An Hour of Who a Day: 08/02/14

August 2: The Seeds of Doom Parts Five & Six

It took a little while, but we've finally got a huge man-eating plant menacing everyone. And it grows pretty quickly too; it was only last episode that Keeler was still tied to a bed, and now it moves from eight feet tall to something like twenty in the space of ten minutes of screen time, as the Doctor and Sarah are trapped inside the cottage with Scorby and two guards. It's a pretty tense scene, particularly with the fourth Doctor as close to losing it as he ever gets. "Scorby, if I die, you die," the Doctor hisses, after the Krynoid offers to let the others go in exchange for the Doctor's life. "I'll take a chance on that," Scorby replies. "There is no chance!" the Doctor yells, and you get a hint of the desperation the Doctor feels, not just to save himself and others, but to get through to Scorby that the Doctor is the only way to stop the Krynoid. But it's only when the Doctor comes up with an alternate plan (that involves, somewhat infamously, Scorby making a Molotov cocktail) that he convinces Scorby that his way is best.

Then, as to be expected, there's a bunch of running around -- although, somewhat surprisingly, the Doctor actually leaves the grounds of Chase's mansion to personally get Sir Colin Thackery and UNIT (in their final story of the 70s -- not that anyone you'd recognize shows up) to come down and take care of the Krynoid. But while he's gone, we get a very creepy scene with Chase inside his conservatory. Chase has earlier tried to convince the Krynoid that he's on its side, and we now see him meditating with his plants. When Scorby and Sarah try to talk to him, it becomes clear that he's gone insane (or possibly, as the Doctor later suggests, he's being controlled by the Krynoid). "The time has come," Chase says. "Animals have ruled this planet for millions of years. Now it is our turn." "What do you mean, your turn?" Scorby says. "You're one of us, Chase." But Sarah realizes the truth: "He's not. At least, not in his mind. You hate us, don't you? ... You want to see us all die." It's a chilling moment, beautifully underplayed by Tony Beckley as Chase.

The cliffhanger's a bit lame (the Doctor (who comes back) and company are trapped outside the mansion while the Krynoid looms over the house), but part six does a great job of selling the danger that the Krynoid poses: "By my reckoning you've got about fifteen minutes before the Krynoid reaches the point of primary germination... The Krynoid is about to eject hundreds of embryo pods. The whole planet will be doomed," the Doctor tells UNIT's Major Beresford (this story's Lethbridge-Stewart replacement). And meanwhile the Krynoid is causing all the surrounding vegetation to also become dangerous and attack humanity -- it's not quite clear how, but it's still very effective, as it smashes windows and grabs people as they try to run through the grounds. Scorby in particular has a memorable death, as he loses his nerve, runs through the grounds and is pulled under the waters of a pond by the ivy that lurks beneath.

Chase isn't quite done yet, as he kills a UNIT soldier with the composter and then plans the same fate for Sarah -- it's only the Doctor's last minute intervention that saves her. The composter also proves to be Chase's undoing, as he physically wrestles the Doctor inside the scoop part (for lack of a better term) but then is caught up by the grinders, screaming horrifically as he goes (although the subsequent shot of the moving grinder is surprisingly clean). "I tried to save him," the Doctor says with anguish. Then there's just enough time to get out of the place before UNIT(?) jets blow the whole place up with bombs, killing the Krynoid. The planet is safe, and the Doctor and Sarah head off for a well-deserved holiday -- only they end up in Antarctica because the Doctor forgot to cancel the coordinate programme in the TARDIS (suggesting he may have been planning to take the TARDIS to Antarctica before deciding to go by helicopter instead -- or you can treat it as a goof like everyone else does).

It fits squarely in this season's theme of going for a more scary approach (what's usually called "Gothic horror"), but the execution of The Seeds of Doom is, as has been observed before, rather atypical. The Doctor is certainly more hands-on in this story than in others, more willing to be aggressive and violent. But we also see a more desperate side of the Doctor -- especially in the later episodes -- that give this story an added impetus. Douglas Camfield does another fantastic job in his final directorial assignment for Doctor Who (and, pleasingly, he's learned from Terror of the Zygons, which featured another giant monster on location, by shooting all the outdoor scenes on video so that the CSO monster effects are significantly more effective), adding a real sense of menace and (sorry) doom to the proceedings. The slightly unusual approach this story takes means it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but it's very effective at what it sets out to do.

It's also the final story of season 13, a season which has set out to be much more terrifying than any season prior. It's not the somewhat bleak and heartless style of season 3 or the straight-up scary monster approach of season 5, but instead an effort to create a more visceral feeling for the show. Hinchcliffe and Holmes clearly want to make this show much more intense and adult than it's been before, and they do this partly by falling back on older tales that they know are effective and giving them a new spin, and partly by juxtaposing different scary elements to see what happens. Whether by accident or design, it's an undeniably effective approach, and it's notable that the only story this season not to really follow this pattern (The Android Invasion, which feels like it would have been perfectly at home during Barry Letts's tenure) sticks out like a sore thumb. Obviously it's an arguable point, but this is just about the scariest Doctor Who would ever get, consistently turning out purposefully terrifying stories. It won't last for long, as the show moves on to a harder, more SF approach next season, before undergoing a radical shift in season 15, but that makes this season special -- an effort to really push the boundaries of the show.