May 19: Inferno Episodes 5 & 6

I'm willing to bet that the high reputation Inferno enjoys rests squarely on the shoulders of these two episodes, because these are the two that see the parallel world destroyed.  This is taut, gripping television.  It's interesting to see how relatively defeatist the Doctor is in these episodes: there's no last minute plan to save the world, because it's already too late.  "The heat and the pressures'll continue to build up until the Earth dissolves in a fury of expanding gases, just as it was billions of years ago," he says.  When asked how long they've got, he replies, "Maybe a few weeks, maybe only a few days."  Which admittedly seems slightly odd (how is the bore hole much different from a volcano?), but in terms of the drama it's very effective.

These two episodes therefore see an increasing sense of tension and desperation as a plan is made not to save this Earth but the one the Doctor is from.  Remember, they're not as advanced with the drilling there, so the Doctor might be able to stop them from penetrating the Earth's crust.  But in order to do so they have to rewire the nuclear reactor and dodge the Primords that are roaming the complex.  And while these two episodes also have quite a few scenes of people arguing with each other, this time it feels like there's a point behind it, and even when the point isn't obvious it still drives home the futility of it all.  Or as Greg Sutton puts it: "It's marvellous, isn't it?  The world's going up in flame and they're still playing at toy soldiers!"

So the world's being destroyed (illustrated by lots of tremors and a pleasing red haze for the scenes outside) and the Primords are closing in -- so the main characters can't even stop to catch their breath without the threat of being rubbed in mutagenic slime and regressing into a savage ape-like creature (as we see happen to Benton at the end of episode 5).  But the most interesting thing is to watch how each character deals with the impending doomsday.  Sutton becomes a lot more dominant, probably because he knows he's got nothing to lose and therefore no reason to toe the party line.  Section Leader Shaw is practical yet increasingly insubordinate -- she's willing to help the Doctor but she has little patience remaining for her superior, the Brigade Leader.  Nicholas Courtney, however, is the standout performer of the group, as his Brigade Leader becomes increasingly cowardly and scared and therefore belligerent and bullying as a result, as if desperate to hold on to some shred of power, even if it's ultimately meaningless.

Elizabeth Shaw, Petra Williams, and Greg Sutton watch the world
end. (Inferno Episode 6) ©BBC

But it's the final moments that demonstrate clearly why this story was worth doing: power has finally been channeled to the TARDIS console, and after a brief confrontation the Doctor is free to escape if he can while the world (or at least this section of it) definitively ends, as a huge flow of lava heads towards the hut that they're all trapped in.  Here we have a world that clearly does end -- all the fascist stuff is there to add to the drama, but the real point of Inferno is to actually show what would happen if the world was going to end.  And by making it a parallel universe they can have their cake and eat it too -- they can be bleak and absolute with their ending (no last-minute saves here) and still have the show continue on next week.  It's the ultimate cliffhanger ending and, because of its finality, it's deeply satisfying as a result.

So there's still one more episode of Inferno to go.  How are they going to top these two?

May 18: Inferno Episodes 3 & 4

The Doctor has disappeared into a strange dimension -- "sideways in time", he says -- which is close to but not quite the same as the world he's just left.  All the characters seem to still be present, but they're all slightly different.  Yes, it's time for the "evil parallel universe" story.

To be fair, it's not like it's an unreasonable idea for a serial, and as it's the first time Doctor Who has done this type of story we can forgive them a bit of indulgence.  And unlike, say, every episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine involving Trek's "Mirror Universe", this isn't simply a chance for the regulars to indulge themselves by playing "bad" versions of themselves.  The parallel universe part of Inferno feels much more dangerous, because everyone's playing it so straight.

Starting by having an extended chase sequence where troops are all shooting at the Doctor as he zooms around the complex on Bessie is a good move; it immediately brings home the danger of this place.  There are lots of troops (well, it seems like there are, at least) and some great location shots of the Doctor high up on the gasometers.  (Oh, and incidentally, I was wrong last time; the world record fall happens in episode 3, not episode 1.  It's still Roy Scammell, though -- twice, in fact, as both the private who falls and the one who shoots him down.)  And then we get to see the people in this world: the Brigadier is now Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart, with an eyepatch and no moustache; Liz is now Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw, with black hair; and Sergeant Benton is Platoon Under-Leader Benton -- he still looks the same but is decidedly nastier as a person ("Are you coming with me quietly, or do I shoot you here and now?" Benton asks the Doctor at the end of episode 3, and it's quite clear which outcome Benton is hoping for).  Meanwhile, Professor Stahlman has become Director Stahlmann -- he's lost the facial hair but is still the same basic person.  The other main difference is that in this parallel world the drilling has been proceeding a bit quicker, so instead of being something like 40 hours away from penetrating the Earth's crust, this world is only a little over 3 hours away.

The Doctor is interrogated by the Republican Security Forces.
(Inferno Episode 4) ©BBC

It's got to be said, though, that these two episodes, much like the first two, consist largely of people rehashing the same points over and over again.  In episodes 1 and 2 it was everyone versus Stahlman; here it's everyone versus the Doctor, as the Brigade Leader tries over and over again to find out which foreign power the Doctor is working for and how he got onto the base in the first place.  They try demanding answers, then they try interrogation, then trying to be nice in an effort to get the truth out of the Doctor.  All the while, the Doctor is trying to convince the people at the base of the danger their project is causing; he repairs the computer so that it can warn them, as well as reasoning with everyone there repeatedly about the dangers (something, it must be said, he didn't seem as willing to do back in his own universe).  Needless to say, no one believes him, and episode 4 ends with Penetration Zero being reached as the drillhead starts making a really nasty noise, while the Doctor yells out, "That's the sound of this planet screaming out its rage!"  It's such a good cliffhanger that it's slightly surprising that the episode carries on a little bit longer, with Stahlmann holding a gun on the Doctor as the actual cliffhanger.

May 17: Inferno Episodes 1 & 2

Standard and special edition DVDs

So we've arrived at another scientific research base out in the middle of nowhere.  The Doctor and UNIT are already settled in at this project; this time it's about drilling deep into the Earth and penetrating the crust, thereby hoping to tap the vast pockets of Stahlman's gas down there.  How anyone knows this gas exists in the first place isn't brought up.  The man the gas is named after, Professor Eric Stahlman, is unashamedly the first mad scientist introduced in the Pertwee era.  Yes, we might cite Dr. Lawrence from Doctor Who and the Silurians as a mad scientist, but he's not remotely in the same league as Professor Stahlman.  Irritable from the get-go ("Our liver playing us up again this morning, is it, Professor?" the Doctor asks pointedly) and completely unwilling to consider the safety of anyone if it risks slowing down the rate of drilling, Stahlman comes across as pig-headed and dangerous at best.  There are no subtleties in Olaf Pooley's performance here: Stahlman is single-minded in his goal to penetrate the Earth's crust, no matter what the cost.

Of course, this causes a problem in that these first two episodes consist largely of various emergencies that Stahlman refuses to take seriously, and so several people argue unsuccessfully with him about slowing down or stopping the drilling, or at least taking some of the warnings seriously.  It works reasonably well in the first episode; after the second it starts to get a little tedious, as the Doctor, Sir Keith Gold (Christopher Benjamin, who'll return in The Talons of Weng-Chiang), and Greg Sutton (who played the caveman Za in An Unearthly Child) all try to get Stahlman to see reason -- or at least not endanger lives unnecessarily.

Still, it's not the only thing going on; there's also a subplot about a strange green goo⁵⁷ that turns anyone who touches it into a regressed ape-like creature (the credits call them "Primords") that emits intense heat and burns anyone and anything it touches.  This leads to some fairly brutal moments, as the first person to be infected, Harry Slocum, starts brutally murdering people (and note the blood spatter on his coveralls when he's inside the nuclear reactor control room).  Then two more people are infected (by Slocum, it seems, so either he smeared some of the green goo on himself or he can turn people into Primords à la werewolves), including a private who falls to his death (in what was at the time the highest fall ever performed by a British stuntman -- nice work, Roy Scammell).  And Professor Stahlman also ends up touching the goo -- not that you'd notice from his behavior, since he's already acting extremely irrational and territorial.  He even tries to sabotage the main computer when it starts warning that the whole place is in danger -- a scene which leads to Jon Pertwee's first use of what he calls here "Venusian karate"⁵⁸, in which a certain pressure point has the ability to paralyze a person (even if the actual effect is Pertwee grabbing someone in a non-dangerous (read: unable to be copied by children) hold).  Here it's used on Stahlman himself, although it doesn't stop him from ultimately destroying the microcircuit he removed from the computer.

The other subplot running through these first couple episodes consists of the Doctor trying to get the TARDIS console (still outside the TARDIS itself, as seen in the opening moments of The Ambassadors of Death) working again.  In episode 1 a power surge sends it and him through an interestingly directed but painful-looking realm that the Doctor later describes as "some sort of limbo", with a "barrier I couldn't break through."  Episode 2 sees him try again, but the power is cut off at a crucial moment and so the cliffhanger has the Doctor, the TARDIS console, and Bessie all dematerialize in front of Liz Shaw and the Brigadier...







⁵⁷ In reality a heavy duty hand cleaner known as Swarfega.
⁵⁸ Fandom tends to refer to it as "Venusian aikido", but this term isn't actually employed until The Green Death.

May 16: The Ambassadors of Death Episodes 6 & 7

The Doctor enters the alien spaceship. (The Ambassadors of
Death Episode 6) ©BBC

After spending so much of this story as a conspiracy thriller, with agents moving against our heroes for unknown reasons, episode 6 finally supplies some answers.  The Doctor is taken aboard a trippy alien spaceship, where the three human astronauts are waiting around, apparently under the belief they're watching a football match.  Soon the Doctor is confronted by an alien dressed like a mummy: "Why have you not returned our ambassadors?" the alien demands, finally explaining the title of the serial in the process.  "An agreement was made.  You have betrayed us.  Unless our ambassadors are returned, we shall destroy your world."

And down on planet Earth, tensions at Space HQ remain high.  "The American space agency are now preparing to launch an unmanned capsule to observe the unidentified object," says one of the technicians, glancing repeatedly at the camera every time she has a close-up.  When the Doctor finally returns, he refuses to tell anyone about what happened while in orbit until he's face-to-face with them -- which ends up being a problem when he's gassed by Reegan and taken back to where the ambassadors are being held.  General Carrington then insists, bizarrely, that the Doctor might have staged his kidnapping: "[The gas] could be a blind to make us think he'd been kidnapped."  He also states that they should blow the alien spaceship out of the skies, insisting it's their "moral duty".  "I think the General's a bit overwrought," the Brigadier comments.  "I think he's insane," Cornish replies, and it's growing increasingly harder to disagree with him.

And then no sooner is the Doctor brought back to consciousness in Reegan's bunker when General Carrington appears; it turns out he's Reegan's boss.  "You're not surprised to see me?" Carrington asks the Doctor.  "Not particularly, no," the Doctor replies.  Carrington then pulls a gun on the Doctor, ready to kill him and once again claiming it to be his "moral duty".

It's only Reegan's insistence that the Doctor could still be useful, combined with the Doctor's sweet-talking of Carrington, that saves the Doctor's life.  Carrington's rabidly xenophobic plan, and his reasoning behind it, are finally revealed: when Carrington was on Mars Probe 6, they made contact with the aliens, and one of the aliens accidentally killed his fellow astronaut Jim Daniels (an incident which apparently escaped the attention of anyone in the British space programme).  Now Carrington intends to unmask one of the ambassadors on live television as a pretext for declaring war on the aliens, to prevent, in his eyes, an alien invasion of Earth.

General Carrington places the Brigadier under arrest. (The
Ambassadors of Death Episode 7) ©BBC

Carrington's plan gets pretty far too; he arrests all of the UNIT troops, including the Brigadier himself, and brings one of the ambassadors to the Space Centre, ready to unmask him and cause a world panic.  Fortunately the Brigadier escapes, rounds up his few remaining troops, and heads off to rescue the Doctor (thanks to an SOS signal the Doctor's been transmitting).  There's a rather limp battle (certainly not up to the standards of the fights in episodes 1 and 2), and then the Brigadier bursts into the bunker to rescue the Doctor.  "What kept you?" the Doctor asks ungratefully.  Fortunately Reegan isn't killed in the battle; he's become so charmingly slimy that you do root for him a little, and so it's good to see him survive.  He's also the one to suggest taking the two remaining ambassadors to Space HQ to stop Carrington's broadcast.  And that's in fact what UNIT does, thus stopping Carrington and therefore saving the Earth by freeing the ambassadors.  Touchingly, the Doctor allows Carrington to keep his dignity as he's led away.  "I had to do what I did.  It was my moral duty.  You do understand, don't you?" Carrington asks the Doctor.  "Yes, General.  I understand," the Doctor replies, and it sounds like he really does.

So that's two Earthbound stories in a row that aren't about mad scientists or alien invasions -- in fact, this is a story about a friendly alien encounter gone wrong because of narrow-minded humans, rather than about alien monsters come to enslave us all.  In that sense it turns the idea of an alien invasion on its head, with the aliens among us explicitly identified as ambassadors, with all the connotations of the word, and it's only the actions of one xenophobic man that lead to the derailment of an official first contact between these aliens and humanity (even if, admittedly, this element is pretty far down in the mix, with lots of action sequences and standard thriller moments given more prominence).  The Ambassadors of Death is another success: an exciting, well-paced thriller with space travel, action-packed battles, and lots of memorable images.

So that's two seven-part stories in a row that have more than justified their length.  Can the production team keep it up?

May 15: The Ambassadors of Death Episodes 4 & 5

The conspiracy thriller vibe continues with these two episodes.  Episode 4 has Liz Shaw helping the people who kidnapped the astronauts, but under duress.  She also gets a subplot of pure padding, as she escapes for five minutes only to be brought right back, with virtually no consequences or changes to the status quo.  Actually, that sort of describes this episode -- there's a lot of treading water and little plot advancement.  But it's to its credit that you don't really notice this while you're watching, since the wheel-spinning is reasonably exciting.  Really, the main things that happen are that Liz starts working for the enemy and Taltalian blows himself up while trying to kill the Doctor.  (Though, to be fair, that's because Reegan, the astronauts' kidnapper, changed the timer on the bomb to zero; it's not because Taltalian is clumsy or inept.)  All right, there's also some stuff with General Carrington trying to convince the Doctor and the Brigadier that the bodies found in the quarry (you know, Reegan's henchmen) were foreign agents kidnapping the astronauts, but the Doctor doesn't appear to believe a word of it and so therefore neither do we.

An astronaut advances on the Doctor as he checks Quinlan for
signs of life. (The Ambassadors of Death Episode 4) ©BBC

At the end of the episode, though, there's a great action sequence as one of the astronauts rampages through the Space Centre, killing both soldiers and Sir James Quinlan with a touch⁵⁶ and destroying presumably important documents inside Quinlan's safe.  There's some great direction here too, with the astronaut framed against the sun as it stalks toward the gate.  (And side note to retract a comment last time about color recovery being a bit rough; episode 4 is entirely color recovered and it looks very impressive -- probably more so than episode 5, which is entirely color restored with an off-air copy.  Seriously, look at that picture there.  That color was pulled off a black-and-white film print.  Tell me that isn't incredibly cool.)

Episode 4 ended with the Doctor discovering Quinlan's body, unaware of the astronaut behind him, and he's only saved at the last moment by the Brigadier entering the room.  But there's nothing anyone can do about the astronaut, so the Doctor continues to help prepare Recovery 7 for another launch to check on the missing people still believed to be in orbit.  Carrington continues to be obstructive but offers no real reasons for doing so -- we know he has some ulterior motive, we just don't know what it is.  But Liz manages to convince Dr. Lennox to leave and tell UNIT about the astronauts -- and we also see the return of Benton (last seen in The Invasion), now a sergeant.  Unfortunately, Reegan's boss has men everywhere, so Dr. Lennox is served a fatal meal of an unshielded radioactive isotope.

But the real drama is the sabotage of the launch by Reegan, who pumps too much of the unstable fuel into the rocket (the M-3 varient [sic]), thus sending the Doctor into space far too quickly.  This was the episode transmitted immediately after the Apollo 13 disaster (the splashdown happened the day before), which apparently lent this moment an extra frisson of danger for the viewing audience -- and as it's reasonably tense even without real world events, this must have been quite a thrill.  But fortunately the Doctor makes it into orbit safely and links up with Mars Probe 7 -- only to see a large UFO out the window...







⁵⁶ Well, except that the thing everyone notices is that the guard who's "killed" at the gate in episode 4 appears to be alive and back at his post in episode 6, so the astronauts' touch might not always be fatal.  Of course, this is the same story that keeps killing Derek Ware, so maybe we shouldn't read too much into it.

May 14: The Ambassadors of Death Episodes 2 & 3

To digress for a minute: while The Ambassadors of Death Episode 1 is the earliest episode of Doctor Who to still survive on the original tape, we don't have another episode still on videotape until episode 1 of The Claws of Axos.  So that means that the remainder of this story is, like Doctor Who and the Silurians, recolorized.  Now, there is, like The Silurians, an off-air NTSC color copy of this serial -- unfortunately it suffers from a rainbow patterning fault through large portions of the broadcast (you can see an example of this from episode 4 here), rendering the color useless.  But it turns out that the color signal is still present on the 16mm black & white film telerecordings in the form of a chroma dot pattern, and, in what is seriously one of the coolest things ever, people have worked out how to recover the color based on those chroma dot patterns.  It's a little rough at times, but given that this color comes from a b&w film print, it's still very impressive.  The remainder of The Ambassadors of Death is therefore a mixture between color restoration (as on The Silurians) and color recovery.

Recovery 7 is loaded onto a trailer to take back to Space
Control. (The Ambassadors of Death Episode 2) ©BBC

But back to the actual story.  We continue the thriller feel established in episode 1, with Recovery 7 unexpectedly returning back to Earth, despite the loss of radio communications.  Although the spacecraft returns successfully, its transportation back to Space Control is interrupted by a successful attempt to hijack the trailer containing Recovery 7.  This is quite the battle scene, with lots of guns, explosions, trucks, motorcycles -- even a helicopter!  Oh, and note the blue background in some of the shots inside the trailer cab: this will become relevant when we get to The Claws of Axos.

But the thieves are successful in capturing the spacecraft, only for the Doctor to recapture it using his wits and a bit of technical wizardry (aka a plot convenience), and return it to Space Control.  Only problem is, the astronauts refuse to come out, instead repeating the same sentences over and over again, so Space Control is forced to cut the capsule open.

Episode 3 reveals that the capsule is empty; apparently a bogus security check allowed the thieves from earlier to take the astronauts away.  The atmosphere that this serial is generating means that this is moving into conspiracy thriller territory.  And there's another problem: the inside of the capsule is highly radioactive, so how can the astronauts still be alive?  But then, in a twist, we learn that the man who's been orchestrating the kidnapping is in fact a general and former astronaut named Carrington, who's been operating with the approval of the British government.  Allegedly.  The Doctor doesn't seem entirely convinced, and when it turns out that the astronauts have been kidnapped by a third party, we see Carrington and Sir James Quinlan (representing the government) still involved in some sort of cover-up which is obstructing the actions of Space Control, who intend to send another spacecraft up to Mars Probe 7 based on the Doctor's belief that the astronauts are still up there, and that "I don't know what came down in Recovery 7, but it certainly wasn't human."

And it seems that the Doctor and Liz are getting in the way, and so that third party is instructed to take them out of the picture, which leads to sending Liz off on a wild goose chase that results in her being chased by some goons out onto a slippery weir...

May 13: Doctor Who and the Silurians Episode 7 / The Ambassadors of Death Episode 1

Episode 7 is a bit less morally complex than the other episodes.  The cure has been found, the Doctor has been taken into the Silurians' base (merely incapacitated, not killed by the Silurians), and a scheme is hatched by the Silurians to destroy the part of the atmosphere that keeps things cool (Liz Shaw says they want to destroy the Van Allen belt, but we'll assume she misspoke and meant the ozone layer).  The Silurians hope to kill off humanity and make the planet more habitable for them at the same time.  This also leads to the wonderful juxtaposition of seeing the Silurians inside the Wenley Moor research facility, menacing the scientists and setting up their molecular disperser.  But thanks to some quick thinking from the Doctor, the reactor goes into overload (fun fact: dropping all the fuel rods into the reactor at once will only lead to a slow-building overload rather than an instant catastrophic explosion -- well, maybe things are designed differently in the Doctor Who universe) and the Silurians decide to go back into hibernation before the whole place becomes radioactive.  Fortunately, you can rewire a console to prevent a nuclear meltdown (fun fact #2), so the place is saved.

The Doctor watches as the Brigadier blows up the Silurians' base.
(Doctor Who and the Silurians Episode 7) ©BBC

But then the Doctor wants to go back and talk to the Silurians again: "One at a time, so that we can reason with them.  There's a wealth of scientific knowledge down here, Brigadier, and I can't wait to get started on it."  This alarms the Brigadier (and, presumably, the government as well), so as the Doctor leaves to gather equipment and scientists, the Brigadier wires the place with explosives and blows it up -- much to the appallment of the Doctor.  "But that's murder.  They were intelligent alien beings.  A whole race of them.  And he's just wiped them out."

Doctor Who and the Silurians is a pleasingly nuanced and complex story.  Malcolm Hulke's aforementioned complaint about only having mad scientists and alien invasion stories available to the series has been sidestepped by Hulke himself with a lovely "what if?" serial about prior inhabitants of the planet.  There are also some nice morally ambiguous puzzles: do the Silurians have any right to the planet still?  Is there a way to coexist peacefully?  Could humanity -- who aren't averse to killing each other over squabbles, never mind a completely different intelligent species -- actually accept the presence of Silurians?  And then laid over this is an engaging story about reptile men and their effect on people; in other words, something for everyone to enjoy, not just those willing to engage with the philosophical questions.  In this regard, Doctor Who and the Silurians is one of the most adult (in the positive sense of the word, as opposed to the Torchwood meaning) stories the series has yet produced.  More like this, please.

But now we move on to another seven-part story with The Ambassadors of Death.  This is the earliest episode of Doctor Who to exist on its original 2" Quad tape, rather than on a 16mm film telerecording -- so you can get some idea of what the picture quality of these episodes originally was.

This one opens a bit differently: we get the Doctor Who title sequence and then we start the episode, as the basic set-up is laid out (spaceship Recovery 7 is trying to link up with Mars Probe 7, because "something took off from Mars"), and, with the first use of the "sting", normally associated with the end credits, we get the title: "The Ambassadors", followed a beat later by "OF DEATH", appearing with a sproing.

Other than that what we have is the makings of a good thriller.  There's trouble afoot with the two spacecrafts' link-up, and a strange message is transmitted to Earth -- only to have a reply sent back from somewhere in London.  As the team at Space Control try to regain contact with Recovery 7, UNIT heads to an abandoned warehouse to find out who sent that signal.  We get a really exciting fight scene as UNIT has a pitched gun battle with whoever is sending that reply.  And great fun can be had spotting all the doubling-up of stuntmen: Derek Ware in particular shows up repeatedly on both sides, killed multiple times.

While that's going on, the Doctor is trying to translate the alien message.  When he goes to use the computers, Space Control's computer expert Dr. Bruno Taltalian pulls a gun on the Doctor and Liz.  And then finally, in its proper place, we get that glissando-like "sting" that will signify the start of the end credits for the rest of the show's run.  Hard to believe we got through six seasons without that.