November 9: Planet of Fire Parts One & Two

I can understand the appeal of wanting to get as much use out of their exotic location filming (the island of Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands) as possible, but it does mean that what we get is occasionally confusing as we switch between an alien planet and Earth, both of which more or less look the same (volcanic rock and blue oceans in the distance).  It's only really a problem on the first viewing, but it's still there.

To be honest, the Earth scenes are more compelling in the first episode than the Sarn ones -- it's not really clear what's going on on Sarn, other than some form of heresy, but the Earth scenes have the Doctor and Turlough wandering around Lanzarote looking at ancient artifacts, using alien currency to pay for things, and rescuing drowning girls.  This last action is performed by Turlough, who then brings the drowning girl -- Perpugilliam "Peri" Brown -- into the TARDIS to recover.  And yes, that bikini she's wearing is quite racy for Doctor Who, but we also get Peri's father Howard shirtless and Turlough in a shirt and short swimming trunks, so at this point you can't complain too much.

But perhaps the most surprising thing about these two episodes is the return of Kamelion -- remember him?  Not seen since The King's Demons¹²⁹, here he's causing problems with some sort of alien signal, trying to get to some sort of "point of contact".  The net effect of this is that we get to see Turlough be devious again, as he seems to recognize the distress signal being broadcast and clearly wants nothing to do with it.  He's not terribly successful at stopping the signal though, as Kamelion takes them first to Earth, where there's an alien beacon, and then to Sarn, which bears the same mark on a column as on the beacon.  "The Misos Triangle," Turlough says.  "...It means there are people from Trion here.  My home planet.  This must be an old Trion colony."  But while the Doctor and Turlough are out exploring, Kamelion turns first into Peri's stepfather and then into the Master.  (Cliffhanger!)  Yes, it seems the Master has managed to regain some control over Kamelion.

Part two, sad to say, isn't very interesting (which isn't to say it's bad -- it's just not terribly engaging).  The best bits involve revelations about Turlough's background (the fact that he has a Misos Triangle on his arm like Malkon does is good, but the best bit comes near the end: "Doctor, you don't understand.  I think this equipment [lying around the Hall of Fire on Sarn] came from my father's ship"), but these are few and far between.  Instead we get extended sequences of Kamelion-as-the-Master chasing Peri across Sarn's surface while the Doctor and Turlough get involved (peripherally) in the holy war (well, argument, then) between believers and disbelievers of Logar, the Sarn Lord of Fire, but the disagreement isn't presented in a particularly interesting way -- it's instead supposed to be obvious that Timanov and the other believers are wrong.  Still, at least the end of part two involves the Doctor finally encountering the Master (well, Kamelion, but he doesn't know that), which means that something more interesting may happen -- particularly since the Master has convinced Timanov that he is the Outsider that was prophesied to appear as the messenger of Logar, and that all the disbelievers should be burned...







¹²⁹ One of the more entertaining things about the Wikipedia articles for the stories between Kamelion's two appearances is that every entry except The Five Doctors feels compelled to note that "[n]o explanation is given for companion Kamelion's absence from this story", as if this was of great concern or something.  But does he count as a companion?  He didn't show up in the companion roll call last story -- but, of course, neither did Leela...

November 8: Resurrection of the Daleks Part Two

The Doctor prepares to execute Davros. (Resurrection of the
Daleks Part Two) ©BBC

So the Daleks have a couple plans running at the same time -- one offensive, one defensive -- and I think they generally make sense.  I'm just not sure why they're both happening in the same place at the same time.

The offensive plan seems to involve making Dalek duplicates of key individuals so that the Daleks can bring various places down from the inside.  This is what takes up the majority of the first half of part two, as they hook the Doctor up to their duplicate-making machine and record the contents of his mind -- which seems to mainly consist of companions (and far be it from me to buck the trend and not point out that they've forgotten Leela -- although apparently that's a genuine mistake, as a clip was prepared).  The Daleks want to use the Doctor to infiltrate the High Council and kill them all -- although one wonders how much damage that would cause, given that The Five Doctors wiped most of them out.  Maybe the Time Lords would just shrug and say, "Well, here we go again."  There's also some stuff at the end of the episode about how the Daleks have replaced key people around the Earth with Dalek duplicates -- but as Stien illustrated and the Doctor hopes, the duplicates are unstable and will presumably break their conditioning.  (This is a plot element that's never followed up on or even mentioned again.  About Time speculates that it might be intended to be a joke at the expense of 1984's world leaders.)  The plan makes some sense and is nicely devious for the Daleks, but the conditioning problem is always lurking in the background, even though they don't actually get to make their Dalek duplicate of the Doctor.

The defensive plan involves trying to cure this Movellan virus -- that seems to have backfired on the Daleks, though, since Davros is more interested in reestablishing a power base than in helping the Daleks.  Still, it makes sense -- it's just not clear why this is happening in the exact same location as the duplication plan.  And there's still no clear reason to involve Earth in this (beyond some hand-wavy "it's a secure location" guff).  You'd think having both of these things happening in the same place would cause problems.  Except it doesn't end up mattering anyway; other than placing the Doctor and Davros in the same place, these plots have little interaction with each other.

The Doctor and Turlough say goodbye to Tegan. (Resurrection
of the Daleks Part Two) ©BBC

But the real thing to notice is how brutal this continues to be, particularly in the second half of the episode, as all sorts of people are killed once they've outlived their usefulness to the plot.  We even get the Doctor in on the action, prepared to cold-bloodedly kill Davros at point-blank range (he only fails because he walks through a door which locks behind him), and then killing a bunch of Daleks with the Movellan virus.  Huge numbers of people are dead by the end of this (Resurrection of the Daleks notoriously has more on-screen deaths than any other Doctor Who story), and in fact the only people to emerge from this unscathed are the Doctor, Tegan, Turlough, Lytton and his two policemen, and (as we find out next season) Davros.  It's been pointed out that this is essentially a war story, so of course people will die, but there's still a sense in which people are being killed off just so Eric Saward doesn't have to deal with them anymore (notice the way in particular Lytton kills off the guard with him just before the end of the story).  All the deaths even get to Tegan, who decides to leave the TARDIS for good this time.  "It's stopped being fun, Doctor," she tells him emotionally.  "No, no, don't leave, not like this," the Doctor protests, but it's too late; she's gone.  "It's strange," the Doctor says bleakly.  "I left Gallifrey for similar reasons.  I'd grown tired of their lifestyle.  It seems I must mend my ways."

Being an action-packed war story isn't the worst of sins, but the problem with Resurrection of the Daleks is that there's nothing redemptive about any of it.  It's an incredibly bleak story that no one comes out of well (with the possible exception of Turlough, who's managed to spend most of it uninvolved with the main plots) -- not even the Doctor, who should normally be relied on to be our moral compass for things like this.  (Although I'll be floating the argument that this does help make his regeneration in two stories' time more meaningful -- but we'll get there when we get there.)  There's nothing particularly wrong with the plotting, but Resurrection of the Daleks is told in such an unpleasantly dark fashion that one simply feels exhausted and numb at the end, and this makes it a very difficult tale to derive any real enjoyment from.

November 7: Resurrection of the Daleks Part One

Standard and special edition DVDs

So remember how season 20 was going to conclude with a Dalek story called The Return, only for that story to be killed by industrial action?  Well here's that story, now retitled Resurrection of the Daleks and reedited into two 45-minute episodes (in order to work around the BBC's coverage of the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo).  Was it worth the wait?  Well...

The first thing you notice about this episode is how brutal it is.  Fleeing people are shot down in London streets with machine guns, station personnel in the future are gassed with some sort of horrific deformity-causing agent while others are shot down by Daleks, Dalek mutants are attacking British soldiers by biting them in the neck... even the Doctor gets in on the action, pointing a pistol around a warehouse and (apparently) unloading several rounds into said Dalek mutant.  ("Apparently" because after this he immediately hands the pistol to Professor Laird, who takes it by the barrel without any problems -- suggesting that it wasn't actually fired.  Or that the actors didn't think about this when they worked it out.)  And while watching the Doctor and company shove a Dalek out of an upper-story window to the street below, where it explodes spectacularly, is a satisfying viewing experience, it doesn't help with the feeling of brutality prevalent in this episode.

It's also worth noting how quickly writer Eric Saward sidelines the two companions.  Tegan suffers a head wound after the Dalek appears (in what would have been -- and was for overseas viewers, who got the four-part version -- the cliffhanger to part one) and is confined to a sleeping bag in the bomb disposal unit's temporary headquarters, while Turlough disappears not long after the TARDIS arrives in 1984 London -- it transpires that he's entered the time corridor that brought the TARDIS to this location in the first place, but he spends the rest of his time this episode wandering first the Dalek ship, and then the space station that the ship is docked with, and not much of anything else.

Davros prepares to take control of engineer Kiston.
(Resurrection of the Daleks Part One) ©BBC

No, here the action is focused squarely on two figures: the Doctor, and Davros, who's been locked up for ninety years after the events of Destiny of the Daleks and is the reason the Daleks have attacked the space station.  In a somewhat rare nod to previous events (albeit very much in keeping with this phase of the show's (often slavish) adherence to continuity), this story is pitched as a direct sequel to Destiny of the Daleks, with the Daleks unable to find a cure to the Movellan virus that was introduced in between these two stories -- thus, they're hoping that Davros will be able to help them find that cure.  Davros has been recast again -- this time as Terry Molloy, who is significantly better than David Gooderson was in Destiny of the Daleks but isn't quite as controlled as Michael Wisher was in Genesis of the Daleks -- Terry Molloy's version seems to be more inclined to rant.  It's not just ranting, though, and Molloy excels in the quiet moments as well -- they made a good choice this time around. 

And while Davros remains cunning as ever, the Doctor seems still in the dark -- he knows that the Daleks are involved, and that they've established a time corridor between Davros's time and 1984 London for no obvious reason whatsoever (maybe they'll explain in part two), but that's about it.  And so he leaves Tegan in the hands of the army while he goes to the TARDIS with escaped Dalek prisoner Stien to trace the time corridor back to its source.  He doesn't know that the leader of the bomb disposal squad (there because some Dalek tech was mistakenly thought to be a UXB (UneXploded Bomb -- typically left over from World War II, though it doesn't have to be)), Colonel Archer, has been taken over/replaced with a Dalek agent (thanks to some sinister fake policemen wandering around) and now has Tegan and Professor Laird under his control.  No, the Doctor is too busy arriving on the Dalek ship and being betrayed by Stien, who, it turns out, has also been a Dalek agent all along...

November 6: Frontios Parts Three & Four

Part three isn't quite as wonderful as parts one and two, sadly.  Though to be honest, there's not really anything wrong with this; it's just that there's a sense of marking time, particularly down in the tunnels.  Tegan and the Doctor spend most of the time wandering around, narrowing avoiding/escaping Tractators, and they don't really learn much new until the cliffhanger.

But above ground it's a bit different.  Brazen is holding Mr. Range accountable for concealing information about "deaths unaccountable", and between Mr. Range and Turlough's ramblings (which seem to come from some sort of race memory -- not entirely unlike the reaction of people after seeing Silurians in Doctor Who and the Silurians) we start to piece together what's going on.  It seems that these Tractators have operated on other planets (including Turlough's home planet, it seems), where they live below ground and pull people down underground with them -- and then use those people for their own devices.  And as we see in the cliffhanger, the Doctor and Tegan discover the same thing, as they find an excavation machine being run by the corpse of Captain Revere...

Part four gets us back on track, with some lovely interactions between the Doctor and the Tractators' leader, the Gravis -- once the Doctor appears to sympathize with the Tractators' side of things, the Gravis seems perfectly happy to show him around.  Tegan has to stay behind, though, but the Doctor avoids her being used in one of the Tractators' machines by pretending she's a robot.  "It is certainly a very convincing replica of the humanoid life form," the Gravis says.  "Oh, you think so?" the Doctor replies.  "I got it cheap because the walk's not quite right.  And then there's the accent, of course."  This scene is wonderful just to watch Tegan fume helplessly at these insults, knowing that she can't respond to them for fear of giving the game away.  And meanwhile, after Turlough tells them that the Tractators need people alive, a search party goes into the tunnels looking for Plantagenet, who was sucked underground in part two.  This is notable because it's what leads Turlough to overcome both his base fears and his natural cowardice to head down into the tunnels to help -- it really is a moment to cheer, as the show finally decides to make him better than he was; it's been a long time coming.

Two Tractators and the Gravis near parts of the broken-up
TARDIS. (Frontios Part Four) ©BBC

The ultimate revelation of the Tractators' intentions (they've been using their gravity beam powers to pull asteroids down at the colonists -- as well as causing their ship to crash in the first place -- so they'd have a ready supply of parts for their machines, which are carving out tunnels in such a way that they can then use those gravity powers to pilot Frontios around the galaxy -- which sounds rather silly, but as they're working with gravity maybe they have the ability to warp space and move a lot faster than it otherwise sounds) answers a number of plot points, as well as making clear the extent of the gravity beam powers the Tractators have.  This will become useful for the climax, as the Doctor goads the Gravis into pulling the TARDIS back together -- and as Turlough has pointed out, when the Gravis is cut off from the Tractators both become harmless.  Thus the Doctor is able to take the Gravis to the uninhabited planet of Kolkokron, leaving the remaining Tractators harmlessly burrowing on Frontios.  The colony is saved -- just don't mention it to the Time Lords...  And then, in classic Hartnell style, we get a cliffhanger into the next story, as something incredibly powerful is pulling the TARDIS off-course...

It's something of a rarity in this era to have a story where everything comes together, but that's what we get with Frontios.  The strong direction, the intelligent scripting, the appropriate casting, the excellent acting, the smart design, the suitable lighting... it all works really well.  It's not perfect (as I said, part three does sag a bit), but in terms of production unity it's the best we've seen in a very long time.  And yet for some reason this is a story that tends to fade into the background, not given the credit it deserves (it was down at 147 out of 241 in the most recent DWM poll for some unfathomable reason), when it's easily one of the best stories of Peter Davison's run.  A great injustice for a jewel of a story.

November 5: Frontios Parts One & Two

It's the really far future -- so far, in fact, that the TARDIS states that it's exceeding its time parameters.  And while the Doctor doesn't want to interfere in the fragile future of a handful of Earth refugees ("Fleeing from the imminence of a catastrophic collision with the sun, a group of refugees from the doomed planet Earth--" Turlough reads gleefully from the TARDIS databanks), it seems he has no choice when the TARDIS is pulled down to the surface of Frontios.  There's a mood of quiet desperation among the colonists on Frontios -- it seems they've been eking out a living while being bombarded by meteor strikes for the last thirty years.  And while there's some semblance of order, the general impression is of a society on the verge of tearing itself apart, trying desperately to hold everything together.

But it's not just that -- there's an energy present in these episodes that derives from this near-extinct colony, but also from the characters that inhabit it.  Science Officer Range is played with a bit of wry humor by William Lucas -- he's very much aware of how tenuous their situation is, but he still has a streak of dark humor running through him ("It failed," he tells the Doctor, after the Doctor asks what happened to all the "failure-proof" technology aboard their colony ship).  Meanwhile Chief Orderly Bragen is a narrow-minded man who's trying to keep it all going in the wake of the death of their leader, Captain Revere, and Captain's Revere's son Plantagenet is doing his best to lead in the wake of his father's death.  It's a really nice set-up, aided by some striking set design (which manages to look both futuristic and primitive, as well as run-down, with dirt everywhere), and Peter Davison is once again given the opportunity to flex his muscles as the Doctor:

DOCTOR: At first we thought it was some sort of meteorite storm.
PLANTAGENET: And what do you think now?
DOCTOR: I think your shelters are totally inadequate and your warning system does nothing but create panic.
PLANTAGENET: I did not ask--
DOCTOR: Your population has already fallen below critical value required for guaranteed growth and you're regularly losing new lives.  I think, and you did ask what I think, I think your colony of Earth people is in grave danger of extinction.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Frontios)

Peter Davison also decides to play things with a bit more age behind them -- he treats everything with grave intent (albeit still with the same sense of breathless energy that has characterized his Doctor), and his habit of looking at things through half-moon glasses, as if to suggest that he is in fact older than he looks, is really lovely.

But as good as Davison is, he's eclipsed by Mark Strickson, who finally gets a chance to shine again (after being locked in a dungeon in The King's Demons, stuck in the TARDIS in The Five Doctors, made to act really cowardly in Warriors of the Deep, and locked in a barn in The Awakening).  This is a Turlough who has been around the universe -- he knows about phosphor lamps and something called the Twenty Aeon War¹²⁸, and he finds the tunnels underneath the colony vaguely familiar -- the word "Tractator" coming to mind for some reason.  And then his pure abject terror at the end of part two, all wide-eyed and staring, is really compelling.

But then the entirety of these first two episodes is compelling.  They've somehow managed to create a near-perfect synthesis of story and scripting, direction, and design.  They've even brought the lighting down to create lots of eerie shadows and dark spaces.  All that and two excellent cliffhangers to boot (the TARDIS has been destroyed!  Destroyed!; and, the Doctor is helpless against the power of the Tractators, those strange insect/slug-like creatures, deep beneath the surface of Frontios -- the danger, it seems, was from below, not above).  It's like this is the anti-Warriors of the Deep.  If the rest of the story is this good, Frontios will be one of the bona fide classics of the series.







¹²⁸ Yes, yes, I know the universe is currently only 13.5 aeons old -- but it still sounds cool.  And besides, maybe the Arar Jecks of Heiradi didn't use the term literally (i.e., where 1 aeon = 1 billion years).

November 4: The Awakening Parts One & Two

There's been a tendency over the last couple of seasons for stories to feel somewhat relaxed at times, interested in exploring their environments rather than being on the move.  And while there's certainly nothing wrong with that, it does mean that stories feel a bit slow from time to time.  However, The Awakening is the opposite of this -- it's packed full of incident and energy as it moves from scene to scene.  That's partially because this is only a two-parter, but while other two-parters have simply had smaller, less urgent plots to deal with, The Awakening attempts to squeeze all the incident of a four-part story into half the time.  In this respect it's much closer in feel to the 21st-century version of Doctor Who than anything surrounding it.

To this end it moves with tons of energy, opening with a contemporary woman being chased by Cavaliers on horseback in a way that suggests that perhaps time is mixing -- but no, it turns out the Cavaliers are also contemporary men reenacting the English Civil War.  But then later, in a double bluff, we learn that, no, there is some mixing of time periods -- that early fake-out was preparing us for the real thing later on.  And the war games that are being put on by Sir George Hutchinson and the rest of the village are becoming more and more serious, much to the alarm of schoolteacher Jane Hampden, who seems to be the only person not participating.  This is the environment that the TARDIS materializes in, and the three travellers are quickly caught up in the reenacted events.  And since this story is packed with incident, we quickly move from being captured to being free, leaving the Doctor to investigate the nearby church and discover a local boy named Will Chandler, from 1643.  Will was there for the real Civil War battle, and he doesn't seem keen to live through it again.  And the Doctor learns that there's an alien presence in the church called the Malus, which made the local events of 1643 particularly bloodthirsty and is preparing to make the 1984 reenactment just as violent.

This is a story filled with an outstanding guest cast -- Denis Lill is perfect as the charming yet deranged Sir George, with Glyn Houston as his much more skeptical friend Ben Wolsey, while Polly James provides the voice of reason as Jane and Keith Jayne gives a very likable performance as Will Chandler.  It's therefore impressive how much Peter Davison stands out from this crowd, giving a very strong turn as the Doctor, full of energy but with a biting edge at times -- his delivery of the line "Yes, I know", in response to Jane's statement that Sir George must be stopped, is filled with exasperated sarcasm and makes this Doctor far more interesting as a result.  I also like the way the Doctor tells everyone in the TARDIS to "remain perfectly calm and still", and then leaps into motion like a hyperkinetic jackrabbit.  And there's the tasteless pun about the burned alive Queen of the May being "the toast of Little Hodcombe", which leads to a sharp rebuke from Will: "'Tain't funny.  She were screaming."  These elements all combine to give us a much more interesting Doctor than we've had in a while -- it's as if someone's finally letting Peter Davison push the boundaries of the role.  It's therefore somewhat sad that it was during the production of this story (28 July 1983, to be exact) that it was announced that Peter Davison would be leaving -- he'd had to make a decision to stay or leave the show after season 21 at the end of season 20, and thus decided to leave -- partly because he hadn't thought the scripts for season 20 were particularly good, and partly because Patrick Troughton told him not to stay longer than three years.

Sir George tries to fight the psychic influence of the Malus.
(The Awakening Part Two) ©BBC

Now, while there are moments of brutality in The Awakening (the attempted burning of Tegan as the Queen of the May, the death of the hapless trooper by psychically-projected Roundheads), it never feels gratuitous, the way it did in Warriors of the Deep.  This makes a big difference, and while Sir George is killed by the Malus (which then self-destructs, in a sequence somewhat reminiscent of the conclusion of The Dæmons), his sadistic right-hand man Willow is forgiven by Wolsey and Jane (we're probably meant to think that he was under the evil influence of the Malus and is now free, although this isn't remotely conveyed on screen), rather than being condemned to die by writer Eric Pringle/script editor Eric Saward.  And, charmingly, the whole story has just enough time to end with a lovely little discussion in the TARDIS about staying behind a bit in Little Hodcombe and having tea.  It's the perfect end to a neat little story.

The Awakening is an engaging tale, told very well by first-time Who writer Eric Pringle (odd that he never came back -- he doesn't appear to have even submitted another story idea) and well-directed by first (and also only)-time director Michael Owen Morris.  It's got a great villain and a nice hook (the English Civil War period hadn't really been explored on the show in any form before), and the whole thing moves along with a sense of speed and fun.  It's not "big" enough to stand up among the classics of Doctor Who, but The Awakening does so much right with such economy that it's really hard not to adore it.  So why fight it?

November 3: Warriors of the Deep Parts Three & Four

Commander Vorshak on his bridge with two Silurians and a Sea
Devil. (Warriors of the Deep Part Four) ©BBC

These episodes are a bit better, just because there's more action going on, but they're still not much fun to look at.  Let's be perfectly honest, though; the Myrka really isn't that bad.  It's not great, and it generally moves with great silliness (and giving it arms was a bad move), but it doesn't look that bad, and it's at least a huge imposing presence in a story that needs a huge imposing presence.  It's just that, taken as a whole with all the other misfires in this serial, the Myrka does nothing to counteract criticisms (and Ingrid Pitt's ludicrous-looking death, where she tries to karate-chop the Myrka into submission, doesn't help at all).

But perhaps the most frustrating thing about Warriors of the Deep is that the basic script is actually rather good.  It's a proper base-under-siege tale, of the sort we haven't really had since Horror of Fang Rock, and while the reasoning behind the Silurians' actions is a bit woolly (they can't kill off humanity but they can make it so humanity kills off itself, which is somehow more noble), it still makes a sort of sense.  Other than the fact that it's an incredibly bloodthirsty script -- at least with script editor Eric Saward's rewrites -- and that it has the occasional lapses in consistency I mentioned last time, this is actually a reasonable action story.  But the whole thing is sabotaged by all sorts of production problems.

The Target novelization (from On
Target - Warriors of the Deep)

Some of this can be blamed on Margaret Thatcher (she called a surprise election in the wake of the Falklands which threw the production for this story into chaos, as studios had to be reallocated to cover that instead), but some of it looks like it was going to be a problem no matter what.  The red flashing eyes are incredibly stupid-looking, but that's because no one's thought to include moving mouths for the Silurians (or the Sea Devils for that matter, but as there's really one talking Sea Devil at any one time it's less of a problem for them) and so it's the only way to tell which one is talking.  The Sea Devil heads appear to be top-heavy, and so they wander through the corridors of Sea Base 4, cocking their heads quizzically at everything they see.  Sea Base 4 is all gleaming white walls (not the rusting, forgotten place writer Johnny Byrne originally scripted) and thus is rather boring to look at, and the whole thing is generally very brightly illuminated, which leads to a lack of shadows for characters to hide and lurk in -- allegedly there was going to be a power cut when the Sea Devils began their assault, but there's no evidence of this on screen.  (One version of the story claims that the lighting director simply refused to lower the lighting for the action moments.)  And it's probably churlish to criticize the computer graphics again, but even at the time they weren't very impressive.  At least the model work is really nice.

So it's too brightly lit, it's often excessively macho ("You'll get no help from me, Silurian"), and it's incredibly bloodthirsty -- the only survivors at the end appear to be the TARDIS crew and Bulic (and the cynical side of me assumes that's because Eric Saward, who added the extra deaths to Byrne's script, forgot to kill him off at the end).  While the final line ("There should have been another way") is powerfully delivered by Davison, it's also a bit hypocritical, because nothing about this feels inevitable.  There's no sense of tragedy behind the characters but every sense of being cannon fodder.  If they'd managed to get the look of Warriors of the Deep right, they could have pulled this off -- as I said before, despite the occasional problem the basic script is quite good, and there's enough going on that we haven't seen for a while/at all to give the story a sense of potential.  But they didn't; that potential is squandered, and the final result is sadly a mess.  You're better off reading the Terrance Dicks novelization instead.