May 3: The War Games Episodes One & Two

The good news is that now we have video for every remaining episode: with The Space Pirates we leave behind not just the series' brief flirtation with putting titles in quotation marks (or inverted commas, if you prefer) but also the missing episodes.  Video from here on out (even if there are occasionally problems with the colors, but we'll discuss that when we get there).

Random observation: the picture of Troughton on this DVD
is almost but not quite the exact same photo as on the cover
of the CD of The Space Pirates.

The bad news is that The War Games is Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, and Wendy Padbury's final story.  It had been announced that Troughton was leaving during transmission of The Krotons, but now we've reached the end.  Well, sort of; the fact remains that this is the either the second- or third-longest serial (depending on how you count The Trial of a Time Lord) in Doctor Who's history.  So we're not quite at the end yet.

Episode one is actually a pretty bleak affair.  The TARDIS arrives in 1917 in No Man's Land, where they're almost immediately fired upon -- though not specifically aimed at them, it would seem.  They've arrived in the middle of World War I, and the episode is designed to make it clear just how horrible that war was.  The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe are treated as spies by the British soldiers and court-martialled with only a thin veneer of a fair trial.  The Doctor, it seems, can defeat anything except the closed military mind.

Except things aren't exactly as they seem; a number of the people we see have difficulty remembering where they've come from or how long they've been near the front, and there's the curiousness of General Smythe, who not only has the power to hypnotize people by putting on a pair of glasses but also has a video screen in his room in 1917 France.  But despite these slight oddities, this is treated as a straight historical story, full of brutality and irrationality, and as the Doctor is tied to a post before a firing squad, you get the sense that the real issue is everyone's blind obedience of orders.

Episode two starts to highlight the oddities.  It begins when the Doctor is rescued by someone who appears to be dressed in an American Civil War uniform, sniping at the British soldiers.  We also get a strange machine that fades into view and carries General Smythe off somewhere -- it sort of sounds like a TARDIS when it appears, but then the door makes the "Dalek door" sound when it opens, so maybe we shouldn't read too much into these things.  And Jamie, convicted of being a deserter, is in the military prison when he's joined by a Redcoat from 1745...

But Lieutenant Carstairs and Lady Jennifer, both of whom met the TARDIS crew in No Man's Land, start to have doubts about how the court-martial was carried out.  This means that, while the regulars are still fighting the bureaucracy and dominance of the General's orders, they have some allies on the inside.  The anachronism of the video screen is highlighted, and we see General Smythe somewhere with a man wearing strange glasses looking through the viewscreen at the Doctor and company.  It's enough to convince Carstairs and Lady Jennifer to help them out, and so they drive away from the chateau and into a strange mist, on the other side of which is a Roman legion...

May 2: "The Space Pirates" Episodes Five & Six

Episode five sees things coming to a head: the Space Corps finally start to work out that Clancy has nothing to do with the space pirates and that the beacon sections found floating around Lobos were originally headed toward Ta, while our heroes are locked up in a disused office that used to belong to Dom Issigri, Madeline's father.  And Caven's getting ready to take some proactive action to frame Clancy for the piracy (in case the beacon pieces floating around Lobos aren't sufficient).  And Madeline Issigri starts to seriously doubt her alliance with Caven once the subject of murder comes up.

Cover of the 1990 Target novelization.
(From On Target - The Space Pirates)

And it turns out that Dom Issigri is alive and, well, not exactly well, as he's been Caven's prisoner for the last few years, but reasonably healthy.  So they all hatch a plan to escape (with a lovely interchange between Jamie and the Doctor: "It's not an audio lock, is it?" Jamie asks, referring to the lock on their door in episode four.  Once the Doctor tells him it isn't, Jamie replies, "Och, that's a relief," to which the Doctor responds rather drily, "Jamie, I don't think you appreciate all I do for you") and warn the Space Corps about the pirates (I think?  The motivation's a bit hazy here).  Only Caven has sabotaged LIZ 79...

Episode six, somewhat worryingly, may actually be as dull as this story's reputation claims the whole thing is.  "Worryingly" because this is the final episode and you'd think this would be where all the action is.  But what we get is some shenanigans with Milo and Dom in LIZ 79 while Caven tries to escape the clutches of the Space Corps.  (Spoiler: he dies in the attempt.)  And there's some stuff with Caven rigging up the atomic power plant to explode and destroy basically everything on Ta, which seems like it should be tense but just ends up being the Doctor working at a bunch of wiring for what feels like far too long.  And the whole thing weirdly⁴⁷ ends like an episode of Star Trek, with a lame joke and a bunch of laughter.

The Space Pirates has a reputation for being a deathly dull story, and that doesn't seem fair.  The primary issue is that's awfully dull to listen to -- but it was probably quite entertaining to actually watch.  There are a number of action sequences: we can't judge how they looked since the surviving episode doesn't have any (and Michael Hart never directed any other episodes of Doctor Who for us to make a comparison with -- he did do some other things, like Z-Cars⁴⁸, but I've never seen them), but there's no reason to believe they weren't at least competently done.  Certainly the model sequences we can see look pretty good.  The only worry is that some of the performances might let things down; I've already mentioned Donald Gee's uncomfortably self-conscious portrayal of Major Warne, but Gordon Gostelow's Milo Clancy is so broad that it might have come across as parody.  It's hard to tell.  This, much like The Celestial Toymaker or The Savages, is a story we really need to see in order to properly evaluate it; what we have simply isn't sufficient to get a good grasp on.







⁴⁷ It's weird because a) it's very much out of keeping with how Doctor Who typically ends -- especially with the somewhat forced laughter; and b) despite how much it resembles an ending to a Star Trek episode, no one in Britain will actually see that show for another three months, as Star Trek first aired as the summer replacement show for Doctor Who while it was between seasons 6 and 7.
⁴⁸ Remember, it's a British show, so it's pronounced "Zed-Cars".

May 1: "The Space Pirates" Episodes Three & Four

You get the impression, listening to these episodes, that they would have been reasonably exciting to watch.  There are space battles (well, a space chase, but there are copper needles involved) and laser shootouts in what were likely semi-gloomy tunnels.  But these come across as less exciting when all you can do is listen, sadly.  Still, there are some nice moments, such as Clancy getting the better of Major Warne via the aforementioned cloud of copper needles, which is oddly satisfying.  Although that might be because I've apparently taken an irrational dislike to Major Warne and thus overly enjoy hearing him receive his comeuppance (it might be the accent).

The Space Corps in general is rather thick, though.  Maybe it's because it's been fairly clearly signposted that Clancy is not in league with the pirates, but their continual efforts to catch him out and arrest him based on basically no evidence whatsoever is somewhat tedious, albeit occasionally laughably so.  Of course, when the Doctor briefly suspects Clancy as also being a pirate in episode four, you start to wonder if maybe Gordon Gostelow is doing such a good job of playing Milo as a harmless old coot that he's inadvertently sabotaging the script's intentions.

But we do get some actual pirate action in these two episodes, as Caven and his deputy Dervish scheme to implicate Clancy in the piracy by redirecting some of the stolen beacon pieces to Clancy's base on Lobos.  The pirates are actually based on Ta, the same planet as the Issigri Mining Corporation, and have been using the old mining tunnels to break down the station pieces.  And Clancy has also decided to lay low on Ta, reasoning that the Space Corps will never look for him on his rival's world.  Which means, conveniently, that the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe can become embroiled in the pirates' dealings.

So as I mentioned before, these seem like pretty visual episodes -- they're not completely devoid of interesting dialogue (in particular, Clancy's riff on Zoe's "Here's what I don't understand" comment is quite welcome), but one suspects they would have been better to see than to hear.

April 30: "The Space Pirates" Episodes One & Two

It's been a while, but we've now reached another missing story.  Still, at least this is the last one; everything after The Space Pirates exists in one form or another.  But on the downside, all we have of The Space Pirates is one episode, a handful of clips from episode one, and the soundtracks; no telesnaps were ever taken of this story.

This is particularly unfortunate because, on the basis of the first episode at least, a lot of the appeal of this story was visual.  It seems there was a lot of effects work going on, and those clips mentioned earlier are pretty impressive indeed.  But on the audio it's just a bunch of sound effects while Frazer Hines explains what's going on.  And when we do get dialogue, most of it is basically exposition, telling us what's going on and why.  This may be Robert Holmes's second script, but his flair for dialogue hasn't shown up yet.  Of course, as this story was written in a hurry to replace another script⁴⁵, it may not be too fair to criticize.

Still, there's a lot of set-up going on with exciting model shots that we can't really see.  And this episode held, until 2011, the dubious distinction of running the longest amount of time before the Doctor appears (with the exception of "Mission to the Unknown", in which he doesn't show up at all).⁴⁶  And when he does show up, he, Jamie, and Zoe get shot at and sealed inside a small room on one of the beacons being blown to pieces.  So it's not the most exciting time.  But everything else was probably all right, as the space pirates break up some beacons to salvage the precious argonite that they're made of, so maybe we shouldn't be too hard on it.

Madeline Issigri offers General Hermack any help she can give.
(The Space Pirates Episode Two) ©BBC

Episode two is the existing episode, so we can actually see what's going on.  Although almost nothing can prepare you for the sight of Technician Penn's haircut and moustache on what appears to be a military vessel (and then combine it with the hairstyles of General Hermack and Major Warne, none of which appear to belong with each other -- and we haven't even mentioned Madeline Issigri's metal beehive yet).  Still, at least we can see things, so we can see how clearly awkward Donald Gee feels in the role of Major Warne (maybe having to give a cod-American accent is throwing him off).  And we get our first look at Milo Clancy, space pioneer, who adds a bit of color (you know what I mean) to a rather stiff ensemble on Hermack's V41-LO.  Clancy's apparently also been having problems with people stealing argonite, which naturally leads Hermack to suspect Clancy as the ringleader of the pirates.  Er, yes...

Meanwhile, the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe are still locked inside a tiny room, and the air is running out.  And that's their entire storyline so far.  Honestly, you'd think this was a sixth Doctor plot, the way the regulars are being kept from the action.  Though at the very end Milo Clancy bursts in and guns down Jamie, so there's that.  Which, come to think of it, also feels like an incident in a Colin Baker story.







⁴⁵ According to Howe-Stammers-Walker in The Handbook: The Second Doctor, this was The Dream Spinner by Paul Wheeler -- although the website Doctor Who: A Brief History of Time (Travel) says that The Dreamspinner [sic] was supposed to be the fourth story of season 6, and when it fell through The Invasion was extended to eight episodes.  In any event, given the problems with The Dream Spinner, The Prison in Space, and The Laird of McCrimmon all falling through, you can see why this story had to be written in a hurry.  And we're not done yet; we'll pick this up again when we get to The War Games.
⁴⁶ The new record-holder at the time of writing is 2011's "A Good Man Goes to War".

April 29: The Seeds of Death Episodes Five & Six

When we last left Zoe, she was about to be gunned down by an Ice Warrior.  Fortunately Fewsham, at the start of the episode, leaps to her defense, struggling with the Ice Warrior to stop its weapon from being brought to bear.  And what does Zoe do during this struggle?  Just stands there and watches it happen -- doesn't run for cover or try to help Fewsham.  Just stands there.  So when Fewsham is knocked aside and the Ice Warrior redirects its attention toward Zoe, I was half rooting for the Warrior to shoot her.  And I like Zoe.  But man is she dumb in those first minutes of episode five.  It's only the extreme heat knocking out the Ice Warrior that saves her.

And then we move into a new stage for this story.  The Doctor returns to Earth to help solve the problem of the alien blight, while the Ice Warrior who T-Matted down last week is still at large.  "The last sighting was by the Weather Control Bureau there," Professor Eldred states, while pointing at a position on the map different from the one clearly labeled "Weather Control".  But the Doctor discovers that the seed pods are easily destroyed by water -- not quite on the level of the mind-bogglingly stupid alien invasion in the movie Signs, but in the same ballpark.  Still, this does explain why the Ice Warrior headed to Weather Control -- to stop the rain from falling.  So Jamie and Zoe head to Weather Control to make it rain, and the Doctor follows after, venturing through an epic amount of foam (it's almost up to his neck in places) on his way to the door, which is naturally locked.  And there's a seed pod swelling just by the door as well.

The Doctor tells Slaar the Martian fleet is heading into the sun.
(The Seeds of Death Episode Six) ©BBC

Episode six gives us the actual invasion part: once the Earth has been softened up by the seed pods, the Martian fleet will arrive and mop up any resistance.  So Slaar, the leader of the Ice Warriors, makes contact with the Grand Marshal to confirm flight plans.  Having the Grand Marshal not hissing his sibilants in his own atmosphere is a nice touch; giving him sequins and a star filter less so.  But we're into the final episode of this story, so the Doctor works out a plan to trick the Martian fleet into heading toward the sun instead of the moon.  Once the Ice Warriors are doomed and the fungus is being defeated on Earth, the Doctor informs Slaar of what's really been going on.  Slaar angrily tells his fellow Ice Warrior to kill the Doctor, who looks ready to accept his fate -- it's only the timely intervention of Jamie that saves him.  But what's more interesting is how readily the Doctor resorts to violence in this episode, from shooting down a couple Ice Warriors with his portable solar energy emitter to sending an entire fleet into the sun.  Given how we've already seen that the Ice Warriors are intelligent beings that the Doctor seems perfectly happy to kill, it's a bit bloodthirsty.  And to be fair, the script does seem aware of this: "You have destroyed our entire fleet!" Slaar cries.  "You tried to destroy an entire world," the Doctor replies coolly in what appears to be Brian Hayles' (or more likely Terrance Dicks') post hoc justification of his actions.  But it's still rather odd.

The Seeds of Death is Troughton's final "monster" story, one that's part "base under siege" and part "alien invasion".  What's interesting is how each episode seems to introduce a distinct phase of the story: episode one outlines the takeover of the moon base, episode two is about the rocket's journey...  It's not like, say, The Web of Fear, where each episode builds on the previous one but we get the same basic story for most of the six episodes; here instead we get a new emphasis with every installment.  It's a nice change and it certainly keeps things engaging.  Add in some striking direction from Michael Ferguson and we get a solid "monster" story that's sufficiently different from season 5's offerings to stand out on its own.  It's not without its flaws, but the positives outweigh the drawbacks, leaving us an entertaining serial.

April 28: The Seeds of Death Episodes Three & Four

Episode three is when things start going.  Once the rocket lands on the moon, the action shifts to avoiding the Ice Warriors in the moon base while trying to stop them.  Except that doesn't work too well; the Doctor is spotted and avoids death by proclaiming to the Ice Warriors that "Your leader will be angry if you kill me; I'm a genius."  Except he tells them this not self-importantly but with a sense of resignation, which is a wonderful touch from Troughton.  And meanwhile the T-Mat link from the Earth to the moon has been temporarily fixed, so Miss Kelly has gone up to make more extensive repairs, not knowing that this is what the Ice Warriors want (or even that they're there at all).  It's only when the repairs are completed that the Ice Warriors reveal themselves to Miss Kelly and her team.

Once the Doctor is captured, he's brought to the control room, where he talks with Fewsham, the person who's helping the Ice Warriors because he desperately doesn't want to die.  He doesn't convince Fewsham to stop helping the Martians, but he does learn what the seeds of death are, when one of them explodes in his face -- although (probably because of his alien biology) he's only knocked out instead of killed.  And now that T-Mat's ready, the Ice Warriors can start sending these seeds around the world.

An Ice Warrior strides through the seed pod-created foam on
Earth. (The Seeds of Death Episode Four) ©BBC

Episode four maintains the sense of action, even as things move from being a claustrophobic incursion on the moon to a larger-scale invasion of Earth.  Once the seeds arrive, they start propagating quickly, leading to foam-covered exteriors as the planet is attacked by this strange blight.  An Ice Warrior T-Mats down to Earth to enact the second part of the Ice Warriors' plan, which means we get sequences of an Ice Warrior striding menacingly across the countryside, looking quite out-of-place.  This means that these sequences are quite striking, and because they haven't been repeated as often as the "St. Paul's steps" sequence from The Invasion, they retain their power of juxtaposing the familiar with the alien.

And back on the moon, Jamie, Zoe, Miss Kelly, and a technician named Phipps, who's been stuck on the moon hiding from the Ice Warriors since the crisis began, devise a plan to turn up the heating in the base, since the Ice Warriors are adapted to a cold climate and heat should be intolerable to them.  This leads to a sequence where, after making their way through the ventilation system, Zoe sneaks across the control room to where the heating control is in a most unsneaky fashion -- she doesn't get down on her hands and knees or dodge from cover to cover, but she instead tiptoes across the room, turns the heat up, and then starts to "sneak" back the same way.  And when an Ice Warrior finally spots her and trains its weapon on her, she stands there yelling at Fewsham to help her rather than, you know, running for cover or doing something useful.  Ah well, I guess you can't win them all.

April 27: The Seeds of Death Episodes One & Two

We're on the moon!  In the future!  With instantaneous transportation devices (called T-Mat) that are being run from the moon!   But it doesn't take long (in terms of the episode) for someone to arrive on the moon and mess things up.  And here we get some more first-person shots of the currently unseen menace, threatening the people on the moon with death unless they obey.  These shots aren't quite as wonderful as the ones in The Krotons were because there's no gun constantly in view, but it's still an interesting choice.

We're also treated to Troughton in shirtsleeves inside the TARDIS, as he works out that they've landed inside a space museum.  Two things are immediately apparent: 1) Troughton's shirt is really impressively baggy; 2) He has short sleeves by virtue of having hacked off the ends of the sleeves, rather than rolling them up or just having a short sleeve shirt.

But yes, there's trouble on the moon, and only one man can help before those troubles threaten the entire world (since food and medicine can't be T-Matted across the globe): the owner of that space museum, who's also the only person left on the planet with a working rocket.  And while the controller of T-Mat, Commander Julian Radnor, tries to convince Professor Daniel Eldred, the museum/rocket owner, to help them, the audience learns that the moon has in fact been invaded by Ice Warriors!

Episode two is a little different in tone: the Ice Warriors are on the moon trying to cow the technicians there into fixing T-Mat for their own purposes, while the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe are being readied to crew this rocket to the moon.  It's interesting seeing the dynamic between Zoe, who's clearly familiar with space travel and all the experiences and risks it entails, and Jamie, who's clearly out of his depth but is determined not to be left behind.  It makes for much more entertaining viewing, it must be said, than Jamie and Victoria's interactions ever were.

But episode two is about preparing for this journey into space and then what that flight will entail; remember, this went out in early 1969, so audiences were used to news stories and shows about this anticipation and what space travel would realistically be like.  Obviously we're in the future, so some of the verisimilitude has been sacrificed in favor of ease ("Switching to automatic gravity control now," Zoe says so that they don't have to simulate weightlessness), but there's still a gesture toward doing things properly.  Of course, we also get the wonderful pop-art sequence at mission control in preparation for lift-off, with everything initially viewed through a circular cutout, and then as Miss Kelly does the countdown the numbers are illuminated on her face in reverse.  It's quite striking -- no wonder it's a clip that tends to get a lot of use in Doctor Who retrospectives and the like.

But disaster strikes, and the rocket loses their homing signal to the moon -- which means there's a real danger that they'll drift off into eternity forever.  And more importantly: it's been two episodes and we still have no idea what the name of the serial means.  Just what are the seeds of death?