Random Who Report: Terror of the Autons

There are only a few Doctor Who stories which are really direct sequels, but "Terror of the Autons" occupies an interesting space. It's a reprise of "Spearhead from Space", the third Doctor's inaugural story, not just in reintroducing that story's villains, but also in accomplishing another tweak to the show's format. It gives the Doctor an adversary, the Master, an evil Time Lord who's just about his intellectual equal. That alone guarantees its significance, even if the story sometimes plays like a dry run for the season to follow; it ends up being fairly effective, but takes a while to get to its payoff.

Doctor Who At 50: The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964)

Doctor Who survived because of the Daleks. True, it reinvented itself many times over and insinuated itself as a British institution, but before any of that, the only reason the show made it past year one is that audiences went crazy over a bunch of genocidal salt shakers. When the show's second season began, a sequel to "The Daleks" was inevitable, but Terry Nation commendably improves on his own work to deliver one of the best stories of William Hartnell's run, a postapocalyptic epic which cements the Daleks as classic villains.

Random Who Report: The Mind Robber (1968)

Doctor Who often straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy; current showrunner Steven Moffatt enjoys invoking a fairy tale feeling, and it's a tradition that goes all the way back to the show's misty black-and-white beginnings. "The Mind Robber" is an especially bold step outside the show's traditional trappings of alien monsters and invasions from space, a piece of metafiction taking us into the land of make-believe as if the show didn't exist there already. The fourth-wall breakage may be in the tradition of Sixties surrealism, but it manages to do this without actually shattering our suspension of disbelief. In the end it does some amazing stuff.

Random Who Report: Planet of the Spiders (1974)

The Doctors' final stories tended to be ambitious undertakings, and Pertwee's definitely follows in that tradition. "Planet of the Spiders" is not only the last of the third Doctor's adventures and a semi-sequel to "The Green Death" from a season ago, but also a trippy Buddhist allegory about death and rebirth. It has a lot on its plate and is kinda disjointed as a result, but pulls itself together at the end to provide a fitting send-off for the actor who had, up to that point, played the character of the Doctor longer than anyone else.

Random Who Report: Planet of Fire (1984)

While classic Doctor Who stories often have the feel of movies, it was still a weekly television show. Sometimes episodes had to fill functions in a larger story, and for Planet of Fire a number of those functions intersected- the departure of a compaion, the arrival of a new one, dealing with a recurring character and giving us another round with one of the show's most popular villains. Peter Davison's penultimate story works pretty well under these circumstances, and if it lacks a certain urgency, it makes a good pause for breath between two much grimmer serials.

Random Who Report: The Five Doctors (1983)

There's a first time for everything. "The Five Doctors" was the very first Doctor Who story I ever saw, when all I knew about the show was a few passages in sci-fi books, the Peter Cushing film Dr. Who and the Daleks, and faint memories of seeing something really creepy on PBS. "The Five Doctors" was a twentieth-anniversary special that ran as a full 90-minute feature (as opposed to being serialized), and while it's not the best story of its era, it's a good introduction, a pastiche of several familiar faces and story elements into a fun if scattershot story. Oh, and it's not quite five Doctors, but we'll get to that.

Monsterthon: Random Who Report: The Curse of Fenric (1989)

Picking a “monster-centric” installment of DOCTOR WHO seems kind of difficult, since monsters are a major part of the show on any given week. But some stories are more horrific than others, and “Curse of Fenric” is arguably the most Halloweeny of them all. It aired during the final season of the show’s original run, when few people were watching despite a really admirable creative recovery. After the show’s hiatus and a jumbled creative period during Colin Baker’s last season and Sylvester McCoy’s first, script editor Andrew Cartmel and producer John Nathan-Turner came up with a unique “master plan” to return some mystery to the character of the Doctor by making him more than another Time Lord, and darkening the tone of the show a bit. McCoy’s Doctor, originally just a broad clown type, became more of a grand manipulator, with a friendly and humorous exterior hiding some deep and almost callous calculation. “The Curse of Fenric” takes this approach to a rather grim extreme in a dark and scary story of soldiers, vikings, and mutant vampires from the future.

The TARDIS lands on a British naval base during World War II, the Doctor (McCoy) wanting to meet with a Dr. Judson (Dinsdale Linden), a wheelchair-bound cryptographic expert working on the British Ultima Machine, a massive codecracking computer. The base and town itself have been built on top of old Viking settlements, and in the basement of the local church Judson and others are investigating ancient runes and a legend of a treasure the Vikings stole from somewhere in the east, a treasure bearing a terrible curse. A group of Russian soldiers have shown up hoping to steal the device (or at least the relatively small central component of it), while the curse starts to awaken due to the efforts of Judson and others, include companion Ace (Sophie Aldred), who gives him the idea to run the latest set of runes through the Ultima Machine. The program triggered awakens legions of the dead and drowned from the ocean, now turned into mutant bloodthirsty Haemovores, and in time releases Fenric himself, a bodiless ancient evil force from the dawn of time, who lost a contest with the Doctor centuries ago and is itching for a rematch.

The Doctor is playing a long game from the start, never telling Ace- or, for that matter, us- why he’s here until he absolutely has to. A sense of mystery and uncertainty runs through the story, as we’re not sure what all these plot threads have to do with each other for the first couple of episodes. It’s engaging enough not to be frustrating, but it shows how the manipulative nature of the Doctor was changing how the standard formula worked; instead of exploring and seeking out new evils to combat, the Doctor is driven places by what he’s done before and what he has to do now to bring his plans together. For once he’s opposed by an equally manipulative enemy; Fenric turns out to have engineered not only many of the events in this story, but events in episodes from seasons past (including ones that didn’t really make sense at the time.)

The effect of all this on Ace is particularly interesting; though she doesn’t strictly have a lot of agency in the plot, the story is in some ways about her faith in the Doctor and how it’s tested by these events. She develops emotional attachments to people who end up being expendable pawns in the larger game, whether they’re killed by Haemovores, soldiers, or Fenric himself. In an interesting expansion of this theme, faith turns out to be the one thing to which the Haemovores are vulnerable- instead of being repelled by crucifixes and communion wafers, the Haemovores are driven back by the psychic power of human belief, whatever it happens to be in. The Soviet Commander Sorin (Tomek Bork) repels them through his faith in the revolution, at one point wielding his Red Star pin like a cross; the kindly and thoughtful Rev. Wainwright (Nicholas Parsons), on the other hand, has trouble, because the horrors of war have strained his belief in the goodness of mankind. And while in retrospect it’s a fairly obvious liberal-humanist-whatever subversion that a Soviet (and so presumably atheist) soldier has more faith than a clergyman, the story doesn’t really bludgeon us with this and we’re left with the sense that Wainwright is a decent person.

The story is bleak stuff, just about as bleak as DOCTOR WHO can or really should get; lots of innocent people die in a very unpleasant way, and the atmosphere is that of a horror film throughout. For a show that, especially near the end, was contending with low production values and short schedules, “Curse of Fenric” looks gorgeous, with lovely location work, lashings of rain and fog, and impressive battle scenes. The incidental score by Mark Ayres is particularly lovely. The Haemovores themselves are strikingly ugly- a little rubbery in close-up, perhaps, but the visual is nice. The Ancient One (Raymond Trickitt), a beast from humanity’s chemical-poisoned future brought back in time by Fenric to sire the other Haemovores, is a particularly interesting creation.

An epic story like this can’t always go right, and despite writer Ian Brigg’s admirable attempts to pull everything together there are some less effective parts. The arc of Jean (Joann Kenny) and Phyllis (Joanne Bell), two bawdy London evacuees watched over by a shrill caretaker (Janet Henfrey), has a weirdly puritanical slasher-movie element to it that rings a little false, and I’m not sure they were the best people to deliver some of the more melodramatic dialogue. It’s a bit unclear why there’s no concerted attempt to get at least some people off-base when the Haemovores attack, and at some points the characters run around not being too inconvenienced by the danger. There’s also a scene where Ace attempts to distract a prison guard that, due to the limitations of family television, just turns out weird. On the other hand, Aldred is pretty good throughout, especially in her interaction with Kathleen (Cory Pulman), a radio operator who’s raising an adorable baby whom Ace falls totally in love with. She looks good in forties get-up, too.

The story had to have some of it edited out for time when it was first broadcast, though the VHS release restored those moments and the DVD offers them as part of an expanded feature presentation with some CGI-enhanced effects. The additional scenes aren’t essential but they do expand on a few things, and they point to just how much background the story really has. “Curse of Fenric” is a triumph of style, but has a lot of substance to it as well; it really shows how unfortunate it was that the show was cut off just as it was finding its legs again. It’s not my favorite DOCTOR WHO story or even my favorite story from the McCoy years, but it’s one of the show’s classics and a scary good time nonetheless.

Written by Ian Briggs
Directed by Nicholas Mallett
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Aired October 25-November 15, 1989

Grade: A

Random Who Report: The Sea Devils (1972)

As much as I enjoyed “The End of Time”, the Tenth Doctor’s fiery swan song, all that apocalypse stuff and tear-jerking goodbyes call for a palate-cleansing. “The Sea Devils” is a tricky story to review because it’s a sequel to one I haven’t reviewed yet; “Doctor Who and the Silurians” had the Doctor encountering a race of reptile men who inhabited Earth before man and now wanted it back, and here he meets their cousins with the same agenda. Malcolm Hulke (arguably the old series’ most socially conscious writer) manages to mix things up, though, and it’s a respectable sequel with just enough action and adventure to justify its six-episode length.

The Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and Jo Grant (Katy Manning) head out to check up on the Master (Roger Delgado), currently being held in an island prison. Ships have been disappearing in the area, and the Navy’s getting nervous. The Doctor tries to make contact with the Sea Devils in hopes that he can work out a peaceful solution to their displacement, but they’re not much for words and more for killing people with heat rays. It doesn’t help that the Master, with the cooperation of his jailer who hopes to get the credit for flushing out “enemy agents”, has made contact with the Sea Devils and plans to help them in their goal of destroying the human race, just to get back at the Doctor. (Some things never change.)

The original Master, Delgado is always a treat to see in the part. His is probably the most understated take on the character- not yet maniacally driven to survive at all costs, the Master is simply interested in gaining power and putting one over on his old friend/foe whenever possible. He’s more the sane evil mastermind, witty and urbane and with a twisted respect for our hero.

Essentially the story has two major plots; the Sea Devils wanting to take over the Earth, and the Master playing them to his advantage. By alternating between these two elements, the story generally avoids the feeling of padding most six-parters get; it’s probably a little longer than it needs to be, but there are no obvious plot cul-de-sacs or red herrings.

Instead, there’s quite a lot of action, here with the participation of the genuine Royal Navy. There are some very nice stunt sequences and battle scenes, but the highlight has to be the authentic working combat hovercraft that plays a key role in a few scenes. It’s interesting that the Navy’s participation was secured for a story which calls into question our rush to solve problems with violence, but it does put the blame for human escalation not on the sailors, but an amusingly spineless government functionary who just wants the business to be over with as quickly as possible.

The Sea Devils are an interesting design, undermined slightly by the execution- they have stiff, inexpressive heads perched upon long necks which conceal the heads of the actors, resulting in some awkward movement to say the least. That said, they can be a chilling sight rising from the water in groups, and their turtle-like faces are almost charming.

The social commentary that formed so much of “Doctor Who and the Silurians” is here mostly reduced to a couple of scenes, but the moral ambiguity of the situation still adds a lot to the story. It plays up the Doctor’s altruism against the Master’s self-interest, as well as pitting our desire to see humanity win out over our knowledge that it’s not necessarily the most just outcome. “The Sea Devils” is a fun story overall, and rumors seem to indicate that the monsters (and their Silurian cousins) may return to the show for Matt Smith’s first season, so this isn’t a bad time to catch up.

Written by Malcolm Hulke
Produced by Barry Letts
Directed by Michael Briant

Grade: B+

Random Who Report: The Invasion of Time (1978)

As I said when I started this feature, I’ve got a weakness for Gallifrey. I still think the show lost something when it was written out, and it’s hard to articulate just why. Its inhabitants are stuffy, the show’s production budget could never quite get the whole “super advanced space Rome” thing right, and the conventional wisdom holds that outside of THE DEADLY ASSASSIN, there are no really good stories set there.

THE INVASION OF TIME doesn’t quite disprove points one and two, but I’m willing to make the case that this is a better story than it gets credit for. The story, by “David Agnew” (a common pseudonym- Anthony Read and Graham Williams get the real credit), was a last minute replacement for a hideously expensive script involving cat people, and it has a certain loopy twistiness to it that’s hard not to enjoy. It’s a season finale, and on the old series, “season finale” doesn’t mean “epic blowout” so much as “we have no money left”, but despite being cheaper than usual, THE INVASION OF TIME has a nice atmosphere and gets quite a bit of entertainment value out of a supposedly bland concept.

After a meeting with some mysterious alien beings on board their spaceship, the Doctor decides, seemingly under their influence, to return to Gallifrey and assume the title of Lord President, which he won in DEADLY ASSASSIN’s emergency election and promptly forgot about. Taking the crown in a solemn, almost mystical ceremony, the Doctor is wounded by interfacing with the Matrix- the Gallifreyan repository of all knowledge- and goes into an even stranger state, exiling companion Leela (Louise Jameson) to the wilderness outside the main Citadel, and apparently opening the way for Gallifrey’s invasion by the still-enigmatic Vardans. The Doctor may be playing some kind of bluff, but then, the aliens have a game of their own.

There are more than a few reversals and surprises here, so I’m not sure how much to spoil off the bat. The Doctor himself is keeping us in the dark for over half the story, and though this wouldn’t be the only time, it’s rare for the show to even imply that he’s on the side of the baddies. We of course know this can’t be true, but Tom Baker does a good job selling the idea of the Doctor’s untrustworthiness. The story gains a certain energy from us never knowing what’s going on, which overcomes one of the common issues with six parters; the story rarely lags, because it’s always going someplace different. The structure isn’t exactly rock solid as a result, but it holds together.

The major stumbling block for this story, and the reason it doesn’t quite enjoy the reputation it should, is that even for DOCTOR WHO, the special effects were cheaper than cheap. The sets for Gallifrey- partly retained from DEADLY ASSASSIN- are impressive enough, but the President’s Office is apparently decorated with tire rims, the Vardans are represented for most of the story by shimmering pieces of foil, and a climactic chase through the TARDIS interior seems to have been mostly shot in an abandoned factory of some kind. Along with the cheap sets, our suspension of disbelief is sometimes tested by characters making asides to the camera, a sign of a sort of lazy self-awareness setting in.

Despite these limitations, the story speaks more to the ancient-yet-new mystery that Gallifrey is supposed to represent than most others. The sets and costumes still have a unique aesthetic quality, and the introduction of the “savages”- people who broke with the Time Lords and live in the Gallifreyan wilds outside their domed city- also reveals a fair bit about the civilization, without rendering it mundane. The Doctor’s coronation as Lord President is a wonderfully dramatic ceremony, conducted almost like a church service complete with organ music. (Topping it off, access to the Matrix is granted by a halo-like crown.)

We’ve also got some good character work, both from the regulars and the guests. The Doctor has always shunned authority, so when the story compels him to take it on, it’s an interesting exploration. This is also Leela’s last story, and Louise Jameson gets several great moments; the method by which she leaves seems sort of contrived, but she manages to sell it. Hilary Ryan also does a charming turn as Rodan, a Time Lord techie who serves almost as a sort of proto-Romana (though disappointingly, she destroys no Japanese cities in the course of the story.) We also have John Arnatt as the nicely crotchety Borusa, and Milton Johns as the slimy Castellan Kelner, who ingratiates himself to whoever is running Gallifrey at the moment.

As goofy as this story sometimes is, and as often as it seems that we have to use our imagination to figure out what the people making this really wanted it to look like, THE INVASION OF TIME has an incredible amount of charm. It knows it’s sort of a slapdash last-minute affair, and so tries to keep things fast and energetic to pave over any potential story holes or thematic inconsistencies. In that sense it shares a lot with some of the new series’ more madcap episodes, the ones that make serious fans grumble but pull massive approval figures regardless. Which just goes to show that Gallifrey wasn’t that stuffy a place after all.

Written by David Agnew (meaning Anthony Read & Graham Williams)
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Gerald Blake

Grade: A-

Random Who Report: Destiny of the Daleks (1979)

With the Daleks now an annual guest on DOCTOR WHO, it’s interesting to think that their appearances used to be more spaced out. Terry Nation took them on a forced hiatus for five years starting in 1967 as part of an unsuccessful attempt to give them their own series in America, and after GENESIS OF THE DALEKS in 1975, they took another, shorter siesta. DESTINY OF THE DALEKS marked their return to the series, and also Nation’s final work for the show as a writer. It also has the unusual distinction of being the most highly watched story in the show’s history; the BBC’s main competitor, ITV, was temporarily blacked out by an industrial strike, and over 13 million people tuned in to watch this story. And yet, for its various distinctions, the story itself is unmemorable; a sequel to GENESIS in many ways, DESTINY has little of the former’s atmosphere and energy, often presenting itself as the generic archetype of a DOCTOR WHO story, right down to being filmed in a quarry. Some good ideas almost save it in the last episode, but it’s otherwise a rote affair.

The Doctor and a newly regenerated Romana (Lalla Ward) pop up on a rocky alien world and go exploring, not realizing that it is, in fact, the Daleks’ home planet of Skaro. The Daleks have been bringing human slaves to their planet to work on a massive excavation of their own ruined city, a project which has drawn the attention of their major rivals the Movellans, an enigmatic race of dreadlocked, androgynous warriors. (One wonders if the designers were doing a riff on the glam rock movement.) After various captures and escapes and so on, the Doctor and Romana discover that the Daleks are, in fact, digging up their creator Davros, who survived his apparent extermination in GENESIS and has been waiting in suspended animation ever since.

From the opening sequence in which Romana casually tries out a few bodies before settling on that of Princess Astra from the end of last season (Ward played her, too), to the Doctor’s pronouncement of “Oh look, rocks!” upon checking out where they’ve landed on the TARDIS scanner, the story establishes a very light tone. The show had been moving in this direction for a while under producer Graham Williams, and with Douglas Adams editing the scripts a bit more quirkiness and comedy than usual was bound to seep in. This isn’t a bad thing in itself, obviously, and was used to great effect later in the season in CITY OF DEATH, but it has the effect of making this story feel inconsequential.

The structure doesn’t really help- Terry Nation came up with some interesting themes and concepts for the story, centered on the Daleks’ dependence on logic, but the revelations which make all this work all come in the last quarter of the story. Which means that for the most part, we’re reliant on a bog-standard series of serial setpieces: the Doctor and companion clamber around some rocks for a while, get separated, run up and down corridors, etc. It’s all very boilerplate, and the art direction is a bit bland and monochromatic as well. Not helping things is the near-total lack of a music score; Dudley Simpson is trying for some sort of weird atonal minimalism, which doesn’t exactly ramp up the drama.

The story does have some things to recommend it, one of them being the lovely Lalla Ward. The second Romana’s personality is a charming combination of youthful giddiness and aristocratic ease, and she would soon establish a chemistry with Baker’s Doctor that added a lot to their stories together (and would lead, with less beneficial results, to the brief marriage of the actual actors.) Despite lackadaisical direction, the actual performances are enjoyable.

This really wasn’t the best story for Terry to go out on, let alone the best for the Daleks to return with. It’s kind of sloppy, the sort of thing a show puts out when they’ve had trouble getting their ducks in a row. But there are some nice bits to it, and it’s interesting to see how this sets up the next couple of entries in the Dalek saga. So, a minor footnote in the show’s history, but I kinda think the Movellans are cool.

Written by Terry Nation
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Ken Grieve

Grade: C+

Random Who Report: Vengeance on Varos (1985)

The Colin Baker era of DOCTOR WHO is an interesting one, held in relative disgrace by a lot of Who fans. The sixth Doctor’s first season (of only two) was a strangely experimental one, with longer episodes, a darker tone, and a brash and arrogant lead character with the most ridiculous outfit imaginable. Ratings eroded and the show was yanked off the schedule for 18 months, and the next season was a gutted reformatting, signifying that the BBC no longer had any confidence in the institution. I honestly think that this period of WHO gets more flak than it deserves; yes, it was uneven, and took the show from being a popular hit to a cult item, but it was a daring attempt to move the show forward, and it produced a few classics.

Case in point, VENGEANCE ON VAROS. This is probably the best executed of Season 22’s stories, without the awkward structuring that plagued the show’s expansion to 45-minute episodes, but at the same time it demonstrates the stylistic change that had come over the show. It’s a grim, violent, gritty story about a dystopian society where torture and murder are used to distract the public from their crippling poverty, and it’s laced with surrealism and murky morals. It’s also bordering on brilliant, with a magnificently constructed premise that touches on a lot of social issues in a way that, while not subtle, avoids preachiness for the most part. Like much of the season it’s slick and stylish, and it introduces one of the show’s more memorable villains. If only I could figure out what, precisely, the title is referring to.

Varos is a desolate mining world, originally a prison colony. Its chief export is the precious metal Zyton-7, which it sells to an intergalactic mining conglomerate represented by the sluglike Sil (Nabil Shaban). The conglomerate uses its muscle to extort a low price for the metal, keeping the planet poor; the current governor (Martin Jarvis, being fucking awesome) wants the people to hold out for a better deal, but they need food and keep voting him down. Incidentally, whenever the governor loses a vote, he’s subjected to a shower of laser beams, and losing too many or by too much means they’d better sweep him up and find a replacement. To try and keep the public happy, the governor also broadcasts executions and torture sessions from inside the colony’s punishment dome, and there’s no shortage of dissidents. Into this fascist society with a veneer of democracy comes the Doctor and Peri (Nicola Bryant), as the TARDIS needs its Zyton supplies replenished. They happen to arrive just as the rebel Jondar (Jason Connery) is about to be executed, and they try to escape the dome’s many traps and mind games, while the arrival of two offworlders brings tensions between Sil and the governor (and his underling, who is taking payoffs from the mining company) to a point of no return.

A main reason why I love this story is that the society presented is so damn fascinating. Most looks at the story focus on the “video nasties” angle, but that’s just one salacious part of a larger picture; what we have is basically a corporate-run fascist state with the trappings of democracy. The art direction is very reminiscent of 2000 A.D. (the Judge Dredd comics in particular), and despite middling production values the story has a strong atmosphere. A kind of Greek chorus is provided by a middle-aged couple, the miner Arak (Stephen Yardley) and wife Etta (BRAZIL’s Sheila Reid), who watch the Punishment Dome proceedings, vote via television screen, and never leave their little hovel- a decision both economic and evocative.

One of the things that really disarmed viewers during Colin Baker’s first year was how poorly the Doctor and his companion got along. The arguments between him and Peri aren’t as severe as in some other stories, and they don’t spend quite as much time wandering around on their own as they do in other stories (the season’s major problem- writers weren’t really used to the 45-minute format, and never had time to get comfortable with it.) The Doctor’s still a blowhard, but he’s dealing with such baldfaced evil that he doesn’t have to go far to be the hero.

The story has its rough patches, namely loads of clunky expository dialogue from Jondar and his main rebel squeeze Areta (Geraldine Alexander); the good guys can’t help but come off bland in such a fascinatingly dark environment. As the governor, Jarvis fares much better- he’s so dignified and charismatic you almost forget that he’s part of the system. Nicholas Chagrin (best name ever, by the way), also has some great scenes as Quillam, the sadistic head of the Punishment Dome with a fondness for genetic experimentation who gives the proceedings a bit of a David Lynch feel, and Shaban and Forbes Collins are both impressive. I like Colin Baker’s Doctor quite a bit, including his ridiculous outfit, and Nicola Bryant is, well... bouncy, in whatever way you care to interpret that.

Forced to make a snap decision (I’m not getting left with 5 posts a month again), I’m going to give this one a very high grade. It’s the best of C. Baker’s stories, and if you want to see just one of his, this is it. It’s fiercely intelligent, well directed, solidly paced, and though it embodies a lot of the stylistic weirdness and grimness that made season 22 so polarizing, it’s also just plain good sci-fi. This is a classic that stands up with the best of any era.

Written by Philip Martin
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Ron Jones

Grade: A

Random Who Report: The Time Warrior (1973/4)

A couple of installments ago, you may recall I looked at THE GREEN DEATH, last story of the tenth season and the farewell to companion Jo Grant. Without realizing it I recently rented the very next story in the series; THE TIME WARRIOR begins Jon Pertwee’s final year as the Doctor and has the distinction of introducing us to Elisabeth Sladen as the ever-popular Sarah Jane Smith. More than anything, though, it’s a cheery romp through the grimy and violent world of medieval England, with the added bonus of an alien soldier who looks like a potato. God, I love this show.

The story starts at the castle of Irongron (David Daker), a brutal robber baron who’s been threatening the local nobility, all of whom have sent most of their soldiers off with the king fighting the Crusades or the French or whatever (Middle English history is not my strong suit.) A spaceship crash-lands next to his castle, and its occupant, Sontaran lieutenant Jingo Linx (Kevin Lindsay), trades Irongron higher-tech weapons (breech-loading rifles at first, then a robot) in exchange for shelter. But he needs technicians to repair his ship, so he uses what technology he has to propel himself forward in time and start stealing scientists from a conference in the 20th century. This catches the attention of UNIT, and so the Doctor joins the conference, tracking the disappearances to their source and taking the TARDIS back in time to Irongron’s castle. Unbeknownst to him, intrepid reporter Sarah Jane Smith has stowed along for the ride.

THE TIME WARRIOR was actually one of the first stories in years set in Earth’s past; the pure historical episodes of the Hartnell and Troughton years were never big ratings successes, so this one throws in aliens. The way the sci-fi and medieval material interact is actually kind of clever. Irongron’s men see the crashing spaceship as a falling star, and appropriately enough it’s a tessellated sphere. Linx’s armor is weird and exotic but something like a warrior’s plates, and his appearance, while appropriate for an alien from a high-gravity planet, makes him look a bit like a troll. The Doctor, of course, instantly gets pegged as a wizard.

The medieval setting is also an opportunity for just plain fun; Robert Holmes has written a wonderfully funny script full of brilliant old-timey insults and threats, such as, “I’ll chop him so fine not even a sparrow will fill its beak at one peck!” As Irongron, David Daker roars and tears across the set with wonderful gusto, and is given a clever counterpoint in John J. Carney as the worshipful Bloodaxe. Much of the story hangs on the interaction between Linx and Irongron, which is well-played on both sides. Director Alan Bromly keeps the energy high, and the production values are unusually high.

The story marks the introduction both of the Sontarans, who have popped up now and again on into the new series, and Sarah Jane, of whose wonderfulness I have already written. Here, Sarah has yet to take on that favorite-aunt cuddliness, but she’s still smart and brave and charming, and the early “Women’s Lib” aspect of her character (presumably meant as a contrast to the fluffy Jo) isn’t treated with the typical reactionary disdain of the time. Donald Pelmear is also entertaining as Professor Rubeish, a nearsighted scientist who wanders around the proceedings with varying levels of usefulness. (One of the nicer bits in the story is the fact that Irongron’s band is a disorganized gang of thugs, which means it’s not really implausible that the heroes can wander in and out of the castle without much supervision.) Also, watch for Jeremy Bulloch, later to become Boba Fett, as Hal the Archer.

THE TIME WARRIOR isn’t the show at its best- the ending is a bit abrupt- but it’s the show at its most consistent. The story makes sense, the pace is right, the characters are developed as much as they need to be and the atmosphere is light and welcoming, with only a couple of naff effects, which by WHO standards means this is a technical triumph. Definitely one worth watching, and if you’re interested in getting into the old series, this could be a story to start with.

Written by Robert Holmes
Directed by Alan Bromly
Grade: B+

Random Who Report: Genesis of the Daleks (1975)

A late start is better than no start at all, or at least that’s what I tell myself. And I’m starting with a classic: GENESIS OF THE DALEKS, one of the best known Who stories from one of its best-loved eras, and a strong candidate for the title of best Who story ever. Not only does Terry Nation come up with a compelling origin story for WHO’s most popular monsters, he uses the show’s traditional corridors-and-cliffhangers structure as a vehicle for difficult moral and ethical questions. It’s genuinely great science fiction drama, on a level not often expected of a show that’s made its reputation as light entertainment.

The Doctor (Tom Baker) and his companions Harry (Ian Marter) and Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) are pulled away from their most recent adventure by the Time Lords, who forsee the genocidal Daleks destroying all life in the universe and want the Doctor to destroy them before they are created (or alter their development so they don’t turn out so evil.) Our heroes are unceremoniously dumped on the Dalek home planet of Skaro, in the midst of a centuries-old war between its original inhabitants, the Kaleds and the Thals. Soon after arriving they are split up by a gas attack. Sarah falls in with some rather normal-looking mutants (called Mutos) before being captured by the Thals, while the Doctor and Harry end up in Kaled territory, where they meet the wizened and sinister scientist Davros (Michael Wisher). Officially he and a bunch of other scientific elites are developing weapons to help win the war, but Davros’ real project is to develop a travel machine for the hideous mutant embryos that the war’s chemical weaponry will force the Kaleds to evolve into. The resulting creations are the first Daleks, armored killers under Davros’ control, and he aspires to make them the dominant life form in the universe. Not only does the Doctor have to try and put a stop to his plans, but he has to keep his friends from being caught in the crossfire as the war between the two races reaches its brutal end.

A child of World War Two, Nation often said that he had based the Daleks on his memories of the Nazi threat, and so it’s appropriate that for their origin story he goes to World War One. The first images of soldiers in gasmasks running across barren fields and ducking into trenches, in a war that has devolved into two domes shooting at each other across a poisonous wasteland, give the story an immediate resonance. It’s not a straight allegory for the rise of fascism in Europe, but echoes here and there (especially pertaining to eugenics) keep popping up. Nation never does explain how the entire population of the planet got reduced to two domes that happen to be right next to each other, but I’ll take it as convenience. (Similarly, the Mutos don’t really look deformed, just sort of rugged- but then that may be a deliberate callback to Nazi standards of racial purity.)

This is a grim story, moreso than average for the series- producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes would get a reputation for dark and scary shows very quickly, but this is unusually apocalyptic even for them. We know horrible things are about to happen, and though the show’s family viewing slot prevents it from going too far, it’s unusually frank in showing the horrors of war and genocide.

Of course, this is still DOCTOR WHO- it’s not without humor, and Tom Baker’s moody take on the character allows him to deliver quips and wrestle with the gravity of his situation. Indeed, Terry Nation- whose first Dalek story, the show’s second serial overall, helped establish the conventional formula- tended to write traditional runarounds, and in a way that’s what this is. The characters are separated early, they meet opposing groups and so explain the background and conflict, and have a succession of escapes, captures, run-ins with monsters, deathtrap evasions and so on as the larger plot unfolds. GENESIS OF THE DALEKS features all these things, especially since it’s a six part story and needs to reach that length somehow; there’s some padding around episodes two and/or three, and to be brutally honest I’ve yet to come across a six parter that doesn’t have this problem.

However, the constant thrills and spills actually provide a nice backdrop to the major conflicts of the story. Because there’s no one group on Skaro who are clearly the good guys, the Doctor has to actively search for their better natures, to convince them that a greater evil will arise from the immediate good of ending the war. Several characters are faced with making sacrifices in the name of greater good, whether it be leaving a friend behind or letting an enemy live. And ultimately the Doctor has to face up to the reality that if he destroys the Daleks, he commits genocide.

And then there’s Davros, one of the finest villains on the entire show. He’s a focused megalomaniac, interested not so much in temporal or political power as in a kind of immortality through his creations, bred to survive by exterminating all other life. It’s terrifying to see the Doctor finally pitted against someone as clever as he is, without any ethical barriers whatsoever, and he manages to terrify nearly everyone working for him, not that he cares. Visually he bears a weird resemblance to the near-dead grandfather in Tobe Hooper’s TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, and his shriveled visage and grating, near-Dalek voice are the stuff of nightmares. The production design is appropriately monochromatic, and though there is a truly laughable “attack” by giant and clearly immobile mutant clams (one of Davros’ failed experiments, though probably good eatin’), mostly the production values are pretty strong.

For most of its run, both old-school and new, DOCTOR WHO has been content to be straightforward sci-fi entertainment for the whole family, and that’s just fine. Doing that right is an artistic achievement in itself. But GENESIS OF THE DALEKS uses the familiar formula of the show, and the marquee value of the Daleks themselves, to explore some serious questions of morality and to expose the most insidious kinds of evil- the dislike for the unlike, the desire for control and security, the dehumanization of war. It makes its point with only a little preachiness, and on top of that it simply shows the traditional structures and conventions of DOCTOR WHO at their most effective. If you want to see the show at its best, this is where to look.

Written by Terry Nation
Produced by Philip Hinchcliffe
Directed by David Maloney

Grade: A+

Random Who Report: The Green Death (1973)

THE GREEN DEATH is very much a story of its time, dealing with issues raised by the newly active environmentalist movement, the computer revolution, coal pits closing, etc. This is typical of stories from Jon Pertwee’s time, as writers began to engage with social issues a little more directly (perhaps reflecting the show appealing to a more mature audience.) However, it’s also very modern, developing characters and setting up arcs in a way that foreshadows how the new DOCTOR WHO does things. Though not the most coherent of stories, THE GREEN DEATH is consistently engaging even at its goofiest, and has some scary and touching moments too. It also marks the departure of Katy Manning as Jo Grant, and as companion send-offs go it’s pretty strong.

The bulk of the story takes place in Wales (see what I said about new series foreshadowing), in a remote town whose name I forget that’s having its coal mine shut down. The generically-named Global Chemicals promises that their new facility will produce plenty of jobs and money; they’ve got some way of refining oil that’s ultra-efficient and only produces a small amount of hideous green mutagen that kills people and makes maggots grow to giant size, honest. This upsets a local environmentalist hippie group under the leadership of Professor Clifford Jones (Stewart Bevan), and when one of the last miners out of the pit turns all green and dead, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT) gets called in to investigate just what is going on. The Doctor is temporarily unavailable, having nipped off to the distant world of Metebelis III to steal a valuable gem just because he can, so Jo goes off to meet the handsome young Professor and starts investigating what’s in the mine. Turns out that yes, Global Chemicals is dumping a lot of green muck down the old mine shaft, and not only does it cause a toxic infection in humans, it’s also spawned a bunch of maggots the size of dauchsunds whose bite spreads the killer slime. On top of this, everyone at the evil generic chemical company is acting very weird, which has to do with the fact that their boss is a giant computer that was programmed to have human inefficency and creativity and as such has gone batshit plumb loco.

This story is most fondly remembered as “The one with the maggots”, which is also the title of the greatest FRIENDS episode never written. But the maggots evidently weren’t enough to sustain a six-part story, so they threw in an evil computer, poison sludge, and the Doctor running off to an alien world. This last bit is a particularly surreal sidetrek scattered at various points throughout the first episode; we see brief scenes of the Doctor wandering about a dark and smoky landscape, menaced by stock footage of snakes and the giant claws of some offscreen monster. All to get a nice shiny blue crystal which does end up serving some plot use later on, albeit mostly by happy chance. What’s interesting is that this also serves as foreshadowing for something that would come an entire season later; PLANET OF THE SPIDERS, the third Doctor’s final story, dealt with some unforseen repercussions of the jewel heist, leading to the Doctor sacrificing his life to stop a great evil in what is apparently a Buddhist allegory (I haven’t seen that one yet.) The series had tried some of this light foreshadowing in earlier years- the Pat Troughton story THE INVASION is basically a test run for the Jon Pertwee UNIT era- but it was still the exception for WHO rather than the rule.

Jo Grant gets a superb exit, especially after poor Liz Shaw was written out off-screen. Jo was introduced as, to put it politely, a less intellectual companion compared to super-smart Liz, in order for the Doctor to once again have someone to explain everything to. Jo wasn’t dumb, really, but she tended to act very silly and impulsive and to scream a lot. She gets to do more this time around, and her romance with Professor Jones is well played if still firmly in the realm of genre melodrama. (There’s even a scene where she lounges by the fireplace in a dress straight out of a romance novel cover. Not that I can complain.) On top of that, the first episode, with its elements of the Doctor going off to another world while Jo has to investigate trouble at home, foreshadows her parting ways and striking her own path. The final scenes of the story are very touching.

In its disjointed way, THE GREEN DEATH provides a lot of neat touches. The commune/laboratory where Professor Jones and his fellow hippies work isn’t exaggerated quite as much as these things often were in popular media; there’s not much psychedelia or reactionary fear of Those Damn Kids Today, just a bunch of quirky people in fairly dingy housing making do with what they’ve got. (Of course, by this point hippiedom itself was becoming a bit more subdued.) For all the serious issues this story deals with, there are quite a few funny moments, intentional and otherwise. The maggot effects are quite good, though their adult form is unconvincing even by WHO standards.

THE GREEN DEATH suffers from the curse of nearly all six-parters, in that it’s not really a big enough story to justify the length (there’s some particularly obvious padding when the Doctor and friends raid Global Chemicals just to get some wire-cutting tools.) But if it suffers from a lack of focus, the individual parts are never dull. Quite entertaining, and just the slightest bit ahead of its time.

Written by Robert Sloman (with uncredited assist by Barry Letts)
Produced by Barry Letts
Directed by Michael E. Briant

Grade: B+

Random Who Report: The Web Planet (1965)

DOCTOR WHO’s early black-and-white years hold a unique fascination; in some ways it’s the most fantastical that the show ever was, with a surreal quality only emphasized by the uneven production values and cramped sets. Nowhere is this more evident than in THE WEB PLANET, an ambitious conceptual experiment for the series that, though it doesn’t work, has more than a few treasures. This six-part epic is one I can’t quite recommend to non-fans (and its reception at the time was less-than-kind), but if you’re willing to tough your way through the slower bits, it’s kind of fascinating.

The TARDIS is caught in a mysterious barrier that traps it on the planet of Vortis in a far-away galaxy. There, the Zarbi, near-mindless giant ants, have overrun the planet once dominated by the beautiful butterfly creatures known as the Menoptera. They do so under the direction of the Animus, a mysterious force from another world that has corrupted the land, turned the water into acid, and constructed a giant dome for itself and its Zarbi slaves. After some attempts by the Animus to possess the TARDIS crew, the Doctor (William Hartnell) and Vicky (Maureen O’ Brien) are captured by the Zarbi and taken to the dome structure, while Ian (William Russell) and Barbara (Jacqueline Hill) fall in with separate groups of a Menoptera reconquest force.

It takes a while for the full premise of this story to unfurl itself; the first couple of episodes try to preserve the same kind of mystery that accompanied the introduction of the Daleks, and though the Zarbi are seen early on, what precisely they’re doing is unclear for a time. Unfortunately this makes the early part of the story very slow indeed, as the exposition of what has happened is slowly doled out. Not helping matters are our main participants; the Zarbi cannot speak (instead communicating in ENDLESS electronic chirps), the Menoptera can but very slowly and with lots of hand gestures, and the Animus (voiced downright seductively by Catherine Fleming) is no faster.

The obtuseness of the story is also part of what it does very well; we are dealing with a truly alien environment with few obvious analogues to ours, and that’s the sort of thing that takes setting up. The Menoptera speak in very strange poetic tones, and are convincingly trained to move in a deliberate, insect-like fashion.

Of course, there are no two ways about it; these are very clearly men and women in suits. While the Daleks had been conceived and built to hide any suggestion of a human shape (no legs, no arms), the Menoptera have visibly human faces with large bug eyes and ears, the Zarbi have two human legs that do all the actual running, and the grub-like Optera, encountered later, also have human faces with some hilariously limp extra hands at their sides, clearly made of cloth. It’s rather like watching the stage version of THE LION KING; you have to imagine what the aliens are really meant to look like, but can admire the artistry at work.

The environment of Vortis is quite neatly realized. It’s a planet with thin air, seeming to hang in eternal night- the stars are always visible, and the surface resembles what we used to think the moon looked like before we actually landed there. The “web” element is underplayed, apparently for budgetary reasons, but there are some nice touches, like the Valley of Needles and a ruined temple.

The major problem of the story is just that it moves so sluggishly; six parters were often prone to this, and between the insect performers’ slow movements and the obtuse dialogue it takes a long time for this story to get where it needs to go. At heart it’s not much more than a straightforward good vs. evil story, which shouldn’t take as long as it does to tell. There’s a nice twist down the line involving the Doctor and Vicky “domesticating” one of the Zarbi, and the Optera do liven things up a bit, but counteracting that there’s a subtle somnambulistic tone which threatens to lull you into peaceful slumber. That they smeared vaseline at the camera lens at some points for no apparent reason doesn’t make things any easier.

This same dreamishness does work in the story’s favor, too, and in some ways this story epitomizes what DOCTOR WHO was like in its early years. The shaky effects force your own imagination to fill in the gaps, and the claustrophobia of the sets results in an almost theatrical intimacy. The performers work to sell it as amiably as ever; in its first couple of seasons, the show was an ensemble piece, with Ian and Barbara often being as vital to the story as the Doctor, to say nothing of the younger companion.

I remind you all, the grading system I’m using for this is a bit different from the one I use elsewhere. Overall, I think THE WEB PLANET is good television- it’s imaginative, atmospheric, and highly ambitious. But it’s also a bit of a drag, and you have to already love the show and know its shortcomings to put up with some of the needless corridor-running and truly shoddy effects to get to the good stuff. So it’s a middling grade by WHO standards, but bear in mind- that’s still pretty damn good.

Written by Bill Strutton
Produced by Verity Lambert
Directed by Richard Martin
Grade: C

Random Who Report: Arc of Infinity (1983)

I’ve wanted to write more about DOCTOR WHO on this blog for a bit, and with new series reviews being taken care of, I’ve decided to go for old school. It actually isn’t a big stretch from reviewing movies; the classic series was built around the serial format, with episodes of 25 minutes each linking together to form larger discrete stories (though they tried 45 minute shows for one season.) Stories would tend to be around 3, 4, or 6 episodes long, meaning that the average WHO story is about the same length as a feature film. So it’s possible to treat these like mini-movies and discuss each one on its own merits, not bothering with any kind of chronological or thematic order. Enjoy.

I rented ARC OF INFINITY for a couple of reasons. It comes from the Peter Davison era, which I’ve always personally regarded as a high point for the show; his three seasons were slickly made (for the most part), and had an energy and assurance to them, like producer John Nathan Turner had found his feet and knew what he wanted to do. On top of that, it’s a Gallifrey story, and I kind of like those. I understand why the new series had the Time Lords and their home world blown up off camera, clearing away years of continuity baggage in the process, but I miss the pretentious bastards nonetheless. The Time Lords are an ambiguous race, corrupt but not really evil, just stuffy and shifty. They have the powers of gods but the flaws of regular human beings, and their world is a mixture of shiny new technology and ancient myth and legend. Gallifrey stories are hard to do well, because of the aforementioned stuffiness and a way of getting bogged down in technospeak, but there’s something to the concept that grabs me.

Anyway, ARC OF INFINITY, written by Johnny Byrne (no relation to the comics artist), is about the efforts of a powerful being from an antimatter universe trying to possess the good Doctor. After one failed attempt, aided by an unidentified Time Lord, the High Council of Gallifrey decides to call in the Doctor to see what’s going on. Apparently the kind of merging that the being is trying to do runs a risk of bringing antimatter into our universe, which would blow up a substantial part of it. Some of the Time Lords get it in their heads that the safest way to prevent this is to execute the Doctor outright, so he and companion Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) have to solve the mystery before that. Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, a couple of travelling youths try to sleep in a crypt and are attacked by a goofy looking alien who makes one of them into a zombie slave. The unfortunate fellow happens to be the cousin of recently departed companion Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding), who shows up in Amsterdam to try and find out what happened, and yes this is related to the main story.

This is an odd one. John Nathan Turner specifically wanted to film in Amsterdam, and had also promised that each story in the twentieth season would feature the return of an old monster. The old monster in this case is Omega (Ian Collings), an ancient Time Lord who helped discover time travel and in the course of his experiments managed to catapult himself into the aforementioned antimatter world, where the isolation and not-quite-existence drove him mad. He showed up ten seasons ago in THE THREE DOCTORS, so there’s a nice symmetry there. JNT was sometimes criticized for going back to the well on old monsters so often, but this was an interesting choice.

As I’ve said, the reason I like Gallifrey-related stories is the weird grandeur of the place- at least, conceptually, since old-school DOCTOR WHO could manage visual grandeur maybe once per season if you squinted. The actual meat of the story- that Orion wants not only to pass back into existence but to control the power of an entire rift between dimensions (the titular Arc of Infinity), and to control the power of the Matrix, Gallifrey’s repository of knowledge which acts as a giant virtual mindscape (though here we only see a bunch of glittery lines.)

There’s a lot of nice epic background material here, which would have been more effective if the structure weren’t so choppy. The business in Amsterdam takes a long time to go a short distance, and the constant cutting back to it only seems to pad things out. To be fair, the actual Amsterdam locations look a bit better than the strangely drab grey sets used to represent Gallifrey, but it’s a less-than-perfect mixture.

On the upside, though, there’s some especially good acting in this installment. Nyssa, often pushed aside in her time on the series due to the TARDIS being unusually crowded, gets some great scenes as she rushes to and fro to prevent the Doctor’s execution; Sarah Sutton shows some good emotional range here. Peter Davison is as intensely gentle as ever, and gets to stretch his acting legs when Omega briefly takes on the Doctor’s form. Collings is good even when kept behind a (cool looking) mask for almost the whole of the proceedings. And Colin Baker, soon to play the Doctor himself, is nicely stentorian as a Gallifreyan guard captain with the silliest hat on what is essentially the planet of silly hats. To top it all off we have Michael Gough (who had appeared on the series back in the sixties) as Chancellor Hedlin, an old friend of the Doctor’s but also one of the potential traitors.

As weird as the pacing is on this one, I found there to be some redeeming elements. At heart it’s a good storyline, one with a lot of neat ideas and a few curveballs here and there to throw us off guard. We frequently fall back on running up and down corridors, but this is something the show did very well and the climactic chase through Amsterdam is downright fun. The production values are a mixed bag. Omega looks cool, his chickenlike Ergon construct not so much, Gallifrey’s too grey but still sort of atmospheric, etc.

Before I give a final grade I’ll have to explain how I’m doing the grades for this one. DOCTOR WHO is a very good show, and the kind that is good enough that even its worst episodes tend to have some redeeming element. So you’re probably not going to see many Fs or Ds, and even for the non-passing grades you might have to append “by the show’s standards”. But basically, C+ and below means it’s really only worth watching if you’re already a WHO fan.

Anyway, this gets a general recommendation, albeit sort of a marginal one. It’s awkard but worthy, good concepts and classic sci-fi scope pulling us through the slower parts. It’s also always good to see a companion do neat things, and here Byrne was able to do justice to the character of Nyssa (whom he created) not long before she left the TARDIS crew. ARC OF INFINITY holds up, and the DVD has some fun extra features that are worth seeing. A solid kick-off to the show’s twentieth season, if not the most memorable one.

Directed by Ron Jones
Written by Johnny Byrne

Grade: B-