All posts by Jessica Holmes

Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[February 10, 1969] Beam Me Up! (Doctor Who: The Seeds Of Death [Parts 1-3])

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By Jessica Holmes

It’s not every day that you come across a title equally applicable to a Doctor Who serial and a PSA about the dangers of cannabis, but look what we have here: "The Seeds Of Death". With Brian Hayles back in the writer’s chair and a return to the base-under-siege format, do we have a good story sprouting, or a dud?

Let’s take a look.

The Doctor (left, middle-aged, white, dark hair) examines a model rocket while Eldred (right, upper middle-aged, grey hair, balding, white) looks on.

In Case You Missed It

"The Seeds Of Death" is set in Earth’s future, where technology has progressed to the stage that humanity can transport themselves and their goods around the world in the blink of an eye. The system’s called T-Mat. Think, ‘Beam me up, Scotty!’ (Before the Trekkies get me, let me state for the record that I am fully aware that nobody ever actually says that.) Essential to the operation is their moon-base, which itself can only be reached by T-Mat, because humanity in its wisdom has abandoned conventional space travel. Gee, wouldn’t it be awful if something were to happen to it?

Say, for example…an alien invasion?

Enter the Doctor. Arriving on Earth in a museum dedicated to the history of space travel, he soon runs into its curator, Professor Eldred (Philip Ray). Eldred, an ex-rocket scientist, is less than friendly at first, but warms up once the Doctor unleashes his inner dorkness. It really is endearing.

ID: Radnor, left, looks over Kelly's shoulder, right. Radnor is a middle aged man in overalls. Kelly is a young blonde woman. Both are white.

Meanwhile at the T-Mat London base, T-Mat operators Commander Radnor (Ronald Leigh-Hunt) and Gia Kelly (Louise Pajo) grow uneasy about their sudden inability to contact the moon-base and the interruption in service. If they want to check up on their moon-bound colleagues, they’re going to have to find alternative transport. But in a world where traditional space travel is obsolete, where might they find a rocket ship?

Why, a museum of course.

The pair visit Eldred’s museum, and get a bit of an icy reception. There’s no love lost between ex-colleagues Eldred and Radnor. Eldred is understandably a bit miffed about his life’s work being rendered obsolete, and therefore refuses to help Radnor with his T-Mat troubles.

ID: Professor Eldred speaks to Commander Radnor. Kelly stands between them. There is a model rocket in the foreground.

However, at that moment a transmission arrives from the Moon. The technicians attempt to tell their colleagues what’s happened, but they’re caught red-handed by their captors, the Ice Warriors, and cut off. Of the three still-living technicians on the base, one is killed on the spot, another flees, and the third agrees to help the Ice Warriors to save his own skin.

Not knowing the full details but realising that something is very wrong, the Doctor attempts to persuade Eldred to allow Radnor and Kelly to make use of his prize exhibit: an (almost) functioning rocket ship. Radnor offers whatever resources are necessary to get it space-worthy, but Eldred is still reluctant to help.

As for the obvious question, why not take the TARDIS? The Doctor doesn’t exactly have a good track record on piloting it. He’d probably miss the moon by a million miles—or a million years. However, he knows enough about rocket ships that he could pilot one to the moon, and his friends could help. Radnor and Kelly are understandably concerned about their would-be astronauts. You’ve got the bloke who looks like he just walked off the set of the Three Stooges, a teenage girl, and a man who seems to have only recently learned of the very existence of rocket ships.

It doesn’t inspire confidence.

And they don’t even have spacesuits for their amateur astronauts.

Or helmets.

Nevertheless, they get the rocket space-worthy (ish) extraordinarily quickly and the ship blasts off, almost immediately losing communications with Earth.

ID: Left-Right: Zoe (late teens, dark hair, white), the Doctor, Jamie (early 20s, dark hair, white). All three are seated in a small cockpit. All three are wearing headphones. All three have looks of discomfort on their faces.
Extreme g-forces might not be comfortable, but they do result in very funny facial expressions.

Speaking of Earth, the Earth side of the emergency T-Mat link comes back online, though all they can do is send something to the Moon. Taking the hint (and failing to consider the potential dangers), Kelly immediately sends herself and a few extra men to lend help.

The Ice Warriors remain hidden, and their collaborator, Fewsham (Terry Scully), meets her when she arrives, telling her that his commander went mad and destroyed the T-Mat system. He needs her help to repair it, and of course she’s only too happy to oblige.

Meanwhile the escapee, Phipps (Christopher Coll), rigs up a radio transmitter and tries to contact Earth again, instead finding the Doctor, and he’s able to help guide him into landing the rocket as he explains to him about the invasion.

Kelly soon gets T-Mat back up and running, learning too late that she’s just played straight into the hands (claws?) of the Ice Warriors, who immediately kill her assistants. Unable to T-Mat herself back to Earth, she flees into the bowels of the moon-base.

ID: Kelly confronts an Ice Warrior while Fewsham cowers behind her.

The Doctor meets up with Phipps, and quickly comes to the conclusion that in order to stop this invasion going any further, he has to put T-Mat out of action permanently.

He tells Jamie as much, and to get the rocket ready for takeoff. Unfortunately the rocket motors– I’m sorry, motors? I thought rockets didn’t have motors. It’s essentially a tube sitting on top of an explosion. They’re simultaneously very simple and hideously complicated.

Anyway. The rocket motors are out of commission. Jamie and Zoe go to look for the Doctor, and instead find Phipps and Kelly. Phipps shows Jamie, Zoe and Kelly his method for dealing with any Ice Warriors who come across him: a heat-trap, channelling the base’s solar power to a small area to effectively melt them.

The Doctor stands with his back to a wall, looking apprehensive. In the foreground, obscured, are a pair of Ice Warriors at either side of the shot, framing him.

As for the Doctor, he infiltrates the Ice Warriors by using the tried and true method of acting so completely pathetic that even a Dalek would probably offer him a blanket and a nice cup of tea.

He learns that the Ice Warriors have a purpose in mind with the T-Mat. They need to use it to send something around the world. Seeds. Exploding seeds. Seeds…of death! (Insert thunderclap here.)

One blows up in the Doctor’s face as he tries to examine it, knocking him unconscious.

And then the Ice Warriors send a seed to London…

The Doctor stands alone, examining a small white sphere in the palm of his hand.

Incuriosity and Obsolescence

So, there’s a pretty obvious theme emerging in this serial: obsolescence of old technology, and the dangers of new technology making us complacent.

Though the T-Mat system is undoubtedly more efficient than any conventional means of transportation, in entirely abandoning old methods, humanity has rendered global infrastructure frighteningly fragile. Planes, trains and automobiles? No thanks, say the people of future Earth. Never has it been easier to get medical supplies and food aid where it’s most needed, but with the T-Mat system down, millions are now at risk of death. And by the end of the serial it appears to have only been out of action for a day or two at the most. How much longer can society hold itself together?

ID: A rocket launch pad. There is a rocket at the centre, and radar dishes off to the side.

Humanity in this serial is perilously short-sighted. It shows in their approach to global infrastructure, and it also shows in their attitude to the concept of space travel and exploration. Radnor and Kelly respect Eldred’s work in the field of space travel, but as a stepping stone to the creation of T-Mat, rather than for its own sake. In viewing the current T-Mat system as the endpoint of all advancements in transportation, they’re missing the potential of combining rocket travel with T-Mat. Sure, rocket travel is comparatively slow and expensive, but you’d only need to go somewhere once to set up a T-Mat booth, then you’d be able to come and go as you pleased. The possibilities are limitless. Off-world colonisation? Easy peasy. No need to worry about the practicalities of getting building supplies and colonists to Pluto if you can just zap them there. Scientific exploration? You could pop over and collect some samples from Mars and be home in time for tea. Resources? There are many large, metallic asteroids in our Solar System. Set up shop there, with instant transportation of materials to and from Earth, and you’ve got a licence to print money. And maybe you can give Earth a break from having chunks gouged out of her, to boot.

These ideas are the product of a layperson giving the topic a good five minutes of thought. Smarter people could probably come up with more. By assuming our latest innovations are the furthest we can possibly go in a particular area, we close ourselves off to new opportunities.

Radnor stands behind Eldred, addressing him with a stern look. Eldred is looking away with a look of consternation. Kelly is visible in the background.

This is the crux of the character conflict here. Radnor and Kelly see Eldred as old-fashioned, but if anything they’re more stuck in their ways. There is a sense of practicality to the point of troubling incuriosity in the pair of them. They have no interest in rocket travel beyond their immediate need. Will they rediscover their curiosity by the end of the serial, or will short-term thinking prove the end of space travel—and maybe even the human race?

ID: The Moon and Earth as seen from orbit. The Moon is only lit along the edge, and is in the foreground. Earth is half-lit, in the background.

Final Thoughts

I’m enjoying this serial so far. It’s a base-under-siege, but decent enough. It’s at least using the format to have an interesting discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of rapidly advancing technology. And I suppose it has been a while since we last had a serial in this format, so I can’t complain. The format wasn’t really the issue, just its overuse.

However, the story does also suffer from a couple of real problems. Too often does the plot slam to a halt for a character to explain what the audience could easily enough infer from the events on-screen. Stage setting is good, but not at the expense of the story.

ID: A storage room. A man hides from an Ice Warrior. He is directly behind it and not well hidden.
He's behind you! Ice Warriors apparently can't turn their heads.

Also a pain is the blatant padding. There are more than a few scenes that go nowhere, which I struck from my summary because they really didn’t matter in terms of plot or character development. Scenes that are dull to watch are dull to write about, and there are unfortunately a few of those sprinkled throughout.

All that said, I’m mostly enjoying it. We’ve got some interesting characters (I’ll give you my full thoughts of them once the serial is over) and some cracking music to set the mood. With the action starting to pick up, I have high hopes for the latter half of this serial to be stronger than the beginning.

But we’ll have to wait and see.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[January 20, 1969] Waiter? There’s An Alien In My Soup! (Doctor Who: The Krotons)

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By Jessica Holmes

Another new year rolls around, and we have a new writer to welcome to Doctor Who: Robert Holmes. Before you ask, no relation. At least I don't think so. Regardless, whenever he writes something I like, I will be claiming him as part of the family.

So, am I claiming him as kin today? Let’s find out, and join the Doctor as he shows the youths that their school is just a brainwashing tool to keep them in line, and introduces them to the wonders of acid. Here are my thoughts on "The Krotons".


On a planet with two suns, sunburn is a real killer.

In Case You Missed It

The TARDIS arrives on a blighted world lit by twin suns, wastelands as far as the eye can see and a strong whiff of sulfur in the air. Despite the harsh conditions, this world is inhabited by a race of people called the Gonds.

In their society, the two brightest youths of each generation are chosen to be companions of their rulers, the mysterious Krotons. What they don’t realise, and what the Doctor very quickly discovers, is that this great ‘honour’ ends with ejection from the city, and a swift and grim death by disintegration on the back doorstep.

The Doctor and his friends attempt to warn the Gonds against sending any more candidates, but their sudden and unexpected appearance only makes the Gonds suspicious. Despite their efforts, a girl called Vana (Madeleine Mills) enters the Krotons' machine, the Dynatrope. The gang rush off to try and rescue her, with her boyfriend Thara (Gilbert Wynne) following, defying the law of his people to venture out into the wasteland. They’re successful in saving her from disintegration, but whatever the Krotons did to her has left her catatonic.


Cut him some slack, the man's not a medical Doctor. Though I could have sworn he once said he was.

Thara takes Vana to the home of his father, Selris (James Copeland). While the Doctor attempts to bring Vana out of her catatonic state, Selris explains that the Krotons have ruled over the Gonds for all of recorded history. Shortly after they arrived, they rained poison from the sky, making the land uninhabitable and wiping out much of the native Gond population. The Gonds have been under their ‘benevolent’ rule ever since.

It’s not all been bad for the Gonds, or so Selris claims. Sure, they can’t leave the city, and sure, they have to hand over a couple of their people every so often, and sure, they have to obey everything the Krotons say… But at least they get a robust education. Courtesy of the Krotons’ advanced teaching machines, no less!

Well, they get a robust education when it comes to how great the Krotons are and how marvellous it is to be ruled by them. Less so when it comes to things like chemistry and the concept of electricity. It’s not education, it’s brainwashing.

The Doctor and Zoe leave with Selris to investigate the Learning Hall further. While the Doctor explores the Underhall with Selris, Zoe tries out one of the teaching machines, earning herself a very high score, and an invitation from the Krotons to be their companion.

Aghast, the Doctor takes the test himself, so that she won’t have to go into the Dynatrope alone. He's so terribly upset when he realises she's doomed herself. It's really quite sweet.

Jamie arrives to tell them that Vana has woken up, but he’s too late to stop them. As he hammers on the door from the outside, the Doctor and Zoe are at the mercy of a mysterious machine. It knocks them out, but they survive the ordeal, with Zoe deducing that the Krotons have found a way to convert brain power into energy. That’s why they’ve been educating the Gonds, and why they’ve been taking their best and brightest.

But what’s it all for? The pair spot a vat nearby, filled with a kind of slurry of crystals in suspension. Like a primeval soup. And what might one find in a soup? Croutons. Sorry, Krotons.

The Krotons take on solid form and emerge from the soup as the Doctor and Zoe make their escape. Outside of the tanks, they’re hulking crystalline beings, reliant on a feed line to maintain their form. Or something. It’s not entirely clear.

Jamie finally succeeds in breaking into the Dynatrope , but the Krotons capture him immediately. Despite his inferior mind (rude) the Krotons decide to spare Jamie, reasoning that he could give them intelligence on the Doctor and Zoe.

Outside, the Gonds don’t just have the Krotons to contend with, but power struggles within their own ranks. Eelek (Philip Madoc), previously very pro-Kroton, realises that the current crisis is the prime opportunity to seize control of the governing council away from Selris, its current leader. He goes on the warpath, trying to recruit his people into all out war against the Krotons—never mind that the Krotons have chemical weapons while the Gonds are fighting with axes and clubs. It won’t be a revolution, but a slaughter.

Having lost the Doctor, the Krotons decide to destroy his means of escape, disintegrating the TARDIS with a blast of the gas gun. All is lost…for all of about ten seconds, until the TARDIS re-materialises a short distance away.

Meanwhile, Selris has a plan to defeat the Krotons that is a little less doomed-to-failure. If the Gonds can destroy the supports at the base of the Dynatrope, they could bring down the whole machine! Unfortunately, he can’t get Eelek on board with this idea, so decides he’s going to go ahead without him.

The Doctor and Zoe return to the city, having discovered that the Krotons are composed of Tellurium, which happens to be soluble in sulfuric acid. As it happens, there’s absolutely oodles of pure sulfur all over the wasteland.

Jamie manages to sneak away from the Krotons as the Doctor and Zoe lend the Gonds’ chief scientist, Beta (James Cairncross), a hand with his very first chemistry lesson. They’re making acid, and their laboratory safety practices are absolutely atrocious. On learning that Jamie hasn’t been seen for some time, they go to look for him.

They arrive at the Learning Hall to discover that Selris’ scheme is well underway, the ceiling of the Underhall is caving in, and worst of all, Jamie is inside the Dynatrope. Following a narrow escape from falling debris, they rush off to the Dynatrope’s exit to try and save Jamie. Eelek arrives on scene shortly afterwards, furious at Selris for disobeying his orders. He has him arrested, and with his power secure, Eelek makes a deal with the Krotons: if they agree to leave the Gonds alone, he will hand over the Doctor and Zoe.

Blissfully unaware that they’ve just been thrown under the bus, the Doctor and Zoe meet Jamie at the exit of the Dynatrope, saving him from the disintegration gas. They tell him to go and find Beta and get him to make as much acid as he can, then run off, straight into the waiting arms of Eelek and his loyalists.


Beep boop.

Eelek shoves the Doctor and Zoe into the Dynatrope, with Selris diving in after them, bringing with him a bottle of the acid solution smuggled from Beta. It’s a brave act, and his last, as the Krotons kill him on sight.

However, it does save the Doctor and Zoe, who pour the solution into the soup, and the Krotons unknowingly pump it into their bodies. It takes them a little while to notice that something is wrong, and by the time they do, it’s too late to stop it. They dissolve from the inside out. It would be quite grisly if they were more fleshy.

As the Krotons dissolve, Jamie and Beta pour barrel upon barrel of acid onto the outside of the Dynatrope. The Doctor and Zoe flee the rapidly disintegrating Dynatrope, and the Gonds celebrate their new-found freedom. Thara deposes Eelek’s short lived dictatorship, taking on his father’s hereditary role as leader of the council. He has a mind to ask the Doctor for his advice, but our spacefaring friend has already slipped out the back and made a beeline for the TARDIS. I guess the Gonds will work out democracy at their own pace. Their future is theirs to decide now, after all.

A Few Thoughts

The dynamic between Zoe and the Doctor is so much fun in this serial. They snipe back and forth over which of them is the cleverest (and it’s very funny), but I don’t doubt they’d each walk into traffic if the other asked them to.

Holmes’ dialogue is snappy and witty, and Troughton and Padbury are definitely having fun with it. Unfortunately Jamie gets a bit sidelined in this serial, though he does have his moments. When the group initially encounters the Gonds, some of them get a bit aggressive, and Jamie steps forward, unarmed, to defend the Doctor. Later, he manages to keep the Krotons talking long enough to delay his own execution, and steal one of their gas canisters into the bargain. I’ve long said that he might not be a maths whizz or a super-genius from the future (or wherever), but he’s not dim.

As for the Krotons, well. I don’t think they’re going to become iconic like the Daleks or the Cybermen. There was an attempt to hint at a wider Kroton threat, with some mention of a wider Kroton battle fleet, but see… I just can’t take them seriously. They’re so clunky and awkward. I kept expecting them to go ‘beep boop’ in true B-Movie fashion. I know, I know, they’re not robots, but they look like them and act like them. And that’s a bit of a shame because a life form composed of living crystal is a marvellous idea. It’s so wonderfully alien.

And another thing. Remember how the Daleks have pretty iconic voices? All that modulated shouting they do, easily mimicked by shouting into a desk fan? And the Cybermen, with their uncanny computerised tones? Well, I think there was an attempt to give the Krotons a distinct, signature voice. Something to really sell the idea that they’re from a distant galaxy, a truly exotic life-form. The distant, far-away galaxy… of Birmingham. That’s what they sound like. Brummie aliens. Brummie aliens whose heads spin around. I don't think Krotonmania is on the horizon.


Let's not put gloves on before we pour enormous vats of corrosive fluid! Yay, safety!

I don’t know enough about Robert Holmes yet to guess if this was on purpose, but there’s a definite counter-cultural undercurrent running through this serial. You’ve got the youth rejecting the propaganda of the state, the education system revealed as a brainwashing tool, and of course the answer to it all is dropping acid. In a very literal sense. All we’re missing is some tie-dye and a little grass. Groovy.


I couldn't find anywhere appropriate to insert this image, but it's funny and I thought you should see it. Behold the Krotons' cruellest weapon: the wide-angle lens.

And Finally…

The plot’s nothing mind-blowing and the alien enemies are so-so, but "The Krotons" is a solid story. It’s tightly-paced and fun to watch, with likable characters to root for…and also Eelek. Stuff Eelek.

Robert Holmes has had an encouraging debut, and I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing more from him.

That’s about it for the first serial of 1969! Who can say what the year ahead has in store for us all, but as far as Doctor Who is concerned, I’d say the future is looking pretty bright.

3.5 stars out of 5 for The Krotons.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[December 24, 1968] We Shall Fight Them In The Streets (Doctor Who: The Invasion [Episodes 5-8])

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By Jessica Holmes

Hello again! Another year draws to a close, and so too does the latest Doctor Who serial, "The Invasion". Last time, we saw the Doctor try his hand at espionage in an attempt to uncover the villain Vaughn's wicked plans. Now that it's revealed that Vaughn is working with the Cybermen, can the Doctor and UNIT put an end to their plot, or is it curtains for the human race?

Let's check it out.

In Case You Missed It

Having borne witness to the birth of a new Cyber-menace, Jamie and the Doctor hurry back to UNIT. They report their findings to the Brigadier, who laments that thanks to Vaughn’s mind control, he’s lost the backing of the Ministry of Defence. To get help from UNIT command in Geneva, he’s going to need actual proof of the Cybermen.

It’s handy that there’s a photographer on hand then, isn’t it? However, the Brigadier rebuffs Isobel’s offer to go down into the sewers and photograph the Cybermen. Why? Old-fashioned sexism. Ugh. It doesn’t stop Isobel going down into the sewers with Jamie and Zoe to prove him wrong– though given the attempt ends in disaster, with two dead men and no decent pictures to show for it, I’m not sure she proved her point.

Meanwhile, Vaughn tests his secret weapon on one of the newly awakened Cybermen, driving it mad with pure fear. I actually felt a little bit bad for it. And scared of it. Those modulated screams will have given plenty of kiddos nightmares, I guarantee it.

He’ll need it soon, because the Cybermen have every intention of converting a small selection of humanity and then slaughtering the rest. And Vaughn can’t have that. He’s no great humanitarian but ruling the world doesn’t mean much if everyone’s too dead to follow your orders.

As for the Doctor, he’s trying to find out the particulars of the Cybermen’s plans for invasion. He suspects that the mysterious electrical circuits hidden in every piece of IE equipment have something to do with it, but how?

Not even Prof. Watkins (rescued offscreen) can enlighten him, but he can tell him about the secret weapon Vaughn made him build, which leads the Doctor to realise that the mysterious circuits could be used to produce a hypnotic signal. It’s like the hypnosis the Cybermen used back in "The Wheel In Space", but on a much grander scale.

The Doctor and UNIT can’t make enough signal-blocking devices to protect everyone in the world before the invasion begins; they can barely cobble enough together to protect themselves. And then the signal begins to transmit, and everyone who hears it loses consciousness. And then Cybermen come pouring forth from the sewers in their hundreds. It’s a terrific sight, Cybermen marching down the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral. It’s one of my favourite shots in all of Doctor Who, right up there with the parade of Daleks outside Parliament. And there’s nobody who can stop them.

Nobody except the Doctor and a couple dozen UNIT soldiers, that is.

Already starting to butt heads with the Cybermen over control of the invasion force, Vaughn dispatches Packer to try and retrieve the Professor in hopes of forcing him to mass-produce more of his secret weapon. Packer uses his characteristic restraint in doing so, both failing to retrieve the Professor and injuring him in the process. And Jamie, too.

Finding themselves alone against the world-ending threat, the Brigadier and the Doctor start brainstorming ideas for resistance. The main problem is that the hypnotic signal is being broadcast from the Cybermen’s ship, which is currently sitting somewhere between the Earth and the Moon. Not exactly within reach of missiles, and they don’t have a rocket handy. Or do they? The Russians had been on the verge of a rocket launch when the signal went out. If UNIT were to commandeer the rocket and replace the manned capsule with a warhead, they could use it to knock out the ship. I can’t imagine the Kremlin would be terribly happy about that, but they’re asleep right now.

Mind made up, the Brigadier sends a squad to Russia to take care of the rocket. Meanwhile, the Doctor decides to confront Vaughn. He tries to appeal to Vaughn’s better nature, but the unfortunate fact is that Vaughn doesn’t really have one.

More Cyberman ships are rapidly approaching Earth, but with Zoe’s help computing a tactical launch pattern, UNIT are able to intercept them with ground-based missiles. This loss leads the Cybermen to blame Vaughn for his failure to fully subdue the human populace, and they change their minds about their plans for humanity. They aren’t going to keep any of us around after all, converted or not. They’re going to deploy a bomb to wipe out all life on Earth.

Furious at his allies for betraying him before he got the chance to do the same to them, Vaughn agrees to help the Doctor. They need to switch off the Earth-based radio beam which the Cybermen will use to guide their bomb. I’d have thought that if a single bomb was powerful enough to destroy all life on Earth, it doesn’t really need a precise guidance system, but hey-ho.

Forming an unlikely alliance, Vaughn and the Doctor infiltrate the IE factory compound, slipping past hordes of Cybermen to reach the radio controls. As they advance, UNIT brings up the rear, engaging the Cybermen in a firefight from which UNIT emerges victorious.

And a good thing, too, because Vaughn doesn’t make it all the way to the radio controls. The Cybermen catch him and the Doctor in an ambush, and the Doctor has a very narrow escape as Vaughn perishes. To his credit, Vaughn takes a few of the Cybermen with him.

UNIT take care of the radio controls, saving the world from the bomb… for now. However, the world is still fast asleep, and the Cybermen are moving their ship to deliver the bomb at close range. The survival of humanity depends on the Russian rocket hitting its target.

A nail-biting few minutes ends in a mighty explosion—in space!

All’s well that ends well. By daylight, Isobel manages to get some very nice snaps of the Cybermen (and the Doctor, too) which land her a job in photojournalism. The Professor and Jamie recover from their injuries, and as for the Doctor, he finally manages to get those TARDIS circuits fixed.

Now, if only he could remember exactly where he parked it…


"Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up!"

A Few Thoughts

The Cybermen are back! And they have a new design. Again. They do change quite a bit, don’t they? A Dalek is a Dalek is a Dalek but Cybermen never seem to settle. We’ve done away with the droopy notches at the edge of the mouth in favour of a more straight-faced look, and added a headpiece. It looks a bit like a bulky headset, like they’ve just come down from the Abbey Road Studios.

There’s been another change to their vocal design, a little heavier on the modulation. It sounds absolutely marvellous on the mad Cyberman. The warbling screams are positively haunting.

However, I am worried that they’re starting to get a little bit too robotic. If we lose sight of the fact that the Cybermen were once very much human, we lose what makes them special as villains. There’s a billion evil murder-robots. They’re fun, and I like them. The Cybermen, however, are horrific, and that’s why I love them.

I can’t think of an elegant way to segue from talking about the Cybermen to talking about women's lib, so let’s just lurch over there, shall we?

There was an attempt, of sorts, to inject some feminist messaging into the serial. At least, I hope it was a good-faith attempt, because it really didn’t work.

As mentioned earlier, the Brigadier was reluctant to let Isobel go and photograph the Cybermen, on the grounds that she’s just a young girl and this is a job for his men. Isobel rightly enough tells him off, and when Jamie agrees with the Brigadier (he at least has the excuse of literally being from the 18th century), she and Zoe swan off to prove the men wrong, dragging Jamie with them. A win for women’s lib, you’d think. And you’d be wrong. The expedition to the sewers results in the completely avoidable deaths of two men, and to add insult to injury, Zoe’s pictures are dismissed by the Brigadier as useless. The messaging is loud and clear: the silly little girl should have just listened to the men and let them handle things.

After this point, Isobel spends the rest of the story flirting back and forth with one of the UNIT men. While their banter is cute, don’t get me wrong, it also feels like she’s being shunted back into the standard role for all pretty girls in stories: something for the men to flirt with.

At least Zoe does get due credit for her maths genius. Thanks to her calculations, UNIT are able to take out 90% of the incoming Cyber-ships. The UNIT chaps are quite keen to keep her around. After all, she’s much prettier than a computer. Insert weary sigh here. Well, at least they admitted that she saved their bacon.

Speaking of UNIT, they’re quite an interesting addition to the world of Doctor Who. Having been established as a permanent fixture on contemporary(ish) Earth, I wonder if we’ll see them again the next time the Doctor and company wind up round our neck of the woods. I’m not averse to that, they’re fun to have around. It is important to me, however, that they don’t turn into a tool the Doctor can call on to simply run in and shoot the problem. That wouldn’t be Doctor Who to me. Cleverness and ingenuity should be what wins the day, not a greater force of arms.

Final Thoughts

Now that I’m done sounding like a total wet blanket, I have to say I really enjoyed this serial. It’s tremendous fun, very exciting, and I loved the cast of side characters.

On the heroic side, the Brigadier, old-fashioned sexism aside, is just plain cool. I’m sure I said the same when he was first introduced as a Colonel, but it still applies. This is a man who is utterly unflappable. Give him a job to do, and he’ll get on with it, efficiently and without a hair of his moustache out of place.

The narrative didn’t do her any favours, but I really did like Isobel and how she stood up to the men. Her uncle the Professor is also very interesting to me. He doesn’t meekly go along with Vaughn’s plans, but fights him every step of the way. There’s a moment late on in the serial where he tells Vaughn that though he has no choice but to serve him, given half the opportunity he would kill him. And (this is my favourite Vaughn moment) Vaughn gives him that opportunity, handing him a loaded gun.

You might expect that the Professor would find himself unable to follow through on his threat, but he really goes for it, firing on Vaughn three times at point blank range. Unfortunately it turns out that Vaughn is bulletproof thanks to his cybernetically augmented body, but still, he tried. I have to give him credit for that.

I can’t overstate how much I enjoyed Vaughn. He’s an absolute delight to watch; a total slimeball, utterly despicable, absolutely captivating. We get to see him at the height of his strength, cool and smug and in control, and at the depths of wretchedness when all his plans come to nothing. What a great character.

The Invasion isn’t without its flaws, but it’s a jolly good time, and that’s what we’re here for.

4 stars out of 5 for "The Invasion."




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[November 24th, 1968] Old Friends And Older Enemies (Doctor Who: The Invasion, Episodes 1-4)

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By Jessica Holmes

Hello again, it’s time for me to talk very excitedly at you about the latest Doctor Who serial: The Invasion (written by Derrick Sherwin from a story by Kit Pedler). As the programme dabbles in military sci-fi, the Doctor runs into an old friend—and an older enemy.


Yes, you're seeing correctly. He is indeed using his recorder as a telescope and Jamie's shoulder as a mount. This might be my favourite Doctor-companion pairing ever.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

So, what exotic locale has the Doctor and co. landed in this time? Uh, England. The twentieth century. And the TARDIS' circuits are in desperate need of repair. Seeing as they have friends in the 20th century, the Doctor suggests looking up Professor Travers in London (whom they met in "The Web of Fear"). Hopefully his skills resurrecting a robot Yeti will translate to repairing an immensely complex time and space machine.

Before we get to that, however, dark deeds are afoot. The Doctor picked a bad place to land, requiring the aid of a van driver to smuggle him and his friends out of a compound owned by the mysterious, ruthless and well-armed International Electromatics company.

On arriving in London, the Doctor and company find that Professor Travers and his daughter Anne are out of the country. They’ll have to settle for the suspiciously similar substitute Professor Watkins (Edward Burnham) and his niece Isobel (Sally Faulkner). Teeny problem: Professor Watkins hasn’t been seen in a week. Not since he went to work for… International Electromatics. (Dun dun duuuuuun!)

The Doctor and Jamie head to the I.E. company offices in London in an attempt to get some answers. And answers they get (of a sort) from the company director, Tobias Vaughn (Kevin Stoney). Snappy dresser. Nice office. Doesn’t blink often enough.

And he’s far too nice. He gives Jamie a free radio and offers the Doctor his workshop’s help with the TARDIS circuits, assuring him that Watkins is perfectly fine. No, of course they can’t actually see him. He’s busy.

The Doctor suspects Vaughn’s got something to hide, and he’s absolutely right. Vaughn is hiding an alien computer in his office—an alien computer that’s currently planning an invasion, and insists that the Doctor must be destroyed if their plans are to have a chance to succeed. It also tells him that the Doctor has the ability to travel between worlds, and Vaughn becomes obsessed with finding out how.

But the Doctor isn’t the only man with a distrust of Vaughn and his company, and he’s not the first to try investigating them. Say hello to the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, headed by our old friend Brigadier (formerly Colonel) Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney). They’ve made it their business to investigate the unusual and otherworldly, and they’ve been taking an interest in I.E. for quite some time. If they pool their knowledge with the Doctor, they might be able to put a stop to whatever Vaughn’s plans are. The Brigadier gives the Doctor a transceiver radio and assures him that if he needs help, U.N.I.T. will be ready to provide it.


Nice 'tache.

And he might need it sooner rather than later, because the women got tired of waiting and went to the I.E. offices to look for them—and they haven’t come out of there since. The Doctor and Jamie arrive too late to stop Vaughn’s enforcers bundling the women onto a train (in crates, no less), but Vaughn ever so kindly offers to give them a lift to the I.E. factory compound so they can search for them.

U.N.I.T. observes this with some concern, and the Brigadier has them discreetly tracked… if you call helicopters ‘discreet’.

Meanwhile, Vaughn’s head enforcer Packer (Peter Halliday) is hard at work coercing Prof. Watkins with threats to Isobel’s wellbeing. Watkins is a stubborn bloke, though, and Packer doesn’t scare him. Vaughn, on the other hand… when Vaughn turns up to make a threat, that’s another matter.

Such as when he threatens to hand Zoe over to Packer’s mercy. He’s worked out the Doctor has a machine that allows him to travel between worlds, and he wants it for himself. Hand over the TARDIS, and nobody has to get hurt. The Doctor instead makes a run for it. I’m pretty sure he couldn’t hand over the TARDIS even if he wanted to. It turned invisible when he arrived; he’s probably forgotten where he parked it.


The Doctor/Jamie method for getting through tough situations: when in doubt, grab Jamie/the Doctor and hold on for dear life.

The Doctor and Jamie make a narrow escape via the building’s lift shaft, and hide out in a train car for a little while. They find some crates, and Jamie is alarmed to discover that his is not empty. There’s something alive in there! However, he doesn’t get a chance to investigate, because they need to search for the women—and we need to tease the mystery out for one more episode.

Speaking of the mystery, how about a clue? Vaughn discusses with Packer his plans to double cross his extraterrestrial allies. Watkins is insurance against them. The machine he’s building has the potential to destroy Vaughn’s allies with the power of emotion. They’re vulnerable to it, you see. Vaughn’s happy to use their technology and strength for his own gain, but would rather they didn’t take over the world. They aren’t going to kill everybody, oh no. They’re going to convert them. Into what? Well. Take a guess.

When Vaughn demands that the Doctor and Jamie hand themselves over, the Doctor calls in his favour from the Brigadier. Cue the daring rescue! As a U.N.I.T. helicopter hovers above, Jamie helps the women escape from the compound’s main building, and the group ascend from the rooftop via a rickety rope ladder under a hail of bullets.

A furious Vaughn now must alter his plans to bring the invasion forward. He prepares to return to London, getting in contact with his inside man at the Ministry Of Defence. U.N.I.T. must be stopped.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has a burning question. What was in the crates? Out of the frying pan, he throws himself back into the fire, sneaking back to the I.E. London office to take a look at their cargo bay. This time, he’s lucky enough to get a glimpse of a crate being opened, and the thing inside is waking up. Stepping unsteadily from the crate, glinting in the dim light…is a Cyberman.


Nice earmuffs.

A Few Thoughts

I often get a bit annoyed with long serials, but I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed every episode so far. The mystery unfolds at a fair pace, new revelations revealing new questions, rather than the repetitiveness and backtracking that some serials lean on to pad their runtime. There’s a good degree of suspense, helped along by the rather good soundtrack and interesting cast of characters. Speaking of which…

Some people say a story is only as good as its villain, and if that’s true, this is shaping up to be an excellent serial. Vaughn is a great villain. He’s smooth, clever, he’s affable, but just a little bit too much. He’s smarmy, and there’s something peculiarly loathsome about smarmy people, isn’t there? And yet underneath that cool, polished surface, there’s a positively explosive temper, and a true nastiness to him. The tension between these sides of his personality is absolutely delicious.


You can't hear it, but 'The Teddy Bears' Picnic' is playing in the background of this scene. I wish I was joking.

Speaking of having hidden depths, it surprised me that Zoe chose to hang back and play fashion model with Isobel rather than investigate the office with Jamie and the Doctor. Of course, on the purely practical level it was necessary to separate the group somehow, but the method is something I find curious. I don’t really know what to make of it. On the one hand, it could be said that this is just pigeonholing Zoe and Isobel into a stereotypically feminine and frivolous activity while the men do the important stuff. And well, I don’t think that’s entirely inaccurate. And I think it is fair to point out that even when the women do show initiative in attempting to come to the rescue of the chaps, the fact they immediately get captured and need the men to save them rather undermines the whole thing.

On the other hand, Isobel is a self-employed woman making her own way in the world, and Zoe has never really had much of an opportunity to simply enjoy or explore her own femininity. She expresses in "The Dominators" a degree of discomfort in fashion that isn’t solely utilitarian, and we saw in her introductory serial how she was raised as more of a human computer than an actual teenage girl. Perhaps this is the first time in her life she’s ever been at liberty to have fun. Nothing wrong with that.

So yes, there’s nothing wrong at all with the women’s choice of activity, but there is room to criticise how the story uses that choice to reinforce traditional gender dynamics. Gender politics as they apply to storytelling can be pretty complicated. Who knew?


When confronting supervillains, it's important to wear the silliest accessory you can find. That way, they'll be too distracted to harm you.

Final Thoughts

As glad as I am to see the return of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, I haven’t yet made up my mind as to how I feel about the introduction of U.N.I.T. On the one hand, they’re cool. No denying that. They seem trustworthy enough. I like the Brigadier, and think the new facial hair suits him very well. Yet I worry about the idea of the Doctor making too much use of military allies. I only hope their answer to every alien problem won’t be to just shoot it.

Well, all that remains to be seen. And I’m very much looking forward to it.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[October 14, 1968] Outta Space and Outta Mind (Doctor Who: The Mind Robber)

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By Jessica Holmes

This month on Doctor Who, we’re headed out of space and out of time and into a place rather more strange: the land of fiction. This is a bit of a weird one.

Let’s take a look at The Mind Robber, shall we?


This is supposed to be lava. Or Dulkis has oddly foamy volcanoes.

Once Upon A Time

Trying to describe the plot of The Mind Robber is like trying to describe the plot of Yellow Submarine or Alice In Wonderland. Technically speaking you can, but doing it in a way that doesn’t sound like you’re off your head on cough syrup (which I currently am, but that’s beside the point) is another question. We’re firmly in dream-logic territory here, so you might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.

With the TARDIS sitting in the path of an oncoming lava flow, it would behoove the Doctor to find somewhere else to park his motor. However, the ship refuses to start, forcing the Doctor to use the emergency unit to yoink the TARDIS out of reality entirely. And that is where the real trouble begins.

Being nowhere and nowhen, you’d think the TARDIS and its inhabitants would be safe. Surely nothing could exist outside of time and space, right? The Doctor doesn’t know, and what he doesn’t know can most certainly hurt them.

It’s not long before visions of home and voices in their head lure the three of them outside the safety of the TARDIS. When they try to return, the ship disintegrates, stranding them in a pitch-dark void.

The next we see of the crew, they’re separated and searching for each other in some sort of maze. Jamie gets shot by an English redcoat and turns into a faceless cardboard cutout. Zoe ends up trapped in a jar. The Doctor is beset by creepy children with a fondness for riddles.

It makes exactly as much sense in context.

The Doctor revives Jamie by putting his face back together (badly), and once reunited with Zoe the group try to get their bearings. What appears from ground level as a maze or a dense forest is in fact a page of written text. They’re in a world of words.

They’re then captured by tin soldiers and led to a black void where a charging unicorn tries to run them through. That’s a sentence I didn’t expect to write in the context of Doctor Who.

How do you stop a charging unicorn? Remind it that there’s no such thing as unicorns, silly. This actually works, and becomes a handy method for dealing with the fantastical threats of this strange place. In a world of imagination, belief is a powerful thing.

After another run-in with a redcoat, the Doctor gets a chance to fix Jamie’s face (he went all cardboard-y after once again trying to bring a knife to a gun-fight), the group find their way to a labyrinth. There they get separated, and the Doctor and Zoe come face to face with a Minotaur. Handsome fellow. Meanwhile, Jamie climbs Rapunzel’s tower. She doesn’t think much of him (only a prince is good enough for her), but is quite amusingly resigned to having every Tom, Dick and Harry use her hair as a rope.

Following a run-in with Medusa, some handy directions from Gulliver and a little tussle with a comic strip villain (and surprising combat skills from Zoe), the Doctor and Zoe eventually join him. Inside the tower, they find a device that’s been attempting (unsuccessfully) to predict (or control) the Doctor’s progress, narrating it as if it was in a storybook. Someone is trying to turn the Doctor into fiction.

The man behind the curtain, so to speak, is the Master (Emrys Jones). Formerly a serialist from the 1920s, he's now a servant to a supercomputer with a bit of a god-complex and no imagination.


Not shown: the gross bit of something or other the Master had in the corner of his mouth in some shots. Maybe he'd just finished his lunch when the Doctor showed up.

He’s technically a prisoner, but is quite enjoying himself. He has access to all of human literature and gets to make make-believe a reality. But he’s no longer young, and the Doctor is ageless. That’s why he’s been trying to trap him in this fictional world. In short… it’s a job offer.

One the Doctor isn't allowed to refuse, but he does so anyway.

The Master responds to his obstinance by taking Jamie and Zoe captive and trapping them between the pages of a book, both literally and figuratively. The line between those two concepts is quite blurry in the land of fiction.

The Doctor makes a run for it. He tries to edit the master tape of his narrative, but realises that writing fiction with himself as a character would trap him inside the story, and the Master would be able to do as he pleased.


This is probably the most miserable I've seen this Doctor. At one point he's on the verge of tears. Some very nice acting from Troughton. I just want to give him a hug and a cup of tea.

Getting tired of his resistance, the Master uses his powers to turn a fictionalised Jamie and Zoe against the Doctor. They trick him into stepping into a trap (which he really should have seen coming, but then again he was very upset and thought he'd lost them forever). With that, the Doctor’s imagination becomes part of the computer.

But what is this all for? The same thing every other Doctor Who villain wants, apparently. To take over the Earth.

However, the problem with plugging the Doctor directly into this computer is that he has a mind of his own. Now he can manipulate the narrative. What ensues could be called a battle of wills, but could equally be called a playground slapfight, but without anyone running home crying to Mummy about the other children not playing the game properly.

The Doctor frees Jamie and Zoe, so the Master dreams up a threat, which the Doctor conjures up a defence against, and on and on it goes. Neither side gets much of an advantage over the other, but the situation gets odder by the second. At one point Sir Lancelot ends up fighting Blackbeard. It is delightfully weird.

All this push and pull overloads the computer, and it eventually jams up, allowing the Doctor to break free. As the robots start firing on everything in sight, the Doctor and company flee. The computer blows up behind them, taking the fictional world with it.

With the narrative broken, things go back to how they should be. The TARDIS is in one piece. The Doctor and his companions are safe (as they ever can be)… and I expect that somewhere in the 20s a writer is waking up from a nap having had a very strange dream indeed.

Curiouser and Curiouser

So this is a surreal story to say the least. You’ve got companions changing faces (Hamish Wilson makes a pretty good Jamie for an episode), reality warping to fit a story, and a whole cast of fictional characters swanning about the narrative. Well, it’s a fictional story, so they’re all made up. Fictional within the world of Doctor Who. Extra-fictional. Double fictional.

You’ve got your classics like Medusa (with rather excellent stop-motion snake hair) and the Minotaur, at least one fairytale princess, a raygun-toting supervillain, and even book characters. Lemuel Gulliver (Bernard Horsfall) is probably the most prominent of the bunch. He pops up every now and then to speak in an oddly cryptic manner and offer some friendly advice before swanning off again. The reason for his cryptic speech is simple: he can only speak in words that his written counterpart used. He does his best to get his point across, but his vocabulary can only stretch so far. He acts of his own volition, but is unable to act against the will of the Master or even perceive anything that the Master doesn’t want him to see.

That’s just such a fascinating idea to me. It's a really interesting way to distinguish between the fictional and the real. And yet with that in mind, I have to wonder something. Lemuel Gulliver was never real in the first place, but there are characters in this story who were. How much of the original Edward Teach is left inside the fictionalised version of Blackbeard? Or Cyrano de Bergerac? Are they constructed entirely from the imagination? Or are they like the Master Controller, plucked out of time and forced to assume a role? It’s a ghastly fate when you think about it.

Come to think of it, it’s not so pleasant for the people who were never real in the first place. They might lack free will and have limited means to express themselves, but does that mean they don’t have actual consciousness? Do they think and feel, or are they just puppets with the illusion of life? Did they die when the computer blew up? Could they even be said to be alive in the first place? Am I thinking much too deeply about a surrealist romp?

Maybe we’ll leave this one to the philosophers.

Final Thoughts

What an odd serial. I still have questions about where the fiction-obsessed computer came from, or how it had such a huge degree of control over reality (or unreality, I should say), but mostly I’m just delighted. It’s so much fun! You never know what’s going to happen next, but whatever it is, it’s bound to be wonderful. Childlike glee, that’s what it gave me. I was big on the Greek myths as a child (the monster-related ones, naturally), so when the Minotaur turned up it was almost like an old friend. A big, old, man-eating friend.

Also, is it bad I’ve never got around to reading Gulliver’s Travels? I think I had a picture book about that bit with the little people but otherwise I have no idea what happens in it.

Anyway. The Mind Robber. It’s weird and surreal and sometimes things happen for no clear reason other than ‘because that’s how the story goes’, and I am…fine with that. I’m actually perfectly fine with not understanding everything. Why shouldn’t the world outside time and space as we understand it be one of pure imagination?

4.5 out of 5 stars for The Mind Robber




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[September 8, 1968] Those Darn Space-Hippies (Doctor Who: The Dominators)

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By Jessica Holmes

We’re beginning a brand new series of Doctor Who, and you know what that means. I get to ramble at length about it! The Dominators is our opening serial, coming from the pen of Norman Ashby, who I don’t believe has written for Doctor Who before, nor, as far as I can gather, anywhere else. How very curious.

Is this debut the start of greater things, or an omen of troubles to come? Let’s take a look at Doctor Who: The Dominators. (Note: this review covers four episodes in one go, so it's a little bit of a departure from earlier formats).

In Case You Missed It

The Dominators begins with the arrival of a couple of blokes with terrible fashion sense to the peaceful-to-a-fault world of Dulkis. No, it’s not the Doctor and Jamie, but the Dominators, Rago (Ronald Allen) and Toba (Kenneth Ives). They’ve popped in to refuel their ship, and perhaps also conquer this world and enslave its people. Nice blokes.

The Doctor and company (including new companion Zoe) arrive and soon encounter a team of local surveyors (the Dulceans) who are very surprised to find them here on this island, which until about five minutes ago was positively swimming in radiation. It turns out the Doctor’s choice of location for a beach holiday was a nuclear test site.

They’re soon joined by Cully (Arthur Cox). He's the sole person on the island who has seen the Dominators and lived to tell the tale. He tells them of how he and his friends crash-landed on the island, and approached the Dominators for help only to be slaughtered.

The Doctor and Jamie rush off to investigate these interlopers while Cully and Zoe travel to the planet’s capital to beg for help. Jamie and the Doctor get themselves captured (of course). Cully and Zoe can’t get anyone to listen to them, much less lift a finger to help them deal with the invaders.

The Doctor and Jamie fool the Dominators into thinking they’re too stupid to be worth any notice, or to even be useful as slave labour. The same can’t be said of the survey team, who end up as the Dominators’ slaves.

Zoe and Cully get captured on their return to the island. Unlike the survey team, they have the gumption to do something about it. They manage to get their hands on a weapon and attempt to take out the Dominators’ (frankly adorable) robot servants, but the plan goes awry thanks to the untimely intervention of the Doctor and Jamie. Cully and Jamie end up trapped in an underground bunker, separated from the rest of the group, while the Doctor and Zoe fall back into the Dominators’ hands.

Jamie and Cully don’t stay trapped for long, however.  They turn out to be rather good at disabling the robots, which creates enough of a distraction for the Dominators that the Doctor gets a chance to look around their ship and work out their plan. All this time, the Dominators have been drilling for something, but for what? The island has no mineral resources or oil. However, it is on a thin area of the planet’s crust, making it the ideal place to access the mantle. They’re making a volcano, and plan to blow up a nuclear device inside. The plan is all kinds of daft, but the bottom line is that they’re planning to reduce the planet to irradiated slag to provide fuel for their fleet.

Cully and Jamie rescue the others (the robots are really quite useless at being killing machines) and the Doctor cooks up a plan (and some homemade bombs) for them to continue distracting the Dominators. Meanwhile the rest of the group digs a tunnel to intercept the Dominators’ nuclear device (that part was Jamie’s idea).

They manage to get through in the nick of time, but unable to disarm the nuclear device, the Doctor has no choice but to take it out of harm’s way. By which I mean he smuggles it onto the Dominators’ ship, killing them when it goes off.

The day saved, the Dulceans depart back to the capital, and the Doctor and company had better get going themselves before the Dominators’ man-made volcano blows them all to kingdom come.

Thoughts And Rambles

For me, the most interesting source of tension in this serial is that between the Dominators Rago and Toba. They really, truly cannot stand one another. Both are equally unpleasant, but they have completely incompatible approaches to villainy. Rago’s the cold one. He passes up plenty of opportunities to just kill everyone and have done with it, not out of any compassion but because he would rather not waste resources. Toba, on the other hand, is a volcano in shoulderpads. Just look at him funny and he’ll set his cute little robots on you. I had wondered (and was a bit disappointed when this did not happen) if they would end up killing each other, their cruelty and ambition being their undoing. It would feel more appropriate to the general tone and messaging of Doctor Who than… well, I will get to that in a moment.

The funny thing is that if Rago had listened to Toba and just killed the Doctor in the first place, his plan would have gone off without a hitch. Take note, future villains.

Oh, and speaking of which. The plan. I think there is someone at the BBC who lives to think up new ways of annoying anybody with an O-Level in science. My inner know-it-all simply cannot let it be. There is a deep lack of understanding of how harnessing nuclear energy works. The Dominators use nuclear fuel, but have no reactor, just using the passive radiation from the raw fuel to power their ship. Not exactly efficient. Without a reactor you’ve just got a load of hot rocks. And if you have a lot of them all in one place…well, now you DO have a reactor, don’t you? One which you can’t control.

So the Dominators’ plan to get more fuel for their nuclear-disaster-waiting-to-happen is to dig holes into the planet’s crust, fire rockets into them to trigger an upwelling of magma, then drop a small nuclear device into the base of the resulting volcano. And then it'll spew radioactive lava. Which, for some reason, will cover the whole world. The planet basically becomes a petrol station for the fleet. One: That’s not how volcanoes work. Two: That is not how radiation works. Three: That’s not how… planets work.

The incredibly peaceful Dulceans have this atomic test island, by the way, because a couple of hundred years ago they decided to do research into nuclear energy. As part of their research, they built a bomb (for some reason), set it off, and panicked when it did exactly what bombs are supposed to do. And then they swore off nuclear research altogether. I am going to have a migraine.

It’s one thing to make up daft science about stuff far beyond our scope of knowledge but this is just a bit silly.

However. I can let bad science slide. If it’s a fun idea, who am I to rain on everybody’s parade? What I’m not sure I can let slide is the much more serious issue with this serial.

For all these years, Doctor Who has been quite strictly pacifistic in its philosophy. When the guns come out, the Doctor is in the thick of things trying to persuade everyone to put them away and talk. However, in this serial he spends much of his time trying to persuade the Dulceans in the opposite direction. Now, I’m all for nuanced critique of the limitations of pacifism, but that’s not what this is. It’s the narrative equivalent of having an argument with yourself in the shower.

The Dulceans are pacifist to a degree that goes beyond absurdity. Pacifist does not mean ‘doormat’. Yet the Dulceans are willing to just give up and give their invaders whatever they want. They’re a parody of hippies (sans the free love, but you can’t really show that sort of thing on teatime television), and a bad one at that. They’re very rigid thinkers, the youth accepting the word of their elders as gospel. And they lack curiosity, the council seeing no need to investigate the arrival of the Dominators. Though they might have two hearts, they don't have the slightest ember of rebellion in either of them. Not exactly counter-cultural icons, are they? Nice people, sure, but not a fair representation of pacifists, hippie or otherwise, and their problems would have been over a lot sooner if they’d just been willing to attack the Dominators as soon as they’d started causing trouble.

And that’s a weird message for Doctor Who, isn’t it? Not that it’s a lesson that the Dulceans would even have learned. In the end, the Doctor took care of the threat for them.

Oh, yes. The Doctor killed the Dominators, and I am pretty certain he did not actually have to. If he had time to go and plant the nuclear device aboard the Dominators’ ship, he had time to hop into the TARDIS. He could have flung the device out into space or dropped it on some lifeless moon. It would probably have been quicker; I’m pretty sure the TARDIS was actually the closest ship to the bunker. He had to go out of his way to dispatch the Dominators. That doesn’t seem like a very Doctorish thing to do. Sure, the Doctor might not step in if a villain is about to get themselves killed through their own foolishness, but I wouldn’t say that he makes a habit of making sure they meet a sticky end.

And just to top it all off, this act was ultimately pointless. It was an act of revenge, not one that served to actually ensure the continued safety of the Dulceans. The Dominators mention many times that they are just a small part of a vast fleet bent on conquering the galaxy, and yet the serial ends without any consideration for said fleet. The planet Dulkis may have been spared for now, but do you think it will last long against the full onslaught of the Dominators’ empire?

The Bottom Line

It’s not that this is a bad story, per se. I quite enjoyed it. The Dominators were fairly fun to watch, the Quarks were far too cute to be scary but ultimately quite charming, and I developed a fondness for Cully. He’s a bit of a boy in a man's body, but he’s good in a crisis and possesses a degree of backbone and curiosity not seen in the rest of his people. Plot-wise, it’s not the most exciting or inventive fare, but I am just so glad it wasn’t another base-under-siege.

The problem is the messaging. Ultimately, whether intentional or not, the moral is clear: resisting oppression and pacifism are mutually exclusive. That runs counter to every Doctor Who story I can remember. More often than not the villains are the architects of their own destruction. The heroes win the day with their wits and the strength of their convictions, not through blowing stuff up or slaying a retreating foe.

All in all, it’s a decent story. It just misses the entire point of Doctor Who.

3 stars out of 5 for The Dominators.




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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 28, 1968] Once Upon A Time, Or Maybe Twice… (Yellow Submarine)

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By Jessica Holmes

Yellow Submarine is a weird film. Directed by George Dunning and produced by Al Brodax and King Features, the latest Beatles movie is a bit different from the previous live-action offerings. For one, it’s animated, and for two… the Beatles are barely even in it. I mean, they’re in it as characters, and in person in a very brief cameo at the end, but the four themselves don’t actually voice their animated counterparts. I’m sure they’re busy smoking whatever the hell made them come up with Revolution No. 9. But that’s not the weird bit.

The weird bit is the content of this film.

Think ‘Alice In Wonderland’ if Alice sampled a rather more special kind of mushroom.

It's All In The Mind, Y'Know

Strip back all the surrealism and Yellow Submarine is a pretty straightforward adventure. The idyllic realm of Pepperland comes under attack from an army of Blue Meanies, prompting one of the inhabitants, Old Fred, to go and find help. He goes off, recruits the Beatles, then they journey back together through various locales so they can defeat the Blue Meanies through the power of music. Cue awkward live-action cameo, roll credits.

But of course, we’re not really watching this for the plot, are we?

Yellow Submarine is like a dream. As such, it operates on dream logic. Old Fred (Lance Percival) stalks a depressed Ringo (Paul Angelis) through the streets of Liverpool in a flying submarine. Ringo’s house is bigger on the inside, and has doors that open onto many different locations. John Lennon (John Clive) is Frankenstein’s Monster. George Harrison (also Paul Angelis) can manipulate reality with his mind. Paul (Geoff Hughes)… Paul’s actually pretty normal.

Their journeys take them to the Sea of Time, where they age backwards, forwards, and back again, then to the Sea of Science, where… nothing happens. Really, nothing. There’s a decent tune in this section (‘Only A Northern Song’) but it doesn’t even have any much video to go with it. It’s just soundwaves accompanied by pictures of the group. It’s an out of place sequence in a film of out of place sequences.

The weirdness immediately starts back up as the submarine sails into the Sea of Monsters, where they encounter creatures that Hieronymous Bosch would be proud of. There’s the purple elephant thing which is so ugly they bully it until it cries. There’s a pair of Kinky Boots. There’s some stuff I have no name for, and creepiest of all, a vacuum monster that goes around sucking up all the other creatures.

Ringo accidentally ejects himself from the submarine, and the others have to rescue him by deploying the submarine’s cavalry company. There’s a button for everything. Unfortunately for them, the vacuum monster immediately slurps them up, before slurping up all the other monsters, then the actual backdrop of the film, and finally itself, leaving the submarine stranded in an endless white void. They are…nowhere.

But they aren’t alone. Enter Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D. (Dick Emery) a peculiar little nowhere man who speaks entirely in rhyme. He offers them a hand with their engine, and in return,Ringo, feeling sorry for the little guy’s loneliness, invites him to join them aboard the submarine.

They don’t get far before breaking down again in the foothills of the headlands, and the submarine (with Old Fred still aboard) flies off without them when they get out to fix it. So they might as well squeeze a song in. The ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ sequence isn’t exactly plot heavy (it’s mostly just rotoscoped imagery of dancing girls) and really doesn’t have a thing to do with what’s going on, but it’s undeniably gorgeous to look at.

From there the group follows a trail of pepper to the Sea of Holes, an infinite white void filled with black holes. Three dimensional space works a little differently here. It’s as the laws of physics had been written by M.C. Escher.

Jeremy gets himself captured by a Blue Meanie, and the group eventually find a hole to the Sea of Green, and find themselves at last in Pepperland… which is decidedly lacking in green of late.

The Blue Meanies hate colour, and music, and life itself, so they’ve taken it upon themselves to cure Pepperland of these ailments.

The Beatles revive the mayor of Pepperland with a snippet of song, restoring him to life and colour, and reunite with the submarine and Old Fred. The old mayor comments that the Beatles bear an uncanny resemblance to Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and theorises that if they were to disguise themselves, they might rally the people to rebel against the Meanies.

And cue the music! I think you can guess what song they start with. The Meanies hate it, of course, but the tune brings life back to Pepperland. The group even manage to find and revive the real Lonely Hearts Club Band, teaming up with them to take the fight to the meanies. Oh, and Ringo rescues Jeremy.

Faced with the combined power of the Beatles and the Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Meanies turn and flee, despite their Chief’s exhortations. Jeremy transforms the Chief Meanie with the power of rhymes, and John extends the hand of friendship to the band’s defeated foes. The Meanies accept, and everyone joins in for a final dance party. All’s well that ends well, and here come the end credits.

But first, we must indulge the real Beatles in a clumsy cameo. The absolute flurry of puns and wordplay that are present in practically every line of Yellow Submarine are no less present here, and no less painful. With newer and bluer Meanies being spotted in the vicinity of the theatre, the Beatles sing us out.

Not Quite Right

So, sounds like a cheerful, colourful, fun little romp, right? Wrong. This film is unsettling.

And it starts barely a couple of minutes in with the arrival of the Blue Meanies.

Good grief, the Blue Meanies.

It’s not just their concept that’s creepy. Sure, sure, a villain that hates everything good and nice and is relentlessly negative. We’ve seen all that. But they are deeply unnerving to look at with their too-wide yellow grins. The Chief Meanie (also Paul Angelis…poor man, give his vocal cords a break!) is by far the creepiest. I have to give a nod to Angelis and his vocal talents for creating such a nightmare. He goes from a sickly sweet sing-song tone to irate shrieking at the drop of a hat. It gets my skin crawling.

As if the Chief Meanie wasn’t bad enough on his own, there’s his Dreadful Flying Glove to think about. It’s…well, it’s a glove. A giant, angry-looking, sentient glove that chases people across Pepperland. Sounds ridiculous? Sure. But it's a rather dreadful looking thing.

Outside of Pepperland, the seas offer plenty of discomforts. There’s obviously the Sea of Monsters with its various grotesques, but I found ‘nowhere’ to be quite creepy too. Just the idea of being alone in an infinite white void with nothing but my own thoughts for company… it gives me the shivers. I am perhaps just projecting, but I would hazard a guess that a fair few people share my feelings.

You’re not even safe from the surreal and uncanny on dry land, as Liverpool is no less peculiar. There’s an art shift in the Liverpool sequence, where the people are not drawn, but composited in from highly processed photographs and film stock. The colours are minimal, and most living things are completely static. Those that are not static are trapped in short loops of actions as the submarine passes them by. We even see someone perched on the ledge of the uppermost window of a tall building, as if about to leap. Towards the end of the sequence, there are hundreds of people on rooftops. All this, to the tune of ‘Eleanor Rigby’. It’s painting a depressing picture of the home-town of the Beatles, to say the least.

Then you’ve got Ringo’s house, and I do not like that place. He keeps a Monster around, sure, and that’s a bit off-putting, but there’s something more subtle about the place that unnerves me a lot more. It does not feel like a place where people belong. There’s a long hallway with dozens of identical doors, each opening onto a different locale entirely—even onto oncoming trains. It’s vast, and quiet, and you could get lost for hours or even days, and I don’t think anybody would be coming to find you. It’s that sort of place. There’s a palpable absence of humanity.

I searched around for the right word to describe what this film actually made me feel. ‘Unsettled’ feels too vague. It just means that I feel different from my normal emotional state. ‘Scared’ is over the top. It’s not scary. And ‘creeped out’ is too simple. It’s not all creepy. Some parts are beautiful. I think my response ultimately comes down to the atmosphere of the film. And that atmosphere is one of loneliness.

Ah, Look At All The Lonely People

There is something about this film that positively oozes an atmosphere of isolation and loneliness. Even in colourful Pepperland at the start of the film, though there are crowds of people, they’re almost entirely static and lifeless. The Mayor is at least animated enough to play the violin, but even then he’s more interested in that than in fending off the Blue Meanies or trying to escape from them. There’s precious little humanity to be found here. I think something was wrong with Pepperland long before the Blue Meanies ever showed up.

Of course, once they do, what little semblance of life there is soon goes away.

The Liverpool section, as with all the musical sections of the film, is essentially a music video for the song ‘Eleanor Rigby’, and it’s as lonely and depressing an image of the city as I have ever seen. That’s the thing with big cities—everyone lives on top of one another, but you don’t really know each other, and so you even feel alone in a crowd of people who all feel exactly the same way. ‘Look at all the lonely people’, indeed.

Ringo even says so himself.

Liverpool can be a lonely place on a Saturday night, and this is only Thursday morning.

And he would know a thing or two about loneliness, living in his cavernous house, under the same roof as his bandmates and yet with the four of them isolated from one another.

Starting to notice a pattern?

In the Sea of Monsters, the vacuum monster eventually finds itself completely alone. And so it consumes its own body. In Nowhere, Jeremy has lived his whole life by himself. Though he seems initially content with his way of life, when the Beatles are about to leave him behind, he breaks down sobbing. He’s utterly pitiful, and utterly alone.

Everyone in this film… is lonely. Scratch the surface of the colourful surrealism and catchy tunes and you’ll find a deeply melancholy undercurrent to the whole thing.

How could it fail to rub off on the audience?

Final Thoughts

Heinz Edelmann’s art direction is stunning. The extraordinary psychedelic presentation is really the key to making this film work. It’s bright, beautiful, and occasionally frightening. There’s bold, bright pop art style elements (think Warhol), but also grotesque creatures that would fit well within the pages of a medieval bestiary, or perhaps in a Dali. I’m sure the unique visual style will make this a hit with anyone with an appreciation for psychedelic art—or psychoactive substances.

Music-wise, what can I say? It’s the Beatles. If you like the Beatles (which I do), you’ll like the music. There’s a nice selection of tracks from their previous albums, and also a couple of new songs. I say new, but I’m pretty sure they’re unused tracks from previous albums. The B-sides’ B-side. Still, even if ‘All Together Now’ is not their strongest offering, it’s definitely catchy.

The band’s music might be what people are coming to this film to hear, but let’s not forget the rest of the soundtrack. ‘Fifth Beatle’ George Martin’s score is lush and romantic, tying the film together with dreamy orchestral interludes.

Finally, here’s a miscellany of thoughts about Yellow Submarine I had that don’t really relate to anything else:

The live action bit at the end is really weird. And I don’t mean surrealist weird, I mean ‘deeply awkward and filled me with a sense of vicarious embarrassment’ weird. It’s probably there to fulfill contractual obligations, but they could have at least tried to act less awkward than a group of unprepared teenagers giving a school presentation. I suppose it was at least appreciated by those people who lose their minds at the very sight of the Beatles.

As for the animated version of the group, I thought the voice actors did a very good impression of them. It’s just a shame that they all sounded bored out of their skulls throughout the whole film.

You’d have thought the jokes might have coaxed some life out of them. There’s enough of them. A veritable smorgasbord of agonisingly painful wordplay. Particularly excruciating highlights include:

“I can’t help it. I’m a born lever-puller.”

And:

“Are you blueish? You don’t look blueish.”

Oh, and of course the Rimsky-Korsakov/Guy Lombardo joke which took me far too much effort to understand, and when I did, it still wasn’t actually funny.

I could go on, but I shan’t. I'm not a cruel woman.

Lousy jokes aside, this is a movie I’m glad to have seen. I wasn’t sure if I liked it at first, but once I stopped trying to make sense of things and just went along for the ride, my appreciation of the film went right up.

This strange, beautiful film will surely be a hit with all the lonely people. Sure, it’s often melancholy and alienating. But it also offers hope.

In the end, how do the Beatles win? Not with combat prowess, but good old peace, love and rock n’ roll. Even the Blue Meanies benefit from hearing the band’s message. They just needed to abandon their relentless negativity and accept what was freely offered. Thanks to the Beatles, Pepperland is livelier than ever.

To defeat the forces of misery and loneliness… all you need is love.

(Four stars out of five)




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TV

[June 4, 1968] (Doctor Who: The Wheel In Space [Part Two])

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By Jessica Holmes

Here we are at the end of another serial and another series of Doctor Who. For sure, it’s had its ups and downs, but does the series end on a high note? Let’s look at the ending of Doctor Who: The Wheel In Space.

EPISODE FOUR

With the astronauts mind controlled, the next stage of the Cybermen’s operation can go ahead. Inadvertently helping them is Jarvis, whose reluctance to listen to reason has turned into pathological denial. Even when confronted with incontrovertible evidence of the threat, he simply refuses to see it. This comes in handy when the Cybermen try to Trojan-horse their way aboard the Wheel in a crate of bernalium.

When things immediately start going very badly aboard the Wheel he sinks into a catatonic state and ceases to have any bearing on the plot, leaving it to Corwyn to pick up the slack. She has the good sense to listen to the Doctor when he suggests putting up a force-field around the operations room to protect it from the Cybermen.

The Cybermen waste little time killing some of the crew and mind-controlling others. They take over the workshop and see to it that the engineers restore the laser to full working order, before ordering one of them to go up to the operations room, infiltrate it, and wreck the outbound communications equipment—killing himself in the process.

Zoe, meanwhile, realises that the meteorite storm will hit them sooner than anticipated, reporting to Corwyn in her usual matter-of-fact manner. Corwyn questions her on her seeming coldness, but it seems it’s really just a case of a miscommunication. Zoe was trained to prioritise the cold hard facts of a situation over her emotional reaction to it. For space exploration it makes perfect sense. You want someone who can work the problem, not someone who runs around like a headless chicken the moment things go wrong.

There’s a parallel being drawn here between Zoe, who has had the emotions trained out of her, and the Cybermen, who have had theirs programmed out. Unfortunately the serial doesn’t really do anything with it. As of the end of the serial, her rationality has been neither a help nor a hindrance. It’s just a trait that people around her are treating as inherently bad. So, she’s a little different. So what?

Upon learning that the astronauts have brought a cache of bernalium back to the Wheel, the Doctor is quick to realise that the Cybermen are on board the station. It’s too late for the chaps down in the workshop, but as for the others the Doctor gets everyone to make small shields to wear on the back of the neck. They’ll block the mind control waves.

I’m not entirely clear on why they had to go and check that yes, the Cybermen did indeed come aboard in the bernalium crate, but the Doctor and Jamie head down to the cargo bay all the same. They find the false-bottomed crate the Cybermen smuggled themselves in. And then they hear the heavy footsteps of an approaching Cyberman…

EPISODE FIVE

The handy thing about not being able to move their necks is that this generation of Cybermen are really easy to sneak past. The Doctor and Jamie do just that. They get back to the operations room to discover that the meteorite storm is heading for them a lot faster than previously anticipated.

Fortunately, the Cybermen are kindly supervising the effort to repair the laser. By this point the Doctor is pretty sure that the Cybermen are after something more than destroying the Wheel, but can’t figure out what.

Zoe starts fretting over her lack of ability to think on her feet, feeling rather useless. Her training emphasised rote memorisation of facts and figures over developing critical problem-solving skills; another Cybermen parallel, and this one feels deserved. This whole time, the Cybermen we see on screen haven’t actually been coming up with their own plans. They aren’t programmed for that. A Cyber-Planner has been feeding them instructions.

This is a pretty interesting facet of the Cybermen, this emphasis on conformity and following orders. They don’t seem capable of creative thought. In a way it serves as a strength, enabling them to cooperate without butting heads over differing opinions or succumbing to infighting. On the other hand, it’s probably also their greatest weakness, and the thing that lets the Doctor defeat them time and time again. It’s pretty troubling to think that apparently back on Earth, young minds are being trained to behave in this way. What kind of society does Zoe come from?

The Doctor has an idea for stopping the Cybermen, but he needs the Time Vector Generator, which he seems to have dropped at some point. Jamie is going to have to go back to the rocket ship with Zoe in order to fetch it. I don’t know, has he tried having a rummage through the lost and found?

With the laser back in working order, the Cybermen have no further need for the station’s crew. Well, except for a stooge, whom they order to poison the ship’s oxygen supply. However, Corwyn happens to be in the right place at the right time to overhear them, and she uses the video comms to warn the Doctor. Sadly for Corwyn, the Cybermen catch her, and the Doctor gets a front-row seat to her death.

EPISODE SIX

Despite the kids still being out in the vacuum of space, the Wheel goes ahead and starts blasting away the incoming asteroids. The Doctor is of course horrified, but as one of the crew points out, he’s the one who sent Jamie out there. Luckily, they only hit the space rocks and not our favourite Scot.

The Doctor informs the crew about Corwyn and warns them to swap to the backup oxygen supply, thwarting the Cybermen’s plans.

Oh, and Jarvis is dead. He decided to go walkabout and walked right into a Cyberman.

With their plot gone to pot, the Cybermen realise that someone on the station must have advance knowledge of their methods, and start investigating the personnel on board the station. They soon know the source of their difficulties: the Doctor. They need to deal with him.

But they’ll need to lure him out first. They have a mind-controlled minion give the operations room a call. He claims that he’s managed to trap the Cybermen in the workshop and is heading up to the operations room. This will give the Doctor the opening he needs to fetch the spare radio components from storage so as to repair the Wheel’s outgoing communications.

Yes, the plots in this serial are rather convoluted, aren’t they?

Jamie and Zoe overhear this from the control room of the wheel, which for some reason is still receiving communications from the Cyber Planner. Don’t they know you should turn off your appliances before heading out? Going to have an electrical fire if you’re not careful.

However, the Doctor is a smart cookie, noticing the stooge’s monotone delivery and dead-behind-the-eyes expression, and warns the others to grab him when he gets to the forcefield and put a shield on him. At least someone’s paying attention.

The Doctor makes it down to the storage room all right, and finds some convenient mercury for the TARDIS before grabbing some equipment for his plan. He had better hurry. Another ship has appeared: a massive Cyberman invasion ship carrying a fleet of smaller vessels.

Jamie and Zoe return to the Wheel, coming across Corwyn’s body on their way back to the operations room.

The Doctor gets in contact with the crew, very relieved to see that Jamie is alive and well. Mostly because he likes Jamie, but also because Jamie has the TVG and the Doctor really needs it right now.

While Jamie heads down to meet the Doctor, the Cybermen pay a visit to their old friend.

The Doctor greets his guests quite civilly, and over the course of the conversation pieces together the entirety of the Cybermen’s plan.

Are you ready? Here we go.

Step One: Commandeer a rocket ship, set it adrift, use it to deliver cybermats to the Wheel, wait while they destroy the Wheel’s laser and bernalium supply. Get lucky when Jamie wrecks the laser for you.

Step Two: Blow up a distant star to create a tsunami of asteroids, despite the fact that space is definitely far, far too big for this to actually work. (If you have the technology to blow up a star, why in the world are you bothering with all this other faff?)

Step Three: Assume that rather than evacuate, the crew of the wheel will recklessly board your rocketship to look for bernalium to repair their laser.

Step Four: Smuggle yourselves on board in a crate, then hypnotise some crew to repair the laser so that the Wheel doesn’t actually get destroyed.

Step Five: Hypnotise one guy into destroying the Wheel’s outbound communications. He did it in a pretty haphazard way, so you’re lucky that the inbound comms still work.

Step Six: Kill the crew via a method that is quite easily averted by switching to the supplementary oxygen supply.

All this, so that the incoming invasion fleet can follow the radio signals from Earth, without which they can’t enter Earth’s atmosphere for…reasons. You mean to tell me that these supposedly ‘superior’ beings somehow have the ability to blow up distant stars but can’t calculate their own orbital trajectories and re-entry angles? We have people on Earth right now who can do that by hand!

So yes, this excessively convoluted plan serves more or less to turn the Wheel into a big signpost so the invasion fleet doesn't get lost.

Still, Troughton is really great in this scene. I love when he gets to come face to face with a villain. He has this air of being scared but trying very hard not to show it, with a slightly trickster-ish undercurrent of having a card hidden up his sleeve. The scripts may disappoint me, but Troughton never does.

And the Doctor does indeed have a trick up his sleeve, as he invites the Cybermen to destroy him…only to activate a trap. The first Cyberman steps right into an energy field, electrocuting it. The other stays back, but cannot get near the Doctor, and so leaves to await reinforcements. It’s the best bit of the serial.

Jamie then arrives with the TVG, and the Doctor can finally save the day. He plugs it into the ship’s laser in order to amplify the beam from the TVG, while Jamie goes to head off the incoming army of Cybermen approaching the cargo bay. He subdues the one Cyberman still on board with quick-set plastic, but the others are attempting to breach the cargo bay doors.

The Doctor finishes augmenting the laser, which fires on the Cybermen’s ship, blasting it to smithereens. As for the invading Cybermen, the crew of the Wheel activate a forcefield, repelling them from the cargo bay doors and out into the void.

I wonder how long they can survive out there?

Another enemy defeated, the Doctor and Jamie head back to the TARDIS, but they have a stowaway. Zoe wants to go with them. However, the last teenage girl the Doctor took with him ended up traumatised from her experiences. Is Zoe sure she can handle it?

To test her, the Doctor plugs himself into a device that displays his memories on a screen. He decides to start by showing her the Daleks…


Final Thoughts

Dear, dear, dear. This is not the ending I hoped for for this episode, nor for the current series as a whole. It’s proved to be a prime example of the mortal sins that have plagued this serial: it is badly paced, uninspired, and frankly boring. It doesn’t even use the Cybermen to their full potential, instead flattening them down into generic alien invaders. So, two stars for this one.

Zoe has some potential as a companion, I think. It might be interesting to have a girl around who can keep up with the Doctor’s wits. I like her, at any rate.

Perhaps after a little break the team behind Doctor Who will be able to come up with some fresh stories, but if they can’t, then I have real worries about the longevity of the programme. Doctor Who has a unique opportunity to be potentially unending—as long as there are always new stories to tell.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[May 12, 1968] Slow And Steady… (Doctor Who: The Wheel In Space [Part One])

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By Jessica Holmes

We approach the end of another series of Doctor Who, and it’s been a bit of a rough one, hasn’t it? Other than the occasional standout, I feel that I’ve ended up finding every other story terribly repetitive. As I began to watch the last serial of the current run, I had hope that my faith in the series would be rewarded. After all, when Doctor Who is good, it’s really, really good, and this latest serial was scripted by David Whittaker (who wrote The Enemy Of The World, possibly my favourite story) based on a story by Kit Pedler (who is to the Cybermen as Terry Nation was to the Daleks). With a writing duo like that, things looked very promising for the serial. Was my faith rewarded? Let’s mull it over as I give you a quick rundown of The Wheel In Space.


EPISODE ONE

With Jamie still a bit sulky over Victoria’s exit from the TARDIS, things go from bad to worse for the lad as the time machine breaks down, leaving him and the Doctor stranded. To be on the safe side until he can get the TARDIS working again, the Doctor removes the doohickey that makes it appear bigger on the inside, the Time Vector Generator. The pair then split to search the rocketship for any crew or mercury for the TARDIS’ battery. They spend the better part of the episode doing this, with a break for lunch. That’s just what the kids want to watch: a couple of blokes operating a vending machine. The scene of them actually obtaining lunch is about as interesting as it sounds, but they do have a nice little discussion on how they think Victoria is getting on back on Earth.

They’re unable to find any mercury for the TARDIS, although the one place they haven’t searched is the rocketship’s control room. Unbeknownst to them, there is a countdown timer in there. But counting down to what? Out of ideas, and having at least confirmed that they’re safe for now, Jamie settles down for a nap.

Yes, it seems the ship is abandoned, drifting aimlessly…just like this serial.

There is however a robot making the rounds, and while the Doctor and Jamie are in the crew cabin, it seals shut their section of the ship.

This serial has slower pacing than 2001 (at least from what I've read), and that’s saying something.

With only a couple minutes left in the episode, something resembling action finally happens. The countdown in the control room hits zero. The ship lurches as it releases a number of silver spheres into space. The jolt  wakes Jamie up and knocks the Doctor over, resulting in a nasty crack on the head. A dazed Doctor uses the Time Vector Generator to unseal the door (it apparently works sort of like a high powered laser beam) and Jamie helps him escape the robot and run back to the cabin, again employing the TVG to see the robot off.

They’re safe for now, but the Doctor passes out from his injury.

Meanwhile, the crew of a nearby space station have discovered the drifting rocket ship. This is the Wheel, so called because it looks a bit like a wagon wheel from above. It’s an Earth vessel, observing deep space phenomena and warning spacecraft of potential hazards. They attempt to get in contact, and as they do so, something hits their outer hull. They don’t realise it yet, but it’s the silver spheres from the rocket ship.

Unable to hail the rocket on the radio, the crew of the Wheel are faced with a choice: should they leave the ship be, or blow it up on the off-chance that its autopilot is still active and may drive it into the station?

EPISODE TWO

Fortunately for the Doctor and Jamie, they have the Time Vector Generator, which Jamie flashes out the porthole in an attempt to get the attention of the space station. The Wheel detects the unusual signal, and sends some men over to investigate the rocket, soon finding the Doctor and Jamie and bringing them back to the Wheel.

Now we’re all together, let’s go over the crew of the Wheel. We’ve got Jarvis Bennett (Michael Turner), the station’s controller, who is quite high-strung and prone to stressing out. There’s also Dr. Gemma Corwyn (Anne Ridler), the medic and resident voice of reason, and the astrophysicist-librarian-maths-genius-wunderkind Zoe Heriot (Wendy Padbury). Filling out the cast are a few more or less interchangeable crewmembers of various nationalities portrayed with varying degrees of sensitivity.

Corwyn gives the Doctor and Jamie a thorough medical examination, finding that Jamie is perfectly fine but the Doctor, unsurprisingly, has a concussion.

With how long he’s been unconscious I’m surprised it’s not worse than that.

While the Doctor recovers, Zoe shows Jamie around the Wheeel, and the two don’t exactly hit it off. She laughs at his kilt, and he threatens her with a spanking. She seems quite delighted by the prospect. Make of that what you will.

For her part, though she likes him well enough, Corwyn is suspicious of Jamie’s story. He’s not exactly a good liar. Case in point: when asked, he told her that the Doctor’s name is ‘John Smith’, a name that is somehow conspicuously generic.  Corwyn and Bennett start to suspect that the Doctor and Jamie might be saboteurs. There has been growing opposition to the space program back on Earth.

Zoe and Jamie arrive at the Wheel’s control room just as Bennett is about to go ahead with blowing up the rocketship. Uh-oh, the TARDIS!

Meanwhile aboard said rocketship, the timer begins to count up. There’s something strange in the room, a couple of large…eggs? They begin to glow, and humanoid shapes become visible inside. They stir, and a silver-gloved hand punches its way out of the shell.

Could it be… the Cybermen?

EPISODE THREE

Wanting to delay the destruction of the rocket for obvious reasons, Jamie grabs some conveniently located spray-on quick-set plastic and sabotages the Wheel’s laser-gun. Bennett catches him in the act. Jamie couldn’t have picked a worse time to disable the gun.

Why? Because…well…because of a load of absolute poppycock, even by the lax standards of the programme. A star in the Hercules Cluster is about to go nova, and the radiation flux will fling asteroids and any other space flotsam right at the Wheel.

Science fiction writers, I’ve noticed, often have difficulties with understanding just how big space is. The cluster in question, formally designated Messier 13, is twenty-two thousand light-years away. Assuming the Wheel is situated at the edge of the solar system (its precise location isn’t made explicit, but given its stated purpose as an early warning system, observatory and halfway house for spacecraft heading into deep space, I think that makes the most sense), any nova in Messier 13 would pose about as much threat to it as farting ant in the Sahara.

I’m nit-picking, but only because I’m bored.

Because they don’t have enough problems already, some stowaways have weaseled their way aboard the station. Cybermats! One of the crew encounters one. Thinking it’s some sort of space bug, he hides it in a cupboard. While left to its own devices, it goes ahead and tucks into the entire ship’s stock of the material needed to repair the laser.

Meanwhile, the Cybermen are preparing the next phase of their plan. It seems that (somehow) they triggered the nova, and another that occurred the previous week. They are trying to lure the crew of the Wheel to board their rocket in search of more material with which to repair the laser. Pity they didn’t wake up earlier, they could have saved themselves a bit of bother.

The star in Messier 13 goes nova. As tempted as I am to go off on a tangent about the speed of light, I shall restrain myself and take off my insufferable know-it-all hat.

Zoe cheerfully informs the others of the danger they’re in. She’s not quite as good at tact as she is at reciting facts and figures. ‘All brain and no heart’, as one of the men describes her. Seems a little harsh if you ask me.

One of the hapless crew runs afoul of a swarm of cybermats. He doesn’t appear to have twigged that these things are about the size of a football. Just punt them! He encases one of them in quick-set plastic, but the others overwhelm and kill him in a spectacle of truly glorious over-acting. Poor fellow, choked to death on all that scenery he chewed.

Corwyn finds his body, though by then the cybermats have fled. She presents the encased cybermat to the Doctor, who x-rays it and discovers the true nature of the threat to the station.

Alas, it’s too late. A pair of men from the Wheel have already arrived on the rocket. They immediately run into the Cybermen, who swiftly bring them under the influence of a mind-control ray. Their first command? To take the Cybermen to the Wheel.

Final Thoughts

Doctor Who is a teatime show, but I almost nodded off a couple of times while watching the first couple of episodes. I’m genuinely surprised by this, given the track record of the writers and how much I usually enjoy the Cybermen. There’s just so much padding! The whole thing drags terribly, turning any potential for suspense into a slog.

The Cybermen themselves have had another design update. They're mostly the same as their previous appearance, but have now got a little notch at the corner of each eye that looks a bit like a teardrop, as well as a notch at the bottom of the mouth slit. I don't know, i think the entirely utilitarian, featureless design of the previous iterations was creepier. The mouth notch just looks a bit awkward.

Will the later half of the serial improve on things? Perhaps, now that the antagonists have deigned to show up.

We will have to wait and see.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[April 22, 1968] Bored Of The Rigs (Doctor Who: Fury From The Deep [Part 2])

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By Jessica Holmes

I am poorly, I am tired, and to add insult to injury, I had to review this dreary serial. I’m going to chug some cough syrup, and then we’ll take a look at the latter half of the latest Doctor Who serial, Fury From The Deep.

EPISODE FOUR

As the seaweed of doom continues to take down gas rigs, Victoria starts fretting. She’s starting to get sick of constantly getting dragged into dangerous situations. This is going to come up a lot over the latter half of the serial, and to be honest the scenes get a bit repetitive. It’s basically the same thing over and over: Victoria says she’s scared all the time, Jamie asks if she’s happy, she says she doesn’t know. It never goes any deeper or takes a different angle. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Meanwhile, Harris continues to search for his wife, and finds Robson alone on the beach. When asked where Maggie is, Robson cryptically assures Harris that he’ll find her soon. If you were expecting anything interesting to happen after the walking-into-the-sea incident, you will be sorely disappointed. Maggie Harris doesn’t show up again for the rest of the serial except for a very brief appearance at the end. Her involvement in the story dissolves like so much seafoam.

Speaking of characters disappearing from the story, Van Lutyens also makes an abrupt exit after going down into the impeller shaft to check for a blockage. Something pulls him into the foam, and he vanishes, never to be seen again. We’re later told that he isn’t dead, but his part in the story is cut short.

However, the moment he leaves, someone else shows up, because this story has found itself short one Outside Authority Figure. The new Outside Authority Figure is Robson’s boss, Megan Jones (Margaret John). I do rather like her, she’s quite no-nonsense but willing to listen to people. That said, Harris’ story of aggressive parasitic seaweed is a bit hard to swallow, so she authorises him to send out some helicopters to survey the rigs to verify his story.

While she’s discussing matters with Harris, the Doctor and Jamie are down in the impeller shaft looking for Van Lutyens, leaving Victoria alone with Oak and Quill. It may surprise you to know that she promptly gets kidnapped. I know. I’m shocked. Jamie finds her soon enough, and he fusses over her in a way that I find quite sweet.

The helicopter pilots sent by Jones to survey the rigs report back that the unresponsive sites are covered in seaweed. Harris’ proposed solution is to evacuate the remaining rigs and then reduce the whole complex to rubble.

As if summoned by the talk of potential harm to his precious rigs, Robson shows up to yell at everyone for even thinking about it, then storms off again just as abruptly. Having seen his odd behaviour for herself, Jones is now willing to entertain the Doctor’s theory that he’s being controlled somehow. He doesn’t believe that the weed itself is intelligent; rather it’s a plant simply doing what plants do: growing. However, it does have the ability to parasitise sentient beings who will then work in the best interests of the weed. It’s not explained very well, but I think this is what is happening. There is a kind of fungus that does a similar thing to ants.

Another rig falls to the weed, and now it’s the base’s turn to fall. There’s foam coming up the pipeline, and the weed is trying to break through. As the Doctor says, the battle of the giants has begun.

Wait.

What in the world is that even supposed to mean?

EPISODE FIVE

Luckily for Robson and his life’s work, the Doctor doesn’t believe that simply blowing up the rigs will be sufficient to destroy the weed. However, he does have another thought. Remembering how earlier Victoria came under attack in the oxygen stores by a man in a gas mask (to be honest I had forgotten that detail but in fairness to me I’m sick), the Doctor theorises that pure oxygen is toxic to the weed. They have a way to stop it!

Or rather, they did have a way to stop it. Having overheard the Doctor quite loudly explain his theory, Oak and Quill nip the oxygen problem in the bud by stealing all the canisters. Well, we can’t make it too easy for the Doctor. It’s only the fifth episode.

With Robson in his quarters under surveillance (for now) and Van Lutyens nowhere to be found, the Doctor realises that there must be some other agent of the weed present on the base. Fearing discovery, Oak and Quill immediately make a break for it. Jamie catches Quill, however. He feels quite pleased with himself, but the Doctor isn’t sure it’s the old McCrimmon punch that did the trick. Before he gets a chance to elaborate, the Chief Engineer calls everyone back to the impeller room. The weed is trying to break out.

Speaking of breaking out, Robson is no longer in his quarters, having subdued his guard with the power of his bad breath. Everyone’s too transfixed by the weed to notice him sneaking in the back of the impeller room and absconding with Victoria when nobody’s looking. Poor Victoria. Someone needs to get her some self defence lessons.

Robson boards a helicopter with Victoria, and eventually the Doctor realises his ward is missing. It doesn’t take him long to work out that she’s with Robson, and thanks to the base’s surveillance it’s not hard to find Robson’s helicopter and hail him on the radio. Victoria is once again a bargaining chip. If the Doctor offers himself up to the weed, Robson will let her go.

Taking another helicopter, the Doctor and Jamie head out to the rig complex, where they find one of the towers covered in a particularly large amount of foam. This is the nerve centre of the weed. Within the tower is even more foam and a rather sudded-up Robson.

I’m sorry, is that meant to be scary? It just looks like he’s been messing around in a bubble bath. Move over, Daleks. Doctor Who has a new recurring enemy: Fairy Liquid!

EPISODE SIX

As is typical for Doctor Who, the baddie of the month wants the Doctor’s assistance in its evil plan for matter to conquer mind. The Doctor protests that such a thing is against the laws of nature, but I can think of a few kinds of other ‘vegetable matter’ that have some very interesting effects on the mind.

Luckily for everyone present (except poor me, and my eardrums) Victoria has got an impressively loud set of vocal cords. The piercing sound of her screams is sufficient to incapacitate Robson, giving them the opportunity to escape.

Unfortunately, the Doctor can’t seem to flag down the pilot of the helicopter he arrived in, so rather than waiting a couple of minutes he settles for the next best thing: taking Robson’s chopper for a whirl.

The Doctor does not know how to fly a helicopter, but try telling him that.

Did you know that helicopters can do a loop-de-loop?

I do now.

This is quite a drawn out sequence. Clearly it cost the BBC quite a bit to hire the helicopter and stunt pilot and they were damned if they were going to leave a single second of footage on the cutting room floor.

By some stroke of fortune he makes it back to the base and lands the helicopter safely. However, the base is running out of time, and there’s still no way to defeat the weed. Or is there?

On their way back to Harris and Jones, the trio pass the medical centre, where they learn that Quill has made a full recovery from his weed problem. But what killed it off? Victoria, of course. Specifically, the fact that she screams at a specific frequency that is apparently deadly to the weed.

If they can harness the sound of Victoria’s screams, they can use her as a sort of sonic weapon. Well, her propensity for wailing like a banshee had to come in useful eventually. I’m sure she used to be good for more than just screaming and getting captured, but there you go. That’s Victoria in a nutshell: the one who screams a lot.

I do find it quite a pity. She had so much potential but lately she has been written as little more than the archetypal damsel in distress. It’s a waste of a perfectly good character, and I find it disappointingly regressive. It is possible, I believe, for a female character to be gentle and feminine without her primary role in the story being to give the men something to rescue from danger.

Daft as it is, the Doctor’s plan works, Victoria’s amplified screams echoing down the pipeline and destroying the weed at the source. With the nerve centre destroyed, everyone who was controlled by the weed returns to normal. Maggie’s fine, Robson’s fine, and even though he remains offscreen, Van Lutyens is tickety-boo too.

All’s well that ends well. Or is it? In an unusual turn of events, the Doctor sticks around for the denoument, joining everyone for a meal at the Harris’ house. It’s not him who is reluctant to leave, however; it’s Victoria. Tired of being thrust from one dangerous situation into another, Victoria has finally had enough, and she wants to stay in one place. The Harrises are happy to have her to stay for as long as she likes, but of course staying in one place isn’t really the Doctor’s style. He did promise her father that he’d keep Victoria safe, and now he has an opportunity to actually follow through on that promise. Jamie is concerned for her being alone in a time that isn’t her own, but it’s not like there’s anyone left for her back in the 1860s.

The Doctor and Jamie bid farewell the following morning, and I will say this for the episode: it offers a satisfying companion departure, which is not a given for Doctor Who. Remember when Dodo literally just vanished offscreen mid-serial and went home without as much as a toodle-oo?

The Doctor’s a little sad to see her go, but poor Jamie really struggles with Victoria’s decision to leave. I always did suspect that he might have had a soft spot for sweet Victoria.

Final Thoughts

I suppose it is quite interesting that immediately after facing an enemy of pure consciousness, the Doctor’s next fight is against an enemy with no consciousness of its own except that which it steals from others. Unfortunately, the weed feels nowhere near as menacing as the GI. It does have its moments from time to time (like with Oak and Quill), but much of the time the story asks the audience to try being scared of…foam.

Other than a mildly interesting villain concept and a surprisingly well-done companion departure, this story is the television equivalent of a lettuce sandwich. It’s flavourless, unsatisfying, and so dull. It is yet another base under siege, and not a very good one.

And what is there left to say about the base under siege plot that has not been said already? It’s formulaic, repetitive, has a tendency to go round in circles, and it’s repetitive. At the risk of repetition…I’ll leave it there.

2.5 out of 5 stars for Fury From The Deep.




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