October 24: Snakedance Parts Three & Four

The Doctor and Nyssa discuss the Little Mind's Eye crystal.
(Snakedance Part Three) ©BBC

One of the impressive things about part three is that this is the episode where the Doctor works out the backstory of the Mara -- despite being locked in a cell for the majority of the episode -- through a combination of Dojjen's journal (the previous director's, given to the Doctor by Ambril's assistant Chela) and Nyssa's working through the properties of the crystal -- concluding that it must be man-made with no imperfections of any kind (not even distortions from gravity), an incredibly advanced technique from a people who now appear to be too primitive to be able to perform it.  Therefore, the Manussans were once very advanced, but when they made the Great Crystal (aka the Great Mind's Eye) in order to harness their mental powers, they brought the Mara into being, leading to the downfall of their civilization and the rise of the Sumaran Empire.

Of course, while the Doctor and Nyssa are locked up, the Mara is making plans for its return.  Curiously, though Lon is clearly in the thrall of the Mara, he still seems to retain some semblance of his old self (unlike Tegan), and while he's being controlled by the Mara, it's not actually living inside him.  But he's fascinatingly manipulative with Ambril, who ultimately seems willing to let Lon use the Great Crystal during the Defeat of the Mara Ceremony, even though a) it's expressly forbidden, and b) he's seen some weird stuff inside the cave full of artifacts -- like Dugdale doing his barker routine to no one in particular.  Incidentally, it's the "expressly forbidden" part that seems to convince Chela to release the Doctor, who's the only one who's been warning of dangers while Ambril is continually dismissive of the possibility.  And incidentally, I really like the incorporation of the Mara into the Punch and Judy show -- it's a really nice touch.

Part four has two moments that are really wonderful.  The first is the Doctor's interaction with Dojjen, who's gone off into the hills to become a snakedancer.  The telepathic conversation they share (thanks, it seems, to a snake bite) is enigmatic and charming, with some great lines, such as "Fear is the only poison" and "The still point is within yourself ... To destroy the Mara you must find the still point."  I also like how the Doctor takes full responsibility for Tegan having succumbed to the Mara; it's a nice touch.

The second moment is the ceremony itself; there's something pleasingly elegant about the (obviously well-known) lines spoken during it: "I offer you fear in a handful of dust", "I offer you despair in a withered branch", and so forth.  Plus, the way in which Lon causes the ceremony to go off the rails is really well done ("What do you mean, [the crystal has] hidden depths?  Where are they?  Show them to me.  It's just a fake.  Your whole ceremony is a fake"), and the reveal of the Mara is a lot better than it was in Kinda.  It's a significantly more convincing snake.  The defeat of the Mara here is also better than it was in Kinda -- there's nothing here about mirrors, but instead it's about one man's refusal (the Doctor's) to submit to fear, to instead find the still point inside and thus disrupt the Mara's power.

Snakedance is a much more accessible story than Kinda was, and I think that's a real strength, for while Kinda was fascinating in its use of metaphors and imagery, Snakedance has much of the same feel while telling a more coherent tale.  There are also some brave elements to this story (making the Doctor seem like a crazy outsider, for instance), and the whole thing coheres thanks to the sterling directorial work of Fiona Cumming.  I've already mentioned the excellent work that Martin Clunes and John Carson have put into this, but I haven't mentioned Janet Fielding, who finally gets a chance to really let loose as the possessed Tegan.  It's a frightening performance (even more so because we're familiar with how Tegan usually is) and one that Fielding takes full advantage of.  All this and a great script make Snakedance easily one of the standouts so far of Peter Davison's tenure.

October 23: Snakedance Parts One & Two

"Well?" Nyssa asks the Doctor as this story opens, having changed out of her usual velvet clothes into a hideous new outfit of a white and blue striped shirt with a different striped skirt (predominantly dull purple, green, and red), worn over a pair of burgundy shorts.  The Doctor, wisely, doesn't reply.

Other than some awkward exposition to bring anyone who didn't see Kinda up to speed, these first couple episodes of Snakedance are really well done.  It's a sequel to Kinda, albeit on the planet of Manussa instead of Deva Loka.  Manussa was the planet from which the Mara ruled over the Sumaran empire until it was overthrown by the Federation five hundred years earlier, and it seems the Mara is keen to retake Manussa through Tegan.  Manussa, by the way, looks gorgeous -- the bazaar set in particular is a great riot of colors and nooks and crannies.

It's not just the set design, though: the script is filled with fantastic characters, all aided by an excellent guest cast.  Lon, the Federator's son, has the purest motivation ever, boredom, and while there's nothing actually evil about him, there is a slightly sadistic and mischievous streak -- note the way in which he casually tosses that priceless artifact to Ambril.  As everyone knows, this is Martin Clunes's first television work (before he became the star of Men Behaving Badly and Doc Martin), and he's magnificently good here, both when he's being indolent and when he's been possessed by the Mara.  And I really like how he goes to the house of mirrors with Dugdale (played by Brian Miller, who's also Elisabeth Sladen's husband) because he's so impressed by the audacity of someone summoning him that he wants to see who would dare do such a thing.  And John Carson pitches his performance as Ambril perfectly, being both somewhat insufferable when he's lecturing others on Sumaran history and realistically dismissive of the Doctor's wild claims (for which he has no proof) -- the sarcastic rejoinder to the Doctor's cry to cancel the ceremony celebrating 500 years of Mara-free rule ("Yes, I'll cancel the whole thing.  At once") being a particular delight.

In fact, this is just about the only time in the series that we get a look at how the Doctor must seem to others.  Manussa appears to be a relatively stable and free society, happily going about its business, when the Doctor appears on the scene declaring tales of doom and destruction if he's not heeded.  And since he has no proof (Tegan having run off and then succumbing to the Mara, who's in no hurry to reveal itself), he really does look like a crazy person, even though we the audience know better.  Mind, flashes of the Doctor we know still shine through: I love the Six Faces of Delusion bit, as the Doctor points out the obvious to the academic Ambril, who has examined the piece so closely that he missed the actual point of the headdress.

These two episodes ultimately feel like they're building to something big, as the Mara marshals its power and prepares to strike.  That second cliffhanger is weird, though: I guess it's supposed to be worrying that Lon is speaking with Tegan-as-the-Mara's voice?  But we already know Lon has been taken over, so I'm not sure what we gain from this.  But never mind; this doesn't detract from what's gone before, and so far what's gone before has been excellent.

October 22: Arc of Infinity Parts Three & Four

I take back what I said last time about the Ergon; while it's not bad from a distance in poor lighting, up close in bright white lights it's really quite an appalling costume.  It looks really cheap, and the fact that you can see the holes in the neck where Malcolm Harvey is looking out does it no favors whatsoever.  Not that the other effects are that much better; the matter converter's beam and disappearing effect is quite nice, but the Matrix is rather disappointing with its shimmering black with odd white lines look -- we're a long way away from The Deadly Assassin's surreal landscape.  And I don't think much of Omega's costume either.

But anyway...  Part three is all about revelations.  The Doctor's not dead!  Hedin is the traitor!  The Renegade is Omega!  Er... bringing back a one-time villain from ten years ago doesn't seem like a great move (even allowing for the fact that The Three Doctors was repeated in November 1981 as part of BBC2's Five Faces of Doctor Who season), and Arc of Infinity makes few concessions to anyone who doesn't remember/know about Omega.  Not that it really matters, I suppose; all you need to know is that Omega really wants to take over the Doctor's form and enter our universe, and that This Is A Bad Thing, because Omega is made up of antimatter and thus will create a huge explosion when he interacts with matter.  Again, how has Omega not considered this problem?  Moreover, no one on Gallifrey seems willing to work with Omega, to come up with a safe way for him to transfer over; they'd much rather annihilate him and be done with it.

Omega's body begins to break down in Amsterdam. (Arc of
Infinity Part Four) ©BBC

It's a decent enough episode, but the story really becomes worthwhile in part four, due in no small part to Peter Davison's performance as Omega-in-the-Doctor's-form.  All the stuff leading up to that is suitably tense and dramatic, but once Omega achieves transfer and Peter Davison takes over, it's simply wonderful.  Davison plays the role like someone experiencing the world for the first time, taking in all the sights and wonders that he's been denied for so long.  The moment with the child in front of the calliope, where he looks at the child and smiles, somewhat uncertainly, is so magical that you find yourself rooting for Omega, even though he's ostensibly the villain of the piece (and he has just killed a groundskeeper).  And the scenery is quite gorgeous; the Amsterdam location (the second time Doctor Who has filmed abroad) is used quite effectively and adds a sense of scope to the proceedings.

But of course it can't last; the transfer is unstable, and the Doctor is forced to dispatch Omega with a matter converter so that a huge explosion doesn't take place.  The universe is saved, and Tegan is free to travel with the Doctor again.  Although I can't tell if that final shot, where the Doctor smiles and then his face falls, is because the camera didn't cut away soon enough, or if the Doctor is meant to be somewhat less than enthusiastic about the prospect of traveling with Tegan again...

I can't decide if Arc of Infinity ultimately works or not.  It's never less than entertaining, but there is a bit of a sense of the author's hand behind things; there's a good deal of technobabble floating around to make the story do whatever is necessary, and it's never really made clear what the main problem is.  There's some handwaving about antimatter, but that's treated as if that's enough, and the threat Omega (allegedly) poses is thus frustratingly vague.  It is, however, a story that works a bit better the second time around; if you already know that the Renegade is Omega, then you can have some fun with the motivations and the casual callbacks to facts we learned in The Three Doctors.  But taken in context, Arc of Infinity is something of an unmotivated adventure, and while it's enjoyable enough while it lasts (and again, Peter Davison really is impressive as Omega), it's hard to dispel the sense that this is all rather irrelevant.

October 21: Arc of Infinity Parts One & Two

Season 20 opens with some shadowy Time Lord figure making a deal with someone unfamiliar, displayed in a negative image (you know, like a Dalek extermination effect).  So it's going to be a Gallifrey story, I guess.

And it seems they've decided to make this some sort of mystery/suspense story, so we get lots of shots of shadowy figures and first-person-from-the-culprit's-point-of-view scenes.  This is fine (even if it's aping The Deadly Assassin somewhat), but there's a lot of technobabble going on to support the mystery (biodata, Quad magnetism, temporal bonding), which instead has the effect of taking you out of the mystery rather than pulling you in.

Still, it's nice to see Nyssa interact with the Doctor without anyone else in the TARDIS to take up screen time, and we see a genuine affection there of the sort that wasn't really present in TARDIS scenes during season 19.  It's a welcome change, and there's also a feeling that Nyssa has grown up a bit.  Although the fallen hatstand in the console room seems to suggest that little time has passed between Time-Flight and this, it's hard to reconcile that with the easier and stronger relationship.  Maybe the hatstand just fell over again.

There's also some stuff in Amsterdam with young tourists, but, while somewhat interesting, it's hard at this stage to really see how it ties in with the Gallifrey stuff, beyond the fact that the same person seems to be responsible for both Colin's "death" and the Doctor's attempted abduction/takeover.  Although there is that weird chicken creature, the Ergon, to watch.  Actually, I don't mind the Ergon as much as the rest of fandom seems to; it's not a total success, but you can sort of see what they were going for, and I don't think it looks that bad, especially if they were going for "weird" rather than "scary" (mind, if they were going for "scary" then it is a failure).

But look!  It's Colin Baker as Commander Maxil!  Which wouldn't normally be anything of particular note, except that Colin Baker is going to go on to become the next Doctor (not that anyone knows that yet).  Here he's quite ruthless -- although he doesn't seem actually evil -- in the pursuit of his duties.  Maybe the Doctor upset him at some unseen point before this story, since his reactions over the Doctor are much more extreme than anyone else we see.  And Borusa has regenerated yet again, it seems.

Maxil and the Doctor in the TARDIS. (Arc of Infinity Part Two)
©BBC

Part two shows us why we're really supposed to care about the Amsterdam stuff: Tegan's back (well, that was fast).¹²¹  She's now unemployed and sporting a pixie cut, and it turns out that Colin the now-possessed tourist was her cousin (thus getting her involved in the story).  So she and Colin's friend Robin go around trying to convince the police that there's a problem while Gallifrey gets on with executing the Doctor, so that the thing that tried to bond with him ("the Renegade", according to the credits) is unable to do so.  The Renegade is composed of antimatter, you see, and if the bond were successful there would be a tremendous explosion as matter and antimatter mixed.  Although you'd think the Renegade would have thought of that and would have plans to prevent killing itself.

But yes, this episode seems to just be marking time for large portions: Tegan learns about Colin and that's about it, while the Doctor is sentenced to execution (only the second time this has happened -- the first being Morbius, presumably) and waits around for it to happen.  And that's largely it for plot purposes.  Yes, there are some complications, and we learn that it must be someone on Gallifrey who's working with the Renegade in order to use the Doctor as a candidate for temporal bonding, but that's it.  It does lead to a good cliffhanger, though, as the Doctor is led to the execution chamber and then appears to be vaporized -- although not before the Renegade has bonded with him...







¹²¹ To be fair, Tegan's departure was never intended to be permanent, but rather a cliffhanger to sustain interest over the season break.  Except it sure looks like a departure and not any sort of cliffhanger at all, but never mind.

October 20: Time-Flight Parts Three & Four

Part three is something of a halfway house between the first two parts and part four; there's some maneuvering with the Master, as he takes the Doctor's TARDIS -- his own not working properly after he apparently barely escaped Castrovalva -- but there are also some efforts by the script to explain what's going on with the Xeraphin, the alien intelligence that the Master is attempting to control to use in his TARDIS.  It does feel a bit mystical at times, with telepathic gestalt entities that are having an internal conflict between their good and evil sides and yet are still able to remove walls and create psychic projections, but as the first two episodes also had that mysterious quality, this isn't too bad.

The problem with this episode, then, is that Peter Grimwade (who actually began work on this story before his Who directorial debut in Full Circle) has had to write a number of scenes with the Master in the Doctor's TARDIS while Captain Stapley and First Officer Bilton spy on him, leading to some sabotage and then later an attempt to work out how to fly the TARDIS.  (It may not surprise you to learn that a good deal of this material was padding to fill out an under-running script.)  It's rather at odds with the surrounding material involving the Doctor and the Xeraphin tonally, and so it ends up feeling like something of a letdown.

The Doctor and the Master exchange TARDIS components outside
the Master's TARDIS while Concorde passengers look on.
(Time-Flight Part Four) ©BBC

Part four almost completely abandons the more mystical qualities the script has had in favor of a dull runaround, with the Master and the Doctor sparring with each other over TARDIS pieces while the Concorde crew readies their plane for takeoff back through the time contour that brought them there.  The sets aren't very convincing and neither are the airplane parts (the wheels, for instance, aren't even the size of a standard car's), and you do sort of wish they would get on with it.  This makes the very end of the episode, back in Heathrow, a refreshing breath of air -- there suddenly seems to be an energy present that was missing the previous twenty minutes.  And it is a nice surprise ending: four episodes after the death of Adric, Tegan is suddenly and unceremoniously left behind (admittedly at the airport she'd been spending most of the season trying to get back to), without even a farewell.

There are two problems with Time-Flight.  The first problem is that there's no money to make a story as ambitious as this one, and so a story that wants to be sweeping and epic is reduced to some tiny, cheap-looking studio sets representing Jurassic Earth.  It's unlikely that there would have ever been enough money to do this story justice, but making it as the end-of-season runt just dooms it.  The second problem is that, although the production team has spent this time bringing the Master back to the show, now that they've got him they don't seem to know what to do with him.  This means he spends two episodes in disguise and then two episodes running around being generically villainous, rather than having a plan with some flair or drama.  This isn't really Anthony Ainley's fault, as he's just playing the role they're giving him, but they really need to give him something better than this to make him rise to the occasion.

It's a weird story.  It probably never would have worked (although it's fun to imagine how a million pound version of this would have looked), but there are some interesting ideas at play in various parts.  Filming at Heathrow and being able to use Concorde is something of a coup, but unfortunately Time-Flight reaches a point where it's no longer sure what to do with the ideas it has and settles for something rather simple and dull, and so you can occasionally get the feeling that it's squandered its resources.  It's not offensively bad, but it is worryingly aimless at times.

Time-Flight is, of course, the last story of season 19, and it's been an interesting season.  There have certainly been some uneven moments, and this last story doesn't help matters any, but it's fascinating to watch Peter Davison's debut season as the Doctor -- you can visibly see him growing more confident with how he wants to play the part, such that he seems much more self-assured and consistent in his performance in Time-Flight than he did in Four to Doomsday.  The large number of companions aboard the TARDIS is a bit of a problem (albeit one that the production team seems to have recognized, as they've been slowly culling the crew), and the varying quality of the stories has led to a less consistent run than season 18 was, but this appears to be a show comfortable with its identity again -- and the audience seems happy as well, with ratings consistently around the 9 million viewers mark, give or take a million.  If there's a cause for concern, it's that the later scripts seem a bit less tightly plotted than the earlier scripts did -- but as incoming script editor Eric Saward is finding his feet as a brand-new editor, these could easily be teething troubles.  It hasn't been an outstanding run, but it's rarely been less than entertaining, and the diversity of the scripts has been a definite positive.  If they stay on this path, they'll be fine.  Whether they do is a subject for next season...

October 19: Time-Flight Parts One & Two

I think it was Jonathan Blum who pointed out that it was in the previous episode that Adric died in a freighter crash in the late Cretaceous period, and although this story takes place in the late Jurassic (quite a time span away, but still), no one even mentions Adric's death after the opening TARDIS scene.  Even though there's a crashed spaceship nearby.

I bring this up because it illustrates one of the inherent problems with the show at this point in time: it wants to have more interconnectedness between stories, to have a longer-running story than just the four episode serials, but it does it in a shallow way.  There's a scene of grieving at the beginning, with the Doctor declaring that he can't go back and save Adric, and then it's on to business as usual; Adric might as well have been dead for months, for all Tegan and Nyssa seem to be subsequently broken up about it.

There are some nice ideas at work in Time-Flight proper; the thought of Concorde disappearing back in time is rather interesting, and there's some nice back-referencing to UNIT in part one, of the sort that's pleasing for long-term fans but not required for more casual fans to understand.  But the issue is that because this is the last story of the season, there's not much money left to spend on sets, and because this is such an ambitious script, the results look particularly cheap.  Air traffic control is one guy in a small windowless room, for instance, and while the Plasmatons aren't the worst creations ever, their appearance effect is an overlayed smoke funnel, and the effect of holding people prisoner consists of soap suds.  And you can hear everyone walking around the wooden rostrums "outside" in the Jurassic wilderness.

One thing that's pleasingly odd is the Arabic magician who brought them all back in time, Kalid.  There's something wonderfully bizarre about his performance, with his incantations and his threats toward the Doctor, and I find him terribly watchable.  And his death in part two is particular gruesome, with all the green slime bubbling out as Kalid dies.  It's actually a bit disappointing, since no one else in this production is really worth watching.  And then, in the part two cliffhanger, it's revealed that Kalid is in fact the Master!  Oh.  Well, ok then.  Now I don't understand where this story is going.

October 18: Earthshock Parts Three & Four

Today one of my best friends is getting married.  Congratulations Jason and Elizabeth!  I got you guys a dead companion!

Hold on, let's back up.

A Cyberman is frozen inside a door. (Earthshock Part Three) ©BBC

It turns out that most of the problems I have with Earthshock have to do with part four.  Part three continues to excite and interest, as we see the Cybermen on the move onboard the freighter, while the Doctor and Adric try to convince Captain Briggs that they're not responsible for the deaths of the crewmembers.  And there's also a subplot involving Lieutenant Scott and his troopers, accompanied by Tegan, working their way through the ship, trying to find the bridge while dodging Cybermen.  It coheres rather well -- although you can see why Beryl Reid takes flak for her performance; there are definitely times when she seems unsure of the dialogue she's being asked to deliver.  But I still think she does a nice job.

The Doctor's confrontation with the Cyberleader is also interesting; there's this curious moment where the Cyberleader says, "So, we meet again, Doctor," despite the fact that, as far as we've seen, no Cyberman has survived an encounter with the Doctor.  And we get that great cliffhanger, as a huge number of Cybermen begin marching through the freighter, all in sync.

"Now I'll never know if I was right." (Earthshock Part Four) ©BBC

Part four, as I mentioned, is where the problems really set in.  Things start happening for no obvious reason, and it's rather frustrating.  Why, for instance, is the second wave of Cybermen activated?  It looks like it's a fault, but there's also the question of why they weren't activated at the same time as the first wave; is the Cyberleader really okay with letting a large number of his troops be killed unnecessarily?  And how exactly does hooking an alien computer up to the freighter cause it to travel back in time?  If time had been spent coming up with some sort of explanation for these events, this could have been something special, but as it is it's just aggravating instead.

One thing that works better than it should is Adric's death.  Adric has, unfortunately, become superfluous to the needs of the TARDIS crew, and so his time had come to leave the show.  But what a way to leave!  Obviously one of the companions had to die, to show that traveling with the Doctor doesn't necessarily mean you're safe.  Matthew Waterhouse reportedly wasn't very happy with his character's fate.  But it's certainly a memorable way to leave, and the ending is quite affecting.

There are a lot of things to like about Earthshock.  The first three episodes are quite good, with good acting and some really great direction from Peter Grimwade, and some outstanding design work in both sets and costumes.  If the entire script was of the same caliber it would be great, but the plot holes make this an ultimately frustrating experience.  I really want to love it, but I just can't quite do it.