric. It would even inspire people from the new series, with creatures like the Gelth, the Empty Child, the Werewolf, the Devil Entity (played by Gabriel 'Sutekh' Woolf), the Racnoss, the Carrionites, Professor Lazarus, the Weeping Angels, the Toclafane, the Vashta Nerada, the Martian Water Virus, Prisoner Zero, the Saturniyans, the Silence, House, the Gangers, all of these have roots in the horror concepts from the Holmes/Hinchcliffe era. This era may owe a lot to horror books and films, but new Doctor Who owes a lot to this era.



BEST STORIES: Genesis of the Daleks, Planet of Evil, Pyramids of Mars, The Deadly Assassin, The Talons of Weng-Chiang

WORST STORIES: The Sontaran Experiment, Revenge of the Cybermen

Okay, so, while I might be taking a break from watching Doctor Who for a few days (don't worry anyone still following this, I'll be onto Horror of Fang Rock before the next deadline), I thought that we might have a quiz, with 10 questions from each of the eras. None of it is actually related to my reviews per se, but rather trivia related to the show proper, as well as the DVD special features. So, without further ado, here are the questions:

ERA 1: THE BLACK AND WHITE ERA

1. An Unearthly Child was actually a different first story to the one originally considered for first. It eventually became a story that was transmitted as part of the second season. What was that story?

2. Despite the fact that it is a British institution, the production team on the first Doctor Who serial was surprisingly diverse. Name two personnel, and why (nationality or gender) they were unusual in television.

3. Why was The Edge of Destruction commissioned?

4. The first Doctor and his companions had met a number of notable historical personages. Name five of them (real-life people only).

5. Although the concept of regeneration was introduced in The Tenth Planet, there was one story where William Hartnell was intended to be replaced by another actor before the idea was postponed. Which story was this, and how would it have happened?

6. Out of his various characteristics, the second Doctor is unique in pretty much one characteristic only. He was the only Doctor to...what?

7. Although the second Doctor was known to wear a stove-pipe hat earlier in this incarnation, he did try another hat on another occasion. What was this occasion?

8. Which story of the Troughton era is partially set in Australia?

9. Which story nearly had the BBC sued by the London Underground, and why?

10. Although the Time Lords are not named until The War Games, three named (or at least titled) Time Lords, other than the Doctor, appear in the black and white era. Who are they?


ERA 2: THE PERTWEE YEARS

1. Which four stories were co-written by Barry Letts?

2. What anatomical feature was Jon Pertwee notoriously sensitive about?

3. Which actor, who would go on to play a main character in Blake's 7, had his Doctor Who debut in a Jon Pertwee story?

4. In The Mind of Evil, the Master's greatest fear is revealed. What is it?

5. Which two planets, other than Earth, are visited twice during the Pertwee era?

6. Which two stories were originally conceived as a twelve-part epic?

7. Why was The Three Doctors produced after Carnival of Monsters and Frontier in Space?

8. Which story was the first mention of the Time Lord homeworld as Gallifrey?

9. What story elements link the latter three season finals of the Pertwee era (The Time Monster, The Green Death, and Planet of the Spiders)?

10. In Planet of the Spiders, much of the cast had appeared in the series before, and in the Pertwee era too. Name four of them.


ERA 3: THE HOLMES/HINCHCLIFFE ERA

1. Although Terrance Dicks claimed that he invented the tradition of an outgoing script editor writing the first story to be produced after he had left, this turned out to actually have happened before in Doctor Who. Name at least one such story. (There are at least three such answers, technically)

2. Where was Tom Baker working when he was asked to become the Doctor?

3. Ian Marter later novelised several Doctor Who stories. What did he become infamous for?

4. What was the working title of Genesis of the Daleks?

5. While this era was infamous for pilfering from various films and books, it also prefigured two well-known science fiction films. What were these films, and the stories they seemed to echo?

6. Which Doctor Who set did Tom Baker consider either walking through his own mind, or else like open-heart surgery?

7. What was the origin of the Robin Bland pseudonym used on The Brain of Morbius to replace Terrance Dicks' credit?

8. Which actor, appearing in one story during this era, has also appeared in the franchises of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Blake's 7?

9. What scene pissed Mary Whitehouse off the most in this era?

10. What city was Magnus Greel said to be the Butcher of?



Let the games begin...

Anyway, in case anyone is still paying any kind of attention to this thread, I've decided to name the remaining eras here and now.

About Time, or Cutting Violence, Cutting Budgets, and Cutting Humour (Graham Williams, seasons 15-17. About Time is the name of a documentary covering the era in the DVD of The Ribos Operation)

The Reign of Turner 1, or Fighting Entropy (John Nathan-Turner, season 18. The Reign of Turner is the name of a satirical video made by fans, but I felt it an appropriate title for this period of the show's history)

The Reign of Turner 2, or Number Five is Alive! (JNT, seasons 19-21, excluding The Twin Dilemma)

The Reign of Turner 3, or Trials and Tribulations (JNT, seasons 22-23 plus The Twin Dilemma. Trials and Tribulations is the documentary examining the Colin Baker era on the DVD for Trial of a Timelord: The Ultimate Foe)

The Reign of Turner 4, or A Parting of Ways(JNT, seasons 24-26)

Plus the TV Movie by itself.

Once we get to the new series, I pretty much go from season to season. So, we'll have...

Doctor Who Reborn, or Trip of a Lifetime (new series 1)

Enter David Tennant, or Friends and Enemies Old and New (new series 2)

You Are Not Alone, or The Doctor and the Medical Student (new series 3)

The Song is Ending, or Shapes of Things to Come (new series 4)

Vale Decem, or I Don't Wanna Go (specials)

A Mad Man With a Box, or Silence Will Fall (series 5)

Demons Run, or Family Values (series 6, or at least what has been done of it so far)

REVIEW: Horror of Fang Rock by Terrance Dicks

SERIAL: 4V, 4X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: No.


The origin of Horror of Fang Rock was a curious one. Terrance Dicks originally wrote a vampire-based story, but the BBC vetoed it because they were doing a high-profile dramatisation of Dracula. Dicks' vampire script seemed set to drift into limbo, although it would be later resurrected as the season 18 story State of Decay. Robert Holmes, having been (in Dicks' own words) dragged kicking and screaming into a story set in medieval England (The Time Warrior), did the same thing to Dicks, requesting a story set in a lighthouse. Though reluctant, Dicks agreed, and in doing so, wrote one of his best scripts for Doctor Who...

Landing on the small island of Fang Rock, the Doctor and Leela find that there has been a death in the nearby lighthouse. One of the remaining crew thinks that the newfangled electrical system may be to blame, while the other had seen a strange light plunge into the sea. When the lighthouse fails, and a ship wrecks on Fang Rock, the tension continues to rise. There is a legend of a horrible Beast of Fang Rock, but the reality is a lot worse: an alien with the ability to manipulate the weather, kill with electric shocks, and an even more terrifying power that has the Doctor making a mistake that could prove fatal...

At its core, this is not unlike some of the 'base under siege' stories that proliferated in Doctor Who during the sixties. Take a group of humans isolated, stir well, and add an alien menace to the mix. Add to this Dicks' strong understanding of structure, and it makes for a well-written horror story. It certainly seems to owe much to the previous seasons' Gothic undertones, and the tension is thick enough to cut with a knife.

Dicks seems to have a bit of trouble with characters. While they are all acted well (Colin Douglas' Reuben and Alan Rowe's Skinsale being particularly well done), the actual writing feels a little flat. Palmerdale makes no secret of his intentions, and Adelaide is a screaming hysterical paranoiac. Harker seems to bond with the Doctor rather too readily. Indeed, besides the creature and the regulars, only Reuben and Vince are reasonably well written. The Doctor and Leela are, as usual, acted well by Tom Baker and Louise Jameson, and apparently, due to Jameson asserting herself, she gained respect from Baker.

The production design is mostly faultless. The models and sets are perfect, with the exception of a slightly dodgy yacht crash and the Rutan spaceship at the end. The realisation of the Rutan itself is variable. While it looks good from a distance and while more or less at rest, while moving, it looks rather dodgy. That being said, it was a nice touch of Dicks to make the creature a Rutan, already mentioned to be the eternal adversaries of the Sontarans, and the contrast with the Sontarans is interesting.

Overall, Horror of Fang Rock, while not perfect, is still a pretty damn good example of what can be done. Rather bleak in the end, but it's a very good story fit enough to make your hair stand on end, or maybe make your eyes change colour...


SCORE: 9/10

EDIT: BTW, forgot to add the DVD trailer for the next story, The Invisible Enemy, as well as K9 and Company: A Girl's Best Friend.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFjCrsPEHA0[/youtube]

For those of you wondering, yes, I will be reviewing K9 and Company: A Girl's Best Friend, and I will be doing it after Logopolis as part of the 18th season review.

REVIEW: The Invisible Enemy by Bob Baker and Dave Martin

SERIAL: 4T, 4X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: Yes.


Out of the various companions of the Doctor, one of those who continues to provoke division of opinion is K9. That he is popular with a large section of the fanbase is without doubt, and he continues to appear in the series, even after being written out, and not only plays a substantial role in The Sarah Jane Adventures, but also has his own spin-off, filmed in Brisbane. But what of his origins? Was he really so endearing in his first story? Let's find out...

In the year 5000, humanity is poised to spread across the stars in a really big way. But something seeks to challenge that dominance. First, a shuttle carrying a relief crew for the Titan Base, and then the TARDIS flies through a mysterious cloud. The relief crew and the Doctor are infected by a mysterious virus that seems unable to infect Leela. With Lowe, the supervisor of the Titan Base, Leela takes the Doctor to the Bi-Al Foundation in the asteroid belt for treatment against the virus, treatment that Professor Marius and his dog-like mobile computer, K9, hope to give him. But Lowe has already been infected with the virus, and the virus, the Nucleus of the Swarm, wishes to conquer the macroscopic realm as well as the microscopic. Using an unstable cloning technique and a dimensional stabiliser, the Doctor and Leela embark on a voyage to defeat the Nucleus from within the Doctor's own body. But can they stop the Nucleus? Was the reason why Leela couldn't be infected biological, or because of her intuitive nature? And what does the Nucleus want with Titan Base, or for that matter, the Doctor?

I once read that Bob Baker and Dave Martin were noteworthy for putting in catchphrases into their stories. In The Hand of Fear, it was "Eldrad must live!". In Underworld, it was "The quest is the quest". And here, it is "Contact has been made." The Bristol Boys are good at bringing in decent storylines that nonetheless do not quite excel. That being said, a lot of The Invisible Enemy looks quite good on paper compared to their earlier works. Titan being used as a refuelling station, a special hospital in the asteroid belt, and an eccentric physician with a computer dog.

The characters are functionally written rather than being spectacular, but they do get performed well. Although most human characters lose interesting characteristics once infected by the Swarm, Michael Sheard as Lowe still is compelling even after infected, a rare villainous role for him in Doctor Who. Frederick Jaegar, compared to his more serious Sorenson in Planet of Evil, plays Professor Marius as an eccentric, almost comical figure with a Germanic accent that nonetheless manages to work, although why he readily gives up his much-loved K9 to the Doctor and Leela without much sadness (even given the weight penalty). And John Leeson pulls double duty as the voice of K9, in which he is still finding his feet but manages to do a decent job, and the Nucleus's voice, which is probably the only good thing about the realisation of that character. Tom Baker and Louise Jameson do well, as usual, as the Doctor and Leela, with Baker particularly getting some interesting lines when he is fighting against the influence of the Nucleus.

If there is one part of the story that is disappointing, it's the production design, which isn't bad as such as at times inconsistent. The writers' idea of phonetic English is inspired, but does come across as a little silly-looking in practice, and the sets are mostly functional, though the sequences set in the Doctor's body are astoundingly well realised. The model effects are also amongst the best in the series, but unfortunately, there are some rather dodgy video effects and one obviously re-set 'burnt pillar' (all of which, incidentally, I replaced using the CGI effects on the DVD), and the Nucleus, when at human size, looks more comical than menacing, being a rather melodramatic giant prawn with waving pincers. However, the new TARDIS control room is good, and K9, despite his limitations, is an endearing design brought to life by John Leeson's performance.

The Invisible Enemy isn't really bad, or even average, but it tries and fails to punch above its own weight. With a better budget and a few writing revisions here and there, it could have been much better. Still, as an introduction to the character of K9, it was a good one.


SCORE: 8.5/10

Here's the DVD trailer for the next story, Image of the Fendahl. It took me a while to find this trailer, as there weren't any others, and this one had the title spelt wrong.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOIO-6BZwRA[/youtube]