An Hour of Who a Day: July 2014

July 31: The Seeds of Doom Parts One & Two

It starts with some really poor superimposed blowing "snow" over stock footage before settling down into a tale of horror in the Antarctic (which is apparently having record precipitation, given the amount of blowing snow we see). And it's clear from the outset -- at least for these two episodes -- that this is intended to be closer to the horrific end of the SF spectrum. Yes, six years before John Carpenter did it, Doctor Who sets out to do its own version of The Thing from Another World.

The first episode is mainly set-up for the terror that will later be unleashed, with the discovery of the seed pod in the permafrost, the Doctor and Sarah making their way to Antarctica, the pod's germination and infection of Winlett... all pieces that are being put into play. The cliffhanger to part one is the discovery that the plant-infected thing that was once Winlett is now moving around and killing people -- everything before that is just ratcheting up the tension. And part of the reason this episode is so successful at raising that tension is because of how seriously the Doctor is treating things. He clearly has his suspicions about this seed pod, and seeing what's left of it and the effects on Winlett only confirm his fears: this is an alien plant that will destroy everything. "On planets where the Krynoid gets established," the Doctor tells Sarah, "the vegetation eats the animals."

Once part two starts, the horror part kicks in, as the Krynoid is wandering around looking for food. Yet that's not the main concern for the main characters -- no, that's the arrival of two men determined to find the strange pod for a plant collector named Harrison Chase (who found out about the pod last episode via the same person who informed the Doctor), and who are willing to kill everyone else to cover their tracks. So while the Krynoid roams free, the Doctor and Sarah are tied up in the living quarters of the base and held at gunpoint. One of Chase's men, Keeler, is uneasy with the violence, but the other, Scorby, has no such compunctions; when he learns that they found a second seed pod (which the Doctor went out of his way to find for some reason), Scorby takes it and decides to wire a bomb to the base's power plant -- tying Sarah up next to the bomb for added measure.

Despite the ever-present threat of the Krynoid, it doesn't actually make a direct attack on anyone until the end, when it kills Stevenson in the main camp and then moves to attack the Doctor and Sarah inside the power plant. They manage to lock it inside and then run away as the clock on Scorby's bomb reaches zero, and the episode ends with a tremendous explosion as the power plant is ripped apart...

July 30: The Brain of Morbius Parts Three & Four

Morbius may just be a brain in a jar, but he still gets one of the best villain rants ever: "Solon, I think of nothing else [than gaining a body again]! Trapped like this, like a sponge beneath the sea. Yet even a sponge has more life than I. Can you understand a thousandth of my agony? I, Morbius, who once led the High Council of the Time Lords and dreamed the greatest dreams in history, now reduced to this, to a condition where I envy a vegetable."

In fact, it's Solon's reassurances that Morbius will have a body again that leads to Morbius's panicking, as he learns that the Doctor is a Time Lord. "That is why his head is so perfect. From one of your own race, from one of those who turned up on you and tried to destroy you, you get a new head for Morbius. The crowning irony," Solon tells him. "Fool!" Morbius cries, alarmed at the thought that the Time Lords have found him. "I'm sorry, the pun was irresistible," Solon says, misunderstanding Morbius. But yes, this is the moment in which Morbius decides to stick his head in a plastic fishbowl, never mind the consequences -- he has to be able to escape from the Time Lords and the Sisterhood, who he thinks are working together.

Yet the Doctor's not exactly getting along with the Sisterhood. He's doing better than the last time he was there, but even after solving the problem of their dying Sacred Flame (thanks to a firecracker knocking some soot loose) they're not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt: "And so now, Doctor, you expect us to show gratitude?" Maren asks disdainfully. Next thing we see of the Doctor, he's lying on a stretcher, about to be taken back to Solon. (Actually, it's never made clear if the Sisterhood is really returning the Doctor to Solon or if it's just a ruse to get the Doctor back inside Solon's place.)

Intriguingly, they also spend the entire episode with Sarah still blind -- which leads to lots of nice blind acting from Elisabeth Sladen, as she's forced to assist Solon in his operation -- since Condo became angry when he saw that Morbius had his arm and fought with Solon, inadvertently knocking Morbius's brain onto the floor in the process. She does finally regain her eyesight though -- just in time for the completed Morbius creature to menace her...

Morbius and the Doctor engaged in a mindbending contest.
(The Brain of Morbius Part Four) ©BBC

Part four has a couple odd moments, it must be said. The strangest part is after an already questionable moment where the Doctor orders Solon to kill Morbius and then wanders off after Sarah, apparently just trusting that Solon will obey; but stranger is the decision, after Solon traps them downstairs, for the Doctor to make cyanogen and send it up the ventilation shaft. Does he hope Solon will investigate? Because what actually happens is that the gas kills Solon instead (all right, maaaaaaybe it only knocks him out, but we never hear from him again) -- it's only because Morbius now has "the lungs of a birastrop" and is thus immune to cyanide gas that the Doctor and Sarah are freed. This leads to a mindbending contest between Morbius and the Doctor⁹³, the result of which leaves Morbius crazed and the Doctor on the verge of death. But Morbius pitches over a cliff to his death, and the Doctor is restored thanks to some of the Sisterhood's Elixir. The galaxy is safe from Morbius and the Doctor and Sarah depart (albeit with a rather odd-looking and -sounding dematerialization effect -- what was director Christopher Barry going for here?).

It's got some strange moments, sure, but The Brain of Morbius continues the recent trend of brimming with such confidence that any flaws are simply brushed aside. This self-assured approach (never once does this story seem uncertain about where it's going or why things are happening) makes this a tremendous success -- highly entertaining in almost every regard, with everyone involved on the top of the game. The mystic nature of the Sisterhood is also a nice touch -- and provides a good contrast to both Solon's "mad scientist" scheme and the Doctor's rational approach. A superb tale.

⁹³ All right, let's talk about the Morbius Doctors. During the mind duel, we see various former faces of Morbius and the Doctor: in order, braincase Morbius, the Morbius face that Solon has a bust of, then Tom Baker, Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton, and William Hartnell. There's a cut away to Sarah (so possibly they started showing Morbius faces again when we weren't looking), then back to eight unfamiliar faces as Morbius crows, "Your puny mind is powerless against the strength of Morbius! Back! Back to your beginning!" So the clear intention is that these are pre-Hartnell Doctors (and producer Philip Hinchcliffe has confirmed that that was what they were going for).
Obviously this causes all sorts of continuity problems with other stories, so fandom has bent over backwards trying to explain what these faces are, with theories ranging from "They're Morbius" (which doesn't really at all fit with what's actually going on) to "The Doctor's faking it" (well, ok then -- boring but plausible) to the very 90s theory of "They're the faces of the Other, the Gallifreyan who was there with Rassilon and was reincarnated much later as the Doctor" (that's putting it very roughly -- see the New Adventure books for more if you're really curious (or you can follow this link, but I'm not sure it helps)). Nowadays, in the post-50th-anniversary world where we know of other incarnations who "don't count" as the Doctor, we could also speculate that these are incarnations from before he called himself "Doctor", a title which seems to coincide with a new regenerative cycle -- but that opens up a lot more cans of worms. It might be simpler to just go with the "faking it" theory.

July 29: The Brain of Morbius Parts One & Two

We're back to form with this story, as "Robin Bland" (in reality a pseudonym for Terrance Dicks, heavily rewritten by Robert Holmes⁹²) gives us a space version of Frankenstein -- and then, not content with that, throws in a Sargasso Sea of crashed spaceships and a mystical group of female seers as well. The result is that, even while the material is treated rather seriously (though not as seriously as, say, Pyramids of Mars), there's a light touch underneath constantly keeping things moving.

It helps that Philip Madoc is so delightfully ambitious as Doctor Mehendri Solon, the would-be Dr. Frankenstein of this story. He's apparently a brilliant neurosurgeon, but what makes things so entertaining is his fixation on things like the Doctor's head. There's a purpose behind it, of course -- he wants the Doctor's head to complete the pieced-together body he's built -- but the way Madoc plays it suggests that he would be interested in some head-stealing even if he wasn't trying to give his master Morbius a body again. Solon also gets all the best lines, such as calling his assistant Condo a "chicken-brained biological disaster." But Colin Fay as Condo is also doing a fabulous job, playing Condo as entertainingly dim but not going too far with it. As a result he's quite a sympathetic character, even if he's on the side of the villain and keeps doing villainous things.

The Sisterhood of Karn, on the other hand, isn't quite as well realized -- the sense of mysticism surrounding their actions and abilities is a good move, but there's still a sense that these are something of a backwards people, despite their relationship with the Time Lords. It doesn't help that they're one of these groups who've decided ahead of time that the Doctor must be guilty of whatever plot they're concerned about and thus don't give him a chance to explain himself. Still, they have the power to mentally transport both the TARDIS and the Doctor to their shrine, and to make Sarah go blind, so they're clearly not a group to trifle with. How you feel about their elaborate dances and movements is probably a matter of taste (I personally can't quite decide if they're very silly or wonderful).

But where these two episodes excel (for a more dedicated fan like me, at least) is in their development of the mythos of the Time Lords. Most of it is (shrewdly) kept vague, with talk of alliances with Time Lords and special healing elixirs and (most excitingly) a Time Lord criminal named Morbius who met his end on Karn. Obviously the Morbius bit is the main thrust of the story, but the circumstances behind his initial downfall are kept pleasingly indistinct -- it's enough to know that he was a villainous Time Lord who met his end on this planet. It's also a nice twist in the cliffhanger to part two, with a blinded Sarah stumbling down into Solon's lab after hearing Morbius calling, and the audience learns that Morbius, this famous, deadly enemy of both the Time Lords and the Sisterhood, is now literally just a brain in a jar. Good stuff.

⁹² The story goes that Dicks, unhappy with the rewrites, requested that his name be taken off and replaced with "some bland pseudonym". When he saw the name Robert Holmes had chosen, all was, it seems, forgiven.

July 28: The Android Invasion Parts Three & Four

This third episode feels very transitional, as if writer Terry Nation wants to get to the actual invasion on Earth but knows he needs to wrap things up on Oseidon, home planet of the Kraals. What this means is that the Doctor is put in great jeopardy at roughly the halfway point ("Resistance is inadvisable," Styggron tells the Doctor when he captures him), tied to an obelisk in the center of the fake village with a matter dissolver bomb at his feet, but then there's still 10 minutes of action left for what would have otherwise been a natural cliffhanger. You'd think this would make things more exciting, but what it actually amounts to is the Doctor and Sarah locked up for a bit and then getting free (Sarah by tricking and destroying an android guard, the Doctor by being rescued by Sarah from Styggron's brain drain machine -- "I feel disoriented," the Doctor says after Sarah rescues him. "This is the disorientation centre," Sarah replies. "That makes sense," says the Doctor) before being knocked out by some intense g-forces as the rocket they're inside lifts off.

Styggron meets with Marshal Chedaki. (The Android Invasion
Part Three) ©BBC

Still, we do get some villainous plans and character motivations outlined in this episode, which is always welcome. Styggron wants to wipe out humanity with a virus in a disguised Vaseline jar, paving the way for the Kraals to leave their doomed planet and start afresh -- standard villainy, then. Guy Crayford is a little more complicated; he believes that he was abandoned by humanity while out in space and was rescued and healed by the Kraals, who were able to restore everything except his eye. That doesn't completely explain why Crayford's so willing to help the Kraals, but to be fair, he thinks they're just going to take over half the planet and not actually kill anyone. Nevertheless, it's not the strongest motivation ever.

Part four is probably the most interesting of the lot, since they actually get to the invasion attempt, which means we get a chance for some doubles shenanigans as well as a chance for characters to not act like robots. It's nice to see Benton and Harry for real again, even if they're both woefully underused -- but even this limited screen time has some good moments, such as when Colonel Faraday (the Brigadier replacement for this story, as Nicholas Courtney was unavailable) mentions that Crayford has been further into space than any other human being, and Harry and Benton both exchange a knowing look. There's also a bit of fun with both the Doctor and his android duplicate wandering around the Space Centre, both convincing the other androids that they're the android version. It's more fun, but it feels like they could have done a lot more with this part of the premise -- possibly played up the uncertainty as to who was an android and who was human more. What we get is entertaining but limited in its ambitions.

And unfortunately, this story rather hinges on the single most stupid moment in all of Doctor Who, where Crayford learns that the Kraals have duped him -- the proof being that Crayford still has his eye underneath that eyepatch. How in any universe did Crayford not know this? He never looked to see what the missing eye looked like? Not once? He just trusted on blind faith that oh, by the way, you only have one eye now? But no, this is a revelation to him -- had he ever checked, it's doubtful he ever would have helped the Kraals with their plan, but he didn't and all he gets for this betrayal is being killed by Styggron. But it's okay; the Doctor reprograms his android to attack Styggron (er, even though he sent out a signal that jammed all the android circuits; still, this is just about acceptable, I guess), thereby knocking him on the deadly virus container which shatters, killing Styggron (rather nastily, it must be said). The invasion has been stopped.

It's not the worst story ever, and there are a number of welcome moments of levity and wit in a season that has been significantly more serious as of late, but ultimately The Android Invasion feels more like something Terry Nation did to earn a paycheck than anything else. There's no sense of exploring a theme or reworking a classic story in Doctor Who terms (something the show under Hinchcliffe has started increasingly doing), and while Barry Letts' direction isn't bad, it is a little loose, and the whole thing sags as a result. But other than the gobsmackingly stupid idea of Crayford and his eye, there's nothing really terrible here -- but there's nothing very striking or memorable either.

July 27: The Android Invasion Parts One & Two

It's actually rather clever, calling this The Android Invasion. By announcing the main concern prominently in the title, the viewer is distracted from realizing that the invasion hasn't actually happened yet. So when the Doctor and Sarah arrive on Earth and find masked figures shooting at them and UNIT soldiers walking jerkily over cliffs, we already know that the problem has something to do with androids, and we (sort of) assume that all the other anomalies (the brand-new money, the deserted village) are related.

This does come at a price though; because we already know that there are android problems in the town of Devesham, there is a bit of a sense of "get on with it" as we wait for the Doctor and Sarah to catch up. Director Barry Letts doesn't help with this either, as he has a number of relaxed moments (such as watching all the villagers get off that truck and slowly take their places in the pub and wait for the clock to chime) that add to this almost casual feeling. Even the cliffhanger to part one, as an alien secretly observes Sarah rescuing the Doctor from a cell inside the Space Defence Centre, feels oddly loose and not the shocking/impressive moment it should be.

Still, they do a nice job of maintaining the mystery, even as in part two things become more and more odd -- such as the day calendar that only reads 6th July. Part of the fun here is Milton Johns's portrayal of astronaut Guy Crayford, who's pitched at just the right level of control mixed with borderline hysteria. His scenes with the alien scientist Styggron are quite entertaining, particularly as Styggron has no interest in Crayford's feelings whatsoever. Plus, by including Crayford in the proceedings and adding his backstory (as told by Sarah) of a deep space astronaut who disappeared and was pronounced dead, they're able to keep the Earth pretense up. Having Benton and Harry Sullivan also walking around helps, even if they're not in these two episodes much and they're behaving strangely (because androids) when they are around.

But by the end of part two we've started to work things out, and thankfully the Doctor has as well: for whatever reason, this is just a very accurate facsimile of Earth. However, by this point the focus has shifted; Sarah has clearly been replaced by an android (with lots of clues for the viewers -- the Doctor mentions her scarf, but there's also the ginger pop stuff and the lack of a sprained ankle as sustained earlier in the episode), and in what's the most interesting cliffhanger of the story (and directed with some urgency, thankfully), "Sarah" is knocked back and her face falls off, revealing the android circuits inside...

July 26: Pyramids of Mars Parts Three & Four

Part three keeps the momentum going, as the Doctor formulates a plan (thanks to Laurence) to blow up the missile that the mummies are building in order to destroy the apparatus on Mars that keeps Sutekh a prisoner. There's an entertaining scene with Sarah and the Doctor inside the poacher's shed looking for explosives, where Sarah tosses a box of gelignite to the Doctor, much to his alarm: "Sweaty gelignite is highly unstable," he says quietly. "One good sneeze could set it off." They can't find any detonators though: "Perhaps he sneezed [to set it off]," Sarah says facetiously -- a comment which the Doctor is very clearly (and wonderfully) not amused by.

Sutekh, last of the Osirans. (Pyramids of Mars Part Three) ©BBC

While they're gone, Laurence receives a visit from Marcus and unsuccessfully tries to break Sutekh's hold on him, resulting in Marcus strangling Laurence. This leads to probably the most callous Doctor moment ever: after he finds Laurence is dead (casually pushing the body aside when he's done examining it), the Doctor gets on with his work, prompting a rebuke from Sarah: "A man has just been murdered!" "Four men, Sarah," the Doctor responds evenly, putting things in perspective. "Five, if you include Professor Scarman himself, and they're merely the first of millions unless Sutekh is stopped." It's a nice way of making the Doctor seem not quite human while still on the side of "good".

The stuff with the Doctor dressed as a mummy (and yes, that's really Tom Baker underneath -- director Paddy Russell insisted on it, much to his displeasure) and Sarah turning out to be a crack shot with a rifle is also quite entertaining, and the fact that Sutekh is containing the force of the explosion with pure mental energy is quite impressive -- and requires the Doctor to head down the sarcophagus space-time tunnel to Sutekh's tomb (prison?) in order to distract him so that he releases his mental grip on the explosion. Sutekh is not happy with the Doctor...

The opening of part four is fantastic. Sutekh's power over the Doctor, even while he's still confined to his chair, is impressive, and Tom Baker really sells the Doctor's horror and fear over being controlled by Sutekh. It's also quite worrying, how Sutekh is able to take full control of the Doctor and have him take Marcus and a mummy to the pyramid on Mars that controls Sutekh's imprisonment.

Sadly, it does sag a little in the middle, as they remake part of Death to the Daleks here, with mental puzzles and such needing to be solved in order to get further inside the pyramid. In the fine tradition of Terrance Dicks, Sarah even mentions how it reminds her of the "city of the Exxilons" -- but that doesn't solve the basic problem of repetitiveness. Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen do manage to keep things entertaining (such as with their entrance and immediate exit into the room Marcus is currently in, or with the Doctor writing "RELAX" in the dust of the cylinder Sarah is trapped in and Sarah sarcastically indicating her understanding), but it's not quite as wonderful as the first part. But then Sutekh is actually freed and heads out to wreak his vengeance on the universe -- but thanks to some technical jiggery-pokery by the Doctor, he ends up trapped in a "corridor of eternity" and thus cannot leave before he dies. The universe is saved, and the Doctor and Sarah leave as an explosion from the sarcophagus starts a large fire in the priory...

It's not hard to see why Pyramids of Mars has a reputation for being one of the standout Tom Baker stories (and indeed one of the standouts of the entire series). There's a real effort here to make this as tense and serious as possible -- there's very little in the way of humor to relieve things, and much of the humor we do get is rather black (such as the aforementioned bit with the gelignite). Tom Baker is at the top of his game here, acting alien and intense without going too far or (most crucially) turning into a caricature, and Lis Sladen is more than up to the task of keeping up with him. Add into that an outstanding performance from Gabriel Woolf as Sutekh (never has evil sounded so calm and cultured as here) and a creepy turn from Bernard Archard as the possessed Marcus Scarman, and the result is a cast taking an already solid script and elevating it to something special. It's not perfect, but it's a lot closer than most other stories ever get.

July 25: Pyramids of Mars Parts One & Two

I always forget about the opening "prologue" of this story, with the nice stock footage of Egypt and the discovery by Marcus Scarman of Sutekh's untouched tomb. I'm not sure why I forget; it's a nice set-up showing that something terrible will be happening for the next four episodes, but in my head the story opens with the TARDIS scene and the Doctor acting inscrutable.

This first episode is all set-up, mainly: there's something wrong at Scarman's house -- a priory in England, with rooms full of Egyptian artifacts but the professor himself nowhere to be found. In his place is an Egyptian named Namin who's running things while Scarman is away. Namin's willing to preserve his secrets at all costs, so there's a chase sequence outdoors with Namin and two mummies (yep, walking mummies -- with huge chests) trying to find the Doctor, Sarah, and a wounded gentleman named Dr. Warlock, who was shot by Namin but only injured, thanks to the Doctor's intervention. It's a nice chase (even if we have Egyptian mummies hunting people down in the English countryside), and it eventually culminates with our heroes escaping (for now) and taking refuge at the house of Scarman's brother, Laurence. There's some stuff there with a crude radio telescope and a signal from Mars that apparently translates as "Beware Sutekh" -- although why this signal is apparently being broadcast in English is never explained. The Doctor is now worried ("If I'm right, the world is facing the greatest peril in its history") and they head back to the priory to see Namin summon Sutekh's servant from inside a rather nice special effect in a sarcophagus, who coolly but quite brutally kills Namin, telling him that Sutekh only needs one servant. The servant then very calmly declares that he brings "Sutekh's gift of death to all humanity." It's a creepy cliffhanger.

There's a lot more of this coldness and callousness on display in part two. Sutekh's servant turns into Marcus Scarman, only Scarman looks like a walking corpse (so kudos to the makeup department on that one). Dr. Warlock is strangled to death by a mummy in Laurence's house, and a poacher who happened to be on the grounds when the mummies set up a forcefield around the place is crushed to death between two mummies in a literal death hug -- though not before the poacher tried to shoot down Scarman, only to see Scarman expel the bullets and suck the smoke into his chest, unharmed (well, I think that's what's happening; it's a really neat use of reversing the footage, but it's not quite clear what's supposed to happen beyond "bullets can't harm him"). But the most striking version of this comes from the Doctor himself, as he shows Sarah the consequences of not stopping Sutekh in 1911:

DOCTOR: 1980, Sarah, if you want to get off.
SARAH: It's a trick!
DOCTOR: No. That's the world as Sutekh would leave it. A desolate planet circling a dead sun.
SARAH: It can't be! I'm from 1980.⁹¹
DOCTOR: Every point in time has its alternative, Sarah. You've looked into alternative time.
LAURENCE: Fascinating. Do you mean the future can be chosen, Doctor?
DOCTOR: Not chosen, shaped. The actions of the present fashion the future.
LAURENCE: So a man can change the course of history?
DOCTOR: To a small extent. It takes a being of Sutekh's almost limitless power to destroy the future.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Pyramids of Mars)

The manner in which the Doctor matter-of-factly shows the result of their inaction is quite callous, but it's also very effective (and looks a lot like it's been inserted to forestall viewer questions about how Sutekh could destroy the world in the past).

Laurence is meanwhile having trouble accepting that his brother is dead and that the Marcus we see is just a walking corpse, so when the Doctor tries to set up a jamming device to break Sutekh's control over Scarman, Laurence tries to stop him -- just as two mummies burst in to kill them, leaving us with the rather disturbing image of one of them grabbing Sarah's throat as the cliffhanger...

⁹¹ And yes, this is the story where Sarah Jane Smith repeatedly states that she's from 1980. This isn't really the place to get into the whole UNIT dating argument, other than to observe that this is one of the few pieces of on-screen evidence to not gel with an early-70s setting for the Pertwee UNIT stories and so is probably the bit brought up most often for the late-70s theory.

July 24: Planet of Evil Parts Three & Four

It's a bit sad that, after we spent so much time in that awesome jungle for the first two episodes, that most of our time in these last two are spent on the Morestran spaceship. It just can't compare. But you can see what Louis Marks (whose last script was Day of the Daleks, you might recall) is doing by heading inside the ship; it's one thing to have something roaming the jungles outside, but it's another to have it in the ship with you.

Part three does a good job of maintaining the suspense, with the Doctor spinning through a black void and communicating with the antimatter creature -- apparently his promise as a Time Lord to return the antimatter was good enough for the creature to accept. And so the spaceship tries to leave Zeta Minor, Salamar having ordered that the antimatter be taken off the ship -- only it seems that Professor Sorenson has hidden some away, thus preventing the ship from getting too far into space. That's bad enough, but it seems that Sorenson is being taken over by the antimatter, turning into some sort of animal (this is often compared to Jekyll and Hyde, but it's also a lot like a werewolf). The glowing eye effect is pretty nifty, but there's a lot of "hands covering face" acting -- presumably to remove whatever has been painted on Frederick Jaeger's eyelids. Still, it's an effective shot.

But yes, Sorenson has turned into an animal-like creature and started killing people, but Salamar is convinced that the Doctor and Sarah are responsible. There's a nice moment after the first death in this episode, where Vishinsky consigns Morelli's body into space, while playing the last rites for a Morestran Orthodox. It shows the level of thought that went into things (even if Vishinsky doesn't seem particularly sympathetic towards Morelli's beliefs: "One of those," he says a bit derisively upon learning his faith, and then when he plays the last rites silently, he remarks, "We may have to play the last rites, but we don't have to listen"), and it's a clever way of establishing the jettison equipment -- so that when Salamar wants to space the Doctor and Sarah, we already know what that entails. Thus the cliffhanger is even more effective, particularly since we see them both disappear from view...

The antimatter creature watches the TARDIS depart. (Planet
of Evil Part Four) ©BBC

Part four doesn't quite wrap things up as nicely as one might want. There's a sense in which things have been nearly sorted out less than halfway through, which is presumably why they introduce a new threat by having a crazy Salamar shoot Sorenson with a "neutron accelerator", which turns him into a whole bunch of antimatter creatures roaming the ship and attacking people. It only stops when the Doctor finds the real Sorenson, knocks him out, and drags him into the TARDIS so he can take him back to Zeta Minor. It's noticeable that this is one of those rare instances in which the Doctor seems to have total control over the TARDIS, able to make short hops in space but not time with it -- and to have a dangerous enemy along for the ride is even more striking. But in any event, the Doctor is able to return the antimatter and the hybridized Sorenson back to Zeta Minor and save the Morestran spaceship. Pleasingly, the antimatter creature decides to return Sorenson to "our" universe, minus any antimatter contamination -- it's nice to have the misguided "villain" survive the story. The Doctor thus returns Sorenson, picks up Sarah, and heads off to Earth again.

There are two things going for Planet of Evil: the superb design work on Zeta Minor and its antimatter creature (pinched from Forbidden Planet or not, it's still cool) and the desire from Louis Marks and the rest of the crew to make a straightforward scary story. These decisions go a long way in papering over any flaws the rest of the story might have (such as making Salamar go mad -- difficult in the best of circumstances, but Prentis Hancock does seem to be a little out of his depth, such that it's almost like a switch is flipped when it's decided, "oh, he's crazy now"). It's not designed to be an allegory or an "event" story; it's just there to tell a tense, scary story, and at this it succeeds marvelously. A solid, well-done tale.

One lingering question though: what is it about the planet that makes it evil, exactly?

July 23: Planet of Evil Parts One & Two

Hey, that's not London...

The thing that immediately strikes you about Planet of Evil is how impressive that jungle set is. It's a riot of plants and colors, and it's all lit very moodily -- particularly on film. But what's perhaps even more impressive is that the character of the jungle is retained when they go to studio scenes shot on video; it still looks like the same set (albeit with more standard lighting). And so they've taken this really good jungle and decided to make it scary. So add one lost expedition and the Doctor and Sarah stumbling on the remnants, just as the reinforcements arrive, and you've got a nice old-fashioned tale of suspense. There's clearly something out there, killing people by sucking all the liquid from them (the disappearing effect is rather meh, but the dehydrated appearance of the bodies is first-rate) -- and unfortunately those reinforcements think the Doctor and Sarah are somehow responsible.

The Morestran spaceship does provide a nice contrast to the jungle set, even if it occasionally looks too much like a quick set that someone's put up in an hour, but the crew themselves disappoint by being rather one-dimensional; they don't trust the Doctor, and that seems to be their only motivation -- even to the exclusion of leaving Zeta Minor as quickly as possible. I guess once they think they've caught the culprits there's no need to worry -- and the Doctor and Sarah making an escape, only to have one of the Morestran guards attacked by a nifty Forbidden Planet-esque monster, doesn't exactly help their case any.

Part two gives us more of the same but adds into the mix some motivation for what's going on, thanks to the Doctor. The Morestrans still believe the Doctor's responsible for the deaths (and there seems to be a math error here: Sorenson says there were eight in his expedition, and he appears to be the only survivor; then we see O'Hara killed, which should make eight deaths, but Salamar keeps referring to seven deaths), but the Doctor's worked out that Zeta Minor is a gateway between universes, this one and one he refers to as one of antimatter, and that the antimatter universe isn't going to let the Morestrans take any of their universe away (in the form of mineral samples that Sorenson has collected). But the Morestrans desperately need energy, so Sorenson doesn't want to relinquish the minerals. However, their ship is unable to leave the surface, and then the antimatter monster attacks the ship -- which seems to convince the Morestrans that maybe the Doctor isn't responsible. The Doctor offers to negotiate with the other universe, but when he's at the black pool which seems to be the immediate gateway, the antimatter creature rises up and causes him to overbalance and fall into the pool (with another David Maloney freeze-frame cliffhanger)...

July 22: Terror of the Zygons Parts Three & Four

A reasonable cliffhanger resolution for once: the signalling device for the Loch Ness Monster is destroyed, and the Doctor was the last one holding it, ergo the Doctor has been destroyed too. Thus the Zygons can proceed with their plans without further interference, they believe. And seriously, the Zygons are still so creepy-looking.

One of the primary plot points for part three, however, involves the pub's landlord, Angus, being killed by the Zygon masquerading as Sister Lamont (and the transformation from Zygon to human and back is really well done -- that red-and-black effect does a good job of selling the change, rather than just, say, a simple dissolving mix), which leads to a cross-country chase for Warrant Officer Benton and his men -- and look, an alien that's not immune to bullets. Someone probably should have told that trooper about the shapeshifting, though. The big point gets the Duke of Forgill involved -- turns out he's a Zygon in disguise as well, and Sarah quickly (and serendipitously) learns that there's a tunnel leading right to the Zygon spaceship in Loch Ness. She's able to rescue Harry, too -- although the Doctor still ends up being captured by the Zygons and taken back to their spaceship. And when the Brigadier tries to get them to come out of the loch, they end up (in a really nice effect, both underwater and above it) simply flying away...

Part three does a good job of keeping the momentum going and setting up the big finale, and part four doesn't disappoint. There are some marvelous moments in front of the camera -- that forced perspective shot of the spaceship model in the quarry, with people apparently jumping out of it, is so good that it's actually all too easy to believe it's a real full-blown set built on location (and compare this to the tank scene in Robot) -- and the script has some witty moments too. "You can't rule a world in hiding," the Doctor tells Broton, the Zygon leader. "You've got to come out onto the balcony sometimes and wave a tentacle, if you'll pardon the expression." Robert Banks Stewart (a writer new to the show) also slyly pokes fun at its limitations: "When does this great operation begin, this conquest of the world? ... And what are you going to do with it when you've got it? Isn't it a bit large for just about six of you?" the Doctor wonders. There's also the forward-thinking moment where the Brigadier handles a phone call from the Prime Minister who is clearly female ("Oh, absolutely understood, madam. No public announcement"). But contrasting with this is the somewhat bloodthirsty moment where the Doctor traps the remaining Zygons inside the spaceship which he then sets to self-destruct -- as if the fact that these are would-be conquerors means that their lives somehow don't have value.

A Zygon is given orders by its leader Broton. (Terror of the
Zygons Part Four) ©BBC

The resolution of everything is admittedly a bit daft (Broton's plan appears to be to hold the International Energy Conference to ransom with the Loch Ness Monster coming out of the Thames) -- although, again, the fact that Zygons can be killed by bullets is rather nice -- but there is a nice bit of symmetry. The story started with the Skarasen (the Zygons' name for Nessie) attacking oil rigs, and now it ends with the Skarasen terrorizing London. This is probably the worst the special effects get for the Skarasen, and it's not that bad at all (though it should be noted that the DVD has done a good job of stabilizing the most offending shot, which had wildly shaky film with rock-solid video superimposed on it, so that it only looks a bit bad, instead of really bad). But the Zygons have been defeated, and all that's left is for everyone to head back from London to Scotland to the TARDIS -- even though two of those people (Harry and the Brig) are going to go straight back to London again (and the Brigadier has changed back into that kilt again). Sarah prefers to head back to London via TARDIS, and so off she and the Doctor go.

And so we say goodbye to Harry Sullivan as a regular companion (though he'll be back for one more story later this season), and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart as a semi-regular character (he'll be back a few more times, but not until 1983). It's a bit sad to see Harry go -- Ian Marter is an incredibly talented actor, and it's a shame they got rid of him, even if he's rather superfluous in plot terms. The Doctor may not have liked having him around, but I sure did. It's a little less sad to see the Brigadier go, but only because a) we know he'll be back, eventually, and b) his appearances have been more and more sporadic anyway. Combine that with the fact that the fourth Doctor doesn't seem to really fit in with UNIT anymore, and it's probably best for the Brigadier to bow out at this point. Oh, and UNIT too! They'll be back a couple more times, but this in many ways feels like the last gasp of greatness for UNIT. But at least they get a good story to go out on.

For many people the Skarasen is held up as a woeful effects shot that lets everything down. As I mentioned in Outside In, this is nonsense. It's not the world's most convincing effect, but it's a lot better than other effects from around this time. I think the Skarasen receives the brunt of these criticisms just because all the other visuals in this story are so good. The Zygons are incredible, the ship is convincing, and Camfield does a superb job of keeping everything moving. Closer examination reveals that the script isn't quite as good as the direction initially makes it seem (e.g., Broton's plan is a little confused, there are some shocking lapses of good thinking on behalf of UNIT at various points), but it's Camfield's triumph that this only becomes apparent when you really sit down and think about it. Terror of the Zygons is a solid tale, and when something like the Skarasen is the worst thing about it you know things are going right. And if the Loch Ness Monster bothers you that much, you're probably watching the wrong show anyway.

July 21: Terror of the Zygons Parts One & Two

Full disclosure: this is the story I wrote a piece on for Outside In (which you can purchase here if you're interested (shameless plug over)). This will try to not be a repeat of that piece, though I may touch on a couple of those points again.

It is rather nice to see UNIT back in action again, even if we're outside the usual stomping grounds and hanging around Loch Ness instead. (Not exactly convinced about the Brigadier in a kilt though.) But what's more striking is how irritated the Doctor seems to be about being summoned back by the Brigadier, even though he's the one who gave him the space-time telegraph in the first place. "When I left the psionic beam with you, Brigadier, I said it was only to be used in an emergency," the Doctor grumbles. "Oil an emergency? Huh! It's about time the people who run this planet of yours realised that to be dependent upon a mineral slime just doesn't make sense." He does allow himself to be persuaded to help after the Brigadier mentions the loss of life, though.

Given that this is a UNIT story during Philip Hinchcliffe's producership, we get an interesting blend of that cozy UNIT feel and the more intense air of season 12. It clearly suits director Douglas Camfield fine (back in the Who fold after 1970's Inferno), and he does a fabulous job with the material, but that blend is still present -- perhaps no more obviously than the sequence in part one where Harry is shot with a sniper rifle out on the beach while trying to help an oil rig worker who's stumbling in from the sea. So while the Brigadier is setting up a base of operations in the local pub, Harry is lying on the ground with blood on his forehead (and Ian Marter does a good job of selling being struck by a bullet as well). It's to Camfield's credit that this juxtaposition of styles works so well. And he also does a good job with the titular aliens, showing us a hand here, a pair of eyes there, so that the first cliffhanger, showing one in its full glory menacing Sarah, has a strong impact.

Zygon Harry hides in a barn. (Terror of the Zygons Part Two)
©BBC

Of course, once we've seen a Zygon, part two gives us lots of shots of them inside their organic spaceship. They really are a masterpiece of design and still maintain their creepy impact even today. Their ship is also just as unpleasant, looking like a pizza gone amok. It's very impressive. But the other thing we learn is that Zygons have the ability, given a suitable bodyprint, to take on the appearance of human beings -- which therefore allows Ian Marter to play a baddie, as a Zygon assuming Harry's form. Marter is very sinister in this role, and he's aided by some striking direction -- one shot in particular (as shown to the right), with him half-hidden in shadow, is superbly framed and lit to make Harry seem very sinister. The sequence doesn't last long, but its impact is long-lasting.

But shapeshifting isn't the only weapon the Zygons have: they also have control of a giant monster living in Loch Ness, which has been chewing up the oil rigs and caused the problem that brought the Doctor to Scotland in the first place. Yep, it's the Loch Ness Monster, and it honestly doesn't look that bad -- it's a hell of a lot better than the dinosaurs from season 11, and there's something wonderful about the stop-motion animation used to make it chase the Doctor across the moorland -- a welcome touch of Harryhausen added to the proceedings. It is a bit silly that the Zygons have to resort to gassing an entire town in order to let it pass unseen, but the monster does make for another effective cliffhanger, as it bears down on the Doctor and the tracking device that he can't get unstuck from his hand...

July 20: Revenge of the Cybermen Parts Three & Four

400! Revenge of the Cybermen Part Three is Doctor Who's 400th episode -- quite a milestone (and the halfway point for the entire series, as of time of writing). And it helps that this is probably the most interesting episode of the story, as we see Tom Baker being dangerously flippant with the Cyberleader and forced to travel to the center of Voga with a Cyberbomb strapped to his back, in order to blow the place up. (Voga, remember, is the source of all the gold that was so deadly to the Cybermen in the last Cyber-war -- and yes, this is the story that introduces the gold weakness.) Tom Baker is very entertaining in this scene -- it looks like the Doctor is playing with fire and knows it, trying to get a rise out of the Cybermen: "You've no home planet, no influence, nothing. You're just a pathetic bunch of tin soldiers skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship...." The Cyberleader tries to defend his race by blaming their defeat on Voga, but the Doctor will have none of it. "It was a glorious triumph, for human ingenuity," he says. "They discovered your weakness and invented the glitter gun, and that was the end of Cybermen except as gold-plated souvenirs that people use as hat stands."

Two Cybermen on Voga. (Revenge of the Cybermen Part Three)
©BBC

But in any event, bombs strapped to the back and sent to blow the planet up. We also learn that Kellman has actually been working for the Vogans, trying to lure them to Voga so that Vorus can blow them up. For some reason he hasn't discussed this at all with their leader, Tyrum (as played by Kevin Stoney, who was last seen as Tobias Vaughn in the last Cyberman story), and so this is what the civil war is about? Or something? It looks like Gerry Davis hasn't bothered to really give much motivation to this, and the cause has to be largely inferred. Either way, Kellman's actually working for the Vogans, and all he had to do was kill an entire station of people to enact Vorus's plan -- so it's still hard to be on his side.

Doesn't matter, though -- he's killed in a rockfall at the cliffhanger that also knocks the Doctor out. This means that we get a somewhat unusual cliffhanger, as Harry finds him and tries to remove the bomb, not knowing (like the audience does) that the release mechanism is bobby-trapped...

Fortunately he's warned off by Lester, one of the Doctor's fellow bomb carriers from Nerva, so tragedy doesn't strike. And when the Doctor learns that Harry caused the rockfall and tried to remove the bomb, he bellows "Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!" and passes out again. The camera cuts away, but not before we get a marvelous look of "gee, thanks" from Ian Marter.

The rest of the episode isn't that exciting, unfortunately. There's some farting around with the Vogans' rocket, while the Cybermen decide to load Nerva Beacon full of outlawed bombs and send it toward Voga (though not before the Cyberleader attempts to kill the Doctor with a violent shoulder rub). The Doctor is able to just barely prevent Nerva from crashing into the planet -- a sequence which gives us the silliest "hurtling towards the ground" effect ever: first they show Nerva crashing toward Voga by just zooming the camera in (which doesn't work since the stars therefore appear to be closing in as well), and then someone's gotten the idea to take a tube, decorate it with a rocky landscape, and then spin it really fast -- as if the Beacon is going to crash into a giant spinning chocolate log.

But the Beacon is saved and the Cybermen are destroyed and everything is fine again. Unusually for a season-ender, Revenge of the Cybermen ends with a cliffhanger, as it seems the Brigadier has an emergency and needs the Doctor's help (which will tie in with Terror of the Zygons, the first story of season 13 but made at the end of this season).

On the surface there's not really anything wrong with Revenge of the Cybermen -- it's competently made, and there are some nice moments here and there. Even the music isn't as inappropriate as it was in Carey Blyton's last score, for Death to the Daleks (although there are still moments where the music insists on going "plod...(plod)...plod...(plod)"). No, the main problem with this story is that you never get a sense that anyone's really invested in this. It feels less like an effort to work out some personal demons on the writer's behalf or to make something strikingly visual or memorable (as About Time notes, they missed the chance to do a definitive "body horror" story here by focusing on the Cybermen converting people) and more like someone's realized they haven't done a Cyberman story since 1968 and so maybe they should. It's not the mess you may have heard -- which may be because it was the first Doctor Who story ever released on home video (in an edited form, no less)⁹⁰, and so people had a greater opportunity to be disappointed by it -- but it's by no means a classic. It feels more like a leftover from season 11 -- which should say it all, really.

This is the exception rather than the rule for season 12, however. Tom Baker's (and Philip Hinchcliffe's) first season has been a smash hit, giving the show a new sense of energy and vitality that was lacking last season. The decision to also go in a more "serious" direction has paid off marvelously -- the way in which these stories treat their themes has been incredibly successful. It's also paid off for the audience -- the ratings have been extremely healthy for this season. It's a shame the season is so short, but what we get is largely high-caliber, and a definite triumph for everyone involved.

⁹⁰ Allegedly they took a poll at the 20th Anniversary celebration at Longleat for which story fans wanted released on video first ("allegedly" because this story gets mentioned a lot, but never with a source attached), and the winner was The Tomb of the Cybermen -- which didn't exist at the time. So the powers-that-be figured any Cyberman story would do (not that they had many options at that point, the state of the archive being what it was) and put out this one instead.

July 19: Revenge of the Cybermen Parts One & Two

After their adventure on Skaro (thus continuing the interconnectedness of these stories⁸⁷) , the Doctor and his companions arrive via Time Ring on Nerva -- only it's a lot earlier than when they left. The Nerva of this time period ("thousands of years before" the solar flares, the Doctor tells Harry -- but maybe he actually means thousands of years before the events of The Ark in Space) has been severely afflicted by a plague which has killed virtually everyone on board -- there are only four people left alive. Everyone else has been struck down by this strangely familiar-looking disease (although, to be fair, it has been nine years since The Moonbase, so maybe it wasn't that familiar to the audience), while large silver snake bugs slither around. Oh, and there's clearly a slimy traitor on board who's contacting the Cybermen. It's a reasonable set-up, but the problem is that Kellman is such an obvious traitor that the question is about how he'll be stopped, rather than who the traitor is. The new redesigned Cybermats also seem awkward and ungainly -- no one has seen these huge things moving around on Nerva? But no, they're leaping on people and biting them in the neck, and Sarah is attacked in part one's cliffhanger.⁸⁸

Nerva is where it is, by the way, because fifty years earlier a large asteroid showed up near Jupiter ("So you mean there are now thirteen [satellites of Jupiter]?" the Doctor infamously asks⁸⁹), so Nerva is there to warn passing ships of the new astronavigational hazard. The asteroid is all that's left of Voga, the planet of gold that was instrumental in defeating the Cybermen "centuries ago" at the end of the Cyber War. The Vogans have managed to survive in the interim, though. The problem with the Vogans is that the audience isn't given much background or reason to care about them before they start engaging in a sort of civil war, and so it just looks more like a bit of incident along the way for Harry and Sarah to get out of than anything else. (Sarah, by the way, has been cured of the Cyber-infection by passing through a transmat -- pity no one else thought of that.) And while the Vogan sets and location footage work well together to create the world of Voga (and remember that fancy figure-eight symbol -- it'll come up again in season 14), the Vogans themselves leave something to be desired. The hero masks are reasonably good, but all the extras/stuntmen are wearing less-developed masks with visible gaps between the mask and the actors' own eyes that significantly ruin the effect.

But the main concern with these first two episodes of Revenge of the Cybermen is that it doesn't feel like anything really happens. There's some Vogan politics and such to try and keep things moving, but any real drama feels like it's being delayed with the appearance of the Cybermen (the Cybermen! We haven't seen them for seven years!), who don't really show up (other than a brief scene here and there) until the end of part two, when they shoot down the two remaining crewmen -- and the Doctor! Everything prior feels like it's building to this point. Let's hope the pay-off is worth it.

⁸⁷ Even if, oddly, Sarah makes reference to "these past few weeks", which suggests that either they were on Skaro for a hell of a lot longer than we thought, or there are indeed somehow unseen adventures in this arc of stories.
⁸⁸ Not exactly relevant to this story, but it's worth noting that William Hartnell died between parts one and two, on 23 April 1975.
⁸⁹ Stephen Cole tries to explain away this line by basing the penultimate Eighth Doctor Adventure To the Slaughter on it, if you feel so inclined (in which a bunch of Jovian moons are destroyed in the name of cosmic feng shui), but it's worth noting that this number was accurate when Revenge of the Cybermen was written -- though not by the time of filming and subsequent broadcast, as a thirteenth moon, Leda, was discovered in September 1974.

July 18: Genesis of the Daleks Parts Five & Six

These episodes are probably the best of the story -- certainly they're full of memorable moments. Part five gives us the Doctor's discussion with Davros about the deadliness of the Daleks in the future, with the Doctor likening them to a virus: "Davros, if you had created a virus in your laboratory, something contagious and infectious that killed on contact, a virus that would destroy all other forms of life, would you allow its use?" Davros, however, is taken by the idea: "Yes. Yes. To hold in my hand a capsule that contains such power, to know that life and death on such a scale was my choice. To know that the tiny pressure on my thumb, enough to break the glass, would end everything. Yes, I would do it! That power would set me up above the gods! And through the Daleks, I shall have that power!"

Events appear to be moving against Davros, however, with those opposed to him staging a sort of revolution -- a revolution which Davros appears to submit to. He seems to bow to Gharman and the others' demands (hey, he wasn't lobotomized after all!), asking only that he be allowed to address everyone. Yet after Gharman agrees to this, Davros begins to crow triumphantly. "Ours is the victory, Nyder. We have won! They talk of democracy, freedom, fairness. Those are the creeds of cowards. The ones who will listen to a thousand viewpoints and try to satisfy them all. Achievement comes through absolute power, and power through strength. They have lost!" Davros cries.

But while Davros remains fascinatingly watchable, the Doctor is making his own plans to wipe out the Daleks, by setting explosive charges inside their nursery. But as he comes out, a Dalek mutant is attempting to strangle him...

"Do I have the right?" The Doctor contemplates genocide while
Sarah and Harry look on. (Genesis of the Daleks Part Six) ©BBC

Part six has probably (and understandably) the most well-known scene of this entire story, as the Doctor contemplates going through with his plan and blowing up the nursery:

DOCTOR: Just touch these two strands together and the Daleks are finished. Have I that right?
SARAH: To destroy the Daleks? You can't doubt it.
DOCTOR: But I do. You see, some things could be better with the Daleks. Many future worlds will become allies just because of their fear of the Daleks.
SARAH: But it isn't like that.
DOCTOR: But the final responsibility is mine, and mine alone. Listen, if someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?
SARAH: We're talking about the Daleks, the most evil creatures ever invented. You must destroy them. You must complete your mission for the Time Lords.
DOCTOR: Do I have the right? Simply touch one wire against the other and that's it. The Daleks cease to exist. Hundreds of millions of people, thousands of generations can live without fear, in peace, and never even know the word "Dalek".
SARAH: Then why wait? If it was a disease or some sort of bacteria you were destroying, you wouldn't hesitate.
DOCTOR: But if I kill, wipe out a whole intelligent lifeform, then I become like them. I'd be no better than the Daleks.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Genesis of the Daleks)

Fortunately for the Doctor, he doesn't have to make the choice, as Gharman comes and tells him that Davros has lost. The future has been changed. Well, except it turns out Davros has been stalling for time, waiting for the Daleks to arrive and exterminate all the rebels. So while the Thals are outside the Kaled bunker, preparing to destroy the entrance and entomb those inside, the Doctor decides to go back and finish the job he started. That's less well-remembered -- probably because there aren't any interesting speeches the second time around. But even though he's successful, he's not completely satisfied: "I'm afraid I've only delayed them for a short time. Perhaps a thousand years."

But the best thing about this episode is watching Davros outmaneuver his opponents, being cool and collected with them, trying to persuade them to join his side before seeing them all cut down by Dalek fire -- only to then have them turn on him as well, as they decide they don't need him. "We obey no one. We are the superior beings," a Dalek declares before it exterminates Davros. And meanwhile, the Thals set off the explosives, trapping the Daleks inside the bunker -- at least for a little while.

And the story ends well too, as the Time Ring sends the Doctor, Sarah, and Harry away from Skaro. "We failed, haven't we?" Sarah asks. "Failed?" the Doctor replies. "No, not really. You see, I know that although the Daleks will create havoc and destruction for millions of years, I know also that out of their evil must come something good."

Genesis of the Daleks is considered one of Doctor Who's finest stories, and it's not hard to see why. There's a confidence on display here that carries the whole production, and David Maloney's direction is chock full of good scenes that are stark in their brutality, making the whole thing feel desperate. And it seems that someone has inspired Terry Nation to rise to the occasion, as he delivers his best script for the show since The Daleks. There's also something exciting about seeing the origins of the Daleks that shines through, even now. But even though this is called Genesis of the Daleks, the Daleks themselves are kept largely in the background, only to be unleashed at key moments in parts four and six. No, this story is primarily about Davros, one of Doctor Who's best villains ever, and Michael Wisher is more than up to the task of carrying the tale. It's a tour de force performance, delivered inside a wheelchair and behind a (very well done) latex mask. The success of Genesis lies as much in his lap as in anyone else's. You wouldn't want them all to be like this, but Genesis of the Daleks carries out its mission in considerable style.

July 17: Genesis of the Daleks Parts Three & Four

Funny how Sarah gets out of her life-imperiling situation by landing on a platform that doesn't appear to have been anywhere near her...

The other striking thing about Sarah's failed escape attempt is how brutal and sadistic the Thals are; it's hard to imagine anything this cruel during the Pertwee era. And while the Thals are dealing harshly with their almost-escaped prisoners, Davros is demonstrating the latest developments in his Dalek project. But that project might be ending soon; the Doctor and Harry have made their way through a cave system (which involves Harry literally putting his foot inside a giant, largely motionless clam in order to provide some action to this sequence -- still, at least Ian Marter does an excellent job of conveying Harry's sheer panic and distress) in order to reach the Kaled leaders, who decide to investigate Davros's experiment and bring it to a halt if necessary. This may have sealed the Kaleds' fate, however; although on the surface Davros appears willing to go along with the Kaled leaders' request, in reality he's willing to sacrifice everything, including his own race, in order to see the completion of his Dalek project. And so Davros arranges a secret meeting with the Thals, to give them a formula to help them utterly destroy the Kaleds. The Doctor overhears this, thanks to a secret tunnel which leads directly into the Thal base that one of the Kaleds shows him.

Hold on a minute. Not only can Davros (who's essentially wheelchair-bound) make his way to the Thal base without problems, but there's an unguarded tunnel that leads into the middle of the place that the Kaleds know about? And the Kaleds have never taken advantage of this? No wonder this war has lasted ten centuries.

So the Doctor tries to stop the Thals' rocket from launching, but he fails, causing the Kaled dome to go up in flames at the start of part four. The Kaleds are basically wiped out, and Davros uses this as an excuse to unleash the Daleks on the Thals. This can probably be regarded as the turning point in the story. The Daleks have lurking in the background prior to this, but this is the point at which they become a formidable threat, as they sweep through the Thal city exterminating people.

And yet, despite this, it's Davros that remains the focus of the story. We've seen him be both suavely manipulative and insanely ranting, and Michael Wisher's performance (through a fairly immobile mask, even) is excellent. One can't help but be drawn into the drama as he occupies the screen, turning the Daleks into amoral killers and plotting with Nyder to retain power and crush any opposition. It's also quite chilling how he matter-of-factly decides to give Gharman a lobotomy so that Davros can continue to use him for his "inventive skills." And the cliffhanger to part four is also a good one, with the Doctor strapped down and Davros threatening to torture Harry and Sarah unless the Doctor tells Davros about every future Dalek defeat, so that the Daleks can be warned. Davros remains the focal point as he rants at the Doctor in clipped, Dalek-like tones: "You will tell me! You! Will! Tell! Me!"

July 16: Genesis of the Daleks Parts One & Two

Picking up where The Sontaran Experiment left off (so no gaps in these stories), Genesis of the Daleks starts with a Time Lord informing the Doctor that they've plucked him and his companions out of the transmat beam⁸⁵ and brought them to Skaro at the dawn of the Daleks' creation. The Doctor isn't thrilled by this ("Look, whatever I've done for you in the past... I've more than made up for," the Doctor tells the Seventh Seal Time Lord⁸⁶), but he agrees to help when he learns the Daleks are involved. The Doctor receives a mission right away: prevent the Daleks' creation, alter it to make them less evil, or discover some inherent weakness. Everything else in this story is designed with that goal in mind. Oh, and he gets a Time Ring to take him back to the TARDIS when he's finished.

In keeping with the new style that producer Philip Hinchcliffe seems to be adopting, this is a brutal story. It looks dirty and dangerous, and there's not a friendly face to be found in the entire first episode (Time Lord messenger excepted). The decision to primarily use realistic projectile guns and recognizable weapons (such as landmines) also adds to this bleak atmosphere. (Although you do get the chance to finally see the Drahvins' guns in color, a mere ten years after Galaxy 4.) And the landmine sequence may be pure padding, but at least it's well-played, tense padding. The rest of the episode serves as a series of captures, escapes, and recaptures, but it's done well enough that you don't really mind.

But what's really happening here is that Terry Nation has decided to go back to the beginning and tell the story of how the Daleks came to be. What's perhaps most surprising is how closely this sticks to the history described in The Daleks -- the biggest change is that the name of the Dalek progenitors is now Kaled instead of Dal. Everything else serves as expanding that story. But the biggest introduction is the crippled scientist Davros, creator of the Daleks (sorry, Yarvelling). Time has robbed us a bit of the impact of seeing him for the first time, his lower half encased in a Dalek-looking base. And the cliffhanger gives us our first look at a Dalek -- a time-honored tradition on Doctor Who, but one that actually makes sense in this context.

There is no recap of any kind in part two (which you could tell if you were watching the omnibus edition, as I first did, because the end of the title music suddenly intruded) because they've got to get right to it. While there's some more stuff with the Dalek and introducing it to the Kaled scientists (which leads to some of them becoming concerned with the direction of the Dalek project and thus deciding to help the Doctor and Harry), the primary point of part two is to show the Thal side of things. What's most striking here is that we see the Thals are just as brutal and amoral as the Kaleds, taking prisoners and forcing them to do dangerous work at gunpoint. So Sarah and her fellow prisoners are forced to load toxic distronic explosives (which the story treats as a form of radiation) into a rocket designed to completely wipe out the Kaleds. Both sides are apparently willing to do whatever it takes to end this thousand-year war. As Sarah doesn't want to die from distronic toxaemia, however, she leads an escape attempt to climb the scaffolding next to the rocket and climb out the top of the dome. Things don't go well, though, and the cliffhanger to part two shows Sarah losing her grip and falling from the scaffolding, ending with a freeze-frame. How is she going to get out of this one?

⁸⁵ As we'll see next story, the Doctor never does return to Nerva to tell them that the transmat is working again. So what does Vira think when neither he nor his friends ever return? Do the surviving Galsec people transmat up at some point?
⁸⁶ There aren't a lot of fluffs from Tom Baker (there are some bad ad libs, but that's not the same thing), so this line is probably the closest we get, and even then it takes a minute for the problem to sink in.

July 15: The Sontaran Experiment Parts One & Two

The Sontaran Experiment picks up right where The Ark in Space left off, with the Doctor, Sarah, and Harry transmatting down to Earth. This story is entirely on location and once again is shot on video -- although this time there's no obvious reason why. But even though the Earth is supposedly deserted, there is in fact a small group of space-travelling humans from Galsec, investigating a distress signal. And somewhere is an alien who's been torturing people -- not that anyone knows who this alien is, and we only get brief glimpses of a hand until the cliffhanger. Except this story is called The Sontaran Experiment, so it's not exactly a big mystery who the alien is. But no, the big reveal is left until the end, like this is a Dalek story or something.

But we can while away the time until said cliffhanger by looking at the pretty location footage of a desolate and uninhabited Earth, with scared humans wandering around (and look, one of them (Krans) is played by Glyn Jones, author of The Space Museum) and a rather nifty-looking robot roaming the countryside, capturing those hapless enough to get in its way. And the Doctor continues his verbal abuse of Harry, as he looks down a hole that Harry has fallen into and subsequently disappeared from: "You know, it's absolutely typical of Harry! How anyone in his proper mind could fall down a whacking great subsidence like–" before realizing that, as it's a subsidence, Harry must have found an exit.

But all too soon it's time for the cliffhanger and its reveal of a somewhat redesigned Sontaran head, which Sarah nevertheless identifies as Linx, the Sontaran from The Time Warrior. Part two then crams in all the Sontaran action, as this new Sontaran, Styre, goes around running sadistic experiments on people, including Sarah. Styre is evaluating humanity on behalf of the Sontarans, who are contemplating an invasion. So while the Wirrn were trying to turn the Nerva humans into a food source for their larvae, Styre was down on Earth torturing Galsec humans. Busy day for a supposedly uninhabited sector of space.

But all too soon it's time for a climactic fight between the Doctor and Styre, which means that we get a couple decent looks of Terry Walsh doubling for Tom Baker (Baker having broken his collarbone earlier) as he wrestles with Stuart Fell doubling in the Sontaran costume for Kevin Lindsay. And while the Doctor is distracting Styre, Harry is performing some sabotage on Styre's ship, so that when Styre goes to recharge after the fight, he ends up being killed (with a nice little deflating effect) and his ship explodes. Earth is safe for humanity to return to, and the Doctor and company transmat back up to Nerva.

It's surprising at this point in time to get such a short Doctor Who story (the last two-part story was 1965's The Rescue), but it's nicely economical with its storytelling. Still, the whole thing primarily consists of people scrambling around on various rocks avoiding/chasing each other, and thus it's a bit uninvolving. But there's nothing that it does wrong, and it doesn't overstay its welcome. The Sontaran Experiment is thus one of those pleasantly average stories that Doctor Who turns out from time to time. It won't really stick in the mind, but it's entertaining while it's on.

July 14: The Ark in Space Parts Three & Four

To be honest, not much happens story-wise in part three. The primary set-piece concerns the Doctor trying to learn what happened to the Wirrn queen (as we discover that that's the name of the insect species) during its final moments on the Ark. He achieves this by linking up the dead queen's eye to a computer screen via his cerebral context. Intriguingly, Tom Baker chooses to play this as great fun even though the script indicates that this is supposed to be a dangerous procedure -- another sign of how different Baker is playing the character from how Pertwee played it. This manner of smiling inappropriately is present throughout the whole story. "Vira, if you fail," the Doctor says, "your people will die in pain and fear. If I fail," he adds with a grin, "they'll die anyway, but at least only the six of us will know anything about it." Add into the mix the way the Doctor behaves right after the link with the Wirrn is severed, as he almost seems ready to join the Wirrn, and it makes this new Doctor feel wonderfully off; you get the sense that almost anything could happen.

There are also two more characters revived from the Ark. Lycett ends up dying pretty quickly, but Rogan makes it quite far. Of course, his manner of speaking is so different from that of Vira's and Noah's that it ruins the "future humans are different" effect that was established in the first two parts -- but at least he's entertaining to watch.

But while the Doctor and company are learning that electricity is what killed the Wirrn queen, and Rogan and Harry are finding weapons, the Wirrn themselves are shutting down the power on the Ark, while Noah is undergoing his final transformation into the Wirrn swarm leader...

Part four actually has quite a bit of plot to get through; we learn some backstory about the Wirrn, and the whole sequence with electrifying parts of the Ark is entirely within this episode -- complete with the sequence of Sarah crawling through the ventilation ducts, with the Doctor egging her on by insulting her until she gets mad enough to get through the ducts so she can hit him. Of course, this does mean that the resolution of things happens pretty quickly -- the Wirrn (led by the transformed Noah) are led onto the transport shuttle on the Ark as the Doctor and Rogan release the synestic locks holding the shuttle down. Rogan sacrifices himself to save the Doctor's life (who seems quite ready to sacrifice himself for the sake of humanity) and sends the shuttle into space, where Noah deliberately allows the rocket to explode. The Wirrn are no longer a threat, and so the Doctor volunteers to transmat down to Earth to fix the matter transmitter so that the rest of humanity can safely transmat down (eh? if the transmitter's not working, how can the three regulars transmat down?), leading into the next story.

The most striking thing about The Ark in Space is how deadly serious everything is played. There's a clear intent to make this as scary as they can get away with, and it pays off for them. It's hard to imagine a story like this being made during Barry Letts's time, but new producer Philip Hinchcliffe hits the ground running. It's still a little too slow at points for my personal taste, but it definitely works much better in the context of the larger progression of the show, and it's easy to see why people like it. If only the rest of Doctor Who had as much confidence and conviction as this story has.

July 13: The Ark in Space Parts One & Two

Standard and special edition DVDs

Five episodes into the revised title sequence (oh, right, forgot to mention that for Robot -- and hooray! It no longer looks off-center!) and they decide to give everything a salmon tint; guess they were trying something different. It only lasts for this episode, though.

So, confession time: I've never really cared much for The Ark in Space. I always found it rather slow. But that was in an isolated context. Viewing it in place, its virtues become much more apparent.

It starts unlike any Doctor Who story of the 70s -- other than a brief alien viewpoint at the beginning, the whole first episode consists of the Doctor and Harry slowly exploring the environment they find themselves in, learning about things at the same time as the audience. It's a style that evokes the feel of a Hartnell at times, and it's a welcome change from the standard set-up of the Pertwee years. It's also nice how they choose to make the relationship between the Doctor and Harry rather spiky, yet with a sense of affection deep underneath. The Doctor is annoyed with Harry, but he's not sending him off to sulk in a corner and he seems to enjoy exploring the space station with him. There are also some nice set pieces (such as the bit with the auto-guard), and, coming after the (occasionally stuttering) freneticness of the previous stories, this feels less slow and more like we're being given a chance to breathe.

And where's Sarah during all this? She's been accidentally pulled into the machinery, as it were, and is cryogenically frozen along with the people on board the station, essentially writing her out of the rest of the episode. So this is like a Hartnell in more ways than one.

Oh, plus we get a great cliffhanger, with Harry opening cupboards to look for a resuscitation unit and finding a giant dead insect instead...

Part two is a little less wonderful, simply because they've decided to introduce new characters into the mix. There's an effort to make the revived members of the station crew seem as alien as any random race by making them unfamiliar with Harry's colloquialisms and such. It's partially successful, but it breaks down a bit with Noah, who's required to be unreasoningly hostile towards the Doctor and his friends. You'd think a people as compartmentalized and as coldly logical as Vira and Noah seem to be would be willing to at least hear the Doctor out, but Noah assumes the Doctor is there to cause trouble and won't even listen to his warnings about something in the solar stacks -- presumably brought out of hibernation when the Doctor restored the power in part one.

In terms of plot though, the primary things happening in part two concern Sarah's resuscitation and Noah's infection by something in the solar stacks, as a green pseudopod slimes his hand. It starts to make Noah's behavior more erratic, ultimately resulting in this episode with him killing Libri before, in what's another excellent cliffhanger, he pulls out his left hand and looks on in horror at what he's becoming. Yes, it's clearly painted bubble wrap, but Kenton Moore's performance is so good that you don't mind one bit.