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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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







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

April 29: The Seeds of Death Episodes Five & Six

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

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

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

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

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

April 28: The Seeds of Death Episodes Three & Four

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

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

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

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

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

April 27: The Seeds of Death Episodes One & Two

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 26: "The Krotons" Episodes Three & Four

Jamie encounters the Krotons. (The Krotons Episode Three) ©BBC

We're barely a minute into episode three and we get our best ever look of the Krotons.  And I have to say, they really are a triumph of design from the waist up.  I love all the lines and angles, and the crystal-shaped "head" is fantastic.  It's too bad that that rubber skirt lets them down (allegedly, this is because a significant miscommunication led to the costumes being made too small; the skirt was the best effort to hide the performers' legs).  I also really like the way those heads spin around when the Dynotrope is under attack; it makes them seem quite alien and less like a man in a bulky suit, in addition to just looking cool.

And in terms of direction, I utterly adore the first person shots of the Kroton wandering the wasteland in search of the Doctor and Zoe.  Obviously there's no way they could know this at the time, but its resemblance to a video game (or, perhaps more pertinently, the first-person shots of the movie Doom, which actually are based on a video game) brings a smile to my face.

This is also the episode where Philip Madoc as Eelek comes to the fore, and he's so wonderfully silky in his delivery that you can't help but be entertained, even in a role like this.  It's a fairly standard "duplicitous power-hungry politician" role, but Madoc makes it that bit more special.  The same can't be said for Richard Ireson as Axus though, who seems so smug all the time that you just want to punch him in the face.  Of course, he's supposed to be an antagonist in this, so I guess that's all right.

Scripting-wise this episode is a bit uneven, though, as Eelek's motivations seem to shift from one scene to the next, and it's never quite clear why the characters are behaving as they are.  Actually, this is probably meant to be intentional, demonstrating Eelek's slipperiness, but it comes across as confused.  And of course, there's the infamous moment where Beta is under the Hall of Learning after having just been left performing chemistry in his lab, but that's a casting issue rather than a scripting one (reassigning a line to someone they're already paying without realizing the issue it would create).

Episode four is little better in this department; Eelek's motivations are much clearer this time (hand over the "high brains" and the Krotons will leave), but everything feels rather perfunctory.  Once the Doctor and Zoe are captured, they're handed over to the Krotons, and then they pour sulfuric acid into the Krotons' life-sustaining slurry tank (along with Jamie and Beta pouring acid on the machine from the outside), destroying the Krotons and saving the Gonds.  And that's about it.  I wish there was more to talk about, but it's a very straightforward episode, other than some clowning from the Doctor as he buys time in the Dynatrope for the acid to take effect.

In many ways this sums up The Krotons as a whole -- it's straightforward.  There aren't any real twists in the tale; the drama comes from getting inside their ship and then working out how to defeat them.  There's little time spent on the Krotons' motivations, and the Gonds are there to either help or hinder the Doctor's progress.  Still, it's competently written and directed, and some of the performances here are quite good -- even a relatively minor part like Beta becomes that little bit more in the hands of James Cairncross.  It's unlikely to be anyone's favorite story, as it's one of those pleasantly average stories that Doctor Who occasionally makes: nothing too striking but nothing too terrible either (and at four episodes it also doesn't outstay its welcome ).  While I'd like to say that Robert Holmes's talent is clear from the outset, the fact is that this is a very workman-like script, with little of the sparkle, charm, or imagination that set his later contributions apart.  The Krotons simply sets out to entertain the audience for four weeks, and at this it succeeds.  It just doesn't have much ambition beyond that.

April 25: "The Krotons" Episodes One & Two

The Krotons is the first story from Doctor Who's most prolific 20th-century writer, Robert Holmes, who'll go on to write some of the most highly acclaimed episodes of the series.  But his first script is an inauspicious one, being as it is a spare script that new script editor Terrance Dicks had set aside in case another script fell through.  Well, another script did fall through (and from just about all accounts -- including the positive ones -- we were spared a horrifyingly sexist "comedy" called Prison in Space, by Dick Sharples), and so this script was promoted to full production.

It's not a bad couple of episodes, and there's certainly some imagination going on, but there's also a sense of unreality.  To be fair, much of this has more to do with the actors than the script itself: the students in particular tend to be rather unconvincing.  The first fight with Jamie is actually rather good for a studio fight, but you get the sense that Jamie should be mopping the floor with him, rather than barely holding his own.  And the mini-"revolution" staged by the students in episode one is also rather stagey (and it doesn't help that some of the bits on the teaching machines are clearly just taped on).  But there's also the way in which the script gets all of its exposition about the planet of the Gonds and their relationship with their Kroton masters out of the way fairly early -- it's pretty blatant, and Holmes will soon be much better at this sort of thing.

So episode one is all about set-up, and episode two is about complications.  It's not actually clear why the Krotons decide the Doctor is the leader of the rebels, but there is the nice touch of announcing he's dead after their killer camera root thing has killed someone else -- the Doctor's thought that since it killed someone it figures it killed the one it was meant to kill being accurate.  If you know what I mean.  But episode two is quite entertaining, particularly the part where the Doctor works with the teaching machine to get a high enough score to be accepted into the Krotons' machine -- his antics with Zoe are very entertaining.  And then we get a look at the Krotons themselves, who are apparently brought into being thanks to the Doctor's and Zoe's high mental energy.  Their design is quite striking -- the problem is that they look unfinished from the waist down, with just a thick rubber skirt for legs.  And unfortunately, one of our first sights of a Kroton is of this skirt.  But then we get other looks at the Krotons, especially after Jamie is let into the machine under the assumption he's also got a lot of mental energy to drain.  And so drain Jamie they do -- except he might not survive the process...