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. 

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.

 

Season 9

After Season 8 it would have been easy to do another season of all, or mostly Doctor v. Master stories, and the team resisted the temptation to go down this route. Likewise, it would have been easy to go down the route of having no Doctor v. Master stories, and the team resisted the temptation to go down this route. In fact, what we got was actually what I felt to be the most diverse and varied season since Troughton’s last. We had a story which not only reintroduced the Daleks, but also explored the whole question of how time travel from the future can actually change the past, which in turn changes the future – a complex and intelligent storyline. We got a proper story set in an alien civilisation of the sort we really haven’t seen since “The Krotons”, a story which saw the return of the Ice Warriors, and had the confidence to recast them as good guys. There was an Earth bound story which, for once did not use UNIT, but did retell “The Silurians” from season 7. We had a worthy but dull Colonial story in a similar milieu to “Colony in Space”, and we had “The Time Monster”, which pretty much defies rational description.

One pleasing development in the season has been the Doctor’s developing relationship with Jo. He’s still a bit of a pig towards her at times in the season, but by “The Time Monster” there’s something a little bit special developing there. It will all end in tears this time next season, we know, but then that’s fine as well, and all part of the process.

Let’s have a look about how they fared in the fans’ ratings, and then in mine: -

Mighty 200/DWM 2014 poll

The Sea Devils  50/60

Day of the Daleks 71/65

The Curse of Peladon 82/93

The Mutants 182/ 213

The Time Monster  187/222

My rating

The Time Monster

The Sea Devils

Day of the Daleks

The Curse of Peladon

The Mutants

Well, look, my list is of course a personal choice, and if you’ve given “The Time Monster” a fair crack of the whip and it’s not for you, then I can understand that and it’s fine. I really, really enjoyed it, and I don’t feel the need to lie about it – and if you ask me which story I enjoyed most from season 9 then it wins hands down, even if I can’t explain why in words which would convince anyone else.

What I can’t really understand about the poll ratings is how anyone else could seriously claim to have enjoyed “Galaxy Four” and “The Celestial Toymaker” more than “the Time Monster”, yet both of them are higher in both polls. Unless they haven’t actually seen any of the stories involved, which is a distinct possibility.

Well, there we are. Take your seats please for the Tenth Anniversary season. The Doctor’s exile will be ending (officially) any minute now. 

64: The Time Monster

Before Watching

Some stories seem to stay below the radar for me, and this is definitely one of them. As is my wont at the moment in such cases, I shall do the one minute brainstorm, and write down all I can think of to do with the story. Here we go – The Master – Atlantis – Giant white birdman – Doctor lost in the void and brought back inexplicably by the TARDIS. Not a lot, is it? This is partly because it wasn’t released as a Target novelization until 1985, by which time I was in the middle of studying for a degree in English Literature from the University of London, and Terrance Dicks was sadly not on the syllabus. On paper it’s not without interest – this is the last Earthbound story for the Doctor. The next season opens with “The Three Doctors” which brings the exile to an end. Ooops. Spoilers. This is also the penultimate story for Roger Delgado. Yes, he’s there in “Frontier in Space”, but I don’t so much rate it as a Master story. Mind you, it’s not totally a Dalek story either. We’ll come to that after.

After Watching

Something has just occurred to me. This story was written by Robert Sloman (and Barry Letts although he wasn’t credited), and it’s the last story of season 9. Their story “The Daemons” was the last story of season 8. Their “The Green Death” will be the last story of season 10, and “Planet of the Spiders will end season 11, being the last ever Pertwee story. That rather smacks of the Producer being a little bit, shall we say, naughty there, keeping his own stories back to finish the season each time. It would be even more naughty if they were turkeys. Well, “The Daemons” at least wasn’t. How about “The Time Monster”?

I’m going to come straight out and say it now. This story was mad, at times almost laughable, at times made little or no sense . . . and I loved every minute of it. Even if I’m not entirely sure why.

Let’s try to explain the plot of this one. The Master has decided that his latest scheme for universal domination is to gain control of the greatest of all the Chronovores, Kronos. Chronovores are creatures who live outside of Time, devouring it when they please, and giving it out when they please, beings of immense, in fact unimaginable power. Exactly where this fits in with the Time Lords, and the Guardians and all that stuff is never explored, which is probably just as well, since the Guardians won’t be dreamed up until Graham Williams takes over in a few years’ time.

In order to entrap Kronos, the Master has invented a machine called (don’t Laugh) TOMTIT – Transmission Of Matter Through Interstitial Time. The basis of this machine is a crystal which used to be part of a much larger crystal in the ancient civilisation of Atlantis. The Master uses the crystal and the machine to bring him Krasis the Atlantean High Priest of Kronos, who has a medallion which Kronos seems scared of. The Master learn, though, that he needs the full crystal, which he can only obtain from Atlantis itself.

While all this is going on The Doctor and UNIT have been doing their level best to thwart his plans. And so while he is preparing to leave for Atlantis in his TARDIS, the Master subjects the Unit forces to attack from, in kronological order, a knight in armour, a platoon of Roundhead infantry, and a WWII V1 ‘doodlebug’ flying bomb. The Doctor, in a rather good sequence, lands the TARDIS within the Master’s, and creates a standoff which is only resolved when the Doctor emerges from his TARDIS, the Master sics Kronos on him, and he is cast into the Time Vortex. Good job that the TARDIS has a ‘rescue the Doctor from the Time Vortex’ button built into the new console.

Both TARDISes land in Atlantis. The Master fails to convince 500 year old King Dalios that he is an emissary of the Gods, but indulges in a spot of hand holding with the Queen, which convinces her to stage a palace coup. When he attempts to use Kronos to kill the Doctor and Jo, Kronos goes on a destructive spree, enabling the two time Lords and to flee in their respective TARDISes, with the Master still having the crystal, and Jo into the bargain. The Doctor threatens to put the TARDIS into time ram, destroying them both, but can’t quite bring himself to do it, so it is Jo who slams the Master’s TARDIS into top gear, and smashed them both out of the space/time continuum. This has the action of freeing Kronos, who, as a reward will allow the Doctor and Jo to return home in the TARDIS. Despite her wish to keep the Master in eternal torment, the Doctor successfully pleads for his freedom in order to take him back to face Earth justice. Of course, he escapes. That’s pretty much it.

Phew. Now, agreed, that is one busy script. But there are some pretty clever things about it. For one thing, this obeys Robert Holmes’ edict about the structure of a successful 6 parter, namely that it should really be a 4 part story followed by a linked two part story. Which is exactly what this is. There’s the 4 part story about the Master capturing and using Kronos on contemporary Earth, and then the 2 part story about him trying to obtain and use the full crystal in Atlantis. 4 part then 2 part – it’s the classic way of making a 6 parter that doesn’t drag too much.

I know that I big up Roger Delgado in every story in which the Master has appeared . . . so don’t expect me to make any exception now. The man was just pure class, and I find myself getting sad as I write this to think that there’s only one more story in which he appeared to watch now, and he is only one in a number of features of that particular story. This one really is The Master’s Master Plan. He’s just brilliant – barking mad, of course – but brilliant, silkily menacing, and still charming, even when telling Jo that he is casting the TARDIS – and her – adrift into the void. While we’re talking about the regulars as well, this is a great Jo Grant story, possibly her best so far. The scene in episode 6 where she pushes the Master’s TARDIS into time ram is probably her finest hour – in this story it is Jo who saves the Universe, not the Doctor. I’ll talk more about the Doctor’s developing relationship with Jo in the round up of season 9 which follows this review, but let’s just say that there’s a real bond between these two characters, real tenderness, especially evident in the delightful scene where the Doctor talks about telling the old hermit who lived on the hill all his troubles when he was a little boy. It takes real confidence in yourself as a writer, and your cast of actors to throw in changes of mood in the way this story does, and I think it’s one of the things that lifted it above so much of what I’ve already seen during the Pertwee era.

As for the guest stars, there’s an actor who I recognise as playing K’Anpo Rimpoche in “Planet of the Spiders”, also by Robert Sloman, which we’ll be getting at in about 10 stories time, called George Cormack who plays King Dalios of Atlantis. He does a really splendid little turn in this, where the Master tries to hypnotise him, and he just laughs politely, and sounds amused that the master is using such a simple and old fashioned method of hypnosis. It’s just one of a couple of lovely little touches to his performance, which means that the story handles the way that everything changes in the last two episodes with ease. I didn’t realise it before checking the cast list a few minutes ago just before I started writing, but the Queen’s serving girl, Lakis, is actually played by Susan Penhaligon. She was still about 4 years away from “Bouquet of Barbed Wire” and stardom at the time. There was no mistaking the late Ingrid Pitt as Queen Galleia, though. At the time that this story was made, Ingrid Pitt was riding the height of the wave of her cult status, earned through her starring roles in such edifying fare as “The Vampire Lovers” and “Countess Dracula”. Look, it’s easy to say that her inclusion in the cast was an attempt to include a little something to keep the Dads and older brothers interested, and very difficult to argue against it given the extensive amount of airtime given to her cleavage. She’s very decorative, anyway. Rounding up the cameos, again, it was only when I looked at the cast list that I noticed that the Minotaur, guardian of the crystal, was played by none other than Dave Prowse. Dave Prowse. The man who played the body of Darth Vader. The Green Cross Code Man. Dave flippin’ Prowse!

Yes, dear friends, I enjoyed the story so much that it never occurred to me once to ask – how the hell is the Doctor’s TARDIS working again? Because it is, with pinpoint accuracy. It’s hardly ever done that before. More to the point, how the hell can the Doctor dematerialise it, when all knowledge of dematerialisation theory and the dematerialisation codes has been removed from his memory? Even in “The Curse of Peladon” in the last episode the Doctor did suggest that it was all the Time Lords’ doing. In this one, nothing. Kronos’ birdman incarnation? Not great but meh, what you gonna do on a tiny budget?  Wobbly columns in the Minotaur fight? I’ve seen worse. No, d’you want to know the only thing that really bothered me about the design? In that case, you need to come back with me to 1982. It’s a Friday morning, and I’m on the island of Ios. I discover that there’s no ferry to Crete until the Sunday – and I really want to go to Crete. So I decide to get a ferry to Thira/Santorini and take my chances of getting a boat from there. If you haven’t ever been to Santorini, and you get the chance, leap at it. I took the cable car to the town at the top of the rim of the extinct volcano (did I mention that the town is built on the rim od an extinct volcano?) and was told in the travel office that yes, there was a boat to Crete, leaving in about 20 minutes from the port on the other side of the island. After the scariest taxi ride I have ever had in my life I made it with a couple of minutes to spare. I spent a wonderful night in the doorway of the bus station in Iraklion (actually it was wonderful, but that’s another story for another day), and the next day I was on the first bus out to Knossos to see the Minoan Palace. Those couple of days have stayed as full colour memories for the whole of my life since. So, coming back to the design of the Atlantean episodes of “The Time Monster” what I found really bugged me was that they’d got so much right in the design, what with the costumes and the sets, but they’d used Greek columns rather than Minoan columns which are very distinctive and completely different from Greek ones. I’m a hopeless case.

I do like the redesigned TARDIS interior though. The painted backdrop of roundels used for one wall since the earliest days in the show have gone now, probably for good. The only difference I could notice between the Master’s TARDIS and the Doctor’s was that the Master had a shiny metal arrangement inside the central column, while the Doctors’ had an arrangement of green and pink neon tubes.

Well, that was “The Time Monster”. Completely bonkers, and yet thoroughly enjoyable from the first minute until the last.

What Have We Learned?

Chronovores have a strange sense of humour, and a terrible sense of décor.

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.

-----------------

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”.