233 The Seeds of Death: Episode Two

EPISODE: The Seeds of Death: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 233
STORY NUMBER: 048
TRANSMITTED: 01 February 1969
WRITER: Brian Hayles
DIRECTOR: Michael Ferguson
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who Revisitations Box Set - Volume 2 (Seeds of Death, Carnival of Monsters & Resurrection of the Daleks)

hahahaha. I pressed the Play All option on the DVD for episode 1, but I've dropped into the Select Episode menu to pick episode two. There's the audio for a trailer for the story playing over the selection screen.

The Ice Warriors force technician Fewsham to fix the damaged emergency T-Mat link. Eldred says he's too old to go up in his rocket so the Doctor, Jamie & Zoe volunteer. The rocket is prepared for launch. The Ice Warriors on the moon hunt the missing technician Phipps. The Ice Warriors tell Fewsham they do not need an army to take Earth and it will be there's for the taking very soon. The rocket launches, but the video communication link cuts out. The Doctor temporarily restores communication before smoke fills the cabin. The emergency T-Mat link is reactivated: Miss Kelly and a technician team use it to go to the moon. Phipps attempts to contact Earth control. Phipps kills an Ice Warrior using solar power but in the process cuts out the homing beam that the Doctor's rocket is homing in on leaving them unable to land....

Another slow episode here. There's more Doctor, but he's separated from the main action for most of the episode. Even when he travels to the moon someone else from Earth gets there first. But the Ice Warriors have more of a screen presence here even if they do look like they're waddling down the corridors of the moonbase. Like the Ice Warriors point of view shots in episode one, there's a couple of nice little touches here. I liked the round monitor screen showing the action as the countdown occurred but I swear at one point there was a QR Code/Data Matrix Code, one of those black & white squares you can read with a mobile, pop up on the screen (thanks to Mohamed Ansar and Tim Walker for reminding me what they were called when I couldn't remember!)

Ooooh! Sticking strictly to the episode count for the original series, we're 1/3 of the way through our journey today. Ish. As we'll see later counting Doctor Who episodes isn't a strictly accurate business. You could easily add 19 onto this number to take into account a longer special and 16 double length episodes and/or subtract 6 episodes because Shada was never transmitted? Not 100% sure how I'm going to do that story but that's a matter for May next year..... But I've got the Video so it'll get looked at......somehow. Do you include the McGann Movie in the original episode count? What about K9 and Company? Can or worms, nearly as bad as UNIT dating, would rather not go there. Anyhow my list says there's 701 original episodes of Doctor Who so we'll stick to that number. For now.........

Episode 2 of the Seeds of Death exists as a high quality fine grain 16mm print. When Seeds of Death was released as a compilation video in the 1980s the jump in quality from episode 1 to 2 was huge and noticed by almost everyone who watched it.