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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[November 28, 1967] Aliens On Ice (Doctor Who: The Ice Warriors [Part 1])

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By Jessica Holmes

After their run in with a bunch of snowmen, the TARDIS team are gonna have to keep their cool—this time, they’re up against The Ice Warriors. This story comes from Brian Hayles, who previously gave us The Celestial Toymaker.

EPISODE ONE

The episode opens on a glacier. We can immediately tell we’re in the far future by the music that opens up the episode. It’s either a theremin (the most futuristic of instruments) or a woman doing a really good impression of one. In the future, all music will sound like this: oooOOOooo

Amidst all the ‘oo’ing, we have Earth caught in the grip of a second ice age. Keeping the advancing glaciers at bay is a network of scientific bases manning ‘ioniser’ devices. However, one of those bases is about to fail–and about to lose Europe to the ice.

The Doctor makes a bumpy landing when he first arrives, with the TARDIS toppling over on an ice floe. So, he can’t steer and he can’t park. Does the Doctor even have a licence to drive this thing? Well, he might take a bit more care in future, as getting OUT of the toppled TARDIS proves a painful (but funny) endeavour.

His companions are amazed by, of all things, the plastic dome protecting the base from the elements. There’s plenty of plastic inside the TARDIS, I don’t know what’s so special about more of it. Shinier, I suppose.

They couldn’t have chosen a better time to pop in, as the Doctor immediately realises how close the equipment is to failing. A timely bit of gung-ho meddling (the Doctor’s specialty) saves the base’s ioniser from going kaput, and gives us a chance to meet a few characters. Inside the base, we’ve got the leader, Clent (Peter Barkworth), a man whose ambition and overreliance on the computer to tell him what to do outstrips his actual ability to lead. Under him is a very enthusiastic senior scientist/amateur archaeologist Arden (George Waring), who at this moment is leading an expedition on the ice, and he’s made a discovery that might rewrite human history: an ancient warrior, long buried in the ice!

He’s not alone on the ice, though. Out in the cold we’ve also got Penley (Peter Sallis), a maverick scientist who defected from the base for whatever reason, and his pal Storr (Angus Lennie), who is…there to give Penley someone to talk to, I suppose. They don’t do much at the moment other than skulk around and discuss the other characters, providing helpful (if a bit transparent) plot explanation.

Clent recruits the Doctor as his new head scientist (to replace Penley), and we soon learn that a sudden drop of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere brought on this wee cold snap. And we have nobody to blame but ourselves. We went and made plants obsolete by making artificial food to feed the rapidly expanding population, which for some reason caused a drop in carbon dioxide levels. It wasn’t until later that I suddenly realised this does not actually make sense. Plants breathe IN carbon dioxide and breathe OUT oxygen.

This is primary school stuff.

Oh, and if the base fails and the glaciers advance over Europe, not only will people die but it will upset the balance of power! However will the world cope without we Europeans to boss them around?!

Arden brings his ice warrior in from the cold, and the Doctor soon notices that the warrior’s helmet has some sort of electrical wiring on it. This is no ancient Earth warrior, not with that level of technology. He goes to warn the base’s leaders, leaving Jamie and Victoria alone to banter about the scandalously skimpy (by Victorian standards) outfits the base’s ladies are wearing. Jamie approves (typical bloke), while Victoria is appalled (typical Victorian). And she certainly has no intention of wearing anything like that, much to Jamie’s disappointment. It’s a fun little moment, rudely interrupted by a frosty fighter waking up from his nap.

We’re off to a fun start here! The chemistry between the TARDIS crew is bubbling nicely, and the setting is pretty interesting.

EPISODES TWO AND THREE

Unfortunately we had some bad weather the couple of weeks these episodes were on, and my reception was so spotty I ended up missing a lot of them. However, I’ve managed to piece together a fairly cohesive overview from my own notes and the notes some friends made. Bearing that in mind, let’s continue.

The Ice Warrior’s got up on the wrong side of bed for sure.  The first thing he does upon waking up is knock Jamie out and abscond with Victoria.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is trying to sell the base’s commanders on his ‘alien astronaut’ theory about the warrior’s origins. They’re prepared to accept the idea, and become eager to continue excavating. Where there’s an astronaut, there’s a spaceship, and where there’s a spaceship, there might be a reactor that could restore their ioniser to full power.

Elsewhere in the base, the Warrior asks Victoria how long he was buried in the ice. The Warrior, Varga (Bernard Bresslaw, who you might know from the Carry On… films), explains that he’s from Mars. His ship crashed, and he and his crew were buried in an avalanche. He tells her that he intends to retrieve them and return to the red planet.

Pretty reasonable I’d say, Jamie-clobbering aside. Then again, if I was knocked out in an avalanche and woke up in an unfamiliar location a few millenia later, I might panic and do something silly like that too.

It’s quite annoying trying to understand him, though. He has this rather grating habit of hissing between (hiss) every (hiss) word (hisssss…).

Which he delivers in a hoarse whisper.

Someone should offer him something to drink.

Having woken up from his involuntary nap, Jamie accompanies Arden onto the glacier to search for the Warrior’s craft. There’s a bit of pointless meandering as they go back and forth to retrieve excavation equipment.

Meanwhile, Varga makes Victoria help him find a power pack, so that he can wake his buddies up with a little electric shock.

Clent walks in on the pair of them, so Varga knocks him out and runs off with Victoria. He doesn’t have much of an excuse this time. That’s just rude.

Taking Victoria out onto the ice, Varga immediately sets about thawing out the rest of his crew. Soon one Ice Warrior becomes five. Rather than saying thank you to the nice lady and jetting off back to Mars (it’s a bit chilly this time of eon), the Ice Warriors start talking about setting a trap. It’s like an asthma convention with all this rasping.

And Jamie and Arden walk straight into the Ice Warriors' ambush. Arden takes the brunt of the blast, killing him, and knocking Jamie unconscious (again).

Poor Jamie’s brain can’t be doing well from all these knockouts.

Watching all this from a distance, the runaway scientist Penley decides to intervene. Waiting for the Ice Warriors to retreat with a hysterical Victoria, he drags Jamie back to his base in a plant museum (of all things).

Taking a break from acting all damsel-in-distress-ish, Victoria finds her initiative and sneaks away from her captors. She retrieves Arden’s communication device and manages to contact the Doctor, who is aghast to learn of Arden’s death and Jamie’s uncertain fate. However, the Ice Warriors have noticed her absence…and are about to use her for target practice.

Final Thoughts

So far, I’m enjoying The Ice Warriors…in between the dull bits, at least. Once again we have this issue of scenes being egregiously padded out in order to stretch the length of the episodes. The plot becomes like butter scraped over too much bread.

As far as the general overarching structure of the plot, it looks like we’ve got another of those serials where a small group of people in an isolated location are under attack from the Big Bad Monsters outside. A base-under-siege, basically. It’s a solid standard plot, though I hope it doesn’t become too overused. There have been a few Doctor Who serials (especially under Troughton) that use this as the basis of their story. Just swap out the setting and the monster, and they begin to look suspiciously similar.

Still, I’m looking forward to seeing how this wraps up. I’ll check in with you all again next month to conclude The Ice Warriors.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[November 6, 1967] Reaching the Peak (Doctor Who: The Abominable Snowmen [Part 2])

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By Jessica Holmes

It took a long time—far longer than it really should have—but The Abominable Snowman finally lurched towards a pretty good conclusion. Let’s take a look at the second half of the latest Doctor Who serial.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

EPISODE FOUR

As Victoria flees from the Yeti in the monastery, the Doctor and Jamie find another guarding the TARDIS—but neither of these perils pans out as you might expect. The monastery Yeti simply walks out the door (despite the monks’ attempts to stop it), and the one lurking by the TARDIS is apparently unaware of its surroundings, leaving the Doctor free to disable it. However, there is a very real danger on the mountain: whatever the Abbot is doing with the pyramid in the cave. Travers watches him curiously, but has no choice but to flee when the pyramid activates, producing a very unpleasant hum and a blinding light.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

As the pyramid activates, the disabled Yeti’s control sphere attempts to reconnect with its Yeti, prompting the Doctor and Jamie to realise that the missing orb in the monastery wasn't stolen…it moved by itself. They've left Victoria with a potentially active Yeti!

For her part, Victoria finds herself accused of resurrecting the Yeti herself. Unable to provide a good excuse for why she was hiding in the room with the Yeti, and with Thomni trying to protect her, Khrisong orders the pair of them to be locked up.

While in the cell together, the pair discuss how the Doctor came by the holy Ghanta in the first place, as he was under the impression that it was given to a stranger 300 years ago for safekeeping. Victoria braces herself for a tricky explanation of how the Doctor can travel through time and space, only for Thomni to be entirely unfazed by the idea. After all, with years of meditation, Padmasambhava himself learned to detach himself from his earthly body and travel great distances.

Astral travelling sounds pretty great. Shame I don’t have 300 years to dedicate myself to meditation. Or the patience. Or the capacity to sit still and quietly without anything to amuse me for longer than five minutes.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

Having completed his task, the Abbot returns to the monastery, where Padmasambhava tells him to prepare the monks to leave, as the Great Intelligence is starting to take on material form.

Now, I’ve seen episodes padded out in a lot of ways before. Sometimes there’s long establishing shots, sometimes there’s a filler scene, or perhaps a long fight sequence…or a musical number. By far the most annoying however is the technique used here. Every scene with Padmasambhava takes an absolute eternity to complete. Why?

Becaaaaaauuuuuse… heeeeeee… taaaaaalkssss… liiiiiiike… thiiiiiis.

I could go into the kitchen, stick the kettle on, make a cup of tea and drink it in the time it takes him to finish a sentence. (Indeed, I may have…)

On their way down the mountain, a group of Yeti corner the Doctor and Jamie, but like a pack of big potato-shaped dogs, they’re only interested in the ball. You’d think an entity called the Great Intelligence would create servants a little less mindless. Maybe he should be called the Mildly Smart.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

Victoria escapes from her cell by feigning sickness before the Doctor and Jamie make it back, which is unfortunate as it was apparently the Doctor’s idea for Khrisong to lock her up out of harm’s way in the first place (because we have to treat her like a delicate little flower, apparently), and now nobody knows where she is. At the same time, Travers makes it back to the monastery, ragged and babbling about the pyramid before fainting.

Although Khrisong is willing to hear the Doctor out, the rest of the monks still answer to the Abbot, and when the Abbot orders the Doctor, Travers and Jamie to be arrested, the monks see no reason not to comply.

And what of Victoria? She’s headed straight back to the inner sanctum, like a moth to a flame.

This time, Padmasambhava invites her inside.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

EPISODE FIVE

Padmasambhava takes this opportunity to hypnotise Victoria, before placing four Yeti (what is the plural of Yeti? Yetis? Yeti? Yetii?) in the courtyard. The monks are taking too long to leave.

Travers comes around from his fainting spell, but although he can remember the bright light and the noise (and the pain that came with them), he can’t remember anything he saw in his brief time away from the monastery. Before anyone can press him further, the monks learn that the Yeti have broken in, and most fall back. However, one insists on continuing to search for Victoria…and ends up squished by the Buddha statue for his troubles.

Well, if that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is.

Admittedly, it was the Yeti who pushed it over. But still. A sign’s a sign.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

The monks don’t need any more encouragement to leave, but the Doctor is not so easily dissuaded. This is where Victoria comes in. She comes to the monks with the holy ghanta, speaking with the voice of Padmasambhava, and tells them that they must all leave. It seems redundant.

Realising that Padmasambhava is the same monk who was at this monastery the last time he visited, the Doctor figures it would be a good idea to check in on his old friend.

Padmasambhava is not enjoying his old age, it’s safe to say. Most people don’t have ‘bring an evil disembodied intelligence to life and end the world’ in their retirement plans, and neither did he. He was just trying to do some astral travelling when he came upon the Great Intelligence. He decided to help it gain corporeal form, which was kind of him…until it took over his mind and body. Now it won’t let him die. He begs for the Doctor’s help, but passes out before he can reveal where the signal controlling the Yeti is coming from. The Great Intelligence presumably keeps him on a short leash.

Quite a nightmarish existence, really. He’s almost a parody of old age. His mind is slipping away from him, with it his body. He must have seen everyone he cares about die before him. It’s a cruel fate indeed. I wish there was a bit more focus given to this aspect of Padmasambhava. It’s an untapped well of horror and interesting character potential.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

Having run into a dead end here, the Doctor returns to the others. Victoria is still under Padmasambhava’s hypnotic influence, stuck begging the Doctor to go back to the TARDIS. To save her from losing her mind (or perhaps because her repeated pleas are quite annoying), the Doctor reveals his own skill in the art of hypnosis. He puts her to sleep, then makes her forget everything that happened since she escaped from her prison cell. It seems to do the trick.

I might normally say something about hypnosis being nonsense but this is a story about robot Yeti so maybe I’ll give the sarcasm a miss.

The Doctor and Travers then head back up the mountain to try and trace the signal again, only to realise to their horror that the signal was coming from inside the monastery the whole time.

Well, yes. We know. It’s played as some kind of revelation, but we were already in on the secret. Dramatic irony can be good, but there’s a lack of the necessary tension in this story to make it work. The Yeti don’t really feel all that threatening, so it doesn’t feel particularly urgent to work out how they’re being controlled. The Great Intelligence is the root of the threat, but everyone’s still fixated on the Yeti.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

As if to underscore my point, it’s here that the Great Intelligence’s rapidly expanding corporeal form bursts out from the cave and spills onto the mountainside. If I were an incorporeal entity, my choice for a physical form wouldn’t be ‘gigantic glowing blob thing’, but who am I to judge?

The Doctor and Travers rush back down the mountain and warn the others that Padmasambhava is controlling the Yeti from his sanctum. Khrisong, realising that the Abbot is alone with the master and fearing for his safety, immediately runs off to look for him. It’s then that Travers remembers–just moments too late–what he saw in the cave. Khrisong is running to his doom.

See, that’s some good dramatic irony.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

EPISODE SIX

The Doctor rushes to the sanctuary too late to save Khrisong, who dies of a stab wound inflicted by the Abbot moments after his arrival. Padmasambhava/the Great Intelligence’s immensely unsettling laugh echoes across the monastery as the monks come to investigate the commotion. The Doctor and Thomni stick up for the Abbot, recognising that he was hypnotised and not responsible for his own actions. He tells the monks to go, remaining behind with Jamie, Thomni and Victoria.

Travers, for his part, is convinced that the mysterious pyramid in the cave must be destroyed, and heads up the mountain.

The Doctor takes advantage of the Abbot’s trance state to interrogate him, and learns that there’s a room behind the master’s throne where the controls for the Yeti are hidden.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

Meanwhile, Travers finds that the Great Intelligence’s light is spreading all over the mountain. Before long, it’ll engulf the monastery. However, the Yeti are behind him, and he’s trapped up on the mountain.

The Doctor confronts Padmasambhava, and demands entrance to the sanctum. As he struggles across the room against a howling wind (courtesy of the master’s incredible psychic powers), Jamie and Thomni come in behind him to start smashing up the controls, finding another pyramid in the hidden room. However, Padmasambhava still has the Yeti figures, and starts bringing reinforcements into the monastery. Though Victoria tries to stop him, she can’t shake off his psychic influence, even with a mantra ('Om Mani Padme Hum', one of the most popular mantras in Tibetan Buddhism) to help her.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

Calling the Yeti back to the monastery leaves Travers free to come back down the mountain. Finding the dire predicament that the others are in, he takes out his gun, aims at Padmasambhava, and fires. But the old man catches the bullet in his hand, which is undeniably very cool.

Jamie then smashes the pyramid in the control room, which simultaneously (for some reason) causes the pyramid in the cave to explode–along with the top of the mountain. With that, the Great Intelligence is destroyed, assuming it’s even possible to truly destroy an incorporeal disembodied mind. It’s all jolly exciting, but it’s a shame that it took five episodes before it started getting good.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

Free at last from the Great Intelligence, Padmasambhava thanks the Doctor before finally shuffling off this mortal coil.  With the evil finally purged from the monastery, the monks can return to their peaceful life, and the Doctor and company can return to the TARDIS.

There’s one last surprise as they head up to the ship, though. The group, with Travers, spot a hairy, shaggy creature out on the mountain. But it’s not one of the Great Intelligence’s robots. Could it be… a real Yeti?

Travers runs off to search for it, and the Doctor and company head into the TARDIS, hoping for warmer climes.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

Final Thoughts

It’s a shame, really. After a long slog to the last episode, we finally get to see something good happen—and then it’s all over. I shan’t beat the authentic casting dead horse any more than I already have, though I can’t really comment on the authenticity of the religious practices shown. Nothing sticks out as glaringly wrong, as far as I can tell, so that’s encouraging. I think the writers did do their due diligence to get things right and it at least appears that they’re trying to respect Buddhist beliefs. They’ve definitely done at least some research. Padmasambhava is the name of an Indian Buddhist master who is still revered in many Buddhist traditions to this very day. However, I don’t think our Padmasambhava is meant to be the same person (the real one lived over a thousand years ago) which is for the best, I think. Turning a revered religious figure into a villain possessed by an alien ghost would be a bad idea indeed. I don’t know why they picked that name specifically, but I found it quite interesting when I looked him up.

The last episode was good, I will give it that much. Other than that, this serial doesn’t do much for me. I didn’t feel enough threat from the Yeti to really engage with them, and they serve only to distract from the more interesting Great Intelligence. However, there’s not enough information to go on there. Where did it come from? What did it want, once it had a body? Some mystery is good, but with too many unanswered questions, there aren’t enough clues to ponder.

3 out of 5 for The Abominable Snowmen



 

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[October 16, 1967] A Frosty Reception (Doctor Who: The Abominable Snowmen)

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By Jessica Holmes

After a thoroughly entertaining serial last month, sadly things take a sharp downturn in the latest serial of Doctor Who. It’s got big hairy monsters and mysterious monks, but what about it has left me so cold? Let’s plough through The Abominable Snowmen.

EPISODE ONE

The first episode starts off with snow, wind, a lot of screaming…and the Doctor arriving in the Himalayas. With Jamie refusing to wear anything warmer than his kilt (because he’s a Highlands lad, and doesn’t see why the Himalayas should be any different), the Doctor dons a big fur coat and heads out alone. With him he takes a ghanta (a kind of bell used in some religious practices), which he assures his companions will grant them a warm welcome at the monastery further down the mountain.

However, this might not be a simple outing. The Doctor’s trip down the mountain takes an uneasy turn as he comes across giant footprints, an abandoned campsite, and a dead body.

And about time too. The pacing of this serial is downright glacial. It’s just full of long stretches of practically nothing happening.

The Doctor helps himself to a rucksack lying beside the dead man, and continues down the mountain.

Meanwhile, a bored Victoria grows tired of waiting for him to come back and goes to explore outside, coming across more giant footprints.

Before anything interesting can happen there, we’re down at the monastery, which at first seems abandoned (potentially exciting, mysterious!) but after some poking around turns out to be full of monks who, I suppose, just couldn’t be bothered to answer the door. I don't care for fake suspense. It's cheap and it's unsatisfying.

There is also an English anthropologist, Travers (Jack Watling. And yes, he is related to Deborah Watling; he’s her dad!), who is here looking for the elusive Yeti. However, his expedition went awry when their camp was attacked, his associate brutally murdered in the night by something with masses of fur. And here comes the Doctor, wearing a big fur coat, and carrying the dead man’s rucksack.

Jumping to conclusions, Travers accuses the Doctor of being their attacker (the Yeti are far too gentle to attack a human…as far as he knows, anyway), and the monks’ lead warrior Khrisong (Norman Jones) takes him prisoner.

While the Doctor mopes about in his cell, Jamie and Victoria follow the footprints to find a cave…and an angry Yeti!

Travers comes to the Doctor in his cell and accuses him of being some agent of the press sent to sabotage his expedition. It’s the usual ‘I’ll show them all!’ explorer spiel. You’ve heard it a thousand times before.

Meanwhile, the monks speculate that although the Yeti are usually peaceful creatures, the sudden appearance of the Doctor may have turned them savage. In a first, they have actually cast actors of Asian descent to give a faithful interpretation of the fascinating culture of Tibetan Buddhist monks.

Just kidding. Of course it’s a bunch of white English blokes with their eyelids taped and some accents that are varying degrees of dodgy.

But wouldn’t it have been nice?

EPISODE TWO

With the Yeti approaching, Jamie knocks out a support holding up the cave’s roof, burying the beast under tonnes of rock. You’d think that would be the end of the matter, but it turns out that the Yeti is harder to kill than that. Jamie and Victoria don’t get much exploring done before the creature starts getting back up, and they flee the cave. However, they don’t leave empty-handed: they found a shiny ball. The ball will be important later.

Meanwhile, it seems that the Doctor is not entirely without friends at the monastery. Upon learning of his presence, the master of the monastery, Padmasambhava (Wolfe Morris) orders that the Doctor be released from his captivity and treated with kindness. However, there’s something very off about Padmasambhava. He remains always off-camera, and his voice seems to have a hypnotic effect on all who hear it. It’s quite creepy.

On the mountain, Jamie and Victoria coming down meet Travers coming up, and warn him about the great hairy beastie roaming the peaks. They manage to convince Travers that the Doctor isn’t actually there to sabotage anyone, and so Travers accompanies them back down the mountain to apologise to the Doctor.

Jamie and Victoria show the Doctor their shiny ball, which is just as befuddling to the Doctor as the Yetis’ behaviour is to Travers.

But… I’m sorry. I am. But I absolutely cannot feel even slightly afraid of some monsters which can only be described as big fluffy potatoes on two legs. Give them a small push and they’d bounce down the mountain.

A Yeti comes up to the gate, and as the monks rush to repel it, it suddenly drops dead, another of those shiny balls rolling away from it.

The group haul it inside, and it turns out that if there really is a creature called a Yeti…this isn’t it. It has a metal body, and a hole where a control unit is supposed to go. This is no creature of flesh and blood, but a robot!

EPISODE THREE

Noticing the round shape of the slot for the Yeti’s control unit, the group speculate that the silver balls are for controlling the Yeti. However, the one they showed to the Doctor appears to have vanished, though nobody has touched it as far as they can work out.

That’s not the only thing gone walkabout. Determined to find out where the robot Yeti are coming from, Travers sneaks out and heads up the mountain.

Unable to find the control unit inside, the Doctor and Jamie want to go out and search for the other control unit which must have dislodged from the Yeti, but Khrisong won’t let anyone leave the monastery. He’s not entirely unreasonable though, and goes out himself to have a look.

There are forces at play, however, that wish to keep the control units from falling into the Doctor’s hands. It’s revealed that Padmasambhava is controlling the Yeti from his chambers, moving them around like pieces on a chessboard. And now they’re moving in on Khrisong…

The Doctor and Jamie rush to help him, but the Yeti have little interest in Khrisong himself, throwing him aside as they snatch the control unit from him. Wanting to know where the control signal is coming from, the Doctor and Jamie head up towards the TARDIS to find some tracking equipment. Victoria, meanwhile, just sort of pokes around the monastery and keeps trying to get into Padmasambhava’s inner sanctum out of an abundance of curiosity and perhaps a deficit of respect for sacred spaces.

With the Yetis’ work done, they retreat, and Padmasambhava can attend to other matters, like giving the Abbot a present. Presenting the Abbot with a small glass pyramid, he tells him to take it up to the cave, so at last the ‘Great Intelligence’ can take form.

But who or what is this Great Intelligence? Well, we’ll have to wait and see…

Final Thoughts

There’s not really much to say about this serial other than listing synonyms for tedium. The pacing is just glacial, and the monsters just aren’t threatening, so it can’t even claim to be suspenseful. That said, Padmasambhava does intrigue me, and perhaps this Great Intelligence can offer a more interesting monster than a bunch of hairy potatoes. Maybe things will pick up in the second half.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[September 24th, 1967] A Really Cool Story (Doctor Who: Tomb Of The Cybermen)

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By Jessica Holmes

Doctor Who is back for another season, and let me tell you: we’re off to a promising start. The Cybermen are back, we’ve got a new companion, and Patrick Troughton continues to impress in his role. Let’s take a look at Doctor Who in The Tomb Of The Cybermen.

EPISODE ONE

With a new companion accompanying the Doctor, the first episode takes the time to introduce Victoria—and any new viewers—to the TARDIS. Don’t worry if you’ve never seen an episode of Doctor Who in your life—this is a great place to jump in.

Victoria and Jamie are also surprised to learn that the Doctor is a little older than he looks. About 450, in fact. I’ll bet he uses Pond’s Cold Cream.

The next adventure goes off with a bang, as a group of explorers blast open an entrance to a long-abandoned city of the Cybermen, eager to uncover the mysteries of their extinction many years ago. However, the expedition won’t be a walk in the park, with one of the party falling victim to an electrified door before the Doctor and company even arrive.

Realising that the group are probably in over their heads, the Doctor agrees to help them out, de-electrifying the door and helping them enter.

In this little pack of adventurers we have Parry (Aubrey Richards), the expedition’s leader and his assistant Viner (Cyril Sharps) providing the archaeological expertise. There’s also the expedition’s financier, Kaftan (Shirley Cooklin), her servant Toberman (Roy Stewart), and her colleague Klieg (George Pastell). In addition, we have a couple of spaceship pilots but they spend most of their time back at the ship and aren’t important.

Inside the complex, the expedition splits off into small groups. Apparently gender roles have stagnated over the last however many years, because the men would be quite happy to leave the women behind because after all, exploring is a MAN’S JOB! The men in this serial, the spaceship pilots especially, are very rude and patronising to Victoria for no good reason, and constantly dismissive of her. Victoria, though literally a Victorian, is having none of it, and forms her own group with Kaftan and Viner.

Victoria’s group soon finds a room designed to ‘re-vitalise’ a Cyberman, while Jamie’s group finds a weird metal mouse with googly eyes. Or caterpillar, as Jamie calls it. But I think it looks more like a mouse. The Doctor later identifies it as something called a ‘Cybermat’, and puts it in Victoria’s bag for safekeeping.

The Doctor and Klieg remain at the entrance, puzzling over a control panel which they believe will open a hatch to the deepest part of the complex. There’s a lot of babble about binary logic which sounds about right to me, but I know absolutely nothing about computers.

Meanwhile, Jamie and his exploring buddy (who I don’t think has a name) make the wise decision to start randomly pressing buttons and pulling any levers they find. It’s no surprise they end up in trouble. They manage to activate some sort of hypnosis machine, which leaves them completely helpless as a Cyberman slides out of the darkness, gun at the ready. There’s a blast of light, and Jamie’s buddy drops down dead.

EPISODE TWO

By the time anyone makes it to them, the Cyberman has vanished, leaving a very confused and distressed Jamie and a very dead explorer. After some experimentation, the Doctor manages to discover that the Cyberman that slid out was nothing more than a dummy, and the fatal shot actually came from behind. It looks like this is a weapons testing area, and Jamie’s buddy was just unlucky enough to be caught in the crossfire. But why were they hypnotised? Is it a trap, or do the Cybermen just like a groovy light-show while they practice their shot?

The group bring the dead man back to the entrance, where Parry decides to call off the expedition. It’s nice to see someone being sensible. Alas, they can’t leave yet—someone has tampered with their ship’s fuel pumps. By someone, I mean Toberman, acting on Kaftan's orders. He's the only one strong enough to do it.

With no choice but to stay, Klieg suggests that they continue their exploration, against the Doctor’s protests. Klieg manages to get the mysterious hatch open, and the men go inside, while the delicate little women stay behind. Of course.

Victoria’s quite insistent on going down with them, but the Doctor convinces her to stay with Kaftan—not for sexist reasons, mind you, but to keep an eye on her. Kaftan couldn’t be a more obvious villain if she tried, so someone had better make sure she doesn’t get up to any mischief. So sure, leave the teenager alone with the scary lady. What could go wrong?

Down in the depths of the complex, the men find a tomb… a tomb of Cybermen. It’s frozen solid, keeping the Cybermen immobile and dormant…but not for long. Klieg gets to work warming the room up, and the Cybermen come to life, much to Viner’s horror.

Viner tries to stop Klieg, but it looks like Klieg isn’t just foolish—he’s malicious. Shooting Viner dead, Klieg continues awakening the Cybermen. There’s nowhere for the others to run, as Kaftan has drugged Victoria and closed the hatch. This was their plan all along, and so far it’s going off without a hitch, as the Cybermen burst from their icy coffins and awaken their leader.

However, there’s something they didn’t take into account. Remember the Cybermat? It’s woken up, and so has Victoria.

Though quickly realising that Kaftan has betrayed the group (in fact, she has Victoria at gunpoint) Victoria tries to warn Kaftan about the rapidly advancing critter. Her warnings go unheeded, and the strange creature attacks, knocking Kaftan out and providing Victoria with a chance to get hold of the weapon, with which she promptly deals with the metal menace. Looks like Victoria is made of sterner stuff than it first appeared!


Admittedly the Cyber-controller is harder to take seriously when its head is shaped…um…like that.

EPISODE THREE

Seeing as he doesn’t have anywhere else to be, the Doctor takes the opportunity to have a little chat with the Cybermen about what sort of dastardly scheme they’re cooking up this time. Turns out this place is a trap for eggheads like Parry and company. The Cybermen are few in number since their disastrous attack on the moonbase, but they’re quite picky about who they want to convert. They want people with a natural aptitude for logic, hence the weird door-opening mechanism. Well, Klieg is certainly logically minded (According to him, anyway. He never shuts up about it.), but rather lacking in common sense.

So of course it’s Klieg that the Cybermen pick to be the leader of this new batch.

Fortunately for Klieg, Victoria managed to get some help back at the entrance (though not without having to contend with the dismissive boneheads piloting the ship), and here comes the captain of the spaceship to rescue them. However, in the chaos as they flee the tomb, Toberman gets left behind.

Out of immediate danger, the group realise that Klieg and Kaftan have their own agenda, and can’t be trusted. So, they decide to lock them away…in the weapon testing room.

The weapon. Testing. Room.

A shiny ha’penny piece for whoever can guess what Klieg and Kaftan do next.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group settles down for a nap. Here we get one of my favourite parts of the serial. Victoria, bless her, lets the Doctor get a little extra sleep on account of his advanced age, and when he wakes up they have a private moment for him to ask her how she is. Understandably, she’s missing her father, but the Doctor assures her that it will get easier not to think about him with time. He’s something of an expert at it.

VICTORIA: You probably can't remember your family.
DOCTOR: Oh yes, I can when I want to. And that's the point, really. I have to really want to, to bring them back in front of my eyes. The rest of the time they sleep in my mind, and I forget. And so will you.

I understand what he means, but there’s something very sad about the way he puts it. And he doesn’t ever bring up his family, so am I to take it that he chooses not to remember? I think there’s a sadness beneath this Doctor’s clownish exterior.

It’s a rare moment of emotional honesty and vulnerability, and I’ll be interested to see how this affects the Doctor-companion bond. We’ve had Doctor-as-parental-figure, Doctor-as-teacher, how about Doctor-as-confidante?

See, I said the new Doctor would open up new avenues of character exploration, and it looks like I’m right.

However, the moment is disrupted with a whole swarm of Cybermats attack! The Doctor manages to deflect them with a live power cable, and delivers the most wonderful line afterwards:

“The power cable generated an electrical field and confused their tiny metal minds. You might almost say that they've had a complete metal breakdown.”

That is painful. I love it.

Remembering the prisoners they oh-so-wisely locked in the weapons room, the group rush to check on Klieg and Kaftan, only for the duo to be already waiting for them..and they’ve got the Cybergun working.

EPISODE FOUR

Klieg takes a shot at the Doctor, but misses, hitting one of the blokes from the spaceship instead. He claims he meant to do that, but I beg to differ. Despite still being held at gunpoint, Victoria insists on helping the wounded man. I think I really quite like Victoria. She’s got a good strong backbone.

Klieg demands to speak to the leader of the Cybermen, who comes out of the hatch with a partially-converted Toberman. Toberman hasn’t been shoved into a tinfoil spacesuit, but the Cybermen have removed his emotions.

Threatening to leave the Cybermen down in their tomb forever, Klieg demands the power to conquer the world. Because what is the point of doing something monumentally stupid and dangerous if your end goal ISN’T to have dominion over the Earth? It’s Villain 101.

The Cyber-controller accepts, and Klieg orders it and the explorers into the revitalising room, keeping Victoria as a hostage.

Yes, he sends a tired Cyberman into the room used to pep up tired Cybermen.

However, this knackered Cyberman is having difficulty climbing into the revitalising machine. Apparently five hundred years of sleep isn’t enough. Fortunately, it’s the Doctor’s turn to leave his common sense at the door, as he gets everyone to help the Cyber leader get into the machine…and then turns it on.

Luckily, Jamie tied a rope around the door so that the Cyberman can’t open it. Gee, it’s a good thing that Cybermen aren’t really strong or that would be woefully inadequate!

Oh. They are, in fact, really strong. Strong enough to punch through the door itself.

Feeling refreshed, the Cyber-controller gives telepathic orders to Toberman, who immediately turns on Klieg. He knocks him out in a single hit as the rest of the group breaks out of the revitalising room.

The Cyber-controller orders Kaftan to open the tomb. She tries to refuse, and shoots at it with her conventional gun. However, bullets don’t work on Cybermen. Cyberweapons work fantastically on fleshy humans, though, and the Cyber-controller strikes her down in an instant.

The Doctor takes the opportunity to appeal to whatever sense of humanity Toberman still has within him. Despite the Cybermen’s tampering, he seems to have genuinely cared for Kaftan, and he’s ultimately still loyal to her. His loyalty runs deeper than his programming, and he turns on the Cyber-controller, easily overpowering and disabling it.

However, there are more Cybermen to contend with. Jamie shoots a couple down as they attempt to emerge from the hatch, but the Doctor has to make sure they all go back to sleep. This time, they won’t be waking up. The Doctor recruits Toberman to help him out, though it does take a fair bit of slow, patient explanation before Toberman understands why the Doctor is asking him to help destroy the Cybermen. It's weird and feels quite patronising. Once he gets the picture, though, he’s quite enthusiastic, if somewhat lacking in subtlety.

The Doctor tries to freeze the Cybermen, but at that moment Klieg shows up, having regained consciousness and followed the pair down to the tomb.

It’s become clear that Klieg and logic are no longer on the best of terms, as the Doctor outlines his vision of a world under Klieg’s control, with everyone thinking exactly like him, and Klieg falls in love with the idea of controlling everyone’s thoughts.

Also, rather than killing the Doctor now and getting it over with, he decides to leave him to the mercy of the Cybermen…who are none-too-fond of the idea of having to take orders from Klieg. One of them kills him, and Toberman pounces on it, wrestling with the metal menace while the Doctor (and Jamie who has just popped up because he needs to have SOMETHING useful to do) put the Cybermen back in the icebox. Toberman wins the fight, ripping out the 'heart’ of the Cyberman, which dies in about as grisly an manner as a mechanical being can, clutching desperately at its chest as foam gushes between its fingers.

With the Cybermen back on ice, the Doctor tampers with the controls at the entryway, planning to electrify the hatch and the control panel in addition to the main doors. However, the Cyber-controller isn’t quite dead yet!

With the Cyber-controller in hot (well…snail-paced) pursuit, the group bolt for the exit, but they can’t shut the doors without electrocuting themselves. Smart move, Doctor. However, Toberman, either not realising the doors are deadly, having no sense of self-preservation, or extraordinarily bravely (pick whichever you prefer), steps in, pushing the huge heavy doors shut. With the doors sealed, they electrify, killing both poor Toberman and the Cyber-controller.

At least everyone else is safe, and the Cyber-threat is dealt with for good.

…Or is it?

Final Thoughts

The Tomb Of The Cybermen is a very exciting serial, great for fans of exploration. It feels sort of like a more futuristic version of that sort of adventure serial about treasure hunters exploring tombs. Long-forgotten ruins, booby traps, ancient horrors best left undisturbed… sounds a bit familiar, doesn’t it? Events move at a good pace, never plodding but not rushing either, with some moments to catch a breath. The part where Victoria and the Doctor had a bit of a heart-to-heart was particularly good. I was really looking forward to seeing the next part each week, and didn’t find any of them to be a slog—just how a serial should be!

However, sometimes characters had to do really, really stupid things to get the plot moving forward. I understand that this sort of adventure story is structured as a cautionary tale on the perils of unchecked curiosity and arrogance, but sometimes the decisions were just extraordinarily dim, like locking the baddies in the room with the super-weapon, or helping the evil robot-human hybrid recharge its batteries.

The characterisation is stronger than usual for Doctor Who stories with large ensemble casts, who usually end up all blending together in my head. That’s not to say that these characters are deep, but at least I can point at Viner and say ‘he’s nervous’, or point at Klieg and say ‘he’s self-obsessed and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is’.

That said, Klieg and Kaftan are a bit too obviously evil for my liking, and have all the subtlety of a tonne of bricks splatting a panto villain.

And then there’s Toberman: the sole black member of the cast, portrayed as subordinate to the others, inhumanly strong, and having almost no thoughts or feelings of his own. Here, we have a repeat of my issues with Kemel, but this time it’s worse. At least Kemel got some characterisation. Toberman is just some unthinking muscle. He’s a plot device used to open doors and lift heavy objects, not a person. The only conversation directed him that isn't an order is a patronising pep talk from the Doctor about how he shouldn’t let himself be enslaved. And then he dies. Heroically, admittedly (if we are generous with our interpretation of events) but it seems we’ve gone from having virtually no ethnic minorities in Doctor Who to having the occasional racist stereotype who doesn’t live to the end of the serial.

A lot of the same comments I had about Kemel also apply here, so I’m hoping that I’m wrong about the pattern I’m starting to see, because I don't like it.

All that said, I did genuinely enjoy The Tomb Of The Cybermen, for the most part. In fact, it has some of my favourite moments in all of Doctor Who so far. If it didn't have the lousy racial politics and unexpected sexism I might go so far as to call it my favourite serial of the entire programme.

4 out of 5 stars for The Tomb Of The Cybermen




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[July 2, 1967] An Explosive Ending (Doctor Who: THE EVIL OF THE DALEKS [Part 2])

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By Jessica Holmes

When we last caught up with the Doctor’s adventures, we left him in the clutches of the Daleks, forced to help them discover the 'Human Factor' for their own ends. Jamie has become an unwitting lab-rat, with the fate of young Victoria Waterfield–and perhaps humanity itself–hanging in the balance. Let’s see how things turn out with the conclusion of The Evil Of The Daleks.

EPISODE FOUR

The Daleks soon learn that in order to possess the ‘human factor’, they’ll have to embrace something no Dalek has ever exhibited: mercy. This revelation comes as Jamie encounters the strongman Kemel, and in the course of their fight ends up saving his attacker’s life. Realising that Maxtible lied to him and that Jamie is not in fact a villain bent on harming anyone at all, Kemel has a change of heart. He decides to aid Jamie in his quest, saving him from a booby trap moments later.

Kemel doesn’t talk much. Well, he doesn’t talk at all. But he seems like a nice chap, having a bit of a soft spot for Victoria. He's also a great help when it comes to bypassing the traps and dealing with the Daleks in their path.

Meanwhile, Maxtible and Waterfield find themselves saddled with the unsavoury task of disposing of yet another Dalek murder victim. Maxtible feels no responsibility for all these deadly goings-on, but Waterfield's conscience is nagging at him, and he fully intends to turn himself over to the law once this is all concluded.

Noticing that her fiancé Terrall is acting weird, Ruth confronts her father about the goings-on in the house. I don’t think she was quite expecting him to confess to aiding evil beings from another world in exchange for the secret of transmuting base metal into gold.

No, really. Maxtible–filthy rich Maxtible–is willingly helping the Daleks in order to learn alchemy.

Now that's what I call a Faustian bargain.

Jamie and Kemel’s journey through the house brings them to the brink of finding Victoria–but just when they think they’ve succeeded, they find themselves surrounded by Daleks…

EPISODE FIVE

Luckily for Jamie, Kemel comes to the rescue. He sweeps the nearest Dalek off a balcony using a length of rope, and the pair escape into Victoria's room.

Victoria and Kemel joyfully reunite, and the group barricade themselves in while they work out what to do.

Having completed work on uncovering the human factor, the time has come for the Doctor to implant three test Daleks with 'positronic brains'…whatever those are. I think it just sounds a bit cooler than 'electronic brains' or 'computers'.

Waterfield, however, has serious misgivings. The Daleks are bad enough right now!

Meanwhile in Victoria's room, the chaps are so busy trying to stop the Daleks getting in, they don't immediately notice when Terrall pops out of a hidden door and snatches up Victoria.

They rush after him, and Jamie corners Terrall sans Victoria, duelling him with one of the many, many swords adorning the walls of the room. Cute, Scottish and good with a sword? Sounds like my kind of guy.

Before either of them can do any real harm to one another, Ruth and Mollie walk in on them and attempt to intercede. All this commotion brings the Doctor rushing in, and he discovers a strange electronic device on Terrall's clothing. It seems that this is what the Daleks have been using to control him, as he begins to recover once the Doctor takes the device away.

And then Ruth, Mollie and Terrall leave the house and the story, never to be seen again.

Meanwhile, Kemel finds Victoria in the laboratory, but before he can rescue her, a Dalek orders him to take her into the time…portal…thing that they've been using to travel to and from their base of operations. Let's just call it the Magic Cabinet.

Reunited with the Doctor, Jamie is still understandably very cross with him. However, they don't have any time to hash things out. The new, improved Daleks are awakening.

What new evils will these Daleks be able to devise? What cunning plans will they come up with? What new avenues of malice will they explore?

To the Doctor’s shock, these new Daleks rush up to him, sweeping him off his feet…

And proceed to play with him.


Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

EPISODE SIX

The Daleks are playing trains. Trains. Forget about any notions of super-Daleks, the human factor has turned them into children!

The Doctor is surprised to say the least, but he's quite thrilled at the result, naming his Dalek-kids Alpha, Beta, and Omega. Hmm, I'm not sure about that. I understand that new parents want unique names for their little darlings, but surely they're just going to get picked on in school.

I also can't quite decide if these child Daleks are oddly creepy or oddly cute. It's definitely a very fresh approach.

Bonding time is over quickly, however, as the baby-Daleks are called back to Skaro, their homeworld.

It’s time for everyone to go, actually. The Daleks have got what they wanted, and are about to blow up the lab.

Maxtible is not best pleased about this turn of events, and makes the incredibly wise decision to follow the Daleks back to Skaro and confront them on this betrayal.  They don't take criticism well, and he ends up in the same cell as Victoria and Kemel. Well done, Maxtible. Well done.

Having been left behind, the Doctor, Waterfield and Jamie make their escape via Waterfield’s time machine, and start sneaking into the Dalek city through the network of underground tunnels, retracing the Doctor’s steps from when he first encountered the Daleks.

Kemel and Victoria are safe for now, with Victoria promising to protect Kemel, much to his amusement. After all, he is about twice the size of her. I find their friendship rather sweet.

The safety of the captives might be short-lived, however, as the Doctor and company hear a terrible scream coming from their location. But it’s a trap! The captives are fine, the Daleks just told them to scream. Well, they made Maxtible scream, and Maxtible then twisted Victoria’s arm, because he’s a jerk.

A group of Daleks soon find the Doctor and company, and take them to their leader… the Dalek Emperor.

Though initially the Doctor is defiant, declaring that if he can turn three Daleks good, they can introduce the rest to their wild new ideas of not being genocidal maniacs, and the Emperor will have a rebellion on their hands.

But no. It’s never that easy with the Daleks. By isolating the ‘human factor’ the Daleks have worked out its opposite…the ‘Dalek factor’. And the Doctor’s Dalek-kids will be the first to be ‘impregnated’ (interesting choice of words) with this Dalek factor, followed by all of humanity, throughout human history. They’re not looking to make human-ish Daleks. They’re looking to make Dalek-ish humans.

EPISODE SEVEN

Refusing to comply with the Daleks’ commands, the Doctor ends up imprisoned along with the others, forced to endure a punishment worse than death: listening to Maxtible bang on about the secret of transmutation. Jamie thinks the man’s head is full of cotton wool, and so do I.

Helping the Daleks isn’t an option for the Doctor at this stage. There’s too much at stake. He’d rather all the captives die, himself included, than turn the entire human race into Daleks with legs. He’s uncertain if there’s anywhere to escape to, even if they could. He does toy with the idea of taking everyone to his home planet (which I'd love to see!), or to another universe entirely.

However, there’s a spanner in the works for the Daleks. When commanded to cease work so that the Dalek Emperor can conduct an experiment, one of the Doctor’s Dalek-kids pipes up with a simple question, a question no Dalek has ever thought to ask before, which infuriates the Dalek leaders:

“Why?”

Back with the captives, the Daleks surprisingly come through on their deal to show Maxtible the secret of transmutation–but it’s a trap. As he approaches the transmutation device, passing through an archway, a strange effect comes over him. He’s been implanted with the Dalek factor!

To the horror of the others,  Maxtible lures the Doctor through the archway with the promise of retrieving his TARDIS. The Doctor's gone Dalek—or has he? It appears that neither Maxtible nor the Daleks have taken a simple fact about the Doctor into consideration: he’s not from Earth, nor is he human. Sure, he’s human-like on the outside but his insides could be made of chocolate pudding for all we know.

He does have some spectacularly angry eyebrows.

Still, the man does a good Dalek impression. He promptly uses his fake-Dalek status to start making mischief, tampering with the machine that converts humans into Daleks. With the Daleks unaware that the conversion didn’t work on him, he helpfully suggests to the Emperor that in order to deal with the recent crop of disobedient Daleks, it would be prudent to have every Dalek go through the conversion machine. After all, it won’t do anything to the proper Daleks, and the errant Daleks will have their brains fixed.

He’s telling the truth…from a certain point of view.

As the Daleks file through the archway one by one, a change comes over them. They develop the curious, contrarian, childlike demeanour of the test Daleks. They’re turning human, and it’s brilliant!

So human in fact that they react in a very relatable way when one of the black commander Daleks kills one of their number for questioning an order—retaliation! In a matter of minutes, a few questioning Daleks has turned into a full-blown revolution!

However, just when victory is at hand, a black Dalek takes aim at the Doctor. Waterfield pushes the Doctor out of the way, taking the blast meant for him. Deaths in Doctor Who don’t tend to be all that sad, but this one does pull on the heartstrings a bit as the Doctor promises the dying Waterfield he’ll look after his daughter.

The rebellious Daleks push on, and the Emperor is powerless to stop them. With a battery of blasts from the rebelling forces, the Dalek Emperor goes up in smoke—and so does the city.

 

The ensuing carnage is best described as cataclysmic. There’s some really cool pyrotechnics on display here. The models of the city's exterior could be better, but it's a bit hard to see through the flames.

Could this be the end of the Dalek menace?

Tragedy strikes outside the city however, as Maxtible (wait, why didn’t they shove him through the archway before leaving?) attacks the group, flinging Kemel from a cliff to his death.

“Poor Kemel,” is all the reaction Victoria can muster. Gee. You must be so heartbroken, Victoria. Poor Kemel, indeed. Kemel deserves better than this, honestly. I suppose there was only room for one new companion, but this just feels like a lazy way to kill him off.

Conveniently, the Daleks (or whatever’s left of them) call Maxtible back to the city before he can turn on Victoria and Jamie, and he presumably perishes in the flames. It’s not terribly clear. Last we see him, he’s entering the city ranting and raving about the superiority of the Daleks as the Doctor climbs out of the burning wreckage.

I’m pretty sure he’s dead, and good riddance to him, too. He was a wrong'un before the Daleks ever tinkered with his brain.

The Doctor finally makes it back to the others, and has to break the bad news about her father to Victoria. All is not lost for the poor girl, however. The Doctor intends to keep his promise. With Victoria officially joining the TARDIS team, the group departs for parts unknown…

Final Thoughts

I’ll say it outright: The Evil Of The Daleks is the best Dalek story in I don’t know how long. Actually, it might be one of my very favourite serials outright. Sure, it has its weak spots, but the stronger elements are glorious. And that ending—wow!

I very much enjoyed the H.G. Wells influences in the earlier part of the serial, and the Daleks didn’t disappoint when they showed up. It was interesting to see them trying a new approach to their universe-conquering goals.

We had a good cast of characters, though I’ll admit some weak links. The side-plot of Terrall’s struggle with Dalek control didn’t really seem to go anywhere; the Doctor just took the device off and off he went. Ruth is basically an accessory to Terrall, and there’s not that much to be said for Mollie. And there’s not that much to be said for Victoria, either. Unfortunately, our new companion hasn’t had much opportunity to distinguish herself, being little more than a fair damsel for the heroes to run around rescuing.

Kemel was a lot more interesting to me, and he doesn’t even talk.

Maxtible and Waterfield however I both found very enjoyable to watch. Maxtible’s a bit over-the-top with his maniacal gold obsession, but it does make him entertaining. Waterfield is more well-rounded, antagonistic at first but never really a true villain. He’s just a decent bloke who needed to find his backbone, and in the end he did.

This serial also does interesting things with the relationship between the Doctor and Jamie. At numerous points throughout the serial, Jamie butts heads with the Doctor over his seemingly overly-cooperative and callous approach to dealing with the Daleks. Though of course we now know that the Doctor was hoping all along to somehow use the Human Factor against the Daleks, we can forgive Jamie for being seriously concerned about the Doctor’s intentions.

It’s a matter of trust. Being a fairly new companion, Jamie and the Doctor haven’t really had time to develop that bond yet–but I think they have, now. For Jamie, going through the archway to escape the Dalek prison was an act of great trust—trust he couldn’t be sure that the Doctor had earned, considering the previous few episodes. Yet he did it, and I think that marks a turning point in their relationship. Of course, only time will tell if I’m right.

But what of the Daleks? Will we ever be seeing them again? It doesn’t look likely. Though the evil Daleks are gone, it appears that the good ones were caught up in the fiery demise of the Emperor. That’s a real pity. Once you get past the dissonance, the more human-like Daleks were quite endearing, and I was curious to see how they might develop.

What made the Daleks monstrous wasn’t their mutated form. It wasn’t the pepper-pots, or the plungers, or the eyestalks. The thing that made the Daleks monstrous was their mentality. Their genocidal sense of superiority, their utter obedience to their commanders, their inability to question orders.

I hope at least some Daleks might have survived, because I see potential for very interesting stories involving their redemption going forward. There’s rich potential for fascinating, insightful and pertinent storytelling here.

If there are any good Daleks left, they’ll have a real struggle on their hands—well, plungers. Not only will they need to rebuild their civilisation, they’re going to have to work hard to move on from the atrocities of their past. Not all wrongs can be righted, and not all sins forgiven–not without considerable effort, anyway.

Changing the mentality of a civilisation is never straightforward, and neither is the path to atonement and making restitution.It’s something we’re still struggling with ourselves, in many nations.

Redemption for the Daleks will not come easily—but I'd love to see them try.

4.5 stars out of 5 for The Evil Of The Daleks.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[June 4, 1967] The Daleks Stoop To A New Low… Vehicle Theft! (Doctor Who: The Evil Of The Daleks [Part 1])

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By Jessica Holmes

EX-TER-MIN-ATE! I hope you aren’t tired of Daleks, because we’ve got angry pepperpots aplenty in the latest Doctor Who serial– and this one’s a long-haul. Will the Daleks quickly wear out their welcome or leave us begging for more? Let’s find out as we watch David Whittaker’s Victorian spin on the ever-popular villains, The Evil Of The Daleks.

EPISODE ONE

The Doctor and Jamie can’t catch a break, can they? Fresh off the whole palaver with the Chameleons, they try and return to the TARDIS only to find that it’s been stolen! Trailing their suspect to a warehouse, the Doctor and Jamie soon realise that they’re being led into a trap, and the TARDIS is bait–but they have no choice if they ever want to get it back.

But who has taken the TARDIS? Another man out of time. Enter Waterfield (John Bailey), a dealer of Victorian antiques who seems to belong to the period himself. He’s very anxious to bring the Doctor to his shop, obeying the orders of an unseen master… Give you three guesses who that’ll turn out to be.

However, it doesn’t seem that he pays his lackeys well enough, because the rogue who nicked the TARDIS for him comes snooping around his parlour looking for extra compensation, and gets rather more than he bargained for. A hidden room– and a deadly foe.

Enter the real villains–the Daleks!

EPISODE TWO

The Dalek in the secret room kills the intruder before vanishing, leaving the Doctor and Jamie unaware as they arrive for their meeting with Waterfield. Noticing that all these Victorian ‘antiques’ appear to be brand-new, yet somehow genuine, the pair begin to suspect they’re dealing with another time-traveller.

Meanwhile, Waterfield finds his dead lackey (much to his horror). He realises he’s definitely in too deep–but there’s no backing out for him, for reasons that will later become clear.

The Doctor and Jamie discover the body a few minutes later, and believe that Waterfield has murdered the man. Soon finding the hidden room themselves, they inadvertently set off a booby trap that knocks them out—and then Waterfield makes the three of them disappear.

When the Doctor wakes up, he finds himself nursing a cracking headache in Waterfield’s house–and he’s been transported to Victorian times. 1866, to be precise. Waterfield introduces him to his colleague, Maxtible (Marius Goring), and the pair explain that they’re in big trouble. While conducting experiments into time travel, they accidentally opened the door to horrors beyond imagining. I dearly love the look of dawning horror on Troughton’s face as the Doctor, hearing the familiar scream of the Daleks, realises what the pair have unleashed. It’s a great little moment of acting.

The Daleks, unusually for them, don’t want to kill the Doctor. Not yet, anyway. They require him to assist them with an experiment. After however-many attempts to conquer humanity, the Daleks have realised they need a change of tactic. They want to understand what makes humanity tick–that unknown human factor that they can transplant into themselves, and thus become unstoppable.

The Doctor has little choice but to assist. If not, the Daleks will kill Waterfield’s daughter, Victoria (Deborah Watling).

However, he’s not so keen when it turns out that Jamie is to be the Daleks’ test subject.

While all this has been going on, Jamie has woken up in the other room, met Maxtible’s daughter Ruth (Brigit Forsyth), and worked out what year it is. Before he can snoop any further, however, a man breaks in and abducts him!

The Doctor arrives to find him missing, the unconscious maid in his place. He needs to find Jamie, fast. Any delay in starting the experiment will result in Victoria’s death.

EPISODE THREE

So, what’s happened to Jamie? He wakes up in a stable and finds that his kidnapper acted on the instructions of another: a posh bloke called Terrall (Gary Watson). Terrall doesn’t seem to have any better idea of what’s going on than Jamie. Though he had apparently promised to pay the kidnapper, he refuses, claiming to know nothing of this. It doesn’t get much clearer from there. One moment he’s asking about the whereabouts of Victoria, then the next he’s claiming to be sure she’s gone to Paris. He’s quite all over the place.

The Doctor catches up to them before long, so we don’t get any better idea of what this bloke’s problem is. Perhaps it will become clear in due course. Until then, I’m just going to call it a bit of a plot cul-de-sac.

The pair return to the house. The Doctor leaves Jamie with the maid, Mollie, while he goes off to discuss the experiment. He doesn’t give Jamie so much as a hint of what’s going on (at the Daleks’ insistence), and boy is Jamie mad about being left out of the loop. He gives the Doctor a good telling-off once he gets back from the meeting, both upset about the secrecy and that the Doctor is so chummy with Waterfield, who for all Jamie knows is a murderer. It delights me to see a companion with a bit of backbone.

While the Doctor is off playing mad scientist, Jamie gets to know Ruth a little better. She is either mind-controlled or an extraordinarily bad actress, because everything about how she talks and carries herself is just plain weird. She turns out to be with the posh bloke who had Jamie kidnapped earlier–he’s her fiance! Perhaps whatever made him so odd is also influencing her?

Jamie gets along much better with Mollie (Jo Rowbottom), the maid. She tells him that Ruth’s fiance, Terrall, is normally quite a nice bloke, but does have anger issues since coming back from Crimea.

When the Doctor and Jamie meet back up, the Doctor warns Jamie that under no circumstances is he to attempt to rescue Victoria.

As expected, he immediately goes off to do just that. Truly the Doctor is a master of reverse psychology.

Mollie sneaks Jamie a copy of the house plans so that he can find his way around, and he commences his quest.

However, little does he know that the house is full of booby traps! What's more, a silent Turkish strongman by the name of Kemel (Sonny Caldinez) guards the way.

And so the experiment begins. Jamie charges off to mount a rescue, and the Doctor returns to Maxtible’s lab to monitor his progress and analyse his actions. In case you’re thinking the Doctor is being a bit too cooperative with the Daleks, he did offer himself as a test subject in Jamie’s place, but he’s not exactly human, is he? If I wanted a new face I’d need a boatload of money and a very good surgeon. Though the Doctor looks human, I think we can assume by now that he’s at least a little different from your average Joe.

Unhappy with being stiffed on the payment by Terrall, the ruffian who kidnapped Jamie earlier attempts to blackmail him. When that fails, he settles for a mugging. Unsatisfied with the contents of Terrall’s pockets, the ruffian pushes his luck by breaking into the house.

The Daleks find him before long, and his end is swift–and painful.

Final Thoughts

Though I’m beginning to worry that the Daleks are becoming a tad overused, I cannot deny that The Evil Of The Daleks is off to a good start. There’s something quite H.G. Wells about our time-travelling Victorians encountering horrors from another world. It’s some really old-school science fiction, and I’m on board.

There’s only so much I can say about the new characters thus far, being only a handful of episodes in. Poor Waterfield doesn’t strike me as a bad chap.  I think he’s in over his head. I have my doubts about Maxtible. He seems a lot less uneasy about the unethical things the Daleks are making them do.

The Daleks’ new scheme could mark an interesting evolution in their villainy. What would a more human-like Dalek be like? If they end up taking on more humanity, might they end up becoming more like their Kaled ancestors? Can the Daleks be reformed?

We’ll have to wait and see.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[May 14, 1967] Ben And Polly To The Departure Gate (Doctor Who: The Faceless Ones [Part 2])

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By Jessica Holmes

May rolls around, and the sun has finally started to make an appearance in merry old England. It’s time to start thinking about our summer holidays, but if one thing’s for certain, it’s that I won’t be booking with Chameleon Tours any time soon.

Let’s take a look at the second half of The Faceless Ones.

EPISODE FOUR

We left things off with the Doctor having a sudden attack of a bad back, and things only get worse, with Spencer disabling Jamie and Samantha within moments of the episode’s opening.

Now would be a good time to finish them off, you’d think, but instead he sets up some sort of death ray to kill them… eventually. The thing moves so slowly the trio would probably have time for a round of golf before the ray fries them. Though mostly paralysed, Samantha conveniently has enough control of her faculties to get her mirror from her bag and hand it to Jamie, who uses it to reflect the beam and blow up the death ray machine.

With the machine destroyed, their partial paralysis wears off, which doesn’t make an awful lot of sense to me. I thought it was the freezing pen that paralysed them? And I’m still not sure what that device on the Doctor’s back did to him.

Unable to get past the Nurse in the medical bay, the Doctor speaks to the Commandant, who is still being unhelpful. His secretary, on the other hand, has learned from other airports that Chameleon Tours never delivers passengers anywhere, it only takes them. Finally, there’s the proof that the passengers aren’t reaching their destinations.

Seeing as the Commandant is no use, he enlists her help in distracting the Nurse with a feigned medical condition so that he can sneak into the medical bay.

Meanwhile, Samantha has a bright idea to get on a Chameleon Tours flight to Rome, to find out what happened to her brother. Given that this is absolutely bonkers, Jamie wants to go with her to keep her safe. Somehow. However, he can't scrounge up the twenty-seven quid for a ticket. Being from the seventeenth-century, that's more money than he's seen in his life! If he can't go with her then, he'll go instead of her.

Using his manly wiles, Jamie steals Samantha’s ticket from her while she’s too busy snogging him to notice.  Girls can't resist a Scots brogue. Jamie, you scoundrel! Samantha doesn’t realise she’s been robbed until she attempts to board the plane, at which point she’s captured by Spencer.

The Doctor sneaks into the medical bay where he finds the transference equipment and some high-tech armbands which he then brings to the Commandant, but it’s still not enough. How?! There's healthy scepticism and then there's just being deliberately obtuse. If I were the Doctor, I'd be starting to wonder if the Commandant is himself a Chameleon.

The Commandant has an RAF fighter tail the departing Chameleon Tours flight, but alas this jumbo jet has more tricks up its sleeve than just vanishing passengers. It's got weapons!

Thinking they've collided, the Commandant watches in horror as both planes appear to freeze in place, then vanish from the radar. It looks like they've both nose-dived. Well, the RAF plane has, but as for the other…it’s going up. Straight up. All the way into outer space, and into a space station!

Suffice to say, Jamie is not enjoying his first taste of air travel.


Barbie had better watch out, she's got some competition!

EPISODE FIVE

Having not vanished due to a conveniently timed upset stomach, Jamie emerges from the aeroplane loo to find the other passengers gone, and the flight attendant gathering something from their seats. She puts the mysterious objects into storage on the Chameleon space station, but what could they be?

They’re the passengers! They’ve not vanished at all, but shrunk down to the size of a doll.

Unfortunately for Jamie, he gets caught soon after disembarking the plane. The makeup department might have gone slightly overboard with some of these Chameleons. They’re quite scary.

Maybe keep the smaller kids away from this one, eh?

Back on Earth, the Commandant finally starts to wonder if the Doctor might be onto something after all when the RAF plane’s wreckage turns up, and it's discovered that the pilot died by electrocution. I'm not sure how they can tell, given I didn't think there's usually much left of someone after their plane crashes.

The Doctor gets to question Meadows, and discovers that he has one of the mysterious high-tech armbands– and he’s very anxious that the Doctor mustn’t touch it.

With no other options, he comes clean. There was a catastrophe on the Chameleon home planet, and to survive they need to take on the physical characteristics of another being. That’s why they’ve been abducting all these people–they’re up to fifty thousand by now!
The original people the Chameleons have copied are hidden somewhere in the airport. Meadows doesn’t know where his original is, but the nurse does, and she keeps her own original close at hand.

The group hurry down to the medical bay, and not a moment too soon, because Samantha’s in there! The Doctor frees her, but the nurse kills an accompanying policeman and tries to attack the Doctor. Before she can, however, Meadows finds her original and deactivates the armband, causing the Chameleon-Nurse to disintegrate. They’re safe, but they’re no closer to finding the others.

On the Chameleons’ satellite, Jamie is very surprised to run into the Inspector. However, his surprise turns to horror when it turns out that this isn’t the Inspector at all, but the Director, the leader of the Chameleons. The actor does an excellent job pivoting from amiable to menacing.

Learning that the Chameleons have captured Jamie, the Doctor comes up with a plan to get him back–he’s going to pretend to be a Chameleon. He gets the Nurse to help him dupe Blade into believing that the Doctor is really Meadows (or, well, the alien pretending to be Meadows, unless they just so happened to have the same name), having been re-processed and given a new face.

It gets them onto the next plane…but they’re flying into a trap. Blade's not stupid after all. They Doctor and the Nurse (ha) arrive onto the satellite only for the Chameleons to immediately surround them. On the plus side, the Doctor soon finds Jamie. On the downside…it’s not really him.

And worst of all, he’s not got a Scottish accent.


I wanted to illustrate Chameleon-Jamie but it turns out you can't hear an English accent in a photograph.

EPISODE SIX

Unable to find the originals of all the Chameleons, the Commandant halts all flights and enlists the entire airport staff in the search. Meanwhile, the Doctor tries to negotiate for the lives of all the people the Chameleons have captured, but it's not as if he has a leg to stand on. Or does he?

The Doctor learns that some of the Chameleons have their originals safely stored on the satellite, but only the most important personnel. The others are at a lot more risk of being discovered, and he realises he can use that to his advantage. See? Class stratification ruins everything. I don't think this serial is really trying to make a broader societal point, but I found one anyway!

He claims that the airport staff have already found the originals, and they’re about to start waking them up–so the Director had better start listening to what the Doctor has to say.

Skeptical, the Director radios down to Earth to confirm. The Commandant is quick to catch on, and backs up the Doctor’s fib. However, he can’t tell the Director where he found them. Growing impatient, the Director gives the order to hook the Doctor up to the transference machine. Of course, the Doctor breaks it, because he can't go anywhere without breaking something.

Samantha has the bright idea to search the airport car park, where she and the Commandant’s secretary find the missing people inside the parked cars. Gee, so thoroughly hidden! They might as well have stuck them in the departure lounge.

The Chameleons aboard the satellite get a nasty surprise when one of them suddenly disintegrates. Now they realise they’re completely at the humans’ mercy. The Director still tries to refuse to give the stolen humans back, claiming that the process can't be reversed, but in a bit of a surprise Blade turns against him and calls him out on his lie. The planes can easily reverse the process. Though the Director is unwilling to give in to the Doctor’s demands that the Chameleons give back all the people they stole and leave, Blade has a healthier sense of self preservation. After all, his original is down in the car park.

Being rather nicer than he has any obligation to be given that the Chameleons keep trying to kill him, the Doctor offers to help the Chameleon scientists find another way to save their species that doesn’t require body snatching. The Director isn’t keen, but he’s not in charge any more, and Blade kills him when he attempts to flee.

The Chameleons start returning all their captives, and the Doctor recovers his friends. They return to Earth, and it’s time to say goodbye.

It turns out that I was wrong in my speculation, and Samantha will not be staying on as a companion. After all, her brother will probably wonder where she’s gone. Still, I thought she’d have made an excellent addition to the crew, so this was rather disappointing.

But there are a few more goodbyes than expected. As they head back towards the TARDIS, Ben and Polly (hello again!) realise that today is the 20th ofJuly, 1966–the very same day they left Earth. I think we can gather where this is going.

The Doctor is very understanding about their desire to go back home, admitting that he was never able to get back to his own planet, so he can sympathise with the desire. That’s interesting. Did something happen to his own world, or is he banished? Is he a space fugitive? That’s a fun idea. Sad for him, I mean, but fun.

The Doctor sends Ben off to resume his naval post and become an Admiral one day, and assigns to Polly the lofty goal of… looking after Ben. Well, Doc, I think Ben can look after himself, and Polly's a bright enough young woman to have her own ambitions. She deserves more than to be an assistant. In any case, what they do with themselves is up to them.

With that, Ben and Polly depart, and the Doctor and Jamie head back to the TARDIS.

Just one small problem.

They have absolutely no idea where it is.

Final Thoughts

So, that was The Faceless Ones. Aside from some moments where characters acted needlessly stupidly in order to move the plot along, I really liked it. The mystery built up and unfolded at a good pace, and for once it didn’t feel like the conclusion was a tacked-on afterthought. Perhaps it was a little brisk at the end, but not as abrupt as some serials have been, so that’s progress.

Though of course their methods were very dodgy, I appreciate that the Chameleons had a sympathetic motive for their villainy. ‘Because they’re just evil’ is a dreadfully dull basis for a villain, but a species fighting for survival? That’s a lot more compelling. Who is to say that humanity wouldn’t do terrible things if our very existence was threatened?

I do think it’s a real shame that Samantha won’t be joining the regular cast, especially now that Ben and Polly are gone. It’ll feel pretty empty aboard the TARDIS without them, though on the upside Jamie will have more room to breathe and grow as a character.

With Ben and Polly leaving, however, something occurs to me. There are now no remnants of the Hartnell Era, save the TARDIS– and even that’s gone missing. Their presence provided a vital sense of continuity, and though of course they had to leave at some point, it does feel a bit strange now. We’ve lost half the crew, the ship, and we’re heading into uncharted waters. Let’s hope for calm seas.




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[April 24, 1967] You Look Familiar (Doctor Who: The Faceless Ones, Part One)

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By Jessica Holmes

Another month of Doctor Who, and this time we’ve got the first half of a rather good little mystery thriller. This is part one of The Faceless Ones, by David Ellis and Malcolm Hulke.

EPISODE ONE

Materialising on the runway of Gatwick Airport in modern-day London, it’s not long before the Doctor and company get themselves into trouble. For once, it’s not bug-eyed space monsters that pose the immediate threat– it’s the coppers! The group split up and hide, and that’s when things take a turn for the deadly. In the hangar for a company called Chameleon Tours (this will later prove to be quite fitting) Polly witnesses the murder of a policeman by an airline pilot!

She flees to tell the Doctor and Jamie what she’s seen.  Meanwhile the killer, Spencer (Victor Winding) confers with an accomplice, Captain Blade (Donald Pickering). Upon investigating the body, the Doctor discovers that the man was electrocuted, inferring that the murder weapon, and therefore the murderer, was not from our world. There’s something very dodgy going on at this airport, that’s for sure.

On their way to report the crime, the Doctor and Jamie prove to be extremely observant (not) when they fail to notice Blade kidnapping Polly from right behind them. When they eventually realise she’s missing, they don’t search long enough to find her. A bit blase, don’t you think? There’s a murderer on the loose! It does annoy me a bit when characters have to leave their brains behind to allow the plot to progress.

Giving up, they try to report the killing to the airport authorities, but they can’t even get inside the terminal from where they are without a passport. That’s bureaucracy for you. However, airport security would very much like to talk to them about the police box that just turned up on the runway. Priorities!


I don't think I've ever seen someone look so infuriatingly smug.

And what of Ben? Honestly, not much. He’s just sort of lagging behind everyone else, none the wiser as to what’s going on. We'll ignore him until he does something interesting.

Following a lengthy interrogation, the Doctor manages to persuade the airport Commandant (Colin Gordon) to come and see the dead body for himself. By the time they reach the hangar however it seems that Blade and Spencer have cleaned up after themselves.

After they’re gone, the pilots bring someone out of the hangar. Whoever they are, they don’t seem very well, and it looks like they’ve got quite a painful skin condition.

In case you’re wondering, it’s not Polly. No, she’s just arrived at the gate, fresh off the plane from Zurich. And her name’s Michelle now. And she’s Swiss.

Oh, and she hasn’t the faintest idea who the Doctor is.

Meanwhile the pilots bring their afflicted friend to the airport medical bay…and it doesn’t look like the poor fellow has a skin condition, after all.

Whatever he is… he’s not human. Generally speaking, humans have faces.

The first episode kicks off a rather intriguing little mystery. By the end I still had no idea what was going on, but I was enjoying the ride all the same.


I suddenly have a craving for pizza.

EPISODE TWO

Now that they look like total liars, the Doctor and Jamie make a run for it when the Commandant calls the police.

While they’re on the run from the law, the pilots and a nurse attend to the faceless alien. They’ve apparently also kidnapped a gentleman from the airport staff, Meadows (George Selway), and have him tied down to a bed. They need him. Rather, they need his face. The nurse attaches a bunch of equipment to the pair of them, and the alien transforms, becoming a perfect copy of Meadows—even sharing his memories. The effect is similar to the one used to transform Hartnell into Troughton, though without the flash of light to mask the transition.


This is why I make exfoliation a regular part of my skincare routine.

Ben catches up to the Doctor and Jamie as the Doctor begins to wonder if Polly is really Polly. ‘Michelle’ as she now calls herself is working for Chameleon Tours. She adamantly denies remembering anything about the hangar, or anyone being killed there. However, the Doctor hadn’t even mentioned the murder. She knows more than she’s letting on.

The men confer, and the Doctor decides to try again to get the Commandant to listen to him, while Ben investigates the hangar and Jamie keeps an eye on Polly. I wouldn’t send a friend of mine to poke around a murder scene with the killer still at large, but what do I know?

Samantha's a smart lass, but she has dreadful taste in hats.

While Jamie’s hanging around the airport terminal being generally stunned by the modern world, a young woman comes to the Chameleon Tours desk. The woman, Samantha (Pauline Collins) is worried about her brother, who went on a Chameleon Tours holiday and never came back. Overhearing this, Jamie offers to help her.

Ben finds the real Polly inside a packing case, apparently catatonic. He immediately calls the commandant on a conveniently located telephone, hoping to be able to contact the Doctor.

Unfortunately the Doctor has already left the Commandant’s office, after the Commandant called the police on him. Who’d have ever seen that coming?

He meets back up with Jamie, and finds that ‘Polly’ left a short time ago. Inside her office, they find a monitor connected to a camera in the hangar, showing Ben—and someone sneaking up behind him. Unable to alert Ben to the danger, the Doctor can only watch as some sort of device freezes him.

Rushing to the hangar, the Doctor finds no sign of Ben, but he does find the strange weapon. There’s no sign of Polly, either. See, this is why you don’t send people to investigate crime scenes alone.

He finds the real Meadows, but before he can let him out of the crate, a voice calls from the other room, pleading for help. The Doctor naturally rushes in, only for the doors and windows to seal shut. The air vents begin to belch some sort of freezing gas…

The plot thickens, and things are getting a bit clearer– and more sinister. I’m starting to really like this story. It’s not over-reliant on flashy sets or effects, mostly playing out like a mystery. This episode also introduces Inspector Crossland (Bernard Kay, who has popped up in a few serials thus far), who has come looking for his murdered colleague. He doesn’t have much to do yet. Well, other than walk around and ask for information the audience already knows, but I’m sure he’ll become more important later.

EPISODE THREE

The Doctor pretends to collapse, tricking Spencer into emerging from a hidden room to check on him, at which point the Doctor zaps him with the freezing device and makes good his escape. Later, Blade orders Spencer to kill the Doctor to atone for his incompetence.

The Doctor meets back up with Jamie, who has made the acquaintance of the Inspector, who is very interested in what the Doctor has to say. The pair return to the Commandant, and the Doctor lays out his theory of what’s going on: Chameleon Tours is a front for a kidnapping operation, and people are being abducted and replaced by doppelgangers from another world. To be fair, I wouldn’t believe him, either.

However, the Doctor now has the freezing device, which he tries to use on the fake-Meadows in air traffic control. The impostor runs for it, but not before the Doctor succeeds in turning his teacup to ice. Now nobody can deny that this weapon isn't like any we have on Earth.

Samantha and Jamie, meanwhile, have been told to stay put. As you might expect,  they disobey the moment the Doctor turns his back. Samantha talks Jamie into snooping around the hangar with her, and they soon find a stack of pre-written and stamped postcards, realising that Chameleon Tours are forging postcards from their passengers to disguise the fact that they’ve vanished into the ether.

The pair bring this evidence to the Commandant, who finally agrees to allow the Doctor free rein to investigate the matter.

Meanwhile, fake-Meadows reports to Spencer that the Doctor is suspicious of him. Spencer provides him with a device to smuggle onto the Doctor’s person, which will take care of him once and for all. For some reason, the Doctor doesn’t recognise him when he returns to the office. Maybe he’s bad with faces. After all, he never noticed that the Inspector is a dead-ringer for a mediaeval Sultan and a future rebel. Fake-Meadows has no trouble sticking the device to the Doctor’s back, like a more deadly version of a ‘kick-me’ note.

Oblivious to the danger, the Doctor and Jamie return to the hangar and begin to search for the hidden room Spencer emerged from earlier.

The Inspector boards the Chameleon Tours aeroplane in order to talk to Captain Blade, following him into the cockpit, where Blade holds him at gunpoint. There also seems to be a lack of the expected equipment within the cockpit, hinting that this aeroplane is not quite what it seems.

The Doctor and Jamie find monitors in the hidden room showing the medical bay. They're about to investigate when Spencer remotely activates the device on the Doctor’s back, causing him to collapse in severe pain.

And on the aeroplane, the situation only gets worse. Once the plane reaches cruising altitude, Blade shows the Inspector the secret of Chameleon Tours; the passengers have all vanished!

Final Thoughts

So far, this is shaping up to be a good story! The twists and turns are building nicely, without throwing too many at the viewer at once.

I like Samantha, and I’m wondering if the writers are lining her up to join the crew of the TARDIS. She’s got a smart head on her shoulders and a bucketload of determination, to boot. The regional dialect (she's from Liverpool, though her accent is quite mild) is a bonus in my book, too. I believe I've mentioned that I appreciate it when the BBC doesn't force all its actors to speak in RP.

Of course, if she joins the crew it might start getting crowded. I wonder if there might be a departure on the cards soon? It would make sense, as we’re back in Ben and Polly’s time, and they have been travelling with the Doctor for a little while now. Oh, but I like Ben and Polly! Perhaps I’m wrong—maybe they’ll stick around for a little while yet. This could be a red herring. We’ll just have to wait and see!




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[April 2, 1967] On The Immortality Of The Crab (Doctor Who: The Macra Terror)

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By Jessica Holmes

In Spanish, there’s a rather delightful way to say you’re daydreaming: ‘Pensando en la inmortalidad del cangrejo’. It literally means ‘thinking about the immortality of the crab’.

The Macra Terror by Ian Stuart Black is a serial that I think will quite often have you pondering on crab immortality, and I don’t mean that it’s thought-provoking.

The first thing you’ll notice about this serial is that there are BIG CHANGES AFOOT. Not in anything trifling like the main cast, but they’ve gone and changed the style of the opening titles. Now they flash up a great big picture of Patrick Troughton’s mug on the screen, in case we forget what the main character looks like.

EPISODE ONE

The Doctor and company arrive in a colony that I can only describe as Butlins IN SPACE. For those of you who aren’t from my neck of the woods, Butlins operates holiday camps where they put on lots of group activities and shows and stuff. Not my cup of tea, but they’re inexpensive and very popular.

An unfortunate soul called Medok (Terence Lodge) has run afoul of the law, however. His crime? Not being deliriously happy, and for very good reason. He’s been seeing monsters.

The gang run into him (literally) outside the TARDIS, and the authorities soon arrive to take him for brainwashing, and take the gang for a makeover.

Yeah, haircuts and beauty treatments take up a surprising amount of the episode. The Doctor smartens up for all of ten seconds before promptly turning back into a complete scruffball. It’s mildly amusing, I suppose. I got bored.

It’s also clear quite early on (though it takes the characters a while to notice) that there’s something deeply weird about this place. Is it the singing shift-change announcements with lyrics like ‘we’re happy to work!’? Could it be the fact that they apparently have a ‘beauty president’? Or perhaps it's the omnipresent giant screens broadcasting the face of their beloved Controller (whose FACE is Graham Leaman, but whose VOICE is Denis Goacher, a fact that will make more sense later)?

Can’t quite put my finger on it.

Curious about what Medok has been claiming to see, however, the Doctor visits him in his cell and sets him free, meeting up with him later at a construction site. There, Medok tells him about the Macra: huge beasts, like giant insects with great claws, moving about in the dark. A few people have seen them, but those who fail to keep their mouths shut soon find themselves in the hospital for ‘correction’.

Oh, and there’s one just outside the building site at this very moment…

This is not a strong start. I get what the writer is trying to do here. It’s all a bit ‘Brave New World’ with a side order of creature-feature, but it’s just falling flat for me. The dialogue is very blandly written and quite wooden. It serves its basic function, but not much else. Let’s see if things improve from here.

EPISODE TWO

The encounter with the Macra gets Medok and the Doctor hauled in front of the colony's Pilot (Peter Jeffrey). Medok covers for the Doctor, telling the Pilot that the Doctor was only trying to apprehend him. The authorities send Medok back to the hospital, and the Doctor returns to his quarters.

The Pilot, meanwhile, decides his guests would benefit from some brainwashing. The Doctor wakes Polly up before the voices in the walls have too much of an effect on her, and Jamie manages to resist, but Ben’s completely under the Pilot’s spell, and even runs off to snitch when the Doctor rips the brainwashing equipment out of the wall.

A little later, Ben and Polly have their own run-in with the Macra, briefly snapping Ben back to his usual self as he comes to Polly’s rescue. However, by the time they get back to the Doctor, Ben’s once again mind-controlled. I can tell because for some reason his accent changes. Apparently you get free elocution lessons with your brainwashing.

Finding brainwashing equipment in the Pilot's quarters, the Doctor realises that somebody is brainwashing the Pilot himself. The group (sans Ben) start to question the very existence of the yet-to-appear-in-person Controller. There’s something fishy about the place, and it all seems to stem from him.

The group demand to see him in person, and surprisingly he acquiesces. But the Controller is no longer a young man with a jawline you could use to cut glass. He’s old. Very old. And it doesn’t appear that he’s the man in charge any longer, if he ever was. It's been his face on the screen… but not his voice.

And it appears that he has outlived his usefulness.

The Macra aren’t a new threat to the colony after all. They’ve been running it all this time.

This episode’s a bit more interesting, and the reveal with the Controller is quite well done, even if it is a bit ‘Wizard Of Oz’. PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE CRAB BEHIND THE CURTAIN.

EPISODE THREE

Now that they know the truth, the real Controllers send the gang down to the pits to mine for gas, where they reunite with Medok. The Doctor remains on the surface to supervise and meddle, and manages to reverse-engineer the formula for the poisonous gas that the colonists are mining, but can’t work out what it’s for.

Down in the tunnels, Jamie steals the keys to an access door from an overseer, and sneaks into an abandoned mineshaft. Medok goes after him, but almost immediately runs afoul of a giant claw.

Jamie finds him dead and runs into the beasts that killed him, but that’s not the end of his problems. Learning that Jamie has gone out of bounds, Control vents gas into the old shaft. If this gas is so valuable, the Doctor is puzzled that they’d waste it on killing Jamie. It must have another use. Bear in mind he doesn't have any way of knowing what exactly is going on inside the shaft. He can't see the Macra, or communicate with Jamie. He just knows that Jamie is in there. And yet he manages to come to the conclusion that there must be Macra in the mineshaft, and they must need the gas to live. He’s right, but that’s a leap of logic bordering on omniscience. It’s not very satisfying to watch the invisible hand of the writer blatantly hand a character information.

The Doctor and Polly scramble to stop the flow of gas, but the Macra are encroaching on Jamie…

EPISODE FOUR

The Doctor manages to pump fresh air into the mineshaft just as the Macra begin to drag Jamie from his hiding spot, and then there’s a convenient rockslide just to make doubly sure they’re dead.

With that problem dealt with, Jamie escapes the tunnel and runs into something much worse: cheerleaders.

To escape them, he dances the Highland Fling. It’s… quite something. Unfortunately, Ben catches him, and reveals him to the authorities. It seems the brainwashing is starting to wear off however, as Ben clearly struggles with himself as he betrays his friend.

On the run from the authorities, the Doctor and Polly end up finding their way to the control room, and spot the Macra within. They’re like parasites that have completely hijacked the colony. The Pilot needs to see this.

It’s a struggle to get him to come with them, but the Pilot manages to resist Control’s command, and he’s horrified to find out that they’re telling the truth. Apparently a lifetime of brainwashing doesn’t come with any cognitive dissonance. However, the group are apprehended, and forced into a room which begins to fill with toxic gas.

Ben chooses this moment to finally shake off his brainwashing and come to the rescue, messing around with the gas inflow and outflow to create an explosion. Somehow. And it only blows up the Macra in the control room. This bit is not very well explained at all.

All’s well that ends well, and the colonists try to elect the Doctor as their next pilot. That won’t do at all, so the gang heads off on their merry way, dancing through the celebration as they go.

Final Thoughts

So, that was The Macra Terror. Was it terrifying? Uh, no. Perhaps to younger children, but I’m not scared of crabs so there’s nothing about making a crab BIGGER that makes it any scarier to me. The Macra model itself is quite impressive in terms of scale, I’ll give it that much.

Character-wise, nobody’s interesting enough to comment on, and the plot doesn’t have much going for it either. It’s just a bit dull. On paper the idea of a colony being secretly controlled for an ulterior purpose sounds quite interesting, but the execution just feels flat. Rather than ‘oh my goodness!’ my reaction is more ‘Oh, and?’ because it ultimately doesn’t seem to matter that much.

Everyone finds out they’ve been under the control of a bunch of evil crabs for the past few decades and they just go right back to business as usual once the crabs get blown up. I think there was a missed opportunity to examine how the colony might adjust once the influence of the Macra was lifted. Their entire culture revolves around working and keeping the masses mindlessly happy and obedient. What happens to them when their entire reason to be here is suddenly removed? I’m not asking for half a dozen episodes of political fallout, but maybe a single conversation isn’t too much to ask?

All in all, it’s a pretty forgettable story. Not dreadful, but if you didn’t get to see it, don’t worry. You’re not missing much.

2.5 out of 5 for The Macra Terror




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 6, 1967] Men On The Moon (Doctor Who: The Moonbase)

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By Jessica Holmes

Hello again, everyone, and boy do I have a fun serial for you this month!

The Doctor and pals have had a bumpy landing on the Moon, arriving at a lunar base in the '70s– the 2070s, that is! However, it soon turns out that things are not quite what they seem at this weather station, and an old foe lurks in the shadows…

Let’s recap and review Kit Pedler’s The Moonbase.

the moonbase from outside

EPISODE ONE

We start off with an absolutely cracking episode full of suspense, mystery and a looming sense of dread.

Following a bumpy landing and a nasty crack on the head for Jamie, the Doctor and company find themselves on a multinational lunar base, soon meeting their leader, Hobson (Patrick Barr). This is the station from which all the world's weather is controlled, but lately things haven't been going well.

There’s a nasty pathogen going around, a rapidly-progressing disease that leaves the victim helpless in a matter of seconds.

The base is expecting a relief doctor from Earth, so it’s pretty handy that our Doctor arrived when he did. Don’t worry, he is a real doctor. He got his medical degree from Joseph Lister himself back in the 1880s. I daresay medical science has progressed since then.

However, there may be more to this disease than meets the eye. In the storeroom, one of the base’s scientists notices signs of tampering and hears the approach of footsteps…and a familiar shadow appears on the wall.

Could it be?

shadow of a cyberman

While attending to Jamie in the sickbay, the Doctor and Polly bear witness to the last words of the base’s doctor, who screams something about a silver hand before dropping dead.

The Doctor runs off to tell the others, and the familiar silhouette appears again. Though Polly screams for help, it’s gone before anyone else arrives.

The group goes to examine the body, but to their surprise upon pulling back the sheet they find only a few large bags of sugar.

There’s a body snatcher on the loose!

The base staff still have a job to do preventing a hurricane smashing up half the world’s coastlines, so they leave Polly alone with Jamie again. Delirious, Jamie asks Polly to fetch him some water. No prizes for guessing what happens while she’s out of the room. It's almost like a pantomime! A really, really creepy pantomime, that is.

All together now: He's behiiiind you!

The silhouette appears once more, and we finally see what it belongs to. Did you guess right?

The design is a little different now, admittedly. A tad more high-budget, but no less unsettling. Where there was once fabric, the face is now smooth metal, the plastic casing on the chest a little less bulky, but there’s no mistaking those handles.

It’s a Cyberman.

Cyberman

EPISODE TWO

The Cyberman inspects Jamie before moving on and dragging one of the other patients off. Polly catches him leaving, and immediately tells the Doctor what she saw. He believes her, but Hobson doesn't, beginning to grow suspicious of the newcomers. He gives them 24 hours to solve this mystery, or get off his base. The Doctor gets to work, his demeanour much more serious than it has been of late. It's a little jarring!

Unfortunately, this episode is a bit of a drag, with much of its runtime eaten up by the base’s efforts to control a hurricane on Earth using a device called a Gravitron. The Gravitron will be important later, but that doesn’t mean it makes for interesting television right now. Still, it is somewhat amusing to watch everyone try to get on with their work while the Doctor goes around stealing people’s shoes for analysis.

Suspecting that it may have been sabotaged, two of the men on base head out to inspect the Gravitron, only to run afoul of a pair of Cybermen. Just how many of these things are lurking about?!

a cyberman approaches jamie

The body-snatching Cyberman comes back again while Polly attends to Jamie, knocking the pair out before absconding with yet another patient. Having had enough, Hobson accuses the Doctor of being behind all this sabotage, sending him into full pacification mode. He pretends to have found something, and Polly makes everyone coffee in an attempt to smooth things over.

It mollifies Hobson, but only for a moment, as one of the men suddenly collapses, his skin developing the tell-tale vein-like marks. That’s when the Doctor realises how this pathogen is spreading– it’s in the sugar!

Hand with black vein-like markings

See, this is why I don't sweeten my tea.

More worryingly than a bit of contaminated sugar however, the Doctor has another epiphany. The base has been thoroughly searched for signs of Cyberman incursion…but the sickbay, having been continually occupied, hasn’t.

And that’s when they realise that one of the patients isn’t a patient at all…

the doctor and company look on in horror as they spot a pair of silver shoes underneath the covers of a hospital bed

EPISODE THREE

It turns out that not only do the Cybermen have new faces, they have new voices. The odd sing-song has been replaced by a more straightforwardly robotic monotone, which is interesting, but I don’t find it as unnerving. Perhaps a combination of voice modulation and the uncanny sing-song vocal performance would maximize the terror?

Curiously, like the Daleks, the Cybermen also recognise the Doctor despite his new face. How can they tell it’s still him? Can they see something we can’t? Perhaps he still wears the same cologne.

In the nearby Cyber-ship, the other Cybermen prepare their captives for conversion. It’s all rather ghastly, but we’re spared any gruesome surgical scenes, as the ‘conversion’ appears to only go as far as mind-controlling the captives.

A man with an apparatus on his head and black veiny markings

The Cybermen are kind enough to explain their dastardly plan and their motives. Why do villains always do that? Anyway, they’re going to take control of the Gravitron and use it to wreak havoc on the weather and obliterate everything on Earth’s surface. It’s nothing personal, but life on Earth is a threat to them, so they're eliminating it.

For a bunch of baddies that supposedly don’t feel emotions, I can’t help but think this sounds like they’re scared.

Jamie finally recovers from his head injury, and Ben and Polly discuss how they might beat the Cybermen. Unfortunately this time around they don’t have any handy radioactive material, so they’ll have to get creative. At Jamie’s mention of sprinkling witches with holy water, Polly gets a smart idea. Perhaps a solvent could corrode the boxes of machinery on their chests?

But what solvent to use? After all, there’s lots of different plastics out there and what works on one might not work on another.

In an experiment that absolutely should not be repeated at home, Polly mixes all the solvents she can get her hands on and puts the concoction into spray bottles.

Polly’s Magical Melting Potion:

1 part benzene (fair enough, that’d work on polystyrene)
1 part ether (permeates most plastics but won’t really melt them into goo)
1 part alcohol (Polly doesn’t say which kind, but I’d guess ethanol. Ethanol will degrade certain plastics, but only very slowly)
1 part acetone (probably the most useful solvent in the list)
1 part epoxy-propane (I’m not even sure if this can be used to melt plastic, and I’m not about to buy some and test it out)

Directions:

1. Mix ingredients
2. Put mixture in…plastic…spray bottles. Hmm.

Not only would this not work, I think it might actually be dangerous, and definitely not a good example for children, who might get it into their heads to make their own anti-Cyberman spray.

With that done, Ben and Jamie go off to squirt some Cybermen. Polly’s not invited, because this is MEN'S WORK! Polly does not pay them any mind, of course, and I admire her restraint in not spraying solvent in Ben’s eyes. Jeez, Ben, ever heard of feminism?

jamie, polly and ben with squirty bottles

They burst into the control room and let loose, the Cybermen proving no match for Polly’s concoction. Their death noise is funnier than it should be: ‘wubwubwubwubwub!’ I had a guinea pig who used to make a noise just like that when he ran around on the carpet.

Safe for now, the Doctor and company remove the headpieces from the controlled men and rush them to the medical bay, while the others try to get the Gravitron back under control.

Realising something must have gone wrong, the Cybermen on the ship have a change of plan. The time for subterfuge is over. Now it’s time for an invasion.

A group of cybermen

EPISODE FOUR

Things come to a head in this episode, with plenty of tension (and sometimes stupidity) to go around.

The Cybermen cut off the base’s line of communication with Earth, but those inside the base don’t panic just yet. Having been unable to contact the base, Earth will surely have sent help by now, so all they need to do is sit tight until help arrives.

Sit tight, and maybe keep an eye on the recently mind-controlled men?

…No?

Two cybermen

The Cybermen transmit their control signal again, directing one of their thralls to escape the sickbay and gain access to the Gravitron controls. Somehow, nobody notices as he walks right through the control room and into the Gravitron room, where he knocks out the man on duty and takes the controls. I’m not being funny, but there’s literally a window into the Gravitron room. Does nobody have eyes?!

Our heroes’ joy at seeing the approaching Earth ship is short-lived, as it abruptly turns around and starts accelerating towards the Sun, deflected by the beam from the Gravitron.

Taking things from bad to worse, the Cybermen blast the outer shell of the base with a laser weapon. Air rushes out through the hole, and it’s only with some quick thinking by Hobson that the whole group doesn’t suffocate.

The Doctor hands Polly an oxygen mask

With the mind-controlled thrall now unconscious, the group regains control of the Gravitron.

The Cybermen don’t realise this, however, and find themselves greatly surprised when their next laser blast deflects harmlessly off the Gravitron’s beam.

Now with the upper hand, the Doctor and Hobson disable the Gravitron’s safety controls and point it right at the advancing Cybermen, sending them floating off into the vacuum of space. Let’s hope wherever they land, they land with a crash.

A cyberman floats away

The base gets to work to get the world’s weather back under control, and the Doctor and pals head off, not bothering to say goodbye.

Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor decides to use the time scanner to get an idea of the future, and gets a glimpse of the dish of the day at the nearest seafood restaurant.

Or maybe a space monster.

But my money’s on the lobster.

Final Thoughts

I was a bit surprised to be seeing the Cybermen again so soon, but I’m not complaining. This serial doesn’t really expand on them much or explore their worldview in greater detail, but hopefully we might see some of that in the future.

It's also a little surprising that the Cybermen have been redesigned already, given other recurring enemies like the Daleks have been very consistent in their design. Then again I suppose it does make narrative sense. As their own technology improves, it follows that they would repair or replace outdated components. Still, I hope that the design won't end up completely inhuman. The real horror of the Cybermen is that you can very much recognise that there is a person under all the machinery, so it would be a real shame to lose that.

So, that was the Moonbase! Some jolly exciting stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree. Admittedly the minor characters aren’t very interesting (they’re basically interchangeable, apart from their accents) and there’s a definite lull in the second episode. Still, on the whole it’s very well plotted and tense.

Here's hoping the Cybermen will be back again before too long, and that this streak of fun stories continues!

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars



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