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.