June 30: Invasion Part One / Invasion of the Dinosaurs Part Two

Here's the second (and final) exception to the "everything exists on PAL tape" fact: Invasion Part One only exists as a 16mm black & white film print, and while color recovery was attempted, the results weren't great; apparently only the red and green signals could be recovered, not the blue.  The blue was approximated, but the results (which can be seen as an alternate viewing choice on the DVD) aren't great; you can see why the default version of this episode is a cleaned-up copy of the b&w print.  Still, some color is better than none, and let's not forget: they're pulling color off a black & white film.  Seriously, color recovery is just so cool.

So that's the first thing to note about part one.  The second thing to note is the title.  In an effort to hide the surprise appearance of dinosaurs, this first installment is called simply Invasion.  Except the surprise had already been ruined by that week's Radio Times listings, as well as by the Radio Times Doctor Who Special back in November 1973 (which had a preview of the then upcoming season 11), so it's not really that much of a shock when a pterodactyl shows up halfway through.

The opening scenes are really nicely done though; there's a sense of desolation and neglect here, giving us the impression that London really has been deserted.  It's also nice how they continue this feeling throughout most of the first episode, and even occasional encounters with other people have a sense of society having broken down -- it's almost an apocalyptic feel, in a way.  And that shot of the pterodactyl trying to bite the Doctor is pretty well done as well -- even if the shot of it flying is less successful.

But despite being attacked by a prehistoric reptile, the Doctor and Sarah are still uncertain as to the nature of the emergency that's gripped central London, and none of the authorities they've encountered will tell them anything, content instead to lock them up for looting.  But as they're being driven away, a (somewhat sad-looking) Tyrannosaurus appears...

Butler and Professor Whitaker listen to Mike Yates's warnings
about the Doctor. (Invasion of the Dinosaurs Part Two) ©BBC

The mood in part two (now properly called Invasion of the Dinosaurs) gives way from an atmospheric thriller to a fairly typical UNIT runaround.  There's an interesting bit near the beginning with someone from 12th century England attacking the Doctor, before vanishing (presumably back to his own time), but before long the Brigadier has found the Doctor and is briefing him on the situation.  So we get a bit of exposition about how dinosaurs keep turning up, forcing an evacuation of the area, but then it's off to try and find the cause of these appearances.  But the whole thing is treated so matter-of-factly that the overall impression is one of business as usual -- even when it patently isn't.  I mean, for goodness' sake, Mike Yates is working for the bad guys!  That should be a game changer, but instead it's handled as just another incident along the way, and other than a reference to taking leave after The Green Death's events and liking London with less pollution, Yates's motivations here aren't really explored.  Fair enough, maybe they'll be covered in later episodes, but as for right now there's barely a hint of a reason for his actions.

But he's working for the villains, who have been bringing dinosaurs forward in time essentially as a diversion, a reason for London to be evacuated.  So the Doctor reasons that if he can capture a dinosaur, he can study it and work out where the time field that's bringing it to the present day is coming from.  Which means we should probably talk about the dinosaurs.  The three we see in this episode aren't actually that bad, and are in keeping generally with a 1970s understanding of dinosaurs.  The main problem is that they're clearly puppets, and thus they're being prefilmed on model sets.  But no one's taking care to line up the CSOed-in actors with the puppets, and so we get moments like the one near the beginning of part two, with UNIT soldiers firing well to the Tyrannosaurus's right instead of at it.  The other, less noticeable problem probably can't be helped, but it's the fact that they move like, well, puppets.  And not even very articulated puppets.  It's rather like watching a child's rubber dinosaur toy being moved around on screen.  The upshot of all this is that there's a lack of care involved with this that makes the finished product rather unimpressive.  There's nothing wrong with the conception; it's the execution that lets things down.

Nevertheless, the story's called Invasion of the Dinosaurs, so when the Doctor goes to capture a Stegosaurus (which is one of the better dinosaurs on display) with his fancy stun gun, he finds it doesn't work (because Mike Yates sabotaged it with a device from working-against-UNIT person Professor Whitaker, who managed to create a stun gun neutralizing device despite having never seen the device and said device being based on a principle that, according to the Doctor, hasn't been developed on Earth yet).  Which would be fine if the Stegosaurus didn't disappear, to be replaced by a much more ferocious (and still sad-looking) Tyrannosaurus bearing down on him...

June 29: The Time Warrior Parts Three & Four

Oh, look, they've edited in a shot of Hal and Sarah in order to make his rescue seem less abrupt.  Although according to them it's not a rescue, "it's a capture."  I doubt the Doctor minds much, though.

Sarah watches the Doctor make stink bombs. (The Time
Warrior Part Three) ©BBC

Part three has a lot of moments that seem rather silly, but as they're endearingly silly we can overlook any small problems that arise as a result.  Certainly the Doctor and Sarah clear up Sarah's misunderstanding really quickly (quite handy if she's going to be the next assistant) and get on with repelling Irongron's invasion.  The Doctor's strategy involves making stink bombs with some extra bits added, and lots of dummies to line the battlements.  It's not exactly high Shakespearean drama, but it's still entertaining to watch huge (and I mean huge) plumes of orange smoke fill the screen and billow around Irongron's small group of ragtag men as they try to scale ladders before just giving up and running back home.

The second half of the episode also has these wonderfully fun moments (what About Time calls "children's television" moments), with Sarah and the Doctor dressed as monks who want to get into Irongron's castle because they've heard of his great charity -- and the guards just let them through, apparently on a lark.  But they're there to enact their plan to take care of Irongron and Linx, and when they enter Linx's workshop, the Doctor is able to break the hypnosis of one of the scientists -- but then Linx enters and blasts the Doctor...

Part four resolves this problem by having Sarah knock the gun away and then Rubeish striking Linx on the back of the neck, on his probic vent -- the one weakness that a Sontaran has, apparently.  Then the plan proceeds, with Rubeish dehypnotizing scientists, Sarah heading to the kitchen to drug the food⁷⁹, and the Doctor forced to divert Irongron while the other elements of the plan take effect.  This is another silly-but-fun moment, with the Doctor dressed up as Linx's robot knight and attempting to distract Irongron for a bit -- but then forced to defend himself against both Irongron and Bloodaxe.  The game is soon up though, and Irongron decides to use the Doctor as target practice for his new "star weapons" (aka rifles).  The Doctor manages to escape, though, when Sarah swings a chandelier at him, which he then swings across the room on like Errol Flynn, and then they both escape to Sir Edward's castle.

Some drugged soldiers later, they return to rescue the scientists and stop Linx.  The Doctor manages the former (using Linx's osmic projector to send all the scientists back to the 20th century), but Linx is starting up his spaceship, which will destroy the whole castle.  Irongron is killed by Linx after Irongron attacks over a perceived betrayal, and a well-aimed arrow by Hal subsequently pierces Linx's probic vent, killing him -- but the spaceship still leaves, so the Doctor gets everyone out (except, it seems, the serving girls), causing the castle to explode, destroying everything anachronistic in the process.  And while you can sort of see the logic of using a stock explosion shot to save money, it's still a wonder that director Alan Bromly thought he could get away with what's clearly a quarry explosion substituting in for a castle being destroyed.  (Although perhaps it's not that surprising, if the stories about Bromly's directorial abilities and instincts are to be believed -- certainly the next (and final) Doctor Who Bromly directed, Nightmare of Eden, was an unmitigated disaster behind the scenes.)

So, having given us a story where different locales and times are successfully intermixed in Carnival of Monsters, Robert Holmes pulls a similar trick here, by taking an historical time period and throwing an SF element into it to see what happens.  This is by no means a novel approach, not even for Doctor Who (The War Games and The Time Meddler, which are both stories that The Time Warrior has in its DNA, played at something similar), but the difference is that the sheer confidence on display in Holmes's script makes this a viable thread of storytelling in a way that, say, The Time Meddler isn't.  The Time Meddler didn't lead to a subset of stories where a time traveller tries to alter history, but The Time Warrior did (albeit with aliens substituted for time travellers) -- see, for example, things like Pyramids of Mars or Horror of Fang Rock (and even into the modern day, with stories like, most obviously, "The Fires of Pompeii").  In part this is because the script is very confident about what it's doing, even when what it's doing is silly pantomime fare -- again, the stink bomb stuff comes to mind -- and it sparkles with lots of great dialogue (I've mentioned some of it before, but we also get lines like "By the stars, Bloodaxe, I swear I'll chop him up so fine not even a sparrow will fill its beak at one peck" and a description of the Doctor as "a long-shanked rascal with a mighty nose").  But it's also because it's clear how supremely comfortable both Jon Pertwee and Elisabeth Sladen are in this.  Pertwee is definitely at home here in history, engaging in swordplay and chivalry equally well.  Sladen is particularly impressive, finding her feet from the start and doing a convincing job of first mistrusting the Doctor and then being firmly on his side.  It's obviously not clear how the original actress cast as Sarah Jane would have done (the identity of whom Barry Letts insisted on taking to his grave, but subsequent research (after his death) revealed to be April Walker), but Elisabeth Sladen nails the part from her first scene.

It's fun, it's witty, and it's well-acted.  The Time Warrior is a stand-out story, and one that single-handedly revitalized a whole type of Doctor Who story, the pseudo-historical.  A marvelous tale, and probably the highlight of season 11 -- though, as we're only on the first story, we'll have to wait and see before we confirm this.







⁷⁹ It's well-known that there are anachronistic potatoes in this episode, a point which apparently caused some grief for Terrance Dicks, who then took it out on Robert Holmes -- so when Dicks wrote his own historical-based story for season 15 (Horror of Fang Rock), Holmes made certain all the research was done properly.  Except, as The DisContinuity Guide suggests, About Time confirms, and I verified, there don't appear to be any potatoes in the show.  There might be one on the table (briefly visible at the lower left edge as the camera pans), and Sarah might pick one up, but it's not like anyone's prominently peeling spuds or anything.  And besides, why would Dicks berate Holmes for something the set dressers did?  This has the feel of one of those stories with a grain of truth (the novelization (by Dicks) does mention Sarah peeling potatoes) that's been subsequently distorted beyond recognition, à la the story about Pertwee and the ship compass from Carnival of Monsters.

June 28: The Time Warrior Parts One & Two

A brand-new title sequence brings us into season 11, with the fancy slit-screen process and some filters creating a nifty-looking tunnel effect -- one that will become well known as the title sequence for most of Tom Baker's run.  It's not quite the same though, but I still kind of like the streaks of light that come at you at the very beginning (even if I always feel like it's off center).  Not as convinced about the full-length Pertwee portrait receding away though.

This is, pleasingly, a strong opener, as a Middle Ages warlord sees a star fall (in reality a crashing spaceship) and rides out to encounter an armored alien who claims Earth and the moon "for the greater glory of the Sontaran Empire."  Linx, the Sontaran who's crashed, needs to repair his ship, but upon finding that the technologies he needs aren't around in the Middle Ages, he decides to take them from those who do have the technologies.

From there we get a cut to near-contemporary Earth, with the Brigadier (whose hair seems really quite shaggy by this point) announcing that, in the wake of a number of recent kidnappings of important scientists, he's had them all brought to a high-security establishment.  Not that high-security, though; one of the people there is posing as an eminent virologist, but is in fact a journalist named Sarah Jane Smith.  Yes, it's Sarah Jane's first appearance in Doctor Who, here dressed very professionally and not willing to take any nonsense.  She's posing as her Aunt Lavinia, but the Doctor easily finds her out.  "I read your paper on the teleological response of the virus.  A most impressive piece of work," the Doctor tells her.  "Particularly when I realize you must have written it when you were five years old."

But he's content to let her wander around and act patronizingly towards her, as he's more concerned with the missing scientists, and when one of them is snatched away he determines that they've been taken back in time, so he hops into the TARDIS to trace them, with Sarah unwittingly on board (as she thinks that maybe one of the missing scientists, Professor Rubeish, is inside the TARDIS).  The TARDIS lands in medieval England, and Sarah walks out after the Doctor has left, seemingly unconcerned about the fact that they're in a new location (or about anything regarding the interior of the TARDIS, as far as we can tell) -- only to be captured by Irongron's men (after distracting future Boba Fett actor Jeremy Bulloch, as Hal the archer, from loosing his arrow accurately).  And as the Doctor looks on in hiding, Linx, thinking he's alone, removes his domed helmet -- only to reveal an identically-shaped head...

Linx and the Doctor.  (The Time Warrior Part Two) ©BBC

Part two has much of the flavor of a romp.  There's a lot of stuff with Sarah refusing to believe she's been transported back in time, despite all the mounting evidence (perhaps she's suffering from cognitive dissonance), but the result is a lot of great dialogue from Robert Holmes.  "Perhaps the wench is crazed," says Bloodaxe, Irongron's second, to Irongron.  Irongron, meanwhile, has good lines too, such as referring to Lady Eleanor, the person who hired Hal to assassinate Irongron in the last episode, as a "narrow-hipped vixen."  Fortunately, however, Linx interrupts Irongron, allowing Sarah to make her escape.  Linx, it turns out, is providing Irongron with guns and robot knights to fight for him.  And while this is going on, the Doctor is wandering around, causing mischief by shooting the control for the robot knight out of Irongron's hand (which allows Hal and Sarah to escape from the castle) and investigating Linx's workings.  He encounters Professor Rubeish, but as he's talking to him he's found out by Linx.  It seems the Doctor has met the Sontarans before ("So, the perpetual war between the Sontarans and the Rutans has spread to this tiny planet, has it?" he asks), and they end up chatting rather pleasantly, with the Doctor name-dropping his home planet for the first time. ("What is your native planet?" Linx asks.  "Gallifrey.  I am a Time Lord," the Doctor replies.  "Ah, yes," Linx says.  "A race of great technical achievement, but lacking the morale to withstand a determined assault.")  You'd think it would be a more important revelation than this, but it's just tossed into the background as a detail as the conversation moves to more important things. Still, it's entertaining to watch the Doctor and Linx chat, with each standing in as a representative for their whole species (and thus their species' point of view).

Meanwhile, Sarah appears to have gotten the wrong end of the stick by believing that the Doctor is the wizard that Hal describes as helping Irongron.  You can sort of see where she's coming from, as there's clearly time travel involved and the Doctor is a time traveller, but it still rather flies in the face of the evidence she was presented with in the first part.  But she's convinced the nearby Sir Edward that they should raid Irongron's castle and capture the Doctor -- who'd probably be fine with that if he knew, as he's locked up by Linx and forced to work for him, and when he's freed by Rubeish he ends up shoving Irongron out of the way before being surrounded by a large group of Irongron's men in the castle courtyard.  "He who strikes Irongron dies!" Irongron cries, raising his axe against the fallen Doctor.

June 27: The Green Death Episodes Five & Six

Back to the slow burn with episode five, but at least there's enough incident to sustain interest through the slower bits (which, honestly, has been the case with all the episodes of The Green Death so far).  Still, you can't help but be a little exasperated at Jo, who's gone to the slag heap to recover a maggot for Professor Jones to experiment on.  She doesn't know that the Brigadier's about to bomb the area in a (futile) effort to destroy the maggots, but it's still a silly thing to do.  But when Jones goes after her, he's the one who ends up knocked out and infected by maggots, not Jo.  And just as he'd discovered a cure for the green death in the previous episode, too.  Eventually they're rescued, but Jones is in a bad way, and if the Doctor can't discover what the cure for the green death was (the only clue he has is Jones muttering "serendipity", because the cure, the special fungus Jones has been breeding, was knocked onto the treated slides by Jo), then Jones will become its latest victim.

While Jo and Jones are stuck on the slag heap, the Doctor is having a conversation with the computer on the top floor of Global Chemicals: it's the first Biomorphic Organizational Systems Supervisor, or BOSS.  It's been linked to Stevens' mind in order to help it make the leaps of logic that a computer can't do, but in the process it's turned into "a megalomaniac machine".  The Doctor tries to escape but is discovered by Stevens before he can do so, which leads to a lovely scene where BOSS is trying to condition the Doctor the same way he conditioned Fell (this time complete with a nifty little electronic effect around the Doctor's head) but is unsuccessful:

BOSS: The subject is not responding to therapy!
DOCTOR: Therapy?  Oh, what a pretty euphemism.  You're not trying to tell me this is all for my own good?
BOSS: It is.
DOCTOR: And that it hurts you more than it hurts me?
BOSS: It does.
DOCTOR: (happily) You didn't mean it to though, did you?

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Green Death)

Mike Yates holds the Brigadier and the Doctor at gunpoint.
(The Green Death Episode Five) ©BBC

Thus thwarted, BOSS sends the Doctor to a holding room, where he's set free by Mike Yates, but in the escape attempt Mike is caught and conditioned to try and kill the Doctor.  This is where that blue crystal the Doctor took from Metebelis III comes in handy, as the Doctor is able to use it (somehow) to break Mike's conditioning.  Then Mike is sent back into Global Chemicals to find out what's happening, but after he deconditions a man named James⁷⁷ and learns that BOSS is planning a takeover of something at four o'clock, he's caught by Stevens.  "Just can't depend on anyone, can you, Mr. Yates?" he says.

Episode six shows the Doctor accidentally discovering how to kill the maggots, as one dies while eating the fungus stuff.  Armed with this knowledge, the Doctor and Sergeant Benton drive out to the slag heap and throw chunks of fungus at the maggots, who devour the stuff and then perish.  "Kitty, kitty, kitty," Sergeant Benton starts calling out entertainingly at one point, "come on!  Come on and get your lovely din-dins!  Come on, kitty, kit—"  "Sergeant Benton!" the Doctor interjects, appalled.

Just as they think they're done, though, a huge fly starts dive-bombing them -- one of the maggots having pupated.  It's, er, not the most convincing effect in the world, particularly as they've shot it on film and then superimposed the Doctor and Benton via CSO, which means they're both on video and have yellow fringing all around them.  It also doesn't last very long, as the Doctor throws his cloak into the air (another less-than-convincing effect) and ensnares the fly, which crashes to the ground and dies.

They still haven't figured out Jones's cure for the green death yet, but when Jo mentions how she knocked brown powder on his slides, the Doctor works out what "serendipity" means and has Jo show him.  It's the same fungus as killed the maggots, and it means that they can cure Professor Jones.  But Mike Yates has managed to escape from Global Chemicals and warns the Doctor about BOSS's planned takeover.  The Doctor heads to Global Chemicals, only to find that BOSS has completely taken Stevens over.  BOSS is an amazing character, by the way, happily humming to himself and taunting Stevens about his nervousness while he wonders if he should have staged a concert to mark the occasion.  "Stevens, you know, we should have arranged for a symphony orchestra to herald my triumph.  To take over the world, to sweep into power on the crest of a wave of Wagnerian sound!... No?  Oh, er, the 1812, perhaps?  Or would we dare the glorious Ninth?" BOSS asks.  It's such a welcome change from the typical talking computer (even if Doctor Who itself hadn't done much with that particular cliché) that it's incredibly entertaining to watch.

But as I said, the Doctor arrives to stop BOSS from taking over, which would then cause the Stevens process, and therefore the toxic green slime, to go worldwide (in addition to the whole "enslaving the humans" thing).  "Stevens, listen to me," the Doctor says.  "You've seen where this efficiency of yours leads.  Wholesale pollution of the countryside.  Devilish creatures spawned by the filthy by-products of your technology.  Men walking around like brainless vegetables.  Death.  Disease.  Destruction."  But Stevens is under BOSS's control, so the Doctor produces the blue crystal, bringing Stevens back long enough to come to his senses and initiate the destruction of the entire complex by "cross-feeding the generator circuitry."  With a lot of crazy color effects and then a giant explosion, the world is saved.

The Doctor presents Jo with the blue crystal as a wedding
present. (The Green Death Episode Six) ©BBC

Not quite done yet, though; as mentioned before, this is Jo's final story, and so we have to have her farewell scene, where she announces that she's going to follow Jones into the Amazon to look for a high-protein fungus.  Jones asks her to marry him (well, sort of; he more announces his intention to marry her and she agrees), and an impromptu celebration begins at the Nuthutch.  The Doctor realizes he's lost the battle for Jo's affection, so after gallantly giving her the blue crystal as a wedding gift, he quietly slips away and drives off into the night.  (Well, I think it's supposed to be night; they've clearly put a filter on the camera to do day for night filming, but unfortunately the sun is still blazing away in the shot.)  It's quite an emotional moment⁷⁸, and they do a nice balance of celebrating Jo's happiness with the Doctor's loss.

And so The Green Death comes to an end.  This story made a big impact on the audience at the time -- it's probably one of the most fondly-remembered stories of Doctor Who's 20th-century run -- and it's not hard to see why.  The story is paced well (a welcome improvement over the authors' last story, The Time Monster), starting small and getting bigger and bigger.  The pro-environmental theme is also nice because it roots the problem in something relatable: the mad computer angle might muddy the waters a bit, but this is a story about the dangers of pollution.  Yet The Green Death doesn't beat you over the head with this theme, content instead to let it percolate in the background for anyone who wants to think about it; for those that don't, it's just about a freak green slime that causes mutations and death.  Like all the best Doctor Who, it works on multiple levels.  It is a bit patronizing to the Welsh, though, with lots of dialogue ending in questions and "boyo"s thrown in for good measure (not to mention things like Jo describing the deceased Bert as a "funny little Welshman"), but the goodwill that this story generates tends to outweigh these concerns.

So now that we've reached the end of season 10, it's worth taking a look back not just at the previous season, but at how the show has changed over these ten years.  Season 10 itself is generally a triumph, with some of the best stories the show has ever produced.  Not only that, but the public knows it too; the ratings have been up all season and the move to end the Doctor's exile is a good one (even if in terms of settings there's really not that much difference between this and the previous season).  It gives them more freedom to tell different stories, and if the group they've put together this time around is any indication, Doctor Who will be on top for a while.  But there's also a sense of endings, with Katy Manning leaving and Roger Delgado's death (as well as a final hurrah for both these title/end graphics (run upside-down for the end credits of both episodes five and six) and the use of the word "episode" (sob) -- from here on out, the installments will be referred to as "parts"), so how the show moves forward after these events will be interesting to see.  Season 10 is a high point for Doctor Who.

But the show itself has adapted considerably since its beginning, moving from an educational-cum-adventure show to a more formulaic "monster" show into its current incarnation, an action-adventure serial.  Yet that flavor of wonder and learning that made the early seasons such a success isn't gone.  It's still present in most of the stories up through season 10, and there are a lot of moments where Doctor Who tries to both showcase ideas (such as, say, the black hole in The Three Doctors, much of which was accurate based on 1972's understanding of the concept (and is still the most accurate black hole portrayed on the show)) and slip them into the background (e.g., the segregation that exists between the Overlords and the Solonians in The Mutants, some of which is explicit but some of which is casually added as a detail in the background).  I don't know if Sydney Newman's thoughts about this period of the show are recorded, but I would think he would still recognize Letts and Dicks' version as the same one he had come up with back in 1963, just with some cosmetic differences.  There's just as much to enjoy now as there was then, and even with such a restrictive format (and such a massive sea change) as the Doctor's exile to Earth, that sense of investigation is still present, letting us know that this is the same show as before.  Ending the exile only confirms that by showing us stories that are similar in feel to the ones from the '60s, and in the meantime they've surreptitiously increased the importance of the "contemporary problems of Earth" element, almost without our realizing it.

In general, these first ten years of Doctor Who have been a strong success, and it's easy to see why this show became one of the most successful television shows ever created.  Here's to the next ten years and the strengths and changes that those years will bring, while still retaining that core appeal.







⁷⁷ This was supposed to be Elgin, but the actor playing him, Tony Adams, developed peritonitis and thus couldn't be present for the final recording session, so his lines were given to a new character played by Roy Skelton.
⁷⁸ And it's a moment explicitly paid tribute to by the end of Sherlock series 3 episode 2, "The Sign of Three".  Although if you know anything at all about Mark Gatiss and his tendencies towards pastiche in just about every thing he writes, this is perhaps not the most surprising thing in the world.

June 26: The Green Death Episodes Three & Four

Episode three is a bit of a slow burn.  There's a lot of stuff with the Doctor and Jo making their way through the mine (first by "punting" an old mine cart through the green maggot-infested goo lake, then by climbing up a crevasse that is unfortunately all too obviously made of polystyrene, as it squeaks like mad when the Doctor and Jo make their way through it).  Their journey ends inside a pipe at Global Chemicals, where Elgin (the "good" technician) manages to get them out right before a whole bunch of waste is dumped down the pipe (and remember, the Stevens process allegedly creates no waste).  This is after Elgin has an urgent conversation with Fell, the gentleman we saw last episode getting brainwashed in Stevens' office and who seems to be fighting to regain control of his mind.  His programming somewhat broken, he returns to Stevens' office, where the computer he's hooked up to gives him orders to "self-destruct" -- which Fell does by throwing himself off an outside balcony.  Stevens seems shaken by this.  "Stevens, you are a sentimentalist," his boss taunts him. 

While this is happening, the Brigadier is trying to get Stevens to shut down Global Chemicals while they investigate this strange green substance in the mines, but Stevens refuses and calls his friends in the government to intervene -- which leads to a scene where the Brigadier is being told to back off by the Prime Minister himself.  Unable to do anything else, and with the Doctor and Jo safely out of the Global Chemicals complex, they all retire to the Nuthutch, where the Doctor regales them with tales and Jo and Jones start to form a real connection -- although they don't quite get the chance to kiss, as the Brigadier and the Doctor can be heard coming into the room.  The Doctor seems to realize what's going on, and his behavior is that of someone who's slightly jealous, interestingly; first he tries to show off to Jo by showing her the blue crystal he recovered from Metebelis III, and when that fails he (rather obviously) grabs Professor Jones's attention and leads him off to discuss scientific matters, leaving Jo alone in the living room.  But unbeknownst to her, the giant maggot egg that the Doctor retrieved from his trip through the crevasse has hatched, and a giant maggot is silently inching up behind her...

If episode three was a slow burn, episode four sees some action finally start happening.  Stevens had sent a goon to the Nuthutch to take care of the Doctor and Jo (the only witnesses thus far to the giant maggots in the mine), and it's him who ends up being attacked by the newly-hatched maggot, which then escapes into the night.

A giant maggot hisses on the hillside. (The Green Death
Episode Four) ©BBC

Having learned about the maggots (and presumably having informed his superiors about them), the Brigadier is the next day preparing to blow up the mine, thus sealing the giant maggots away where they can't hurt anyone.  Despite the Doctor's best efforts (which involve pleading his case to Stevens, who refuses to take the Doctor seriously and brings in a man from the Ministry to support his side -- which ends up being an incognito Mike Yates), he's unable to prevent the mine's sealing.  Turns out this doesn't stop the maggots, though, despite the Brigadier's initial claim to the contrary (which is treated as a joke, complete with "wah-wah"-esque music -- proof, if nothing else, that Murray Gold doesn't have a monopoly on inappropriately highlighting "funny" bits); the maggots start crawling up through the waste pipes and even burrowing out of the hillside.  Worse still, they're impervious to bullets (of course they are), owing to "thick chitinous plates protecting the whole body surface", as the Doctor says.  Well, except he pronounces it like "chit" ([tʃɪt]), instead of like "kite" ([kaɪt]) as it should be, but never mind.⁷⁶  Thus the Doctor resolves to investigate Global Chemicals undercover, first as a visually-decent old milkman and then as a rather less convincing cleaning lady.  Yates has been unable to uncover anything, but he tells the Doctor that Stevens' boss lives on the top floor, along with anything important pertaining to Global Chemicals.  The Doctor heads up there, only to find out who the head of Global Chemicals really is.  "I am the boss.  I'm all around you," the boss tells the Doctor, who turns to look at a large red screen.  "Exactly," the boss confirms.  "I am the computer."

(Oh, and special mention to the grammar fail in this week's credits, which includes "Yate's Guard" -- although at least the end graphics aren't upside-down like they were for episode two.)








⁷⁶ Actually, it's this, not the fluff from The Mutants, that's probably Pertwee's most famous goof -- although that's only because of a well-known letter sent in to the production team after transmission, which read

The reason I'm writin'
Is how to say kitin [sic]

June 25: The Green Death Episodes One & Two

It's interesting how quickly the "end of an era" feeling begins in The Green Death.  It's all over the first UNIT scene, with the Doctor offering to take Jo to Metebelis III and her choosing to go down to South Wales to help Professor Jones in his crusade against a company called Global Chemicals instead.  She seems to feel it's her duty to try and make a difference, and that this Professor Jones reminds her of a younger Doctor.  "I don't know whether to feel flattered or insulted," the Doctor replies.  He tries to sweeten the deal by offering to take her not just to Metebelis III, but anywhere and anywhen she'd like to go, but her mind is made up.  "So the fledgling flies the coop," the Doctor remarks a bit sadly, after Jo leaves, before setting out on his own to Metebelis III.

But the story really starts with a parody of Neville Chamberlain's speech about the Munich Agreement, the pact which allowed Nazi Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia.  "I have in my hand a piece of paper which will mean a great deal to all of you," the director of Global Chemicals, Stevens, tells the crowd of gathered ex-miners.  "Wealth in our time!"  The miners seem reasonably happy with this, as it means they'll have jobs, but Professor Jones and his compatriots are protesting that it will mean an increase in pollution.  Yes, for the first time in Pertwee-era Who, Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks are deliberately tackling a current hot topic: the problem of pollution and what it will eventually do to the planet without making changes.  (They've tackled social issues before, but this is the first time they'd commissioned/written a story specifically designed to address one.)

This first episode consists primarily of setting up the opposing points of view, and as such there's not much in the way of excitement or action.  There's the death at the very beginning, the cliffhanger, and then the Doctor's trip to Metebelis III, which looks an utterly miserable time, as the Doctor is attacked by all sorts of creatures while he grabs a blue sapphire as a souvenir.  Still, at least he was right about the blue light everywhere.  But everything else is set-up: Professor Jones is working on sustainability, and thus he opposes Global Chemicals and their oil refinery process.  However, Director Stevens insists that their revolutionary new process not only allows them to refine 25% more petrol and diesel from a given amount of crude oil but also produces no waste.  "Well, I'm no scientist, Mr. Stevens, but I find that somewhat difficult to believe," the Brigadier tells him.  Professor Jones believes that Global Chemicals is lying and is simply pumping the waste into the disused mines.  Jo wants to go and look, but Professor Jones is too busy.  (We should probably also note how much the first meeting between Jo and Jones is pitched as a meet cute, with adorable/"adorable" (delete according to preference) bumbling from Jo and a lot of teasing from Professor Jones.  This is Jo Grant's last story, after all, but at least they're taking the time to try and set up her departure (as opposed to, say, Liz Shaw's complete disappearance between seasons 7 and 8).)

So Jo's off to the mine, but there's a problem as she descends with another miner, Bert: the brakes on the lift aren't working and it's running out of control...

Episode two is a bit more action-packed, first with the Doctor's successful effort to halt the lift's descent (by jamming a piece of metal into the pulley system and forcing it to stop), and then with their efforts to free Jo and Bert from the lift.  The only way they can get down into the mine now is to cut the cable of the broken lift and then rigging up a donkey pulley to send the lift in the other shaft down (they work in tandem, you see).  The mine doesn't have cutting equipment, but Global Chemicals does.

Dai Evans is the latest victim of the mysterious "green
death".  (The Green Death Episode Two) ©BBC

Global Chemicals don't want people going down into the mines, and so they're deliberately obstructive, informing UNIT that they have no cutting equipment on site.  The Brigadier goes off to get some while the Doctor decides to infiltrate Global Chemicals.  A couple fight scenes later (where, for the first time, it's incredibly obvious that Terry Walsh is doubling for Jon Pertwee -- the hair's the wrong color, for starters), the only thing the Doctor accomplishes is bringing himself to the attention of Stevens' boss, at this point only represented by a disembodied voice and an oscilloscope trace on a screen.  Jo and Bert, meanwhile, have decided to venture into the mine in search of another exit.  They encounter Dai Evans, a miner who's been infected with the same green glowing skin condition as John Scott Martin at the start of episode one, but they leave him behind as they search for the exit.  They also find a strange green substance that appears to burn Bert when he touches it, and shortly thereafter he starts to exhibit the same green glow.

The Doctor and some miners manage to gain access to the mine and set off in search of Jo and Bert.  They find Bert, who's in a bad way, and while the miners take him back the Doctor moves ahead to find Jo.  He does so, but he also finds a huge pool of glowing green goo, filled with large maggots.  It's a suitably unnerving sight, but it's about to get even worse, for as the Doctor and Jo turn back, part of the mine collapses -- revealing three large, hissing maggots...

June 24: Planet of the Daleks Episodes Five & Six

Seriously.  Let's us just acknowledge how appalling the "glowing lights substituting for unblinking eyes that you can literally see them turn off and on to simulate running away and then coming back" scene is and move on.

Cover of the 1976 Target novelization.
(From On Target - Planet of the Daleks)

And Vaber's been taken by the Daleks!  Taron and Codal are on his trail, disguised as Spiridons (boy, those purple furs sure are handy, aren't they?), and while they're too late to stop Vaber from being exterminated (killed while trying to escape), they're at least able to retrieve their bombs.  Meanwhile, the friendly Spiridon that helped Jo shows up: it turns out his name is Wester, and he's learned of a Dalek "bacteria bomb" containing an incredibly virulent disease that will wipe out all non-inoculated life.  (Oh, right; forgot to mention last time that the Daleks were working on this.)  So now the Doctor and company really have to stop the Daleks.

Fortunately, the Doctor has a cunning plan to infiltrate the city, which is to capture a Dalek by shoving it into a molten ice pool (in an iconic moment -- well, iconic for me, at least, but that might just be because of the cover of the Target book) and then, er, recreate the part of The Daleks that they missed in episode three by having Rebec hide in the shell and lead the others into the base (though they'll be disguised as Spiridons rather than prisoners).  Oh, and they're splitting up, so Jo and Latep are going to head to the ventilation shaft in case the other group doesn't make it.  So the Doctor, Codal, and Taron (all in furs) head with Rebec (inside the Dalek) into the base, where they watch Wester enter the bacteria preparation room and foil their plan of biological warfare by pushing the cover off the glass container and releasing it into the atmosphere before the Daleks have distributed the antidote.  A noble sacrifice, and after Wester dies we see his face -- which might suggest that invisibility for the Spiridons is a force of will rather than an innate property.  (Sadly, it turns out he's just a white-face humanoid with a lumpy face.)

And then a Dalek sees a foot and realizes these aren't real Spiridons.  Cliffhanger!

Episode six continues to remake The Daleks by having Rebec get out just in the nick of time before the Daleks destroy the captured shell -- a fact we only learn in the next scene ("Well, Rebec, it seems you stopped being a Dalek just in time").  They head inside the cooling chamber and barricade the door with random stuff, which leads to possibly the most ludicrous scene ever, as Daleks take turns ramming into this barricade at low speeds to try and break it down -- rather than, say, just blowing it up with their guns.  But no, this indeed serves to delay the Daleks while the Doctor tries to find a good place to set the bomb.

The Dalek Supreme emerges from its spaceship. (Planet of the
Daleks Episode Six) ©BBC

And while this is happening, Jo and Latep watch a Dalek craft descend to the surface.  This one contains a member of the Dalek Supreme Council, which is a movie Dalek prop that's been refitted with a standard Dalek gun and given a new paint job.  This Dalek Supreme has arrived to oversee the final operations on Spiridon.  It's time to wake up all the Daleks currently in hibernation beneath Spiridon's surface -- which is something of a problem for the Doctor, given that he's right next to them.  But they manage to place the bomb (although there was a moment where the timer was damaged and I was worried we were going to lose Codal, the best of the Thals by some distance, to a moment of self-sacrifice) and set it off, flooding the caverns with molten ice and sending the Daleks back into deep freeze.  The galaxy is safe -- for now.  ("Preparations will begin at once to free our army from the ice.  We have been delayed, not defeated," the Dalek Supreme states.)  After an awkward parting between Jo and Latep (who've been having awkward conversations about their relationship all episode) and the Doctor giving an honestly not that bad speech about the danger of glorifying war ("Don't make war sound like an exciting and thrilling game...  Tell them about the members of your mission that will not be returning...  Tell them about the fear; otherwise your people might relish the idea of war"), it's back to the TARDIS and the end of this epic Dalek adventure.

There's not really anything particularly wrong with Planet of the Daleks, but there's nothing incredibly exciting either.  Terry Nation hasn't written for the series since 1965, and so sometimes there's a sense that he's assuming nothing's changed since then.  There are definitely moments where this feels more like a Hartnell story than a Pertwee one -- yes, obviously all the bits that are lifted from The Daleks, but also just in the way the story is paced and written.  Unfortunately, it doesn't feel like one of the good Hartnells; it's more like a mix between the first couple episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan and the runaround latter episodes of The Daleks, with lots of traipsing through jungles and avoiding Dalek patrols.  Remaking those Hartnell stories in color isn't necessarily the worst of sins, but there's nothing here to add to that.  And worse, all the set-up that Frontier in Space gives this story is casually brushed aside to give us this fairly generic runaround.  It's not a terrible story by any means (and it's entertaining for most of the time, even if not always for the right reasons), but it does feel rather like a pointless one.

June 23: Planet of the Daleks Episodes Three & Four

A little while back, you might recall, I mentioned that all of Doctor Who from The Three Doctors on exists on PAL videotape (its original format) with two exceptions.  Planet of the Daleks episode three is the first of those two exceptions.  Technically this episode only exists on 16mm black & white film, but thanks to some color recovery (the first Doctor Who episode to be treated in this fashion) and some computer colorization (commissioned before the color recovery process was finalized), this episode has been restored to color.  And even though this episode has also had the benefit of computer colorization, to be honest the results aren't noticeably different from the episodes that are simply color recovered, without any additional computer work.

Sadly, that might be the most exciting thing about episode three.  Most everything else feels like a remake of The Daleks.  So we have the Doctor and Codal conspiring to escape their prison cell by overpowering a Dalek (using a rewired TARDIS log instead of mud and a cloak, but the result is the same); Taron, Rebec, and Marat crawling through caves to breach the Dalek base via the cooling ducts (instead of the plumbing, but near enough); shenanigans with our heroes and a lift; and the Daleks trying to cut their way into a room that's been sealed by the Doctor (a sequence which looked rather more impressive in 1964).

Jo is plainly in that Dalek's line of sight.  How did no
one catch this? (Planet of the Daleks Episode Three) ©BBC

Still, it's not exactly the same: the Thals are clambering through caves filled with an allotrope of ice that remains a liquid (which is water, fine, but the impression given is that this is a type of water that remains a liquid below the standard freezing point), and the core of the planet, it seems, consists of this "molten ice".  Then there's also the matter of Jo sneaking into the base in a cart wheeled by the Spiridons -- now completely covered in dark purple fur coats (so as not to have to make them invisible) -- in order to rescue the Doctor.  They wheel this cart of junk into the main control room, for some reason, and when the coast is clear Jo sneaks out, unseen by anyone.  Which would be fine, except for the fact that there's a Dalek in the corner staring straight at her.  But this Dalek is sleeping or something, so she gets away unseen.  Seriously, they couldn't turn that Dalek around to look at something else while Jo made her getaway?

The method of our trapped heroes' escape is also relatively novel (though I can't comment on how feasible it would actually be): creating a lot of heat down low and then capturing it with some plastic sheeting, thus rising up through an access shaft to the planet's surface.  The cliffhanger's a bit lame, though, as the Thals worry that their plan won't work in time for them to escape.  And then episode four's resolution shows that, no, it does.

Things get a little better here, and while the sight of the makeshift hot air balloon isn't bad, the floating Dalek is much more nifty (even if all we really see are specially selected camera angles and such).  And that might be a first for the show⁷⁵, a floating Dalek, even if it requires a special platform to hover.  It doesn't catch up to our heroes in time though, and some boulders dropped down the shaft put paid to that Dalek.  And that model shot is also pretty good.  Things are looking up a bit from the shot of a bunch of Louis Marx Dalek toys in episode three.

The Doctor chats with Taron. (Planet of the Daleks
Episode Four) ©BBC

Then there's a quick reunion between the Doctor and Jo (who, having spent that time sneaking into the Dalek base at the start of episode three, had snuck back out by the end of it), where they wrap up a few loose ends from Frontier in Space (well, they just tell us that the Daleks' plan of fomenting war has been foiled, even though we never get official confirmation of this) and have some heart to heart chats with the Thals ("...the business of command is not for a machine, is it?  The moment that we forget that we're dealing with people, then we're no better off than the machines that we came here to destroy.  When we start acting and thinking like the Daleks, Taron, the battle is lost," the Doctor says).  But night's coming, so it's off to the Plain of Stones ("It's an area of huge boulders," Codal tells us helpfully), where there'll be enough residual heat from the daytime to keep them alive.  (Oh, and what the hell is up with Jo and Latep?  It looks like they're trying to set up a love interest for Jo, but it's done so clumsily that you just feel sorry for actor Alan Tucker, who has to deliver these incredibly awkward lines and is clearly struggling to do so convincingly.)

Nothing dramatic has happened for a few minutes, so Vaber (who's already been shown to be hotheaded) decides to quarrel with Taron over how to proceed with their mission of destroying the Daleks, which leads to a lot of macho yelling and things, and then when they've all quieted down, Vaber takes some explosives away on his own to blow up the Daleks (by dropping the bombs down that ventilation shaft).  Taron and Codal go after him, leaving the others alone, with animals closing in (hilariously indicated by their glowing eyes -- clearly sets of flashlights -- as if this was a cartoon or something).  And Vaber's captured by some fur-clad Spiridons on his way to the shaft.  "Take him to the Daleks," one of them declares, ending the episode.







⁷⁵ Not for all Doctor Who, though; the Dalek comic strip featured plenty of Daleks on flying platforms whizzing over planet surfaces and through space.

June 22: Planet of the Daleks Episodes One & Two

When we last saw the Doctor, he'd been wounded by the Master and had sent a telepathic signal to the Time Lords to take the TARDIS to where he needed to go.  Now he's taking the time to recuperate, which means it's time for Pertwee Healing Coma #5.  It's been a while; we went all of season 9 without one.  This one's a little different from the one in The Dæmons, though, because here the ice crystals appear to form on his skin as a result of the coma, rather than because he was blasted with ice.  But this means that Jo's all alone, so she takes the TARDIS log (which is so obviously an audio cassette case with some bits inside that it's a wonder they thought they could get away with it) and ventures out into an unknown jungle to seek help for the Doctor.

While she's gone, the Doctor recovers from his coma, only to find that the doors are sealed shut and all the air is gone -- apparently because squirting plants outside have covered the TARDIS in their thick fungus (yeeesssssss... it's probably better to just screw your eyes up tight and accept for this story that an interdimensional time machine can be nearly incapacitated by plant juice than try and reason your way out of this).  Fortunately, Jo Grant finds help from some space travellers on the planet ("I'm qualified in space medicine," Taron, their leader, tells Jo, but declines to mention what makes space medicine different from regular medicine) -- trying to avoid "them".  Unfortunately, she's been squirted by those plants, and so now she's being slowly covered by fungus.

The travellers find the TARDIS and break off the fungus enough for the Doctor to get out -- good thing, too, as he was almost completely out of oxygen (remember, just accept this).  He works out that these travellers are in fact Thals, as last seen way back in The Daleks.  They're on this planet, Spiridon (pronounced ['spaɪ.ɹɪ.dən], or SPY-rih-don if you don't know IPA) on a secret mission, one that they refuse to discuss.  The Doctor's also on a mission that he refuses to discuss, but at the cliffhanger it turns out they're both on the trail of the same thing: "Daleks," the Doctor says, as if he wasn't expecting them.  Let's remember not just that this story has the word Daleks in the title, but that last episode we learned all about their plot to conquer the galaxy and that the Doctor headed to Spiridon (with Time Lord assistance) for the express purpose of stopping them.  But no, the production team (or maybe just Terry Nation -- who's back writing a Dalek story for the first time since season 3 and The Daleks' Master Plan) has decided to hold back their appearance till the cliffhanger and pretend we won't know who the baddies are until that moment.

Still, at least we get something a little different: this Dalek is invisible, a trick it's picked up from the native Spiridons.⁷⁴  Invisibility takes so much out of the Daleks though that this one is basically dead (or actually dead -- it seems to be the latter, but it's not entirely clear), so the Doctor and the Thals end up wandering the jungle avoiding Daleks (apparently there are about 12 of them on the planet) and bands of invisible Spiridons.  Not entirely successfully, though: Codal, one of the Thals, runs off to distract the Spiridons and ends up being captured by them.

Jo, meanwhile, is succumbing to the fungus.  She attempts to leave the Thals' ship but collapses nearby.  And then the Daleks come to destroy the Thals' ship.  The Doctor, believing Jo is still inside, rushes out and tries to stop them, but the Daleks paralyze his legs (yes, just like Ian in The Daleks) and get on with blowing up the Thals' ship before capturing the Doctor and taking him to a small cell in their base (yep, again like The Daleks), where he meets up with Codal (all right, that's different).  He gives a little speech about bravery and then it's time to try and escape.  And while this is happening, Jo's fungal infection is treated by a friendly Spiridon.

But the game-changing moment occurs near the end, when another Thal ship crashes down on Spiridon.  One of the survivors, Rebec, tells Taron that there aren't twelve Daleks on Spiridon; there are 10,000.  Which is actually a pretty good cliffhanger and goes some way towards making up for that lousy first one.







⁷⁴ Although the less charitable among you will note that Nation also has invisible aliens in The Daleks' Master Plan (specifically the fifth episode, "Counter Plot").  No invisible Daleks though.

June 21: Frontier in Space Episodes Five & Six

Earth Police Spaceship 2390 (aka the Doctor's ship) encounters
Earth Battlecruiser X29. (Frontier in Space Episode Five) ©BBC

Episode five begins with the Doctor, the Master, and Jo all being taken in front of the Draconian Emperor.  It seems the Doctor is an honorary Draconian noble, but other than that it's just more arguing -- that is, until the Master is rescued by ultrasonic-disguised Ogrons, one of whom is accidentally left behind.  This allows the Emperor and the prince to see that the Doctor has been speaking the truth.  Armed with this knowledge, the Emperor sends the Doctor and his son on an urgent mission to Earth, to warn them of this third party, and with the evidence of the Ogron to support their claims.  Alas, the Master manages to board their vessel and recapture the Ogron prisoner -- and take Jo Grant along too.  With the evidence gone, the Doctor and the Draconian prince head to Earth to try and tell their story to the President and General Williams.  Again.

In what might be one of the least motivated changes of heart ever on Doctor Who, General Williams learns that the first Earth-Draconian War started because of a misunderstanding; when Williams saw a Draconian battlecruiser approaching, one that wasn't responding to communication attempts, he opened fire, starting the war.  But apparently that's how Draconian nobles travel -- in battlecruisers; this one just wasn't armed.  And the lack of communication?  Neutron storm.  General Williams feels terrible about the whole thing (it was 20 years ago -- how is he only now just learning about this?) and agrees to take a ship to the Ogrons' planet to investigate.

And so Jo's been captured, right?  So the Master plans on using her as bait by hypnotizing her, but she recites nursery rhymes to foil his plans, making him unable to get a hold on her mind.  "You'll just have to give up all hope of hypnotising me, won't you?" she tells him.  "Once was quite enough, thank you," she adds, referring back to Terror of the Autons.  So Jo can hold out against the Master's hypnosis attempt.  But, the cliffhanger has us ask, can she hold out against his fear-generating machine?

The answer is yes, yes she can.  It appears to take an enormous amount of willpower, but she's able to overcome the Master's device.  "It doesn't work on me any more!" she cries.  Frustrated, the Master sends her to be locked up.  Meanwhile General Williams' ship encounters trouble from a Draconian ship -- mainly as an excuse to have Jon Pertwee do another spacewalk sequence.  And, sadly, the Kirby wires are as visible as ever.  But then it's off to the Ogrons' planet, where the Master lures them into a trap (apparently -- this part's a bit confusing, since the Master seems to be trying to lure the Doctor to his base, except isn't that what the Doctor would do anyway?).  The trap doesn't work though, because the Ogrons are scared off by their god, which is (and sorry about this, but there's really no other way to describe it) a large, orange, hairy scrotum.  (No wonder director Paul Bernard cut every shot of it bar that one from the finished show.)  But the Master has another trap laid, as it turns out he's been working for...the Daleks!  And in an appearance that the Radio Times didn't spoil!

The final shot⁷³ of Roger Delgado as the Master. (Frontier
in Space Episode Six) ©BBC

Yes, it turns out that the Daleks are behind the plot to set Earth and Draconia at each other's throats.  Once those two empires are gone, they'll swoop in and conquer the survivors.  The Master has the Doctor under lock and key, but fortunately the Doctor and company escape.  General Williams and the Draconian prince are sent to their respective homeworlds to warn them about the Dalek threat, and the Doctor manages to escape in the TARDIS -- although he appears to be grazed by the Master's gun before he escapes.  Yes, this part is rather famously garbled; the original intent was for the Doctor to use the Master's fear machine to make the Ogrons see their god, but as Bernard was deeply unhappy with those shots (because scrotum), they were all removed and what's left is the Ogrons fleeing in fear, taking the Master with them.

And what's this?  Another cliffhanger?  Yes, it seems that, even though this is the final installment of Frontier in Space, things have been left unresolved in favor of a full-blooded Dalek serial as the follow-up.  So we'll have to wait until the next story to find out what happens next.

When you stop to think about it, Frontier in Space doesn't seem to be the most exciting story.  There's a lot going on, but we experience most of it from inside various prison cells.  And yet this doesn't seem to matter.  The sense of scope that Frontier in Space has -- that "space opera" feel, to coin a phrase -- goes a long way in making sure this is entertaining.  And make no mistake: this is definitely entertaining.  What's more, we get to see both Pertwee and Delgado at their best -- and Jo Grant, who can often be one of the more annoying assistants, also gets a chance to shine -- particularly in her cliffhanger confrontation with the Master.  The script isn't heavy-handed, and it's good to have such a wide variety of locations.  Perfunctory ending aside (and besides, it's relying on Planet of the Daleks to wrap up the major plot points), Frontier in Space is a joy from start to finish.

However, we sadly have to bid farewell at this point to Roger Delgado as the Master.  A planned final appearance next season (which would also have seen the end of Pertwee's Doctor) had to be dropped, due to Delgado's tragic death in June 1973 in an automobile accident in Turkey.  This makes that final scene in episode six even more frustrating than it would otherwise be, as you can't help but feel that he should have gotten a better farewell than that.  So goodbye to the original Master, Roger Delgado -- probably the best actor to play the role (as well as one of the best actors on the show period).  He will indeed be missed.







⁷³ Well, there is one additional shot of the Master fleeing, but a) it's only a fraction of a second, and b) it's both blurred and in shadow, so it's not obvious that it's the Master at all, given that there are also fleeing Ogrons in the shot.  In fact, the only way to tell it's the Master is that you can just make out his white cuffs sticking out, and even then only in slow motion.

June 20: Frontier in Space Episodes Three & Four

Well, that "rescue" didn't last long; apparently the Doctor and Jo have no desire to be rescued by Ogrons, and the result is to be recaptured by Earth security forces and locked up again.  Then the Doctor is subjected to the mind probe, which indicates that everything he's been telling them has been the truth (even when the mind probe is turned up to "break" the Doctor's non-existent conditioning by the Draconians).  General Williams's conclusion?  The Doctor must be lying and just really good at defeating mind probes.  It never occurs to them that, hey, maybe there actually is a third party trying to provoke a war; nope, they just pack the Doctor off to a penal colony on the Moon.

Of course, the nice thing about this is the change of scenery, as a reasonable lunar landscape is represented outside the large window inside the prison.  There's some screwing around with the Peace Party members already imprisoned (the lunar prison is apparently for political prisoners), as two of them play Star Trek-style three-dimensional chess (perhaps the first obvious influence of Star Trek on Doctor Who) while the Doctor and the Peace Party's leader Professor Dale work on escaping from the prison.

The most important part of this episode, however, is the appearance of the Commissioner from Sirius IV, revealed almost nonchalantly to be the Master.  He's here to take the Doctor and Jo back to Sirius IV for trial; yes, he's the one who's been hiring Ogrons to impersonate Draconians and humans in order to start a war, and he learned of the Doctor's presence after the Ogrons brought the TARDIS back, along with the stolen cargo, to their home planet, where the Master was scheming.  So after collecting Jo, it's off to the Moon to collect the Doctor -- except he might be too late, as the Doctor and Professor Dale are both trapped in a rapidly-depressurizing airlock with no oxygen (a result of a failed attempt at an escape)...

The Doctor and the Master are confronted by a Draconian
boarding party. (Frontier in Space Episode Four) ©BBC

Nope, no death for the Doctor today; the Master arrives to save them at the top of episode four, and he successfully convinces the prison governor to turn the Doctor over into his care.  It seems the Master's employers want the Doctor alive, so the Master's taking him and Jo back to the Ogrons' home planet.  Of course, this means that the Doctor and Jo are locked up yet again -- but this time the Doctor is able to escape (thanks to a steel file and a lot of extemporaneous talking from Jo -- "Thank you, Miss Grant, we'll let you know," the Master remarks drily upon uncovering the ruse) and head outside the spaceship to try and take control of the flight deck via an external hatch.  The spacewalk parts of this episode are rather good -- it's a shame that the Kirby wires holding the Doctor up are so visible (to the point of casting shadows on the hull of the spaceship).  The Master and the Doctor have a confrontation, but before this gets too far a Draconian ship arrives and takes everyone prisoner, piloting the ship back to Draconia.  The Doctor is looking forward to this, as he hopes he can explain the Master's actions to the Draconian emperor, but the Master has secretly sent a signal, which, in a shocking cliffhanger, is received by an Ogron.  With its back to us.  That'll get 'em tuning in next week.

It might not sound exciting, but the thing Frontier in Space has going for it is the scope of things.  We've been on ships, Earth, the Moon, and it sounds like we're going to Draconia next.  There's a scale to the proceedings here that is incredibly welcome -- it's nice to see all the different things, rather than just hear about them as in Colony in Space or The Mutants.  Let's hope they can keep this going for the final two installments.

June 19: Frontier in Space Episodes One & Two

After a near collision with a passing spaceship, the TARDIS materializes on said ship, only to find that tensions are high.  It seems that Earth cargo vessels, like this one, have been raided recently by Draconian ships -- and sure enough, this ship is next.  Except things aren't what they seem, as Jo watches the ship outside appear to change shape, and then soon after one of the crew members perceives the Doctor as a Draconian, while Jo sees a Drashig (as seen last time) -- and each illusion is accompanied by a strange noise.  It seems that something is influencing the perceptions of the humans aboard, using ultrasonics to cause them to see whatever it is they fear.  All well and good, but try convincing the already paranoid crew of that.

This first episode concerns itself largely with setting up the situation.  We learn about the tensions between the humans and the Draconians (thanks to a scene between the Earth President and the Draconian Ambassador), about how there was a war before and it looks like there'll be a war again, as each side accuses the other of violating the previous peace treaty and raiding the other race's ships.  Clear care is going into making this seem futuristic; the fashion, obviously, with the huge collars and the frankly implausible padding on the shoulders and forearms, but also touches like the President being a woman and the newsreader being black (both progressive ideas in 1973) help define this as a "future" story (and, parallel timeline aside, the first look of futuristic Earth we've had (as opposed to simply hearing about it) since The Seeds of Death).  And we should also take a moment to acknowledge how genuinely impressive the Draconian makeup is, with an alien yet humanoid appearance, extremely expressive and lovingly crafted⁷², and with an attention to detail that extends to the similarly textured arms and hands.  It's fantastic work.

Then as the episode progresses we see that the attackers of the cargo vessel aren't Draconians but in fact Ogrons, as last seen in Day of the Daleks (well, and a brief cameo in Carnival of Monsters).  But of course the human crew see Draconians, and they can't be persuaded otherwise.  A shootout leaves the crew stunned but unharmed -- which means they can testify that they saw Draconians, and that the Doctor and Jo are Draconian spies...

So yes, episode two does see the Doctor and Jo spend the vast majority of the length locked up, but at least Malcolm Hulke has inserted some humor into the situation: "Right," Jo declares, once the guard has moved off; "we'll give it a few minutes, then I'll start groaning and pretending I'm ill.  When he comes in, you can use your Venusian karate...  Then, we'll take his gun, go to the flight deck and make somebody take us back to Earth."  "Jo," the Doctor replies reasonably, "this ship's already going back to Earth."  Then, once they arrive on Earth, they're held in a different cell, while the Doctor reassures Jo about mind probes: "As long as you tell them the truth, they can't do you any harm."  This leads to a story about a giant rabbit, a pink elephant, and a purple horse with yellow spots, who were all delegates at an intergalactic peace conference, it seems.  So when the Doctor was captured by the Medusoids ("a sort of hairy jellyfish with claws, teeth, and a leg"), the mind probes couldn't believe he was telling the truth, and so they burned themselves out.  It's a fun little story.

The problem with Earth, however (getting back to the main plot), is that no one will listen to their story of a third party attempting to start another war between Earth and Draconia.  General Williams is convinced that the Doctor and Jo are Draconian spies, and nothing the Doctor says can persuade him.  ("Allow me to congratulate you, sir," the Doctor says to Williams, exasperatedly.  "You have the most totally closed mind that I've ever encountered.")  The President seems slightly more inclined to listen, but she still has a hard time believing the story.  Meanwhile, the Draconians believe that the Doctor and Jo are in fact working for General Williams, trying to assign blame for the raids to the Draconians and thus incite a war.  We learned he started the last war between the two races, and the Draconians think he's trying to start another.  Stalemate, it would seem.  And then, to make matters worse, at the end of the episode the Ogrons (once again making the humans see them as Draconians) raid the prison where the Doctor and Jo are being kept.  "You, come," an Ogron says to the Doctor at the end of the episode.







⁷² Well, at least as far as the hero masks go.  The Draconian illusion that one of the crewmen sees the Doctor as is obviously a rough one-piece copy of the more detailed appliances.

June 18: Carnival of Monsters Episodes Three & Four

Ok, I guess the Drashigs haven't quite found the Doctor and Jo yet.  They hunt purely by smell so it's taking them a bit to track our heroes down.  But only a little bit, and the Doctor and Jo soon find themselves in trouble.  Detonating the marsh gas with the sonic screwdriver delays the Drashigs a bit, but it requires help from above, as Vorg sticks his hand in and waves the Drashigs away, giving the Doctor and Jo a chance to escape back into the circuitry.  Except, like the Mounties, the Drashigs always get their man, and they won't rest until they've eaten their prey.

It's after this that the Doctor works out that they're inside a Miniscope, which were banned by the Time Lords (thanks to the Doctor) due to their capturing of intelligent creatures.  However, it looks like this one was missed (and yes, everyone points out that maybe they've landed in a time before the ban -- but this is the Time Lords, so maybe the ban took place throughout time and space and there is no "before" time).  "And outside there are people and creatures just looking at us for kicks?...  They must be evil and horrible," Jo exclaims, and the joke isn't lost on the audience.  (Well, it's not lost on me, at least.)

But there are bigger problems at the moment, as the Drashigs have broken through into the circuitry in pursuit of the Doctor and Jo and are relentlessly hunting them down.  The Doctor finds the exit, but they'll need rope to get down to it; fortunately, there's plenty of rope on the SS Bernice.  But this means that the Drashigs also make their way on board, which leads to Lt. Andrews, Major Daly, and the rest of the crew frantically trying to fend off these huge, bizarre creatures -- though not until after they've captured Jo again as a stowaway.  But they are successful in their efforts (thanks to some dynamite which causes even more problems in the Miniscope's circuits), and the Doctor uses the opportunity to climb down and escape the Miniscope -- leading to the rather odd cliffhanger of Shirna screaming because the Doctor is free...

The Doctor holds the Inter Minorans responsible for the
Miniscope, as Shirna and Vorg look on. (Carnival of Monsters
Episode Four) ©BBC

Episode four has some great moments, such as the Doctor attempting to out-bureaucrat the bureaucrat aliens by holding them (not Vorg and Shirna) responsible for the Miniscope, and Vorg trying to get the Doctor to admit he's a carnival showman like Vorg is.  This is also the episode where Kalik, who's been quietly conspiring with fellow Tribunal member Orum for the last three episodes, starts to put his plan into action: he figures that by unleashing the Drashigs, a major incident will occur that will lead to the removal of his brother President Zarb from power, thus allowing Kalik to take over.  And so while the Doctor lashes up a machine to get himself back inside the Miniscope so that he can rescue Jo, Kalik lets the Drashigs out, only to be eaten by one (this isn't obvious from the broadcast version, but a deleted scene (as seen on the DVD) makes this clear).  Vorg's quick thinking has him use the Eradicator to destroy the Drashigs, and there's just enough power in the Doctor's lash-up to send everyone and everything inside the Scope back to their natural time and place.  Vorg is now hailed as a hero by the Inter Minorans, and the Doctor and Jo slip away in the TARDIS while Vorg demonstrates a variation of Three-card Monte/Find the Lady (delete according to nationality and/or preference) to Pletrac, taking his money in the process.

Let's make it clear: Carnival of Monsters is wonderful.  However, it's not flashily brilliant (like, say, The Caves of Androzani); it's quietly brilliant, which means that if you're not paying attention then this one might pass you by.  There are no obvious "splash" moments (to borrow a term from comics) and nothing that one can clearly point to and say, "That's why this works."  No, Carnival of Monsters works because it takes the most wonderful Doctor Who-ish idea, of taking radically different environments and mashing them together to see what comes out, and runs with it.  It's the sort of idea you won't get on almost any other show, and Robert Holmes makes it all fit together naturally.

It also gives us the full flowering of Holmes's talents, with lots of witty and knowing dialogue (to adapt a phrase from The DisContinuity Guide) on display and marvelous characterization.  One of the many brilliant things about Carnival of Monsters is that there's no real villain involved; the primary antagonist (other than the Drashigs, who are simply hunting by instinct) is bureaucracy, with a race of literal grey-faced bureaucratic aliens who want nothing more than to deport Vorg and Shirna and their Miniscope, but have to wait until they've filled in the proper forms and received the proper authorizations.  Even Kalik's plans to depose President Zarb come across more as inter-office politicking than any sort of evil intent.  Then Holmes contrasts the Inter Minor officials with the very colorful and free-spirited Lurmans, Vorg and Shirna, who have this magical machine but don't quite know how it works.

As I said before, it's not the most flashy Doctor Who tale, but it succeeds marvelously at what it sets out to do.  If you're not watching these stories in any particular order, then you might not realize the greatness that is Carnival of Monsters -- this is a story that benefits from being watched in context, because it makes its virtues stand out even more; it hardly puts a foot wrong.  One to cherish.

June 17: Carnival of Monsters Episodes One & Two

Standard and special edition DVDs

With a flash of wit and cleverness, Robert Holmes arrives.  Sure, his earlier stories have had flashes of brilliance, but Carnival of Monsters is where the Robert Holmes that fandom reveres truly begins.

It starts on an alien world, with grey-skinned beings moving cargo for a different kind of grey-skinned being when two carnival entertainers arrive via the luggage belt.  These two colorful characters, Vorg and his assistant Shirna, are immediately under suspicion by the xenophobic ruling class on this planet.

And then the scene completely changes as the Doctor and Jo arrive in the TARDIS (her first trip post-exile, it seems) on a cargo ship in the Indian Ocean, and not Metebelis III as the Doctor was shooting for.  We then move back and forth between these two disparate locations for a bit, unsure what's going on -- though Vorg gives a clue to those paying attention: "Roll up and see the monster show!  A carnival of monsters, all living in their natural habitat, wild in this little box of mine.  A miracle of intragalactic technology!  Roll up!  Roll up!"  And then to reinforce the point, the Doctor and Jo are hiding from the crew when a plesiosaurus rears up out of the Indian Ocean -- an impossibility if this really is 1926 Earth.  In addition to this there are other clues for the Doctor and Jo: a metal plate in the deck floor that only the Doctor and Jo can see, the fact that it's broad daylight outside when it should be pitch dark, and the strange jumping back of the clock in the cabin.  The Doctor also notes that they're on the SS Bernice, which, he says, vanished from the Indian Ocean on 4 June 1926 -- the date that the calendar in the cabin reads.

Meanwhile, Vorg and Shirna are trying to convince the official species (as Pletrac refers to his race) that they should be allowed to stay, and that their Scope is harmless.  "Our purpose is to amuse, simply to amuse," Vorg explains.  "Nothing serious, nothing political," he adds.  But a fault has developed inside their machine, and as the Doctor and Jo head back to the TARDIS, a giant hand reaches down and plucks the TARDIS up, thus providing a memorable cliffhanger.

Episode two makes it clear what's going on: the Scope is essentially a miniaturized zoo, with different creatures and habitats all in their own self-contained environments and conditioned to follow the same set of events over and over again.  Their personalities can be adjusted a bit, as Vorg demonstrates by increasing the aggression of the Tellurians (aka humans), leading to Lieutenant Andrews (as played by Ian Marter) declaring he's going to thrash the Doctor "within an inch of his life" before chasing after the two stowaways around the ship, trying to shoot them.  "I can't leave it for too long or the specimens start damaging each other," Vorg says, and turns the aggrometer back down, leaving the crew to cheerfully walk away from the bemused Doctor and Jo.  Still, now the Doctor and Jo can remove the metal plate, revealing a hole that leads to complex circuitry (in a rather lovely set design from Roger Liminton) that they can investigate.

Outside the Scope, the officials are making the lives of Vorg and Shirna miserable, finally announcing officiously that the Scope should be destroyed -- only the Eradicator that they use isn't successful: the Scope is damaged but not destroyed.  "Who's going to pay good credit bars to see a blob in a snowstorm?" Shirna complains afterwards.  Meanwhile the officials are growing even more paranoid, wondering if Vorg and Shirna are spies sent to destroy them.  When Orum investigates the machine, he finds nothing but a piece of a bric-a-brac: the TARDIS, which then grows to full size as the effects of the Scope's compression field wear off.  

But the Doctor and Jo have broken into a completely different part of the machine, consisting of flat marshland.  Shirna realizes from watching on the Scope's screen that they've entered the environment of the vicious Drashigs ("They're great favourites with the children, you know, with their gnashing and snapping and tearing at each other," Vorg notes happily) , who will stop at nothing to hunt down their prey once they get their scent.  And as the Doctor and Jo look, a giant Drashig head rears out of the water, its mouth gaping open, roaring at them...