Doctor Who – The Mark of the Rani Review (or “Dreary, With Terrible Accents”)

I want to like the Colin Baker era, but it’s just hasn’t happened for me so far.

The Twin Dilemma was awful and both Attack of the Cybermen and Vengeance on Varos were not without their own problems.

So what is it? The Writing? The Acting? The Characterisation? The new 45 minute format?

Well it’s been a mixture of all four so far.

I wonder how the next story – The Mark of the Rani – will fair?

Doctor Who – The Mark of the Rani Review: What’s This One About?

There’s a new evil Time Lord for the Doctor to face, or should that be a Time Lady, since it’s a woman.

And guess what? The Master is back too, despite him being killed off fairly definitively in his last appearance.

The setting? Northern England in the 19th Century.

The point? Who knows.

Thoughts – Nothing Really Happens

I found myself quite enjoying the first episode of Mark of the Rani.

Despite the fact that The Master was brought in without even trying to explain how he survived being burnt alive at the end of Planet of Fire (and I believe the explanation was left out because Eric Saward wanted to make the point that he

The bloke on the left has the worst stab at a Northern Accent ever heard on TV

shouldn’t have been brought back so quick) and despite the other issues with it that I’ll get to later, it seemed to be set up quite well.

The Rani is an interesting character, well performed by Kate O’Mara, and her reason for being there worked.

The problem was that as things developed, the setting really didn’t matter at all and as a character she offered little threat.

Sure, she was extracting the fluid from people’s brains that prevented them from sleeping, and thus made them more aggressive, but what did that actually matter? How was her plan going to influence anything?

It wasn’t, and it didn’t.

And The Master being there just made for some extra villainy for the sake of it.

As Episode 2 developed, it became clear that nothing was going to happen, there was no threat beyond a dog being killed and the Doctor rolling down a hill on a gurney and the conclusion was just a case of “All’s well that ends well so let’s just go home”.

Therefore, the story went from being quite promising to a damp squib.

Frustrating.

Is it a problem with the format? Probably. This is a story is so slow it’s almost going backwards, and without the ‘Rush to the Finish’ every 22 minutes, it lacked any urgency.

The Worst Regional Accents In Television History

Something about the Mark of the Rani that I found particularly annoying was the use of “Northern Accents” from actors who clearly didn’t speak like that normally.

One or two of the actors either did a good job or were from the area, but mostly it was embarrassing.

Watch the scene were the three badly acting “aggressive” blokes confront the Master. One of them, the one on the end, put on such a bad impression that you could barely understand what he was saying. He was that bad.

Peri’s taking her complaints about her costume to the wrong person

In the main it was actors struggling with a Northern Accent over their already put on BBC English way of speaking. It’s the language equivalent of Julian Glover wearing a Scarlioni mask over the Scaroth mask over his own face. Awkward and uncomfortable.

The Colin Baker Cliffhanger Close-Up Count

While there isn’t a close-up of Colin Baker or Nicola Bryant, this gets a bonus point for having a dramatic close-up of a mine shaft.

Ooooh, exciting.

Random Observations

• What’s the point of having the Master dress up as a scarecrow in the background of one scene? I mean really? Why bother? It’s pathetic.
• Furthermore, having the Rani in costume for a couple of scenes is also devoid of any dramatic license.
• The incidental music in Mark of the Rani sounds like the sort of thing you’d get in an early 1990s Sega Megadrive game. It lacks any oomph and is therefore perfect for a story with such little urgency.
• You’ll notice that Peri’s dress sense has only gotten worse. The costume department are seriously bad at this point in the show’s history. And don’t blame the fashion at the time either, because surely it wasn’t that bad?
• The scene where Colin Baker wears a different coat, even though it was a mucky brown jacket, instantly made him seem like a character to take more seriously.
• The cliffhanger to Episode One has one of the ultimate “Cheat” resolutions. In Episode One George Stephenson isn’t anywhere to be seen and yet in the reprise he pulls a level to redirect the gurney long before the Doctor would reach the
  

  ‘Mon Then!

  mine shaft. Boo!

• This story is also well-known for Pip & Jane Baker’s ridiculous use of language. Nobody, not even the Master would say “Fortuitous would be a more apposite epithet!” Now I like to think I’m a decent writer, but my style is to use language that people actually use and understand. Writing dialogue with words like that adds nothing.
• One aspect of the story I like is the relationship between the Rani, the Doctor and the Master. Her opinion that the two of them are as bad and childish as each other is fairly amusing.
• Beyond the Master and the Rani, the only member of the guest cast worth his salt is Terrance Alexander, and would you believe it, that’s because he was the only other person not speaking in a fake Northern Accent.
• The amount of times the Master says – dramatically – “The Mark….of the Rani” is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face.
• The stuff with the dinosaurs was pointless.
• To give the show some credit, I learnt what a Luddite was. It’s an insult I like to throw around to this day.
• DWM Mighty 200 Ranking: #148

Doctor Who – The Mark of the Rani Review: Final Thoughts

This is certainly one of my shortest reviews, coming in at just over 1,000 words, but that’s because there’s so little to say about it.

The Mark of the Rani is a story that starts brightly but ultimately goes nowhere. There’s no point, no drama, no reason to care. It’s dull, and that’s backed up by the Incidental Music and dreary location.

With a ranking of #148 I just can’t find myself caring enough about it to disagree.

And so once again, I’m waiting to find a Sixth Doctor TV story that I enjoy.

Doctor Who – Vengeance on Varos Review (or “Cut This In Half And You’d Have A Good Story”)

Season 22′s move to a 45 minute episode format meant that the way the show was written changed.

Without the need to come to a climax every 22 minutes, it was believed that the pace could slow down a bit.

But is that a good thing?

Does a show like Doctor Who benefit from slowing down?

As I move into my next story – Vengeance on Varos – I’ll see.

Doctor Who – Vengeance on Varos Review: What’s This One About?

Trade agreements gone wrong, reality TV style voting on whether the Governor should live or die, and lots and lots and lots of walking through corridors.

Thoughts – One Episode Too Long

I feel as though Vengeance on Varos is an example of a Doctor Who story I’m supposed to like, but I don’t.

Boo!!! Hiss!!! It’s Quillam, the evil pantomime villain almost completely redundant to the plot

It’s not that I dislike it, but I just don’t find it enjoyable enough to sing its praises.

The problem? Well as you might guess from the section heading, I feel it’s one episode too long.

I mentioned in my introduction about the move to the 45 minute format and the resultant slow-down of pace. Well I don’t think it’s a good thing here. Yes, it means that stories don’t need to have a cliffhanger every 23 minutes, but that wasn’t exactly a major problem for the previous 22 years.

To me, there’s just not enough plot here for 90 minutes of material.

Instead, what happens is that everything gets dragged out. The Doctor and Peri only leave the TARDIS 24 minutes in. If this was the normal format, that would mean they spent the whole of Episode One there.

Last time I checked, people criticised that sort of thing when it happened in the likes of Meglos.

Then once they leave the TARDIS, they – or the Doctor mainly – spend the rest of the story wandering through corridors, with only a brief sidetracking where they are nearly executed. And not just that, when they walk around those corridors, they face the same bits more than once. In Episode One, they walk towards danger with happy looks on their faces because of pink smoke, in Episode Two, it’s the same thing with green smoke.

Similarly, there’s a great deal of repetition with the stuff in the Governor’s office. We don’t need to see him face the vote three times, and there’s too much to-ing and fro-ing over the price of Zeiton-7.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the idea behind Vengeance on Varos is good  but they could have made a far better story if it had been a brisk paced one part affair.

Cut out all the repetition, get rid of the mostly pointless pantomime villain character of Quillam, remove the bit where Peri and Areta are turned into animals for a couple of minutes and you’d end up with something really good.

And it’s not even that the idea of doing a 45 minute story is alien to Eric Saward – he did 3 of them in the Peter Davison era. What’s more, it’s proven to be a success with modern Who.

I get the feeling they really missed the boat here.

Sil

One thing I do like about Vengeance on Varos is the character of Sil.

The idea behind him is interesting, and it’s clearly written with a disabled actor in mind (I mean, can you imagine if he was played by a 6 foot bloke?) but what really makes him memorable is the acting of Nabil Shaban.

As written, the character is probably pretty dull. Sure, he might pronounce words wrong, what with his faulty translator, but beyond that, a lesser actor wouldn’t excel.

But Shaban’s mannerisms, delivery and especially that laugh make the character into probably the most recognisable and interesting thing about the entire Sixth Doctor era.

Is It Getting Too Violent?

When Doctor Who was put on hiatus (I would say cancelled but that never happened; rather it was delayed for 18 months and people got the wrong end of the stick. That’s the story according to About Time anyway) one of the reasons given was

Luckily, this deleted scene with particularly unpleasant domestic violence didn’t make the cut. Michael Grade would have had a stroke

that it was becoming too violent.

That was one of Michael Grade’s points when explaining the hiatus.

Is he right?

Well, yes and no.

Violence works when there’s a cause and character motivation – like in Caves of Androzani – but violence for the sake of it is a bit much.

In my Attack of the Cybermen review, I pointed out how I felt that the scene with Lytton’s hands being crushed was gratuitous, and I stand by that.

Here, there are two bits that stand out.

The first is the part where the Doctor apparently “throws people into a vat of acid and grins”. He doesn’t. One falls in by accident and the other is pulled in by the first guy. The Doctor doesn’t push either in.

What’s the point of the scene though? Two characters are introduced purely to be burned to death in acid. Pointless and again gratuitous.

The next example is a bit more disturbing though, as the Doctor plans and orders the carrying out of the pre-meditated murder of Quillam, The Chief Officer and a bunch of guards. Yes, he waited until his life was threatened, but it doesn’t seem even slightly “Doctorly” in my opinion.

So yeah, I do think the show at this point is relying too much on the crutch of violence. I don’t really see why people would tune in just for that. Viewing figures would suggest they do the opposite.

I’ll take proper storytelling any day.

The Colin Baker Cliffhanger Close-Up Count

Nothing to report today.

So the score is still

The Doctor 4-2 Peri.

Random Observations

• I would have said that in the main, the standard of acting in Vengeance on Varos is good, but that would be a lie. The truth is that while Nabil Shaban and Martin Jarvis are both excellent in their roles, the rest of the guest cast are ordinary
  

  I imagine they were probably proud of their performances

  at best.

• Especially bad are the two cannibal blokes who make the odd fleeting appearance.
• The Doctor – but for another tiresome set of early scenes in the TARDIS – acts pretty normally here. It’s almost as if the contracted writers pen him as a normal bloke and Saward insists on adding some added arsey touches (innuendo unintended) at the beginning just to remind us not to like him.
• Hey, that Guard Captain is in Game of Thrones!
• Nothing to report on Incidental Music, which is a good thing. It blends into the background well.
• Peri seems to have a very limited wardrobe. Here she’s wearing the same combination of skin tight top and dumpy shorts in powder blue rather than pink. At least she changes her clothes though; the previous four companions barely managed that.
• That line about “It was supposed to be a cold dinner” was excruciatingly bad. Whoever wrote that – steer clear of ever attempting to write a sitcom.
• The premise for the story – that the Doctor suddenly ran out of an important element that could only be found on one planet – is a bit of a stretch. Surely he’d keep a backup supply? Did he learn nothing from his first trip to Skaro?
• I like the cliffhanger to Episode One. It works, even though they are making a pretty big assumption that the Doctor is dead. The addition of Sil’s laugh adds to it.
• Speaking of Sil’s laugh, I’d a) love to be able to do it and b) if I could, I’d do it at a job interview just to unnerve the interviewers.
• Why exactly is it called Vengeance on Varos other than for alliterative purposes?
• DWM Mighty 200 Ranking: #124. Hmmm.

Doctor Who – Vengeance on Varos Review: Final Thoughts

There’s just too much padding and repetition to make Vengeance on Varos the sort of Doctor Who story I’d recommend.

If they’d cut it in half and had one brisk paced 45 minute story – like they do in Modern Who – I reckon it would have been excellent.

Indeed, it’s the sort of story that you could imagine working today.

But sadly, it wasn’t to be.

And so I would say that Vengeance on Varos ends up being a disappointment, meaning that we’re still waiting for a Sixth Doctor story that I can give the thumbs up to.

 

 

Doctor Who – Attack of the Cybermen (or “Don’t Let Superfans Write For The Show: A Cautionary Tale”)

Colin Baker didn’t get off to the best of starts as the Doctor, did he?

The Twin Dilemma was a disaster on every level, the worst of which was the character of the Sixth Doctor and Baker’s choice of acting.

But let’s not carry that with us; let’s try to be positive.

It’s a new season and the production team have had the chance to take stock. Surely in that time they would see the problems they’d created, sort them and get the show back on an even keel.

With that said, we move into Season 22 and the first story, Attack of the Cybermen.

Doctor Who – Attack of the Cybermen Review: What’s This One About?

Fanwank continuity.

Basically it’s a story written for superfans by a superfan (although he insists he had nothing to do with it. Or maybe he insists he does and Eric Saward insists he doesn’t, I’m not sure) that probably flew over the head of most of the people watching at home.

And they wonder why it got cancelled…

Thoughts – Let’s Make A Story Based On Continuity!!!!

The immediate problem with Attack of the Cybermen is that it’s a story based around events that have happened in the show’s past.

By all means have a Cyberman story, by all means redo Tomb of the Cybermen if you want, but don’t write a new story that is linked to old ones that the majority of the viewers haven’t seen.

“Don’t look at me, it’s all Ian’s fault”

In 1985, The Tomb of the Cybermen was presumed wiped and the Tenth Planet wasn’t in broadcastable condition due to Episode 4′s disappearance.

So why write a story that assumes they were transmitted in the last week?

By its very nature, the plot of Attack of the Cybermen takes it as read that the viewer knows all about the Tombs on Telos, The Cyber-Controller, Mondas and its destruction.

But at best, the tiny percentage of viewers who did know about it would have to rely on hazy near-20 year old memories and maybe some pictures in a book.

So again I ask; why write it?

Because people like Ian Levine simply had too much influence over what was going on at the time. But the bizarre double-standard is that JNT wouldn’t allow Michael Craze to be cast in Caves of Androzani.

Anyway, at the time the average viewer probably struggled to follow it, while now, the keen viewer who has copies of the Tenth Planet and the since-rediscovered Tomb of the Cybermen will know that Attack of the Cybermen actually does a very bad job of paying homage to those stories.

Even with the limited amount of pictures they had available to them at the time, surely they could see what both the Tomb set (the most impressive thing about the serial) and the Cyber Controller looked like? So why did they go with a tomb that looked like a specialist freezer showroom, and a Cyber Controller that looked like a normal Cyberman with a particularly bad bump on his head?

And yet, while not considering it important to get details like that correct, they do go to the effort of recasting Michael Kilgarriff as the Controller, even though he was fully covered up and unrecognisable at the time, and by 1985 was a fat bastard. Also wasn’t the character conclusively killed off in Tomb anyway?

As for the Tenth Planet stuff? Well it didn’t make sense.

I mean where do you even begin?

The Cybermen want to go back in time to prevent Mondas from being destroyed. Their plan is to divert Halley’s Comet to Earth the year before the events of Tenth and stop it that way. I’m not exactly sure how that will stop it anyway, but even if it did, would it still not have been a better plan to travel back in time to Mondas and influence things that way? Not only would it be more peaceful, but it’d be more logical, time efficient and make better use of resources. The Cybermen are

I found that bit somewhat gratuitous. I imagine there were complaints.

meant to be logical and without emotion, so if continuity is so important, surely that key element of their character should be considered when writing for them? Of course not…

Anyway, if they do stop Mondas from being destroyed, they plan on blowing up Telos, just to see what happens. Why not keep Telos as a secondary base? And let’s not forget that if they do go back in time and prevent Mondas from being destroyed, that would create a paradox that would mean they’d never moved to Telos in the first place, so not only could they not blow it up, but they couldn’t even have been there to plan to go back and save Mondas.

Ha, think about that!

If I was writing the show at the time, I’d have taken a different approach. If it was Tomb of the Cybermen that I wanted to redo, I’d simply take the same key elements – i.e. have the Doctor, Peri and a bunch of humans end up in another Cyber tomb – and pay homage to it that way. It doesn’t take a genius to find a way to make that story work without treading on the continuity toes of Tomb of the Cybermen.

If they’d done that, they’d have a better story, one that the public could enjoy and one that fans – who at that stage couldn’t envisage a time where every Who story would be available in their homes to watch, let alone a time when Tomb had been rediscovered – could invest in and get excited about.

It’s not rocket science.

Instead we got that.

The Road To Nowhere

Another element I didn’t like was the storyline with Stratton and Bates.

To me, a story has to go somewhere. There’s got to be a beginning, middle and an end, and the end has to have some level of pay-off and satisfaction.

“Mon then”

With this storyline, Sawar…I mean Paula Moore spends 80 minutes or so building them up, giving them a reason for being there, a quest to follow and characters to interact with.

They spend ages trying to get a Cyberman’s head so they can use it to infiltrate Cyber Control, only to then not need it because Lytton has a map. Then once they overcome…erm…nothing of any note, they finally get to the ship only to be caught in a trap and killed.

Other than a boyish need on the part of the writer to kill as many people as possible, what was the point of that? To pad out the story, our time has been completely wasted. There’s no pay-off, no satisfactory ending; it’s just stupid.

The Character of the Sixth Doctor

Well, apart from the early scenes in the TARDIS and on Earth with Peri, I’ll give both the writers and Colin Baker some credit.

They’ve settled the Doctor down and made him a bit more normal. I wouldn’t go as far as to say more likeable or anywhere near as good as the actors who have played the part before him, but it is an improvement.

He’s stuck with that awful costume though.

Other Elements That Don’t Make Sense

There are loads of issues with Attack of the Cybermen that don’t stand up to examination. Here’s a few more I’ve spotted…

• Considering they had two scenes together with minimal interaction in Resurrection of the Daleks, how come The Doctor & Lytton know so much about each other?
• How come Lytton both expected the Doctor to return and assumed that he was responsible for sonic lancing the Cyberman?
• How did the Cybermen get into the TARDIS before the Doctor?
• If Lytton wanted a crack force of mobsters to help him in his plan, how did he make the assumption that two of the four would be killed before he got to Telos and why did he choose a bumbling Yorkshireman, a spiv and an Undercover Cop?
• And why did he not just take his two policeman chums with him instead?
• What are the Cyberman actually doing in the sewers of Earth in 1985? Oh wait…the sewers; that’s an Invasion reference isn’t it? That literally only just occurred to me, showing just how needless this whole continuity thing is.
• If Lytton’s distress signal had been picked up, why keep it running?
• And surely he’d have been better served trying to help the Cryons by contacting and explaining his plans to the Doctor rather than risking death with the Cybermen?
• How did the Cryons not notice their mate was being held in that room if they had CCTV footage of the Doctor there?
• And yes, the obvious one, why did the Cybermen lock the Doctor up in a room with enough explosives to blow up the whole of their base?

But Is It Any Good?

These are all big issues with Attack of the Cybermen, but I suppose the main question to ask is whether or not it’s any good to watch?

Remember how I said I didn’t get the Caves of Androzani all that much as a youngster but appreciate it far more as an adult?

The Fat Controller has been tucking in since we last saw him

Well this is the reverse.

I think Attack of the Cybermen will seem cool to children, but it doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny as an adult.

Although it’s watchable enough and sorts out some of the issues created in the last story, it’s average at best.

And that’s a pity because it could have been better.

The Colin Baker Cliffhanger Close-Up Count

Attack of the Cybermen finishes on a close-up of the Doctor’s face which means we’re up to 4 out of 6.

Interestingly, the other two have been close-ups of Peri’s face, so the count is now…

The Doctor 4 – 2 Peri

Random Observations

• There’s even less original Incidental Music here, with Malcolm Clark borrowing again from his old stories. Mostly it’s from Earthshock but there’s a bit of Twin Dilemma and Resurrection of the Daleks action here too. Disappointing.
• Peri’s dress sense baffles me, or should that be the costume department’s choices for her. They’ve got her wearing a skin-tight Lycra top, presumably to excite teenage boys with her fuller figure, but then in contrast to that she’s wearing a pair of baggy cargo shorts that serve only to make her look dumpy on the bottom half. I don’t get it.
• Considering the original plan was to kill off Griffiths in Episode One, where did the story go without him in it?
• The bit where Lytton has his hands crushed is another example of Saward’s boyish need to make things gory. I don’t think it needed to be in there and I can see why people disapproved.
• Having a Cyber Controller and a Cyber Leader confuses matters. It’s a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.
• What was the story with the Cybermen rotting in the tombs? I’m sure they explain it but I must have missed it this time.
• The end bit, where the Doctor just kills all the Cybermen in the control room just screams “Shit, we’re running out of time and have to kill these guys off”. Poor.
• I haven’t really touched on the acting of the guest cast. On the whole they are fine, although it’s difficult to know quite how well actors in full costumes actually do. Brian Glover, Terry Molloy and Maurice Colbourne are all good enough though.
• The continuity with the I.M. Foreman Yard barely deserves a mention.
• And the Chamelion Circuit gimmick either should have been kept for a while or not used at all.
• I don’t know if it’s meant to be, but the Cryon’s response of “I don’t know; I don’t have an instrument for measuring time” to the Cyber Leader’s question about how long the Doctor has been gone may well be the most brilliantly sarcastic response anyone has ever given in any context.
• Speaking of lines of dialogue, I remember the continuity announcer on UK Gold taking the piss out of the amount people scream “No” at the end of Episode One. It’s six by the way.
• One more about the dialogue: I find Stratton and Bates converse almost entirely in exposition.
• DWM Mighty 200 Ranking: #161 – probably about right but that’s still only one lower than Keys of Marinus, which is a disgraceful rating for the 1st Doctor story to have.

Doctor Who – Attack of the Cybermen Review: Final Thoughts

So they did manage to sort some of the issues with the Twin Dilemma although it seems to be a matter of replacing old problems with new ones.

Continuity has its place – after all, it would have been stupid to have the Silurians come from Siluria – but they’ve taken it to far. Once again, that leaves us with a story that is alienating to a large section of the viewer base.

Attack of the Cybermen is riddled with nonsensical plot developments and threads that end up going nowhere.

It’s the sort of show you’ll enjoy as a child but balk at as an adult, especially one with the old stories its supposed to be paying homage to at your disposal.

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Doctor Who – The Twin Dilemma Review (or ‘In The Immortal Words of Krusty the Klown “What The Hell Was That?”)

At the time of writing, there have been 236 Doctor Who stories broadcast on TV; 239 if you consider the Trial of a Timelord to be four separate serials in their own right.

So it’s baffling that the highest and lowest rated Doctor Who stories of all time could be shown one after the other.

It just doesn’t seem to make any sense.

How can quality and audience appreciation differ so wildly in the space of one week?

How can you go from the final episode of Caves of Androzani - a success on every conceivable level – to the first episode of the Twin Dilemma?

Surely the people in charge of Doctor Who should have seen this coming and done something about it before it was broadcast? You’d think that until you realise that the Producer, John Nathan Turner believed the latter story had more potential.

Anyway, in this review I’ll look at the Twin Dilemma, assess if it’s bad enough to merit its infamy and try to get to the bottom of why it’s so disliked.

Doctor Who – The Twin Dilemma Review: What’s This One About?

There’s a new Doctor in town and he’s an arsehole.

And a giant slug captures two horrible wunderkind  twins because…erm…he wants to move two planets into position so he can hatch some eggs or something. I’m not entirely sure.

Thoughts –  Why Is It So Bad?

On a previous run-through of Doctor Who, I got to the Twin Dilemma and ended up switching it off around half way through episode two. I just found it embarrassing to watch.

Why?

Well that’s the question.

As much as the plot is poor and a bit difficult to follow at times, there have been ones either equally bad or even worse. I found whilst watching it that Mestor, the Giant Slug, was quite a fun character to watch. He’s no Sharaz Jek, but he’s not without his comic charm, and under the makeup, Edwin Richfield (Captain Hart from the Sea Devils would you believe) does a good job on the voice and in gesticulating wildly.

If you had the same basic storyline with Peter Davison as the Doctor, I don’t think it would be considered quite as bad as it is.

So what are the problems?

The Baffling Characterisation of The Sixth Doctor

I don’t mind Colin Baker. As I said all the way back in my very first Doctor Who related post in 2011, he does an excellent job in the Big Finish audio adventures and is the man at the helm for some fine examples of Who done right, like The Holy

After four weeks of the Caves of Androzani, I can only imagine this was the look on most viewers faces after Episode One of the Twin Dilemma aired

Terror, Jubilee and The Pirates.

But if you only get to see his television work – and the Twin Dilemma in particular – you’d be entitled to wonder why he was hired, because on the whole, his performances – mainly down to the character of his Doctor – are horrific.

I get it; they were going for a William Hartnell situation where he’d start of as a bit of a dick and then improve and become a favourite of the viewers. That might have seemed like a good idea on the drawing board, but in reality, it was a staggeringly

bad decision.

The problem is that Baker’s attempts to play the part come across as forced, over the top and alienating to the viewer. That’s both down to his own deficiencies as an actor and the writing of the character. With the Doctor bobbing from one extreme to the other, I doubt even the top actors the UK had to offer could have done any better.

I’m finding it difficult to put into words just how bad he is in this story because…well…where do you start?

Following on from the intense performance of Peter Davison and the brave characterisation of the Doctor in Caves of Androzani, why would the viewer want to see domestic abuse within the walls of the TARDIS and a lead who bounds from being rude, scared, stoic and content ten times each within the same scene?

Why would the viewer want to watch the Doctor bickering and attacking Peri? What good does it do? Where’s the payoff?

What’s the point of having the Doctor not be the hero, especially when the only other member of the regular cast isn’t a strong enough actress to step up in his place?

Why would you write a story that ends with your lead actor having to say to both Peri and the viewer at home “I am the Doctor, whether you like it or not”? What possible good can come from a statement that basically says “Fuck you viewers,

Michael Bluth reacts to the casting of Colin Baker with one word: “Him?”

you’re stuck with me even if you think I’m crap”. And why would you broadcast a story where you know the new Doctor is so bad that you have to put that little disclaimer/warning at the end anyway?

He’s the Doctor whether we like it or not? Well who’d have believed the show would be canned a year later.

I just find Colin Baker, and Peri too in fairness, to be an embarrassing couple to watch.

And that’s the word that describes the viewing experience of Twin Dilemma best – embarrassing.

Costume and Design

Another aspect of the Twin Dilemma that’s embarrassing is the choices of costume for the cast.

Obviously I have to start with Colin Baker’s costume. What were they thinking? Or more particularly what was John Nathan Turner thinking? Or deeper than that; what were the BBC thinking letting a bloke who thought Hawaiian shirts were the

There are very few positives to take from the idea of the Nazis winning World War 2, but if they had, the Costume Designer for the Twin Dilemma would have been shot for this effort

height of fashion oversee any costume design choices for the lead character in one of their top shows?

If it’s possible for a costume to define a character, this is it. How can you take the Doctor seriously when he’s dressed like a clown and he even acknowledges that himself? And if he acknowledged that he picked the costume because he wasn’t right in the head, why not change it later?

It’s not just him though, Peri’s outfit is horrible and how Kevin McNally’s character thought that the sparkly multicoloured item was the best thing he could take from the TARDIS’s wardrobe is a mystery.

Then you’ve got those silly minions of Mestor who I thought were meant to be raccoons but were apparently designed to look like birds, and on top of that, those twins with their smocks and pudding bowl hairstyles.

The Twin Dilemma looks gawdy, and people who defend it by saying that it looked “of the time” are clearly discounting all the stories that came before it.

It Feels Like Kids TV

The worst and yet most accurate thing I could say about the Twin Dilemma is that it looks and feels like you’re watching a kids show. Having just broadcast the most adult Doctor Who story they’ve ever done, this feels like an episode of Bodger & Badger or the Chuckle Brothers.

There’s just a sense of the show being taken in a new direction that nobody will like.

The Colin Baker Cliffhanger Close-Up Count

So we had the Fifth Doctor Timeline, and I feel for the Sixth Doctor stories there needs to be a new gimmick.

Up The Mestor!! He can boil your blood with a look, transport his mind across space, open doors in rooms he’s not even in…

What I’m going for is the Colin Baker Cliffhanger Close-Up Count.

Four episodes in, and three of them have finished with a close-up of Colin Baker’s face. Two are in peril, one is a happy mugshot, but it all amounts to the same thing.

Current Count: 3.

Random Observations

• Another element that goes against The Twin Dilemma is the incidental music. It’s a mess. Rather than create a score specifically for it, like…you know…every other story, Malcolm Clarke just borrows from his past work on serials likeEarthshock, Resurrection of the Daleks and Enlightenment, and fits it in wherever he likes whether it suits what’s happening on screen or not. The only new bits of music are ones that I associate with Attack of the Cybermen as well, and those bits are crap.
• On the other hand, the updated theme music is pretty good, with the inclusion of the whoosh sound when the logo appears.
• Those twins…bloody hell. For a start, nobody but nobody likes wunderkind children, especially ones who are over-confident, but to have unlikeable characters played by really bad actors makes it worse. It’s like Adric in stereo.
• And that’s the thing here; some of the actors are just pathetic. One of those bird things that speaks to Mestor in episode four should have been paid off and sent home, while the second in command played the part as if he was in a Carry On film.
• Mestor himself though is potentially the most powerful opponent the Doctor has ever faced. He can boil someone’s blood just by looking at them, take over the mind of a Time Lord, open the TARDIS door from afar through the power of his own will, project his mind across vast distances of space and use a random person as his own personal CCTV system before killing him without leaving a scratch.
• And yet he needs two people to help him walk up a couple of stairs; a bit like my Gran.
• Speaking of projecting his mind into that of a Timelord, when he does that to Azmael, you get to witness the worst ever example of an actor miming while another actor speaks the lines. Pitiful.
• What exactly is the dilemma involving the twins? And could the story have done without them completely? Probably.
• Edwin Richfield has been to the William Hartnell school of hand acting.
• Even allowing for everything bad about Twin Dilemma, the fact is that having two stories within the same season where the villain is a giant variety of something you’d find in your back garden is one too many.
• What sort of line is “The sound of giant slugs” anyway?
• But clumsy dialogue plagues all four episodes. I don’t have the spirit to go back and find many specific examples, but one I distinctly remember is “It’s called compassion Doctor; it’s the difference that remains between us”. Urgh. You just wouldn’t say that.
• It’s nice that the writer couldn’t be arsed coming up with a name for the two planets that needed to be moved.
• As you’ll know, Colin Baker was cast on the strength of impressing JNT at a party. Unbelievable.
• DWM Mighty 200 Ranking: #200

Doctor Who – The Twin Dilemma Review: Final Thoughts

So is the Twin Dilemma the worst Doctor Who story ever?

Well there have certainly been more boring ones, and there have been ones that have had more irritating music or worse actors in supporting roles.

But I don’t think there’s ever been a story where the worst part if it is – by any way let alone a long way – the character of, and the actor playing the Doctor.

…but fuck climbing two steps without help, he can’t do that.

The production team have created a rod for their own back by going down the route of making the Doctor an alienating figure to the viewer, and it’s something that the show doesn’t recover from over the next year.

The plot of the Twin Dilemma ultimately pales into insignificance when compared to the antics of Colin Baker on screen, but as an overall package, it’s an embarrassment.

It’s the first and probably only time I’ve put on Doctor Who and felt wrong for watching it; felt like a show I couldn’t admit to being a fan of.

I can accept boredom over embarrassment.

So yes, the Twin Dilemma probably is the worst Doctor Who story, and the sad thing is that it didn’t need to be. If you had the same plot with a few better actors, Peter Davison at the helm and a costume designer who wasn’t on drugs, you’d have something a lot better.

Doctor Who – The Peter Davison Era: Thoughts and Rankings

So the Peter Davison Era of Doctor Who has come and gone in a flash.

Getting through the Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee Eras took six months each, while the overall time spent on Tom Baker amounted to just short of a year and a half.

And yet less than two months after I started Castrovalva, here I am on my final summary of the Fifth Doctor’s stint on the show.

Clearly there’s a lot less to get through (Davison has slightly more than half the amount of episodes the first three Doctors had each, and over 100 less than Tom Baker) but it’s still pretty quick going.

Why is that? Well I’ll be honest; I ended up watching some stories first thing in the morning just to get through them, and on other occasions – specifically Earthshock, The Five Doctors, Resurrection of the Daleks and Caves of Androzani – I was asked to watch them with other people.

And I think that sums up this period of the show. There are some stories that people know, remember and love, and there are others that are just absolute drivel. The show goes through some extreme highs and lows. But looking at my rankings, out of the 20 stories I have to go as low as 9th to find one I like, and 3rd to find one I really like. Much of it is poor.

As for the man at the helm? Well he only seemed to get into the swing of things in his last year. I’ve read it said that he ended up regretting asking to leave as he found that he’d just started to get comfortable. I think that shows in his performance as he ended up saving his best for last.

The Fifth Doctor is the favourite Doctor of both my dad and brother. Personally I wouldn’t go anywhere near that far, as to me he’s a clear 5th out of 5 at this stage.

But he’s better than the next two, that’s for sure.

Anyway, on to the rankings…

The Stories

20. Terminus

There’s bad and then there’s bad and boring. Terminus is just too dull for words. I don’t plan on watching it ever again.

19. Arc of Infinity

It’s just such a crap story, with practically nothing going for it. Like watching paint dry. It also has my least favourite actor ever to appear in Doctor Who in it.

18. Time Flight

Slightly more interesting than the last two. It’s awful but at least it doesn’t make me want to slam my head against a brick wall.

17. The King’s Demons

Pointless filler with an unacceptable conclusion and the most pathetic use of The Master yet.

16. Planet of Fire

Including the title of my review, I used the word “Dreary” six times when discussing Planet of Fire. That wasn’t even intentional; it was pointed out to me by someone else. But it summed up how I felt about it.

15. Warriors of the Deep

Crap on almost every level, but I think you can still have a chuckle at how bad it is.

14. The Awakening

Another filler. While not terrible, I have pretty much no interest in watching it again.

13. Castrovalva

It summed up Bidmead’s time in charge. A story that was confusing and went nowhere. Not the best start for the new Doctor.

12. Mawdryn Undead

A plot with too many inconsistencies and incidental music that drove me up the wall.

11. Kinda

I described it as a story that I “Did not enjoy”. What’s worrying is that it almost cracks the top 10.

10. Snakedance

Better than Kinda, but still pretty lacklustre.

9. Frontios

It has a good plot and it’s mostly well acted but the incidental music – again from the same guy – ruins it.

8. Four to Doomsday

People don’t seem to like this one, but I find it perfectly acceptable.

7. Black Orchid

A two-part story that isn’t filler. Amazing.

6. Enlightenment

The best part of the grim Black Guardian Trilogy. By no means a classic, but good enough.

5. The Visitation

I said at the time that it was the first story I’d seen in a while which was enjoyable. I like it. A proper Dr Who story.

4. Earthshock

A momentous affair, but one that perhaps wouldn’t be anywhere near as fondly remembered without the shocks.

3. Resurrection of the Daleks

Finally a story that I can say I really enjoyed without any major issues. It has a strong cast, it looks great and it’s a fun story.

2. The Five Doctors

Classic nostalgia. I love it and so does pretty much everyone else.

1. The Caves of Androzani

Genuinely brilliant. A strong contender for best story ever.

The Top 5 Cliffhangers

5. Warriors of the Deep Episode 3

Ok, when this gets into the Top 5, you have to worry, but there we go. The way the Sea Devil hisses/shouts “You’re turn” at the Doctor with such uncharacteristic rage makes me laugh. What’s even funnier is that the resolution is that he just doesn’t bother to shoot them. Nice.

4. Kinda Episode 1

The first properly strong cliffhanger of the era. The way the relentless incidental music stops to allow the bloke from The Bill to deliver his line is good, as is the delivery of said line.

3. The Caves of Androzani Episode 1

The Doctor and Peri are shot dead. You can’t get better than that, can you?

2. Earthshock Episode 1

To quote the guy from the Earthshock documentary…“Wow, shit, fantastic!!!”. The Cybermen showing up unannounced must have been a real treat for everyone watching.

1. The Caves of Androzani Episode 3

Top direction, great acting and a real sense that the Doctor could well be about to die/regenerate.

The Companions

6. Tegan

If you haven’t read any of my reviews, you probably think I’m mad, but I can’t stand Tegan. She’s an unlikeable brash character who does nothing but moan about wanting to get “Beck to the TAHDIS”. The actress playing her seems to have as much enthusiasm as the character.

5. Kamelion

Yup, Gerald Flood’s voice acting over a static piece of metal is better than Janet Fielding. If he’d been in at least one more story he’d have had a chance of finishing second. Hey, at least he tried to sing.

4. Peri

Not enough time to shine.

3. Turlough

He’s a bit of a nothing character, whose only development came in his first and last stories. He’s not bad, but he’s just so unremarkable.

2. Adric

I can’t believe I’m doing this, but Adric is the second best companion in the Peter Davison era as far as I’m concerned. He might well have been an annoying prat played by a terrible actor, but he actually had some level of significance in the stories he was in.

1. Nyssa

Nyssa is number 1. That says it all. Why is she number 1? Not out of any real merit but she was the only one who properly worked in the role of a companion to the Doctor. And she worked well with Peter Davison’s character.

The Seasons

Based on their positions within the rankings, the seasons end up as follows…

3rd. Season 20 (14.0) A contender the worst season of Doctor Who ever. Remember, the Five Doctors isn’t in it.

2nd. Season 21 (9.67) A close second. Two very strong stories let down by three particularly poor ones.

1st. Season 19 (9.43) Finishes top for being a solid if unspectacular season on the whole. The only real let down was Time Flight.

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Doctor Who – The Caves of Androzani Review (or “Has the DWM Mighty 200 Got One Right? Is This The Best Ever?”)

The DWM Mighty 200 – Doctor Who Magazine’s rating of all the Doctor Who stories as voted by the fans – has played a key role in my Doctor Who reviews.

As I go through each story, I compare what I think about them to how Doctor Who fandom as a group rates them in relation to the other stories in the series.

More often than note, I find myself disagreeing with what they have to say, with stories such as the Gunfighters, The Underwater Menace and The Monster of Peladon being criminally overlooked, while the likes of  Logopolis, Warrior’s Gate and the Curse of Peladon are massively overrated.

Well now we come to the big one; the number one rated story in the DWM Mighty 200 – The Caves of Androzani.

I’m not going to insult your intelligence by asking whether or not I’ll like the story, because of course I do. As I see it, if you don’t like a story of the undoubted quality of Peter Davison’s final adventure as the Doctor, then you’re watching the wrong show.

And yet I must admit, as a child I didn’t get the fuss. It’s not that I disliked it, but for a boy of around…oh…10-14 years old, it flew over my head a bit.

I’ll explain why and also determine whether I agree with the DWM Mighty 200 assessment as the review progresses.

Doctor Who – The Caves of Androzani Review: What’s This One About

Robert Holmes was given a brief; Kill the Doctor.

And that’s what he does, in a story devoid of any “monsters” to speak of (unless you’re talking about the character of the main players involved) and about greed, revenge and the Doctor’s determination to save the life of a girl he’s only just met (if you ignore the Big Finish stuff).

Thoughts – The Most Adult Doctor Who Story of All Time

Now I said above that I didn’t get the fuss about Androzani when I was a child, but then I doubt I’d have enjoyed I, Claudius at that age either.

Here’s some pretty intense “Breaking The Fourth Wall” acting from John Normington. He taught Lovejoy everything he knew

The Caves of Androzani didn’t seem like it was written with a youngster like me in mind, and I’ve got no problem with that.

It’s a story where The Doctor doesn’t try to save the world or overthrow a corrupt regime, but one where simply by being there, he sets off a chain of events that results in the death of the President of Androzani Major, the overthrowing of a tyrannical business owner who ruled oppressively over its population and the end of a brutal war over the stockpiling of a drug that the people of that civilisation believed was worth dying for.

That all this can happen without the Doctor doing anything so much as appearing as a captive on a video screen is genius.

As far as the Doctor and Peri are concerned, the key moment happens less than five minutes in. When Peri falls into the Spectrox Nest and the Doctor brushes it off her legs, that really is it for them; the die is cast and nothing they do between now and the end of the story can prevent the regeneration.

Throughout the rest of The Caves of Androzani we’re treated to a story of relationships, and how each of the characters react to one another. There’s Jek & Morgus, Stotz & Jek, Jek & Peri, Morgus & Stotz, Morgus & The President, Morgus & Timmin, Stotz & Krelper and finally Jek & Chellak.

Other than Peri, every single one of those characters is – in their own way – a nasty, selfish piece of work.

And what is so good about the writing of Caves of Androzani is that every single one of these relationships, deep and intricate though they are, come to a head in Episode 4.

The story builds up until it reaches boiling point – which incidentally works wonderfully with the idea of the mud burst being set to blow up at the same time – and it kicks of big time with around 15 minutes to go. At the same time as all of this is going on, the Doctor – fighting against death – is simply trying his best to find a way to cure Peri.

I could for a long time about how wonderful the depth of the storytelling and characterisation is here, but I think you get the picture.

And I say it’s undoubtedly the most adult story there is. It’s bleak, the characters have no real right to be in a show considered suitable for family entertainment and there are no scary monsters in funny costumes (but for the minor cameo of that Cave monster, which is the one element the story could do without) to scare the kids.

The most gritty scene of the lot – and possibly in Doctor Who history – has to be the one in episode 2 where Stotz forces Krelper into eating what Krelper believes is a deadly pill. I mean, for crying out loud he even shouts at him “Come on you slut, bite!”. This is what Doctor Who should always be like!

The Acting

A good story is one thing, but it needs talented actors to pull it off.

“Come on you slut, bite (the deadly pill in your mouth)” shouts Stotz while holding a knife to Krelper’s throat by the edge of a cliff. Perfect teatime viewing for all the family

The Caves of Androzani has these in abundance.

Every actor understands their role and is cast perfectly, from Christopher Gable as the masked and insane Sharaz Jek through to John Normington as the cold and ruthless Morgus.

Of the guest cast, I think my favourite performer is Maurice Roeves as Stotz.

Stotz is – to be blunt – a maniac, and Roeves knows exactly how to play him. It would have been wrong to write and perform a character like him as a guy who is always shouting and bawling, so the idea that he’s often quite relaxed and yet is more than capable of killing his colleagues when their backs are turned is fantastic.

That scene I describe above wouldn’t have worked were it not for the intensity of Roeves’s performance.

As to the regular cast, Nicola Bryant is far better as Peri than she was in her debut, but most credit has to go to Peter Davison.

Davison has saved the best for last, with a multi-layered and thoroughly confident performance as the Doctor. You look at the likes of Pertwee or Tom Baker in their last story and get a sense that they’d ran out of enthusiasm and it was time for them to go.

But Davison’s performance here shows that there’s life in the old dog yet. It wasn’t his time to go, and his character – written more like the character of the Fourth Doctor before he became all comedic and then maudlin – is far better than it has been probably in any of his previous stories.

He’s just superb, from his interactions with Jek through to his breathtaking performance in the cliffhanger to Episode 3.

The Direction

What takes Caves of Androzani over the limit of being an excellent story into a genuine contender for the #1 slot though for me is the direction.

I don’t want to say that the standard of direction we’ve seen in the show up to this point has been primitive, because that’s not necessarily true. There’s been a range of quality from very poor to pretty darn good, but Graeme Harper leaves them all trailing in his wake.

The fade outs, the fast movement, the choice of camera angles, the accidental-but-brilliant fourth wall break by Morgus; it is literally awesome compared to what we’ve seen before.

What I love about it most is that Harper has invested in what he’s doing. He’s not some freelancer going through the motions just to pick up a pay-cheque at the end of the shoot; he’s put his heart and soul into it.

The little things, like the way we see the same effect used in the regeneration clouding over the Doctor’s eyes only for him to shake it off is brilliant. There’s nothing in the script about it and it’s never mentioned again, but the idea – straight from Harper’s own vision of what’s happening – is that he’s about to regenerate there and then but manages to hold it back. I mean, how good is that?

Harper is a cut above, and it’s no surprise he’s been used so many times since the series returned (although suspiciously never by Steven Moffat).

The Fifth Doctor Timeline

So this is it; it’s time to count it all up. The Caves of Androzani I believe takes place over two days, so that leaves us with…

• Castrovalva (2 days)
• Four to Doomsday (1 day)
• Kinda (2 days)
• The Visitation (1 day)
• Black Orchid (Story lasts an afternoon, but they stay for maybe 3 days to attend funeral)
  

  Here’s the one thing Caves of Androzani could have done without

• Earthshock (Half a day)
• Time Flight (One and a half days at a push)
• Arc of Infinity (1 day plus an unknown amount of time between stories)
• Snakedance (2 days)
• Mawdryn Undead (1 day)
• Terminus (1 day)
• Enlightenment (2 days at a push)
• King’s Demons (1 day)
• Five Doctors (1 day plus an unknown amount of time between stories)
• Warrior of the Deep (1 day)
• The Awakening (1 day and then they stay there for a week’s holiday)
• Frontios (1 day)
• Resurrection of the Daleks (The same day)
• Planet of Fire (1 day)
• Caves of Androzani (2 days)

Therefore, on-screen, the Fifth Doctor’s entire tenure lasts for between 27 and 34 days.

At no point does the Doctor travel alone, and though perhaps as much as a year passed between Time Flight & Arc of Infinity, and maybe some time elapsed between The Five Doctors & Warriors of the Deep, for a man who’s supposed to be around the 1000 years old range, his Fifth incarnation really was as fleeting visit.

Random Observations

• As amazing as Caves of Androzani is, there are still one of two niggles. The cliffhanger to Episode 3 isn’t resolved all that well, with the Doctor not actually crashing the ship but landing safely.
• Also, the Cave monster is a bit crap as I’ve said, you have to ask why the Doctor didn’t get enough bat’s milk for himself (and if he did and he dropped it getting into the TARDIS, which was the original intention, why would he not have drank it straight away in the cave), and you must also wonder why the Doctor didn’t tell Jek about the Spectrox Toxemia earlier? Considering Jek had a vested interest in keeping Peri alive, he would have helped sooner.
• I’ve been very critical of Roger Limb’s efforts at Incidental Music up to this point, but he gets it spot on here.
• Knowing that this was going to be the last story Peter Davison appeared in, the cliffhangers to episodes 1 and 3 must have been really exciting to watch the first time around. Viewers will genuinely have wondered whether or not he actually did die.
• And how brave would it have been if he had done; if he’d regenerated at the end of Episode 3? The story would have suffered, but it would have been the bravest piece of plot development seen in Doctor Who in years, perhaps ever.
• If you are to assume that the best story ever has to have everything, where this suffers compared to the likes of the Talons of Weng Chiang and Blink is in the sets and costumes. As an unfortunate by-product of where and when this is set,
  

  Nooooooooooooooo!!!!!

  the designers had to go “Space Age” and that never looks as good or as genuine as period drama or modern-day stuff.

• My heart sank at the end of this one, seeing Colin Baker turn up. I think Baker is very good in the Big Finish audios, but his TV stuff – as I’ll expand on in the future – is often brutal.
• To me, Robert Holmes is a hit & miss writer. A chunk of his Dr Who output ranges from mediocre to crap (and the worst is yet to come) and yet when he’s on form, he’s capable of writing some of  the – if not the –  best stories ever written for the show. It’s just difficult to know how to rate him based on his entire body of work.
• Did you know that Graeme Harper wanted to cast Michael Craze as Krelper but JNT vetoed it? I only found that out last night.
• Robert Glenister has some great “Eye Acting” as the android, does he not?
• I’m perfectly alright with the idea that the Doctor and Peri travelled together for some time in between Planet of Fire and this, as it’s never speficially stated that they’d only just met here and many of the Big Finish stories with the two of them are good. However, what I do believe is extremely tenuous is the Big Finish story that takes place during the Fifth Doctor’s regeneration sequence involving Nyssa.
• The regeneration sequence itself is probably the best one for what it happening and how it happened, but it’s still not a patch on the very first one for the quality of the special effect.
• And why is the Doctor thinking about Kamelion?
• DWM Mighty 200 Rating: #1, but you knew that

Doctor Who – The Caves of Androzani Review: Final Thoughts

The Caves of Androzani is an excellent story. It builds throughout with tension, drama, top quality acting & directing and finishes with all the linking and complex storylines and relationships coming to a head.

The greatest pity when watching it is knowing that this is how good Doctor Who could have been around this era, with a motivated and talented lead actor, strong supporting cast members and an excellent director. And yet it so often isn’t this good, or anywhere near it.

What’s wrong with the likes of Eric Saward and John Nathan Turner – the latter of whom thought this didn’t have the potential of the Twin Dilemma – that they couldn’t see that the best stories are done with minimal interference from talented writers. It’s bizarre and makes no sense.

We’ll see the baffling situation where following on from this – the top rated story of all time – we move onto the story that finished last in the same poll.

So I guess you have to ask yourself this; much like Ian told Barbara that Autloc was the odd man out rather than Tlotoxl, is Caves of Androzani just a blip? Is it that Doctor Who couldn’t reach this standard by anything other than an accident in this period of its history, or is it that the people in charge of the show genuinely misused it so that it rarely got anywhere near its full potential.

Who knows? I suppose we should just be grateful for what is a work of art and a genuine contender for my Best Story of All Time.

Doctor Who – Planet of Fire Review (or ‘Nice Location, But Utterly Dreary’)

We’re off on holiday again as the Fifth Doctor era begins to draw to a close.

This time, John Nathan Turner decided he wanted to go to Lanzarote for his yearly jolly boys outing.

If you recall, the last time they went away was for Arc of Infinity – when they visited Amsterdam – and it was absolutely redundant to the plot.

Will it be any less redundant this time for Planet of Fire?

And will the story be any good? The last two have been acceptable, so will this be a rare three out of three for JNT-era Who?

Doctor Who – Planet of Fire Review: What’s This One About?

A Google search for a synopsis of Planet of Fire comes back with this…

“The Master re-establishes psychic control of his robot slave Kamelion. He wants to hijack the Doctor’s TARDIS to reach the planet Sarn, where he seeks the healing power of Numismaton Gas to restore himself. Once on Sarn, Turlough comes face to face with his destiny”

Thoughts – What’s This One Really About?

I had to look that synopsis up because I couldn’t find a way of explaining the story without saying what it’s really about.

Peter Davison just looks on in despair at having to work with Kamelion again

In many ways the plot doesn’t actually matter, because ultimately, Planet of Fire is a means to an end.

The brief for the writer – “Oh No It’s” Peter Grimwade – was most likely to do the following.

• Write out Turlough
• Tie up the loose ends with who Turlough is and where he came from (since nobody bothered to explain it before now)
• Bring back and then write out Kamelion, since he couldn’t actually be used as they would have wanted (hey, who’d have thought that?)
• Introduce a new companion
• Give the Fifth Doctor one last confrontation with the Master
• Make use of the Location Filming

And to give Peter Grimwade credit, he does do all of those things, and in particular he manages to give Turlough an interesting backstory that works alongside what we knew of him from Mawdryn Undead. There’s even a mention of the lawyer that was said to be his guardian in that story. Grimwade created the character of course, so that shouldn’t be too much of a shock.

But what Grimwade fails to do is turn these key plot points into an interesting story.

Maybe there’s too much on his plate; too many boxes to tick, but Planet of Fire just ends up being extremely boring.

Do We Really Need To See Another Master Story?

I liked the Master in the Five Doctors because the character was written by the guy who invented him.

It almost made me forget how utterly dreary the Anthony Ainley version is.

I can accept that they wanted one last confrontation with him and the Fifth Doctor, and it seems as though this one is written as a final battle, seeing as he clearly dies at the end of it (although one would wonder why he didn’t just step out of the

fire since there was nothing stopping him), but even so, the character is just so dreary,

No doubt I’ve said this before, but Roger Delgado’s Master worked not only because he was a better character and actor, but because in the eight stories in which he appeared, he wasn’t the sole villain in any of them. Alongside him there were

This is a perfectly healthy and normal Stepfather/Stepdaughter relationship…honest.

The Autons, The Keller Machine, The Axons, The Company, The Daemons, The Sea Devils, Kronos, The Ogrons and the Daleks.

But in the Anthony Ainley stories, he’s the sole villain in all but one (and that one was – you guessed it – the Five Doctors).

There’s only so much interest that can be gained from seeing a one dimensional boo hiss villain lay traps like a crap Dick Dastardly and flaunt his little shrinking gun. We don’t need to him come back for a seventh time in 21 stories.

And what does he even bring to Planet of Fire?

Nothing, that’s what. He just sits around in a box for ages, while Kamelion pretends to be him.

Overall we’ve just had far too much of this character.

Sadly he’ll be back, but with less frequency.

What We’re Left With

The rest of Planet of Fire is – as I say – boring as all hell.

Other than the guy who looks like the Iron Shiek (Timanov), I couldn’t identify any other character from Sarn either by name, appearance or relevance to the plot, and I only finished watching it 20 minutes ago.

There are very few stories – if any – that I could say the same for. Even duds like Underworld, Terminus and Time Flight have recognisable characters whose role within the story is clear.

Not here though; it’s just dreary.

From memory, the plot as far as they are concerned is “There’s a chosen one coming! It’s him! No, it’s him! Let’s just go to a different planet”.

Oh just piss off Master. I can’t even be bothered doing my usual caption with him anymore

Rubbish.

So Grimwade did what he needed to do, but what he failed to turn it into was an interesting tale.

Considering his previous efforts, he did remarkably well as it was.

The Fifth Doctor Timeline

Like Frontios moves directly into Resurrection of the Daleks, Planet of Fire appears to happen straight after that one. Either that or the Doctor just felt like commenting on the Daleks long after the fact.

If you are to take it that it did follow directly on, there’s an argument to suggest that all three stories happen in the same day. I haven’t seen anyone sleep yet, have you?

Random Observations

• So we’ve got a new companion, and watch out dads and schoolboys, she’s got breasts!!! And she’s wearing a fucking bikini!!! OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!
• As Peri, Nicola Bryant turns out to be a decent companion. Well…maybe she does. She’s good in the audio dramas at least. But Planet of Fire isn’t the best of starts for her, as she not only doesn’t seem to be the best actress, but her character comes across as a bit of a whiny brat. And yet she’s still a marked improvement over Tegan.
• Kamelion really was a waste of time, but at least they managed to get Gerald Flood back to do his voice. I’m not sure why there was a need to have him occasionally turn into a silver Howard though. I think it would have been funnier for them to use the prop like one of the Weeping Angels and have it move about when the camera is off it. That would at least have given me a chuckle.
• Of course, the plot with the Master doesn’t really make all that much sense. Even if we allow for him to have piggy backed along with the TARDIS to Sarn by influencing Kamelion after his accident, surely his accident would have killed him?
• And even if we allow for it not to have killed him, how did he manage to make a control room in a shoebox? And if the control room was shrunk when he was shrunk, how did it get into the box? And how does it have a lid?
  

  “Fuck the Michael Jordan…er…the Michael Jackson. And that jabroni piece of shit Hulk Hogan” etc etc

• How come Turlough had previously wanted to go back to his home planet (see: Enlightenment) if he was a political exile.
• Why was the thing in the sea in the sea? Why would it be on Earth and why would it take them to Sarn rather than to Trion?
• Isn’t it massively convenient that the Doctor and Turlough are on holiday somewhere that has a landscape that is exactly the same as Sarn?
• Why did Turlough bother to save Peri, and seeing as he did save her, why not leave her on the beach?
• And how did Peri’s hair not only dry, but restyle itself while she was asleep in the TARDIS?
• Let’s be honest; there’s clearly something a bit mucky about the relationship between Peri and her stepfather.
• Just watching this, you’d have to think that Peri’s family not only must assume she’s dead, but that Howard was responsible for it. He probably got arrested. Indeed, the Big Finish audio , The Reaping (which is really good by the way and is worth listening to) makes that point.
• At long last, Turlough changes his clothes, but he was better with what he was wearing before.
• DWM Mighty 200 Ranking: #134. Hmmm, I’d have it lower.

Doctor Who – Planet of Fire Review: Final Thoughts

Planet of Fire does what I assume it sets out to do, and unlike Arc of Infinity, the use of location adds to it, but beyond that it’s just a very boring story.

I’m not even sure if it’s bad, it’s just dull. There are no issues with sets, costumes, noticeably bad acting, music or anything else.

But it just oozes a sense of being totally unremarkable.

 

Doctor Who – Resurrection of the Daleks Review (or “The One With Rodney Bewes In It”)

I used to have a Betamax video recorder, and unlike I assume most people, I kept and used it up until around November 1993.

Why?

Because I had a recording of Resurrection of the Daleks  that would only play on that machine.

That’s almost all we had left for it by about 1987 (other than a tape that had the last 90 seconds of Attack of the Cybermen on it) and yet we kept it hooked up to one of the TVs for all those years, just for that.

Resurrection of the Daleks then falls into the Five Doctors category; a story I’ve seen more times than I’d care to remember and one I associate massively with my childhood.

But is it any good?

Doctor Who – Resurrection of the Daleks Review: What’s This One About?

It’s the one with Rodney fucking Bewes in it.

And Dirty Den.

And Rula Lenska

And the Daleks

And Davros

And Lytton.

And 74 people are killed making it the highest on-screen body-count of any Doctor Who story.

And Tegan leaves!!

Thoughts – The Strongest Dalek Story Since The 1960s?

You’re going to read that title and – assuming you subscribe to popular opinion amongst fandom – think that I’m mad because I’m saying that this is better than Genesis of the Daleks.

I’m surprised there weren’t frantic rewrites to kill off that pedestrian crossing the bridge.

Well I thought Genesis was slightly overrated anyway, but I also believe it wasn’t really a Dalek story anyway. To me, the Daleks played such a minor part in it that it was more a Davros story.

Resurrection of the Daleks is obviously about Davros too, but his creations share equal billing with him.

So really, the competition includes the Pertwee stories – which were all decent enough – and Destiny of the Daleks, which was pish.

But it’s not even that it wins the vote by default. I really enjoy Resurrection of the Daleks, ridiculous death count and all.

To me it’s one of Davison’s strongest adventures, complete with a plot that you can mostly follow, a far more gritty theme, comparatively high quality sets, far better special effects than we’re used to and a guest cast brimming with quality.

The Guest Cast

So I praised the guest cast of Frontios. and deservedly so I felt, but Resurrection of the Daleks leaves it trailing in its wake.

You’ve got current (at the time) and future household names like Rodney “Immortal” Bewes, Rula Lenska, Lesley “Dirty Den” Grantham and Maurice Colbourne who all do  a top notch job.

They are ably assisted by the likes of Del Henney, Phil McGough and Jim Findlay.

Probably the best of the lot though is Terry Molloy as Davros.

I know it’s easy to disregard him because he’s so well known for his performance in this and subsequent stories, but you have to take into account that though he had been a radio stalwart, before he took on the part of Davros he’d only had a handful of TV roles.

Compared to David Gooderson’s bland performance, in Destiny of the Daleks, Molloy is different class. There’s an argument to be had on whether or not he’s better than Michael Wisher. Certainly I think he injects more into the role in terms of mannerisms and voice range (helped by his radio background), although you could say Wisher played him in an a preferably understated way.

No matter how you look at it though, Molloy puts in a powerful performance as the Daleks’ creator, and in particular, his scene at the end of Episode 3 (in the four part version) is excellent.

The Amount of Death

Resurrection of the Daleks stands out because of the sheer amount of death that happens over the course of the two (or four if you watched that version of the DVD) episodes.

This guy thought he was going to survive the ordeal. Sadly not

Eric Saward seems to have an unquenchable bloodlust.

From the very start, he writes in characters who have no real meaning to the plot, just for the shits and giggles of seeing them killed. That poor old bloke and the boy with the metal detector really don’t need to be in the story at all, but he puts them in just so he had the thrill of seeing them bumped off. More effort is given to building up the character of the Captain of the ship than them and he’s never even seen.

Throughout the story, guards keep getting killed for the sake of it, characters would get so far into the process of doing something like setting up the self destruct switch, only for them to get killed and them someone else take over later on. And what about the bomb disposal squad who are killed, duplicated and killed again?

It’s all a bit bizarre but works within the gloomy nature of the story. Going slightly off at a tangent, the choice of filming location in the Docklands area of London also adds to it all.

Coming back to the amount of death, and I have to say though, the scene where Lytton says “They’re dying, and so are you” before shooting the guard he’s with takes it into laughable parody.

All good fun though.

The Dalek Voices

One thing to notice about Resurrection of the Daleks is that the voices of the Daleks are about the best they’ve been since the 60s.

None of them sound like Zippy, all of them have depth to them, and for me – as someone who watched this story so often as a child – they do feel a bit like the definitive voices.

Obviously Peter Hawkins was better, but these are also good.

My only complaint is that I felt they got the Dalek voices the wrong way round. The Black Dalek ends up with the softer of the two voices, when he really should have had the other one.

Stein and the Dalek Trap

Ok, I might be missing something here, but the stuff with Stein doesn’t really make all that much sense.

I could accept him being a Dalek agent if it was hinted at before the cliffhanger, but to me it seemed more like something Saward decided to do to make for an interesting cliffhanger.

I mean, why would he escape to Earth with that other bloke? And was the other bloke a Dalek agent as well? If so, why was he killed? And if he wasn’t, and Stein knowingly was, why would Stein be surprised and upset to see him killed when he’s

“What the hell did you tell him Davros was on board for!! Idiot!!!”

on his own.

Indeed, much of the stuff on Earth makes little sense to the overall story. The Doctor escapes from the Time Corridor, so presumably if he hadn’t the TARDIS would have landed on the Dalek ship. Are we to assume that they anticipated this and set up a situation where they’d know exactly where and when he’d escape from it to? And that’s why Stein was there; to get him from Earth back to the Dalek ship?

Ok, but then what’s the point of the cylinders of gas (which are there only to kill the Daleks at the end), alerting the bomb squad and duplicating them long in advance?

And while it’s a perfectly reasonable plan for the Daleks to duplicate the Doctor and his companions, why duplicate people like Stein if they are so volatile that their programming fails? Why not just program the original Stein? And was it not a little bit out of left field to have the Black Dalek start talking about duplicates of key Earth figures at the eleventh hour and then just disregard it straight afterwards?

I suppose though that if the focus is on killing as many people as possible, sometimes logical plot development falls by the wayside.

The Fifth Doctor Timeline

It’s another single day adventure, so when Tegan said “It’s stopped being fun” to the Doctor, maybe she should have phrased it as “I’ve travelled with you for about four weeks and every single day we are put in life or death situations. I can’t take it any more, and I don’t understand how you can either. And change your clothes!!”

Random Observations

• Has anyone noticed that they never bother to name Professor Laird on-screen? There have probably been loads of characters like that over the years, but this one sticks out. Having said that, it’s better she’s not named at all ratger than they name her in every sentence like what happened in Warriors of the Deep.
• Another Professor Laird one; when the duplicate of Colonel Archer first appears, she decides that it’s not the real Archer because he’s wearing a gun belt and he’d given his to the Doctor. Is that not a bit of  a reach? Is it not more
  

  Go on yerself, Rodney Bewes

  reasonable to assume he found a new one before concluding that it’s an Dalek-created replica?

• I’m a fan of Rodney Bewes, but isn’t everyone? Last night I was finishing watching this story and someone came into the room and said “Ha, it’s Rodney Bewes! Brilliant”. That sums it up. Apart from being in Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, BBC comedy show QI proved that Bewes is actually a time travelling immortal. Clip below.
• I’m sure everyone will agree that Bewes’s death scene is a corker. And the incidental music adds to it rather than detracts from it.
• Seeing as Bewes is in it, I started thinking about who James Bolam could have played. This led me to the following alternative casting choices for the show. Lytton should have been played by Donald Gee or even by Dirty Den who would than have to be recast. Best of the lot though, and if you’ve ever seen Parks & Recreation you won’t be able to unsee this, but Lt. Mercer would have worked far better if he was played by Aziz Ansari.
• Speaking of Dirty Den, does it not trouble some of you that – on the basis of those uncensored tabloid photos that did the rounds a decade ago – you could watch any scene with him in it and say “Well, I’ve seen that guy’s cock”. I don’t think I could say that about any other character in Doctor Who history, thankfully.
• Dalek ‘acting’ is a difficult skill because they are so limited and emotionless, being that they are metal cases with flashing lights on top. But there’s a scene where the Doctor tricks Rodney Bewes into admitting that Davros is on board, and the Dalek turns round without saying anything and gives him a look as if to say “Oh well bloody done. What did you have to tell him that for?!!” It’s hilarious.
• The idea that the Doctor might kill Davros is alien to many fans of the show, but I don’t see the problem. There’s a double standard that suggests it’s perfectly all right for the Doctor to kill as many Daleks, Cybermen, Autons or Myrka as he wants, but if he tries to kill Davros then that’s completely unacceptable. Weird.
• How exactly did the Black Dalek get a direct link to the TARDIS scanner?
• Yay, Tegan’s gone. Probably my least favourite companion in the show up to this point. She was a miserable cow from beginning to end (with the exception of the Five Doctors where she seemed to be in a decent mood) and she won’t be missed. People might disagree, but I just don’t see the point in a companion who didn’t want to travel with the Doctor.
• Turlough’s an interesting one. Here’s a character who has had very little character development beyond the basic brief that he “wanted to kill the Doctor”. He’s still wearing a school uniform, yet nobody comments on it. What I did notice about him here though, was that rather than being the generic companion that he has been for most of the stories out-with Mawdryn Undead and Enlightenment, he has a bit more to do and say. In particular, it’s a bit shocking for a companion to suggest murdering two guards.
• So we have to assume that Davros was killed. Right?
• Where’s Kamelion?
• Why did that bloke who went to try to kill of Davros not wear a mask when the woman he was with did? And what a terrible actor he was.
• That death scene, along with all the other ones caused by the deadly gas, was pretty horrific for a show like Who.
• How come Turlough manages to avoid being killed by the gas just by putting a handkerchief loosely over his mouth?
• That Dalek mutant really has it in for that solider, doesn’t it?
• And what’s with the bulletproof tarpaulin?
• When the bomb disposal squad are killed off for the second time, they appear to be having a competition to see who can die in the most over the top way.
• Fair play to the Dalek who managed to shoot back after he’d been exterminated himself.
• As I mentioned above, the Incidental Music worked…thankfully. Once again, it was by Malcolm Clarke, who did a good job on both Earthshock and Enlightenment. Paddy Kingsland and Roger Limb should have taken notes.
• Where was Leela when the Doctor was having his mind scanned? I know the answer, but I’m just making the observation.
• Also, if I’m going to be really difficult, I would question why the character of the Doctor would be thinking of the likes of Katarina in his mind scan. Not only did he travel with her for about 5 hours before she was killed and barely said a
  

  Sadly, thanks to the UK Tabloid Press, I’ve seen the cock of one of these four men. Can you guess who it is? Dirty…

  word to her, but he travelled with or mixed with other characters, like Benton & Yates or even Marco Polo for far longer. Hmmph!

• Poor old Peter Purves get barely half a second on screen, and he’s all blurry.
• DWM Mighty 200 Ranking: #93. I’d have it a lot higher I think. I can’t understand the sort of thinking that states this isn’t as good Doctor Who as The Unicorn & The Wasp, Kinda, Enlightenment or The Keeper of Traken.

Doctor Who – Resurrection of the Daleks Review: Final Thoughts

Maybe it’s my childhood memories coming into play, but I very much enjoy Resurrection of the Daleks.

It looks good, has a very strong cast, a story that – despite some nonsensical faults – is easy to follow, the Daleks sound better than they have in a long time, the new Davros is better than the last and it just feels like a more polished piece of work than many of the other stories in this period.

I’m not sure how high I’ll rank it when I do my own ones at the end of this process, but I doubt it’ll be anywhere near as low as #93.

So it comes with my recommendation.

Enjoy it.

 

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Doctor Who – Frontios Review (or “The Curse of Kingsland Strikes Again”)

Oh no, Christpher H. Bidmead is back.

The man who thinks the viewers are interested in makey up science pish is back with a new story, Frontios.

Will it be any better than his previous efforts as a writer and a script editor?

Let’s hope so.

Doctor Who – Frontios Review: What’s This One About?

Burrowing insect creatures known as Tractators led by their well spoken controller, The Gravis, keep sucking human beings into the ground to help them turn the planet of Frontios into one large spaceship.

The Doctor is initially hesitant to get involved, because apparently it’s not ok to meddle so far into the future (make sense of that one if you can), but he does it anyway.

Thoughts – Paddy Kingsland Does It Again…Unfortunately

Much like my review of Mawdryn Undead, I have to start with a complaint about the Incidental Music.

In the aforementioned Season 20 story, the music was both in-your-face and largely unsuitable for what was on screen, and it led to it overshadowing what was on screen.

Oooh he’s butch. And the boy behind him appears to be Brodus Clay’s dad.

It’s almost the same in Frontios, and would you believe it, the composer here is the same as in Mawdryn Undead. It’s Paddy Kingsland.

To be fair, it’s not that the music is unsuitable, because it fits quite well.

But it’s that it’s just so bloody relentless.

Every damned scene has the same piece of woodwind music played over it. Eventually it just got to the point where I was being made tense and irritable by it.

I have to ask the question again; does Paddy Kingsland understand what Incidental Music is supposed to be? Because it doesn’t sound like it.

The Story

That the Incidental Music of Frontios is the ‘Big Ticket Item’ on this review perhaps does a disservice to what is on the whole a perfectly acceptable story.

To me, Frontios is ahead of its time in that it’s the sort of setting you’d expect in the David Tennant era.

There’s a gritty survivalist theme going on where the TARDIS has landed in amongst one of the last colonies of the human race left in the universe, and they are struggling to survive.

I like that, even though it goes against my irrational hatred for anything bleak and murky looking.

And the concept behind the Tractators is good too,  although there are one or two elements about them and their plan that don’t make all that much sense. I’ll get to that later.

The Acting

One of the main strengths of Frontios is the quality of the guest cast and the depth of character they perform.

The likes of Lesley Dunlop, William Lucas and especially Peter Gilmore are all of a high standard, Gilmore especially. He plays a character with more than one layer, and displays a good range of emotion in his performance.

So he’s good, but one I’m not too sure of is Jeff Rawle as Plantagenet.

Either he’s a bit hammy, in which case he’s bad, or he’s acting the part of a character who is deliberately hammy and full of false bluster in the role of an unprepared leader. And if Rawle is acting the latter, he’s top notch. I’m not sure he is though.

Finally, the voice acting of the Gravis is fun – certainly far more emotive and full of character than that dreadful Silurian voices from Warriors of the Deep – and the Doctor’s dealings with him are a fresh and interesting take on the Doctor/Monster dynamic.

Race Memory

While on the whole, it’s good story, there are still things that I take issue with…

For a start, the concept of Race Memory seems very much like something Christopher H. Bidmead has read about in some scientific journal and thought would make a good plot device. Either that or he’d recently watched Quatermass and the Put. Either way, I’m not so sure about its use here.

If Race – or Genetic – Memory really is a thing, it’s meant to be subconscious. There’s a school of thought, for example, that suggests it’s hard wired into us to be afraid of snakes. People can be afraid of snakes without having ever seen one, and it’s

Poor old Gravis. At the very least he’s lost a few teeth there.

because they were such a deadly threat to early man when living in tropical climates.

Now let’s take a moment to assume that’s true, even though it probably isn’t. If it were true, it manifests itself in being afraid of snakes, not being able to recount an entire history of the battle between snakes and humans over the years. That’s what I don’t like about its use in Frontios.

Here, Race Memory = A Chance For Easy Exposition.

Either that or it’s been used to give Turlough something to do.

No matter what the use though, the execution was silly. I can understand Turlough having an inbuilt fear of Tractators, but I can’t accept that he knows exactly what happened when they invaded his planet, nor can I accept that he knows how they operate and that the Tractators are useless without the Gravis. To me that’s just taking the easy way out, especially considering the latter piece of info was key to wrapping the story up.

Leave Me, I’m Not Worth Saving

Another thing that really grinds my gears is the death of Brazen.

It’s death for the sake of death.

For much of Episodes 3 and 4 we see Plantagenet sitting in the Mining Machine quite the thing. He didn’t look in any great discomfort and was freed from it reasonably easily by the Doctor.

But when Brazen sits in it? All bets are off.

Not only is sitting in the machine somehow fatal for him, but he’s got no interest in being saved. He just says “Ach well, leave me. I’ll just die here”.

I’m not sure whether to blame Bidmead or Eric Saward for that, but it comes across as lazy writing and a means of getting rid of a character that no longer served a purpose in the plot.

And actually, the next time we see the Gravis’s control room, the machine has inexplicably blown up.

The Fifth Doctor Timeline

I’d say that once again this story lasts about a day, maybe a day and a half.

It could be that the Doctor & Tegan went off and had their own adventures for years while dropping off the Gravis, but don’t tell that to Big Finish, because they’ll run with it and have a series of adventures with The Doctor, Tegan and a new companion that just so happens to be a streetwise youngster from 2013 London.

Random Observations

• The designers on Frontios deserve credit for trying to make the setting look grand through the use of model shots and CSO (or whatever it was that was being used by 1984). Obviously it doesn’t work to a standard that would be deemed acceptable now, but on the whole it’s good for the time and budget available back then.
• I’m not sure I get the reference to Tegan’s defective walk. Perhaps someone could explain that to me.
• One thing that I noticed watching this that doesn’t make sense – and no I’m not talking about the breakup of the TARDIS which just seems bonkers – is that the plot suggests that the Tractators are harmless creatures when they aren’t under
  

  “It’s ok, leave me here to die for no good reason. In fact, I’ll strap myself in,”

  the influence of the Gravis. I can accept that, but what seemed a reach was that the Gravis just becomes dormant without them. That wasn’t mentioned as part of the explanation was it? And if it were the case, why would the Gravis – an intelligent creature who is well versed in what a TARDIS is – put himself in the situation where he would be separated from them?

• When coming up with the names for the characters, do you think Bidmead thought “Well I can’t call her Norma, that would just be ridiculous! I know, I’ll call her Norna instead; that sounds very space age”
• Once again Tegan is a delightful ray of sunshine in this story.
• And again, she thinks that problems can be solved simply be hammering at buttons. In this case, she thinks she’ll be able to unlock Mr Range’s filing cabinet by randomly pressing the keypad.
• I believe that there’s a fair amount of footage cut from Frontios, much of which is relating to the sub-plot with Cockerill, played by the “ultra charismatic” Maurice O’Connell. Without that footage, the sub-plot is just a waste of time.
• And what about his buddy who looks like someone from a particularly sleazy Village People tribute band?
• I can just about accept the Gravis turning Frontios into a moveable planet, but how do they plan on plundering other planets once they’ve moved there?
• To give some credit to the director, I think the Tractator’s first appearance – turning round when they appeared to just blend into the background – was genius.
• Why does the Gravis have a nose but the rest don’t?
• I’m not too keen on the cliffhanger to Episode 3. As the viewer, I didn’t feel that Captain Revere was a big enough character to justify being used as a cliffhanger, even though it was more to do with a human being used as part of the mining machine.
• There’s something a bit pathetic about the bit where Cockerill gets mugged. People are “hitting” him but there’s no sound coming from the blows. Or maybe there is and it’s just lot behind the interminable Incidental Music.
• DWM Mighty 200 Ranking: #104. I think that’s about right although I’m surprised it’s not higher based on how that list ranks other stories.

Doctor Who – Frontios Review: Final Thoughts

So I like it, even though it’s not without its problems.

What saves it is good acting in the most part, a nice look and decent dialogue.

Plot wise, things are a bit iffy, but it’s a Bidmead story so you can’t expect miracles.

Having said that, this is unquestionably his best story.

It’s just ruined by Paddy Kingsland.

 

Doctor Who – The Awakening Review (or ‘Awakening Is The Opposite Of What Happens With You Watch This’)

Following on from two big reviews – reviews that occupied opposite ends of the complimentary scale – we come to a story that provides some level of relief for me as a writer.

Why is that?

Well it’s the Awakening, and there’s just not much to say.

Doctor Who – The Awakening Review: What’s This One About?

A monster is living in a wall and making Dennis Lill a very angry man.

Thoughts – A Nothing Story That Relies Upon Expositi0n

This is the third two-part story in the Peter Davison era and certainly the least remarkable of them.

While I thought Black Orchid was pretty decent and felt that while the King’s Demons wasn’t up to much, it certainly had topics worth discussion, The Awakening just comes across as two episodes of nothingness.

Well, nothingness and horrific exposition.

What’s wrong with the Awakening is that for any of it to make sense, it relies upon some serious info dumping, and I suppose that’s down to the threat being something that cannot speak or explain itself. So the Doctor – upon finding a piece of metal

“Hello, my name’s Andrew Verney. I’m incidental to the plot and I only have an Australian accent for this one scene”

- has to come away with a long-winded explanation of what it’s called (Tinclavic) where it comes from (it’s “…mined by the Terileptils on the planet Raaga for the almost exclusive use of the people of Hakol”), where that planet is (“…a planet in the star system Rifta”) and what that planet is known for (one where “…psychic energy is a force to be harnessed.”)

All that information in one sentence just because he found a piece of metal.

And it’s a problem throughout the story. What happens during the two episodes doesn’t really matter to how the story concludes.

For all it’s worth, it could have been wrapped up in five minutes flat.

I just found watching The Awakening to be both a bore and a chore. You would think that a two episode story would allow for a brisk pace and a tightly put together and enjoyable adventure. Sadly not.

And it’s not like there’s anything hugely wrong with it beyond the exposition; it’s just that it’s so…meh.

Tegan’s Unfortunate Family

So this is the third time a member of Tegan’s family has unwittingly stumbled across an alien presence. Either there’s some kind of cosmic interference going on, or they are just very unlucky.

Or maybe it’s just unimaginative writing and script editing. Yes, that’s most likely what it is.

But what I noticed about Tegan’s Grandfather – Andrew Verney – is that he is completely redundant to the plot.

The story could have worked without the character, let alone the link to Tegan. Surely the TARDIS could have just landed in Little Hodcombe and – on going for a walk – the crew find a bunch of locals acting ridiculously aggressive?

Whey-hey!

That would have worked just as well without the tenuous link to Tegan’s family.

As a side point, Verney only appears to be Australian in his very first scene. Beyond that he speaks with an English accent.

Accents

Speaking of accents, the ones in this one annoy me. On the one hand you’ve got actors like Dennis Lill, Polly James and Glyn Houston adding a smattering of West Country (is that right? I’m not sure) over their BBC English accents, and then on the other you’ve got the insufferable Keith Jayne as Will Chandler laying it on far too thick with his one, presumably because he’s from the past.

The Fifth Doctor Timeline

Again, it’s a story that lasts merely a day, but it appears as though the Doctor is being pressurised into staying in the village for a week.

He needs the rest.

Random Observations

• Other than Keith Jayne, there’s nothing particularly wrong with the acting, even if Dennis Lill does ham it up a bit. Indeed, there’s nothing massively wrong with anything here.
• The Malus looks impressive, but comes across more like something you’d pass as part of a theme park ride than as a Doctor Who monster.
• That door Turlough breaks down falls to pieces a bit easily does it not?
• The scene where the guy gets beheaded – even though we don’t see it – is fairly gruesome by Doctor Who standards
• Similarly, the idea that it’s ok to bash someone in the back of the neck with a large rock is a bit much is it not? “Well done Turlough” says the Doctor upon seeing two men knocked unconscious and potentially paralysed.
• The only memorable part of the whole story for me  is the cliffhanger, mainly because of the way Polly James shouts “Doctooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooor” in such a melodramatic ‘end of the episode’ style. He’s standing right
  

  What’s Nigel Planer doing in this? And why does he look so old?

  beside her – so she doesn’t need to shout – and before the music hits for the end credits you can even hear her voice wobbling and nearly having to stop and take a breath. Stupid.

• Where’s Kameleon?
• The story would have been made far better if it involved either Jack or Victor from Still Game instead of Verney, shouting stuff like “What the hell’s that great bastarding thing in the wall. Oh Jesus”
• I was reminded of that because the guy who plays Verney is clearly younger than he’s made up to look. Why not just hire an old man?
• To sum up how boring The Awakening is, the documentary on the DVD is about the villagers’ memories of the story being filmed. I skipped through it and stopped at one point to hear a woman say “And my son was the one who managed to stop the horse. We were very proud”. Exciting stuff.
• I really hate the “You’re gonna be dead” line, both in terms of the writing and the delivery, when Will kills Lill. It’s so kids TV.
• DWM Mighty 200 Ranking: #110. The phrase “You can’t mean that” comes to mind, especially considering #111 is the Seeds of Death.

Doctor Who – The Awakening Review: Final Thoughts

It’s not so much that The Awakening is a bad story, but rather it’s just a nothing one; a waste of time.

I just cannot understand why anyone would objectively consider it to be a better story than The Seeds of Death or any number of other stories it’s ranked higher than.

It’s just bizarre to me.

I wouldn’t say avoid it, but rather I’d suggest you just don’t bother with it.