Season 7

Mighty 200 / 2014 DWM poll ratings

Inferno – 32 / 18

Spearhead from Space – 36 / 28

Doctor Who and the Silurians – 42 / 50

The Ambassadors of Death – 90 / 96

My Rating

Inferno

Spearhead from Space

Doctor Who and the Silurians

The Ambassadors of Death

Well, for once it seems that general fandom has it right – or I do – or both of us, since this is the first season where I agree entirely with either the Mighty 200 or the 2014 polls. I think it’s the first season when every story makes it into the top 100 on both polls too.

In no particular order, here are some things I have noticed about the 7^th season: -

* Liz Shaw simply does not conform to the blueprint of companions/assistants used in series 1 – 6.

In the first 6 seasons it has been true of all the companions that they are either –

a) On board the TARDIS through circumstances beyond their own control, and reliant upon the Doctor to eventually get them home

– or –

b) have suffered emotionally/psychologically traumatic events and are therefore damaged goods.

Not sure about that? See for yourself.

Susan – Her parents aren’t mentioned, and may be dead. We don’t know the circumstances of how she came to accompany her grandfather, the Doctor. She has only just found a place to start putting down roots at Coal Hill, and the Doctor whisks her away for good. Damaged goods.

Ian and Barbara – Never gave their consent to the first trip with the Doctor, and only manage to return home using the Dalek timeship

Vicky – Orphaned when the colony ship carrying her and her parents crashed on Dido. The only other human being to survive is a criminal who dresses up in a monster suit to maintain power over her. Barbara guns down her pet in front of her. Damaged goods.

Steven – Marooned on Mechanus when his spaceship crash landed. Held by Mechanoids for a long time, with no companion other than a stuffed toy panda. Damaged goods.

Dodo – Orphaned and living with an Aunt who doesn’t care for her very much. And thick. Damaged goods.

Ben and Polly – arrive aboard the TARDIS by accident, and leave at the first opportunity.

Jamie – has seen the Jacobites crushed on Culloden. His friend Alexander is killed. His clan chief is wounded, and leaves for France, along with all of his friends. His prospects are becoming an outlaw, and either being executed for treason, or fleeing to France and never seeing Scotland again. Damaged goods.

Victoria – Kidnapped by Daleks, taken to Skaro, rescued by the Doctor where she is orphaned when her father sacrifices himself to save the Doctor. Damaged goods. Stuck with the Doctor until she can find the gumption to leave.

Zoe – Turned into a human supercomputer by the educational methods used in the Academy where she was brought up, and thus the victim of anti nerd bullying on the wheel in space, and unable to seemingly form normal relationships. Damaged goods.

You maybe now see where I’m coming from with this. Now you should ask yourself how did Liz join the TARDIS crew? Answer – she didn’t! She never once stepped inside it on camera. The most traumatic thing she encounters prior to meeting the Doctor the first time is the Brigadier’s moustache. Although extremely well played by Caroline John, a fine actress, Liz Shaw is a problematical character. She is a scientist, and therefore a far from ideal recipient of the kind of info-dumping exposition that a more typical companion would be on the receiving end of. So although she is well played, sympathetic and interesting, she was a problem, and it’s not surprising that incoming producer Barry Letts wanted to take a different direction with Jo Grant. What is a little more surprising is that she has no leaving scene at all. I can’t make up my mind whether this was a conscious decision – soppy leaving scenes being a part of old, black and white Who – or that they just couldn’t be bothered. Although thinking about it they did have to edit out quite a bit of “Inferno” to make the running time, so maybe there just wasn’t time. Whatever.

* It’s the Pertwee Era, Jim, but not as we know it –

Watching season 7 was a bit of a disconcerting experience, because it just wasn’t how I remembered it. My memories of the Pertwee era, with the exception of “Spearhead from Space” focused almost exclusively on the Barry Letts era. And this season was not the show I’m sure that it’s about to become. What made it disconcerting is that certain pieces of the jigsaw are already there – peripherals like Bessie, some of the UNIT family, most notably Benton and the Brigadier, and the Doctor himself, who actually is pretty much the Third Doctor I remember, although he hasn’t done so much of the physical stuff yet, which is probably all to the good. I’ve already discussed Liz Shaw as an assistant, so we’ll just say that the switch from Liz to Jo Grant will have major implications.  So few stories with so many episodes as well isn’t just quite a difference from what I remember of the era, it’s also totally different from what we’ve had before. It was the shortest series to date, with only 4 stories sharing 25 episodes. I mean, if we use the 6^th season as a comparison, there we had a 10 parter and an 8 parter, but we also had a 4 parter, two 5 parters and two 6 parters – a total of 44 episodes.

* Wot, no monsters?

No, of course there were monsters. Only. . . well, they weren’t like monsters we had seen before, that’s all. Let’s take the first, the Autons. The Autons weren’t the typical monster in that they looked like every day objects – plastic shop dummies. Which actually is very neat. If you can take everyday objects and make them menacing then you’re probably onto something. The Silurians? Well, they certainly looked monstrous, and with the power to kill using that weird third eye thing they could act like it too. When you get right down to it though, we saw they were individuals, and that there was a ‘good’ Silurian as well as a ‘bad’ one. The bad one wasn’t monstrous because he was a Silurian, he was monstrous because he was bad. As for the Ambassadors in the third story, well, possessed of monstrous powers, and killers, but unwittingly so, clearly. Finally the Primords. The story as such isn’t really about the Primords at all – they’re just a bit of window dressing, and could be chucked out of the story relatively easily if it was a 5 or 6 parter. And . . . they’re us. In that sense, they are essentially tragic rather than horrific – in fact I became quite upset when parallel Benton became one.

Now compare all this to the previous two seasons. Cybermen? Evil. Ice Warriors? Evil. Yeti? Robots controlled by Great Intelligence. He/She/ It’s Evil. Seaweed/foam life form? Evil. Dominators? Evil – look, do you need me to go on? What is interesting, then is that we seem to have a new paradigm here (sorry, but the words new paradigm applied to Doctor Who monsters has just brought me out in a cold sweat) of more three dimensional monsters, and it will be interesting to see what happens with this in season 8. 

54:Inferno

Before Watching

On the Doctor Who Story Reputation Exchange, this is a story whose stock has quietly risen over the decades, so much so that it is now reputed by fandom generally as a classic story.

At the risk of sounding a bit like a stuck record, being as this is a season 7 story, I have precious few memories of actually watching it. I felt the same with both “The Silurians” and “The Ambassadors of Death”, and with both of them there were moments of sudden recognition which triggered memories , and I’m sure that this is going to happen as I watch “Inferno”. By many accounts, “Inferno” is something of an end of an era. This is an odd thing to say considering that the era only really started with “Spearhead from Space” at the start of the season, or possibly with “The Invasion” in season 6 if you like. From the start of season 8, though, Barry Letts is in full charge at the helm in the Producer’s seat, and the argument goes that he took the show in completely different direction from the template that had been set in season 7, or if not the template, at least the tone and style. Well, we’ll have to make our own judgements about that as we watch seasons 8 through 11. For the meantime, though, it’s “Inferno”. Right, allow me to once more play the ‘in a nutshell’ game, as I take one minute to write down all I recall now about “Inferno”. Ready – set – go – Don Houghton, parallel universe – hairy werewolf men – Brigadier with an eyepatch and no moustache – great big drill.

Can’t wait.

After Watching

Having watched in their entirety three out of the 4 stories of season 7, I think I may just now be starting to form a hypothesis why I remembered “Spearhead from Space” so much more clearly than the other three stories. It’s a 4 parter while the other stories are all 7 parters. It has a couple of hooks as well – the new Doctor’s first appearance, and wanting to know what he was going to be like – and the Autons bursting out of John Saunders’ window. For the other three stories, though, I think the point was that I probably just didn’t quite get them. I was only 5 or 6 when I watched them, after all, and this season has been pitched quite a bit higher than even a pretty intelligent six year old.

This is as true of “Inferno” as it is of the previous three stories. You could argue that there is a certain formula at work here. The Doctor shows up at a research centre where UNIT have been called in to provide security/troubleshoot. It was the space centre in the previous story, and the cyclotron at Wenley Moor before that. Now it’s Professor Stahlman’s project to drill through the Earth’s crust to the Mohorovicic Discontinuity between the crust and the mantle, where he believes he will be able to tap a remarkable gas which will solve all of humanity’s energy needs. The basic problems with this project are : -

a) it releases some rather vivid green goo which turns human beings into virtually invulnerable primordial wolfmen who kill people because they don’t know any better

b) once they break through the crust it is going to release forces that will destroy the Earth.

Pretty serious drawbacks really, when all things are considered.

Somewhat surprisingly the Doctor doesn’t seem all that bothered, although he has worked out that the computer is telling them all that destruction will be the inevitable consequence if the drilling continues. No, he’s far more interested in hooking up the TARDIS console, which he has had brought to a hut on the grounds of the research facility, to the project’s nuclear reactor. Here’s a funny thing as well. The TARDIS console had always been light green, since on a black and white set, pure white films too white, whereas light green actually films white. Did they not think to repaint it? Or did they actually like the look? I’ll be interested to see next time we see it in a story, if they kept the colour or went back to white.

Tinkering with the console results in the Doctor,  TARDIS console and Bessie being catapulted into a parallel universe.

I think that this is the point where I should make what is maybe an overdue digression. Please stick with me because it will eventually make some sense. Now, I am not any kind of member of serious fandom, so my comments must be seen in this light, and if you so wish, summarily dismissed. But one thing I have noticed about fandom, really serious fandom, is that it can sometimes get a bit tribal. It can work like this - we belong to the Tribe of Who. This means that we may not sympathise with the Tribe of Trek. In fact we must seek to scorn the false idol whom the Tribe of Trek worship. Or, to put it more simply, if you’re a ‘proper’ fan of Doctor Who, you cannot also have a sneaking liking for the original series of Star Trek. One of the biggest, most serious, Defcon 4 criticisms that I ever hear or read fans of Doctor Who make of a specific story is that ‘it’s the sort of thing they do on an average Star Trek Episode’.

Now, if you like “Doctor Who”, and may I respectfully suggest that you are maybe reading the wrong book if you don’t, it is perfectly possible that you don’t like “Star Trek”, and there are quite a number of reasons why this might be. I have no wish to condemn anyone for that - it is your opinion and you’re entitled to it. All I want to do is to say that there is no law written on tablets of stone that says If thou be of the Tribe of Who, then on no account shalt thou ever cast a glance towards the altar of the Tribe of Trek. Or to put it another way, if you don’t like “Star Trek” then that’s fine –Heaven alone knows that it had its faults, and I’m sure that there are valid reasons to dislike it Disliking it because you like “Doctor Who” is not one of them, though.

I do think that it does not do “Doctor Who” any harm to compare it to the original series of “Star Trek” and there are some obvious points of comparison to draw. If we look at the obvious similarities first: -

* Both of them are children of the 60s. “Doctor Who” debuted in November 1963, while the first season of “Star Trek” began in 1966.

* Curiously, both of them had a less than successful filmed pilot, and had a second pilot made. In the case of “Doctor Who” the original pilot was similar in story line to the transmitted first story. In the case of “Star Trek” the whole crew, with the exception of Mr. Spock, was replaced, and a completely new pilot filmed. The original pilot “The Cage” was cleverly (in my opinion) cannibalized to be used in the 2 parter, “The Menagerie”.

* Both of them are seen as fitting within the genre of Science Fiction television, and both are drama series aimed at the whole family.

* Both of them inspired large and very loyal fan followings

* Both of them were reprieved from cancellation due to very vocal protestations from said fan bases.

* Both of them were cancelled within a few years of being reprieved

Of course there are differences you can point out: -

*Classic Doctor Who follows a serial form. There was only ever one ‘stand alone’ episode- which actually didn’t really stand alone at all, since it formed a teaser/trailer for the 12 part story which followed later in the same season. The original “Star Trek” was essentially episodic and picaresque (as opposed to Picardesque). The episodes did not run into each other, with the exception of the special case “The Menagerie”.

* Classic Doctor Who, at its best, celebrates the individual, non-conformity, and at least a distrust of authority and the establishment. “Star Trek” is essentially militaristic. It celebrates conformity to the Federation ideal, and the Enterprise only functions because the crew are willing to obey orders, even though this usually results in the death of several unnamed crew members in each episode. The Enterprise’s mission is supposedly a peaceful one, but it is still one of the big sticks that gives the Federation the option of speaking softly.

* Classic Doctor Who never had just one parent. The answer to the question, “Who created Doctor Who?” is not an easy one to give. Maybe the idea began with Sydney Newman, but a number of other key people all contributed to what eventually made the screen the day after Kennedy’s assassination. Many people worked on bringing the vision of “Star Trek” to the screen as well, but that vision essentially belonged to one man – Gene Roddenberry. This probably meant that there was a much tighter ‘party line’to which writers had to adhere when preparing scripts - Roddenberry, as is common with US drama series with continuing characters, prepared a ‘bible’ to guide writers as to what was ‘Star Trek’ and what wasn’t. This may be responsible for the observation that “Star Trek” was far more formulaic than “Doctor Who” A formulaic show is great as long as you like the formula that is being applied. It’s worth noting that some of the less appreciated and most criticized “Star Trek” episodes are those which do make some attempt to step outside the traditional formula.

* Classic Doctor Who cannot be easily pigeonholed within any specific genre, either within Science Fiction or outside. Just when you think that you know what the show is all about, something comes along which blows that idea out of the water. “Star Trek” on the other hand was actually conceived as a ‘western’, transposed to a space milieu – Gene Roddenberry actively touted the idea as being a “Wagon Train to the stars”.

* Classic Doctor Who celebrates bravery, but also intelligence, intellect, and yes, cunning at times. The Doctor rarely if ever triumphs through his physical prowess. For all that Star Trek has the crew of the Enterprise trumpeting their peace keeping agenda, the fact is that members of the crew, especially their leader, Captain Kirk, often end up brawling with fists or hand weapons. If you’re familiar with the show, that piece of music they always use when Kirk is fighting is probably going through your head right now as you read this. Even Mr. Spock, emotionless, super intelligent Mr. Spock, happens to be the best fighter among the whole crew, disabling opponents with the famed Vulcan neck pinch.

Right, it’s time for a little sacrilege. I ask the heretical question – did Star Trek at any time influence the writers of Doctor Who? Put those stones down now, and hear me out. If – and it is an if – if they did, when would that influence most likely have been seen? Why, right at the end of the 60s and the very beginning of the 70s, when it was first seen on the BBC. Right about the time when Jon Pertwee was taking over the role. Right about the time when Doctor Who became more militaristic and more conformist than ever before. (Alright, even the Third Doctor is not really a member of the establishment, but he’s a lot closer to being one than his predecessors or his successors.)  Right about the time when we had a Doctor who could seriously look after himself in a fight. But then maybe this is a coincidence.

It isn’t easy to prove or disprove that “Star Trek” influenced the people who made classic Doctor Who, or vice versa. There were certainly times when both series covered rather similar ground, or certainly wanted to. I remember reading an interview with Dennis Spooner, the show’s second script editor, who said that he would have loved to have done a story with the Doctor meeting ‘God’, and it turning out not to be God, of course, but a being with incredible powers – and he drew a comparison with the “Who Mourns For Adonis” Star Trek story – the one where the Enterprise is suddenly stopped in space by a giant hand. That was actually one of my favourite Star Trek stories – although the lukewarm rehash of this in the fifth Star Trek movie – “The Final Frontier” was most definitely not to my liking.

All of which digression is a very long winded way of bringing the subject around to “Mirror, Mirror”. This Star Trek story, from the second season, was written by Jerome Bixby, and was first shown in 1968 in the US – I don’t know for certain when it was first shown in the UK. Now, I’m guessing that only the late Don Houghton could have answered if he was at all influenced by “Mirror, Mirror” when he wrote “Inferno”, but there are similarities. You see what you think. In a nutshell, a shore party, comprising of Kirk, McCoy, Uhura and Scotty beam back to the Enterprise during an ion storm. This has the effect of diverting them into a parallel universe. The Enterprise to which they are transported is not the same one as they left. Now it is the pride of the fleet of the Terran Empire, and it is a ship where efficiency and discipline are achieved through a barbaric level of cruelty. The quickest way to achieve promotion is through the assassination of a superior. Far worse than that – Spock has a beard.

The way that “Inferno” deals with this Science Fiction trope of a parallel universe does actually show us quite a bit about what makes the two shows similar and different. As with “Mirror, Mirror”, the parallel world although superficially similar to our own, is noticeably worse. Now, while the parallel world in “Mirror, Mirror” is cruel and barbaric, it uses the idea of an evil empire. In “Inferno” the world into which the Doctor arrives is noticeably totalitarian. In case we don’t get the point there is a poster clearly modeled on Big Brother from Orwell’s “1984” on the wall of the hut. The other external trappings though are specifically Nazi, right down to the Brigadier’s counterpart having a dueling scar, and just the hint of a slight German accent. Now, there’s probably a good reason for all this. The experiences undergone by the people of Britain during both world wars changed Britain more than it had ever been changed before – that’s a stunningly obvious thing to say. Rightly or wrongly in Britain the simplistic view that Germany was to blame for both wars certainly was a generally held one for most of the second half of the 20^th century. Hitler, Nazism and all that went with them were and are a very convenient symbol for why all that fighting, suffering, and sacrifice was necessary. The fact is that in 1940, Britain could have been invaded by Nazi led German forces, and the Invasion could have been successful. So therefore the abhorrence of the idea Britain under Nazi rule has a grounding almost in fact – it could have happened.

Which is not the same for the people of America. The chances that Germany under the Nazis could ever have successfully invaded the USA are extremely remote. Add to that the fact that it was never Nazi atrocities that dragged the USA into World War II, but the Japanese atrocity of the attack on Pearl Harbour prior to a declaration of War. Therefore while Star Trek did occasionally use the trappings of totalitarianism and even Nazism in depicting a wrong for Kirk and co to right, it never represented the nightmare scenario that it did in the UK. In “Doctor Who”, an echo of Nazism is simple shorthand for an abhorrent society or civilization. The Daleks are Nazis. The Cybermen are Nazis. The War Lord and his crew are Nazis. In “Genesis of the Daleks” Davros’ cronies even seem to be wearing SS uniforms to make sure that we get the point. And in “Inferno” the point is that without actually telling us that it’s what we are seeing, the story is showing us the nightmare situation of Britain as it might have been had the Nazis successfully invaded.

And this is where it starts to get a little worrying if you start to analyse it. For, apart from the uniforms, and the constant threats, (I vill hev you shot, Doktor), the fact is that the parallel world isn’t all that different from the real one. They are essentially carrying out the same project. In fact, they seem to be carrying out rather more efficiently than world 1, since it’s several hours ahead – which is actually very important to the story. Yes, Liz Shaw is not a Scientist in this world, but she is actually a Section Leader. So this is a world where there’s certainly more equality and opportunity for women in the armed forces – you won’t see any women in the UNIT hierarchy in the classic series. Even with the threats too, well, haven’t they got a right to get angry about a complete stranger who has penetrated this top secret research establishment and seems to know many of its secrets? After all, we’d never get upset about that in this world, would we? Alright, I am putting this point slightly tongue in cheek – but only slightly. We’ll never know for certain whether this was a deliberate level of ambiguity on Don Houghton’s part, but the fact that you can choose to see it his way does add a little more depth to the story.

Not that it’s lacking in action. There’s enough toing and froing with Primords in both worlds in the last 2 episodes to keep anyone going – maybe a little too much even . Still, you remember that I did say that the parallel world being a crucial few hours ahead in the drilling was a plot point? Well, it means that the Doctor is able to get back to the real world in order to stop the drilling with 35 seconds to spare. Not 00&?  Well, that would have been going too far.

I wasn’t sure about this story at first, but I’m quite happy now that it deserves the high reputation it has earned over the years. In the end I had to just give in. I think it’s probably because all of the cast were taking it so seriously, that I couldn’t help giving in to it.

What Have We Learned?

The Doctor’s normal pulse rate is 170 beats per minute

In a parallel universe, it seems that there would be no counterpart of the Doctor, so he really is unique. 

53: The Ambassadors of Death

Before Watching

This is the last story penned by David Whitaker. Let’s just remind ourselves about his previous stories, also not forgetting the fact that, as the first Script Editor of the series he would doubtless have had a lot to do with working on the scripts of other writers, applying the kind of polish that they would need for the show. His own stories were : - “The Edge of Destruction” – “The Rescue” – “The Crusade” – “The Power of the Daleks” – “The Evil of the Daleks” – “The Enemy of the World” – “The Wheel in Space”. What a range the man had. It’s very difficult to identify hallmarks of a David Whitaker story, which is more of a tribute to his versatility rather that any implied criticism.

I have read that there were problems with the story, and that David Whitaker, although he came up with the idea and wrote the treatment, didn’t actually write the scripts. Uncredited were Malcolm Hulke, who had scripted the previous story, Terrance Dicks, the Script Editor, and Trevor Ray, who at the time was in the Associate Script Editor role from which Terrance Dicks had progressed to Script Editor.

Stories with a complicated parentage like this often fail to set the world alight, and so I’m trying to tone down my expectations a little bit. What I do expect though is for the more adult tone we have seen in “Spearhead from Space” and “The Silurians” to be maintained.

After Watching

I can still remember exactly where I was in the early hours of the morning on July 20^th, 1969. I was in my Nan’s front room upstairs watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the Moon. (Conspiracy theorists please note – I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next man, but the idea that the Moon landings were filmed on Earth is just pure cock of the poppiest variety). It seems funny to recall how excited we all got about manned space missions back in the late 60s and early 70s, but we did, and “The Ambassadors of Death” cashes in on this excitement.

The opening episode has a great idea behind it – namely, a manned space probe is sent to Mars. (Ah, the innocence of youth. I remember after the Apollo programme ended being told, it will be at least 5 years before a mission to Mars – and may even take a few years longer – and thinking – oh come on! It won’t be that long, surely!)  All contact is lost with the Mars probe for something like two months. Contact is never re-established, yet suddenly it becomes clear that the probe has actually taken off from Mars, and is heading back to Earth. The crew on the probe are more than technologically adept and experienced enough to have mocked up a radio if they had wanted. So what is going on?

It’s a question which Rago the Dominator asked, certainly. Well, the actor who played him, Ronald Allen, anyway. He thus becomes another actor for whom the 3 season rule is overlooked – if indeed it really ever existed in the first place. It’s not a problem, for his character, Cornish,  looks extremely different from Rago here – for one thing his head actually starts above his shoulders rather than somewhere in the middle of his chest. He puts in a good stint, Ronald Allen, appearing throughout the story, and consistently managing to be on the side of the angels, even though sometimes it is far from clear who the good guys and who the bad guys actually are in the first place.

The idea of a space probe coming back to Earth with something more or something different from what it left with wasn’t a new one when this story was made. I am too young (honestly am) to have watched any of the original Quatermass TV series apart from the late 70s ITV revival with Sir John Mills, but I watched each of the films once or twice, and this seems to have a few echoes of “The Quatermass Experiment”. This puts me in mind of a rather pointless digression: I remember when I was probably in my early teens that my grandmother once tried to explain what the original Quatermass was about, and the phrase – there was an orgasm from outer space – memorably passed her lips. I had to stifle a laugh, since I would have been dreadfully embarrassed back then for her to have known that I did actually know what the word meant. I digress.

Considering then these rather, well, I wouldn’t exactly say clichéd, but certainly rather familiar plot elements, I found that “The Ambassadors of Death” did actually continue to serves up some surprises during its seven episode run. It is essentially a story about paranoia. The Recovery 7 returns to Earth with a crew of what seems to be three men in spacesuits previously belonging to the two Mars astronauts, and the astronaut sent to rescue them. The wearers of the suits when they return to Earth are somewhat strange. For one thing they do not allow anyone to remove their suits. For another thing, they need extremely high doses of radiation to thrive. Oh, and their touch brings instant death.

Sounds like these guys are the monsters, doesn’t it, or at the very least, the villains of the piece. Yet the twist is that they are nothing of the kind. They are Ambassadors of an alien civilisation, apparently sent to Earth to establish friendly contact. The first inkling that it is not the aliens who are the villains that we, the viewers get, is when the transporter bringing back the newly landed Recovery 7 capsule to the Space centre if hijacked. It is recovered by the Doctor, but by this time the three occupants have been taken. Far from being the work of some criminal mastermind, this is actually contrived by the regular Army, led by General Carrington. He eventually reveals to the Brigadier, Doctor et al that they have been working with the full knowledge and agreement of Sir James Quinlan, Minister for Technology. This gradual reveal of a plot within a plot within a plot does need closely following – I would imagine that it would have been pretty easy, especially if your attention span was limited, to have got lost in who was working for whom. Especially when it turns out that Carrington is in reality working for himself, and not the minister, who turns out to be an innocent dupe who is killed for his pains. Carrington, we learn, is a former Mars Probe astronaut himself, and his former dealings with the aliens whose Ambassadors these three ‘men’ are, have twisted his mind so that he is convinced they are set on an alien invasion, and blasting their mother ship out of existence is the only answer.

This worked. I originally had Carrington as the villain of the piece, acting on his own initiative, but then when the minister intervened I began to think that maybe I was wrong. That was a tribute to John Abineri, who played Carrington. John Abineri is another one to add to the list of actors who bring the story a bit of quality whenever they appear. His Carrington is very convincing as a tortured soul, whose exaggerated concept of duty has led him to an unthinkable course of action. There’s a lovely scene between him and the Doctor after the climax of episode 7, where he seems to be pleading for the Doctor’s understanding, which the Doctor, with a great bit of eye acting, gives him.

So as I stated earlier, the Ambassadors themselves are neither monsters nor villains. However, this is a 7 part story, and in order to stretch it out to 7 parts, they are forced to act like are villainous monsters at times. They may not be murderous, but they kill people, and at times pretty much seem to be threatening to kill others, including the Doctor and Liz. Part of Carrington’s plan is to use one of the Ambassadors in a live TV broadcast to the world, in which he will remove the creature’s helmet, reveal his alienness to the world, and thus justify his decision to annihilate the mother ship. Just prior to this we do see one of the aliens take off ‘his’ helmet, and the best way I can describe what we see is similar to the makeup worn by the leper in the film “Papillon”. It’s also a little reminiscent of the make up of the unprocessed Chameleon in “The Faceless Ones”, and I’m not sure that it is totally necessary. Personally I think it might have been better, and shown up Carrington’s pointless paranoia more strongly had we either never seen them, or they had turned out to be less ugly. 

They are problematical in another way too. They seem to have been sent to Earth with no way of communicating with humans – which is probably a bit of a drawback if you’re on a diplomatic mission, I would have thought. If the aliens are so technologically advanced as to build a massive spaceship, then surely they could have whipped up a translator of their own – especially bearing in mind that there is something of this ilk on the Mother ship which enables them to talk straight to the Doctor when he arrives. Now, quite often when we point out plot holes, they are usually small and/or inconsequential – after all, at the very least the script will have been looked over for such things not just by writer, but by the script editor as well. And may well have undergone several drafts. But I just can’t get around this one. Yes, the aliens do contrive somehow to send instructions on building a translator so that the humans can be understood by the aliens, although even this is just one way. But why, even if Carrington had promised them the Earth on a stick, why wouldn’t they have given at least one of the three some method of communicating, especially when they clearly had the technology to do so? Either I have completely misunderstood the story (which is a distinct possibility) or this just doesn’t make sense.

Far less important, although this next point did actually bug me quite a lot, was the space capsule, Recovery 7. Now, I’ll be honest, I don’t have such a great grasp of Science that I often sit there watching a story going – that’s wrong – that’s wrong etc. I think I was away from school the day we did Science. However, my boyhood obsession with every Apollo manned space mission up to and including Skylab IV (the confusingly titled third and last mission to Skylab) means that I still know enough about manned space flight to make a couple of observations. Getting a man into space is difficult, far more difficult than putting an inanimate object of comparable weight and size into space. It is, though a piece of battenburg when compared to the difficulty of –a) getting him back to Earth alive, and – b) getting the spacecraft back to Earth in a way in which it can safely be reused. Add to this the fact that when the Doctor brings the Recovery 7 capsule back to the space centre, they can’t open the hatch. This means that they have to take what look like gas axes to it. Now, at the age of 6, when this show first went out, my ambition was to be the first Brit to walk on the Moon, and while it is still theoretically possible that this could happen, the odds against it are, should you pardon the pun, astronomical. Nevertheless, if by some miracle I were ever to be offered the chance to go into space, I would take it like a shot. But . . . I wouldn’t go within a parsec of a spacecraft which had been treated with the tender ministrations of a gas axe. Yet this ship safely takes the Doctor to the alien ship, and will be used to take back the Ambassadors, and return the earth astronauts.

                                                                                 

Believe it or not, I am not actually trying to say that I didn’t like “The Ambassadors of Death”. I do think it has some issues plot wise, which mean that it is difficult for me, even at my most charitable, to put it on a level with the previous two stories, but there are still enough things to enjoy here that you don’t need to look particularly hard to find them. It’s a good Liz Shaw story for a start. Liz gets kidnapped by Reegan. Reegan is a thug hired by Carrington to look after the Ambassadors, but he’s a bit more than a brainless gorilla, and is perfectly willing to double cross Carrington when the chance arises. There’s some good scenes between him and Liz. I’ve already mentioned the performance of John Abineri as well. Nicholas Courtney as the Brig continues to deliver value for money. At times during the last three episodes you can see that far from learning his lesson and showing remorse for what he did to the Silurians, he actually seems to almost sympathise with Carrington’s objective. It’s telling, though, that the Doctor still trusts him enough to leave the Space Centre in his control, happy that this time he’s not going to blow the hell out of the alien ship.

If this is the worst that Season 7 has to offer – and many people seem to think that it is, then we won’t be doing badly at all.

What Have we Leaned?

Never shake hands with an alien – in fact never shake anything with them

Just because an alien civilisation is incredibly technologically advanced – they can still act like Homer Simpson from time to time.

In the Doctor Whoniverse, British Space hardware is considerably further advanced than anything currently on the planet

52:The Silurians

Before Watching

I probably remember reading Malcolm Hulke’s Target novelisation of his own story, which was entitled “Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters” more than I remember watching this story, and if I’m honest, I don’t even remember reading that all that clearly. Back in those early days in the mid 70s Target were a bit funny and fussy about titles. They insisted that the first new novelisation they commissioned, “Spearhead from Space” was changed to “The Auton Invasion” – they had this one changed, “The Colony in Space” became “The Doomsday Weapon”, “The Moonbase” became “The Cybermen” and  “Robot!” became “The Giant Robot”. Thankfully they did learn to leave well enough alone as time went on.

I do remember that I enjoyed the prologue to the novelisation, a little scene with the Silurian scientists observing the approach of the Moon, and making the last preparations for their species’ hibernation, while feeling sorry that their primate pets would be destroyed in the coming cataclysm. I tend to remember this as a rather more thoughtful piece of work than its companion piece, “The Sea Devils” – which I have to say that I remember a lot better than this one. I just can’t help feeling that at 7 episodes it is bound to drag at some point. Still, having said that, two of the best stories in the previous season, in fact the whole Troughton era, were an 8 parter and a 10 parter, and so with hope in our hearts, let us go boldy forwards and see what “The Silurians” can offer us.

After Watching

Let’s imagine a scenario, if we may. There is a weather forecast that tells you that there is going to be the most terrible electric storm for the last thousand years and it’s coming right your way in the next few hours. You decide that the best thing you can do is to go down to wait it out on the couch in the basement, batten down the hatches and pop a couple of sleeping pills in your mouth. You sleep for rather longer than you expected, and when you go back upstairs you find that the storm never happened, and your house has been taken over by squatters. You’d be miffed and do your best to get rid of them, wouldn’t you? Well, that, essentially, is what “The Silurians” is all about. The surface of the Earth is the house, we, humanity, turn out to be the squatters, and the erroneously named Silurians are the angry owners in the basement.

Even though my memory of actually watching “The Silurians” is hazy at best, and may be more about what I remember from the novelization, the scenario at the start of episode 1 is awfully familiar. The Doctor is tinkering with good old Bessie,  when Liz Shaw comes and tells him that they need to go to a research establishment. In this case it’s Wenley Moor, where they’ve been having unexplained power losses when they operate their Cyclotron. Cyclotrons, eh, nothing but trouble in my experience. These power losses seem linked to some mysterious disappearances in the nearby cave system, and UNIT has been sent in to investigate. The Doctor eventually manages to give everyone else the slip, and goes down into the caves, where he meets a dinosaur. I’ve heard it described as a T Rex – it isn’t, although it’s definitely a carnivorous species, although I can’t say which since the director quite wisely only gives us brief glimpses of it.

In the first three episodes, the Director quite wisely doesn’t let us see very much of the Silurians themselves. This isn’t because they are badly designed – although their feet are possibly the oddest since the Sensorites’ – but because once you’ve revealed the monster in all its glory in a given story, then you’re going to have to look for tension and fear from elsewhere, so it’s worth delaying the reveal until the right moment. So throughout the first three episodes we get an arm here, a claw there, a brief glimpse of face, a dark silhouette, a brief flash of the whole thing, and lots of viewing things through the wounded Silurian’s eyes. I did like what Malcolm Hulke did through the early episodes, though, by deliberately setting up the Doctor as the voice of reason. He’s the one who argues that there are 2 species in the cave. He’s the one who presents the evidence that the intelligent species are going out of their way to prevent attacks on humans, while all around you can see the UNIT guys thinking – give me just one chance and I’ll blow the little green buggers to kingdom come.

I watched episode 1 on the same Bank Holiday that I watched the whole of Spearhead from Space. I deliberately rationed myself to just episodes 2 and 3 the next night. By midday of the 3^rd day I was literally champing at the bit to get home so that I could watch the next two installments. So that has to be submitted as evidence that the pacing of the story is spot on, which ain’t an easy thing to achieve for a 7 parter.

I watched episodes 4 and 5 in one sitting, and pressed on for episode 6. In fact I was tempted to go for the finish and watch episode 7 the same evening to finish it off, but it was probably the wisest option to leave it. Right, then, so it turns out that against the Doctor’s express advice, UNIT are going for their default stance of if it doesn’t move, paint it, and if it does move then kill it. It was interesting to see Geoffrey ‘cock up on the catering front’ Palmer playing his first Doctor Who role as Masters, a sort of man from the ministry chap. Actually now might be a good time for our traditional bout of guest star spotting. At the end of episode three the Doctor finds Professor Quinn dead. He’s been keeping the wounded Silurian who got out to the surface as captive, and that was only ever going to have one outcome. Professor Quinn was played by a pre-Porridge Fulton Mackay. Now, okay, he will always be Chief Prison Officer Mackay to many of my generation, but he makes pretty good fist of Quinn. Quinn, you see, did actually discover the Silurians during a jolly potholing expedition, and recognizing that their technology is superior to our own, has been helping them in return for them sharing their secrets. They have been rather slow to keep their end of the bargain, hence Quinn keeping the wounded one as a bargaining chip. I found that Fulton Mackay did very well at convincing me that Quinn wasn’t actually evil as such, but selfish and misguided and greedy.

The there’s Dr. Lawrence, played by Paul Miles. Paul Miles’ most celebrated part in the show was in “Genesis of the Daleks” where he played Davros’ quasi nazi henchman, to perfection. Dr. Lawrence shares some of the same characteristics, but there are subtle differences. Lawrence is blinded to everything that is going on because, if he allows the cyclotron to be switched off, then his own reputation will suffer. Even when Masters tells him that his actions will be praised, and he will have no loss of face, he is not mollified at all. He is thoroughly unlikeable, and yet at the same time there is something very human about him.

In episodes 4, 5 and 6 we finally started to get to know the Silurians, and at least two of them do turn out to be individuals. There’s the older, shorter, more chunky one who is the leader, then the taller, excitable one who wants to be leader. Once the Doctor goes to their lair and tells them of the imminent UNIT attack, then they find a phial of the virus that they used to use when their crops were being stolen by primates in the past. Now, okay, we do have some time issues here, folks. Firstly, the name Silurians. I’m not going to dwell on this because other people have explained this very well in the past, but basically the Silurian Period was far too long before the age of reptiles. Secondly, the figure of 200 million years is bandied about. That’s about 200 million years after the Silurian period, and within the Jurassic. Okay, that’s the Jurassic, in the middle of the Age of Dinosaurs – so far so good. Only dinosaurs and primates were never contemporary, according to the fossil record, which is the best record that we have. Even when the Doctor backtracks in “The Sea Devils” and starts calling them Eocenes, the Eocene was still too early for primates. Well, anyway, it doesn’t really matter. This is a story, for heaven’s sake.

Going back to the individual Silurians, it’s a good thing that we do see the two individuals, and that the old Silurian does give the Doctor the virus so that he has the chance to search for the antidote. It proves that, as with people, there are good and bad, and that it’s wrong to condemn a whole species, as both the brigadier seems to want to do, and the young Silurian. It’s a very subtle anti-racist message which sits quite well after the rather blithe way that the second Doctor had to wipe out hordes of aliens so much of the time.

The scenes of people starting to drop with the virus are very 70’s, and none the worse for it. Terry Nation’s “Survivors” was only 4 or 5 years away. It’s something of a sign of the times that it is the superheroic Doctor who finds the antidote – which the Silurians have never developed for themselves – rather than a chance accidental discovery saving the day – a la The Seeds of Death. Is there nothing that this, er, man, cannot do?

I want to make a point about Caroline John’s Liz Shaw now. It’s always a hazard with a companion/assistant that at some point, especially in a longer story, they’re going to fade out of it for a while. That’s true of Liz at some points in this, but not detrimentally so, and there’s one really interesting scene where the Brig orders her to come with him – presumably to file some papers and make us a cuppa tea love – and she refuses point blank, quite rightly pointing out that she is a scientist and has more important things to do. At which point the Brig gets all military on her and reminds her that she is a UNIT employee, and it takes the Doctor to persuade her to run along now. When Jo Grant comes along they won’t have to ask her, she’ll be offering. Which is a retrograde step. Well, it’s interesting seeing how the mechanics of only having the one travelling companion works for the show. The Doctor travelled with just Steven in “The Massacre”, and Jamie in “The Evil of the Daleks” – Victoria doesn’t interact that much with them until the very end of the story. But from here on in it’s just one companion all the way, until “The Ark In Space” through “Revenge of the Cybermen”, and then all the way until “State of Decay”.

Right, the ending. . One thing I’ve noticed, especially as the Troughton era developed, is that endings can often be problematical for Doctor Who. In this story, therefore, we actually need two endings in order to create a successful final episode. The first sees the Doctor forced to operate the Cyclotron. This will not only power up a Silurian doohickey which will destroy all the human beings– I think – it will also power the hibernation units to allow them to have a kip until it is safe to emerge again, when all of those nasty humans – and pretty much everything else has gone. Ok, got that. What I don’t get is this. The Silurians are supposed to be far more technologically advanced than humans, and yet they need to force the Doctor to work out how to operate this piece of human technology. Why can’t they do it for themselves? This means they are effectively putting themselves in his hands, as he then has the opportunity for a timely piece of sabotage, by overloading the machine. Oh well, it’s not the most ingenious solution we’ve ever seen, but it’s probably not the worst either.

The Doctor then goes on to reveal that he has actually had to sabotage the Cyclotron, and wasn’t bluffing when he said that he couldn’t stop it, until realizing that he can reverse the polarity of something or other – ( I didn’t quite catch whether this one was the neutron flow or not – I’m sure I’ve read that despite popular impressions to the contrary, he only ever reversed the polarity of the neutron flow twice, and one of those was in The Five Doctors as a little in-joke to fandom.)

Ok, that’s the first ending. Now, in many ways far more significantly, comes the second ending. After the Doctor has hot-wired the Cyclotron (well, that’s what it looked like he was doing) The Brigadier makes arrangements to cordon off the area. The Doctor decides that the plan must be to revive Silurians one by one, talk with them, and keep on doing it until they listen to reason about sharing the planet. His point being that the Silurians are far more advanced than humans scientifically (even if they don’t know how to operate a cyclotron), and Humanity can benefit hugely from Silurian technology. The Brig doesn’t voice any opposition to this plan, and cheerfully waves the Doctor on his way back to UNIT HQ. – Now, you’re not going to do anything naughty while I’m away, like blowing the hell out of the Silurians, are you Brigadier? – Ok – the Doctor doesn’t actually say these words, but that’s pretty much the sense behind what he does say. So, he’s off and away with Liz by his side when Bessie breaks down a couple of miles away – he just fixes her, and what happens? Boom. The Brig blows up the caves. It’s an important happening in the series, I think, and one which is going to underscore a lot of the tension in the Doctor’s relationship with UNIT in general and the Brigadier in particular. I personally think it was the inspiration for the denouement of “The Christmas Invasion”, David Tennant’s first story.

For the most part this was a remarkably successful 7 parter. As a monster design, well, the Silurians were by no means the worst we’ve seen, and actually what with the work of John Friedlander and the costume department this aspect of the show is only going to get better for a while. As a story it leaves you asking questions about who the real villains are, and who are the heroes, if any. That’s a great testament to the level of maturity the viewers are being credited with during this seventh season.

What Have We Learned?

Much of what Darwin told us was wrong

The Brigadier is quite comfortable with Genocide

51: Spearhead from Space

Before Watching

I’m going to watch the story anyway, but I think I know what I’m going to say. After all, this story made a huge impression on me when I first watched it when it was first made, and then when I watched it on cable a couple of years ago it did pretty much the same all over again. And that’s not to mention that I grew up in Ealing. The Doctor Who cognoscenti will know what that means, but for ordinary mortals I will explain. One of the iconic scenes in this stories shows shop mannequins coming to life and bursting out of a plate glass shop window. So iconic that it was recreated for one of the set pieces in “Rose”, the first new Who story in 2005. This was filmed in the window of John Saunders in Ealing Broadway. Incidentally, I’m reliably informed that the shop is still there, although it’s now a branch of Marks and Spencer. Now, come on! This was a scene from Doctor Who, in colour, in a place which I recognised, which I knew well. Not only that, but it was an extremely scary scene as well! This may be one of the reasons why I remember this story so much better than any of the other stories from season 7. Then again, maybe the fact that it’s the only 4 parter had something to do with it as well – each of the other 3 stories in this season had a mammoth 7 parts.

While we’re setting the scene, this was written by my hero Robert Holmes, and this, the 3^rd story he wrote for the show, shows him really starting to flex his script writing muscles.

After Watching         

The first thing that I think we need to say is that this story actually looks amazing. Now, okay, this is partly because for the last few months we’ve had a never-ending diet of grainy black and white images – while the Vid fired episodes look pretty good, it’s still a million miles from colour, and that’s just the way that it is. Actually, now I come to think of it, I never saw this story in colour until a couple of years ago. My first Doctor that I watched in colour would have been Tom Baker, probably from about “The Terror of the Zygons” onwards. My parents’ first colour telly, which was second hand of course, was actually the first telly we owned. Up until then we had a succession of rented black and whites from Ketts Rentals in West Ealing. These tended to break down so often I came to look on the repair man as another uncle, but that too is another story. So the only time I ever got to see Jon Pertwee in full colour was when I was round a mate’s house. Actually, I remember being surprised by one of the episodes of “The Monster of Peladon” watching it round my mate Naqeeb’s house, being as the colours were just so bright – garish we would call it nowadays.

But it’s not just that. After I watch each story I do tend to check my details in a couple of reference books, and see if there’s any corroboration for anything I might have noticed, and so I now know that the whole story was filmed on film as if the whole thing was done on location. This means that while we lack the sharper edges you get on videotaped interiors, the whole production has a real filmic, big screen feel about it which works extremely well. Apparently this was done in order to work around some industrial action going on at the BBC at the time. Pity they couldn’t have done the same for “Shada” the best part of a decade later. We’ll come to that one in time.

So to Jon Pertwee’s Doctor. Now, Patrick Troughton’s second Doctor really wasn’t himself for much of “The Power of the Daleks”. This time the Doctor emerges from the TARDIS and collapses, and then, just as he’s coming to himself again, he is abducted from the hospital on a wheelchair, escapes, is making his way back to the TARDIS and is shot by a UNIT soldier! All in one episode. When he recovers, during the third episode, it is clear that he has no intention of acting erratically any more, and he is very much the third Doctor that I remember – a figure of authority, some might say a tiny touch arrogant, at times grumpy and tetchy, but at the same time a figure of immense charm.

As for the story, well, this was the story where my hero, Robert Holmes, really started to find his feet. There’s a huge contrast between this story, and everything that has gone before in “Doctor Who”, with the exception of “The Invasion”. At the risk of waxing philosophical, I would say that it’s to be found in the contrast between the 60s and the 70s. In the 60s, anything was supposed to be possible. In the 70s, well, the paranoia set in. Yes, things were as bright and colourful as ever, if not more so. But under the glittering exterior some very ugly things were going on – the 3 day week, industrial unrest on a massive scale, Edward Heath’s teeth, the list goes on. So whereas before we were maybe being invited to look up with wonder, in the seventh series we are now being warned to look down with horror. Sorry – I did warn you that I was going to be waxing philosophical. But it is a valid point, I think. By way of comparison, elsewhere on TV we had “Adam Adamant” in the 60s. In the 70s we had “Doomwatch”. Signs of the times, certainly.

Doctor changeover time is the only time really when we are again invited to identify with the companions as the familiar figures to guide us as painlessly as possible through the transition. Which wasn’t easy in this story since the Doctor has no continuing companions at the start of the story. This is why good old Nicholas Courtney’s Brigadier has to ease us in. The Brig is already a bit of an old hand due to his appearences in season 6’s “The Invasion” and season 5’s “The Web of Fear”. Ooh, and here’s a point I was unable to find any references to when I looked it up. In his opening scene where he is recruiting Liz Shaw’s help to deal with the strange meteorites, he says the famous line “We’ve drawn attention to ourselves, Miss Shaw”, and then goes on to explain that UNIT has already dealt with two alien menaces, and both times they were helped out by a strange scientist type called the Doctor. Hang on a minute! Nobody mentioned UNIT in “The Web of Fear”, and the soldiers who appeared in that story were regular army. So was the then Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart. Ah – then maybe it is one of the later Doctors, appearing at some time between “The Web of Fear” and “The Invasion”, or “The Invasion” or “Spearhead from Space”. Au contraire. In this story the Brigadier has difficulty believing that the Doctor has changed his appearance. That is why he cannot already have met any of the Doctors other than the second. More likely it was just an error, or a bit of retro-plotting which nobody thought would be picked up on, being such a minor thing. Going back to what we were discussing at the start of the paragraph, the Brigadier is certainly a welcome fixed point of reference with so much that is new going on around us.

This is a well-crafted and very well paced story. It’s very Robert Holmes that he just dropped into the script the fact that the Doctor has two hearts (living in just one mind?) and alien blood, but for the fans it does pose the question, why has nobody ever noticed this about the Doctor before? A prize winning letter in a recent Doctor Who Magazine made the point that when a doctor tries to listen to your heartbeat, they automatically go to the left side, and would have no reason to check the right side as well. They don’t find the second heart because they are not actually looking for it. Hey, that works for me.

Although the Doctor’s trials and tribulations are the focus for much of the first two episodes, the Auton part of the story is nicely developed throughout all 4 episodes. In episode one we are introduced to the sinister beeping meteorites, but given few clues to go on as to their significance. Then in the end of episode two we have the wonderful cliffhanger where an Auton mannequin steps off its podium in the office of the plastics factory and attacks the hapless victim. The fingers hinging down upon the Auton hands to reveal the concealed gun is such a simple idea, but it works so well – and that’s a brilliant little piece of design.

It is worth noting that the idea behind the Autons themselves isn’t actually totally original. After all, the Autons are lifeless, being made of plastic, but they are activated by the Nestene Consciousness. This isn’t a million miles from the Great Intelligence controlling the Yeti. Not that you have to look too hard for the differences. The Yeti are robots, the originals being constructed by Padmasambhava under the control of the Great Intelligence. The Autons aren’t robots. The Nestene have the power to animate plastic or at least certain types of plastic. The Nestene itself is a group mind, a gestalt being if you like, and it has no physical form of its own. The octopoid, tentacled being revealed in the plastics factory at the end of the story is a form which the Nestene has merely chosen as being particularly suited to the conquest of Earth. Really? Well, in terms of available budget for a monster, yes, really.

I mentioned in my earlier comments about the mannequins bursting out of John Saunders’ window. All of which just goes to show how the memory can play tricks on you, by filling in the gaps that were there when you watched it in the first place. Had you asked me prior to watching the story a couple of years ago, I would have told you in no uncertain terms that we actually see the mannequins bursting out of the plate glass windows. Yet we don’t. We see the mannequins jerking into life, and walking towards the window,  then we hear glass smashing, and next we see they are out and walking down the Broadway opposite Bentalls. I wouldn’t swear to it, but I’m pretty sure that we do actually see the Autons smashing their way out the shop windows in “Rose”, the first story of the new Doctor Who Series 1. Here’s a funny coincidence too. I’m pretty familiar with the St. David’s Centre in Cardiff where they filmed this sequence in “Rose”, since I moved to South Wales in 1986. Mind you, I’ve decided that it probably doesn’t help if you’re familiar with the area where a particular sequence is filmed. All that really came to mind as three mannequins advanced ominously along the South Ealing Road, passing Lamertons (a fabulous art supplies shop) was that they were going the wrong way as they were heading towards John Saunders, rather than away from it. And I shouldn’t be preoccupied with that sort of thing since it’s actually a terrific, in fact iconic scene, with the finger guns poking out from the flipped down hands indiscriminately mowing down pedestrians. In particular what I can only presume was one of the Havoc stunt team took a terrific headlong tumble. Would this scene have been even more effective had it been filmed among the well-known landmarks just a few miles to the East? I don’t know that I’m the best person to answer this, since I wouldn’t have been so excited myself, but then not everybody is as familiar with Ealing Broadway as I was.

The denouement? Well, it was perfectly acceptable, with the Doctor constructing a machine which uses ultrasound – well, something like that or other – to destroy the Autons, after he wraps the Nestene’s tentacles around his throat in order to give himself some serious gurning practice. He always did love a good gurn, did our Jon. I think we probably need to underline just what has been achieved by the end of just these four episodes though. The basic set up with UNIT, which will remain pretty much in place for all 5 Jon Pertwee seasons, has been established. He’s forged a working relationship with Liz Shaw, and she has shown herself to be much more than just a scream and another good pair of legs (although if I may say so they are a particularly fine example of the genre). More than that though, we’ve come through another regeneration unscathed. Jon Pertwee, when being interviewed, or appearing in conventions, had a habit of throwing his cape back and spreading his arms wide while intoning, “I AM the Doctor!” Well, by the end of “Spearhead from Space he was dead right. He was.

What Have We Learned?

According to the Brig, UNIT had been formed before the events of “The Web of Fear”, and were involved. It must have been covertly if they were, since there is not one reference to UNIT in the whole story.

The Nestenes have no physical form

Robert Holmes IS a great writer