73: The Monster of Peladon

Before Watching

If I had been a wee bit older when this one was shown I might have been tempted to ask – does the world really need another Peladon story? To which the answer would probably have been – no, it doesn’t, since it never got another one after this.

Now, actually, the basic premise of the Doctor returning to the scene of a previous adventure is pretty fresh and novel, and it’s remarkable to think that it hasn’t really happened before. Well, alright, the TARDIS did return to the Ark at the end of its 600 year voyage, but then that was all part of the same story. Alright, so the Doctor has been to the Detsen Monastery before “The Abominable Snowmen” but that’s a plot point, and not a televised adventure so it doesn’t count. The Doctor’s returns to Gallifrey I suppose will count when he gets round to them.

After Watching

Last time out was Malcolm Hulke’s last contribution to the TV series, and this time we saw Brian Hayles’. Brian Hayles has, it’s probably fair to say, a mixed track record. His first script for Doctor Who was “The Celestial Toymaker” although it’s only fair to say that what was seen on screen was Gerry Davis’ rewrite of Donald Tosh’s rewrite of Brian Hayles original script. The Donald Tosh rewrite was so extensive that it was agreed that he would receive the screen credit, while Brian Hayles would be credited as having supplied the original idea. He then went on to write “The Smugglers”, the story which recast the Historical genre in the mould of historical adventure linked to a time period, rather than Historical genre linked to a specific event. Finally, in Season 5, the Monster Season, he hit paydirt with the Ice Warriors. They debuted in the story which bore their name. In season 6 they returned in his story “The Seeds of Death”, and then in season 9 in “The Curse of Peladon”, where the great surprise of the story was that they had actually renounced their old warrior ways, and were now acting as galactic peacemakers if anything. So we end with this story, a return to Peladon, and the last story featuring the Ice Warriors actually to be produced during the classic series.

With the exception of Earth it’s difficult to think of hardly any planets which the Doctor has already visited more than once. He visited Skaro in both “The Daleks” and “Evil of the Daleks”, but the Skaro of the latter is from a much later time period than the Skaro of the former, and there’s very little that the two have in common. “The Monster of Peladon” on the other hand takes place a mere fifty years after the events of the earlier story. There’s even one carry-over character, Alpha Centauri. In functional terms it is a useful plot device having Alpha Centauri return, since it saves a great amount of tedious toing and froing in the early episode with the Doctor having to prove that he is who he says that he is. In a way, Alpha Centauri is this story’s psychic paper.

There’s one big plus to doing a sequel story like this, and one big minus. I’ll start with the plus. If you use virtually the same setting for a story as one from a couple of seasons earlier, than you can reuse a lot of sets  and costumes. (Presumably you still have them in storage. If you don’t, then it’s a complete waste of time. ) Theoretically this should make it a cheaper show to produce, and save you money which you can put into the budget of the other shows in the production block. On the other hand it does put you under constraints. It requires a very careful eye to be kept on continuity, because if anything is said or done that contradicts the earlier story, people are definitely going to notice, and they’re going to get upset about it. So how well does “Monster” do as a follow on to “Curse”?

It’s often said that “Curse” was inspired by the UK’s impending entry to the EEC. By the same token “Monster” seems inspired by the Government’s industrial relations problems with the Miners which led to the 3 day week. (Me? Miners’ side of course, brother.) So on Peladon it is 50 years after the end of “Curse” and thus 50 years into Peladon’s membership of the Federation. The Federation is mired in a long standing war with Galaxy Five. (They would have picked on Galaxy Four, but the Drahvins and Rills would have bored them into submission). Peladon is rich in the mineral trisilicate which is essential to keeping a modern fleet of star cruisers going, or whatever the Federation called their space warships. The miners on Peladon are getting bolshie though, and surprisingly it’s nothing to do with the two tone afros which seem to be part of essential Peladon miner uniform. No, their beef is that for 50 years the Peladonian nobility have been enjoying the benefits of Federation membership, and getting fatter and richer on the profits than they were already, while the poor old miners are having to work harder than before for no commensurate rise in their standard of living. That’s not just my opinion, the Doctor actually says this when he’s giving the Queen a few home truths. I’ll come to her shortly. Now, what makes it even worse for the miners is that an apparition of their god beast Aggedor has started appearing in the mines, and when it does, a miner usually gets vaporised in a heat ray.

So essentially what we have is a simple little political parable, isn’t it?  Wrong. Or rather, there is a political parable there, but it’s not so neat and simple as it sounds, since there’s quite an ambiguous attitude towards the miners in the story. For one thing they are shown as not exactly cowardly, but they are very quick to swear to fight to the death, and then run a mile at the first hint of trouble soon after. Not only that, but they are shown as rather sheep like, and I’m not just referring to those hairdos either. They have a leader, Gebek, who is the voice of reason, talks sense, is calm and brave under fire, and is dedicated to his fellow miners. Then they also have a meathead called Ettis, who has a loud voice and a small brain. Ettis has ‘I’ll get you all slaughtered’ written all over his face, and yet the miners are at times just as ready to listen to Ettis and follow him as they are with Gebek. So the message is a rather patronising one of – these miner chappies, salt of the earth and all that, and yes of course, something should be done for them, but for Heaven’s sake don’t let them think for themselves since they’re not all that bright.- Not that the nobility, represented in the person of Chancellor Ortron come off a great deal better. He is an obstinate patrician, conditioned with the idea that those who are not of the nobility are inherently inferior to those who are, yet this position is intellectually undermined by the fact that he tries to manipulate Queen Thalira, who , as royalty, he should view as being that much better than he is, unless he is a hypocrite, which he is.

Speaking of Queen Thalira, she is the daughter of King Peladon from ‘Curse’, whom she says died when she was very young. Apparently there can only be a ruling queen when there is no male heir of the royal line. Queen Thalira is played by Nina Thomas, who is rather decorative, but starts so insipidly that it’s difficult to take her seriously when she later begins to develop a backbone. I’m not really sure how to view this. The Doctor’s suggestion that she takes a few lessons from Sarah Jane, and Sarah Jane’s little speech about Women’s Lib seems dreadfully forced and to be honest somewhat patronising when I watch it in 2015. But maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe this was actually quite progressive in 1974. A part of me says that while it is frankly rather cringe making to watch now (although I still think that ‘there’s nothing only about being a girl’ is a pretty good line) at least the story is maybe acknowledging that it has been guilty of some rather rampant chauvinism in the past. I honestly don’t know.

There is a story here too, mind you, and it isn’t just a random collection of characters making some rather heavy handed, quite paternalistic political points. The story, as such, is complicated by the presence of an Earthling mining engineer called Eckersley, played by Donald Gee, who was last seen in “The Space Pirates”, and Alpha Centauri, who is now the ambassador to Peladon. It is the original Egghead here who contacts the Federation and asks them to send in some ‘peace keeping’ forces. The Ice Warriors, led by one Azaxyr, turn up almost immediately. The thing is, they were already there on Peladon, hiding out in the trisilicate refinery, and they are not Federation Forces at all. In fact they are not even official Ice Warrior troops. We eventually learn that they are a breakaway Ice Warrior faction who long to return to the old ways of slaughter, conquest and bloodshed. The corrupt Earth mining engineer Eckersley has hatched a plot with them for them to declare Martial Law on Peladon, bully the miners back to work, then sell the trisilicate to the Galaxy Five forces, thus making Eckersley the richest and most powerful man in the Galaxy. If he had a waxed moustache he’d have been twirling it when he announced this. It is Eckersley who created the Aggedor projector/heat ray machine.

Let’s consider the way that the Ice Warriors come across in this, their last appearance in the classic series. In a way, Brian Hayles was always onto a loser bringing them back in this story. In “The Ice Warriors” the warriors themselves had a kind of motivation for what they did. In “The Seeds of Death” this had developed into out and out evil malevolence and desire for conquest, which was accompanied by the usual incompetence we’ve come to expect from evil malevolent aliens bent on conquest. Then in ‘Curse’ they had developed as a species, renouncing conquest, taking their place within the Federation and showing that they were clearly some way along the road to Enlightenment. There was nowhere left to go with them for Brian Hayles, short of making them bad again. OK, so we get the tacked on explanation that this is a breakaway faction, but there’s no getting away from the fact that this seems like a renunciation of the bold and effective step that he took with them in the previous story. Which is a mistake.

So, when the Ice Warriors’ brutality and their ultimate aims of domination of Peladon become clear, we see the Monarchy, the bourgeois nobility, the guards (military) and the proletariat all throwing in their lot with each other to defend the Peladonian way of life, a way of life with which a lot of them are by no means satisfied, by the way. Now, I’d be charitable and say that this is a clever comment by Brian Hayles on the way that throughout History rulers and politicians have used war and conflict to distract people’s attention from the issues at home which they are failing to deal with and thus cling on to power. But the way the Doctor comments approvingly on this development rather makes me think it isn’t meant to be viewed ironically like this. The Ice Warriors and Eckersley are defeated by a combination of the Doctor’s superhuman ability to resist Eckersley’s security systems to use the Aggedor projector and the heat ray against the Ice Warriors, and the determination of the people of Peladon to fight together and defeat the Ice Warriors. As a bonus, once the Ice Warriors are defeated Galaxy Five immediately opens negotiations for peace, since they know they can’t possibly win without the trisilicate that Eckersley was going to send them.

Let’s examine the end of the story immediately prior to the Doctor’s departure. Queen Thalira virtually begs him to stay on as her advisor and Chancellor. He refuses, saying that she doesn’t need anyone to tell her what to do now. Right, if this story was serious about making a point about feminism, or showing any feminist credentials, then it should have been Sarah to say this, and not the Doctor. Even more so, once it had been said, then that was the time to leave. However they don’t. The script compounds this by having the Doctor suggest the miner Gebek as the next Chancellor. On the surface this looks like the dawn of a new era of class equality and opportunity on Peladon. It is nothing of the sort. Queen Thalira pays a patronising tribute to Gebek’s excellent qualities , then says there has never been  a chancellor who has not been a member of the nobility before. Firstly the Doctor tells her not to worry about old fashioned thinking like that. This is the second point at which he needs to stop talking and leave immediately. But he doesn’t. He ruins the whole thing by saying ‘anyway, you can always give him some sort of title.’ It’s a throwaway line, but it illustrates so much of what is wrong about ‘The Monster’ of Peladon as a political parable. For essentially the Doctor has just given Thalira carte blanche to maintain the whole unjust system. By giving Gebek a title, she would reinforce the idea that the top jobs are only for the nobility, since she has to make Gebek one. Where this old class system survives, for example in the UK, it does so because it allows the exceptional individual to arise from among the proletariat, but absorbs them into the elite before they have a chance to effect any real change. Yes, there is no reason why a politician who has not attended Oxford or Cambridge University should not become Prime Minister. Precious few of them ever have done so, though.  Just my opinion, of course, and feel free to disagree.

If you are totally apolitical, and view this just as an adventure story about aliens fighting, some with future weapons, some with swords, then frankly it’s a bit of a tired old slog at 6 episodes long. If you try to view it as a political text it’s a lot more interesting. Albeit rather more muddled. You see, while it makes noises about political change, about giving the poor old miners a fair deal, it is actually far more conservative, in fact far more reactionary than that. It is never really a criticism of the semi feudal/semi proto-capitalist society that Peladon actually is, and in fact the only solution to the class conflict in the story that is offered is to take the one effective member of the proletariat, and graft him into the reactionary and ineffective nobility, thus making them more effective and as a result, more powerful. Interesting, and frankly, rather indefensible. Feel free to disagree.

What Have We Learned?

Get a few miners to stop striking, kill a few Ice Warriors, and you too could find yourself in the House of Lords. 

72: Death to the Daleks

Before Watching

Now, there’s a title to get your pulse racing. I’m going to have to be careful not to say too much before we get to the after watching section of this review, since I’m afraid that this is another of those shown in its entirety on the Horror Channel within the last couple of years, which I found the time to sit down and enjoy. Terry Nation, then returned to the fold as it were with season 10’s “Planet of the Daleks”. That essentially was something of a remake of his own “The Daleks” from season 1. In fact, Terry Nation did develop a reputation for rehashing his own material. There is a lovely story, possibly apocryphal, in which Terry Nation is having a meeting with the Producer and Script Writer du jour, discussing a script, and he is supposed to have asked whether they liked it. The producer then replied, “We love your script, Terry, just as we loved it every time you sold it to us in the past.”

So, bearing in mind I only last watched it about a year ago, can I reasonably expect to derive anything new from this story? Well, yes, maybe I can. For when I watched it last week I had not seen every Dalek story before Death to the Daleks. Now I have, and so you never know, this in itself may mean that I come to view it in a different light. Let’s see, shall we?

After Watching

Unless I’m imagining it there’s quite a famous publicity shot from the 4^th Doctor’s time which shows Sarah, clad in beach wear, emerging from the TARDIS with the Doctor, expecting to be in some exotic location, but finding that snow is falling all around her. She should have known better by then, since in the start of this story he has clearly promised to show her a good time in some exotic location, as she starts off dressed in blue beachwear this time. The Doctor is always doing this in the classic series, taking his companions off for a promised holiday in a beauty spot which never materializes, should you pardon the pun. Only a couple of stories ago he kept trying to drag poor old Jo off to Metebelis 3 – no wonder she went off with the Welshman.

We know pretty much what we’re going to get with a Jon Pertwee story now. It’s never going to blow your mind, with the sheer brilliance of a “Mind Robber” or “Deadly Assassin”, but it’s never going to plum the depths of “The Twin Dilemma” either. Seriously, write down a list of the worst Jon Pertwee stories, and then see how many of them would be in your bottom 10. Not many, I’ll be bound. So then, since it’s Jon, the Doctor is going to be dashing around, being heroic, throwing out expositions, barking at idiots, and saving the day – because that’s what the Third Doctor does, without fail. There’s plenty of that in this story.

The TARDIS lands off course, on the planet of the Exxilons. Something is draining power out of the TARDIS. The Doctor meets a group of people from Earth, who are trying to get a supply of Parrinium, (and when you pronounce this on the telly it sounds uncomfortably like perineum) which is essential to fight a terrible space plague. Their ship has been drained of power. So has a ship belonging to the Daleks, who have come for the same reason. Even their guns fail. This is an interesting idea – after all, a Dalek is almost defined by its gun. So what does one do when the gun doesn’t work? Simple – make an alliance with the humans – who can be as evil as Daleks when they want to be – and make sure that you bump them off as soon as you get the opportunity. Fix a different kind of gun to your redundant gun, and hey presto, you’re hot to trot.

So the Earthlings and Daleks strike up a fragile alliance, and put the indigenous Exxilons to work, getting the parrinium for them. See how I told you that humans could act just as evilly as Daleks. This is a point that we are obviously meant to make for ourselves, and the Doctor’s opposition to what is happening really does him some credit.

Meanwhile Sarah has in her own inimitable fashion stumbled up to the great city of the ancient Exxilons. Now, at this stage we get some serious echoes of “Colony in Space”. In both stories an ancient civilization has decayed, and the native in habitants, have descended to ‘primitivism’ over many generations. They have left behind their great city generations ago, but worship it. To enter is forbidden, and just as Jo did in “Colony in Space”, so does Sarah in this story and when the Exxilons find Sarah there they duly take her away for sacrifice.

The resolution to the plot involves the Doctor discovering that it is the city draining power from the TARDIS and the ships. With the help of Bellal, a ‘good’ Exxilon, he enters the city, beating booby traps and facing challenges, with the Daleks hot on his heels.  Now, cards on the table, I like the trope of finding your way into an ancient city, facing challenges and overcoming them to reach the treasure that lies within. It was used to great effect in 3 of the Indiana Jones movies, and is far older than Doctor Who – going back to Rider Haggard’s “King Solomon’s Mines” and arguably back as far as the mythological story of Jason and the Argonauts. Classic Doctor Who used a slight variation on this theme in “Pyramids of Mars” and again in “The Five Doctors”, but this was the first.

I don’t know whether this had anything to do with it, but this story would have been in the planning stage right about, or just after the time of the great Tutankhamen exhibition in the British Museum in 1972. Now, my parents didn’t actually take me to see the exhibition, which was a shame. I can’t complain too much because they did take me to see the BBC Special Effects exhibition in the Science Museum. I did get to see the 2007 Tutankhamen Exhibition at the O2 Arena, which had more exhibits than the 1972 exhibition, but sadly not the gold death mask. However, I digress. At the time of the 1972 exhibition there were a lot of books and a lot of TV shows about Tutankhamen and the discovery of his tomb. Now, I can’t say for certain that this was the catalyst for my love of this particular archaeologically based adventure genre, but then I wouldn’t say that it wasn’t either. Who knows, it may even have been the inspiration for this aspect of the story. Admittedly this only uses some of the trappings of the genre. There’s no great prize, no enlightenment awaiting the Doctor at the heart of the ‘tomb’, only the opportunity to hopefully destroy the city.

The City itself, even more than the Daleks, is the great enemy in this story, and it’s an interesting idea, one that takes this story some way beyond “Colony in Space”. In short, the Exxilons built the city to be capable of repairing and maintaining itself. Hence we have the huge and tentacular roots that attack the Doctor when they believe him to be a threat to the city. The ancient Exxilons fitted the city with a gigantic supercomputer for a brain, and the city instantly realized that it could function much better on its own, and cleared itself of its infestation of Exxilons. The only remaining descendants are the ‘primitive’ Exxilons on the surface, and the small band living under the city, like Bellal. The idea is a different slant on the dangers of technology. The City’s purpose was originally to provide a home to living organisms. When  it becomes seemingly sentient it destroys the organisms it was built to serve, thus losing its’ purpose at the same time. The City’s purpose then becomes its’ own continued existence and nothing more,  which essentially is a warning to us all , since its’ existence is at best, sterile, and at worst, malign. The message would seem to be then, that to simply be is not a good enough purpose for existence. Self-perpetuation is a means, but it should never be an end in itself.

The City and its’ history give us a clue to another source or influence upon the story. When he is shown some of the markings which are on the City wall by Bellal, the Doctor realizes that he has seen the same markings on a temple wall in Peru. Really? When? It wasn’t during the Aztecs, since anyone knows that they lived in Mexico. Leaving that to one side, this looks again like another nod to human development being guided and aided by aliens, as we saw in “The Daemons”, which ties in with “Chariots of the Gods” and by Erich Von Daniken, and its many sequels and imitators. Not for the last time in Doctor Who, either. This ‘Shaggy God story’ was first published in 1968, and its’ enjoyably crackpot theories became hugely popular in the early 1970s, partly due to a 1970 documentary, and a number of TV shows. Without wanting to spend too much time paraphrasing the text of the book, Von Daniken and his imitators and successors claim that they believe that human civilization developed through the intercession of technologically advanced alien beings, who were worshipped as Gods, and that there is ample proof available if you know what you are looking for.

This is the third of four Dalek stories which have appeared once a season since season 9. Yes, I know that they appear in the end of Frontier in Space – but that acts more of a lead in to this story, not unlike the Daleks’ appearance in “The Space Museum” paving the way for “The Chase”).You’ve got the intelligent story which reintroduces the Daleks (Day of the Daleks), then the Daleks’ Greatest Hits story (Planet of the Daleks), and after this the epic story which introduces the origins of the Daleks – and so I always think that this is the ugly duckling of the four. Which is a shame considering that it’s certainly more original than the preceding Dalek story.  An enemy (in this case the City) more powerful than the Daleks are is an interesting departure.

The Daleks have had another makeover for this show. The Daleks in “Planet of the Daleks” were dark, matt coloured daleks, which gave them a more military,’ this means business’ feel. The Daleks in this story are certainly brighter than we’ve ever seen them before. Their bodies are painted silver, and a bright silver at that, while all of their lumps and bumps are black. This does make them stand out far more against the dull, sandy and grey background of the quarry which stood in for the planet Exxilon (which was presumably unavailable due to prior commitments). It does also make the scene where the Dalek bursts into flames after an attack by the Exxilons more vivid as well.

In fact, destruction is something of a keynote in this story, certainly in the last episode. There’s the destruction of the city itself. The city hasn’t been a bad model up to this point. There is a tendency to only go a couple of ways when you’re designing an alien city of the future. Domes, spires and aerial walkways is one – like the city of the Mechanoids in “The Chase”, and the other is mega-ziggurat. This city is the latter. All in all its’ destruction scene is a little bit of a letdown. Presumably it was made from a block of something like polystyrene, and acetone or something similar was poured over it. So the city just sort of subsides, liquefies and congeals, and the overall effect is not the most effective.  Likewise, the classic TV series, as opposed to the film, has always had a bit of a problem with Dalek ships. We recall the flying saucer in “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” and the ‘Dardis’ in “The Chase”.  In the climax of this story, after the Doctor has given the City’s brain insoluble problems to deal with to give it the equivalent of a stroke, the Daleks, in time honoured fashion, decide to do a runner with the loot.  All of which allows grizzled Scottish space marine, Dan Galloway, to smuggle himself and a bomb aboard the Dalek saucer – result? – Mit der bang, mit der boom, mit der bing bang, bing bang boom. A little simplistic, but then this is the Pertwee era, and if the denouement doesn’t actually involve reversing any polarity, then that’s sophistication enough.

Compare this story with next season’s “Genesis of the Daleks” and you can learn a lot about the differences between the Pertwee era and the series with Tom Baker. Which we will do. What we mustn’t do though, is forget that this is maybe not the greatest of all Dalek stories – there’s no maybe, it isn’t – but it rattles along well enough, and that’ll do for me.

What Have We Learned?

When Apple finally get around to inventing the iCity we should probably give it a miss. 

71: The Invasion of the Dinosaurs

Before Watching

Some stories have one or two poor special effects in them, which you can easily gloss over, and which do nothing to spoil your enjoyment of them. Then there are others where, for some strange reason, it is only that poor shot that you ridiculed at the time which stubbornly refuses to remove itself from the dump bin of memory, and dominates your recollections of the whole story. Another example would be the Action Man Scorpion tank used in “Robot” next season, and Dobbin the Myrkka in “Warriors of the Deep” in season 21. We’ll get to them in due course.

So, look, we already know that the Dinosaurs in this show aren’t at all good. That probably upset me more than it should when I first watched it, since there were a number of things I was really into during the Jon Pertwee era of the show. Manned spaceflight was one of them, and so were dinosaurs, and so that’s maybe an explanation of why I can’t hear the words “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” without the phrase – bad dinosaurs, bad dinosaurs- playing on a loop through my head for a while. So what I’m hoping for from this particular viewing, is a chance to assess this story for the story, rather than the effects. At the moment I have it filed in my memory in the cabinet marked ‘crap Doctor Who stories’ and I would hate for it to have to remain there a moment longer than is necessary, not least because this is Malcolm Hulke’s last story.

After Watching

Was it hubris which made the Barry Letts production team go ahead with this story? I’ll explain why I ask. For pretty much the whole of the Pertwee era, when the special effects have been bad, they have got away with them, simply because they’ve never tried telling you they’re any good. There’s this tacit understanding along the lines of – look, we’re going to do the best we can to show you the things we need to show you for the story. Some of it, frankly, isn’t going to be brilliant, but it’s the best we can do, and you’ll forgive us for it. – Now, if you call a story “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” it’s not simply a case of  - oh and by the way there’s a dinosaur in it – as was the case with season 7’s “The Silurians”. No, you highlight the dinosaurs in the title, and you’re basically saying – Hey – look, we’ve got some dinosaurs. . . and they’re good enough that we want to shout about it!-  And the problem is, they’re not.

So how bad are the dinosaurs in this? Well, being fair there’s only two really bad ones. Unfortunately these are the first we see, the pterodactyl, and the most foregrounded dinosaur the T-Rex. Well, that’s what they call it, although frankly it really didn’t look like any reconstruction of a T Rex that I’ve ever seen. Let’s start with the pterodactyl. I’m afraid that time has certainly withered this one, and custom staled. It doesn’t matter how skilfully you film it, but a rubber pterodactyl dangling on a wire will always look like a rubber pterodactyl dangling on a wire. Now, none of the land bound dinosaurs moves particularly well, but at least the sauropod, stegosaurus and triceratops look halfway decent. The sauropod is actually called a brontosaurus by the Doctor – he should have known that not long after the story was filmed pretty much everyone would stop calling this species by that technically inaccurate name, and switch to Apatosaurus. Not that this would be a problem for me if that was the only complaint about the dinosaurs. But as I say, the incidental dinosaurs don’t move at all well, but the models really aren’t bad. But the would-be T-Rex, well, I’m sorry but it’s god-awful, and it keeps popping up all over the story, virtually immobile apart from its pathetic twitching arms.

Now, this is going to sound contrary, but in a way I think the dinosaur deficiencies would matter less if they were more important to the story. That’s not a typing error.  When you boil it down, the dinosaurs are in the story for one reason really, and that is to provide spectacle. When they fail to do this because of the shortcomings of the models used, and their animation, then their inclusion is worse than pointless, it is a definite failure. We don’t need dinosaurs in order for the plot to work. The villains bring dinosaurs into the present day for two reasons – to test their equipment presumably, and to scare the authorities into evacuating London. Well, they could do the same thing just s easily by, for the sake of argument, bringing some plague rats from the 1665 plague. Yes, they would kill a lot of people, but hey, they were going to die, or should I say, to never have existed in the first place, so who loses? As a rule, more often than not the show is very aware of what it can and can’t do, but in terms of effects this is a prime example of the show overreaching itself. In practice the dinosaurs it could produce did not provide the spectacle the title promised.

The sad thing is that all of this is a distraction from what is actually important about this story – the ideas behind the script, the script itself, and the way that the cast deliver the script. Let’s start with the ideas behind the script. The Doctor and Sarah return from their medieval avdventure with Linx the Sontaran to find modern day London deserted. This is nicely done, and evokes fond memories of both “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” and “The Web of Fear”. The deserted city is a Science Fiction trope I’ve always enjoyed. Their first inkling that someone is maybe monkeying around with Time is the encounter with the pterodactyl. The dinosaurs appear, seemingly out of nowhere. They have in fact been gathered by a piece of equipment, a machine invented by a Professor Whitaker played by the excellent Peter Miles. He was Dr. Lawrence in Malcolm Hulke’s earlier “The Silurians”, and next season will play Nyder, Davros naziest henchman in “Genesis of the Daleks”. Would the name Whitaker be a sly reference to David Whitaker, I wonder? Whitaker and his associate Butler, played by Martin Jarvis in suitably oleaginous and nefarious form, under the aegis of Sir Charles Grover MP and General Finch, are putting into practice a scheme. This firstly involves the evacuation of London, and the removal of the Government to Harrogate – which is achieved through the dinosaur apparitions. Secondly, they will use the machine to make the Earth regress in time millions of years. He has several hundred people, many of whom are stored in suspended animation, who believe that they are on a spaceship heading to a planet they have dubbed ‘New Earth’ to start a new civilization since what’s on the old one is going so rapidly down the toilet. When they have regressed the Earth, then these people will be told they have landed, and will start to build a society which will avoid the mistakes of the past.

Ok – well, it doesn’t do too much to over analyse sci fi ideas behind and adventure story, but it seemed to me when I watched it that this scheme would be a classic example of the grandfather paradox. If that doesn’t ring a bell, a simple way of explaining it would be this. One day you invent a time machine. You go back in time and materialise on top of your own grandfather, crushing him to death before he ever met your grandmother. This means that your father was never born, which in turns means that you were never born. This means that you never invented a time machine, so you didn’t go back in time, so your grandfather did survive, so your father was born, so you were born, so you went back in time and accidentally killed your grandfather etc. etc. So if Grover’s lot went back in time, this would condemn pretty much the whole population of the earth never to have been born – and, although I didn’t hear anybody mention it on the show, which is a bit strange considering that as flaws in plans go it’s a bit of a biggie – condemning Grover and Butler and Whitaker’s own ancestors never to have been born – with predictable consequences.

Well, leaving that to one side, when the crazed Whitaker does activate the machine, everyone seems to be caught, frozen in time, except the Doctor. Being a Time Lord it seems that he has the ability to move outside of time, albeit very slowly. Jon Pertwee mimes moving in slow motion to turn the switch off. This section reminded me a little of the pretty much contemporary Six Million Dollar Man TV series, when Lee Majors would mime moving in slow motion to show off how strong he was. Look, I was only ten years old at the time and it made sense to me. This isn’t inconsistent with everything that has gone before – we know that the Doctor can exist within the Time Vortex for example, from “The Time Monster”.

So the ideas beind the story are pretty much hokum. The idea of the deluded elite within the ‘spaceship’ reminded me a little bit of the people kept in the bunker by Salamander in “The Enemy of the World”. There’s a level of predictability about it as well. I couldn’t remember that much about the story, but as soon as we met Sir Charles Grover, even though the Doctor seemed quite taken with him, being that kind of establishment figure who either muck everything up for everyone, or are downright villains in this era of the show, I knew he was the chief black hat. At least, well, at least it wasn’t overtly through megalomania, which is a welcome departure from a lot of what we’ve seen, but through a misguided, in fact downright twisted messiah complex.

So, we have a story which relies on the showcase effects to provide spectacle, which they singularly fail to do. We have a storyline with a couple of gaping plot holes. Yet for all that “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” is not a grade A oven ready turkey – and it’s turned out that even the least good Pertwee stories never tend to be that. What stops it from becoming that particular avian, then? Well, the regulars have some pretty good back up in the guest cast. I’ve already mentioned Peter Miles and Martin Jarvis . Completing the baddies there’s a fine performance from Noel Johnson as Grover, while John Bennett’s Finch was an interesting sort of Anti-Brigadier. Even amongst the cameo parts we had Carmen Silvera, last seen, I think, giving her all on the sinking ship the RMS Celestial Toymaker, who played Ruth, one of the leaders of the elite aboard the ‘spaceship’.  As for the regulars, I felt his was the story where Sarah Jane really started to become the Sarah Jane we all ( well I do) know and love. She’s treated like a spare part for the first three episodes, but once she leaves the Doctor and goes off to investigate by herself she’s just as brave, feisty and gutsy as Jo Grant ever was – and – sorry Jo, quite a bit smarter too.

I suppose we should end with a comment on the betrayal by Richard Franklin’s Mike Yates. Yates never really worked for me in UNIT. He was neither one thing nor the other, and I have to say that Richard Franklin never seemed to have the greatest range either. On a good day he could run the full gamut of emotions from A to B. I’m afraid that when asked to play out of his range in this story, that is, to show the treacherous Yates’ crisis of conscience when Butler or Finch asks him to sabotage the Doctor’s equipment, he frankly looks rather constipated.

So farewell, then , Malcolm Hulke. If you look at all the stories he wrote or co-wrote –

The Faceless Ones

The War Games

The Silurians

The Ambassadors of Death (credited to David Whitaker)

Colony in Space

The Sea Devils

Frontier in Space

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

- it’s quite a body of work, all of it thoughtful, some of it very good, and all of it a cut above the average. Thanks Malcolm.  

Helicopter Watch

At one point the Doctor is giving the slip to General Finch’s men, and is tracked by a small, fast army helicopter

What Have We Learned?

The Time Lords only care when other Time Lords use a Time Scoop. When humans use the equivalent, they couldn’t give a stuff. 

70: The Time Warrior

Before Watching

Since Dennis Spooner’s “The Time Meddler” we’ve had precious few pseudo-historicals like this, that is stories set in the Earth’s past, yet with a definite science fiction element other than the Doctor and companions arriving via time machine. In fact, the only one that comes to mind is “The Evil of the Daleks” and that didn’t do a great deal with Victorian Britain, which was after all only one of the locations of the story.

I’m not entirely sure why. After all, one of the essential problems with the pukka Historicals was that either they became pure adventure stories where the past is merely used as a kind of wallpaper, like the late Historicals, “The Smugglers” and “The Highlanders”, or you had the Doctor and companions being essentially bystanders and observers, the audience to History, but not participants within it. In a pseudo Historical you avoid this problem, since it’s pretty clear that the Doctor must act in order to prevent the course of History being diverted. Classic Who, though, continued to steer clear of this kind of story for a long time after “The Time Meddler”. In that story you may recall the Meddling Monk’s plan was to use 20^th century weapons technology to defeat Harald Hardrada before the battle of Stamford Bridge, sparing Harold Godwinsson the effort, and ensuring him victory at Hastings. Well, Hastings was a real, pivotal, Historical event. The next time that the Doctor would actually be trying to prevent a real Historical event from being wiped out of History wouldn’t be until season 20’s final story, “The King’s Demons” where the Master plans to prevent the signing of Magna Carta.

Look, I can’t lie to you. I watched this one again last year on the Horror Channel. I’m sorry, but I can’t be expected to sit there idly twiddling my thumbs while they’re showing a classic, Robert Holmes – Jon Pertwee story. I know what happens, I know what it’s like – I know the goodies that are within – the debut of both the Sontarans and my favourite classic companion, Sarah Jane Smith. Actually, I’ll be interested to see over the next couple of series whether Sarah Jane manages to stay in that enviable position  - Jacqueline Hill’s Barbara is a serious contender for the crown too.

After Watching

The first thing that struck me about the new title sequence was how unhappy and old Jon Pertwee appears on it, compared with the smiley, short haired Pertwee whose ginning phizzog has welcomed us to every episode previously. Maybe it’s a good job that this is a Robert Holmes story, and a four parter to boot, to get him back into the swing of things.

The story opens in the late12th/ early 13th century. The earliest action is centred on the castle of Irongron. Irongron is a bandit, who is a bit like Robin Hood, in as much as he robs the rich, although he hasn’t got around to giving it to the poor yet. Irongron is played by David Daker, a very well known face on TV in the 70s and 80s. He was the baddy in Richard O’Sullivan’s rather lacklustre “Dick Turpin”, and is possibly best remembered as Harry Crawford in “Boon”. With his lived in face David Daker was never going to be cast as shrinking violetty, sensitive types, and I doubt that his Hamlet would ever have been much to write home about. Cast him as a thug like Irongron, though, and he’d always do a throroughly good job for you. And in this Robert Holmes script he has quite a bit of good stuff to work with.

Supplies are running low, when Irongron and his wingman Bloodaxe see what looks like a shooting star. They ride out to where it came to Earth, and find a small space capsule which contains a warrior in a metal helmet. The Time Warrior, after claiming Earth for the Sontaran empire, enlists Irongron’s help, promising to give him new fangled weapons which will help him overcome any of his enemies. And all this in the first 6 minutes or so.

Using this time to set up the situation with Irongron and Linx, the Sontaran, means that when we do cut straight to UNIT we don’t need a long exposition scene telling us about disappearing scientists – we work out what is happening, and put two and two together to link it with Linx. It also gives a little more time to introduce Sarah Jane Smith. Sarah Jane, played by the late beautiful and talented Elisabeth Sladen, is a journalist, who is posing as her Aunt Lavinia, a famous scientist, to investigate exactly what is going on. When another Scientist, one Professor Rubeish, a scientist who is a prime example of the ‘dotty old fool’ variety thereof, disappears, the Doctor uses a doohickey to get a fix on where he has gone. Sarah goes rooting about in the TARDIS, just before the Doctor decides that it’s a case of tally-ho, the game’s afoot, and sets off after him. Amazingly the TARDIS makes a near perfect landing.

At the end of episode 1 Linx raises his helmet and we get our first sight of the head of a Sontaran. The Sontarans, although not always used to the best advantage, would reappear another 3 times in classic Doctor Who, in “The Sontaran Experiment”, “The Invasion of Time” and “The Two Doctors”. One interesting fact is that their appearance changed, slightly but noticeably each time they appeared – which doesn’t really matter than much apart from the fact that they are supposed to be a cloned species that are absolutely identical to each other. The Sontarans, although the last of the great recurring monsters to appear in classic Doctor Who (by which I mean the Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors and Sontarans) they would actually appear in the post 2005 series before the Ice Warriors were exhumed.

The action, then, remains in the medieval milieu. Irongron wants ‘modern’ firearms so that he can attack and defeat his near neighbour Edward of Wessex. Sarah Jane, after escaping from Irongron’s clutches with the help of the Xeron leader from “The Space Museum”, Jeremy Bullock, who plays Hal the Archer. It’s quite forgiving of him since Sarah Jane distracts him when he is about to shoot Irongron, and thus ensures that he is captured and his life is in danger. Thus when they reach the castle of Edward, we find that in fact on the side of the goodies we have Lord Beardy of Weirdy, Lady Dot of Cotton and Sir Boba of Fett. June Brown is a terrific actress who has rightfully received plaudits for her long lasting role in “Eastenders”, and while Lady Eleanor isn’t the meatiest role she’ll ever have played she imbues her with a certain steeliness which mirrors Sarah’s own , for it’s Sarah who persuades Edward to stage an attack on Irongron.

Episode two sees the meeting between Linx and the Doctor which reveals his plan. His capsule has some elementary time technology, which enables him to seize scientists from the 20^th century – that-s the furthest range that the power source of his capsule will allow. The scientists are then fitted with mind control devices, and used either to carry out the necessary repairs on Linx’s capsule, or to fashion the firearms that Linx has promised Irongron. The Doctor reveals, for the first time, that he is actually from Gallifrey, prompting Linx’s famous observation that the Time Lords have great power, but lack ‘the morale to withstand a determined assault’. And from that throwaway line will come one of the less successful Tom Baker stories in the shape of “The Invasion of Time”. That’s in all of our futures for now, though. It’s been a while since we’ve come back to the issue of whether you can change history or not. The only previous time in Jon Pertwee’s tenure was in “Day of the Daleks”. The third Doctor’s reaction to Linx is completely consistent with his reaction to the Monk in “The Time Meddler” – his meddling with Earth history would be disastrous, and he will not allow it to happen.

In fact, the more I think about it the more the comparison to “The Time Meddler” seems an apt one. There’s the obvious connection with the setting – alright, there’s more than 100 years between 1066, and the dawn of the 14^th century which is when this one is set, but that’s really not a great difference in terms of the culture and society of the times, certainly not as far as Hollywood or TV drama is concerned anyway. Then rather more subtly, there’s the tone. Yes, there are some nasty things that happen in this, or that nearly happen, I should say, but overall the tone of both is of a historically based romp, with a vein of comedy and fun running through it. Not that Linx is a comic character as the Monk is. But in “The Time Warrior” the funny lines are spread out between several of the characters, thus we get Irongron’s memorable description of the Doctor as ‘a long-shanked rascal with a mighty nose’, and then when The Doctor tells professor Rubeish that he is looking for Sarah, ‘I’m looking for a girl’, Rubeish muses ‘I would have thought he was a bit old for all that.’

Now, a short digression, which will, hopefully, make sense in the fullness of time. Superman, the archetypal superhero was created in the early 30s by schoolboys Jerome Seigel and Joe Shuster, and eventually sold to DC comics where he made his first appearance in Action Comics no. 1 in 1938. When he first appeared, Superman didn’t fly, and once of the claims made about him was ‘nothing short of a bursting (artillery) shell could pierce his skin’. Soon his super leaps became flights, and the claim had been changed to ‘not even a bursting shell could pierce his skin’. Superman soon became so super that it was totally unbelievable that anyone could ever so much as inconvenience him, let alone defeat him. Which is why the writers of the time came up with the concept of kryptonite. For those unfamiliar with it, basically Superman was sent to earth from his home planet of Krypton by his parents when he was a tiny baby, because Krypton was about to explode. Kryptonite is pieces of the core of the exploded planet. At first there was just kryptonite – which came to be known as green kryptonite, a short exposure to which robbed Superman of his powers, and a long exposure to which would kill him. In time this would be joined with other colours of kryptonite which would have different effects.

Now, what this has to do with Doctor Who is that the more powerful a monster, the more there needs to be a kryptonite, a weakness which can be exploited to defeat them. With the cybermen, to pick one example, their ‘kryptonite’ has been, at different times, radiation, gravity, acetone, gold and so on. Now, in “The Time Warrior” Sontaran kryptonite comes in the form of the probic vent. Remember, the Sontarans are a genetically engineered species, and instead of the inefficient refuelling means we humans use, that is, eating and drinking, they refuel through an orifice which is called the probic vent. Now, the probic vent is really and truly the only part of a Sontaran that is vulnerable- extremely vulnerable as it happens. So, bearing in mind that they are a genetically engineered species, their designer must have been having a really bad day when he decided to put the probic vent on the back of their necks, where they can neither reach it, nor see any danger approaching it. It’s the only real criticism that I have  of the Sontarans, that their kryptonite is so obvious. Linx isn’t defeated because he is outthought, or out-technologied by the Doctor. He is defeated because Hal the Archer gets one lucky shot at the probic vent. And it’s a shame, since the Sontarans otherwise have a hell of a lot going for them. In most ways they are more interesting and far more adaptable than, by way of comparison, the Cybermen. Could you ever see a cyberman being used in the same way as the revived series has used Dan Starkey’s Strax for comic effect as a member of the Paternoster Gang? I rest my case.

All in all then, if we’re prepared to lavish praise on Robert Homes – and I am – we must also apply criticism where it is due. So this isn’t quite an all-time Holmes classic for me. But it is what it is, a very enjoyable slice of late-Pertweeana, and there’s much to enjoy here.

What have we learned?

Practically everything important we’ll need to know about the Sontarans

Sarah-Jane Smith is as gutsy and brave as Jo Grant, but more feisty too. She’s a keeper. 

Season 10

Here’s the ratings for the stories that made up season 10: -

DWM Mighty 200/ 2014 poll

The Green Death – 39/30

The Three Doctors – 58/51

Carnival of Monsters – 62/64

Frontier in Space – 113/ 127

Planet of the Daleks – 118/ 123

My Ratings

The Green Death

The Three Doctors

Carnival of Monsters

Planet of the Daleks

Frontier in Space

Yes, I tend to agree with the ranking in the 2014 poll, although I agree with both polls that there is precious little to choose between “Frontier in Space” and “Planet of the Daleks”. I am so delighted that fandom in general rates “The Green Death” so highly. It’s a serious candidate for the best Pertwee story so far as far as I’m concerned. In a way it’s quite ironic that in this, the first season in which the Doctor has been able to travel freely since the end of the first story of the season, “The Three Doctors”, the finest story is actually an Earth based, full blown UNIT story – possibly the last great UNIT story, although we shall make our own minds up about that as the next couple of seasons progress. Well, for me one of the keynotes of the season was the Doctor’s gradual realisation of just how fond he was becoming of Jo Grant – the instances of him being a pig towards her have been noticeably far fewer. His leaving scene at the end of “The Green Death” was actually one of the strongest scenes of the era, and proved that when given the opportunity, Pertwee could do quiet emotion just as well as Hartnell or Troughton.

As a whole season, season 10 had more variety than any Pertwee season so far, more variety than any other season since season 6, Troughton’s last, and maybe even season 4. Maybe it is the benefit of hindsight that makes me say that “The Green Death” had something of the feeling of the end of an era. Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks would still be around in season 11, but both were coming towards the end of their time on the show. In Dicks’ case, Robert Holmes was being groomed to take over as script editor and shadowed Dicks throughout season 11. According to Richard Molesworth’s biography, Holmes used to joke that this meant him doing the work, and Terrance Dicks popping in to see how things were coming along on the way to the golf course. Holmes and Dicks were friends, so I’m sure that this was an exaggeration, but nevertheless it did reflect that the show was heading in a new direction. For example, it’s telling that there will be no UNIT story totally set on 20^th century Earth in this season – the two ostensibly UNIT stories , “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” and “Planet of the Spiders” involve time manipulation and travelling through space respectively.

That’s all ahead of us. For now, we can look back on season 10, a season that was a transitional one, with some great highlights, and while some of the stories will never be among my personal favourites, all of them were consistently watchable. 

69: The Green Death

Before Watching

Of “The Green Death” I remember precious little at the moment, other than giant maggots and slime. And Jo Grant leaving. I was quite upset about that at the time, not realizing that, just as Jon Pertwee would be soon replaced by an even greater Doctor, Jo Grant was to be replaced by an even greater companion. Just my opinion, of course. But I’m right.

This is one of the last UNIT stories, and one of the last Pertwee stories set entirely on Earth. Maybe this is why I can remember so little about it when compared against, let’s say the other stories of the 10^th season.

“The Green Death” was scripted by Robert Sloman, whose other contributions towards Doctor Who were writing “The Daemons” in conjunction with Barry Letts, the show’s producer, and Jon Pertwee’s last story, “Planet of the Spiders”. Now, regarding “The Daemons”, any story with Roger Delgado’s Master in it has an unfair advantage before it starts, and when I watched it recently I found it an enjoyable enough romp. For me, “Planet of the Spiders” hasn’t fared so well, although I promise to give it a fair hearing when I sit own to watch it again in a couple of weeks’ time. Really, as I’m a confirmed arachnophobe it should have given me the willies, but those spiders just weren’t convincing enough. There was too much padding, especially in the chase scene with Lupton, where Jon Pertwee was given his head and allowed to use a range of vehicles, none of which seemed all that necessary. There was yet another Time Lord we’d never heard of before, who apparently was the Doctor’s mentor, and who helped the Doctor regenerate. Sorry – this is meant to be a review of “The Green Death”. I’m just hoping – well, I’m just hoping that this is better than “Planet of the Spiders”, otherwise it could be a long 6 episodes.

After Watching

Wow. I loved this. I mean, maybe this is just me, but be fair, wasn’t that terrific? Which is a weird thing for me to say when you think that I didn’t think that much of it when it was first transmitted. But then I was 9 years old at the time, I suppose, and a lot of it must have gone over my head. All of the principals are in marvellous form here, and it kind of showed for me that when a Unit story worked it could be really good – in fact there’s probably a good argument for saying that this was the last really good Unit story.

As a story, the basic premise isn’t that promising. This is what it boils down to. A giant sentient supercomputer going by the acronym BOSS takes over the head of multinational chemical company. (actually you could say that it takes over the head of the Head of a multinational chemical company) The company pumps industrial waste into a disused section of a coal mine which kills anyone who touches it, yet also it alters the DNA of maggots, and said maggots become three foot long armour plated acid spitting super-maggots, and tunnel out of the mine after it is closed off by explosives. This is all part of the supercomputer’s plan to subjugate humanity, and impose order and regulation upon a chaotic world – you get the drift. Yet for all the seeming drawbacks of this particular scenario it is actually exceptionally watchable.

With the megalomaniac supercomputer this is crossing ground which has already been well trodden in “The war Machines”, and will be well trodden again in years to come. Yet for me, BOSS works a lot better than WOTAN ever did. For one thing, it turns out that this computer does have a personality. A rather smug, arrogant and barking mad personality, granted, but it does make for a more interesting story. It has a couple of good lines as well, telling Stevens, its human catspaw “That's how you get your kicks like the good little Nietzschean you are.” You don’t get lines like that in your average Terry Nation.

Watching it, I was surprised how really rather sickening and repulsive the green pulsating goo and the maggots still looked today. Watching the documentary in the extras with the BBC DVD, I was intrigued to see that the maggots weren’t all, as I had previously heard, made from condoms. Actually the special effects people used a variety of several different construction methods including glove puppet and mechanical puppet, depending on the kind of shot that was required. The results are effective, and considering the time that this story was made, really rather remarkably so. Less so the adult insect. It really wasn’t brilliantly realised , and the flying effects were not good. Thankfully they didn’t last that long. I had to chuckle when the creature was brought down dead, and the Doctor examined it saying “What a beautiful creature!” I do wonder how Jon Pertwee managed to keep a straight face saying that one.

While we’re raising the few negatives there are about this story, as we now know, this is where the third Doctor sows the seeds of his eventual destruction by visiting Metebelis Three after threatening to do so for ages. Now, the studio jungle scenes are as good as always, but as for the gigantic avian feet and talons that swoop on the Doctor – well, I’m sorry, but it’s a no from me, Simon. It is rare, though, for such an inconsequential moment in one serial to come back and be used in the way that it is a season later. There’s a strange and inconsistent use of CSO at one point. Most of the scenes on the hillside outside the mine were clearly shot on location. However there is one which makes such obvious use of CSO that it looks ridiculous. All I can think of is that they must have found late on that they needed to reshoot the scene, and didn’t have time and money to go back on location to do it. Oh, and while I think of it there’s the obligatory UNIT “bomb the hell out of them” scene. This scene was a good example of the principle  - if you can’t do it well, then do something different -.

Helicopter Watch

The bombing run is carried out by a tiny one man helicopter, and it’s so unimpressive it would probably have been better just to have the Brig being told over the phone that the bombing run had been completed.

I’ve lived in South Wales for the best part of three decades now, and so much of it must have rubbed off on me that I can get rather defensive about bad accents and patronizing clichés. This does all start off a little bit like it should have been titled “How Green Death Was My Valley” But I found that as the show went on this didn’t seem quite so much of a problem. Not accent wise, anyway, since there’s quite a few really genuine Welsh accents in the mix. I noticed good old Talfryn Thomas when the Doctor descended into the mine for the first time.  I remembered him from being a guest star in a few episodes of “Dad’s Army”. Now I can tell you from personal experience that his accent is the real McCoy. The exteriors looked dead right for the South Wales valleys too – probably because that’s where they were filmed.

Since we’re mentioning performances at this point, we’ll talk about the guest stars. Now there’s definite on-screen chemistry between Katy Manning and Stewart Bevan who  play Jo Grant and Professor Jones, but then that’s hardly surprising since there was off-screen chemistry between them at the time as well. I believe that they were engaged at the time, although the relationship ended. A mention for Tony Adams, making an early TV appearance here as one of Stevens’ flunkeys. He disappears about halfway through the story, because he was taken ill, but this didn’t have any hugely detrimental effect on his career. He went on to play Doctor Neville Bywaters in General Hospital, and then Adam Chance in theat perennial favourite of lovers of bad TV, Crossroads. Acting bouquets, though, go to Jerome Willis, who plays Stevens. He is a terrific villain, and to add to that, his conversion to the light at the end of the story was convincing enough to make his sacrifice at the end rather moving.

How did people view this story’s eco agenda when it was first shown? I ask the question because it just seems right on the money today. When the story was written, alternative ‘clean’ energy, edible fungus and textured vegetable protein, and the dangers of genetic modification were all on the agenda, but pretty much on the fringes of national consciousness, while it’s fair to say that they all firmly in the mainstream today. As a result you don’t have to be a genius to see that this story has a remarkable resonance when you watch it today.

We can’t ignore the fact that this is Jo Grant’s last story. It’s always been fairly clear to those of us who look for that sort of thing, that Jo has confused feelings towards the Doctor. He is obviously a father figure towards her, yet at the same time her feelings are a lot more complicated than that. So when she meets a rather hippyish, young, long haired, Nobel prize winning scientist called Professor Jones, with whom she gets off on the wrong foot at their first meeting, it’s pretty much a given that we’re going to be hearing wedding bells – well, engagement bells anyway, at the end of the story. Actually this does give us a really rather good end to the story. The Doctor slips away from the engagement party, and gives a rueful look as he drives Bessie away into the twilight. He’s going to be lonely, we know. What we don’t know at this point is that in the very next story he’ll get the pleasure of the company of wonderful Liz Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith. Ahh, the lucky swine.

What Have We Learned?

Even at this late stage the production team were capable of pulling a great UNIT story out of the bag.

Today’s Science fiction can sometimes become tomorrow’s science fact.

 

68: Planet of the Daleks

Before Watching

There’s a body of opinion that suggests that this story is a virtual retread of “The Daleks” from the first season. In fact I wouldn’t mind betting that this was the story that, when he asked the production team what they thought about it, they replied – We love your story Terry – we loved it every time you’ve sold it to us in the past. – Well, I cannot tell a lie, I liked this one when I watched it as a kid. I like the escape from the city where the Doctor and his Thal companions all made a sort of parachute/balloon affair and used it to ascend the rising hot air in a ventilation shaft. Very cool.

My recollection of that this story dovetailed out of “Frontier in Space”, and that the two stories worked together more closely than any two others since The Space Museum/ The Chase. We’ll see about that. A shout out for Bernard Horsfall as well, who plays one of the Thals – always brings a little bit of class to any role he plays does our Bernard.

After Watching

Right then. If you have watched every Dalek story so far, as I have, and then you watch the first episode of “Planet of the Daleks”, then maybe you’ll be struck by just how much of this seems familiar. It’s almost a case of being ‘Now That’s What I Call Daleks” – even though one of the Daleks themselves don’t appear until right at the end of this first episode, and it’s disabled when it does. Look at what we have – a jungle planet (The Daleks’ Master Plan) - Thals (the Daleks)- killer plants (Mission to the Unknown) – the crew, who are about to die, saved by medicine/treatment provided by the locals (The Daleks) – invisible aliens (The Daleks’ Master Plan). Despite all of these familiar Dalek trappings, we are actually in an original story – either the Doctor, or the Time Lords with whom he communicated at the end of “Frontier in Space” has steered the increasingly reliable TARDIS to Spiridon, the planet where the Daleks are massing their army for the attack on Earth. So at least the first episode sets out what’s going to happen very clearly. The Doctor must first of all recover, persuade the Thals into an alliance, find out what the Daleks are actually up to, and put a spanner in the works for them.

I had to laugh at the first cliffhanger. The Doctor and the Thals discover a round dent in the ground. There is obviously an invisible thing there. The Thals produce a couple of spray paint cans. “What’s that?” asks the Doctor. Oh, for God’s sake, Doc, it’s a flippin’ spray can! -is not what the Thals reply, sadly, - and they begin to spray the creature which – shock horror – turns out to be a Dalek! This might be a shock to the Doctor, although considering the last episode it shouldn’t – but why it would come as a shock to viewers, when the story is called “Planet of the Daleks” is something more of a mystery.

Speaking of Thals a moment before, there’s an interesting juxtaposition between two of the actors who play them. Both recur in several Doctor Who roles. On the one hand we have Bernard Horsfall – and on the other we have Prentis Hancock. Now, my admiration for Bernard Horsfall as a guest star is a matter of record in earlier volumes, so I won’t go on too much about that. However, if I single him out, I probably should probably single out Prentis Hancock as well. He made his first appearance in the show in “Spearhead from Space” where he didn’t stand out one way or another. However as Vaber the Thal in this he’s been giving a typical Prentis Hancock performance – extremely intense, and that’s for every single line that he’s given, right up to the point where you want to just give him a slap and tell him to stop overacting and calm down. I watched “Planet of Evil” a few weeks ago on The Horror Channel, and he was a main character in that, playing it exactly the same way. We’ll look at that one in more detail when we get to season 13. As I recall he did the same as Paul Morrow in “Space 1999” although it’s such a long time ago that I watched this my memory may well be at fault here.

You know, a funny thing happened as I watched this story. With each successive episode I found my cynicism subsiding, and a growing willingness to say, yes, maybe this is rubbish, but it’s good rubbish. I’m guessing that this is partly due to nostalgia. Thus, since I clearly remember being thrilled as a kid when the Doctor and the Thals – who now included a woman, Rebec, from another crashed Thal ship – rising to safety using a polythene chute as a parachute cum hot air balloon in a dalek air vent, I took a guilty pleasure in watching it again now. By the end of episode 4 I realized that I was actually enjoying it quite a bit more than I had enjoyed “Frontier in Space”, and frankly I wasn’t expecting that.

It took a while, but eventually that old Dalek favourite, deadly plague/bacteria designed to kill a huge section of the native population (Dalek Invasion of Earth) eventually raised its head. Which actually made me start to wonder what the invisibility thing was all about, apart from the fact that Terry Nation did like his invisible monsters. After all, they’re on Spiridon because it’s a convenient place to build a giant fridge to chill your Dalek army until you’re ready to invade the next planet. So the invisibility thing really is a red herring, although it does provide a scene whereby the ‘good’ Spiridonian who saved Jo’s life earlier releases the deadly bacteria in a sealed room, so that if the two Daleks inside the room open the doors, then the whole Dalek city will be contaminated. After being shot, he turns visible, and we see that his head looks just a tiny bit reminiscent of a Cardassian (that’s one from Deep Space Nine, and not the awful Kim and her tribe).

Where’s the swings there’s also roundabouts. Or to put it another way, while the story had me on its side by about halfway through episode 4, it lost me again pretty soon afterwards. Bernard rounds upon Rebec for coming on this ‘suicide’ mission. Why? Because he loves her. Ah, bless. Then we have the night on Spiridon, which certainly seems to last a good 12 hours to me. It’s obvious padding, I’m afraid, and generally episode 5 drags its heels towards its weary conclusion. Old Prentis throws a major wobbly when Taron/Bernard says he has to wait until later to play with his explosives, and so on and so forth. At last, the Dalek Supreme having arrived, they get to attack the city, with the obligatory splitting up of the Doctor and the companion. The Doctor goes off with the Thals, while Jo goes off with a member of the New Seekers.

I should say something about the Dalek Supreme here. My immediate thought when I saw it was that this was very like one of the film Daleks, what with its rather wide bumper, and much bigger headlights, and a check in The Television Companion reveals that it was actually adapted from a film Dalek that Terry Nation had in his possession. There you go. The Dalek Supreme looks quite impressive in his black and gold livery, although in one scene his dome wobbles up and down as he’s talking which is somewhat less impressive. Generally the Dalek Supreme is an interesting addition to the Dalek mythos. We only really started to get an explicit idea of the Dalek chain of command in The Evil of the Daleks, where we met the impressive, though impotent, Dalek Emperor. Now he was clearly different from the other Daleks. In this story, though, the Dalek Supreme, when killing a Dalek who was responsible for not capturing the Doctor and Thals, states that the Supreme Council will not tolerate failure. All of which opens up some interesting questions, namely, what are the Daleks doing having Supreme Councils? Who are on the Council? How did they get there? Who voted them in? It just doesn’t quite sit right with our concept of the Daleks as basically a Fascist dictatorship.

Well, anyway, there we are. The Doctor and his Thal friends manage to set off an ice volcano which buries the Dalek Army, and will take several centuries to melt through. Handy that. The New Seeker, who turns out to be a Thal called Latex, or something like that, clearly has the hots for Jo (ah – back to “The Daleks”) and proposes to her, but she refuses, saying that she wants to go home. In case we missed the point, when the Doctor is basically offering her the choice of all the planets in the universe, she brings up an image of Earth on the scanner, and tells him she wants to go home. A subtle way, I would say, of preparing us for her farewell in the very next story.

What Have We Learned?

Daleks shut down a) when they are in extreme cold – and b) when they’re invisible.