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
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