May 21: Terror of the Autons Episodes Two & Three

The Master invites McDermott to try one of the new plastic
chairs. (Terror of the Autons Episode Two) ©BBC

The hyperactive editing continues.  But if the first episode is focused more on introducing all the new characters, this one is focused on defining all the ways plastic is made dangerous in the hands of the Master and his allies the Nestene.  This means that we jump from plastic chairs smothering their occupants to hideous troll dolls strangling people to policemen who are really Autons in disguise (this last part supposedly getting writer Robert Holmes into a bit of trouble with the real police). And we also cut from location to location, with the UNIT lab, the plastics factory, Farrel Senior's home, and a circus all on prominent display.

The storyline itself isn't incredibly exciting -- it's all about the Master's efforts to kill the Doctor and anyone who gets in his way -- but the sense of energy engendered by both the edits and the performances more than makes up for this.  It moves at such a clip, in fact, that it's only in retrospect that you think how odd it is to have a story that takes place at both a plastics factory and a circus -- although the link such a pairing creates is rather tantalizing as one tries to work out what these two settings have in common.  As I said last time, this feels like a comic book with all the extraneous bits stripped out in favor of getting to the absolutely necessary/exciting stuff.  It should also be said that this energetic, comic-book-like feel is helped by the quite lurid color palette on display (an effect which might be exacerbated by the color restoration process, but I rather doubt it -- note how the title sequence appears to have been tinted magenta for this story).

Episode three continues in this vein.  We've got a fight in a quarry (with an impressive tumble from Terry Walsh as he's hit by a car), sinister Autons in giant smiling masks handing out plastic daffodils (shown to be dangerous even if we don't know how yet), the return of the killer troll doll, and an extra-long killer telephone cord installed by a telephone engineer who turns out to be the Master in disguise.  Against that we get an outrageous scene where the Doctor chews out a rather combative civil servant, threatening to mention him to his boss at "the club", before both parties end up looking rather sheepish about the whole thing, and Mike Yates trying to make cocoa for himself and Jo in the Doctor's lab.  It must be said, Richard Franklin as Mike Yates looks rather uncomfortable for most of this story, when he's called upon to do anything more than take orders from the Brigadier.

And finally we should note Dudley Simpson's score.  It sounds like he's been asked to deliver a purely synthesized score, which veers from quite effective (the theme that the Master gets, for instance) to weirdly intrusive (as with the bit where the Doctor and Jo hide from the Autons in the quarry).  It's not the first time he's done a score like this (Fury from the Deep features a similar approach to the music), but in this case the combination of the non-organic music and the previously-discussed visual style means that this, too, contributes to the non-natural feel of the serial.  This is a case where all the pieces are working together towards the same goal.  We'll have to see how it finishes up in the final episode.