mavic_chen

Since I was not yet three when this was first broadcast, I knew about it only from the various guides and from the Target novelisation - the first ever Target novelisation, in fact - which as some may remember actually featured line-drawing illustrations in the first edition. So I was rather hoping that it might be perhaps half as good as it seemed to me when I first read the story aged roughly nine. And it was, in fact, excellent. I took detailed notes à la yhlee , as follows:

Episode 1: Wow, doesn't it look 1970s! It's the glasses as much as anything. And, as with "The Christmas Invasion", we have the new Doctor out of action and comatose for much of the episode. This leaves the Brigadier and Liz Shaw (who I had never seen before) doing a sort of precursor to the X-Files - the Brigadier actually says, "We deal with the odd... the unexplained. Anything on Earth... or beyond."

The Third Doctor's historic first words are, "Lethbridge-Stewart! My dear fellow, how nice to see you again." All the accents are awfully posh - well, the Doctor and Liz are anyway - which makes the poacher Sam's accent even more noticeable. (Is that really the traditional Essex accent? I am not an expert in these matters but am somehow not surprised to discover that location filming was in Worcestershire.) Note attempt at enlightenment by having the head of the radar station in the very first scene a military woman, addressed as "Ma'am" by the bloke at the screen.

Episode 2: Good lord, I know a bloke in Brussels who looks just like the hapless Hibbert. (And this is the same actor who plays the Draconian Emperor in "Frontier in Space", and Broton in "Terror of the Zygons"! Rather impressive.)

Great exchanges between Liz and the Brigadier:

L: "I deal with facts, not science fiction ideas."
B: "there is a remote possibility that outside your tidy little world, other things may exist."
L: "You really believe in a man who's helped to save the world twice and has the power to change his physical appearance, an alien who travels through time and space... in a police box????"

Shower scene: Hmm, is Jon Pertwee the only actor ever to have played Doctor Who in the nude? (And perhaps also the only one with a tattoo?) (Indeed, is has Doctor Who ever got closer than this to a nude scene from any actor?)

Once the Doctor meets Liz they are flirting away with each other, the Brigadier having rather dashed his own chances with her by remarking that she is not just a pretty face...

Episode 3: Ooh arr, more accents from Sam and Meg. But she at least redeems herself with some brilliant reactions to the Auton towards the end of the episode. Still unconvinced by him.

The unfortunate Ransome trying to reclaim his factory - is this a subtle tribute to C.S. Lewis, I wonder? The protagonist of the trilogy that starts with Perelandra is called Ransom.

Fascinating sub-plot of the new character of the unreliable and frankly dishonest Third Doctor, perhaps in a return to the First Doctor's nasty qualities after the good-guy persona of the Second, trying to escape his responsibilities in the TARDIS and manipulating Liz to get the key off the Brigadier. Though, again, the Brigadier digs his own hole by patronising Liz. Moral of the story: don't patronise women. (Especially the really intelligent ones.)

Episode 4: Poor General Scobie - duplicated, hypnotised, and wakes up being stared at by the customers of Madame Tussaud's. And I found it interesting, given the BBC's supposed policy against advertising, that the waxwork museum is clearly identified as Madame Tussaud's. (I've never seen the attraction of it myself.) I wish Liz hadn't screamed, though other companions would have screamed for longer I suppose.

Note for work purposes: is "Scobie"'s confrontation with the UNIT staff perhaps the first fictional portrayal of the clash between national and UN chains of command which has proved in more recent times to be such a problem in the Balkans?

Simply superb scene as Channing installs the swarm leader globule, practically kneeling in worship, and then the special effects of the Nestene consciousness coming into being are just brilliant. ("We are the Nestenes!" declared Channing, and Anne, watching beside me, squeked in recognition of the name from "Rose".)

Doctor wearing cape and blowing the door open - very like a stage magician. He has fully captured the role now, the poor Brigadier is definitely #3 in the pecking order.

The shop window dummies coming to life - one of those great Doctor Who moments, and no surprise at all that Russell T Davies decided to reprise it almost unchanged in "Rose".

A great climax, UNIT and the Autons exchanging fire outside while the Doctor wrestles with tentacles inside the factory and Liz wrestles with the Plot Device Gizmo to locate the "on" switch. But I shouldn't mock, it is very well done - production values which seemed to have disappeared ten or fifteen years later. 

< The Sontaran Experiment | Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel >

Doctor Who and the Silurians was the second story of Jon Pertwee's first season in 1970 (and for some reason the only TV story with "Doctor Who and" in the title). Those who have seen Quatermass are keen to point out the links; for me, it was one of the most X-Files-like of Doctor Who stories, with our team of investigators checking out mysterious happenings which turn out to have an entirely Earthly explanation (rather rare among Who stories). The first three episodes seemed reminiscent of yer standard rural horror story, but the second half, alternating between science labs and the Silurian caves, steps back into familiar territory. Very familiar in fact - there's Peter Miles, to return playing essentially the same character in Invasion of the Dinosaurs and even nastier in Genesis of the Daleks; there's Geoffrey Palmer, who lasts two episodes this time before dying horribly (he was only in one episode of The Mutants before dying horribly; and now of course he is due to return as the captain of the Titanic - spot a pattern here?); and, most surprising, there's Paul Darrow, nine years before Avon became one of Blake's Seven, being the Brigadier's second-in-command. The Young Silurian is overacting a bit though. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as Spearhead from Space and Inferno, but I can see why some regard this as Pertwee's best season. 

< Castrovalva | The Time Monster >

Jon Pertwee's first season in 1970 was certainly his best, but also in a lot of ways quite unlike any other season before or since. The Ambassadors of Death is Who as James Bond-ish adventure story with lots and lots of shootouts and fighting, and aliens who can kill at a touch. I though Caroline John as Liz Shaw was particularly good here, though she does scream once or twice. Not quite sure what the point of the time experimentation at the beginning was. The plot was exceptionally convoluted in order to cover the seven episodes, and I felt the camera lingered on guest star Ronald Allen for longer than the quality of his acting really deserved (some of the other recurring actors, eg John Abineri and Michael Wisher, were rather better I thought), but altogether it is pretty compelling. It's quite uncomfortable and spiky in places; the congealing of the UNIT "family" in the next season made for a much safer and basically less exciting programme.

My latest watched Doctor Who DVD, this being the last of the first Jon Pertwee season. I liked it. Alex Wilcock has already said pretty much all I would want to say about it. I would just add a few more details:

The Doctor's own role is not especially glorious in this story. Rather than concentrate on the dangers of the drilling project, he prefers to try and escape via TARDIS. When the Brigadier accuses him of having wasted time "gallivanting", the Doctor takes deep offence, but the Brigadier is absolutely right. Had the Doctor stuck around on our world instead, he could have simply badgered Stahlman to take his glove off, which would have resulted in his being instantly discredited. We the viewers know about the intimate connection between the drilling and the Primords; the penny never really drops for the characters.

It's a shame that they didn't give Liz Shaw a decent farewell scene. I suppose that is part of the problem of a season with only four stories and the last one seven parts. There was too much plot to fit in, perhaps. On the second DVD, Caroline John comes across in the interviews as a very pleasant and intelligent person, much more so than the last companion-playing actress who I saw interviewed, who came across as pretty brainless. But it's nice that the last shot of the series, and of the season, is of her laughing at the Doctor and Brigadier squabbling.

The story of John Woods/John Levene and his acting career is a rather nice one too, which I hadn't heard before.

More on alternate universes in another post. But in summary: a good set of DVDs. 

< Tomb of the Cybermen | The Empire of Glass >

Terror of the Autons was the first story of Jon Pertwee's second season, broadcast exactly six years before The Face of Evil, in January 1971. Not one but three new regular characters are introduced here, Jo Grant as the new assistant, Mike Yates as the Brigadier's second in command, and the Doctor's legendary adversary, the Master.

I'm a bit startled to realise that the only other Delgado series I've seen is his last one, Frontier on Space, which I bought on video ten years ago when I was working in Bosnia. He really makes the difference between standard and classic for this story (which is otherwise a routine alien invasion plot, the least impressive of the three Auton tales). Jo, I'm afraid, annoys me as much as ever, and the Third Doctor's inability to tell her what he really thinks is one of his least glorious moments. Some great little bits though - the deadly phone cord and the asphyxiating daffodils, and Harry Towb's doomed McDermott, sporting the best Ulster accent ever heard on Doctor Who.

 < The Face of Evil | Galaxy Four >

The Mind of Evil, first broadcast in 1971, was completely fresh for me; I don't think I had even read the book. It is also almost entirely in black and white, so there's a funny kind of retro-feel to it. Here too we have a world peace conference, a rather more credible one than the one organised by Styles, and we have some really memorable Delgado!Master moments: his aggression towards Captain Chin Lee is very sexual, and his phone calls to the Doctor (of course referenced in The Sound of Drums) hint at the depth of the relationship. Again we have flashbacks to earlier monsters, with even War Machines making an appearance. The prison scenes are memorably nasty, and the gun battles suitably vicious and body-strewn. The plot doesn't quite hang together (so, what happened with the peace conference in the end? and the nerve gas on the missile?) but Jo was not as bad as usual, beating the Doctor hands down at draughts, and even Benton and Yates as well as the Brigadier seem to get plenty to do. Weirdly, Pertwee's Doctor seems to be at his worst, condescending and making silly mistakes, and the mind parasite seems introduced a bit rapidly at the end. But it teeters on the edge of greatness. 

It is, basically, a standard Pertwee-era adventure; aliens invade Earth; the Master is helping them; the Doctor persuades the Master to change sides and they are defeated.

The best thing about this one is Delgado as the Master. Accept no substitutes! He is the real thing! And the Brigadier is fun as well.

Interesting that the Doctor spends the first episode whining that the military want to blow the Axons out of the sky, whereas in fact as it transpires this was the right idea (if unimplementable).

Jo is useless as usual, and gets put in a position of serious danger by ignoring a direct instruction. The only interesting thing to say about her is that she has perhaps her first semi-romantic moment with the visiting American. (What the American is doing there is not at all clear.)

But in general I rather liked it. I've been a bit sceptical of Bob Baker and Dave Martin's scripts (deeply unimpressed by The Mutants, The Three Doctors and The Sontaran Experiment), but this was a good 'un; directed by Michael Ferguson who also did the rather good Seeds of Death and the underrated War Machines. 

< The Seeds Of Death | Invasion of the Dinosaurs >

The first Third Doctor adventure in space, after a sequence of earthbound adventures. The first episode is rather good, with the Time Lords manipulating the Doctor again, and Jo's surprise at entering the Tardis being one of the better "it's bigger..." scenes. Then I'm afraid I felt it lost its way in being padded out to six epsiodes. The danger signs are there when part two has exactly the same cliff-hanger as the part one! And, despite the valiant efforts of all actors, the sets and direction really fail to convey a convincing sense of the scale of this planet, of how far it is from one set of buildings to another. The Master gets in some good cackling and there are some tightly-choreographed fight sequences; but apart from that, nothing much really happens, and the moral message of the story is both plodding and muted. 

< The Dominators | Death to the Daleks >

The Dæmons, first shown in 1971, is presumably the only Doctor Who story featuring a character in the title outside the standard 26 letters of the alphabet (plus numbers and punctuation). I'm a bit stunned that it is remembered as the peak of the Pertwee era by some. It's not very good; it's not very bad either; perhaps that makes it an archetypal Pertwee story, and so those who like that sort of thing will like this sort of thing. Delgado is good; Benton and Yates are good (and this story has clearly provided much inspiration for slash writers); both the Third Doctor and Jo are bad, as usual; and the monster is just awful, as is the final twist (it is destroyed when Jo offers her life instead of the Doctor's as such self-sacrifice CANNOT COMPUTE).

This does at least mark my pasing the half-way point in Pertwee stories: of the 24 broadcast I have now watched 13 (Spearhead from Space, Inferno, Terror of the Autons, The Claws of Axos, The Dæmons, The Curse of Peladon, The Mutants, The Three Doctors, Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, The Green Death, The Time Warrior, Invasion of the Dinosaurs) which leaves 11. Wonder how long that will take me.

< Jubilee | Resurrection of the Daleks >

 Day of the Daleks has benefited in fan memory from having one of Terrance Dicks' best novelisations, as Ian was reflecting not so long ago. In fact it is by some way the most widely owned of the Target novelisations on LibraryThing, at 117 copies (the next are the novelisations of Genesis of the Daleks, Revenge of the Cybermen and Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon = Colony in Space, at 97 each; four of the new series books score higher, Only Human with 119, Monsters Inside on 122, The Clockwise Man on 128 and The Stone Rose on 129). Ian also links to the Alan Stevens / Fiona Moore discussion of the story.

I think he is a little harsh on the 1972 TV version. It is indeed nothing like as good as the book; I watched it for the first time ten or fifteen years ago and thought it was really rubbish, but this time round I could see the good points, in particular the excellent performance of Aubrey Wood as the controller, and forgive the basic cheapness of the sets. The looming threat of global war between the superpowers is a piece of context that has now been utterly changed, in today's unipolar world where threats come from the disaffected. The guerillas too are very seventies. But as political stories of the Letts era go, it is much less strident in its messages than say The Mutants or The Monster of Peladon.

Also, surely this is the first ever flashback showing pictures of the earlier Doctors? (Apart from the brief glimpse of Hartnell at the start of The Power of the Daleks.)

I was trying to think of the times when the Doctor is seen drinking alcohol; he has a jolly good go at the Styles wine cellar here, and the Second Doctor did similarly well out of the Waterfields in Evil of the Daleks, and of course the First Doctor toasts us all in champagne during The Daleks' Master Plan. I can't remember the Fourth Doctor going for it though.

The Doctor:...You slap the Federation in the face by sabotaging the Commission - why?
Hepesh: Because I'm afraid.
The Doctor: Afraid? Afraid of what? The Federation is your safeguard.
Hepesh: That is not true! I know the Federation's real intent!
The Doctor: The Federation's real intent is to help you.
Hepesh: No! They will exploit us for our minerals, enslave us with their machines, corrupt us with their technology... The face of Peladon will be changed, the past swept away. And everything that I know and value will have gone.
The Doctor: The progress that they offer - that we offer - isn't like that.
Hepesh: I would rather be a cave-dweller and free!
The Doctor: Free!?! With your people imprisoned by ritual and superstition?

This story, first shown in 1972, brings the Third Doctor and Jo Grant to the barbarous and wind-swept planet of Peladon, ruled by a young king (also called Peladon), which is seeking admission to a Galactic Federation including the future Earth, for whose commission delegates the Doctor and Jo are mistaken.

The story is widely seen as a reference to Britain's entry into the Common Market, now the European Union; the UK's accession treaty was signed a week before the first episode was shown. I wonder how explicit this was at the time? Both Peladon and the Galactic Federation have a number of interesting features that seem to me to be drawn from elsewhere in history or literature, and which make the Peladon=Britain, Federation=Europe reading not especially straightforward.

First off, what is really striking is that Peladon seeks to join the Federation from a position of weakness, not strength. It is a formerly closed society opening up to the outside world, a minor player seeking to be admitted to the big leagues, being dragged out of barbarity towards modernity by the young and idealistic (but weak) king. I can't quite believe that many in newly post-imperial Britain in 1972 saw the country's geopolitical position in that light. (King Peladon=Edward Heath? I think not.)

Combined with the question of mineral resources (the delegate from Arcturus wants to cut a side deal with Peladon's high priest, Hepesh, giving his planet exclusive access to Peladon's minerals but keeping them out of the Federation), the story actually has more resonances for me with the process of decolonisation, the Federation being the UN rather than the EU, and the young king's heroism reflecting the media lionisation of the leaders of newly independent countries at the time; or perhaps even going slightly further back, King Peladon=the young Haile Selassie, getting into the League of Nations in 1923 and getting satirised for his pains by Evelyn Waugh.

The main plot revolves around conservative forces trying to prevent the modernisation process from happening, by exploiting traditional religious beliefs and using violence to undermine the state. From England in 1972, one just has to look across the water to Northern Ireland for a contemporary example; Hepesh=Ian Paisley, on this reading. Though by the time the programme was shown, the Northern Ireland conflict had slipped from debates about the modernisation of society to much older patterns of behaviour: Bloody Sunday was the day after the first episode of the Curse of Peladon, and Stormont was abolished a few weeks after the story finished. The Doctor's taming of the mystical/mythical beast Aggedor and using him to bring about a good ending is not so very far from the aspirations of the Corrymeela community to use religion as a unifying rather than dividing force back home.

Of course, the story also reflects a general assumption of the time that federations are better than going it alone; see also the setting of the 1967 Star Trek story, Journey to Babel. Is this still as generally held a view? Would the story would carry more resonance in today's Britain if Hepesh were the hero, defending his planet's priceless assets against the greedy aliens, opposing the young and deluded king's shallow fascination with the latest interplanetary political gadgetry? (And how did the royal family get to where they are, anyway? As autopope says, "Whenever I hear about a planet with just one government I start asking about mass graves.")

The final geopolitical point that struck me was the necessity for all the galactic delegates to agree before force could be used - in this case, to defend King Peladon's authority against Hepesh's rebel forces. This is a classic case of Chapter VII intervention, and thus strengthens the Federation=UN rather than Federation=EEC reading; the question of a European army, which remains even now a bit of a red herring, was surely not being discussed by anyone in 1972. Of course (as sometimes happens) the procedures are fudged - Arcturus has already been killed by the Ice Warriors, so his vote is not needed for unanimity; but nobody raises this procedural point.

Apart from that, I rather enjoyed the story. It is interesting to see the Doctor actually make a mistake: normally, he spots the danger before anyone else does, but in this case his suspicions of the Ice Warriors turn out to be ill-founded. He redeems himself by performing the Venusian lullaby, "Klokkleda partha mennin klatch", to the tune of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen". Jo gets (I think) her first romantic plot-line, with King Peladon, and is all the better for it. The citadel (as far as we can tell, the only inhabited spot on the entire planet!) is nicely conveyed (indeed, the whole thing looks great). I actually like the "Doctor Who?" gag at the end a well. Minor problem: the story effectively ends at the start of episode 4 rather than the end, which would have been better planning. Major problem: Alpha Centauri (no need to explain why).

< The Keys of Marinus | Timewyrm: Apocalypse >

The Sea Devils was the middle story of the 1972 season. The Third Doctor had encountered their land-based cousins, the Silurians, a couple of years before. This story is particularly memorable for two things: the glorious scene with the Master attempting to communicate with the Clangers, echoed thirty-five years on by his latest incarnation's encounter with the Teletubbies; and it is the first point where the Third Doctor actually does "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow", which became his catchphrase. Like all of the Pertwee six-parters I have seen, it drags a bit in places, and the two elderly male stooges (the jail governor and the parliamentary private secretary who is given improbably authority to authorise a nuclear strike on the monsters) are too two-dimensional to be credible. It's also disappointing that after his valiant efforts to make peace with the Silurians the Doctor decides to side with the stupid bureaucrats and destroy their cousins, after yet again the Master's non-human allies turn on him - will he never learn? The scenes of dead Sea Devils floating on the water are rather sad. But Katy Manning for once is rather good as Jo, with almost sensible clothes and rescuing the Doctor a couple of times for a change. Also a shout-out to the silently feminist naval officer. No UNIT, slightly surprisingly, but otherwise a standard Third Doctor story.

 < The Time Monster | Mindwarp >

Let's start with a quote from Salman Rushdie's controversial novel, The Satanic Verses

It seemed to him, as he idled across the channels, that the box was full of freaks: there were mutants - 'Mutts' - on Dr Who, bizarre creatures who appeared to have been crossbred with different types of industrial machinery: forage harvesters, grabbers, donkeys, jackhammers, saws, and whose cruel priest-chieftains were called Mutilasians; children's television appeared to be exclusively populated by humanoid robots and creatures with metamorphic bodies, while the adult programmes offered a continual parade of the misshapen human by-products of the newest notions in modern medicine, and its accomplices, modern disease and war.

Fan Lore has it that Rushdie is specifically referring to the 1972 Doctor Who story, The Mutants (where the Mutants of the title are indeed referred to as "Mutts"), and that he

...implies that its characterisation of mutations as evil just because they look different from human beings encourages racist attitudes. He thereby completely misses the point of the story, which in fact has an anti-racist message. (Howe and Walker)

This enables fans to feel superior to Rushdie, in that they can buy into the anti-racist message of the Doctor Who story and pat themselves on the back for being able to see the point better than Rushdie did. I cannot imagine that Rushdie is terribly bothered about this, in that The Satanic Verses gave him bigger headaches to worry about, but I think that Fan Lore is wrong. Rushdie is not attempting to give a blow by blow commentary on the themes of Doctor Who, or a critique of this particular story; it is an incidental illustrative detail in his story (and indeed the description of the semi-mechanical creatures with priest-chieftains that Rushdie gives does not especially resemble the inhabitants of the planet Solos).

In addition, though I haven't read The Satanic Verses, my research (backed up by this essay) indicates that the book is largely about the ideas of hybridisation, merging, changing, which indeed the Doctor Who story also addresses. Rushdie's character watching Doctor Who is the viewpoint character Saladin Chamcha, who has himself been transformed into a semi-human figure and back again, and here he is musing on popular representations of mutations which, let's face it, tend not to be always positive. Rushdie himself states:

The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure.

To accuse Rushdie of "missing the point of the story" by attacking it for racism actually completely misses the point of Rushdie's book.

(Incidentally later in the same paragraph, Rushdie reports that "Lycanthropy was on the increase in the Scottish Highlands." An interesting foreshadowing of the 2006 story Tooth And Claw?)

Alas, one can easily write three times more about one paragraph of Rushdie than about the six episodes of The Mutants. Fan Lore may be wrong about the Rushdie detail, but it is right about this story in general. I watched it because I recall rather enjoying the Target novelisation (inevitably by Terrance Dicks) thirty years ago, but this is not good TV. The politics of the story could have been interesting - the colonial military government, scared that the rug is being pulled from under their feet, move towards a Rhodesia-style UDI but are stopped by the Doctor's intervention; however, the allegory is far more heavy-handed than similarly political Pertwee stories such as The Green Death and The Curse of Peladon, with the evil Marshal completely one-dimensional and the natives either noble savages or deluded collaborators. (Also the anti-racist message is somewhat blunted by the dismal acting of the one black member of the cast, playing an Earth soldier who gets left in charge at the end.) There are also themes here of how dangerous it is to mess around with ecology, and of the importance of not judging by appearances, but it is all lost in the desperate filling of six episodes for a plot which New Who would comfortably do in 45 minutes.

To be honest the only two things about this story that work for me are i) the portrayal of the planetary surface on Solos (played, in a storming performance, by a quarry near Northfleet in Kent, which has been built on since and is now the Bluewater Park shopping centre, supposedly the largest retail and shopping complex in Europe); and ii) Geoffrey Palmer, who is the one good guy among the Earth colonials and of course is killed off before the end of the first episode. 

< Who Killed Kennedy? | The Savages >

The Time Monster was the last story in the 1972 season, bringing the Master back to battle the Doctor and destroy Atlantis (for the third time). Fandom generally is rather down on this story, and I must say that the Pertwee era has been generally disappointing for me since I started re-watching. Perhaps it is an effect of lowered expectations, but I rather enjoyed it. The plot was certainly rubbish, but Jo was allowed to be a little clever and a little heroic for once, the Third Doctor much less nasty than usual (even pleading for the Master's life), the UNIT team generally on good form (Benton ending up naked a la Buffy in Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered - are this and Pertwee's shower scene in Spearhead from Space the only nude scenes in Doctor Who?), and of course Ingrid Pitt and her stunning costume. Also I was intrigued by the two Tardises coming together, a foreshadowing of Logopolis and also of course of Time Crash.

These days, of course, there is a real Newton Institute in Cambridge; I wonder if its staff are aware of this story? Can't think of any others set in Cambridge apart from Shada (and the bits from it hacked into The Five Doctors). 

< Doctor Who and the Silurians | The Sea Devils >

Oh dear. It's pretty dire. The anti-matter monsters are either laughable video effects or men in not-very-threatening rubber suits. The quarry is a quarry. There is a character who is funny because he is working class. There is a human scientist with glasses and a white coat who contributes nothing except to get zapped by the monsters. The Brigadier is at his most nitwittish. Jo is at her most annoying. The incidental music is at its most cliched and intrusive. The quarry is evidently a quarry.

There are some good bits too. The Time Lords' control centre, and Omega's palace, are nicely designed sets which add credibility to the thin plot. The bickering between Two and Three is a delight. Even One, from within his pyramid, is pretty authoritative, though there is one scene where Hartnell has to keep looking across at his cue cards. The scene where it is revealed that Omega has no body left is very good, but fatally undermined by the fact that we have clearly seen Stephen Thorne's chin in silhouette in the previous shot. The Brigadier does get one good line, when he first enters the TARDIS and says to Two, "So this is what you've been doing with UNIT funds and equipment all this time!"

But on the whole it's pretty dire. John Williams points out, on the excellent Behind the Sofa group blog, that the Target novelisation by Terrance Dicks was way better, especially the dismally executed cliff-hanger to episode 3 where Three rolls around on the ground briefly with a guy in a rubber mask. I think since I started re-watching old Doctor Who series this is the least impressive one I have seen. Best avoided unless (like me) you are a completist. Get the idea by reading this summary.

< The Caves of Androzani | City of Death >

I've tended to rather rush through writing up the Pertwee stories I have been watching, as they are much of a muchness, but this is different. I remember back in 1981 when it was re-broadcast, we really wondered why - surely there were other, better Pertwee four-parters out there? The Terrance Dicks novelisation is only average. It seemed as if Carnival of Monsters had been chosen mainly because it followed on in continuity directly after The Three Doctors. Spoiled as we were by the Hinchcliffe and Williams years, Carnival of Monsters did not seem all that special.

I must say that now it does. The 1973 season was probably Pertwee's second best (after his first, the 1970 season) and Carnival of Monsters is surely the best story in it - followed by Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks, which are both OK but not spectacular, and ending with  The Green Death which is also a good one, particularly because it gets rid of Jo. The one thing that lets it down is the visual effects, rather a lot of dodgy CSO being used. But if you can shut your eyes and pretend you are still six during those bits, the rest is fantastic - Robert Holmes at his very best in the script, Michael Wisher in pre-Davros days as the main villain, Ian Marter in pre-Harry Sullivan days as a minor character, a real feeling of several different completely alien cultures (the two classes on Inter Minor and the Lurmans), and an absence of the blatant padding that mars so many Pertwee stories. A special shout to Cheryl Hall, later the girlfriend of Citizen Smith, as showgirl Shirna.

And there's a couple of serious reflections in there too - the MiniScope itself is a futuristic development of the zoo, and gives rise to a rather caricatured discussion of conservation versus entertainment' more seriously, Inter Minor is clearly a communist totalitarian state, threatened to its very foundations by any influence from the outside. Michael Wisher's character Kalik is the conservative brother of the unseen president Zarb. It's nicely observed, although not all conservative backlashes end with the leader of the hardliners being eaten alive by a Drashig. Shame.  

< Master | Zagreus >

I had bought the video of Frontier in Space, a Third Doctor story with Jo and the Master from 1973, about ten years ago. I think it is actually the first Doctor Who I can remember seeing at the time of original broadcast; the scene where the Master introduces his allies to the Doctor and Jo very much lingeres in the memory. I caught up with it over the last couple of weekends, and was reasonably impressed, though I'm not sure that the Master's overall plan actually Makes Sense. Funnily enough, what strikes me now is the unrealistically flat bureaucracy surrounding both the Draconian Emperor and the President of Earth, where both of them have easy access to prisoners, and seem to have nothing better to do than discuss the ways of the world with their closest advisers. I guess I have had more to do with real presidents - though not lizardoid emperors, at least not as far as I know - in recent years. I've written elsewhere about lizard creatures which are actually the Japanese in disguise, so no need to develop that point at length. Depressing, though, that the cold war between Earth and Draconia has delivered a political system on Earth that is only weakly democratic, with the military having the main call on declaring war, and the main opposition forces more hard-line than the president. But thanks to the Doctor, we know it was all based on a simple misunderstanding between gentlemen, so that's all right then.

 < Utopia | The Web Planet >

Back in 1973, Dalek stories were real Dalek stories. Here we have the megalomaniac pepperpots preparing an army to take over the universe, and the Doctor encounters the Thals for the first time since way back when, giving us one of the most explicit continuity references ever. OK, the story is perhaps two episodes too long (how on earth did they get away with six-parters in those days?), the plot has a few holes (what do the Time Lords actually do with the information that the Doctor sends?) and the Daleks, alas, just a little less threatening than they might be (10,000 Dalek toys in a box, and the two who are simply pushed into the lake by our heroes); but it is all great fun. I remember being completely gripped by this when I first read it as part of the Doctor Who and the Daleks Omnibus produced by Marks and Spencer in 1976. The reviewers at the Doctor Who Reference Guide rate the novelisation ahead of the TV story. They may be right, but I found the original version still decently watchable.

To my slight surprise, I found myself liking Jo Grant more than usual. I'm afraid I normally find her deeply annoying, being the blonde companion who screams. Here she goes off to try and get help for the Doctor, dictating her thoughts into a voice recorder; she volunteers for dangerous parts of the adventure herself, and the Doctor lets her go. And there's her almost-romance with Latep the Thal, though one can't quite understand what she sees in him; she is of course destined to fall in love and leave the Doctor in her next story, having previous refused not only Latep but the King of Peladon and an Ogron in Frontier in Space. Indeed, there's romance all round with the Rebec/Taron relationship, the later played by Bernard Horsfall, the former by Jane How who apparently went on to be Dirty Den's mistress in EastEnders.

Which brings me to another topic of unhealthy fascination for me: the women of the Thals. Nation's attitude seems to undergo a steady improvement over the years, with Dyoni in The Daleks being little more than an object of protection (Ian shocks the Thals into action by threatening to hand her over to the Daleks), Rebec here being definitely more proactive but accused by Taron of being a distraction because he is in love with her, and finally Bettan in Genesis of the Daleks as a soldier in her own right who takes charge of cleaning up the mess after the Doctor and his companions depart. This is the chain of thought that culminates in Glynis Barber's portrayal of Soolin in Blake's Seven, and someone better versed than I am in analysing the portrayal of women in sf (and especially in the works of Terry Nation) can take this thought further.

< Evolution of the Daleks | The Maltese Penguin >

Here we have a Dr Who series arguing that Big Business is bad, the destruction of the mining industry will have horrible consequences and (in slight contradiction to that last) protecting the environment is of the utmost importance - made in 1973, when Thatcher was still a lesser light in the Heath government, and even four months before the 1973 oil crisis. I find it difficult to remember a Dr Who series with such an overt and relevant political message (but bear in mind this is perhaps the first time in over five years that I've sat down and watched one from beginning to end).

The acting is good, and the plot fairly tight; can't quite say the same for all the special effects - the maggots are OK, the colour separation overlay painful to look at, the giant fly rather unimpressive; but the eerie glows - the green flesh of the maggots' victims, and the saturated lighting in the climactic scenes with Stevens and his evil computer master (reminiscent of the death of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey) - are particularly good, and Stevens has another brilliant moment earlier in the last episode when his master speaks using his mouth. Indeed the computer, BOSS, is an engagingly horrible villain, which helps us forget the fact that its evil plan for world domination is utterly implausible.

Jon Pertwee really does command the show. The development of Jo's relationship with Professor Jones seems a bit abrupt over the two and a half hours of the DVD, but I take the point that it would have felt a lot more natural over the six weeks in which viewers would have originally seen the show. And the final shots of the Doctor driving away alone from her engagement party, a single bright star in the sky, fading out to the loneliness of the theme tune, do bring a lump to the throat. (Or at least did to mine). It would have been particularly poignant for the cast watching at the time, as Roger Delgado, who played the Master, had been killed in a car accident only a few days before the last episode of the Green Death was shown.

The extras on the DVD are also excellent; interviews with writer Roger Sloman and with the actor who played Professor Jones (and was at the time Katy Manning's boyfriend), and a marvellous spoof documentary set in the present day, at the end of which it is revealed that Stevens survived his final encounter with BOSS and is now doing a very interesting job indeed... There's also a bit on the special effects of creating the maggots but I haven't watched that yet. All in all I felt this was a good purchase.

< First review | Rose >

The Time Warrior was the first story in the eleventh season of Doctor Who, over December 1973/January 1974. More significantly, it was the first outing for Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, a role she played until October 1976, the longest continuous run of any companion (and longer than some Doctors had on screen). (Reprised, of course, in 1981 in K9 and Company, 1983 in The Five Doctors, in various Big Finish and other spinoffs, and last year in School Reunion; now getting her own TV series at long last.)

She gets a good introduction, stowing away in the Tardis to investigate the disappearance of scientists, who as it turns out are being kidnapped by time machine by an alien Sontaran who needs them to repair his spaceship which has crashed on Earth in the Middle Ages. (Of course, when they meet again in School Reunion, the Doctor is once again pretending to be Dr John Smith; not, as we now know, for the last time either.) I felt she was a bit screamy compared with the Sarah Jane Smith we came to know and love later on, but in contrast with the awful Jo who came before she is a vast improvement.

There's also an interesting conversation in Episode 2 between the Doctor and the Sontaran commander Lynx with significant continuity implications. Apparently this was the first time that the Doctor's home planet had been named. But it's also interesting that the Sontarans have been considering it as a military target, a plan which comes to fruition in The Invasion of Time in 1978.

Anyway, not one of the great Robert Holmes stories, but not bad at all.

< Planet of Giants | Frostfire >

Notoriously, the first episode of Invasion of the Dinosaurs exists only in black and white, while the other five are in colour (it would all have been in colour when shown in January/February 1974). Also notoriously, the actual dinosaurs themselves are absolutely terrible as special effects. There are no two ways about it: they are embarrassing puppets pasted onto their scenes by unconvincing CSO.

If you can ignore the awfulness of the dinosaurs, it's not such a bad story; like many Pertwee tales, it is a bit too long, but the two basic bits of plot - conspiracy at the highest levels of government to Take Over/Destroy England, and the people who think they are on a spaceship to colonise the nearest star - are both rather good and well enough worked out, with their motives a bit of a reprise of The Green Death but with the environmentalists now the bad guys. The cliff-hanger where Sarah is told that she's been in space for three months, and the scene where she proves she isn't by walking out of the airlock, are both real jewels.

The main plot twist involving the regular cast, however, is a slightly different matter. Captain Yates, the Brigadier's deputy since Terror of the Autons, turns out to be in league with the bad guys, yet can't quite bring himself to do the Doctor harm. The scene where we discover his betrayal is handled with no dramatic tension whatever, and his motivations are not really explored at all. The Brigadier and Benton get all the good lines, but there's interesting narrative tension among the villains as well.

If it hadn't been for the dinosaurs, this would probably be remembered as one of the great Pertwee stories despite the not-quite-connected plot. As it is, you just have to close your eyes when they are on-screen; but it's still way ahead of, say, The Mutants. (I wonder if an audio version of this, with linking narrative by Elisabeth Sladen or Nicholas Courtney, might work a bit better?) 

< The Claws of Axos | Revelation of the Daleks >

This is Sarah Jane Smith's first space adventure and we start off very well with her in a bikini. The set looks properly like an alien planet. The Exxilons are memorable aliens (and I reckon one of them is still wandering around the Tardis). The Daleks are well voiced by Michael Wisher, who was to become Davros a year later. The plot, unfortunately, has huge holes, and the Daleks' plan (as usual) makes no sense at all. Wood and Miles identify the cliff-hanger at the end of Episode Three as the weakest in the history of the show, adn they have a point.  

< Colony in Space | Nekromanteia >

The Monster of Peladon, from 1974, is probably the least memorable of Sarah Jane's first series with the Third Doctor. The Tardis returns to the scene of an earlier adventure, but this time the politics is really clunky rather than subtle; Sarah tries to teach the Queen about feminism, the miners are revolting (as they were in real life at the time), the Ice Warriors are baddies again, the most interesting character (Chancellor Ortron) is killed off far too early, and the whole thing is (as so often with Pertwee stories) a couple of episodes too long. One for completists really. I recognised Eckersley as Bob Hoskins' sidekick from adult literacy programme On the Move.

< Excelis Decays | The Talons of Weng-Chiang >

Planet of the Spiders was Jon Pertwee's swan-song as the Doctor, back in 1974. Not as bad as some of the other Pertwee stories I have seen, but as with so many of them it is rather spoiled by the ropey CSO effects, the ineptly chosen cliff-hangers, and the frankly not very scary spiders. Also one of the supporting cast (Jenny Laird, playing Neska) is so wooden in her acting as to suck the life out of any scene she appears in. But the others are good, the Doctor/Sarah Jane chemistry is great (and her grief when the Doctor appears to have died all the more credible), and it's also good to see (in Tommy) a positive and sympathetic portrayal of someone with learning difficulties. Sadly, as so often for this era, Terrance Dicks' novelisation is better.

< Living Legend | The Mysterious Planet >