61: The Curse of Peladon

Before Watching

I set myself a little challenge before I sat down to write my little ‘before watching’ preamble. Take a piece of paper, and write down as many words to do with The Curse of Peladon as you can think of in one minute. This is what I came up with – Ice warriors, furry monster, David Troughton, Hard Boiled egg with an eye, Venusian lullaby, miners, bad haircuts, proposal of marriage. I was impressed – I didn’t think that I remembered that much about it. The furry monster is named, if I recall correctly, Aggador (dor – dor , push pineapple , shake the tree). David Troughton, last seen in “The War Games” plays King Peladon, and the Hard Boiled egg is one of the more extravagant alien designs for Doctor Who, being Alpha Centauri from, er, Alpha Centauri. The Venusian Lullaby is what I think the Doctor uses to tame Aggador, the miners are the ones with the bad haircuts which make them look like they are doing a very bad impression of Dickie Davies (ask your parents or grandparents to explain that cultural reference). Mind you, it does occur to me that I could be mixing up this story with the sequel, “The Monster of Peladon”, but time will surely tell. I’m sure that the King, believing Jo to be a princess, proposes marriage to her in the last episode, but she turns him down. We know who she really has the hots for, don’t we? That’s right. Begins with D and ends with Octor.

After Watching

At the start of the story it appears that the Doctor is really starting to get somewhere with the TARDIS repairs, since he says that this is a test flight to Jo. Now, I do have a bit of a problem with this. The Doctor said clearly in “The Claws of Axos” that he’d had all of his memory of dematerialisation theory wiped by the Time Lords, and so even if he could have got the TARDIS working – not impossible but highly unlikely since it needed the Master’s expertise to make even a short hop in The Claws of Axos, and even then the Time Lords set it to continually return to Earth – even if he could have got it working, he wouldn’t have known how to work it anyway. Now, ok, at the end of the story the Doctor ruefully reflects that it was probably the work of the Time Lords that allowed him to make the trip, but I just found this post hoc explanation a little clumsy and half hearted.

I’m told that this story was inspired by the UK’s entry into the EEC, which was only a year away when the story was broadcast in January 1972.I understand that, but it’s very hard to see David Troughton’s dashing young King Peladon as Edward Heath. What a horrible thought. Right, the test flight of the TARDIS brings the Doctor and Jo to Peladon, at exactly the time that a delegation from the Galactic Federation arrives to decide upon whether Peladon will be allowed to join or not. Now, if we’re taking the European anaglagoy a step further, there’s no guarantee that this story would necessarily be saying that joining the Federation/EEC would be a good thing, although it soon becomes clear that this is exactly what it’s saying. The Federation? Would that by any chance be inspired by Star Trek? We all know that when it comes to Space, Federations – good, Empires – bad. Although since we live in the UK hereditary monarchies are obviously fine by us as well. Which is just as well since Peladon is a hereditary monarchy, although it’s far from a constitutional one. The king’s word is law, which is fine when you have a good liberal monarch like Peladon. It’s Peladon (the king) who wants Peladon (the planet) to join the Federation. He has two advisors, who irresistibly remind me of the little angel and devil that used to pop up on Tom’s shoulders now and then in the Tom and Jerry cartoons to symbolise whenever Tom was on the horns of a moral dilemma. Torbis, the Chancellor, representing temporal power, is the angel, trumpeting the benefits of joining the Federation, and Hepesh, the High Priest, representing organised religion, is the devil, trumpeting the need to maintain the ancient tradtions of Peladon. You can only take the analogy so far, mind you, since the Torbis the angel is murdered not long after the start of episode one, and Peladon alone represents the forces of progress on Peladon. So while it may be a little bit of a cliché to have the representative of organised religion being the most reactionary character, setting his face against progress and in favour of the maintenance of the status quo, it’s still quite satisfying, since this is exactly the sort of thing that we tend to want to see the Doctor standing up against.

The delegate from earth has not yet arrived, and so the Doctor poses as said delegate, making Jo out to be an Earth princess whom he has brought along to serve in an observer capacity. This is shades of the way he assumes the identity of the Examiner from Earth in “The Power of the Daleks”. As one of the delegates who will decide on Peladon’s application to become a member of the Federation the Doctor joins possibly the most diverse set of alien beings seen in one story since “The Daleks’ Master Plan”. There are , firstly Alpha Centauri – from Alpha Centauri, which is a star rather than a planet, but we’ll let that go-  who is sort of a cross between Doctor Octopus (from Spiderman), Humpty Dumpty and a shower curtain, Arcturus from Arcturus (likewise) who is a cross between a hostess trolly, a selection of black boxes and lava lamps, an upturned goldfish bowl, and a shrunken head sitting in a nest of green sticks, and two Ice Warriors from Mars.

Hepesh it turns out isn’t just against the idea of joining the Federation, he is actively trying to prevent it by driving the delegates away. He invokes the spirit of Aggedor, a sacred beast of Peladon, which is really a beast he   caught and trapped on the other side of the planet. Although the Doctor is originally convinced that the Ice Warriors are up to skulduggery, it transpires that it is none other than delegate Arcturus. He has been in cahoots with Hepesh, seeing Peladon’s exclusion from the Federation as an opportunity to give Arcturus which is lacking in minerals the chance to fully exploit the mineral wealth of Peladon. This wrong footing over the Ice warriors is actually one of the cleverest things about this story, and not something to be expected from the fairly strait laced adventure stories that Brian Hayles served us up in the last two Ice Warriors stories. Jo has never met them before, but the Doctor has told them of their previous desire to conquer the Earth, and when Jo confronts them with this, Izlyr, who wears the smoother armoud with the bigger helmet denoting him as the leader, confirms that they were previously a race of warriors, but now they have changed and seen the folly of their ways. So more Nice Warriors now then? The amazing thing is that for this story at least, this is absolutely true, and Jo is right when she cautions the Doctor against assuming that the Ice Warriors must automatically be the villains of the piece.

Ah, Jo. It’s easy to get annoyed for Jo in this story, for she does and thinks so much that is right at times, and yet all she gets from the Doctor is abuse because she runs along to save him when he is singing a Venusian Lullaby to Aggedor to tame him. When it turns out that it is not the Ice Warriors who have been responsible for the mayhem I’d have forgiven her if she took his sonic screwdriver, and, with the words ‘ I told you so!’, shoved it right up his mighty proboscis. Her loyalty to the Doctor seems total at this point in the development of her character. After the Doctor has been caught in the secret temple to Aggedor he is accused of sacrilege, a crime against which it is not even permitted to make a defence. Huh? Jo pleads with Peladon not to impose the death sentence, and the laws of Peladon being what they are, all Peladon can do is to commute the Doctor’s sentence to one of trial by combat. Jo has asked him to do more, and to go further to prove to her that she can believe in him. By failing to do that he guarantees that Jo will not accept his eventual proposal of marriage. He failed to act to save the life of her beloved Doctor, that’s enough for a start. But even more than that, he failed to act LIKE the Doctor, who would surely have forgotten about what it says in the statute books, and in Jo’s eyes, by failing to act like the Doctor in that situation he has proven himself unworthy of her.

So, after Hepesh’s final act of rebellion is defeated when he is mauled by an enraged Aggedor, Jo just has time to reject Peladon’s proposal, and it’s all aboard the Skylark for a quick trip home. And as a story? Well, it isn’t the Third Doctor’s first trip to an alien planet, but it’s the first of any great interest, the first which makes a serious attempt to depict at least something of an alien society. “The Curse of Peladon” works through good pacing, and once again, being a 4 parter helped tremendously with this, and a willingness to convey just enough through info dumping expositions, and never when it would get in the way of the story.

What Have We Learned?

The Doctor, although perfectly charming when he is ready to show it, can act like a pig to Jo at times. 

60: Day of the Daleks

Before Watching

Question:  In classic Who, which writers went the longest amount of time between having their stories produced? Answer – I have no idea, but I wouldn’t mind betting that Louis Marks is right up there. John Lucarotti must have come close, but his original version of “The Ark In Space” wasn’t really what Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe were looking for, and so they opted for a page one rewrite, and so “The Massacre of St. Bartholemew’s Eve in Series 3 remained his last writing credit for the series. Louis Marks’ previous Doctor Who story was “Planet of Giants” way back in series 2, so that’s a gap of 7 series between stories. Before we leave this digression behind, while I think of it, Terry Nation went from Season 3’s “The Daleks’ Master Plan” until season 10’s “Planet of the Daleks”, also a gap of 7 series. Then Gerry Davis went from season 5’s “Tomb of the Cybermen” to season 12’s “Revenge of the Cybermen” – again a gap of 7 series.

Coming back to Louis Marks, it’s no great chore recalling this story considering that I bought the DVD a year or two ago, and have watched it a couple of times since. In fact, I’ve watched all of the extras as well, so going into the marathon watch, I probably know this Pertwee story pretty much as well as I know any of them. In fact, of the four stories he wrote for the series, none of them are duds. If you’ve read my review of “Planet of Giants” you’ll know that I thought that particular story was something of a neglected gem, although that’s more to do with some frankly fantastic model work than the brilliance of the script. He wrote the underrated “Planet of Evil” for season 13, and then his last story for the series was the very palatable “Masque of Mandragora” from season 14 (Tom Baker’s 3^rd). All of which is a long winded way of saying that I already know that I liked this one a lot, and this was such a short time ago that I last watched it that I can’t see my opinion changing drastically in the interim.

After Watching

In my review of Season 8 I did mention that it is worth discussing whether the show had been dumbed down at all. Here we had a story which actually took a unique look at some of the implications of time travel, and managed to do it intelligently, while still being a good action story as well.

The story, like season 8’s “The Mind of Evil”, has a world peace conference as its background, and again it’s the Chinese who are proving the real obstacle to progress. I wonder if it was just too politically sensitive to use the Soviet Union in the 70s?

In real terms it seems like a very long time since the series engaged in any kind of debate about Time Travel, and how it affects History. If we recap: -

In “The Aztecs” the Doctor thunders at Barbara that you can’t change History, not one line of it. In one sense the story bears him out, since Barbara is unable to achieve her stated aim of turning the Aztecs away from their rituals involving blood sacrifice. Whether or not this would have made that much difference to the Conquistadores later on is a moot point. However, Barbara does change the destiny of one man, Autloc, who leaves all his worldly goods behind him and wanders off into the desert. Now, maybe, just maybe he might have done so anyway, but there is no reason for him to have done so without Barbara’s intervention in the Society in which he lives.

The first hint that we get that this hardline towards the changing of History is softening is in the climax of “The Romans” when it appears that it is the Doctor who has given Nero the idea of burning down Rome. Now, okay, we might brush that one under the carpet by saying that Nero would have done it anyway, therefore nothing has really changed QED. Realistically we might also say that this was a Dennis Spooner scripted romp, which didn’t take itself seriously enough not to have a little fun by bending the rules and maybe hoping nobody minded that much.

So then Dennis Spooner went and muddied the waters again with “The Time Meddler”. In this joyous story the Monk, clearly a member of the Doctor’s own race, equipped with a slightly newer time machine, and presumably as well versed in the laws of Time as the Doctor is, decides that he will lend a helping hand to the Saxons facing Harald Hardrada’s fleet, to enable Harold Godwinsson to forego having to defeat them at Stamford Bridge and therefore win the Battle of Hastings. The Doctor’s reaction to the Monk’s meddling is telling. If what he said to Barbara in “The Aztecs” was true, then what he should say to the Monk is,

“Go ahead, do your worst, but you’re wasting your time and energy because you can’t change History, not one line of it.”

He says no such thing. The gist of what he does say to the Monk is not – you CAN not do this – but – you MUST not do this – and there’s a whole universe of difference between those two concepts.

In the context of “Doctor Who”, the ‘you must not change time’ approach makes much more sense than the previous stance. If you cannot change History, then the Doctor and his companions can only ever be observers, unable to influence any of the events going on around them. Yet they have already done just that on several occasions. In fact, it’s worse than that, for if History has been preordained in this fashion, then none of what anyone does is either good or evil, for everyone is just a puppet, dancing to a sequence of strings being pulled which had been written down long before they were even made. That’s actually a very bleak way of looking at the world, and one which I don’t believe for one minute that the show ever shared.

In “The Massacre”, which is the last, real, old style Historical in my opinion, the Doctor of necessity returns to the – this has happened, and so we can’t change it however horrible it is – line of argument of “The Aztecs”, which causes Steven to lose all sympathy with him, and leave the TARDIS as soon as it stops. This is actually the last gasp of the Doctor’s non-intervention policy. Only a few stories later, in “The Gunfighters”, the Doctor shows no such scruples, which is just as well since the story does take a few liberties with what actually happened.

In Patrick Troughton’s era the whole vexed question was never really examined at all. The only historical was “The Highlanders”, and this neatly avoided the whole question of changing the course of History by having the TARDIS arrive after the battle of Culloden. From then on stories would be set either in the future, or on alien worlds, or on contemporary Earth. Stories on contemporary Earth, ever since “The War Machines” show that the Doctor feels he has a free hand to do what’s right. Why? Because it isn’t that the Doctor at any time couldn’t rewrite any history, it is just OUR History he can’t rewrite. And our History works back from where we are now, the moment that the story was first broadcast.

And so to “Day of the Daleks”. The main thrust of the story concerns a group of time travelling assassins from the future, who travel back to contemporary England, to find and assassinate the diplomat, Sir Reginald Styles. Sir Reginald is chairing the International Peace Conference, and has been the only man able to bring the recalcitrant Chinese delegation to the table.

The clever thing about it is that at first it seems as if the assassins want to kill Sir Reginald to scupper the peace process. Actually, though it turns out that they want to kill Sir Reginald to save the peace process. In the future from which they arrived, the world has been successfully invaded and is now controlled by the Daleks. It began when a bomb exploded in Sir Reginald’s country estate where the peace conference is taking place, killing the delegates and leading to World War III. In the aftermath the Daleks found the Earth easy pickings. They believe that by killing Sir Reginald they can save the delegates and the peace progress, and engineer a different, Dalek-less future for themselves. Phew! And we thought that Doctor Who had been dumbed down in this stage of the Pertwee era!

There’s actually more than one aspect of changing history to consider here. On the one hand there’s the idea of being able to retro-engineer History, to change the present by changing the past. That’s foregrounded as the Big Idea of this story and that’s what we’ll come back to momentarily. However there’s also the fact that this is not the Dalek Invasion of 2164 featured in “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”. This seems to be an alternate future, another vision of future History. It is not explored in the script in any depth at all – which is probably just as well or we could easily have had another six parter on our hands – but it does suggest a background in which History changes, and time streams shift. Later on in “Genesis of the Daleks” the Time Lord ( who looks like something out of an Ingmar Bergman movie) who tells the fourth Doctor of his mission explains that a time stream has come into being in which the Daleks succeed in becoming the dominant life form of the Universe. Which is not actually that far fetched a concept when you know that the Daleks did develop their own Time Travel Technology, and have presumably been monkeying away with Time themselves. However, I digress.

Now, at the climax of the story we find that the great irony is that the explosion wasn’t caused by Styles or anyone else at home in the 20^th century. It was caused by one of the assassins themselves, isolated from the others, who sees no other way of destroying Styles. The Daleks and their henchmen have followed the assassins back to the 20^th century, and the bomb which would have been used to kill the delegates is actually used against Daleks and Ogrons. Now, this isn’t just a simple matter of a basic time paradox. I’ll explain what I mean.

A time paradox would mean, for example, you use a time machine to go back in time. Your time machine materializes on top of your father when he was a little boy, sadly crushing the life out of him and killing him. Which means that you would never have been born. Which means that you would never have used the time machine. Which means that it wouldn’t have crushed your father to death. Which means that you would have been born. Which means that you would have used the time machine which means that you would have crushed your father to death and so on ad infinitum.

Now, this is different, because in this story the chain of recurring events can simply be broken by preventing the assassination. No bomb goes off – no successful Dalek invasion – no assassins go back to kill Styles – chain broken. What it doesn’t explain is how the chain started. This isn’t a chicken and egg situation. The peace conference must have been blown up originally BEFORE the assassins went back in time. There is no start to it, you have to say that it looks pre-ordained that the assassin would come back to set off the bomb. However, if it was preordained – then the Doctor wouldn’t have been able to change events and break the chain! Which probably explains why the classic series avoided such complex ideas in the first place.

One thing we should consider when discussing this story is that it wasn’t actually a Dalek story at all when it was first mooted, and when Louis Marks began working on it. Messrs Letts and Dicks decided that they wanted to bring them back, and saw this story as a good vehicle for them. You have to agree with that. It’s very difficult to imagine them being slotted comfortably into any of the other 4 stories of season 9. This story is the first Dalek story since “Evil of the Daleks” and it represents something of a reboot for them. I wonder how the conversation with Terry Nation went when they asked him about using the Daleks?

“No, no of course you don’t have to write it yourself, Terry, we’ve already got a story, God bless you. No, now, we’d LOVE you to write one, only we’ve already got one.”

Who knows? The fact is that Terry Nation would write a Dalek story for each of the next three seasons. Robert Holmes once related a story about his time as Script Editor when he was having a chat with Terry Nation, who suggested that he should write a Dalek story for every season, to which Robert Holmes replied non-committally. Days later there was a call from Terry Nation’s agent, ready to draw up a contract to that effect. For season 13, Holmes steered Terry Nation away from writing another Dalek story to writing something different, and this is how we ended up with “The Android Invasion”. Let’s get back to “Day of the Daleks”, though.

This is the first time that they have appeared in colour, and I’m not that sure that I like it that much. There’s a gold one, and a couple of darker ones, and while darker Daleks are okay, the gold one just doesn’t quite gel with me. I know that I liked the colourful Daleks in the films, but that has to be seen in context. The Amicus films were live action comic strips, while a complex TV story such as “Day of the Daleks” is a lot more than that. There’s not a lot of them either – I think that they only had three Daleks to use for this production, and while you could get away with using blow up cut outs in grainy black and white, you wouldn’t have been able to in garish 1970s colour TV.

The Ogrons made their first appearance in this story as well, and they’re an interesting addition to the Dalek mythos, fulfilling the role of the Robomen from “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”. I do wonder whether they were subconsciously inspired by the gorillas in “Planet of the Apes” – their faces do have a certain simian appearance. They don’t actually do a lot, but they’re a threatening presence which is really the point, and it’s a bit of a shame that we only get to see them again in “Frontier in Space”.

A serial story, with a little time to develop plot and character, has the time to play tricks on its audience. Aubrey Woods’ Controller, the Daleks’ puppet in charge of earth, is a good example. He starts off playing a very mannered, very theatrical stage villain, and yet at the end it’s his act of heroism in defiance of the Daleks that saves the past, even though it is probably condemning him to death. Of the assassins, an interesting point was that the leader, Anat, well played by Anna Barry, was a woman. A mature, intelligent woman, noticeably smarter than her companions, and every bit as brave. But before we go congratulating the show for this, the simple fact that it sticks out when the show put a woman character in this position shows that it still had quite a long way to go.

You know, it’s often said that the third Doctor is the most ‘Establishment’ of all of the Doctors, the most reactionary and the least anarchic. I’m not saying that I would disagree with that, and yet, that having been said, the third Doctor just really hates these Whitehall types. Maybe it just sticks out more because he has to deal with a lot more of them, being stuck on contemporary Earth. Still, Sir Reginald Sykes is just the latest in a line which included Mr. ‘Double’ Chinn in “The Claws of Axos”. Frankly, the idea of a pompous pig like that ever being a diplomat is a little far-fetched, but hey, I’ve only ever known one career diplomat in my life, and he is a delightful man, so who am I to judge?

Had I not watched the accompanying documentary among the extras on the BBC DVD, I wouldn’t have seen the contrition from the production team over the Doctor’s use of a gun to shoot an Ogron. It is an issue with the story that he does this, and all in all it probably would have been better had he not done so. Yes, it might fit better with Pertwee’s Doctor than it would have ever done with the first or second Doctors, but even so there has to be a set of core values central to any portrayal of the Doctor, or they then become separate characters, and the show becomes meaningless. The Doctor doesn’t like guns. Full stop.

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Final words on “Day of the Daleks”, then. There’s a level of complexity in this that we haven’t seen in season 8, which while it doesn’t hit the heights of season 7, makes this an intensely watchable and enjoyable story.

What Have We Learned?

You can change the Future, but the Future can also change the Past.

Season 8

The elements of what we think of as the Pertwee Era all seemed to fall into place during season 8. We’ll talk about that shortly. First, though, let’s have a look at the fan ratings: -

DWM Mighty 200 poll/ 2014 DWM poll

The Daemons – 34/38

Terror of the Autons – 51/59

The Mind of Evil – 92/76

The Claws of Axos – 129/139

Colony in Space – 171/199

My Ratings

The Daemons

Terror of the Autons

The Mind of Evil

The Claws of Axos

Colony in Space

It’s unanimous, then. The mighty 200, the 2014 poll, and my own personal ranking have each of the stories in season 8 in exactly the same order. “The Daemons” isn’t my favourite story of the Third Doctor, but it’s a good one, and if it’s a case of more style over substance, well fine, because I like its style. “Terror of the Autons” creeped me out when I was 7, but it has its flaws which can’t be completely glossed over when you’re 50. Even “Colony in Space” isn’t dreadful, despite some of the comments I made about the uneasy marriage of two separate and distinct stories in the script, being worthy but a bit dull.

Looking back on the season as a whole, it’s not that difficult to note a change in direction of the show. I hesitate to use the phrase ‘dumbing down’, which I’ve heard other people use about this era of the show. Season 8 is no more short of ideas than season 7 was. But there’s been a clear change of emphasis. Ideas are there, but they’re there to give opportunities for action. If the story is moving too slowly, then it’s the exposition that goes out of the window. If the ending isn’t working, just speed it up, cut down on the explanation, and give it some welly. Don’t knock it – when it worked, it worked spectacularly.

Season 8 was, of course, dominated by the arrival of the Master. Yes, you could maybe say that the Master is overexposed by appearing in every story of the season, but then when you saw what he could bring to the show, you’d have included him in every story yourself if you’d been the producer too. The team cut back on his appearances in the next season, and in fact he only has three stories left, “The Sea Devils”, “The Time Monster” and “Frontier in Space”

Jo Grant, on the other hand is in every story for the next two seasons, to add to the 5 in Season 8. Yes, she maybe conforms to the stereotype screamer, and yes, she can be really annoying with the way that she keeps blundering into traps, but in her own way she is as valid a character as Liz Shaw was, and perfectly played by Katy Manning. Jo’s relationship with the Doctor will be the backbone of the show right up until the end of “The Green Death”.

59: The Daemons

Before Watching

Right, this bit will eventually make sense. I was researching my family history about ten years ago, and I found out that one of my great, great, great grandfathers was born in Aldbourne, Wiltshire. Now, something in my memory said that this village name rang a bell, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was. Now, it is still rare to find any English Parish registers which have been transcribed and put online, and was even rarer ten years ago. Yet Aldbourne was, and I found out that my 3x great grandfather was an illegitimate child baptised in St. Michael’s, Aldbourne in 1820. He went on to become a blacksmith, and I’ll be honest, I think that every family should have an illegitimate blacksmith in their family tree somewhere. Coming back to the point, though, again, St. Michael’s, Aldbourne rang a bell. I googled it, and it transpired that this is none other than the church at the centre of “The Daemons”!

Some stories stick on the memory while others don’t. This was very much the former. So much so that when I watched the film version of “Quatermass and the Pit” a few years ago it very much reminded me of something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, until I realised that in some ways it was reminding me of “The Daemons”.

So it’s an iconic story. And the thing about iconic stories is that sometimes they deserve their iconic status. . . and sometimes they don’t. Now, until I watch it, I can’t say which is the fairest assessment of “The Daemons”. And this is worrying me a little bit, because if it isn’t close to being as good as I remember it, I’m probably going to be unhappy and wish that I hadn’t watched it again. I’m not sure that I want some of my illusions shattered. Oh well, what must be must be. Bring it on.

After Watching

Of all the stories of the 8^th season, this, the last, is probably the ‘marmite’ story. People either love it or hate it, but one thing you can usually guarantee is that they’ll have an opinion about it. We’ll try to examine why this is the case as we go through the story.

I’ve already mentioned the village of Aldbourne, and this story makes full use of it as a location. For Aldbourne we read the fictional village of Devil’s End. It’s aptly named, since this is the first time that Doctor Who takes a shy at black magic, witchcraft and the trappings of Satanism. It won’t be the last. “Masque of Mandragora”, “The Stones of Blood” and the spin off “K9 and Company” all had aspects of the occult in them, to name but three. Yet it was “The Daemons” that came first.

I’m sure that I once read that when Katie Manning made her screen test audition for Jo Grant she had to run around a churchyard set at midnight being chased around by a gargoyle, which may well have been the ‘Bok’ costume that was actually used in the story. Barry Letts supposedly liked this scene so much that he and writer Robert Sloman worked together to produce the script for this story. It went out under the pseudonym Guy Leopold, mainly because there were fairly strict BBC rules about who could be allowed to write a script if they were working on the same series, in order to prevent script editors and producers from commissioning themselves to write stories. Robert Holmes was always needing to be given special permission to write stories when he was script editors, or to do page one rewrites of other writers’ stories – “The Ark in Space “ and “Pyramids of Mars” being two particularly special results of his efforts. Robert Sloman’s three later stories –series 9’s “The Time Monster”, series 10’s “The Green Death” and series 11’s “Planet of the Spiders” both went out solely under his name, leading to speculation whether Barry Letts had any script input or not. We’ll discuss this again in more detail when we get to “Planet of the Spiders”.

Coming back to “The Daemons” the story concerns what happens when BBC3 (the 1971 concept of the future BBC3 seems rather similar to the 2015 contemporary BBC4) are transmitting a live archaeological dig of the Devil’s Hump, a barrow just outside the village. This happens at the same time as the new vicar, one Mr. Magister, takes up his post. Now, if you know Latin, then you don’t need to actually watch the story to work out who this is, Magister being Latin for Master. The Master it turns out is conducting quasi Satanist rituals in the crypt of the church to summon up an entity he calls Azal.

Concurrent with all this, and as a result, a heat shield encircles the village.

Helicopter Watch

The story goes that the team bought a few seconds of film from a James Bond film of a helicopter being blown up, and used it as a helicopter trying to pass the heat shield.

Stuck inside the village, the Doctor and Jo find a tiny, shrunken yet incredibly dense spaceship inside the dig. This is the first clue that Azal is not, as expected, the Devil or a small d demon, but an alien from an incredibly powerful race, called the Daemons. The Master succeeds in calling Azal up, and we learn more. Azal is actually the last of the Daemons. It transpires that they have been using the Earth, and Humanity as an experiment. They have been hothousing and guiding human development, destroying civilisations, like Atlantis, which proved to be blind alleys. This Atlantis thing is a little bit of a continuity headache due to “The Underwater Menace”, and I’m pretty sure that next season’s “The Time Monster” is only going to muddy the waters further.  Coming back to “The Daemons”, when Azal appears for the penultimate time, he says that the experiment is now at an end, and he must make decisions. He has to decide whether Humanity has passed, or whether to destroy them. He must also decide whether anyone is worthy to receive his knowledge and his powers, as his own time is up. Unsurprisingly, the Master puts himself forward as a candidate. Azal, though, decides that the Doctor fits the bill. The Doctor, again unsurprisingly, refuses. Azal decides that this is reason enough to destroy him. At this point Jo Grant, dolled up as the sacrificial victim as she is, throws herself in front of the Doctor and demands he kill her instead. This wildly illogical behaviour does Azal’s head in, and he collapses in confusion, giving Doctor, Jo, Master and all the chance to escape before he explodes, sending the church up in flames in a rather good model sequence. The Master tries to escape in Bessie, but is foiled by the Doctor’s remote control device.

Now, you can look at this story and say that it’s rather original, or on the other hand you can look at it and say that it’s very derivative. It’s original in the context of Doctor Who. We haven’t really had any story which has even touched on the unique development of humanity before. We haven’t had a story which has looked at the Science v. Magic debate before. On the other hand, this clearly draws on some well known sources. I’ve already mentioned the film of “Quatermass and the Pit” and I can’t help coming back to it. Alright, the dig is not an archaeological one, but a non human skull is found while digging an Underground station. The name of the station? Hobb’s End. The film does explain that Hob is an archaic alternative name for Old Nick, or the Devil. A buried and ancient spaceship is found, and it turns out that conceptions of the devil are race memories of these aliens etc etc. Surely it’s not just me who can see the links here. The quasi Satanist scenes in the crypt are rather reminiscent of quite a lot of 60s and 70s horror films I’ve seen since as well. The idea of a supernatural being who has been worshipped/feared on Earth turning out to be an incredibly ancient and powerful alien was explored in the “Who Mourns for Adonais?” episode of the original Star Trek, first broadcast in 1967, where the crew encountered the Greek ‘God’ Apollo. This was actually a really good exploration of the theme – its exhumation for the 1989 Star Trek film “The Final Frontier” was rather less successful.  I’m sure that I read an interview with Dennis Spooner in the Doctor Who Monthly Magazine back in the 80s where he said that he always wanted to do a story in which the TARDIS crew encountered ‘God’ – only it would turn out not to be God at all, just an alien being of unimaginable power.

Actually, though, it doesn’t really matter that much how derivative or original a story is. While we might award brownie points for originality, no amount of it can save a story when it’s just plain bad. Likewise, a story can draw heavily from a number of well known sources, and still turn out to be fresh and enjoyable. So maybe I’m easily pleased, but “The Daemons” still pleased me. Roger Delgado, of whom you already know I am a huge fan, looks even more silkily sinister as a vicar. I enjoyed Damaris Hayman’s splendid portrayal of the white witch Miss Hawthorne, even if I did find that the whole Magic v. Science debate dealt with rather heavy handedly. I enjoyed the sub plot of UNIT’s attempts to break through the heat shield. Oh, and I’m also on the side of those who don’t have a huge problem with the line,

“Jenkins – chap with wings. Five rounds rapid” Even the ending, which is one of the most English things I have ever seen, did it for me. Watching a group of young ragamuffins dancing around the village maypole, mufti clad Mike Yates asked if the Brigadier fancied a dance, to which the Brig replied he’d rather have a pint.

What Have We Learned?

Ok – the destruction of Atlantis – version 2 – it was the Daemons wot did it now.

BBC3  as conceived in 1971 was a very different kettle of cathode rays to BBC3 today.

58: Colony In Space

Before Watching

“Colony In Space” was novelized as “The Doomsday Machine”. Why I mention that is because I have clearer memories of the Target book than I do of the story itself. It is a significant story in its own right, even if for no better reason that it’s the first time that the third Doctor gets to take a trip in his TARDIS. This is the doing of the Time Lords, who decide to use the Doctor to foil the Master’s plans to obtain aforesaid doomsday weapon. Now, the Master appears in all 5 of the stories of this eighth season, and this is probably the one which has had least acclaim from fans over the years, which is a bit surprising when you consider that the alien setting should at least give the story a bit of novelty value if nothing else. I’m looking forward to seeing how much, if anything, we get to see of the Time Lords. Maybe this doesn’t feature in the story on screen, but in the book I’m pretty sure that it started with the Time Lords discovering that the records concerning the Doomsday weapon had been either tampered with or stolen – can’t remember which myself. Well, if the general consensus, that this isn’t much cop, proves to be correct, then never mind. “The Daemons” is just around the corner.

After Watching

I found that as I watched “Colony in Space” I found myself indulging in one of those prolonged bouts of “this-should-be-better-itis”. Were my expectations so unreasonable? Well, there are reasons for thinking that this was going to be better than it was. Let’s examine them.

Malcolm Hulke

If we look at Malcolm Hulke’s Doctor Who pedigree you’ll hopefully agree that he’s been one of the writers whose involvement always holds out promise that you’ll get something of interest. He co-scripted “The Faceless Ones”, which was one of the unexpected treats of season 4, and also the brilliant “The War Games” which I loved. In season 7 he scripted the always enjoyable “The Silurians” and did uncredited work in writing the actual scripts for several of the episodes of “The Ambassadors of Death”.

So what is the essential problem of “Colony in Space”? To an extent with the previous 2 stories there was a feeling of the Master being added to the script at quite a late stage, and that’s true of this story as well. In fact, it does feel like a four parter that has been unnaturally prolonged simply to include him, and the weapon and the alien city too. For most of the first 4 episodes at least what we have is a dour gritty ‘western’ about the plucky settlers being subject to the unscrupulous attempts of the evil mining company to force them off their claims. And the problem with that is that I’m just not really all that interested in cowboys and indians. They were my Dad’s generation’s thing, not mine. It would maybe have worked better had the two stories been more integrated, but they really aren’t. The alien natives, their city and their weapon don’t hardly impinge on the main story about the Colony, and I kind of think that another draft to integrate them more fully with each other might have worked wonders. Just my opinion, and as always, feel free to disagree.

The Actors

You know that I have my list of faves whom I always like to see guesting in a Doctor Who story, and there’s no less than two of them in this one. First of all we have one of the three Bernards, Bernard Kay to be precise. We last saw Bernard Kay in “The Faceless Ones”, and he does his usual excellent job with what is only really a subordinate role. Ideally, if you’re going to go to the trouble of getting Bernard Kay, then you want to make the best use of him. I wouldn’t have minded seeing him given something a little more meaty to do. He plays Caldwell, a mining engineer who is subordinate to Captain Dent, the real villain of the piece, and although he does have to play out the moral dilemma of deciding whether to do what the company, in the person of Dent, orders him to do, or whether to do the things his conscience orders him to do. But truth be told, he is under used here.

We also get John Ringham. John Ringham memorably played Tlotoxl in “The Aztecs”, and was then seen playing a more heroic role in “The Smugglers”. Here he plays Ashe, the leader of the colonists, trying to tread a fine line in sticking up for his people, and at the same time not letting their defence of themselves descend into anarchy and violence. It’s a decent part, and he plays it very well, as you’d expect.

This story is rarely written about without somebody pointing out that this story also featured Helen Worth, who went on to spend the next 40 years playing Gail in “Coronation Street”. Now, I haven’t watched “Coronation Street” for years, but I have always had a soft spot for Gail/Helen, and so I was a bit disappointed to see that her role in the story is pretty much cardboard for the most part. Given a proper chance she could have done a lot more.

So could Tony Caunter. Maybe best known as Roy in Eastenders, Tony Caunter certainly had a fine body of TV work on his CV, but his character in “Colony in Space”, Morgan, is just a one dimensional thug, and there’s little or nothing any actor could do with him without wildly over acting, or ad libbing.

I can’t write a review of a “Master” story without mentioning Roger Delgado. I personally think that this is the weakest of the 4 stories we’ve seen so far which features him, for which I don’t blame the actor. You can see him as a purely functional character in this story though. It has to be a Time Lord who steals the records of the weapon, nobody else would be powerful enough. The records have to be stolen from the Time Lords, or else they wouldn’t have sent the Doctor there. As it is he doesn’t turn up for a lot of the story, and I’m afraid that the dialogue between himself and the Doctor is rather lumpen and uninspiring compared with previous stories. I guess even Delgado and Pertwee couldn’t build bricks without straw.

The Alien World

This is the first time that the Third Doctor gets to take a trip in time and space, and the first time we get to see an alien world in colour. It’s a bit of a shame. We’ve already explored how the story seems to relegate the alien city and its inhabitants to a subsidiary narrative, but it does have the effect that nothing is developed. On the first trip you maybe expect to see an alien civilization, and we really don’t. On his first visit to the alien city ideas are introduced – the idea of a once great race that has fallen from its lofty perch, descending into superstition and barbarism is an interesting one, but it’s not developed. Again, the separate castes or grades of the ‘Primitives’ is an interesting idea, but it’s not developed. I don’t know if it’s deliberate either, but as we go up the brain chain of the Primitives’ society they become less and less impressive. The priests are shorter, more wrinkly and shriveled than the warriors, although they have a more interesting dress sense, and the Guardian of the weapon is sadly the most pathetic of the lot. Now, in a way this is actually clever if it’s deliberate. If you’re trying to put across the message – well, this is what the degenerated race who built the machine had come to and this is why their civilization collapsed, then fair enough. But there’s pathetic, and then there’s too pathetic.

A word too about the Primitive warriors. At least the temptation to give them dark skins was resisted. Even then though, maybe it’s just me, but their masks seemed to bear some resemblance to some African tribal art that I’ve seen.

The Time Lords

I was intrigued to see the prologue with the Time Lords at the start, but I did feel that there were a couple of problems with it while I was watching. They’re almost in this story like a halfway house between the all powerful super-monks of the last episode of “The War Games”, and the quasi military quasi air traffic controllers of “The Three Doctors” Their appearance does pose a few questions to me.

If the Doomsday weapon is so powerful, and they are so scared of the Master getting his hands on it, then why don’t they get it themselves? Since the Master is the one who’s after it, surely this is a Time Lord matter, and their interfering can be permitted? Since as it is they are interfering anyway by sending the Doctor. Likewise, if it’s so important, then why leave it to the Doctor to find out what his mission actually is? Why not at least give him a clue or two, even if you can’t be bothered to give him proper instructions.

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Well, at least dear old Jo is a ‘real’ companion now, having taken her first trip in the TARDIS.  Also, and I know I often say this, but even with a story like this, where you can’t say that it is particularly gripping, at least you can say that in the main story, the ‘plucky if sometimes misguided colonists v. evil big business’ if it is a little facile then at least its heart is in the right place.

What Have We Learned?

The Time Lords trust the Doctor enough to send him on a mission they should sort out themselves, even without telling him what he’s supposed to do for them. 

57: The Claws of Axos

Before Watching

You wouldn’t forget the two Axon costumes in a hurry. If I recall it correctly, the first costume, which is the appearance that the Axons take on when they first come to Earth, is of golden humanoids, which have expressionless faces and no pupils or irises in their eyes and which look like Greek statues come to life. The second , and real appearance is I’ve got stuck in my head as a creature that has 2 arms, two legs and a head of sorts, but still looks like it has been made from spaghetti and meatballs.

I must have seen at least one of these episodes round a mate’s house in colour, since I still remember the brightness of the colours, especially in Axos itself. If I seem to remember quite a few plot details despite not having watched the story in 4 decades, it must be lingering memories of the Target novelization. I’m not certain, but I think that this one may well have the Doctor and the Master working together to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow – which hardly ever actually really happened despite what people think they remember.

Anything more before we start? Well, I have a feeling that this was the first story to be scripted by the ‘Bristol Boys’ , or to give them their real names, Bob Baker and Dave Martin. They are going to be regular writers until season 19, and in this time they’re going to produce a string of stories, none of which I look back on as an absolute classic at the moment, but none of which were complete turkeys either. So that’s pretty much what I’m expecting here.

After Watching

Maybe I’m going a bit soft, but I really rather enjoyed that. It’s a four parter, and you know the temptation with the 4 parters. I know that the sensible options , to keep Dr. Who fresh for me, is to only watch two episodes in one sitting. Well, no, actually, even that’s a compromise option. Really and truly the most sensible option would be to watch one episode a week, preferably on Saturday teatime, but that just isn’t going to happen. With a 4 parter, you watch your permitted two episodes, and what happens? You’re into it, and you think, well, another one wouldn’t hurt. So then you watch it and think – well, there’s only 1 to go now, it’s silly not to finish it tonight. Before you know it you’ve watched the whole story – which is probably not the best way to watch it, and maybe means you won’t be getting the full benefit from it.

Well, for better or for worse I did watch it in full go, so I promise I will try my best to be fair about it. There were some quite clever things going on in this, the Bristol boys’ first Doctor Who story. Basically, what seems to be an alien spaceship lands on Earth. This happens at a time when a nasty little Ronnie Barker lookalike called Chinn from the Ministry of Defence is poking his nose around about UNIT, and getting himself all worked up about the fact that the Doctor isn’t British. There’s also a visit from an American agent called Bill Filer, who is there to see what’s happening with the Master, and to take him back to the USA if he can be found. Watch this space, Bill.

Back at the spaceship, a tramp rejoicing in the name of Pigbin Josh (one of the Dungeness Joshes?) is snared by the ship and killed. Bill Filer has made his way to the ship, and he too is snared on board. When he comes to he is being held by the eponymous claws of Axos, the name of the organic, living ship, and he is in bad company, since the Master is being held as well.

The plan of Axos is to spread bits of itself, which it calls Axonite, throughout the world, where it can then start feeding on the earth’s matter and energy. It dupes that fat idiot Chinn into agreeing, by showing him how Axonite can blow up a small frog to the size of a large cow, and somewhat mysteriously pronounces this as the answer to the world’s food shortages. Only in France. Sorry, that was uncalled for. I too have eaten frogs’ legs, and d’you know what? They tasted like frogs’ legs. Chinn, though, all along plans to keep Axonite for Britain, which holds up the plans of Axos, allowing the Doctor to discover the nature of Axos’ plans. Axos lets the Master go, but keeps his TARDIS as a guarantee of his good behaviour, to go and get the Doctor and the TARDIS. You see, Axos wants to be able to travel through time so that it can absorb all the energy and matter that has ever been and ever will be. Well, you’ve got to set yourself goals in life now and again, haven’t you. So basically the Doctor gets the Master to fix his TARDIS for him, and fly it into the middle of Axos. Incidentally, we get a nice shot of an unchameleoned TARDIS , since the Master’s looks like the parked TARDISes in the last episode of the War Games. The Doctor suggests he can link up the TARDIS drive with Axos to turn Axos into a time machine. Amazingly Axos falls for this old toffee, and gets itself trapped in a time loop for eternity. The Doctor escapes, although the TARDIS has been programmed by the Time Lords to yo yo back to Earth, and we’re led to believe that the Master has got away.

Written down like that it looks like there’s a lot of story to this story, and there is, but not oppressively so. If we take “Terror of the Autons” as a prototype season 8 story, then this one fits the template a hell of a lot better than it would have fit in season 7. If you read my views on the Hartnell era stories, then you might remember that the mingers v. pretty people score stood at 1 all after “The Daleks” and “Galaxy Four” This story manages the achievement of making the baddies into both pretty people AND mingers!

The story then has a lot going on in it, but for all that it’s a relatively simplistic one. There’s a certain very basic set of assumptions here. Axos has come to Earth. Its purpose is an evil one – to absorb all the matter and energy on the planet. Why is it so evil? Because it is an alien monster and alien monster are evil. That’s what they are and what they do. Trust me, it’s perfectly logical when you’re 8 years old. The Earth has already been invaded so many times  in the show since season 5 (I’m thinking Ice Warriors, Web of Fear, Fury from the Deep, The Invasion, Seeds of Death, Spearhead from Space, Terror of the Autons) you just kind of start from a basic assumption that this is what an alien is going to try to do. You know that however benign the alien is on the surface, it is sooner or later going to be trying to take over the world, and you know that the Doctor is going to foil its plans. You just don’t know how it is going to try to take over the world, and you don’t know how the Doctor is going to foil its plans.

So this month’s alien then is Axos. I say alien, singular, advisedly, since although Axos manifests itself as a number of beings, it is in fact one entity. Neat trick if you can do it. In order to lull those stupid Earthlings into a false sense of security, Axos manifests itself as humanoid beings with golden skin and hair, and overly large strange featureless eyes, the effect of which is to give them something of the appearance of classical greek statues. It was only when the credits came up that I saw the leader of the Axons (alright, they are all one being, but let’s try to simplify it a little shall we) is played by Bernard Holley. Bernard Holley is another of those actors whose name might not mean anything to you, but whose face you’d surely recognize – well, you would if he wasn’t wearing those strange eyes and that dodgy syrup, anyway. ( For those of us who don’t speak 1980s Mockney – syrup is short for syrup of figs, and syrup of figs rhymes with hairpiece). The other manifestation of the Axos – the afore mentioned spaghetti and meatballs monster isn’t to my mind quite so effective. The worst shot of all is when poor Wisher, sacrificial scientist number 1, becomes one. Or rather, he doesn’t. What he becomes is A Man In A Large Brown Bag. I have to say that it’s probably one of the least impressive shots of the season so far, alongside the CSO kitchen in Terror of the Autons.

I said that I enjoyed this story, yet reading back what I’ve written so far I haven’t really said a great deal about why I liked it. So let’s try to be positive. I do wonder whether the outline at least of this story as written before the decision was made to have the master appear in every story (so far) of season 8. Why I say so is that you’d only need to make minimal changes to the plot to take the Master out of it entirely. Which would be a huge mistake. No wonder Roger Delgado was as hugely popular as he became. Here we get to see another facet of the Master’s character, since this is a Master in desperate straits. The criticism has been made that the Master can’t be all that smart since every alien ally he makes seems to dupe him and ditch him in the end. The interesting development in this story is that the Master has already been suckered in by Axos before the story even starts. Blow me if I wasn’t even a little bit sympathetic towards the Master, and never more so than when the Doctor seemingly makes an alliance with him to escape from Earth. That was a great little scene, and it said a lot about the Master and the Doctor’s relative strengths and weaknesses. The Master, it turns out, is the engineer. The Doctor freely acknowledges that only the Master could get his TARDIS working. And, bless him, the Master SO wants the Doctor as a mate, whatever he says.

What Have We Learned?

Beware of Greek statues bearing gifts

56: The Mind of Evil

Before Watching

This one didn’t live in my memory as much as its predecessor did, but then that’s hardly surprising. I haven’t watched it since, either, although I have read the Target novelization since. So what do I remember? There’s a prison in it, and prisoners, and I think that they get hooked up to a machine at one point which is supposed to sort their heads out for them. Shades of “A Clockwork Orange”? Well, I’ve read and seen that, and I can’t say that the comparison particularly struck me before. There’s the Master again, a stolen missile, and a dragon too. That is honestly just about it, and I’ll be interested to see just how all these disparate plot elements come together.

After Watching

Well, the one main plot element I missed out of the before watching section was The Keller Machine.  This was a machine ‘invented’ by Professor Keller. He turns out to have been the Master – and that must be one of the few times that he used an alias which was not a dead giveaway that he was in fact the Master. From my miniscule knowledge of German I do know that it means ‘basement’ or ‘cellar’ – as in bierkeller. ‘I am the Basement, and you will obey me.” Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it really. The Keller Machine is a miraculous invention which ‘cures’ criminals by taking away all their nasty, evil impulses. So one of the tropes we’re returning to in this story is mind control.

It’s probably a coincidence that this story was broadcast in the same year that Stanley Kubrick’s film version of Anthony Burgess’ “A Clockwork Orange” came out, but that dealt with rehabilitation of prisoners essentially through brainwashing techniques – and if you’ve seen the film you’ll know that there the similarity to The Mind of Evil” ends. The film was released a few months later than the story was broadcast. I can’t say whether Don Houghton had read the book and was at all influenced by it.

At the heart of the Keller Machine is an alien creature that feeds off these negative impulses. It becomes clear, though, that this is a mental parasite, which feeds its victims a succession of horrifying images drawn from their own deepest fears. In the case of the first victims of the machine a man who is killed by his fear of drowning is found with his lungs full of water, and a man killed by his fear of rats is found with scratches and bites all over him. The US delegate to a peace conference – more about that later – is so scared of dragons – honest to gosh – that he actually physically manifests one until the Doctor tells it to go away in either Cantonese or Hokkien, and it becomes the Master’s Chinese pawn again. Now, this is an interesting idea which is just left as an idea and not explored at al by the show. The Doctor dismisses the dragon as a collective hallucination. Yet collective hallucinations cannot fill your lungs with water, and they cannot cover your body in rat bites and scratches. So was the machine using its victims’ mental energy to materialise these things, or was the victims’ extreme fear unlocking latent mental powers which made their fears corporeal? Either way it would have been interesting to know.

That’s the Keller Machine. It’s all part of the Master’s rather convoluted plan. He’s installed the Machine in Stangmoor Prison. The idea is that the Machine will use the Machine to create enough confusion in the prison for him to walk in and use the Prisoners as his own private army to help him hi-jack the Thunderbolt Missile which UNIT are overseeing the disposal of so that he can fire it at the World Peace Conference and create World War III. Phew. Before he goes along to the Prison, the Master hypnotises Captain Chin Lee, incidentally played by Don Houghton’s wife, the rather lovely Pik Sen Lim, and gives her an electronic doohickey which enables the Machine to kill the leader of the Chinese Delegation by proxy.

Well, there we. There’s been better stories and there have been worse. Now, when I reviewed “Terror of the Autons” I made the point that the plot was developed at pretty much breakneck speed. Being a six parter this wasn’t so much the case here. Actually, I think that the first three episodes worked rather well because of this slightly more measured approach – for example, we didn’t actually get to see the Master until the second episode. He was posing as a telephone engineer so he could tap the Brigadier’s phone, and he had one of those little red and white stripey tents. Here’s a funny thing. Maybe it was because it had been on Doctor Who, but when I was a little kid I used to wonder whether you would go into one of those tents one day and find the inside was just like the TARDIS.

Now, here’s a point which is worth making about the Third Doctor. Throughout Troughton’s tenure, the Doctor was clearly not a super being. Yes, he usually won, but it was through using his brains alone, either his knowledge or his cunning. This story for me sees the Doctor taking another step towards superhumanity. At one stage Captain Mike Yates appears, telling the Doctor that the Brigadier insists on seeing him at once. When the Doctor refuses Yates says that he has been authorised to being him by force if necessary. He has the temerity to lay hands on the Doctor, at which the Doctor takes his hand in what I can only describe as ‘the Gallifreyan wrist-pinch’ and immobilises him without batting an eyelid. Then when he does go to help the Brigadier, who is having awful trouble with General Fu Peng of the Chinese delegation, the Doctor immediately deduces that he must be Hokkien, and addresses him in (so the General said, although I have my doubts) perfect Hokkien dialect. All smiles, problem solved.

As the story developed, maybe it was because I actually have seen this before that I was thinking – I’ve seen this before – but I do also think that this story was a little bit of a rehash of some of the elements we have already seen in the Pertwee era, even though it’s only story 6. The hi-jack of the missile – the hi-jack of the space capsule in “Ambassadors of Death”. The Master’s alien ally/tool getting out of control – “Terror of the Autons”. Mailer – Reegan in “Ambassadors of Death”. To that extent this story is a little formulaic, and I certainly don’t think it’s as good as Houghton’s previous story, “Inferno”. Which is not to say that it is without things to enjoy. Basically, I think that you could have put Roger Delgado’s Master into any old rubbish and he’d always have been worth watching so long as he had his fair share of scenes playing off Pertwee’s Doctor. Once again, every scene they appear in together is compelling. I almost think that the two of them could have recited the South Wales phone directory to each other and it would still have been worth watching. Well, Houghton’s dialogue is quite a bit better than that. I particularly enjoyed the last exchange. In order to solve the situation the Doctor’s plan involves exploding the Thunderbolt missile on the ground – more about that later – since this will also destroy the Machine. In order to get close enough to do that he lures the Master into letting him approach by offering to return the dematerialisation circuit he stole from the Master’s TARDIS in the previous story. In the confusion the Master steals back his circuit. At the end he rings the Doctor to say he’s fine, and he’s on his way to pastures new, but will return in time to destroy both Earth and the Doctor. Nyahh haaa haaa. It’ll be a lot more quickly than anyone thought as well.

There are a few other things I’d like to mention. Firstly some of the guest stars. I’ve already mentioned Pik Sen Lim. Then we had good old Michael Sheard as the prison doctor. We last saw him the 3^rd season’s “The Ark”, and we’ll see him again in no fewer than 4 more stories. The only classic series Doctors he didn’t appear with were Patrick Troughton’s and Colin Baker’s. Next time will be in the all-time classic “Pyramids of Mars” so that’s something we can all look forward to. We also saw Neil McCarthy as Prisoner Barham. You might not know the name Neil McCarthy, but if you’re at least in your 40s you’ll probably know him when you see him. He had a striking physical appearance, the result of the condition acromegaly, and would die at the tragically young age of 52. He appeared in tons of TV shows – most notably as a regular in the first series of Catweazle, and played one of John Cleese’s Robin Hood’s Merry Men in the Terry Gilliam film “Time Bandits”. At the start of the story, the Doctor and Jo are attending a demonstration of the Keller Machine, and it is Barham who receives the treatment. In the course of removing his evil impulses it turns Barham into rather an innocent and helpless soul, but it later turns out that he is immune now to the Machine, which is key to the Doctor’s solution of the situations.

Now, sometimes when I watch a story I ended thinking that either I missed something, or there is a huge plot hole. It’s such a big one in this story that I’m sure I must have missed a vital piece of information. The Thunderbolt missile is supposed to have a warhead full of deadly nerve gas. Now, surely, surely when the warhead was exploded on the ground in Stanham disused airfield, the nerve gas was released? If it wasn’t then how not? Had it been removed from the warhead and I just missed that vital piece of information? While we’re discussing the denouement as well it was worth noting that the Doctor and Jo make their escape from the airfield in a helicopter, leaving the poor sacrificed lamb Barnham behind. Maybe it’s just me, but from “Fury from the Deep” onwards the production teams seemed to leap at any opportunity to use a helicopter. We’ll note the further appearances of helicopters as and when they happen.

Oh, and here’s another thing. If you watch the story now, pay particular attention to the UNIT attack on the prison in episode 5. For me this was notable for 2 things. Firstly, the Brigadier posing as a ‘cockney’ delivery man. I mean, we’re not exactly in Dick Van Dyke/Bert the Chimney Sweep territory here, but it was pretty much a case of don’t give up the day job, Alastair. Then the attack on the Prison. Now, although we didn’t see a drop of blood, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a firefight quite like it in Doctor Who. We already knew that the Brigadier is a crack shot, but suddenly so is every UNIT soldier too. This little section was like Doctor Who reimagined by Sam Peckinpah. Either that, or it’s the new government’s initiative to solve prison overcrowding. I didn’t count the number of prisoners and UNIT men gunned down in the 5 minutes’ action, but I’m sure it was comfortably into double figures.

Now, you wouldn’t necessarily say that, when you analyse it, this story was really up to the standards of season 7, and yet, for all that I found it extremely watchable. I kind of think that when you get right down to it, that’s the point.

What have we learned?

The Doctor can paralyse a man with a single pinch of the wrist (or Mike Yates is a total wimp)

The Master is now free again to wander Time and Space. So that’s the last we’ll be seeing of him for a while, then.