All posts by Jessica Holmes

[April 18th, 1970] The Spaceman Who Came In From The Cold (Doctor Who: The Ambassadors Of Death [Parts 1-4])

April 18, 2025 Jessica Holmes Leave a comment

By Jessica Holmes

The name’s Who… Doctor Who. In the latest adventure, our favourite double-hearted space alien finds himself embroiled in a spy thriller with all the trappings: cool car, wacky gadgetry, and an espionage plot I need a diagram to keep track of. Let’s take a peek under the bonnet of David Whitaker’s most recent contribution to Doctor Who, “The Ambassadors Of Death”.

In Case You Missed It

Grab your notepads, this is going to get a little complicated.

Let’s start with the basics: Seven months before the start of the story, ground control for a Mars mission lost contact with their astronauts and gave them up for dead. Now their craft is on the way home but the occupants still haven’t contacted Earth. Moments after docking with the Mars capsule, the rescue capsule goes silent, too. Shortly afterwards, mysterious signals start beaming out from the paired capsules. Enter UNIT and the Brigadier, who had been supervising the rescue mission. Hopefully they won’t blow anybody up this time.

Seeing news coverage of the mission on television, the Doctor invites himself over to the space centre and starts telling anyone who will listen (and anyone who won’t, in increasingly loud and tetchy tones) that the signal from the spacecraft was an attempt at communication. With the Brig vouching for him, the Doctor immediately starts work on trying to decode it. Someone has beaten him to the punch, however, and transmitted a reply. UNIT are able to trace the source back to an abandoned warehouse in London, but the signallers flee before they get there, and a firefight ensues.

The Doctor, meanwhile, finds his attempts to decipher the signal stymied at every turn by the Mars mission’s chief scientist, Taltalian (Robert Cawdron), who sabotages the space centre’s computer before going AWOL. Don’t forget about him. He still has a part to play.

With still no communication from the occupants, the recovery capsule returns to Earth, but as UNIT transport it back to the space centre their convoy comes under attack. The Doctor is able to recover the capsule (in a way that’s absolutely hilarious and involves sticking the attackers’ hands to Bessie’s rear bumper and absconding with their stolen lorry), but in the brief time it's out of UNIT’s control, the astronauts disappear.

Growing suspicious that there is someone within the space centre (other than Taltalian) spying on their progress and sabotaging them, the Doctor and the Brigadier attempt to raise the issue with the highest authority they can find, Sir James Quinlan (Dallas Cavell), Minister for Technology. Quinlan confirms their suspicions and introduces them to General Carrington (John Abineri, who previously appeared in “Fury From The Deep” as Van Lutyens), former astronaut and new head of Space Security. Carrington apologises for all the cloak and dagger, but it was for the astronauts’ own safety and that of the public.

He claims the signal was a coded warning from them, so he had Taltalian sabotage the Doctor’s efforts to decode it in order to avoid panic, and sent men to abduct the astronauts to keep them out of the public eye. According to Carrington, the astronauts came down with a nasty case of contagious self-sustaining space radiation and needed to be contained to avoid mass panic.

I’m not the only one who finds his version of events a little difficult to believe. Even more suspicious now, the Doctor asks to examine the astronauts, but whoops! While Carrington was with him, someone abducted the astronauts. Again. Or rather, someone abducted the entities pretending to be the astronauts. Whatever’s wearing their spacesuits, they aren’t human. They’re absolutely buzzing with radiation—far more than any human could survive for more than a few minutes. It’s even dangerous to be around them, as two of their kidnappers find out to their detriment. Their leader, Reegan (William Dysart), leaves their radiation-poisoned bodies (with planted documentation to make them appear to be foreign agents) in a gravel quarry for UNIT to find.

Satisfied with his work, he delivers the mysterious spacemen to the care of his own pet scientist, Lennox (Cyril Shaps, previously seen in “Tomb Of The Cybermen" as John Viner), who was apparently disgraced for undisclosed reasons. Lennox doesn’t seem a bad sort, just in bad company.

Having finally figured out that the real astronauts must still be in orbit aboard the Mars probe (I had a few jokes lined up about this but in light of recent events they don’t seem quite as funny), the Doctor and the space centre's controller Cornish (Ronald Allen, previously seen as Rago in "The Dominators"), inform Quinlan that work on a rescue mission will commence immediately. This greatly disturbs Quinlan and Carrington, who for whatever reason are quite determined that no attempt should be made to get the astronauts back. The consequences could be disastrous. What do they know that we (and the Doctor) don’t?

Lennox finds himself baffled by the mystery spacemen, who turn out to require radioactive isotopes to survive. Luckily for him, he’s about to have some help, as Reegan lures Liz out of the Space Centre and abducts her. He was hoping to get the Doctor, too, but he didn’t take the bait, staying behind to work on the recovery capsule.

There’s a car chase and everything. It’s jolly exciting, even if Bessie does look very silly in a high-speed chase—there’s just something inherently comical about her.

Lennox, already an unwilling accomplice to Reegan, tries to help Liz escape. She makes it as far as the main road, where she flags down a passing car, only to find Taltalian in the driver’s seat. See, I said he’d be back. He promptly delivers her back to Reegan.

The Doctor finishes deciphering the mysterious message, and finds that it’s a set of instructions on how to build a pair of electronic devices. To work out what it does, he’ll have to build it. What he doesn’t know is that Taltalian has built one part already, a receiver and sent another to Reegan, a transmitter.

Having failed to abduct the Doctor, Reegan goes to the next sensible option to get him out of the way: blowing him up. It doesn’t work, but the bomb does go off in Taltalian’s face, blowing him to smithereens and out of the story. Reegan then uses the transmitter Taltalian made to give the spacemen orders. They make for formidable living weapons: bulletproof, radioactive and lethal to anyone who comes into contact with them, as Quinlan soon learns.

Offering to finally tell the Doctor the whole truth, Quinlan invites him for a meeting to explain why he doesn’t want the astronauts rescued from orbit, but before the Doctor can get to him, the spaceman finds him first. The truth remains hidden—and the assassin is still in the room.

Licence To Thrill

I think I’ve already compared the most recent Doctor to James Bond, but this serial is kicking things up a notch. This is legitimately a spy thriller. It’s got everything. Action. Intrigue. Absurd car gadgets. It’s even got a whiff of Le Carré in that I need some sort of diagram to keep track of the espionage antics. Okay, I’m exaggerating a little. There’s a lot of moving parts but it’s not hard to follow if you’re paying attention.

Speaking of car gadgets, I love Bessie. I just find her ridiculously charming, and charmingly ridiculous. It’s like James Bond driving around in Mr. Toad’s motorcar.

There is an aspect I do have some qualms about, however: the violence. I promise I’m not going to be a pearl-clutching killjoy fretting about the delicate sensibilities of children. I enjoyed the action scenes; I’d be lying if I said otherwise. It’s just that there were quite a lot of them and their number has definitely increased over the last few stories.

Which brings us to the Doctor’s relationship with the Brigadier. I can only assume that some time has passed between the end of Silurians (in multiple senses) and the start of ‘Ambassadors’, because the Doctor seems to be on decent enough terms with him now. A pity; I would really have liked to have seen the Doctor confront the Brigadier about his decision. As it stands now, he’s just a little frosty with him, but that’s not really unusual for Pertwee’s Doctor, who is a good deal more prickly than Troughton’s.

I suppose the question is not whether or not I am comfortable with Doctor Who’s more violent turn, but whether the Doctor is. And I don’t think he should be. Doctor Who is a constantly evolving show, and its titular character is a reflection of that. From ambiguously-human scientist to two-hearted space exile, there’s a core ethos to the Doctor that he should remain true to: it’s better to solve problems with wits and words than with bullets.

Final Thoughts

Where does all this leave us? For all my hand-wringing about the violence, I’m honestly having a good time. I’m riveted by the mystery and the twists and turns, and every week eagerly tuning in to find out what happens next.

There’s so much I want to know. What’s become of the human astronauts? Who are the entities impersonating them, and what do they want? Where does Reegan fit into all this, what’s he hoping to achieve?

And most importantly: will we see a repeat of the slaughter of the Silurians?

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 16th, 1970] The Fatal Flaw (Doctor Who: Doctor Who And The Silurians)

March 16, 2025 Jessica Holmes 2 Comments

By Jessica Holmes

Welcome back to our Doctor Who coverage, where today we’re wrapping up the latest serial: “Doctor Who And The Silurians”. With lives lost on the Silurian and human sides, will the Doctor be able to persuade those left behind to see sense?

In Case You Missed It

I’ll begin with a correction from last time: the bloke the Silurians captured, Major Baker (Norman Jones), isn’t from UNIT, he’s head of site security at the research centre. I got my notes mixed up.

Anyway, we’re halfway through the serial when we finally meet our cast of Silurians. There’s… Um. A small problem. None of them have names and I’m bad enough at telling human people apart. So there’s the shorter older-sounding one who is the leader (Dave Carter), and the taller younger-sounding one who needs anger management training (Nigel Johns). We’ll call them the Elder and Younger for the sake of clarity. There’s also a Scientist but he’s only important in one scene.

The Younger Silurian attacks the Doctor, claiming to have already seen soldiers down in the caves and killed them. The Elder stops him, urging restraint. Fortunately it turns out that the UNIT men, including the Brigadier, aren’t dead but trapped. Less fortunately, their air is running out.

Despite Major Baker’s protests, the Doctor insists on trying to have a dialogue with the Silurians. He manages to persuade the Elder to let him out of the cage, and from there they get on quite well, with the Elder bestowing a pile of useful exposition on him. He explains that the Silurians used to live on the surface, but have been in hibernation ever since they saw a cataclysm approaching millions of years ago. What they didn’t realise was that this cataclysm was actually the Moon coming into orbit. By the time that became clear, their hibernation units had developed a fault and they couldn’t wake up without an outside power source.

So they had a very long wait while humanity crawled out of the mud and started banging rocks together. Now that they have access to the power from the nuclear reactor, they can wake everyone up and reclaim the Earth.

Given there’s already people living there, the Doctor urges the Silurians not to do that, instead offering to broker a deal with humanity where humans and Silurians might share the planet. Sharing? What a novel idea!

The Elder is listening, but unsure. There’s already been bloodshed, after all. Will the humans even agree to talk? The Doctor can only try, certain that all-out war would be catastrophic for the Silurians. Agreeing, the Elder releases the trapped UNIT troops.

However, a catastrophe is brewing. Mistrustful of the humans, the Younger Silurian urges the Scientist to join him in a coup. Together, they concoct a plan that will allow the Silurians to have the planet to themselves without having to risk going to war. They have a biological weapon in the form of a bacterium engineered eons ago as a form of pest control against humanity’s ancestors.

Don’t think too hard about the mangled pre-history. It will only give you a headache.

The traitor Silurians dump a disease-riddled Major Baker back into the caves and leave him to wander back to the research centre. Learning of their plan too late to stop them, the Elder Silurian gives the Doctor a sample of the bacterium to take back to the lab in the hopes that he’ll be able to discover a cure before it’s too late.

The traitors reward him for this act of compassion by killing him.

What follows is a masterclass on ‘How Not To Handle An Unknown Biological Contagion’. Against the Doctor’s instructions, Baker takes an ambulance ride to the local hospital. He’s dead by the time he gets there, and only the first of many. What’s worse, while the Doctor was trying to chase Baker down at the hospital, the man from the Ministry, Masters (Geoffrey Palmer), picks now as the best time to go back to London. Via train.

Somewhere, an epidemiologist is crying.

The disease bumps off Dr. Lawrence, Masters, and a few dozen Londoners by the time the Doctor manages to find a cocktail of drugs that will kill it. But the day’s not saved yet. The Silurians have another plan.

Unfortunately this one is stupid and will make physicists cry.

The Silurians are going to destroy the Van Allen belt. Okay. And?

Well, their idea is that without the Van Allen belt (or belts if we’re going to be pedantic. Which we are. It’s my raison d’être.) the sun’s rays would make Earth too hot for mammals, but reptiles like the Silurians would be fine.

Setting aside for a moment the total ecological collapse that would happen which would have knock-on effects for all life on Earth, that’s just not how the Van Allen belts work. Think of the Earth’s magnetic field as a fly trap but for charged solar particles. The Van Allen belts are a pile of flies. Not the safest place to traverse, but not a shield either. Get rid of the magnetic field on the other hand and then we’re in trouble from ionising radiation. But last time I checked, reptiles weren’t immune to cancer or radiation sickness.

I don’t know, I found the plague more compelling. That bit was more tense with a greater sense of mounting dread. This plot thread gets resolved a lot faster and it’s just not as interesting to me.

This attempt at eradicating humanity goes even more poorly for the Silurians, as the Doctor double-crosses them the first chance he gets, overloading the nuclear reactor and sending them scurrying back to their hibernation pods in fear of an impending explosion. The Younger Silurian even shows altruism for the first time in his life, volunteering to stay behind to die so that he can operate the hibernation mechanism.

The reactor isn’t actually about to explode, but they didn’t need to know that.

All’s well that ends well, it seems. The Doctor gets the reactor shut down, the Silurians are having a kip (well, except for the Younger Silurian, but the Brig takes care of him), and the Doctor’s hopeful that if he wakes them gradually he’ll be able to have some much more productive conversations.

Wouldn’t it be nice if that’s where the story ended?

Unfortunately the Brigadier has other ideas.

Waiting for the Doctor and Liz to leave the research centre, the Brigadier orders his men to place charges at the entrances to the Silurian base. When the charges go off, the Doctor can only watch in horror as he realises what the Brigadier has done. Liz assumes he must have had orders, but the Doctor is (rightly) no less disgusted. Orders or no orders, the Silurians were a race of intelligent beings, a people, a culture. There was hope for reconciliation with them, and the Brigadier snatched it away in the blink of an eye. You can’t reconcile with the dead.

Green-And-Grey Morality

I love stories with messy morality. Doctor Who isn’t usually all that messy, but this serial does a great job of shaking things up a bit. Malcolm Hulke might have a wobbly grasp on physics but he gets how people tick. Very few characters come across as morally unimpeachable in this serial. Most commit actions that are at best selfish and short-sighted, and at worst morally reprehensible. That’s not to say that most of the characters in this are evil. Far from it.

It would have been easy to cast one side or the other as straightforward villains, but really they’re all just people. Silurians suffer from the same fatal flaw as humanity: thinking of everything as ‘Us’ vs ‘Them'. For ‘Us’ to win, ‘They’ have to lose. Everything done to protect ‘Us’ is not only justifiable but imperative, or else ‘They’ might do it to ‘Us’, like the barbarians they are.

What I see is a bunch of people—human or otherwise—who are neither 'Good' nor 'Bad'. Every one of them is capable of either kind of action. I don't think they're simply hateful or angry, though of course both sides display a fair amount of that. More than that, I think they’re scared, which makes them a lot more dangerous.

Fear started this mess. Everyone was ready to assume the worst of everyone else from the outset, and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fear exacerbated the situation, sowing distrust not just between humans and Silurians but also between the members of each respective group, eroding their ability to work together.

And finally, fear drove members of each side to commit the unthinkable in the belief that it would protect them.

It’s one thing to try and persuade someone to set aside anger and hatred based on the past. It’s not an easy thing to ask, by any means. But it’s a lot easier than asking them to set aside fear of the future, and what their enemies may do if they fail to stop them in the present. And while you’re waiting for that miracle, the cycle of violence keeps on turning, drilling a deeper and deeper well of fear and of hatred. The longer it goes on, the harder it is to break. And there’s only two real ways that can happen: either everyone finally agrees to draw a line under the past and build the future together, or they run out of people to fight.

It’s almost as if the best way to end a cycle of violence is not to start one in the first place.

Final Thoughts

“Doctor Who And The Silurians” might take a little while to get going, but once the Silurians turn up this turns from a ‘pretty decent for a base-under-siege’ serial to a genuinely great serial. Pertwee’s on excellent form (a few very funny facial expressions aside) and the cast is solid with a bunch of characters believable enough that they sometimes gave me a migraine.

I’ll be curious to see how the Brigadier’s actions at the end of the serial affect the Doctor’s relationship with UNIT going forward. He’s stuck on Earth and I can’t imagine him turning his back on humanity, but I don’t know that he’ll ever see eye-to-eye with the Brigadier again. I hope that the Doctor makes the Brigadier better. I fear the Brigadier might make the Doctor worse.

I had expressed concern that the prominence of UNIT would result in problems being solved with killing which the Doctor could have solved with talking, but I didn’t expect to be proven right so quickly. Perhaps UNIT and the Brigadier will learn from this experience and do better the next time they encounter an alien intelligence. It’s a tragedy that the Silurians won’t get the same opportunity.

This is no surprise coming from the man who co-wrote The War Games, but "Doctor Who And The Silurians" is one of the more mature serials we’ve seen on this programme. Hulke asks the viewer to reject binary thinking and realise that two peoples can both have a right to live in the same place, and neither has the right to destroy or eject the other. People we assume are good can do bad things; and people we think of as monsters can do good. The righteousness of your cause and the righteousness of your actions are not the same thing.

As long as people continue to make these mistakes, this serial will always be relevant.

4.5 stars out of five for "Doctor Who And The Silurians".

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[February 22, 1970] An Es-scale-ating Conflict (Doctor Who: The Silurians)

February 22, 2025 Jessica Holmes 2 Comments

By Jessica Holmes

Welcome back to another month of Doctor Who coverage. Jon Pertwee’s run as the Doctor continues in the same strong fashion in which it started with an intriguing serial from the pen of Malcolm Hulke. We’re about halfway through, so let’s catch you up on the latest happenings in “Doctor Who And The Silurians”. No really, that's how he titled it. Yes, it is an odd choice, but don't let it put you off.

In Case You Missed It

The Doctor’s new job with UNIT sees him summoned to a nuclear research centre located deep within a pre-existing cave network. They’re making exciting inroads in some new kind of fusion reactor, but there’s a problem: their workers keep going missing in the tunnels. And those who don’t go missing end up dead. Or, as in the case of one man, so traumatised by whatever happened down there that he regresses into a caveman.

What’s more, the cyclotron (read: the thing that makes the atoms go smashy smashy) keeps inexplicably losing power, potentially destabilising the reaction. And unstable nuclear reactions are…bad. Someone has tampered with the records, however, and it soon turns out that people who work in the cyclotron room have an oddly elevated chance of having a nervous breakdown. Said room is the closest in the whole complex to the natural caves.

Ditching the fabulous cape for a pair of overalls, the Doctor goes caving to investigate, and it doesn’t take long to find what’s been killing and/or traumatising workers who go spelunking. It’s a dinosaur! One of the UNIT soldiers falls afoul of it as he attempts to hunt a suspected saboteur skulking in the shadows. While everyone is attending to him, something escapes to the surface. Not the dinosaur, but certainly not a human, either. And now it’s loose on the moors.

Dr. Quinn, the lead scientist in charge of the cyclotron, turns out to know more than he’s letting on about the current state of affairs. Unbeknownst to the other characters, he descends into the caves on his own to meet with the inhabitants, an advanced reptilian people that come to be known as the Silurians. It appears they ruled the Earth eons ago, but for whatever reason they’ve been slumbering underground since the time of the dinosaurs. And now, borrowing energy from the cyclotron, they’re waking up.

He warns them that UNIT is planning a full-scale invasion of the caves, and asks them to stop taking power from the cyclotron. However, the Silurians have their own bone to pick with the humans. One of their own is injured thanks to UNIT’s intervention, and is now stuck on the surface. They want him rescued, and to that end, give Quinn a communication device to track and command the stranded Silurian.

Said Silurian, however, has accidentally killed a farmer on the surface and vanished. There are claw marks on the man’s body, but the cause of death was heart failure. I think they’d call that manslaughter. The farmer’s widow, hospitalised with sheer fright, barely manages to tell the Doctor that the creature is still in her barn… where Liz is currently conducting a forensic examination.

The Doctor and UNIT rush back to the barn, where they find Liz unconscious but mostly unhurt. Quinn checks in, supposedly on his way to the lab from his cottage. But he’s far out of his way, and this, in concert with other odd behaviour, makes Liz and the Doctor suspicious of him. The Doctor later drops in on Quinn’s house, finding that he keeps the place very warm. Almost like the reptile house at the zoo, in fact.

Quinn gets him to leave, and the Doctor sets about investigating his office at the research centre. Quinn meanwhile turns out to be holding the missing Silurian hostage. Far from benevolently trying to help them, he’s trying to extort information out of his ‘guest’. If he doesn’t take the Silurian back to the cave, it’ll die. And despite his assistant, his one confidant, begging him to accept the Doctor’s help, he won’t admit that he’s in over his head.

So of course it’s not that much of a surprise when the Doctor finds him dead in his living room a short while later.

Finally about halfway into the serial we get to meet the creature from the black lagoon. I mean, a Silurian. It doesn’t seem hostile to the Doctor, who just wants to talk, but unfortunately it runs off before answering any of his questions.

Meanwhile, the previously injured UNIT soldier goes back down to the caves, determined to find the ‘saboteur’ he saw earlier. He gets a bit more than he bargained for. The Silurians take him captive, though they don’t come out of the encounter unscathed.

With matters escalating, the Doctor recommends that the research operation should be shut down immediately, followed by a careful scientific expedition into the caves. However, even considering that he hasn’t told anyone about Quinn’s death to avoid causing a panic, he doesn’t have a sympathetic audience. Despite the lack of backup, he and Liz go back to the caves by themselves, following Quinn’s map to find the Silurian base and the abducted soldier. They don’t get the chance to free him however, and when they return to report their findings, things go from bad to worse as the news of Quinn’s death finally breaks. Now the Doctor hasn’t a cat-in-hell’s chance of dissuading the Brigadier from a full-scale invasion.

Having had no luck with the humans, the Doctor instead tries to reason with the Silurians. They’re every bit as rational as we are, after all. And unfortunately every bit as irrational. They promptly take him prisoner. From behind bars he warns them that the humans are coming, and urges them to meet with them in peace.

But like the humans, they don’t seem very interested in listening to reason. Can he change their minds before there’s a massacre?

Between A Rock And A Hard Place

The Doctor’s first outing with UNIT as their scientific consultant is already off to a rocky start. When you default to taking the military approach against the extra-terrestrial, you’re liable to cause as many problems as you solve. The Brigadier has barely set foot on base when he’s already butting heads with Dr. Lawrence, the head of the research station. He doesn’t appreciate the intrusion or the interruption to their work, complaining about UNIT’s presence more or less every time he’s on screen. Caught between the two is the Doctor, who begrudgingly needs UNIT’s help, but would rather it didn’t come with firearms. To put it succinctly, it’s not an ideal work environment for anyone involved.

And that’s before mentioning the lizard-man in the room. What we have here is a very volatile first-contact scenario that’s being conducted with all the delicacy of a bull in a china shop. An escalating sense of paranoia and exchanges of tit-for-tat violence are bringing both species to the brink of disaster. We’ll have to wait and see how it pans out, but if matters carry on as they are, the situation will get a lot worse before it gets better — assuming it even does get better.

I think we may be heading for a tragedy, because this is a conflict that absolutely doesn’t have to happen, but both sides are so determined to assume the worst of one another that everything they do just reinforces that idea. But the fact is that while we take for granted that humans are not monsters, neither are the Silurians. Some of them are hostile, yes. But they’re not without reason. They don’t kill unless their life is threatened. The one in Quinn’s cottage didn’t even attack the Doctor. There’s even one which, much like the Doctor, wants to take a scientific approach to learning more about humanity, rather than just extracting intelligence from their captive via brute force. I appreciate that, as there is a bit of a tendency in Doctor Who to treat ‘alien’ species as a bit of a monolith.

Technically speaking though, the Silurians aren’t even aliens. They’re another of Earth’s native species with just as much right to be here as us. If enough people on either side are willing to listen, there’s no reason things can’t be resolved through diplomacy. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like either side is very interested in talking right now. Can cooler heads prevail?

Final Thoughts

On a lighter note, the Doctor did get the car the Brigadier promised him. She’s a charming bright yellow Siva Edwardian which the Doctor has christened ‘Bessie’. He serenades her as he tunes her up and drives her as if he’s got lives to spare. Which, to be fair, he has.

We’re only halfway through the serial so my appraisal of the themes can only go so deep, but there’s very promising indications of moral complexity and a nuanced conflict building. There’s a maturity to the writing and a willingness to trust the audience to ask themselves: Are we jumping to conclusions about who is good and who is bad? And is that even the right question?

For answers, and probably more questions, we’ll have to wait and see when “Doctor Who And The Silurians” concludes. Until next time.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[January 26, 1970] Over The Rainbow (Doctor Who: Spearhead From Space)

January 26, 2025 Jessica Holmes 2 Comments

By Jessica Holmes

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? It’s all change in the new season of Doctor Who: new Doctor, new companion, new visuals. And it's now in colour!

But is it worth the increased rent on my new television set? Let’s catch up on “Spearhead From Space”.

In Case You Missed It

The last season of Doctor Who ended with Second Doctor Patrick Troughton being separated from his longtime companions Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Zoe (Wendy Padbury) and sentenced to exile on Earth in the 20th century. “Spearhead From Space” picks up where “The War Games” left off, with the new Doctor, Jon Pertwee, tumbling out of the TARDIS in the middle of a field in England. And he’s not the only extraterrestrial arrival to Earth. Remember UNIT from “The Invasion”? They’re back again, this time investigating an unusual spearhead-shaped shower of unidentified flying objects that landed in the local area. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) remains in charge, and his curiosity is piqued when he learns of the arrival of a mysterious patient to a nearby hospital: a man found next to a peculiarly-situated police box.

The Brigadier gets a bit of a shock when he sees that this is not the Doctor he knows—and yet this Doctor knows him, greeting him like an old friend. Which of course, he is. Unfortunately for the Brig, for the moment the Doctor isn’t feeling up to doing much more than drifting in and out of consciousness and raving about his shoes, so he needs an alternative scientific consultant. Enter Liz Shaw (Caroline John), an acid-tongued skeptic who is less than impressed with the Brigadier for pulling her away from her research to go chasing after UFO nonsense.

When word gets out about the Doctor’s alien biology, it attracts the attention of local alien ne’er-do-wells, the Nestenes. There’s an advance party of Nestenes already on Earth, being controlled remotely by a sort of shared mind. They’re planning to take over the world by replacing powerful individuals with living plastic duplicates. And also shop window dummies that shoot people. The plan is nearing fruition, but there’s a snag: they’ve quite literally lost their mind. Rather than transport the mind to Earth in a spacecraft like any self-respecting alien conqueror, they put it into a bunch of plastic shells (perhaps they couldn’t find one big enough for the whole thing), flung it in the direction of England and hoped for the best. That was the meteor shower seen earlier. And now some of those shells are missing.

Hoping he can help lead them to the missing shells, the Nestenes attempt to abduct the Doctor from UNIT. The attempt fails, and if anything, puts UNIT and the newly-recovered (and marvellously dressed) Doctor on their trail. A race ensues to recover the shells, and discover what makes them tick. Though the Nestenes manage to recover the shells, even sending in an impostor to steal one from HQ, it’s not long before UNIT track the Nestenes down to a local plastic doll factory.

You don't really get the effect in a still image, but trust me, it's really scary in motion.

Just in the nick of time too, as the Nestenes’ blank-faced Auton servants are wreaking havoc across the country. The Doctor pulls an all-nighter to create a device capable of blocking the Nestenes’ telepathic signal to the Autons, and accompanies UNIT to an assault on the factory. Though the assault fails (plastic dummies don’t really care about bullets), it creates enough of a distraction for the Doctor to infiltrate the factory and confront the big blobby tentacle thing controlling them. According to the Nestenes that’s the ideal vessel for their consciousness: a big blobby tentacle thing in a tank. The Big Blobby Tentacle Thing has a good go of throttling the Doctor as he tries to cut it off from the main Nestene mind off in outer space, but Liz manages to save the day with some last-second adjustments. The Earth is safe… for now. They’ve stopped the Nestenes this time, but all Nestenes share a mind, and the rest of it is still out there somewhere. All the Doctor did was essentially cut off a limb. Who knows if or when they’ll be back? And if not them, who else might be plotting against humanity? We know by now that the Nestenes aren’t the only extraterrestrial threat out there, not by a long shot. With our advancing technology, Earth’s getting noisier every day, and the rest of the universe is taking notice.

Fortunately for UNIT (but not for the Doctor) the TARDIS isn’t going anywhere. It looks like the Doctor will be sticking around on Earth for a bit—and rest assured UNIT will find plenty to keep him busy.

All Change? Not Quite!

It’s a new decade, a new format, a new Doctor, even a new title sequence, but long-time viewers will be glad to know that Doctor Who isn’t shedding the past entirely. With more Earth-bound stories to come in the coming series, and with a new Doctor without companions from his past life, I did have worries that it would feel more like a revival than a continuation of the past 7 years. However, we have UNIT and returning character Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to bridge the gap between past and present. Indeed, in terms of tone this serial is reminiscent of last year’s ‘The Invasion’. If we’ve got more of that sort of thing on the way, I say ‘Brig’ it on.

I am so sorry.

Yes, I was glad to see the Brigadier again, though I hope that the increased focus on UNIT’s activities won’t send the programme in an overtly militaristic direction. That said, it wasn’t going in guns blazing that won the day. It was military intelligence and technological expertise. It’s all rather James Bond.

The name's Smith. Doctor… John Smith.

Though Doctor Who remains connected to its past, this serial is an excellent starting point for anyone wanting to start watching for the first time. With all the exposition flying around, you’ll easily get the gist of what the show is all about. If you’re an occasional viewer, a bit of a refresher is also probably welcome by now. But you're still never going to learn his name. Not his real name, anyway.

We were all sad to say goodbye to Jamie and Zoe at the end of the last season, but it looks like the Doctor won’t be too lonely on Earth. Not only is the Brigadier going to be around for the foreseeable future, but he has a new companion in the form of no-nonsense scientist Liz Shaw. She’s less than impressed to have been dragged off her research at Cambridge to go chasing after UFOs, and it shows. Especially when the men around her start commenting on her looks rather than her brains. I’m immediately rather fond of her, and so too is the Doctor.

Speaking of whom, let’s properly introduce you to the Third Doctor, shall we?

Gracefully flopping his way into the world.

Doctor Who?

So. Doctor number three. If Troughton had the hardest job that any actor has ever had on Doctor Who, proving that the show can survive recasting the main character, then Pertwee has the second hardest. He has to prove that it can work more than once.

But who is Jon Pertwee, anyway? Well, he’s certainly got chops as a comedic actor, with a great many appearances on radio, television, film, and stage, including the original West End production of Sondheim’s musical comedy A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, and later its film adaptation. And of course there’s his appearances in the Carry On… series of films, which starred Bill Hartnell (Doctor No. 1) in its first outing. So he’s in good company there. Does he have the range to make his Doctor more than a clown, however? From what I’ve seen so far… Yes!

Right out the gate, he seems to have taken a leaf out of Troughton’s book, which is to not base his Doctor too heavily on his predecessor. There’s a delicate balance required to find a unique take on the Doctor’s character while keeping him still the same man at heart. Well, hearts. Apparently he’s got two.

Pertwee’s Doctor is a much more confident and authoritative figure than Troughton’s, that much is clear right away. He’s very charming when he wants to be, and abrasive when he doesn’t. And cool. He is undeniably cooler. He’s like James Bond from space. Of course, like both Doctors before him, there’s an element of childishness that he can’t quite suppress. Every now and then, traces of the old Doctor creep in, a sort of Troughton-esque haplessness when things go wrong. I like it.

Of course, the Doctor wouldn’t be the Doctor without a streak of mischief (plus a total disregard for authority), and this Doctor’s more than qualified in that regard. He starts off by nicking himself a new set of clothes. Whereas his predecessor was all for the shabby-chic (emphasis on shabby), this Doctor has rather more refined—if ostentatious—taste. Rather than settle for the first basic shirt and trousers he can dig out of the lost-and-found, he pilfers a frilly shirt, trousers, smart velvet jacket, fedora and, of all things, an opera cape from the (doctors-only, naturally) changing room. But—and this is important—it is a smashing look for him. So morally I’m pretty sure it’s fine.

I also didn’t expect Doctor Who, of all programmes, to have a shirtless scene. Much less getting to see the Doctor with his top off. If you’ve an eye for a silver-haired gent, you’re in luck—there’s a shower scene, too. I wasn’t looking or anything, but I did notice that the Doctor now has a forearm tattoo. Maybe he dropped by an outer space tattoo parlour on the way to Earth.

Sorry to barge in on you, Doctor!

So, yes. I think the new Doctor is working. He charmed Liz in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, and it’s safe to say he’s charmed me too. It’s early days, but I think Jon Pertwee is off to a good start.

Final Thoughts

Plot-wise, this is a pretty fun serial, with a slow but satisfying first half and some exciting action in the second. Come to think of it, the first half reminds me of a film from a few years ago, 1966’s Invasion, directed by Alan Bridges, written by Roger Marshall… and based on a story by Robert Holmes. And guess who wrote this serial?

If an idea’s good, you might as well re-use it.

There’s quite a lot of moving parts which I simplified in the summary, but it’s not hard to follow, just pleasantly complex, with vivid side characters and an air of intrigue to the whole thing.

That said… the ending is a bit weak. Not weak enough to bring down the whole thing, but not as good or smart as all the build-up had been.

I’d better discuss the Big-Blobby-Tentacle-Thing in the room. Yes, the final confrontation between the Doctor and the Nestenes is a bit naff. Yes, the rubber tentacles are silly, and yes, Pertwee pulls a very, very funny face when being ‘strangled’ by them.

The Autons, on the other hand, are a much more impactful villain. I don’t think I’ll ever look at a shop window dummy the same way again—and neither will the nation’s children. The moment in the last episode where the dummies in the window suddenly come to life with a start is truly chilling. Even when they’re not attacking people, they just look wrong. They sit perfectly in the uncomfortable area between human and not-human. The more human-like Nestene duplicates with their waxy faces are pretty creepy, but the Autons are a standout for me.One of the best monsters we’ve had in a while, I reckon.

If we’re starting as we mean to go on, I think we’re in for a cracking season.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[June 22, 1969] Game Over (Doctor Who: The War Games [Parts 8-10])

June 22, 2024 Jessica Holmes 1 Comment

By Jessica Holmes

"The War Games" draws to a close, bringing us a thrilling conclusion, revelations of the Doctor’s origins, and some heartbreaking farewells.

"If I join you, do I also have to grow the silly moustache?"

In Case You Missed It

You really missed out if you didn’t happen to catch it, because I really think "The War Games" is one of my favourite Doctor Who serials. And I’ve been thinking about the ending ever since.

But, first things first. A small clarification: I misinterpreted the dialogue last time, it turns out the War Lord is NOT a “Time Lord” (despite the name) but the War Chief is.

And so is the Doctor.

Up to now, I had mostly dismissed the War Chief as little more than a high-ranking lackey with a temper, but a new dimension within him emerges in the latter episodes of the serial. Sure, he still has a temper, but he’s no lackey. Unlike the Doctor, who left their homeworld in order to see the galaxy, the War Chief desires to rule it. And the Doctor can join him, if he wishes. He's not such a bad chap after all, so he claims. When the galaxy is conquered, there will finally be peace. Yes, War Chief, you’re a real humanitarian.

With no clear way to rescue the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe throw their efforts into carrying out his plan and recruiting the other Resistance groups. The leaders agree to assemble their armies in the American Civil War Zone. The forests will be a good place to hide, and then when a SIDRAT next turns up, they can take it over.

In preparation, they start taking out the control units in each zone, taking out their communications one by one, and drawing out the War Lord’s guards. By the time they’re done, there won’t be anyone left to defend central control.

With only one control unit left, the Security Chief has a pretty good idea of where the Resistance must be gathered, and wishes to wipe them all out with a neutron bomb. The War Lord however has a more subtle idea…

At the barn, Jamie, Zoe and the Resistance leaders are surprised to receive a call from the Doctor, who tells them that he has a plan to take over central control, and that he’s sending a SIDRAT to bring them to him. They meet the Doctor at the landing bay, where the War Lord’s guards promptly arrest them. It seems that the Doctor has betrayed them all.

And if you believed that for a second, I have a bridge to sell you.

As the prisoners are taken away, the War Chief pulls the Doctor aside to discuss plans for the future with his new ally. The Doctor infers that it’s not really him the War Chief needs for his plans to work, but his TARDIS. The SIDRATs have more bells and whistles than the old TARDIS, but it comes at a cost: longevity. The SIDRATs are at the end of their lifespan, and before long the War Chief will have nothing more than a load of surprisingly spacious cupboards, and he'll be of no further use to the War Lord.

What was his plan if a fellow Time Lord hadn’t happened to land in the middle of his games?

To prove his newfound loyalty to the War Lord, the Doctor offers to improve the processing machines, using the prisoners as test subjects. It’s all Jamie can do to prevent the others from killing the Doctor on sight, but the Doctor eventually manages to persuade them that he’s really on their side, and to play along with his ruse.

Unfortunately, things have all gone a bit pear-shaped. The Security Chief, suspicious of the Doctor and the War Chief, has been spying on their conversations. Having arrested the War Chief, the guards are now on their way to grab the Doctor.

The Resistance manage to overpower the guards, and the War Chief has another proposition for the Doctor. He can help them, and save his own skin into the bargain. The guards at the landing bay don’t know he’s been arrested. He could escort the Doctor and his allies there and steal them a SIDRAT. The Doctor accepts, on one condition: that they first go to the War Room and put an end to the games.

The Security Chief’s depleted forces quickly fall to the small band of Resistance fighters, with the Security Chief himself falling at the War Chief’s own spiteful hand. Unfortunately, he didn’t kill him fast enough to prevent him sounding the alarm. They can call an end to the games, but there’s not time for the Doctor to send everyone back to their proper time and place. Not without help, at least.

It’s time to call the Time Lords.

There's only room for ONE ruler of the Galaxy with weird facial hair, and it ain't gonna be you, War Chief.

The War Chief tries to leave the others behind and make a break for it, but the War Lord catches up to him as he attempts to steal a SIDRAT. The War Lord has his would-be betrayer executed on the spot. The Resistance arrive at the landing bay and quickly overpower the War Lord’s guards, but leave the man himself for the Time Lords to deal with. Not the Doctor though, who plans on being far, far away by the time they arrive. See, Time Lords aren't meant to meddle in the affairs of other worlds, and the Doctor does little else. And they’re probably going to want their stolen TARDIS back. To tell the truth, I’m not even surprised that the TARDIS is stolen. Have you seen how he pilots that thing?

Doctor, you naughty boy.

With Jamie, Zoe, and Carstairs (who is just tagging along to look for Lady Jennifer), the Doctor hurries off back to the 1917 Zone. But not fast enough. The coming of the Time Lords is heralded by an eerie drone on the air. Ominously, the War Lord tells the Doctor’s allies that soon the Doctor will wish they’d killed him when they had the chance.

Can we please appreciate Troughton's funny little run?

As the group get in sight of the TARDIS, Carstairs suddenly vanishes, no doubt whisked away to his proper time. The closer the Doctor gets to the TARDIS, the slower time itself seems to become. With an immense struggle, he and his friends manage to get inside and leave the battlefield. But they aren’t free yet.

The Time Lords find them wherever they go, whether it be the depths of the ocean or the depths of space. There’s no resisting the nigh-omnipotence of the Time Lords.

After all his travels, the Doctor must finally come home.

The Time Lords bring the Doctor and his friends to their homeworld, where the War Lord’s trial is already underway. It’s a rare thing for the Time Lords to put anyone on trial, let alone someone from another planet.

Forget everything I said about the War Lord being impressively powerful in my last review. Before the Time Lords, he’s nothing more than a scared little man, though he tries not to show it. A handful of his surviving guards turn up in an attempt to rescue him, taking the Doctor hostage in the process, but they don’t get far.

The Doctor helps the Time Lords to recapture the War Lord, and the justice of the Time Lords proves to be swift and uncompromising. They quarantine the War Lord’s planet away from the rest of the universe, and erase the War Lord himself from reality. It will be as if he never existed.

Despite the Doctor aiding them in bringing justice to the War Lord, the Time Lords aren’t going to give him a pass on his own supposed misdeeds. There's a funny sort of symmetry to this serial; the Doctor's tribulations begin and end with a trial.

"In my defence, Your Honour… it seemed a good idea at the time."

At least unlike last time, the Doctor has actually committed the “crime” of which he’s being accused. The Time Lords have one rule about interfering with the wider universe: don’t. And the Doctor not only admits to flouting that rule, he’s proud of it. Time and again he’s helped to defeat the evils of the universe, all while the Time Lords have failed to lift a finger to prevent the injustices happening before their eyes.

It’s not him who should be guilty, it’s them.

Agreeing to at least consider his point, the Time Lord jury goes into recess to think it over, and Jamie and Zoe are allowed to make their farewells to the Doctor.

Not that they don’t try to escape, but it’s futile trying to evade the Time Lords. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Doctor so completely and utterly defeated. He’s beyond begging, beyond tears, just… tired. Resigned.

To the Time Lords: I hope you're pleased with yourselves.

The goodbyes are brief, too brief really for all the three have been through together. Especially the Doctor and Jamie. Three series of instinctively reaching out to one another and clinging together in times of stress, and they part with a simple handshake.

Promising never to forget him, Jamie and Zoe turn their backs on the Doctor for the last time. But they don’t get a choice. Determined to erase every trace of the Doctor’s illegal travels from the universe, the Time Lords wipe Jamie and Zoe’s memories of their travels.

They’re allowed to keep their first meeting with the Doctor, but nothing more. To Zoe, he’s just that funny little bloke who turned up on the Wheel when the Cybermen invaded. And to Jamie, he’s just a man with a penchant for disguises, who helped his Jacobite comrades escape the English, and nothing more.

That’s… tragic. More than tragic, it’s cruel.

They’ve not just stolen memories, they’ve stolen something even more precious: friendship. Poor Zoe, lonely Zoe, whose colleagues thought of her as an inhuman machine because she saw the world differently to them. In the Doctor she finally had a true friend, a kindred spirit even, someone who understood the way she thinks and didn’t think less of her for it. And she’ll never know.

And dear Jamie. Oh, my poor, sweet Jamie. What’s he meant to do with himself now, alone in the Highlands, with everyone he knew dead or in exile? His relationship with the Doctor was closer than any other companion we’ve seen so far, except for Susan I suppose, but the dynamic feels different. I definitely wouldn’t call it paternal, at any rate.

At least they don’t know what they’ve lost, for what little comfort that is. The Doctor gets to live with the knowledge that he’ll never see his friends again. And his punishment has only just begun.

Seeing as he’s put so much effort into keeping it safe, he will be exiled to the planet Earth. He can keep the TARDIS, but in a disabled state, with even his knowledge of how to work it purged from his mind. Until such a time the Time Lords deem fit, he’ll be confined to one time, one planet, that isn’t even his own. And he won’t even be allowed to keep his face.

Such is the power and the judgement of the Time Lords.

The Peerage System: Even In Space, It Stinks

If the Time Lords are all such sticks in the mud, I’m not surprised the Doctor left home. Who died and made them "Lords" of Time? How terribly pompous.

It’s quite striking really, how much the Doctor has changed from when we first met him. In the early days, the Hartnell Doctor wasn’t such a far cry from the Time Lords, only really getting involved in local goings-on when he didn’t have any other choice. Look at him now, putting them in their place. I may or may not have cheered at the television set in support of the wee chappie.

That said, I don’t think he was ever as cold and detached as the rest of the Time Lords seem to be. His wanderlust and sense of curiosity was there from the start—something sorely lacking in the rest of his people.

It’s unsettling, this dispassionate power. One gets the sense that the Time Lords are to us as we are to insects. And we would have just as much luck arguing with them as an ant does to a boot. Perhaps the wider universe is lucky that they don't want to get involved.

The Doctor may have returned to his planet of origin, but it wasn't much of a homecoming. That would require warmth. It didn’t even occur to the Time Lords at first that his human friends would want to say goodbye to the Doctor. What sort of society is that, where affection and attachment are strange concepts? I don’t think they went out of their way to be cruel, but I don’t think it occurred to them that they weren’t being kind.

Speaking of unkind: The War Lord’s people. It seems a bit extreme to essentially imprison an entire planet for the actions of a few of its leaders. Even if they were abhorrent. I still have questions about them. We didn’t even get a name for the species as a whole. That said, I do have a theory. It’s ironclad, trust me. I think they could be "Dals", at a point in their history before they turned into screaming pepperpots. I have two compelling pieces of evidence:

The Security Chief’s oddly Dalek-like cadence to his speech.
I enjoy the idea, and I am always right. Except when I'm not.

So, there.

Final Thoughts

Wow. The end of a marathon serial, and the end of an era.

I’ll get my final thoughts on "The War Games" out of the way first. It was great! Genuinely one of my favourites in all of “Doctor Who”. It’s a creative romp through time, with the stakes for the Doctor and his friends higher than ever before. What’s not to like?

Well. If I must… I was a tad disappointed that the War Lord didn’t turn out to be quite as big a deal as I thought he was going to be. He makes such an impression upon first arriving, but then he’s barely involved in the goings-on thereafter.

However, the revelation of the War Chief’s ulterior motives almost makes up for the letdown. They have interesting chemistry, him and the Doctor. It’s ambiguous how well they knew one another prior to meeting here, but they definitely knew of one another. Both being runaway Time Lords, there’s a degree of understanding between the two, much as the Doctor would hate to admit it. Pity the War Chief had to die. He could have made quite the nemesis.

The ending for the captured humans is also a bit abrupt. They do at least get to have a climactic battle (well, more of a skirmish) for control of the War Room, but once the Time Lords get involved, poof! They all vanish. It does serve to establish the immense power the Time Lords possess, but it’s not entirely satisfying.

But this is me deliberately looking for fault. These quibbles are there, but to me they’re not a significant hamper on my enjoyment of the story. I just enjoy the good bits too much to let the less-good bits bother me.

And now, it’s time to close out an entire era of Doctor Who. I’m more than a little heart-broken; I adored the current iteration of the TARDIS crew. They’re like a proper little family.

I’ve especially enjoyed the relationship between the Doctor and Jamie. They’re just so comfortable with each other, and the chemistry between Troughton and Hines has always been wonderful. I’ve always found it endearing how affectionate they are with each other, the banter, the absolute undying loyalty. It’s so sweet, and so sad to have their travels together brought to such an abrupt end.

They're adorable. Even if the Doctor did forget what Jamie looks like that one time.

And as for saying goodbye to the Second Doctor, well. It hurts. But I cannot stress enough how much I have loved Patrick Troughton’s take on the Doctor.

Really, it’s extraordinary. It’s an unenviable task, having to take over a beloved character from a great performer like William Hartnell. And yet..! He rose to the challenge, and performed admirably. Troughton's Doctor is very much his own, distinct from the first incarnation, yet still having the same soul. The curiosity is still there, the mischief, the sense of justice. He's a continuation, not an imitation. Just as it should be.

I loved that little man, his wit, his endearing clownishness, and the incredible warmth. How could I not? And then the flip side, the cunning, the moments where the clown mask slipped to reveal glimpses of the much more serious, contemplative, sometimes even melancholic man underneath it all. That’s where the magic is. That’s what makes the Troughton Doctor so compelling.

Thank goodness he ditched that hat, though.

And what comes next? Or rather, “Who”? Well, I had been getting a little nervous at the lack of announcement thus far, but have no fear, because a few days ago the BBC finally made the announcement. Next time we see the Doctor, he’ll be played by Jon Pertwee.

There’s a pretty decent chance you’ve seen Pertwee in one thing or another. He’s been doing plenty of work for the BBC for the last couple of decades, and his film career is certainly nothing to sniff at. If you’ve seen the 1953 film “Will Any Gentlemen…?”, you’ve even seen him perform alongside William Hartnell. I choose to take that as an encouraging sign.

I’m sad to see Troughton go, but I have faith. If Doctor Who can pull off a change of Doctor once, it can do it again.

Thank you for being a wonderful Doctor, Patrick Troughton… and good luck, Jon Pertwee.

5 stars out of 5 for “The War Games”.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[June 8th, 1969] Dissension In The Ranks (Doctor Who: The War Games [Parts 5-7])

June 8, 2024 Jessica Holmes 1 Comment

By Jessica Holmes

When I said this serial was long, I wasn’t exaggerating. We’re getting closer to the end—but we’re not there yet.

Let’s check up on how the Doctor and company are getting on in “The War Games.”

In Case You Missed It

We last left the TARDIS team scattered, the Doctor on his own in the sprawling futuristic central command, Jamie with the Resistance in the 1860s, and Zoe about to be shot as a spy for the Kaiser. Suffice to say, I’m having a lot more fun than they are.

Fortunately for Zoe, she’s more valuable alive than dead, so while the Security Chief hauls her in for questioning, the Science Chief takes Carstairs for more thorough reprogramming. And he has an eager audience of one: the Doctor, who the Science Chief hasn’t yet realised isn’t meant to be here.

As for Jamie, he manages to persuade the Resistance not to kill their prisoner Von Weich, and also reveals to them their puppet-masters’ true means of communicating with central command and moving troops from zone to zone; not tunnels, as they had assumed, but the big green (or so he says) travelling box that's bigger on the inside. It turns out later that it's called a SIDRAT (pronounced 'side-rat'). Funny acronyms on a postcard, please.

The Doctor takes the opportunity to rescue Carstairs when the Science Chief de-programs him in preparation for proper reprogramming, and the pair of them strap him into his own machine before running off to find Zoe. Zoe’s a little the worse-for-wear following her interrogation at the hands of the Security Chief and his truth-seeking visor/bizarre binoculars. On the one hand, the Security Chief now knows about the Doctor and the TARDIS. On the other, he made the mistake of showing Zoe images of all the Resistance leaders—along with their names and their respective time-zones. Thanks to Zoe’s perfect memory, they now have the information they need to start finding these separate pockets of resistance and bringing them together.

They’d better get a move on, because the War Chief is already dispatching guards via SIDRAT to the American Civil War Zone to investigate the disturbance there— and they’ve already killed Harper, the soldier who came to Jamie and Lady Jennifer's rescue earlier. Pity. I hoped he was going to stick around for at least a little while longer. Survival rates of Doctor Who side characters are already pretty low. Looks like they drop to zero if you’re not white.

The other members of the Resistance manage to overpower the guards, however, and Jamie takes a ride back to the base in the SIDRAT, accompanied by his Resistance allies (save one who gets held back from the adventure to keep Von Weich company. That one happens to be played by David Troughton. The surname is not a coincidence. What's the opposite of favouritism?)

Fortunately for the Science Chief, the Security Chief finds him before he gets his brains too badly scrambled, but the Security Chief is too suspicious of the War Chief’s true motives to report the incident to him. It turns out that the War Chief and War Lord are not from this world; unlike him and his cohorts, their people have the secret of time-and-space travel. If the Doctor has this secret too, thinks the Security Chief, perhaps his overlords are bringing in more of their own people to sabotage the experiment.

Well, their technology does seem similar. Same function, familiar design, and SIDRAT is literally just TARDIS backwards. But the Security Chief called them 'Time Lords', and I don’t know about you but the Doctor does not strike me as terribly lordly.

Jamie and the Resistance get a rather frosty reception when the SIDRAT arrives at central command, stunned by a barrage of ray-gun fire. The guards drag him and his allies off to the reprocessing room for examination, and the Doctor heads to the neighbouring room to attempt a rescue from the other side.

Finding that Jamie has never been through the reconditioning process, the Science Chief sends him to the Security Chief for interrogation. Taking advantage of the distraction, the Doctor and Carstairs break into the reconditioning room through a wall panel, quickly overpowering the Science Chief and his guard.

It’s not long before they’ve also rescued Jamie (while the Security and War Chiefs are running round like headless chickens searching for them), and with some handy disguises they all pile into the SIDRAT, the Doctor managing to make it work with surprising ease. Sending Zoe on ahead with the Resistance, he hangs back with Jamie and Carstairs to steal the reprocessing machine.

The SIDRAT arrives back at the barn not a moment too soon, because Von Weich is trying to hypnotise his way out of captivity. His guard manages to fight off his control, however, and shoots him dead.

Meanwhile, the Doctor nicks the processing machine, and it looks like he’s about to make a clean getaway when his stolen SIDRAT grinds to a halt. The pod is impregnable, just like the TARDIS, but what happens if the dimensions inside suddenly match the dimensions outside? It becomes rather snug, that’s what. And with the War Chief outside pushing the dimensional control dial down even further, it won’t be long before the trio are pressed to a pulp.

With no choice but to surrender, the Doctor emerges from the SIDRAT, only to drop a gas grenade from his stolen WWI gear a moment later. While the security guards are reeling, he rushes to the control panel, stealing the navigation circuit rods and restoring the inner dimensions of the vehicle. Just to be safe, he snaps off the lever for good measure, and absconds with the SIDRAT.

Unable to track him while the SIDRAT is still moving, the War Chief prepares for the arrival of the War Lord (Philip Madoc). This man is rather a different beast to the War Chief. He’s quieter, surprisingly soft spoken until he gets angry, and there’s no doubt that this is the most dangerous man on the planet right now. And he is very, very tired of the War and Security Chiefs’ bickering.

On board the SIDRAT, they’re no clearer on where they’re heading, least of all the Doctor. No matter the specific model of Space-Time machine, one thing is guaranteed: the Doctor is a lousy driver.

Landing in the Roman zone, the Doctor, Jamie and Carstairs have to make a hasty break for the time zone barrier, lest they end up on the wrong end of a centurion’s spear.

They aren’t really any better off for stepping into 1917, with General Smythe immediately ordering his gunners to fire on them. Fortunately, they aren’t pinned down for long before Zoe arrives with a small band of Resistance troops. However, more troops arrive to arrest the Doctor, bringing him and his friends back to the chateau, where Smythe sentences him to death…again.

Once again they get about as far as tying him to the post when a surprise attack scuppers the execution, this time coming from the Resistance. Smythe gets himself killed while attempting to escape, and the Resistance secure the chateau.

Wishing to avoid spoiling his little experiment by using his elite security forces, or destroying the valuable equipment at the chateau by simply bombing it off the map, the War Lord orders the local forces (British and Prussians and Frenchmen, oh my!) to assault the chateau on all sides.

With the attackers closing in, the Doctor has an idea. Finding a control device for the local time zone barrier in Smythe’s quarters, with Zoe’s help he’s able to create a new barrier encircling the chateau. The Resistance can come and go as they please, but the programmed soldiers outside will find themselves unable to approach. A single soldier managed to get into the chateau before the barrier went up, and the Doctor is quickly able to deprogram him with the processing machine. It's encouraging to see that it works, but deprogramming every single one of the untold thousands of soldiers throughout the zones will take until doomsday. Until the Doctor gets his hands on some more equipment, this will have to do.

Unfortunately it’s not certain that he’s going to get that chance. Now isolated from the zone outside, there’s nothing stopping the War Lord sending a SIDRAT of his own security forces. And so the Doctor falls into the hands of the War Lord.

A WHAT Lord?

Well, well, well. Things are really getting interesting. This War Lord seems to be an entirely new kind of enemy, with a power level beyond any we’ve yet seen, save for perhaps the Great Intelligence or the Toymaker. The strong implication that he and the Doctor may be of the same world is a tantalising one.

Time Lords: quite a grandiose name for an alien race, don’t you think? Are they just too pompous for their own good or is that a title with actual meaning? It’s hard to imagine this Doctor as any kind of lord—though I think I could see it with his previous incarnation. It’s an interesting notion, but I hope we’re not going to spoil all sense of mystery about the Doctor. That’s part of the fun.

I’m happy to report that astonishingly for a serial of such length, the pacing still works. It’s a really fun ride with no signs of slowing down. We’ve not seen much of the War Lord yet, but he’s very promising so far. Philip Madoc’s presence on-screen is magnetic. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens when he comes face to face with the Doctor.

Final Thoughts

It’s a funny thing, simultaneously being eager for the conclusion of a story, yet at the same time wishing it didn’t have to end. I’ve grown very fond of this incarnation of the Doctor, and it’s strange to think that the next time I sit down at the typewriter to hammer out my thoughts on his escapades, it will be the last. Of course, the Doctor himself will keep on going (for however long the BBC sees fit), but not as the funny little chap with the recorder. I could wax lyrical about him— but I will save that for next time.

Still, no point grousing about it. The wheel of history keeps on turning, and so does Doctor Who.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[May 18, 1969] Whirr Hum Bang Bang (Doctor Who: The War Games [Parts 1-4])

May 18, 2024 Jessica Holmes Leave a comment

[Join us for ongoing LIVE coverage of the Apollo 10 flight—going on right now!]

By Jessica Holmes

I’m a bad-news-first type of person, so I’ll get this out of the way: this is the last serial of the current series of Doctor Who. And, per the Radio Times, that makes this serial Patrick Troughton’s last as the titular Doctor. But here’s the good news:

We’ve got a good while to go yet, because this is a very long serial.

And better still, “The War Games” is brilliant.

In Case You Missed It

From the moment the TARDIS lands in the middle of a sodden battlefield, the crew within are in terrible danger. Emerging to find themselves caught in the midst of the First World War, it’s not long before the team are captured under suspicion of being German spies.

However, it soon starts to become apparent that there’s something rather wrong here. Other than, you know, the total war and unimaginable horrors and all that. No, it’s a bit weirder than that. It certainly looks like we’re in France in 1917, and everyone is talking as if that’s the case, but the personnel have no backstories. Not in the ‘these people are badly written’ sense, but in the sense that when they ask one another about where they’ve been or what they’ve been doing, they have absolutely no idea.

It’s all to do with General Smythe (Noel Coleman) at the local British base, and the decidedly anachronistic communication device in his office. It soon becomes apparent that he’s collaborating with forces far beyond British high command, using mind control to manipulate the men and women under his command towards his own ends.

The new arrivals threaten to upset his control, and he wastes little time in court-marshalling the travellers. They don’t get a chance to defend themselves, and Smythe pronounces all three guilty. Jamie’s sent to a military prison to await trial on further charges of desertion from the highland regiment, Zoe is placed in the custody of a WVR until she can be sent to a civilian prison, and as for the ringleader of their little ‘spy ring’? The Doctor is sentenced to death.

This is treated with more gravity than we’ve usually come to expect from Doctor Who. Sure, everyone’s been in mortal peril plenty of times, but we get the feeling that the characters believe they’ll get out of it in one piece. That’s not the case here. If it were, the Doctor would have told his friends ‘see you soon’ rather than ‘goodbye’. And it’s played by all involved with real sincerity.

After a damp squib of an escape attempt that only succeeds in delivering the Doctor into the hands of his executioners, a surprise German attack grants Zoe and the Doctor an opportunity to flee.

Elsewhere languishing in military prison, Jamie’s very surprised when a Redcoat is thrown into the cell with him. Yes, a Redcoat. This chap seems to think that the year is 1745—and just like the WWI soldiers, he can’t remember how he got here.

We now arrive at a delightful sequence: the Doctor’s method of breaking into a prison. Does he go for brute force? Of course not. The stealthy approach? You’d think, but no. What he goes for is pure cheek. He flags a car down, berates the driver, and demands to be driven through the front gates.

Upon arriving, he pretends to be an examiner from the War Office, and goes on the opposite of the charm offensive. The offence offensive, you could say. He is very, very cross and hell-bent on making it everyone else’s problem. It’s adorable. And funny. Like being yelled at by the world’s angriest penguin.

You see it too, right?

And it works! Not only does the warden buy the ruse, he shows the Doctor layouts of the prison, the logbook, and is about to approve of a visit to a particular Scottish prisoner when a phonecall comes in. Unfortunately, said Scottish prisoner has just tried to escape, aided by his unlikely Redcoat accomplice, who ended up shot in the attempt.

Thinking fast, the Doctor demands that the guards bring him the escaped prisoner. However, his bluster is starting to wear thin, and the warden grows suspicious of the pair of them. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, let alone off-the-cuff schemes that run on pure chutzpah.

Recaptured, it looks like the three are back where they started. However, two of the General’s subordinates, Lt. Carstairs (David Savile) and WVR Lady Jennifer Buckingham (Jane Sherwin), have started to become suspicious of the General’s conduct. Realising that they both have a sense of missing time, they’re a little more willing to listen to the ‘spies’ side of the story.

Having discovered it earlier in the unsuccessful escape attempt, Zoe shows the group the communication device in Smythe’s quarters. Smythe for his part isn’t around. He departed some time ago for a conference, travelling via a strange transportation pod that fades in and out of existence with a somewhat familiar sound.

Convinced by the evidence presented (which they couldn’t even see until they concentrated), Carstairs and Lady Jennifer agree to help. The group escape together in an ambulance moments before the General’s return, soon disappearing into a sea of fog… and reappearing on a Roman battlefield.

This is the moment where I fell in love with the serial.

Reversing away from the oncoming onslaught, they find themselves back (ostensibly) in 1917. The Doctor surmises that they crossed the boundary into another time zone. Two thousand years is quite a long way to wind your watch, to say nothing of the jet lag.

It turns out that what seemed to be northern France in 1917 is nothing more than a small part of a greater patchwork of historical periods and places. In one zone, it’s the 1640s in England. The next, 1860s America. The one thing all have in common is that in each zone, there’s a war on.

In the middle of all these warzones is an empty space. Logically, that must be the domain of whoever is orchestrating all this.

Their attempt to reach this central zone gets off to an inauspicious start with the group being captured by the Germans before very long (if I did have to complain about anything in this serial, it would be how often everyone gets captured), though they do escape quite quickly through some quick talking, the assistance of the sonic screwdriver, and perhaps most importantly, a gun.

Next stop: the American Civil War.

Their escape garners the attention of Smythe’s superior, the War Chief, a man of bad character and worse facial hair choices. Soon, all the armies of all the zones are under instructions to capture the time travellers.

The ambulance has a narrow escape from an ambush, with Lt. Carstairs staying behind to aid the others’ escape. The War Chief notes his loyalty with approval, and arranges to have him brought back to the central hub for re-processing. The War Chief (and the as-yet-unseen War Lord who commands him) have a great interest in the warriors of Earth, but to what end? It’d be funny if they were in some sort of futuristic unethical historical reenactment society.

Soon running out of petrol, the group take shelter for the night in a barn. The familiar electronic sound comes back, a travel pod fading into existence before their eyes. A band of soldiers emerge, but how did they all fit? Well, the pod must be bigger on the inside.

Once the soldiers have departed, the Doctor can’t help but take a look inside. As the sound of gunfire approaches, Zoe follows him in, the door suddenly shutting behind her. The pod de-materialises, separating Zoe and the Doctor from Jamie and Lady Jennifer.

The pod is indeed bigger on the inside—much bigger. There are multiple rooms filled with hypnotised soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder (try saying that five times when you’re drunk), all waiting to disembark at their appropriate time zones.

A gang of Union soldiers meanwhile arrest Jamie and Lady Jennifer, accusing them (much to Jamie’s frustration) of spying. It seems they’re to be granted a reprieve when a bunch of Confederates assault the Union troops, freeing them in the process. They’re even quite friendly. However, their leader, who we previously saw as the German commander in the 1917 zone, hypnotises them into believing that Jamie and Lady Jennifer are spies.

To their surprise, a man in the uniform of a Union soldier comes to their rescue. However, Harper (Rudolph Walker) is no Union solider: he’s one of a growing number of soldiers who have learned to resist the War Chief’s brainwashing. Together, they’re mounting a resistance. Recognising them as being from another time zone, he tries to help. It’s a noble effort, but doesn’t pan out, all three ending up in the Confederates’ clutches. Harper tries to win the Confederates over and break their brainwashing, but being a Black Union soldier, historical context is not on his side.

Fortunately for them, the rest of the Resistance aren’t far behind, but to Jamie’s distress they don’t plan on taking any prisoners.

The Doctor and Zoe eventually end up at the travel pod’s origin point, and emerge to explore the sprawling facility. There are dozens of people working to keep this whole system going, and the pair disguise themselves as part of their number to sit in on a lecture given by the chief scientist.

Keeping thousands of people fighting perpetual fake wars takes quite a bit of brainwashing to accomplish, and it’s no good if people keep resisting the process. As such, he’s been working on improving the mental conditioning device. Lt. Carstairs is the guinea pig, and once the process is complete, he’s entirely willing to accept the reality presented to him. The year is 1917, he’s among his fellow officers, and the two strangers sitting in the front row are German spies.

You could make a drinking game out of this. Take a shot every time the Doctor and company get accused of being spies. Finish your glass if someone gets sentenced to death. You might need to get your stomach pumped afterwards.

Thinking he’s just got a bit carried away in the fantasy, the lecturer doesn’t believe Carstairs and has him wheeled away for further examination. The Doctor takes the opportunity to critique the mental conditioning device, and thereby learn how it works and how it might be used to de-condition a subject.

As he’s about to leave, the War Chief turns up, immediately realising that the Doctor and Zoe don’t belong. They have to run for it, getting separated in the chase. In all the chaos, Carstairs gets loose, and so does what he thinks he’s right: he goes after the ‘spies’. He soon catches Zoe, and there’s only one way to deal with a spy in the field. He’s going to have to shoot her.

It's called fashion, darling.

The Mystery Box

This is an adventure that is yet to fully unfold, but the slivers we’ve uncovered thus far are a delight. “The War Games” invites curiosity, and rewards us for it with even more to be curious about.

The TARDIS team getting caught in a wartime spy drama was already rather exciting, but throw in all these different time periods clashing with each other and we’re really cooking on gas. It’s imaginative, it’s thrilling, it’s exactly what Doctor Who should be.

Who are the War Chief and War Master? I get the sense that what we’ve seen so far is part of a grander and more sinister scheme. Whatever it is, it’s far from benign. Looking at how many untold thousands (likely more) of people they’ve abducted and fed into these endless wars and the level of technology they possess, one gets the sense that these people, whoever they are, are far more formidable than your average foe.

Special offer: brainwash and mental conditioning now offered free with your cut and blow-dry!

Final Thoughts

“The War Games” is off to a terrific start.

It’s got a good pace to it, lingering a moment to let the emotional beats resonate, keeping up a steady rhythm when the action gets going. As such, despite the recurring plot point of the group getting captured, it doesn’t feel padded out. I like the characters, particularly the smart and self-assured Lady Jennifer. With all the different time periods, this feels like a properly big and sprawling adventure—an adventure I’m excited to see more of.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[April 14, 1969] My Least Favourite Kind Of Cereal (Doctor Who: The Space Pirates [Parts 4-6])

April 14, 2024 Jessica Holmes 1 Comment

By Jessica Holmes

The last we left the Doctor and company, they were at the mercy of a gang of not-particularly-swashbuckling space pirates. The first half of this serial was a rather bland affair—let’s see if the second half improves things.

In Case You Missed It

Having just been chased down a hole, the Doctor and his friends are dismayed to discover that they have not in fact found a cunning escape route from the pirates, but the entrance to a prison cell. A prison cell they’re now trapped within. And they’re not alone. The sole survivor from the beacon attack, Sorba, is in there with them. One might think that he’s going to become pivotal to the plot and their survival, but—well, you’ll see soon enough.

Meanwhile, the leader of the pirates, Caven, is beset by dissension in his crew. His subordinate, Dervish, is hesitant to travel to collect the beacon segments, fearing the Space Corps, who are also en-route. However, he’s more afraid of Caven, who has placed a remote control on his ship, and could kill him with the push of a button.

Dervish arrives at the beacon debris to find that one of the sections is missing, and remembering that Sorba had said something about intruders, Caven sends a couple of men to collect Sorba for interrogation.

These men arrive at the prison cell just in time to find the Doctor and his friends escaping with the assistance of Milo Clancey. He shoots one of them, but the other escapes, and soon the whole base is searching for the missing captives as they flee through the tunnels.

The Doctor and company make it to Madeleine Issigri’s office, where they beg for her to call the General—only to realise too late that not only is she aware of the pirates living right under her, she’s in league with them. Caven arrives to collect his captives, and Sorba attacks him. It doesn’t go well for Sorba.

Madeleine intervenes before Caven can kill the others, as she’s only in this for a little space theft, not outright murder.

Caven throws the prisoners into Madeleine’s father’s old office, and who should they find there but…Madeleine’s father, Dom Issigri. It turns out that Caven has been holding him captive all this time to use as leverage against his daughter. Who doesn’t know he’s down there. But was helping him anyway. I have to wonder if Caven fully understands the point of taking a hostage.

Having had enough of Caven’s cruelty, Madeleine appeals to Dervish, who turns out to be too much of a coward to turn against Caven and help her. She instead attempts to contact Hermack to ask for help, but Caven catches her in the act. It’s only then that he reveals to her that her father is alive and at his mercy.

And he’s escaping, with the Doctor’s help. And a little arson. There are many ways to trick a guard into entering one’s cell so you can tackle him and escape, but setting a small fire is probably the most dramatic.

Little do they realise that this time the pirates aren’t going to chase them. Caven has laid a trap, a scheme that will deal with his enemies and shake the Space Corps off his tail. The pirates have planted a remote control device on Milo’s ship, so that they can pilot him towards the stolen beacon, allowing the Space Corps to catch him ‘red-handed’. And he won’t be able to tell the Space Corps that he isn’t in control of the ship, because by the time they’re close enough to see him, he’ll be already dead, because they can remotely cut off the oxygen supply.

That’s the plan, anyway. But Jamie and Zoe lag behind, and when the Doctor doubles back for them, the ship takes off without him, almost burning him to a crisp in the exhaust. Jamie and Zoe catch up to find him lightly toasted and talking like he just gargled a tub of gravel.

Realising that his trap has failed to snare all the intended victims, Caven takes off to search the tunnels, leaving Madeleine alone with Dervish. She tries to convince him to turn against Caven as she has, but he’s in too deep and he’s too much of a coward to try.

The Doctor and company find their way to Madeleine, Jamie successfully subduing Dervish— but not without a little accident. In the scuffle, Dervish’s gun goes off, fusing the wires on the remote control unit. The Doctor manages to repair it enough to get the ship’s oxygen supply back online, but as for disabling the auto-pilot, that’s down to Clancey. Thankfully he’s good at following the Doctor’s instructions, and is soon on his way back to Tar to rescue the Doctor and company.

Drawing near, Hermack radios Clancey’s ship, and Milo gets the chance to tell him what’s really going on, that Dom Issigri is alive, and that the real villain is Caven. Hermack assures him and Madeleine that he’s coming to help.

But they’re not safe yet. If Caven can’t have access to Madeleine’s mines, nobody can. He’s setting charges on the atomic fuel stores. The moment he’s clear of the planet, he’s going to blow Madeleine’s base sky-high—and Milo’s ship won’t be fast enough to get them to safety in time.

Hermack tries to intervene to stop Caven before he can get far enough away to detonate the device, but Caven, seeing the approach of Hermack’s attack ships, threatens to detonate the bomb early and take them with him.

For the people stuck down on the planet, their only hope is for the Doctor to defuse the bomb. All they can do is watch from outside the radiation room as the Doctor slowly, methodically, sets about his work. Hitchcock, it is not.

The Doctor succeeds just as Caven pulls the trigger on the detonator, and then the serial is very abruptly over. Hermack’s ships blow up Caven, Madeleine reunites with her father off-screen, and Milo offers the Doctor and company a ride back to the TARDIS. Considering his driving, Jamie would rather walk.

A Lack Of Flavour

There are two fundamentals missing from this story, two things which should have reinforced one another and the story itself: tension and an emotional core. The ingredients for both are all there, but feel like an afterthought.

Madeleine’s separation from her father should be a lot more emotionally impactful than it actually is. I feel like we do feel the pain of the separation from his perspective, but not from hers. Perhaps because the first time we learn of the separation, it’s part of a dispassionate information dump between Madeleine and Hermack. As far as she’s concerned, he’s dead and has been for years. There’s a lot more emotional distance for her. Yet for Dom, the trauma is ongoing. This mismatch could be played for tragedy, but the narrative doesn’t do anything with it. Worst of all, we don’t even get to see their reunion, for what little catharsis they might have been able to wring out of it. And if the serial doesn’t care enough to show them being reunited, why should I care that they were?

As for the lack of tension, it’s harder to put my finger on. I think this might be more of a directorial issue than a writing issue. Or perhaps a bit of both. There’s something dispassionate about the entire story, possibly caused by the heavy, characterless exposition in the first half. I just don’t feel what the serial wants me to feel.

A prime example is the climactic scene where the Doctor has to defuse the bomb. Sure, we know they’re not actually going to blow up the entire main cast, but other stories have managed to deliver ample tension despite that. I’m told that time is running out but I don’t feel it, that’s the difference. It’s all about the feeling. Bomb disposal scenes should be positively nail-biting but this one just…isn’t. It’s dry.

That’s it. That’s why I don’t like this serial: it’s the television equivalent of bran flakes.

Final Thoughts

How can something with a title as promising as "THE SPACE PIRATES" (Pirates! In SPACE!!!) be such a dull affair? The most it has going for it are a few cute moments between the Doctor and Jamie. They’re basically an old married couple at this point. At least, they certainly bicker like one.

I do hope that the next serial is better. It’s not just the last in the current series. It’s Mr. Troughton’s last spin in the TARDIS as the current Doctor.

And I’m not ready for him to go.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 26, 1969] Avast, Ye Scurvy Dogs! (Doctor Who: The Space Pirates [Parts 1-3])

March 26, 2024 Jessica Holmes 1 Comment

By Jessica Holmes

Possessing the constitution of a wet paper towel, I feel very unwell at the moment, so what better time to curl up on the sofa and watch Doctor Who? Robert Holmes is back in the writer’s seat, bringing us a tale of piracy on the highest seas of all—space! Drink up, me hearties, yo ho—it’s time to be castin’ a weather eye o’er “The Space Pirates”. Yarrr!

In Case You Missed It

We kick things off with a pirate attack on an unmanned space beacon. The pirates move quickly, setting charges in and around the beacon to blow it apart at the weak points, then take off with their spoils. It’s the latest in a long line of attacks by pirates seeking the rare (and very valuable) mineral ‘argonite’. Until now, they’ve carried out their attacks unimpeded, but by going after government property, they’ve attracted the attention of the Space Corps.

Enter General Hermack (Jack May). He’s on the hunt for the pirates, when he’s not being used as a mouthpiece to deliver copious amounts of background explanation.

However, his first attempt to catch the pirates falls short, as they’re long gone by the time his forces arrive at the site of the latest destroyed beacon. He will have to try a change of tactic: place men on the beacons to raise an early alarm in the event of an attack.

The pirates, as it happens, attack the very first beacon Hermack places his men on. Handy.

But where, you may wonder, is the Doctor in all this Who?

He’s finally deigned to show up, at the worst possible time and place—on the beacon, right before the pirate attack.

The pirates kill all but one of the guards aboard the beacon, and seal the Doctor and his friends inside a compartment before setting their charges and departing with their captive.

Then they blow the whole thing up.

Meanwhile, the General and his ship have an encounter with The Most American Man In The Universe. Meet Milo Clancey (Gordon Gostelow). He’s got the bearing of a Gold Rush prospector and the wardrobe to match. With a heavy mistrust of the government and a tendency to say things like ‘what in tarnation’, it’s like he wandered in from a different genre. He is naturally my favourite.

The mistrust goes both ways. Clancey resents the government for not doing anything to help when his own cargo transports were attacked, and Hermack just plain doesn’t like the guy, convincing himself (rather dubiously) that Milo is the criminal mastermind behind these pirate attacks.

Criminal mastermind? The man can’t make toast without cremating it.

As for the Doctor and company, they’ve got their own problems. Their compartment is intact, being towed through space with the other separated segments of the beacon, but they’re running out of air. And fast. The Doctor’s attempts to reunite the compartment with the rest of the station result only in flinging them further out into space. To use his own words, what a silly idiot he is.

It’s a rare serious moment for him. He’s not been this close to utter despair since Jamie and Zoe got fictionalised back in “The Mind Robber”. The poor little chap needs a hug.

Back with the actual plot, General Hermack pays a visit to the nearby mining planet of Ta, where the Issigri Mining Corporation, led by Madeleine Issigri (Lisa Daniely), digs up mountains of argonite. Madeleine’s father started the business, but she’s taken over since his mysterious disappearance—a disappearance Milo Clancey was suspected of involvement in. She also has fascinating taste in headgear.

With Clancey’s own mines running dry, Hermack suspects that he might be out for revenge on Madeleine, jealous of her success. Especially since he’s been beaten at his own game by an attractive woman like her. Eugh.

Out of options, the Doctor and company end up huddled on the floor in a heap, waiting for the oxygen to run out. They’d look rather cute if it wasn’t such a dire situation. However, they’re in luck. A certain space cowboy happens upon the pod, and hoping to find out what’s inside, cuts it open, freeing the Doctor and his friends.

He does commit the small faux pas of shooting Jamie, but the lad gets better so there’s no sense holding a grudge.

Clancey brings the Doctor and his friends aboard, but it’s not much of a rescue. The space corps, having remained on his tail all this time, saw him dock with the pod, and they’ve got rather the wrong end of the stick. Ignoring their demands for him to surrender, Clancey instead deploys a cloud of copper needles, which magnetise to the argonite hull of the pursuing ship, jamming their guidance systems and preventing them from firing, or moving at all.

He then tears out of there, leaving the space corps in his coppery dust. He knows just where to hide out: Ta, the mining planet. Possibly the riskiest place for him to be right now, and therefore nobody will expect him to be daft enough to go there.

It’s not the first time he’s been to Ta. He worked down there a long time ago with his business partner, Madeleine’s father. Once they land, he tells the group to stay put while he does some ship maintenance.

The Doctor and his friends are however pathologically incapable of following that sort of instruction, so they immediately wander off. Jamie’s uneasy about trusting Clancey, what with the shooting incident, and Zoe’s been calculating the original trajectory of the pirates. Assuming they didn’t change direction, they’d have landed on Ta, and very close-by at that.

If they find the pirates and their stolen beacon, they’ll find the TARDIS, and maybe then they’ll go off and find a story where they’re actually integral to the plot.

As Hermack prepares to leave Madeleine’s office and help out his stranded second-in-command, he notices something peculiar: a model ship, of the exact type used by the pirates. It’s top-of-the-line, and very expensive. Madeleine tells him her company recently acquired two of them. How very interesting… it’s starting to look like Madeleine may be more involved in this whole affair than she lets on.

Soon finding themselves lost in the labyrinth of mining tunnels (of course) the Doctor and his friends don’t take long to stumble onto the pirates, setting off all their alarms in the process. As a gang of angry pirates corner them, the three take the only escape route available: a crack in the tunnel wall. What’s on the other side? Who knows, but going by the screaming, it doesn’t sound as if they’re having a good time.

What In Tarnation?!

For the most part, it’s not a bad story really. The setting is neat, the characters are… not terribly interesting, but fine. The pacing is okay, and there’s enough excitement to hold our attention. It gets a resounding “It’s all right I suppose,” from me.

However, there is so much "As you know, Bob"-ing it absolutely destroys the experience. Characters constantly repeat information to one another for the benefit of the fourth wall. What’s worse, it keeps happening. There’s at least three different scenes explaining how flipping marvellous and prized as a material argonite is, and only one of those actually involves a newcomer to the setting who would actually need such an explanation. It’s like Robert Holmes wrote several different versions of an exposition scene, and unsure of which to use, simply shoved all of them into the final draft of the script. It’s a waste of time and insulting to the viewer.

That felt a little harsh, but in my defence I am beset by maladies and reserve the right to be a bit grumpy.

I feel a strange urge to apologise to my American readers (which, I assume, is most of you) on behalf of the BBC. I don't work for it, but I'm British, so close enough. I’m not sure there is a single BBC actor who can do a half-decent American accent, but by golly they do insist upon trying. We’ve not only got one, but TWO faux-Americans knocking around with their dodgy accents this serial. Oh, and Hermack, whose accent is… um. You know, I’m sure it’s meant to be something, but I really couldn’t tell you what. Maybe I’ll apologise to all the countries, just to be safe.

At least Clancey’s whole character is funny. He really does look and act like he wandered onto the wrong set. It’s just so incongruous with what you generally expect to see in a futuristic science fiction setting, and I love it. It’s ridiculous, sure, but I think that they could have gone even further with this bizarre genre mishmash. For a story called "The Space Pirates" there’s rather less swashbuckling than I’d have liked. They’re more like… over-enthusiastic scrap metal dealers. But then, “The Space Over-Enthusastic Scrap Metal Dealers” is a bit of a mouthful for the BBC continuity announcers to say.

Final Thoughts

I think I was a bit off the mark committing to the yo-ho-ho-and-a-bottle-o'-rum lingo earlier. This is not that kind of story. No… it’s a rootin’-tootin’ twilight-of-the-old-west story. Yee haw, giddy-up, etc.

Sorry. I’ll stop now.

Wait, one more thing. Why does it feel like the Doctor is an afterthought to this story? He’s barely involved. We’re three episodes in and he’s only met one of the main characters. The rest have absolutely no idea he exists. He’s not involved in the events beyond getting stuck on a dismantled space station. And even that doesn’t do anything to the plot beyond creating a small detour for Clancey. Take him out, and the main plot doesn’t actually change.

Maybe it’s not a bad story. But it’s not (so far) a good Doctor Who story.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 4, 1969] Here Endeth The Lesson (Doctor Who: The Seeds Of Death [Parts 4-6])

March 4, 2024 Jessica Holmes 1 Comment

By Jessica Holmes

“The Seeds Of Death” draws to a close, and time is running out for planet Earth. Let’s check in with the Doctor and company to see how humanity’s fate unfolds, and whether the human race will learn anything from this whole ordeal…

In Case You Missed It

At the end of the last episode, the Ice Warriors began their attack, sending a seed pod to the London T-Mat control centre. The pod soon bursts, instantly killing the nearest man, and leaving the rest struggling for breath. They’re able to disperse the cloud of spores, but realise too late that they’ve dispelled it into the open air. And soon the seeds take root, growing, bursting and expanding across the grounds outside. And it’s not just London—it’s happening to T-Mat centres across the northern hemisphere.

Maybe these seeds are why the Ice Warriors always sound so terribly asthmatic? Poor things have allergies.

Meanwhile on the Moonbase, Jamie and Phipps sneak around the base, successfully snatching an unconscious Doctor away from under the Ice Warriors’ noses. They also attempt to reach the temperature controls, but find the vent too small to wiggle through. Zoe is small enough, however, and volunteers for the job.

Back on Earth, the autopsy report on the dead man comes back, and Radnor and Eldred are baffled to find that he died of oxygen starvation. It takes several minutes for the brain to start dying from lack of oxygen, so how can he have died instantly? Unfortunately, this is never adequately answered. And they don’t get much chance to mull it over, because the invasion has begun. An Ice Warrior suddenly bursts from the London T-Mat booth. Eldred and Radnor watch in horror as it kills their guards before heading out to terrorise the rest of the facility.

Starting to worry about how long Zoe and Phipps are taking, Jamie is about to go after them when an Ice Warrior stumbles upon the room in which they are hiding. He and Kelly attempt to take it down with the heat trap, but it seems that its power supply is depleted. All they can do is hide.

Fewsham spots Zoe and Phipps as they open the vent, and pretends not to notice, instead choosing to distract the Ice Warrior guarding him so that she can sneak past. However, the Ice Warrior turns as she tries to sneak back out. It guns down Phipps, then turns its weapon on her. Fewsham finally finds his backbone, trying to stop the Warrior. He’s no fighter, but luckily the rapidly increasing temperature overwhelms the foe. He assures Zoe that he will help her and her friends get back to Earth, and she slips back into the tunnels.

Meanwhile in the hideout, the Doctor picks the worst possible time to regain consciousness, alerting the Ice Warrior to the group’s presence. But the Ice Warrior is feeling a little hot under the collar, and soon collapses. They’re as sensitive to heat as I am.

Zoe makes it back to the group, and they all head back to the control room, free of Ice Warriors for the moment. They’ll have to be quick, all piling into the T-Mat booth. Fewsham beams them down, but chooses to stay behind. The others don’t understand why at first, but it becomes clear soon enough that he’s actually being brave. He’s spying on the Ice Warriors.

The others are back on Earth in the blink of an eye (the Doctor is quite disappointed by how boring the trip is), where things are not going well. Having killed the T-Mat control guards, the invading Ice Warrior is now wandering the complex, killing anyone who gets in its way. Its latest target is the Weather Control Station.

The Doctor is eager to start analysing the mysterious fungus rapidly spreading outside, and soon discovers that it contains a compound that absorbs oxygen very efficiently. And it’s very aggressive. A pod starts growing out of the sample, and the Doctor throws everything in the lab at it. The only thing that works…is water. Gosh, it would be a terrible pity for the Ice Warriors if they’d decided to use their water-vulnerable biological weapon against a planet where water covers about 70% of the surface.

… Oh.

At least they thought to do something about the rain. That’s why they attacked the Weather Control Station. The rain has been cancelled for the foreseeable future.

Not realising there is nobody there, Zoe and Jamie go to tell the Weather Control people to bring down the mother of all rainstorms. What’s worse, they inadvertently lock themselves in with the Ice Warrior.

Meanwhile on the Moon, the Ice Warriors, pleased with Fewsham’s apparent loyalty to them, show him their communications device. They assure him that as long as he continues to serve them, he will be spared. The Warriors discuss the final phase of the invasion with their grand marshal, and unseen, Fewsham activates the video link with Earth.

Radnor and Kelly are preparing to launch a satellite to act as a relay to enable T-Mat to be controlled from Earth, albeit at a lower capacity. Fewsham’s transmission changes things, however. The Ice Warrior fleet will be following a signal from the device on the Moon in order to join up with the advance party. If that signal were to be muddled or interrupted, the fleet would miss the Moon and end up in orbit around the Sun (should I point out that the Sun is quite a lot further away than the Moon?). At the Doctor’s urging, Radnor and Kelly immediately start preparing the satellite to send out a false homing signal.

As for poor Fewsham, his act of bravery earns him the wrath of the Ice Warriors.

Half the battle is won! But there’s still the fungus to deal with. The Doctor’s horrified to learn the lone Warrior was last seen at the Weather Control Station, and he takes off as fast as his silly little run can take him.

Finding the door locked, he hammers on it as he struggles against a sea of fungus. He pulls some terribly funny faces as the tide rises. All his banging and yelling distracts the Ice Warrior from hunting the still-trapped Jamie and Zoe, allowing them to escape their hiding spot. As Jamie leads the Warrior on a wild Scot chase, Zoe gets the door for the Doctor. He glides in majestically on a wave of foam… and promptly slips and goes head over heels.

Did I see Zoe laughing at him, or Wendy Padbury corpsing? Who’s to say.

Jamie meets back up with the group, and they all hide in the solar energy room as the Ice Warrior starts attempting to breach the radiation door. Radnor is sending a squad of guards, but will they get there in time?

For that matter, will they do any good? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Ballistic weapons seem to have no effect on the thick armour of the Warrior, and the squad are soon forced to retreat. However, the Doctor and Zoe have made good use of their time, converting a couple of energy cells into a portable heat gun. It makes short work of the Warrior.

The Doctor figures he can get the Weather Control working again by bypassing the control panel. It’s fiddly work, but he thinks he has it right. Probably.

With the rain taken care of, the Doctor has one last little thing to do. Once the satellite is in orbit, he’s going to T-Mat himself to the Moon and destroy the Warriors’ homing device. He almost looks cool with the heat gun strapped to him, confidently getting into the T-Mat booth. Almost. This is still the Doctor we’re talking about.

Unfortunately he’s interrupted, and the Ice Warriors destroy his weapon. And it seems the device is still transmitting. The Ice Warriors decide to keep the Doctor alive for the time being— they still need someone to operate the T-Mat for them. And yet the Doctor doesn’t seem all that worried.

He has no reason to be. His plan has worked. The device is still transmitting yes—but only within the confines of the control room. The fleet, following the false signal, has missed the Moon entirely, and is rapidly heading towards the Sun, with no means of course correction.

The Ice Warriors are outraged at him for killing an entire fleet. The Doctor simply retorts that they tried to destroy an entire world.

The Doctor’s saved Earth, and now it's Jamie's turn to save the Doctor. Arriving in the nick of time to distract the Ice Warriors, the Doctor and Jamie finish off the last two with their own weapons and a power cable. They return to Earth as the rains start. This storm is going to be truly Biblical.

All that’s left for the people of Earth is to, uh, get T-Mat back up and running (with some safeguards this time) and otherwise go right back to how they were doing things before this whole fiasco started. Eldred points out that having access to alternative means of transportation would have made this whole situation a lot easier, but nobody seems to agree with him. Nobody other than the Doctor, but he isn’t sticking around to make any supporting arguments.

Naturally.

Yes, that sounds a fairly accurate assessment of humanity. We’re not very good at learning from our mistakes—or when we do, we take home the wrong lessons.

The Right Lessons

Well, we got plenty to enjoy in the last half of the serial. Action! Suspense! Patrick Troughton pulling really funny faces! It’s a pity however, that the debate that drove the first half of the serial was forgotten towards the end. Even though old technology ended up saving the day, Radnor and Kelly never really acknowledge that fact. In the end, even the near-ending of the world couldn’t break through their arrogance.

That said, the old technology vs new technology conflict didn’t die entirely. I suppose you could say it moved to a different venue. It’s not just the humans who are over-reliant on new tech. It’s the Ice Warriors, too. See, space travel is good ol’ Newtonian physics, and physics is basically practical maths. It’s lots and lots of maths. When we engage in space travel, we don’t have homing signals to rely on, just cold hard sums. I can only assume that the Ice Warriors have all but forgotten how to do this. Why do difficult calculations when you can just blindly follow a signal? Unfortunately, as with T-Mat, this technology which makes travel so much easier is also subject to tampering. And now they’re too dead to have learned their lesson.

I’ve been a little confused over the past few serials as to how much of a pacifist the Doctor actually is. Sure, he states himself to be against violence, but he has absolutely killed people, both directly and indirectly. But I'm coming to think of it not as character inconsistency, but character development. When his adventures had much smaller stakes, or had other people nearby who were willing to do the dirty work, he certainly was a staunch pacifist. I don’t think I could have imagined William Hartnell’s Doctor using a heat gun like that. I think he’d be horrified at the new (well, not so new any more) Doctor for even thinking of it. That’s not to say that I think it was the wrong thing to do. Rather, I think the Doctor has learned that sometimes he doesn’t have good options. For him, pacifism is an ideal. It’s something he always aspires towards, but sometimes cannot reach.

Sometimes there is more at stake than his own morality.

And that, I think, brings me to another thing that the serial delves into: the nature of cowardice. There’s a lot to be afraid of in this story, and I think the serial makes clear that it’s perfectly all right to be afraid, as long as you still do the right thing. Look at the Doctor, he’s often frightened. Not just in this serial but in more or less all of his stories. Put him in a threatening situation and he’ll pull all sorts of faces while clinging to the nearest Scotsman for moral support. But he always steps up when there’s more at stake than his own safety. He might be a bit of a scaredy-cat, but he’s certainly no coward.

Nor is Phipps, who we see in the latter half of this serial is struggling to cope with the stress of the situation. While leading Zoe through the tunnels, he suffers an attack of nervous exhaustion. Zoe deals with it in her characteristic matter-of-fact manner. It’s not any kind of failing, it’s a symptom. They rest, he calms his nerves, and they get back to it. In his story, we see that even the bravest can only keep it up for so long—and that’s okay.

So what is cowardice? Surrendering to fear, and allowing others to come to harm in your stead. And that’s what we see with Fewsham. I cannot blame him for being scared, but I can blame him for collaborating with the Ice Warriors to save his own skin at the expense of his friends, colleagues, and the human race. And yet even for him, there’s a chance for redemption. He doesn’t have to somehow stop being scared, and he never does. To his dying moment, he’s terrified. But he does the right thing, and that makes all the difference. He might have spent most of the story a coward, but he doesn’t die as one.

Final Thoughts

That was fun, even if nobody learned anything. But having given it thought, I don’t think it matters. These people are not real. The lesson isn’t for them. The lesson is for us.

Not that there are many world leaders eagerly tuning into a low-budget science fiction serial for moral lessons. (Except Lizzie in Buck House. I bet she loves it.)

But this is a programme aimed at young minds, and I think it is trusting them to watch and listen thoughtfully. By not allowing the characters to come to a definite verdict, it invites the young audience to consider for themselves. Hopefully they will draw some useful conclusions, and perhaps one day avoid the mistakes of an imagined future.

4 stars out of 5 for "The Seeds Of Death".

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Galactic Journey

All posts by Jessica Holmes

[April 18th, 1970] The Spaceman Who Came In From The Cold (Doctor Who: The Ambassadors Of Death [Parts 1-4])

[March 16th, 1970] The Fatal Flaw (Doctor Who: Doctor Who And The Silurians)

[February 22, 1970] An Es-scale-ating Conflict (Doctor Who: The Silurians)

[January 26, 1970] Over The Rainbow (Doctor Who: Spearhead From Space)

[June 22, 1969] Game Over (Doctor Who: The War Games [Parts 8-10])

[June 8th, 1969] Dissension In The Ranks (Doctor Who: The War Games [Parts 5-7])

[May 18, 1969] Whirr Hum Bang Bang (Doctor Who: The War Games [Parts 1-4])

[April 14, 1969] My Least Favourite Kind Of Cereal (Doctor Who: The Space Pirates [Parts 4-6])

[March 26, 1969] Avast, Ye Scurvy Dogs! (Doctor Who: The Space Pirates [Parts 1-3])

[March 4, 1969] Here Endeth The Lesson (Doctor Who: The Seeds Of Death [Parts 4-6])

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction