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


By Jessica Holmes

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

The Doctor (right, foreground) meets with the War Chief (left, background.)
"If I join you, do I also have to grow the silly moustache?"

In Case You Missed It

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

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

And so is the Doctor.

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

Jamie, Carstairs, Zoe, and Arturo Villa stand around a table in the chateau discussing strategy.

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

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

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

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

The Doctor, centre, stands glaring at something offscreen, with the Security Chief and War Chief flanking him.

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

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

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

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

The Security Chief looks on as a pair of guards manhandle the War Chief.

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

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

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

It’s time to call the Time Lords.

The War Lord stands in the foreground with his back to the War Chief, who is shouting at him as a pair of guards train their weapons on him.
There's only room for ONE ruler of the Galaxy with weird facial hair, and it ain't gonna be you, War Chief.

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

Doctor, you naughty boy.

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

The Doctor, Zoe and Jamie sprint across the battlefield.
Can we please appreciate Troughton's funny little run?

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

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

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

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

The War Chief stands before three Time Lord judges.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Doctor and Jamie shake hands goodbye as a Time Lord watches them in the background.
To the Time Lords: I hope you're pleased with yourselves.

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

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

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

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

The Doctor and Zoe in front of the TARDIS. The Doctor gives Zoe a sad smile.

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

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

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

The Doctor, his back to the camera, stands before a pair of Time Lord judges.

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

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

The Doctor appearing distressed as reflections of his own face surround him.

The Peerage System: Even In Space, It Stinks

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

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

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

The three Time Lord judges, in white robes with black mantles.

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

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

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

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

So, there.

The Doctor angrily addresses the War Chief, with Jamie and Zoe looking on behind him.

Final Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe on an outing together.

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

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

The Doctor and Jamie clinging to one another.
They're adorable. Even if the Doctor did forget what Jamie looks like that one time.

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

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

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

The Doctor, in his tall hat, leaning against a tree stump with a sad sort of smile.
Thank goodness he ditched that hat, though.

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

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

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

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

5 stars out of 5 for “The War Games”.




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


By Jessica Holmes

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

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

ID: The Doctor (right, dark haired middle-aged white male, baggy suit), talking to the Science Chief (middle-aged white male, balding, wearing lab coat and visor with cross shaped eye holes). Seated in front of them with his head in a metal vise is Carstairs (30s-ish white make in WW1-era British sergeant's uniform)

In Case You Missed It

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

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

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

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

ID: The Security Chief (back to camera, smart suit, wearing an elongated visor) interrogating Zoe (seated, white brunette girl approx. late teens). There is a stripey background.

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

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

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

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

ID: The Doctor and Zoe, both in stolen British WW1 army uniforms.

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

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

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

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

ID: The Doctor tapping at a control panel while Jamie (20s white male, wearing British military cap) looks on apprehensively.

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

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

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

The War Lord (left, middle-aged white male, receding hairline, glasses, dark turtleneck) standing around a large map built into a table, with the War Chief (middle, middle-aged white male, dark hair) and the Security Chief (right, middle aged white male, glasses, balding). There are security guards in the background.

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

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

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

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

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

The Doctor using the reprogramming device on a French soldier with Jamie's assistance.

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

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

The War Lord, looking thoughtful.

A WHAT Lord?

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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




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

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



By Jessica Holmes

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

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

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

ID: Zoe, the Doctor and Jamie stand on a a battlefield. There is debris in the foreground. The Doctor is holding a WWI-era helmet.

In Case You Missed It

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

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

General Smythe (60s ish, white, sideburns and British General's WWI uniform) looking stern.

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

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

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

The Doctor tied to a post with his back against a stone wall. The shoulders of soldiers can be seen in the foreground. The Doctor looks panicked.

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

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

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

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

Warden's office interior. Warden is facing away from the camera. The Doctor, who is shorter than him, is angrily yelling at him as Zoe watches from over his shoulder.
You see it too, right?

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

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

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

The General's Office. There is a round glass screen set into a wall panel. Lady Jennifer, her back to the camera, reaches up to touch it. Lt. Carstairs, seen from the back, is at the edge of the frame.

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

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

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

Three Roman soldiers bearing an eagle standard standing on the crest of a hill.

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

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

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

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

Next stop: the American Civil War.

A futuristic control room. Lots of blinking lights and gleaming metal. Smythe stands across a table from the War Chief, who has a medallion around his neck. There are armed men dressed all in black in the background.

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

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

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

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

A large group of WWI-era German soldiers in spiked helmets standing together.

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

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

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

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

Jamie and Lady Jennifer (left and right) talking with Harper (centre).

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

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

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

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

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

The Doctor and Zoe standing in a futuristic corridor with metal wall panels. They are wearing white visors with cross-shaped eye holes.
It's called fashion, darling.

The Mystery Box

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

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

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

A man in a visor uses a vice-like device on the head of Lt. Carstairs, who looks afraid. Carstairs is tied to his chair.
Special offer: brainwash and mental conditioning now offered free with your cut and blow-dry!

Final Thoughts

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

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




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


By Jessica Holmes

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

ID: The Doctor (middle-aged white male, dark hair) and Jamie (young adult male, dark hair) kneel in a darkened room.

In Case You Missed It

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

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

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

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

ID: Madeleine (late 30s-ish white female, polished makeup, shiny hat) with an expression of shock on her face.

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

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

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

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

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

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

ID: Milo (60s-ish, grey hair, white male) looking down at something with an expression of consternation.

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

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

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

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

ID: Hermack (middle-aged, neat grey hair, white male) sits at a control panel, holding a microphone to his mouth.

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

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

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

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

ID: The Doctor peers at a tangle of wires.

A Lack Of Flavour

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

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

ID: Madeleine looking bewildered.

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

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

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

ID: One of the 'minnow' ships leaving the larger carrier. The ship is small with a long, needle-like nosecone.

Final Thoughts

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

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

And I’m not ready for him to go.




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


By Jessica Holmes

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

ID: Monochrome photo, sleek dark spaceship against a black void. The ship resembles a jet plane with an angled nosecone.

In Case You Missed It

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

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

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

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

ID: Monochrome photo, General Hermack (Jack May), speaking into a receiver. He has neat hair greying at the temples, and wears a high-collared spacesuit-like garment with metallic trim. He is white and appears to be in his fifties.

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

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

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

Then they blow the whole thing up.

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

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

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

ID: Monochrome photo, close-up of Milo Clancey (Gorden Gostelow) looking off to his side with his eyes narrowed in suspicion. He has a futuristic gun with a plastic barrel on his shoulder. Clancey is a white man in his late 50s-early 60s, with short bristly hair, large eyebrows and an impressive moustache with the ends curled up. He is wearing a checked shirt.

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

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

ID: Monochrome photo, Zoe (young white female, dark hair), Jamie (young white male, dark hair) and the Doctor (middle-aged white male, dark hair), all on hands and knees, all appearing distressed.

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

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

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

ID: Monochrome photo, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe lying on the floor of a metal room. Jamie and Zoe are slightly propped up on a ledge. Jamie is leaning on Zoe's shoulder, Zoe is resting her head against Jamie's, and the Doctor is lying in Jamie's lap. The Doctor is holding on to a silver oxygen canister.

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

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

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

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

ID: Monochrome photo, Zoe, Jamie and the Doctor. The Doctor is peering off to the side of the shot, and Jamie and Zoe are peering around him.

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

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

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

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

ID: Monochrome photo, close-up shot of Madeleine Issigri (Lisa Daniely), smirking. She is a white woman approximately in her 40s, with a polished appearance. She wears a high-necked garment with a tall standing collar, and a metallic hat covering her hair. The hat looks quite like a pixie cut with side-swept fringe and side parting.

What In Tarnation?!

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

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

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

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

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

ID: Monochrome photo, the segments of the space beacon, against a black void. The segments are wedge-shaped, and there are 8 of them.

Final Thoughts

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

Sorry. I’ll stop now.

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

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




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


By Jessica Holmes

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

ID: Fewsham (white male, 30s) sits in front of a computer terminal between two Ice Warriors (left foreground, right background, both wearing scaly armour and helmets)

In Case You Missed It

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

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

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

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

ID: an Ice Warrior outside. They wear a scaly-textured helmet which obscures most of the face. The bottom jaw and chin are visible, they also appear scaly.

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

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

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

ID: Jamie (white male, dark hair, young adult), the Doctor (white male, dark hair, middle-aged) and Zoe (white female, dark hair, young adult) stand in a glass box, similar to a phone booth.

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

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

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

Oh.

The Doctor in a science lab. There is various scientific equipment in the background. The Doctor stands in the midground, holding a flask and holding a handkerchief over his mouth and nose. He is looking at a flask on the table, which has a large white bubble growing out of it.

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

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

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

Fewsham is surrounded by 4 Ice Warriors. He is standing behind a waist-high drum-shaped device with a screen set into the front.

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

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

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

The Doctor, up to his chest in foam and with his back to a metal wall, looks into the foam with a comical expression of shock and horror.

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

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

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

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

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

The Doctor stands outside the T-Mat booth (glass and metal, like a phonebooth) holding his heat gun. He has a square solar energy pack attached to his shoulder, many wires draped around his neck, and has hemispherical metal dishes in each hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Naturally.

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

The Doctor (left) confronts an Ice Warrior (right). There's another Ice Warrior in the background.

 

The Right Lessons

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

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

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

Sometimes there is more at stake than his own morality.

The Doctor holds up two round metal dishes with lightbulbs in the middle.

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

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

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

Fewsham (left) talks to the Doctor (right).

Final Thoughts

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

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

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

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




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


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.




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


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.






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


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."




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


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.