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28 Feb 2011, 10:02 pm

After some time of considering this, I have decided to do an equivalent of my book-reading blog (the latest one can be read here) in watching the vast majority of Doctor Who adventures, in order.

Why am I doing this? I have a LOT of Doctor Who DVDs, but I actually haven't watched even half of the stories, I think. I buy them usually for the special features. So, I decided, why not watch them, and review each story?

The rules are as follows:

*I am to watch every Doctor Who DVD that I can obtain on DVD that has been released as of the end of February in Australia. In other words, up to The Mutants in terms of release order, rather than transmission order. However, if I have not reached a later release by the time I actually obtain it, I must watch it if I can obtain it. In other words, given that the next release will be The Ark, if I obtain that before I move from the previous available story (The Time Meddler), I am required to watch it.

*These stories will be watched in story order. That is, from An Unearthly Child onwards.

*Only stories with complete audio-visual representation can be counted. Thus, Lost in Time's fragmentary episodes do not count, nor do their audio episodes that bridge the gaps. In other words, The Crusade and The Moonbase, despite full audio recording being available on Lost in Time, do not count. However, The Invasion, which uses animation to fill the gaps, does count as a story.

*I have a week to watch and review each story. The next story will count as a week from the previous review.

*Only the classic series counts. In other words, from An Unearthly Child to Doctor Who: The Movie.

*If the DVD has a special edition version that adds scenes and special effects, but is not edited down, then I may watch it in lieu of the original program. Thus, The Five Doctors, Battlefield, and The Curse of Fenric may count, but Enlightenment and Planet of Fire do not.

*If a DVD contains the option to replace the original effects with CGI, I am permitted to do so, providing that I have either watched the original story beforehand sans CGI, or else I watch a sample of the original effects before reviewing the story.

*The Trial of a Timelord, when I get to it, will be reviewed in four separate parts, and then as a whole. Each part counts as a separate review.

*The review can optionally include a review of the special features included on the DVD, but this is not necessary. The story is what matters.

Any questions? I may post the first later today.


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28 Feb 2011, 11:26 pm

REVIEW: An Unearthly Child by Anthony Coburn

SERIAL
: A, 4X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: Yes.

The first time I saw An Unearthly Child, sometimes called 100,000 BC (I'm going with DVD titles here) was back in 1993, two years into my obsession with Doctor Who. They repeated this story on the ABC at the time. It has been at least a decade, if not a lot longer, since I saw it last, and now coming back to it, I am brought back to when I was an excitable little brat of a Doctor Who fan.

Two schoolteachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, are concerned about the actions of one of their students, Susan Foreman. With brilliant knowledge in some areas, and appalling knowledge in others, and with a grandfather who does not like strangers, they become concerned enough to follow her to her given home address in a junkyard, where the only thing of note is a police box. They encounter Susan's irascible grandfather, who calls himself the Doctor, and force their way into the police box...which turns out to be a time machine. Abducting the schoolteachers in order to avoid drawing attention to Susan and himself, the Doctor hurtles them back in time to prehistoric times, where a tribe of cavepeople are struggling over how to make fire...

The first episode, minus some parts that might be unusual to a modern audience (it would be a rare teacher who could follow their student home nowadays out of curiosity without being accused of some sort of malicious intent), is an excellent start to the series, opening with the eerie strains of the theme tune being played over a fog-wreathed junkyard. Being familiar with the series for so long, it is an effort to put myself into the shoes of a first-time viewer who suddenly goes from a small police box into the interior of a vast space and time machine. But it is wonderful when you do look at it like that.

The performances of the four regulars is excellent, although both Carol Ann Ford as Susan and Jacqueline Hill as Barbara seem a little overinclined, in this serial at least, to melodrama, and William Russell as Ian, at times, is annoying with his initial scepticism. It is something of a shock, coming from later series, to have the Doctor as an not truly likeable character, and while some of his rudeness is justifiable, there are times when he seems downright callous, including, later on, being caught about to try and murder a wounded caveman. However, he does show some initiative and gives reasonable explanations at a couple of points. He doesn't seem like a main character quite yet, given that this is more of a family ensemble, but given time...

The latter three episodes of the story, however, are a little disappointing. Cavepeople don't make exactly good viewing, and while the examination of how primitive politics came about does bring it up a notch, very few of the performances seem real, with the exception of Derek Newark as Za and Alethea Charlton as Hur, the only cavepeople to have any depth to them. And even then, they are extraordinarily mercurial, and stupidly so.

All in all, An Unearthly Child, taken all together, is an average introduction to the world of Doctor Who. The first episode is great, but the subsequent ones fairly average. The magic is there, but it'll take time to grow.

(Note, for this serial only, I have given separate ratings for the first episode, and the subsequent episodes of the serial)

First episode: 9/10

Episodes 2-4: 7.5/10


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01 Mar 2011, 4:42 am

REVIEW: The Daleks by Terry Nation

SERIAL
: B, 7X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: No.


I have only seen the first Dalek story more or less by proxy, by both the novelisation by David Whitaker, and the movie adaptation starring Peter Cushing. I also have a dim and distant memory of hiring a VHS from a video store that had the second half of this story on it, but I have never finished the story, until now...

The Doctor and his travelling companions, his granddaughter Susan and her teachers and reluctant fellow travellers, Ian and Barbara, land on a planet devastated by some past catastrophe. Stumbling through a dead, petrified forest, they find a metal city which the Doctor is determined to explore, going so far as to sabotage the TARDIS. But the planet Skaro is far from dead. Mutant beings known as the Daleks and the Thals populate the planet, and the time travellers are beginning to suffer from radiation sickness, the remnant of a devastating nuclear war...

Having watched and enjoyed Genesis of the Daleks before in the past, it's strange to see something that conflicts with that definitive version of Dalek origins, although this can be passed over. Indeed, in this story, the Daleks are cunning, intelligent creatures with a monomaniacal focus. The groundbreaking design of Raymond Cusick's from Terry Nation's descriptions still make an impression, even today.

The atmosphere, from Terry Nation's writing, Raymond Cusick's designs, and Tristram Cary's eerie electronic music, is palpable, especially during the first few episodes, but still prevalent throughout. And while the production values themselves weren't high, the designs more than make up for it.

The main cast are also settling into their roles nicely, with William Hartnell's Doctor showing an immature, petulant streak that eventually becomes more humane even as the story progresses. This is a Doctor who can make mistakes, and bad ones. He is also willing to endanger the lives of his co-travellers, even his granddaughter, in order to get his own way. William Russell and Jacqueline Hill as Ian and Barbara respectively show the development of their characters into people who can take the initiative, and even stand up to the Doctor, while Carol Ann Ford's Susan gets a defining moment when she rushes through a terrifying jungle, in the dark and during a storm, in order to obtain some anti-radiation drugs.

There are two main disappointments with the story. The most noticeable is the Thals, who, while very functional in the story, are more fixed in their character development, with the exceptions of Temmosus, Alydon, and Dyoni, who develop, if only a little. Their costumes aside, however, they are still an interesting concept. While the Daleks are clearly analogies for the Nazis, the Thals are, ironically enough, an Aryan ideal, albeit after massive mutations. I was also impressed with the fact that Ian actually agonises over the decision to force the Thals to act against their pacifistic tendencies, and does it in a way that doesn't completely compromise their ideology (pacifism doesn't mean a thing when you are up against beings that wish to kill all of your kind, so fighting for self-preservation is fine).

The other main problem with the story is, like many stories of this length, it feels a little too long and laboured, though there isn't quite that much padding. There were also a number of cheesy special effects, the most egregious offender being a rubber tube being visble underneath the body of one monster.

Overall, The Daleks was an enjoyable story, despite some bad special effects and disappointing characterisation of the Thals. Eerie, atmospheric, and introducing an impressively deadly enemy, the first of many for the Doctor, and one which would turn out to be very popular indeed...



SCORE: 8.5/10


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02 Mar 2011, 4:41 am

Okay, to anyone who is actually bothering to read this, I have managed to procure the first of the DVDs actually missing from my collection that still fulfills the criteria, The Keys of Marinus. I won't be watching that until I watch and finish The Edge of Destruction.

So, the next few stories will be:

The Edge of Destruction
The Keys of Marinus
The Aztecs
The Dalek Invasion of Earth


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03 Mar 2011, 3:37 am

REVIEW: The Edge of Destruction by David Whitaker

SERIAL
: C, 2X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: No.


Television production is a fickle thing, and oftentimes, scripts fall through, and need to be replaced. Sometimes, last minute scripts are of low quality, but many a time on Doctor Who, this is not the case. Faced with the need to make up a block of thirteen episodes, with eleven episodes already made and not a big enough budget to cover a two-part adventure, script editor David Whitaker also had to transform the admittedly antagonistic relationship between the Doctor and his travelling companions into something better. No mean feat...

An explosion rocks the TARDIS, and when the four time travellers regain consciousness, they are not themselves, having memory losses and attacks of paranoia. The TARDIS is acting strangely too. Tensions mount, with the Doctor fixated on the idea that Ian and Barbara are the ones responsible, in order to force him to return them to their home. In reality, though, they are on the edge of destruction, and their time is running out...

In television terms, this would be called a 'bottle episode', cheaply done on a minimum of sets. A similar story was used in 2008's episode Midnight, with many of the same trappings (a mysterious explosion, infection by paranoia, threats to throw them out of the safe environment into a hostile one) and written for the same reasons. It's a great way to write character into it, and character is what The Edge of Destruction has in spades.

The cast get into their roles with great aplomb, acting this out very well, but kudos must especially go to William Hartnell as the Doctor, and Jacqueline Hill as Barbara. Hartnell's acting shows the Doctor in what would seem to be today extreme paranoia, although his threat to throw Ian and Barbara off the ship seems like something Christopher Eccleston's Doctor might do (he did in The Long Game to the admittedly misbehaving Adam Mitchell, and his rant at Rose Tyler and his seeming intent to abandon her in Father's Day would fit in well with Hartnell's paranoia in this story). But you can see the moment when he realises that he was wrong, and his Doctor's rather clumsy attempts at comforting and not-quite-apologising to Barbara at the end do much to signpost where this once arrogant character is going.

This story, well before the lauded The Aztecs, is Barbara's time to shine, with Barbara pointing out quite justly to the Doctor that he owes both herself and Ian his life many times over, as well as her own working out of what is happening to the TARDIS. Jacqueline Hill is excellent, showing that Barbara was perhaps one of the best developed female companions of the 1960s era of Doctor Who.

About the only thing really marring this excellent two-parter is a rather infamous felt-tip written sign above a control important to the story. And while the solution to the problem is anticlimactic, it is still the closest thing to perfection that Doctor Who would reach in the 1960s. This is where the antiheroic Doctor became a more heroic version, and how even his companions can stand up to him...



SCORE: 10/10


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05 Mar 2011, 10:30 pm

The next will be The Keys of Marinus, followed shortly (I hope) by The Aztecs and The Dalek Invasion of Earth. I hope to finish all my available black and white Doctor Who stories before I lose my momentum. That means that I will be watching, hopefully, at least (from The Aztecs onwards):

The Aztecs

The Dalek Invasion of Earth

The Rescue

The Romans

The Web Planet

The Space Museum

The Chase

The Time Meddler

The War Machines

Tomb of the Cybermen

The Dominators

The Mind Robber

The Invasion

The Seeds of Death

The War Games


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05 Mar 2011, 11:37 pm

REVIEW: The Keys of Marinus by Terry Nation

SERIAL
: E, 6X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: No.


While the vast majority of Terry Nation's output with Doctor Who involved the Daleks (with 7 stories written and another co-written by Nation), he also wrote two stories that did not involve the Daleks. This was the first, a quest romp called The Keys of Marinus...

Landing on an island in the middle of a sea of acid, the Doctor and his companions explore a nearby temple, only to find it under siege by a group of people known as the Voord. The resident of the temple, Arbitan, is the sole custodian of a machine known as the Conscience of Marinus, which prevents evil thoughts from being thought. The Voords and their leader, Yartek, have found a way to counteract the machine, and Arbitan was forced to scatter the operating circuit keys to the far corners of the planet Marinus, until he could make the Conscience strong enough to override the Voords. The Doctor and his companions are coerced into searching for the keys, but every place they are in is dangerous. From a decadent city with a dark secret, to a temple nearly overrun by a jungle, from a frozen wasteland, to a city whose legal system means that defendants are guilty until proven innocent, the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara must find the keys of Marinus before it is too late...

One thing that Terry Nation gets almost consistently right throughout these stories is atmosphere. The first four episodes in particular are stellar in atmosphere if nothing else. The problem is, given the production values and changing settings every episode, you can see the poor designer struggling to come up with decent sets every week. The fourth episode's ice caves are a particularly notorious offender, as you can often see the styrofoam in the icicles.

Many of the weekly perils, while not always strongly written, manage to contain enough peril. The second episode, about a decadent city that is truly dirty and ragged under the surface, I feel, could have filled a larger story, and the third episode, while it does overstay its welcome, does have a decent feeling of terror. The fourth episode's main human threat, Vasor, manages to go down in infamy as being perhaps the first attempted rapist in Doctor Who, in an adult scene for a children's program (it doesn't go that far, obviously, but he was either going to rape her, or keep her as a slave).

Unfortunately, the trial sequence, while based on an intriguing concept, and had echoes of Terry Nation's later work Blake's 7, overstays its welcome by too long, and while it is excellent to see the Doctor acting as a CSI, it is still a little too dry a part of the story. The final sequence, while a decent conclusion, is something of a disappointment, as is the whole story. And the characters, besides the Doctor and the other regulars, are something of a disappointment, apparently having little depth to them.

This would be an average story, filled with more incident than character and true drama, but unfortunately is let down by a creak in production values. Not abysmal, by any means, and still watchable and, to a degree, enjoyable, but not quite good enough. Why a story like this survived and not, say, Marco Polo, which preceded it, is a mystery.


SCORE: 6.5/10


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06 Mar 2011, 2:27 am

If you wonder if anyone's reading this, I, as a fellow Whovian certainly am. Great reviews. :)



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06 Mar 2011, 3:05 am

SpaceProg wrote:
If you wonder if anyone's reading this, I, as a fellow Whovian certainly am. Great reviews. :)


Thank you. I was wondering. I am doing the reviews purposefully in order of transmission, and as long as the story has been released on DVD in Australia up to and including The Mutants, the Jon Pertwee story. I can include DVDs released since then, but there is no obligation on me to do so. I'm not convinced that I am going to review The Ark, which is out in Australia by now. Although I could buy it, I am trying to restrict my spending at the moment, and I have also just learned that Colin Baker (who I admittedly have met once before) will be attending Supanova at Brisbane in early April, and I want to save money before heading there. I was humming and hah-ing about attending because Eric Roberts (the Master in the Doctor Who telemovie), Christopher Lloyd (I loved Back to the Future), Yuko Miyamura (the Japanese actress for Asuka from Evangelion, whom I have met before) and Tiffany Grant (the English actress for Asuka) would be there, but I'm more inclined to go now.

I'm about a third of the way through The Aztecs, which I have watched once before. While period drama is never my sort of thing (I'm not a fan of the historical stories, I'm afraid), it's still a pretty damn good story.


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06 Mar 2011, 11:57 pm

I am nearly finished with The Aztecs. Only the last episode to finish...


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07 Mar 2011, 12:45 am

REVIEW: The Aztecs by John Lucarotti

SERIAL
: F, 4X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: Yes.


I'm not exactly fond of period drama, and the purely historical Doctor Who stories are not as interesting to me as those historicals with a science fiction element to them. Even so, both the production proper and the writing can often be at their best when doing period drama, and the last story available on DVD from Doctor Who's first season, The Aztecs, is an excellent demonstration of this.

When the TARDIS lands in a tomb in Aztec Mexico, Barbara, having put on the bracelet of a long-dead priest called Yetaxa, is hailed as the reincarnated form of Yetaxa when she emerges from the tomb. Barbara, knowing of the beauty and savagery of the Aztecs, is determined to put a stop to the human sacrifices so that Cortez won't destroy their civilisation, but in trying to change history, she makes an enemy of the High Priest of Sacrifice, Tlotoxl. While Ian is manipulated into a rivalry with the proud and cunning warrior Ixta, Susan and the Doctor find themselves engaged, unwillingly and unwittingly, respectively. Barbara has an ally in the enlightened Autloc, High Priset of Knowledge, but with the malevolent Tlotoxl determined to destroy her, she'll find rewriting history to be a difficult task...

I have heard that the designers of this story did extensive research into the Aztec culture, and regardless of accuracy, the story is rich in design. What a pity this story was not made in colour. Production values, for the most part, are high, although there are one too many obvious painted backdrops and crappy stock footage of a storm.

Out of the regulars, only Susan's role is disappointing, and although she would improve in the next transmitted story, The Sensorites, seeing how she is written here makes me wonder whether this story played a role in her later departure. Ian and his rivalry with Ixta (albeit mostly on Ixta's part) is well done, and the Doctor's gentle romance with Aztec woman Cameca (albeit mostly one-sided) is a light interlude that plays an important role in the story.

However, it is Jacqueline Hill as Barbara who stands out again in this story. After demonstrating an ability to stand up to the Doctor in The Edge of Destruction, she shows that she is more than capable of standing up to Tlotoxl. And while her stubborn refusal, at first, to accept that, in the Doctor's words, 'you cannot rewrite history, not one line!', is a little grating, Barbara's strength of character shines through in that she is doing it to preserve Aztec culture, even though she soon attracts trouble. Her doubts and drives move the story forward, and her clashes with Tlotoxl are amongst the best written scenes.

Out of the guest characters, three stand out. Tlotoxl, the High Priest of Sacrifice, is played by John Ringham as Richard the Third's Aztec equivalent, a cunning but venomous man who is not out to dominate the world, but rather cling onto his powerbase. Autloc is portrayed as a conflicted, gentle man torn between upholding the traditions and his disquiet at the more vicious aspects of society, and whose faith in Yetaxa is portrayed as realistically being strained. And finally, Cameca, the first woman on-screen shown to win the heart of the Doctor, even if part of it is due to misunderstanding. The then apparently 28 or 29-year old Margot van der Burgh does a good job of playing a middle-aged Aztec woman with a certain degree of depth to her.

The same cannot be said of the other characters. Tonila appears to be a yes-man to Tlotoxl, and Ixta is basically the muscle who is as obsessed with destroying Ian as Tlotoxl is with destroying Barbara. And this story seems to be an exercise in getting many of the characters into very sadistic situations. Susan is forced into an engagement that, because she refuses, is threatened with being scourged, Ian is put into some very bad situations ranging from nearly being throttled by Ixta to being drowned, and Barbara is put into increasingly distraught confrontations with both Tlotoxl and Autloc as her divinity is questioned.

Nonetheless, The Aztecs was a good story. You want to see how well the BBC can do period dramas, go and watch The Aztecs.



SCORE: 9/10


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07 Mar 2011, 1:46 am

I think the black and white kind of helps some of the stories as it can hide some flaws that colour would bring out. The Aztecs is one that could go either way. If you don't look at the non-descript, obvious studio flooring it looks quite good for its day.

I think with DW, especially the earlier stories, the historical episodes tended to be a bit more... carefully done as far as costuming and props, because the show was borrowing a lot of its historical and period costuming and the like from the BBC Drama Dept. which had all kinds of nice stuff. It's the other-planetary and futuristic sets that the show sometimes suffered because of lack of money (as they didn't have much of a sci-fi department and was centered mostly in the children's dept.
The show (Classic DW anyway) I always viewed as a perfect example of doing the absolute best that you could with what little you had (for the most part).

I've enjoyed reading your observations and opinions, Quatermass. I hope you continue. :)



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07 Mar 2011, 4:47 am

SpaceProg wrote:
I think the black and white kind of helps some of the stories as it can hide some flaws that colour would bring out. The Aztecs is one that could go either way. If you don't look at the non-descript, obvious studio flooring it looks quite good for its day.

I think with DW, especially the earlier stories, the historical episodes tended to be a bit more... carefully done as far as costuming and props, because the show was borrowing a lot of its historical and period costuming and the like from the BBC Drama Dept. which had all kinds of nice stuff. It's the other-planetary and futuristic sets that the show sometimes suffered because of lack of money (as they didn't have much of a sci-fi department and was centered mostly in the children's dept.
The show (Classic DW anyway) I always viewed as a perfect example of doing the absolute best that you could with what little you had (for the most part).

I've enjoyed reading your observations and opinions, Quatermass. I hope you continue. :)


Thanks. Many of these, I am watching for the first time. Out of the...six I have watched so far, I have only watched two from beginning to end before.


REVIEW: The Dalek Invasion of Earth by Terry Nation

SERIAL
: K, 6X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: No.


While The Daleks helped bring Doctor Who's popularity to an unexpected level, it was the second Dalek story, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, that elevated Doctor Who, and the Daleks themselves, to major success. No longer were they confined to the metal cities of Skaro. Now, they come to us...

The Doctor and his companions land in 22nd century London, devastated after some unknown apocalypse. While separated in order to find equipment to free the TARDIS from a pile of debris, the Doctor and Ian are captured by the conquerors of Earth, while Barbara and Susan are found by a resistance movement. For the Daleks have invaded Earth, but why? What are they digging for in a mine at Bedfordshire, and is there any hope of stopping them?

The first two thirds of this story is wonderful and atmospheric, supplemented with the first extensive location filming used for Doctor Who (the first story was The Reign of Terror, but this was the first time substantial filming was done), showing a chilling London patrolled by Daleks, landmarks marked by Dalek letters. And the non-regular characters, for the most part, all have interesting attributes to them, especially the main resistance fighters David, Tyler, and Jenny. So are the regulars, each of them showing off their skills.

However, the story proper, once it gets to the Dalek's plan, gets rather trite and cliched, filled with not even pseudoscientific BS, and while this particular plothole was apparently explained in later Doctor Who spin-off fiction, it still seems rather naff. So too are many of the effects, even when the option is available on the DVD to turn on the CGI effects. At least one model sequence is pretty badly done, and in the original, the Dalek saucers are, well, B-movie style, like part of the plot.

That being said, this is definitely the story that establishes the Daleks as continuing threats in Doctor Who. They are chilling and nasty, and prove themselves to be even greater threats in this story than before, crappy plan notwithstanding. And Terry Nation is better at characterisation here than he was in The Daleks and The Keys of Marinus.

But perhaps most important of all is the departure of Susan. While hinted at throughout the story, the actual event itself is rather abrupt, but it is movingly written, with the Doctor, feeling that his granddaughter is now grown up, has her stay with the man she has fallen in with. The end is moving, even though it is not the last time the Doctor and Susan would meet.

The Dalek Invasion of Earth, while flawed and could have been better, is still an enjoyable, atmospheric romp. With the Daleks on Earth, free from the confines of Skaro, they are now even more of a menace than ever...


SCORE: 8.5/10


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07 Mar 2011, 7:05 am

REVIEW: The Rescue by David Whitaker

SERIAL
: L, 2X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: Yes.


Just under two years ago, Australian actor Ray Barrett died. He died not far from where I live. I find this a great pity because I wonder if there was any way I could have met the man before he died. After all, I had enjoyed, to a degree, his performance as Bennett from this Doctor Who adventure, a two-part mystery called The Rescue...

Having freshly left Susan on Earth, the Doctor, Ian, and Barbara land on the planet Dido, a planet, according to the Doctor, populated by peaceful beings. But a spacecraft from Earth has crashed on Dido, and the surviving inhabitants, teenaged Vicki and crippled Bennett, live in fear of the enigmatic alien Koquillion. Koquillion claims that he is the only thing standing between the survivors and a hostile native population, but have the Didonians really become an aggressive people? Or is the explanation closer to home?

Being a two-parter in an era of Doctor Who where stories could range from four to up to seven episodes easily, The Rescue is rather thinly plotted. This story, after all, is more of a vehicle to introduce the new companion, Vicki, who is played fairly well, if a little too shrilly, by Maureen O'Brien. While most of the time, her distress is somewhat understandable (having lost both of her parents in a relatively short period of time), it can get grating.

Ray Barrett puts on a good performance, and, well, here be spoilers, plays the dual role of Bennett and Koquillion fairly well. He once said that, upon being told that his story out-rated the Dalek story preceding it, he would have that put on his tombstone, a fitting epitaph. The regulars give decent performances, with William Hartnell's Doctor becoming better inclined towards his travelling companions, being more of a doddery old man than an irascible antihero, but he nonetheless shows his mental and physical mettle in this story, and Barbara makes a rare mistake that puts her on the wrong foot with Vicki when she shoots Vicki's pet 'monster', with the performances involved done well.

However, this is a story with a number of problems, as entertaining as it is. It's rather thin on the ground, especially compared to David Whitaker's far superior previous two-parter The Edge of Destruction. The rather deus ex machina appearance of the Didonians at the end is very unsatisfying, too.

Still, The Rescue is a nice interlude between Doctor Who stories, introducing a new companion for the first time since the beginning, and as long as you don't think too hard about it, moderately entertaining.



SCORE: 8/10


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07 Mar 2011, 7:16 am

Oh, and by the way, just before each story, if there is one available, I will post a YouTube video of the Coming Soon trailer. Coming Soon trailers are on many of the DVDs, for every story from Time-Flight/Arc of Infinity onwards in terms of releases. They are not available for every story, and many of them are combined trailers. Unfortunately, they've removed them from Australian releases. The Rescue/The Romans was supposed to have a trailer for Attack of the Cybermen, but had its trailer removed. All subsequent Aussie releases, much to my disappointment, don't have them... :(

Just a warning: many of these trailers have flashing effects. While very few have strobing effects, I thought I might warn anyone who reads this thread who may potentially have epilepsy.

This trailer is for The Keys of Marinus...

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


...and this is for The Rescue/The Romans...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl1Q2_KpUW0[/youtube]


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08 Mar 2011, 5:18 am

REVIEW: The Romans by Dennis Spooner

SERIAL
: M, 4X25 minute episodes

SEEN IT BEFORE?: Yes.


While comedy, at the right times, makes an excellent contribution to Doctor Who, it is a matter of opinion as to how much should be done. Perhaps the first overtly comedic Doctor Who story, The Romans was written by Dennis Spooner, who wrote the less comedic The Reign of Terror. And while it has equally grim subject matter, The Romans is not quite as serious as the previous Spooner story...

The time travellers take advantage of a vacated villa to have a holiday. However, a month into it, and both the Doctor and new companion Vicki are getting restless, and head off to Rome, only to come across murdered lyre player Maximus Petullian, whom the Doctor is mistaken for. Meanwhile, a pair of slave traders raid the villa and capture the relaxing Ian and Barbara, and while Ian is sold to a slave galley, Barbara is bought for the household of the emperor Nero, whom the Doctor, as Petullian, is meant to play the lyre for. Can Ian and Barbara escape slavery and, in Barbara's case, the lust of Nero and the wrath of Nero's wife, Poppaea? Why was Maximus Petullian murdered? What was his true purpose coming to Rome? And can the Doctor, who can't play the lyre, fool the court of the demented emperor?

The story is fairly light on character compared to some previous stories, but there are still some interesting characters, such as Ian's fellow slave Delos and the devious Tavius. Nero's characterisation owes a lot, I am told, to the Nero of Quo Vadis, and it certainly is an entertaining interpretation of the character, who (especially as played by Derek Francis) can be a childish buffoon one moment, and a chilling psychopath the next.

The actors for most of these all give pretty good performances, and the regulars, including newcomer Maureen O'Brien's Vicki, get many a moment to shine, although Barbara, for the most part, tends to be chased up and down corridors by the amorous Nero for most of the third episode. Even the Doctor has a spectacular fight with a mute assassin, managing to humiliate him in a brilliant fight sequence, and manages to use his wits to solve the problem that he cannot play a lyre.

The storyline itself, as noted earlier, is more about incident than character, and plays out, especially in episode 3, like a farce, with Barbara missing the Doctor and Vicki by mere moments. For what it is worth, though, The Romans does show as much of the darker side of Roman society as would be permissable on children's TV at the time, with slave-trading, poisonings, assassinations, gladiatorial combat and, of course, Nero's mad plan to burn down Rome.

While the production design proper is quite well done, much of the effects work, especially for the great fire of Rome sequence at the end, is pretty naff. And while comedy in Doctor Who is not always a bad thing, here, it seems like they did too much, particularly at the expense of the story.

All in all, The Romans was moderately enjoyable. A not too bad historical, but one that certainly would not reach the heights that The Aztecs did. Decent enough, but a little too silly for its own good.



SCORE: 8/10


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