Saturday 30 June 2012

585 Time-Flight Part Four

EPISODE: Time-Flight Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 585
STORY NUMBER: 124
TRANSMITTED: Tuesday 30 March 1982
WRITER: Peter Grimwade
DIRECTOR: Ron Jones
SCRIPT EDITOR: Eric Saward
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 8.3 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Time-Flight/ Arc of Infinity

The part of the Xeraphim that is Professor Hayter projects himself into the Tardis control room taking it to the sarcophagus chamber to rescue The Doctor, Nyssa & Tegan. The Doctor moves the Tardis outside the chamber and dispatches it with Nyssa & the Concorde crew to prepare the aircraft for take off. He and Tegan attempt to recover the pieces of the Tardis the Master has stolen but discover the Master has gutted the Kalid's control room. The Master discovers he cannot leave this time period because he stole the wrong component from the Doctor's Tardis and bargains the lives of the original Concorde's crew & passengers for the correct circuits. The Doctor cobbles together a replacement using it to get the Tardis and Concorde back to Heathrow where the Master's Tardis appears and is deflected into the time vortex by the Doctor's toward the present day planet of Xeraphas. In some confusion with security guards the Doctor is forced to make a quick exit in the Tardis resulting in Tegan being left behind.

Takes deep breath........

I missed the first few minutes of this on the original broadcast and it didn't make sense. I've watched it all the way through now and it still doesn't. I'll accept that maybe the Xeraphim are powerful enough to be able to project Hayter into the Tardis but to suddenly control it with that much precision? How is the Doctor able to cobble together replacement circuits to enable his Tardis to move in time when the Master couldn't & didn't? Just how does the "knocking the Master's Tardis back into the Time Vortex" work? and how does the Doctor know where he'll end up? I suppose he may have hard coded both the Heathrow co-ordinates and those for Xeraphas into the component before giving it to the Master but really I just don't care cos it's an awful mess from start to finish that is going straight on the "I don't have to watch you again" pile with The Sensorites, The Space Pirates and Underworld. (Plus Face of Evil now it's on DVD). The gap from the superb Earthshock to here is HUGE.

Actually having looked the transmission times for the episodes up I discover *why* I missed the start. In general odd numbered Season 19 episodes, on a Monday, aired at 18.55 and the even numbered episodes, on a Tuesday, aired at 19.05. Confusing to start with I know, you'd have thought they'd be on at the same time. Well for some reason this episode aired at 18:50 an entire 15 minutes earlier than normal.

Still Tegan being left behind is quite a clever little touch which got the series a few column inches in print as people threw there arms up at another companion vanishing. as we'll see that may be another slight bit of misdirection....

Thankfully, later that summer, the BBC provided a repeat season of earlier stories to wipe away the memory of this tosh. My memory has it that Doctor Who & The Monsters came into existence when the the BBC's Monday night American import series (possibly Bret Maverick) ended early. Three stories were chosen to represent each of the Doctor's major monsters and each edited into two 50 minute compilations. On the 12th to 19th July the recently recovered colour copy of the Curse of Peladon (representing the Ice Warriors) was aired followed by Genesis of the Daleks on 26th July & 2nd August and finally Earthshock (for the Cybermen) on the 9th & 16th August. There were no summer repeats of other stories from season 19 shown that year, but two would be shown during the summer of 1983 and another during the summer of 1984.

Later that autumn, in the penultimate weekend of October, two science fiction landmarks occurred on ITV. On Saturday 23rd the first episode of Star Fleet, the English translation of X-Bomber, aired. Then on the Sunday Star Wars aired on UK Television for the first time.

Time Flight was novelised by the story's author Peter Grimwade in 1983. It was released on video in July 2000 and on DVD on 6th August 2007 as part of a boxset containing Time-Flight and the following story Arc of Infinity.

Friday 29 June 2012

584 Time-Flight Part Three

EPISODE: Time-Flight Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 584
STORY NUMBER: 124
TRANSMITTED: Monday 29 March 1982
WRITER: Peter Grimwade
DIRECTOR: Ron Jones
SCRIPT EDITOR: Eric Saward
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 9.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Time-Flight/ Arc of Infinity

The Master attempts to steal the Tardis but the Doctor has left the co-ordinate ovrload on forcing it to return to the Mausoleum. The Doctor & Hayter direct the now freed passengers & crew into penetrating the sanctum where they reach Nyssa & Tegan. They find it contains a Sacophagus with a being on huge power within. Stapley & Bilton hide in the Tardis, attempting to stop the Master from using it but he removes the components he needs and then sends the Tardis away to hover over the Mausoleum. The Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan & Hayter are confronted by a projection of a being. It tells them that he is Anithon, and that the entirity of his race the Xeraphin is stored in the sarcophagus, merged into one being. He wishes to help the Doctor but is opposed by another Xeraphin, Zarak, who believes the Master's promise of power. They try to bring Nyssa into the Xeraphin gestalt but Hayter takes her place and has his body destroyed. The Sarcophagus vanishes, taken into the Master's Tardis.

No, I'm sorry I haven't a clue what was going on there. Lots of wordy explanation that just didn't make sense. A vast proportion of the action takes place in the chamber containing the sarcophagus and that just looks like a cheap fibreglass shell.

Playing Professor Hayter is Nigel Stock, the only actor other than Patrick McGoohan to play Number Six in The Prisoner during the mind swap episode Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling. McGoohan was away while this episode was being filmed making Ice Station Zebra, mainly to finance the production of the remaining Prisoner episodes! Richard Easton (Captain Stapley) was probably best known for playing Brian Hammond in the BBC serial The Brothers. I've never seen The Brothers but many of it's cast get roles in Doctor Who around this time, the most important one being in the very next story..... Bilton, Stapley's first officer, is played by Michael Cashman shortly to find fame as Colin Russel in Eastenders where he would come to national attention being involved in the first gay kiss in a UK soap opera. Since 1999 he has served as a Labour MEP.

Thursday 28 June 2012

583 Time-Flight Part Two

EPISODE: Time-Flight Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 583
STORY NUMBER: 124
TRANSMITTED: Tuesday 23 March 1982
WRITER: Peter Grimwade
DIRECTOR: Ron Jones
SCRIPT EDITOR: Eric Saward
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 8.5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Time-Flight/ Arc of Infinity

The beings surrounding the Doctor ask for his help telling him they are Plasmatons before releasing them. The Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa & Captain Stapley encounter Professor Hayter, a passenger on the first Concorde who has resisted the hypnotic control the other passengers have fallen under. Kalid sends a controlled Plasmaton to subdue Nyssa who is being controlled telepathically to broadcast a warning. The Doctor leaves Tegan to look after Nyssa while he, Hayter & Stapley go to the Mausoleum where they find the crew and passengers of the other Concorde engaged in manual labour trying to break into a large object. The Doctor finds his way to the Kalid's control room and confronts him. His power distracted, Nyssa is free and she & Tegan go to the Mausoleum where they are confronted with illusions of Adric, The Melkur & a Terrileptil. Hayter & Stapley free the two members of Hayter's crew, Bilton & Scobie, but all four are transported to the Kalid's chamber and attacked by a Plasmaton beast. Nyssa and Tegan find their way to the source of the Kalid's power and disrupt it, the Plasmaton beast vanishing and Kalid collapsing to the floor. As the Doctor & Hayter examine the Kalid's equipment a familiar voice rings out and out from the decaying form of the Kalid's body steps the Master.

Just dreadful. The music doesn't suit the on screen action, the Plasmatons in their usual form look rubbish, the Kalid just doesn't work and the only decent set in the program, the Kalid's chamber, is ruined when you see the join between walls and floor. Ugh.

The illusions in this episode feature Matthew Waterhouse as Adric. During season 19, 20 & 21 two episodes were shown on consecutive days and to save space in the Radio Times both episodes shared a single cast listing. By having him appear here in a speaking role the character got a credit for the two episodes in that week's Radio Times, which was released before Earthshock 4 aired, so there wouldn't be the slightest suspicion that he would die in the final episode of Earthshock. Reprising his (uncredited) role as the Melkur is occasional Cyberman & the future PC Tony Stamp in The Bill, actor Graham Cole.

Wednesday 27 June 2012

582 Time-Flight Part One

EPISODE: Time-Flight Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 582
STORY NUMBER: 124
TRANSMITTED: Monday 22 March 1982
WRITER: Peter Grimwade
DIRECTOR: Ron Jones
SCRIPT EDITOR: Eric Saward
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 10.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Time-Flight/ Arc of Infinity

Heathrow Airport tracks the loss of one of it's Concorde aircraft by radar. Affected by the same disturbance the Tardis is forced onto Heathrow's flightpath and then into the terminal buildings where the Doctor uses his UNIT credentials to explain their presence and is co-opted into the investigation. He has the Tardis loaded onto a second Concorde flight which also vanishes from Heathrow's radar but the crew find they have landed at the airport. The Doctor proves it is an illusion and they are in fact in a barren prehistoric landscape with the original Concorde. While the Doctor & Tegan investigate a spaceship wreck the Tardis is seized by passengers from the first flight and taken away to the citadel of the wizard Kalid who is observing proceedings. Two of the crew of the Doctor's Concorde pursue their colleagues but are surrounded by grey alien creatures and teleported away. When the Doctor returns the creatures come for him too....

You know what this is ? It's "we've done a deal with Heathrow Airport to use it and a Concorde in a program. Look everyone - it's Concorde!" And while the location work at Heathrow looks realistic, aided by a layer of snow, the alien landscape in the studio is poor, looking like it's a studio, and the script by first time writer but successful director Peter Grimwade is somewhat pedestrian. And of course as soon as we see Heathrow we're thinking "Gatwick Airport" & "Faceless Ones".

It's nice to see the events of the last episode referenced as the Doctor tries to explain why he couldn't go back for Adric..... but fails completely. My point from yesterday stands: There's a considerable gap in time between the escape pod launching and the freighter being destroyed, how does the Doctor know what has happened on the bridge during this time? Why doesn't he land the Tardis on the bridge the moment the escape pod leaves and rescues Adric? Still it's good to know Scott, Briggs, Berger and the remaining Trooper don't get marooned on prehistoric Earth forever. It's also nice to see the Doctor's connection with UNIT being given it's first mention in the series for donkeys years. UNIT would have been relatively fresh in viewers' minds following the repeats of The Three Doctors during the Five Faces of Doctor Who the previous November.

I find it rather humorous that having spent most of the season trying to get Tegan back to Heathrow airport that it's only when she's decided she wants to stay and he's aiming for somewhere else that the Tardis lands there!

On first viewing in 1982 I found the figure of the Kalid (poor choice of name considering there's a significant alien race in Doctor Who called the Kaleds) an interesting figure, surrounded by technology in the middle of the prehistoric landscape. He must be a survivor of the crashed spaceship the Doctor and Tegan found. The Kalid's credited actor is Leon Ny Taiy..... The Captain of the first Concorde, Captain Urquhart, is played by John Flint who was William des Preaux in The Crusade. Andrews, the head of security at Heathrow, is a familiar figure to sit com viewers in the 80s: he's played by Peter Cellier who was in Yes Minister and it;s sequel Yes, Prime Minister as Sir Frank Gordon, the Permanent Secretary to HM Treasury. When I saw Horton, the radar operator played by Peter Dahlsen, all I could think of was how much he reminded me of Fred Mumford, the original lead character in Rentaghost played by Anthony Jackson. It doesn't help that his superior Sheard, played by Brian McDermott pays more than a passing resemblance to Edward Brayshaw (Reign of Terror/The War Games) who was Mr Meeker in Rentaghost!

There is a rather ominous milestone we must mark with this episode: This is the last time the original series of Doctor Who records a viewing figure over the 10 million mark.

Tuesday 26 June 2012

581 Earthshock Part Four

EPISODE: Earthshock Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 581
STORY NUMBER: 123
TRANSMITTED: Tuesday 16 March 1982
WRITER: Eric Saward
DIRECTOR: Peter Grimwade
SCRIPT EDITOR: Antony Root
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 9.6 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Earthshock

The Cybermen attach a device to the navigation system to control the ship. The Cybermen lock the ship on a course for Earth turning it into a bomb to disrupt a conference aimed at uniting races against the Cybermen. The Cybermen plan to leave the freighter before it impacts with Earth. Scott returns to the Tardis, with Kyle killed by a Cyberman trying to gain entry to the ship. Tegan is captured and taken to the bridge where the Cyberleader threatens her to exert control over the Doctor. Scott takes the remainder of his troopers to rescue the Doctor. The majority of the reactivated Cybermen leave the ship via the airlock. The Doctor & Tegan are taken to the Tardis with Adric left with Captain Briggs & Berger on the bridge. The Tardis leaves the ship as Scott and his troopers storm the bridge freeing the crew and Adric. They re-barricade the bridge against the remaining Cybermen as the Freighter pursued by the Tardis nears Earth. Adric works on cracking the logic codes to release the navigational systems. The Cybermen device starts to interfere with the ship's warp drive taking it back in time. Adric cracks the second code taking the freighter out of warp as Briggs gains access to the escape pod. The drag Adric away but as the doors close he slips out of the escape pod to try to enter the final code. The Doctor tells Nyssa & Tegan that they have travelled back in time 65 million years to the time of the Dinosaurs: the freighter will be the meteorite that destroyed them. Scott reports to the Tardis that they have escaped but Adric is still aboard. The Cyberleader destroys the communicator and is going to kill the Doctor when Tegan distracts him allowing the Doctor to grate Adric's badge into his breathing apparatus damaging him and allowing him to be killed with his own weapon. A dying Cyberman enters the bridge of the ship destroying the terminal that Adric is using. Unable to unlock the ship's computer it crashes into the Earth killing Adric.

That's a huge shock at the end! For the second time in this story you get an episode dominated by it's ending as Adric dies in the freighter's impact on Earth and the episode closes with no music, as the credits scroll, for the first time since The War Games, over a black background showing the remains of Adric's damaged badge. Apparently the idea for the end titles comes from an episode of Coronation Street which ran it's end titles without music following a famous death. Producer John Nathan-Turner remembered this and decided to use it on Doctor Who. (Incidentally the current producer of Coronation Street is Phil Collinson, producer on the first four years of the new series of Doctor Who). If I have one criticism about this episode is there's a musical cue, reused from earlier episodes that keeps cropping up. You get bored of it after a while!

Did Adric deserve to die? At the time I'd have said no, but re watching the stories now he's quite annoying as a character. As someone says on the DVD "When will program makers learn that we hate boy geniuses?" The four main characters has proved slightly too much this season which has led to a situation where one or more of them has been sidelined somehow in many of the stories. Given that there are three companions and one needs to go Adric is the obvious choice to my mind.

More Cyber'tropes during this episode: spacewalking Cybermen (to escape the ship) were seen in the Moonbase & The Wheel in Space while a particularly bonkers plan is a trademark of nearly every Cyberman story..... except I don't think it is here. Their plan A is the bomb in the caves devastates Earth as they approach it in the Freighter and the Cybermen from the freighter make their way to the shattered Earth to subdue the survivors. (How did the bomb and Androids get there? Smuggled in previously, possibly by Ringway on a previous run). This plan goes out the window when the bomb is deactivated by the Doctor so from there on they're improvising plan B: hit Earth with the freighter after the Cybermen have been evacuated.

I've had a continuity error in this episode pointed out to me (courtesy of the Earthshock Fact of Fiction in Doctor Who magazine 441) that I can't not see now: As Scott approaches the Tardis with his three remaining troopers the female trooper at the rear is grabbed by a Cyberman stopping her from entering the Tardis. Yet the female trooper is the first of the two trooper entering the Tardis console room and survives for a little while longer. Older fans would have been watching this scene and been up in arms with what follows as guns are fired in the Tardis console room: Didn't the Doctor say the inside of the Tardis existed in a state of temporal grace, preventing weapons from being used, in Hand of Fear? There's several guns discharged in it during this episode, and at one point the Doctor himself uses one, dispatching the Cyberleader with his own weapon. I'm not 100% sure how I feel about that because, as we commented in Seeds of Doom, using a gun isn't a very Doctorish thing to do. Here however.... his Tardis is invaded, the Earth is under threat of destruction and he's racing to get back to the freighter to rescue the crew & Adric.

So why doesn't the Doctor go back and rescue Adric? Yes the console has been damaged in the struggle with the Cybermen but what's to stop him going back later? There's a considerable gap in time between the escape pod launching and the freighter being destroyed, how does the Doctor know what has happened on the bridge during this time? Why doesn't he land the Tardis on the bridge the moment the escape pod leaves and rescues Adric? The Time Warp doesn't seem to be affecting the freighter by this point. It's a small plot hole, but it bothers me. It's perhaps surprising that there aren't more major problems with the story because Earthshock was written by then script editor Eric Saward as a rush replacement for Christopher Priest's The Enemy Within, which was the second script by Priest, following 18 story Sealed Orders intended for Tom Baker's last season. Priest was not asked to write for the series again.

Obviously Earthshock is Adric's last appearance in Doctor Who and thus should be Matthew Waterhouse's last association with the show. But in order to keep Adric's death a secret a cameo appearance as an illusion in Time Flight was organised thus necessitating a Radio Times credit for the following week. He'll return in the Fifth Doctor's final episode Caves of Androzani as a regeneration induced hallucination and in fact the Fifth Doctor's final word is "Adric" indicating his regret at the death here. He has recently released an autobiography entitled Blue Box Boy but I suspect you'll have difficulty obtaining a copy now.....

It's also (incredibly) the last directing appearance for Peter Grimwade (but he's got three stories as a writer to come). Earthshock cemented his reputation as a good director that could deliver a high class product even if, as related on the DVD, he didn't get on that well with the cast. He was slated to direct Warhead, the closing story of the 20th season, which ended up being cancelled due to a strike.

I love Earthshock: I think it's a great story and it had a lasting impact on me and Doctor Who. Adric's death says that being a companion is not a safe business and makes you worry about the companions survival. It brings back the Cybermen and establishes them as the monster for the Eighties. The design is basically the same for the rest of the decade with only minor tweaks. They become John Nathan Turner's "go to" monster doing most of the work on location for the 20th anniversary story, The Five Doctors, opening the show's 22nd season in the Attack of the Cybermen and starring as the monster in the show's official 25th anniversary story, Silver Nemesis. The story cements Eric Saward's reputation as writer and Peter Grimwade's as director which leads to their pairing again for Warhead. Unfortunately, as we'll see, events there sow the seeds for behind the scenes trouble which will haunt the program during the mid eighties. And while the grim and gritty style of this story proved popular at the time, it sets the story as a template that the show will try to use again (Warhead again!) and then on a downward path towards complaints of violence and horror against the show which are if anything greater than those in the Seventies.

But there's no doubting that Earthshock was a hit at the time, with only the second episode dipping (just) bellow 9 million viewers. So it's no surprise when it was repeated as two 50 minute omnibus editions that summer to close the "Doctor Who and the Monsters" repeat season on the 9th & 16th August 1982. It was novelised by Ian Marter in 1983, the latest story in the series that he adapted. After this point he specialises in older Hartnell & Troughton stories, returning to the Cybermen in print in the superb Invasion. Marter died on 28th October 1986 on his 42nd birthday. Earthshock was released on video in September 1992. I can remember it being shown - with Unearthly Child 1 and Destiny of the Daleks - at a video night to celebrate Doctor Who's 30th anniversary when I was at University. It was released on DVD on 18th August 2003. You need to buy a copy.

Monday 25 June 2012

580 Earthshock Part Three

EPISODE: Earthshock Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 580
STORY NUMBER: 123
TRANSMITTED: Monday 15 March 1982
WRITER: Eric Saward
DIRECTOR: Peter Grimwade
SCRIPT EDITOR: Antony Root
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 9.8 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Earthshock

The Cybermen identify the Doctor and decide to secure the freighter. Scott wants to go & search for the Doctor. The Doctor & Adric are taken to the bridge for interrogation as the Cyberleader's personal guard is activated and the bridge notices a power surge from the hold which the Tardis also detects. Cybermen come to life tearing off their plastic covering. The Doctor's story about a bomb isn't believed by the captain. The size of the power loss is huge compared to the smaller ones seen before. The Freighter's crew are armed as more power drains are detected. Lt Scott takes his troopers and Tegan to find the Doctor, leaving a communicator with Nyssa & Kyle in the Tardis. Ringway has the stairs to the bridge barricaded. The intruders show up on the monitor and the Doctor identifies them as Cybermen. They easily penetrate the barricade and prepare to take the bridge. Ringway holds the command crew at gunpoint to prevent them resisting the Cybermen. Adric realises his badge for mathematical excellence has a gold edge, which can harm Cybermen. This attracts Ringway's attention allowing him to be overcome and the bridge sealed against the advancing Cybermen. The Captain realises that each of her 15,000 silos contains Cybermen. The troopers attack two Cybermen killing one and seizing it's gun but the other injured one escapes. The Cybermen use a thermal lance to cut through one of the doors but the Doctor uses the ship's anti matter power source to stabilise the door trapping an entering Cyberman. The wounded Cyberman finds it's leader and believing that there is more resistance he orders reinforcements activated. The Cybermen blow open the other door to the bridge and storm in, killing Ringway for betraying them. The Cyberleader tells the Doctor he will destroy Earth. All over the ship more Cybermen emerge. A scared Tegan is separated from Scott & the Troopers. The Doctor watches the huge number of Cybermen horrified as the Cyberleader tells him "My Army Awakes DOCTOR!"

Oh how good is that? Proper base under siege stuff with Cybermen everywhere by the end of the episode. Doctor Who gets flack for seemingly only ever having three of any monster but there's at least eight Cybermen in the shot of them walking towards the bridge, and then the shot at the end uses visual trickery to multiply the Cybermen out several times. When I said I would be watching this episode my friend and regular commentator Ralph Burns had this to say on the subject

My first memory of Who was of the Cybermen bursting out of the walls on the space freighter.

It made a life-long impression! Thinking about it, Doctor Who is the only hobby that I have consistently maintained man and boy and as far back as I can recall (Star Trek, Transformers, Douglas Adams' work, and Marvel Comics come close but all have axed and waned in interest level and have had periods where I didn't bother at all). The Earthshock moment is one of my earliest memories!

More Cyber faves in this episode. Cybermen in "suspended animation" storage ? Tomb of the Cybermen & The Invasion. Allergy to gold? Revenge of the Cybermen. In fact is this the first time a Cyber weakness has made it to a second story!

They don't give Ringway much of a chance do they? They already know the Doctor's aboard so why doesn't it occur to them that it might be some more of his friends causing the problems. There again Ringway's life expectancy probably wasn't huge after they took control.

We get our first proper look at the Cybermen's weapons here: I can remember being fascinated by them as they didn't have an obvious handle for the Cybermen to hold. The effect they produce is superb: a circular green glow round the barrel end when fired. It looks fab and works well. It'll be used for the next three stories until the Cybermen's minor redesign in Silver Nemesis when they're replaced by firework firing guns that I'm going to have a lot to say about when they turn up. These are fab, the replacements are rubbish.

One of the mass of Cybermen that appear in this episode is regular extra in a monster costume Graham Cole who'd previously been a Marshman in Full Circle and Melkur in Keeper of Traken, a role he'll briefly reprise shortly. He'll do another Cyberman in The Five Doctors, a crewman in Resurrection of the Daleks & a Jacondan in Twin Dillema before becoming PC Tony Stamp in The Bill. Clare Clifford, playing Professor Kyle, is another member of the Doctor Who guest cast with Angels on her CV. She now works as a stand up comic. Playing first office Berger is June Bland who'll return as Elizabeth Rowlinson in Battlefield.

Which brings us to series principle guest star: playing Captain Briggs is Beryl Reid. People make arguments, even on the DVD that she's woefully miscast and is meant to be a Sigourney Weaver/Aliens style marine. No. They've got it wrong. She's a world weary intergalactic freighter captain, essentially an intergalactic trucker who just wants to get to Earth on time, get her bonus and avoid her fine. It might be big name stunt casting but she does a perfectly good job here and I have no complaints at all.

Join us tomorrow for the finale and the real shock in Earthshock!

Sunday 24 June 2012

579 Earthshock Part Two

EPISODE: Earthshock Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 579
STORY NUMBER: 123
TRANSMITTED: Tuesday 09 March 1982
WRITER: Eric Saward
DIRECTOR: Peter Grimwade
SCRIPT EDITOR: Antony Root
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 8.8 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Earthshock

The Doctor has the Troopers concentrate all their fire on one Android damaging it, forcing them to retreat. The Doctor works out that they're guarding the hatch and has the troopers attack it, which brings the androids back and allows them to be destroyed. The Doctor opens the hatch and discovers a bomb behind it which arms when he opens the hatch. The Doctor shelters the troopers in the Tardis while he to jams the control signal to the bomb. The Cybermen attempt to boost their signal's power while the Doctor disarms the bomb. The Cybermen are suspicious as to how the Earthlings deactivated their bomb. The Doctor wonders who planted the bomb. The Cybermen review the recordings from the Androids and the identify the Tardis, and that a regenerated Doctor must be present. The Doctor traces the control signal for the bomb to sector 16 in deep space and is persuaded to take the troopers with him to help hunt for those who built the bomb. The Doctor apologises to Adric for their earlier argument and offers to take him home but Adric refuses. A deep space freighter waits for it's captain as it's first officer wonders about 3 disappearing crew members and malfunctioning security scans. The Tardis materialises in the hull and the Doctor & Adric go to explore. The Captain arrives complaining about the increased security due to a red alert on Earth for a security conference and the ship gets under way. Two crew members on patrol think they see something and follow it. Someone reports to the Cyberleader that the freighter is under way and that there is worry about the missing crewmen. The Cyberleader tells him that there are intruders in the hold that will serve as scapegoats. The Doctor & Adric think they're being followed and are detected by the crew. The Doctor & Adric then hear the screams of the dying crewmen as a general alert goes off. They find the bodies, with injuries the Doctor thinks he recognises, but are then found by Ringway who tells them that on this ship we execute murderers.

You know what this is? It's the Cybermen's greatest hits! Bombs (Revenge of the Cybermen), Traitors (Revenge again), disappearing crew men (Moonbase) and Cybermen hiding in the background keeping their presence hidden (Moonbase again). They'll be a few more Cyber best bits to come in the next few episodes too. And that before we get to the clips from previous stories: William Hartnell in Tenth Planet 2, Patrick Troughton in Wheel in Space 6 (and not Tomb of the Cybermen as the story insinuates: Tomb was at the time missing from the archives and wouldn't return for another ten years) and Tom Baker from Revenge of the Cybermen 3.

We get our old favourite "We must act quickly!" making an appearance in this episode. Making it's first appearance is the Tardis toolkit, which the Doctor uses to defuse the bomb. It was documented in intricate detail in the Doctor Who Technical Manual and then reproduced for 1996 Paul McGann film.

How on earth does Ringway miss the Doctor and Adric walking through the hold on the scanner?

We get a proper look at the re-designed Cybermen this episode. The bodysuit is apparently a pilot's outfit recycled and resprayed. The Chest unit is a completely new design, much flatter than the boxes seen on the front of the Cybermen previously and coming up over the shoulders and round the neck. The head is obviously Cyberman, looking much like a more detailed version of the Invasion/Revenge helmet. Seen for the only time here is a perspex jaw panel allowing us to see sprayed silver flesh underneath reminding us that the Cybermen are, deep down, converted human beings. It's almost a shame that we don't see the captured crewmen being converted into Cybermen. We met David Banks yesterday, today he's joined by Mark Hardy, who'll serve as his Lieutenant (aka the other speaking Cyberman) in 3 of the 4 eighties Cyberman tale having previously been a Swampie in Power of Kroll. The Cyberleader gets to say "Excellent" for the first time today :-)

The clips in Earthshock part 2 weren't the only old Doctor Who we got to see that week. The BBC's television review program Did You See...? broadcast on Sunday 14th March showed a 10 minute feature on old Doctor Who monsters to tie in with the Cybermen's return. Amongst the clips shown were the Dalek coming out of the water in Dalek Invasion of Earth 2 and the Cybermen walking down St Paul's Steps in Invasion 6 as well as repeating the clip segment from this episode. Any old Doctor Who shown on TV was treasured by fans at the time and some new clips, to go with those regularly recycled on Blue Peter (Unearthly Child, Tenth Planet 4, Fury from the Deep, 3 Doctors & Genesis of the Daleks) and the Who's Doctor Who program were welcomed. This segment of Did You See...? is on the Earthshock DVD.

Saturday 23 June 2012

578 Earthshock Part One

EPISODE: Earthshock Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 578
STORY NUMBER: 123
TRANSMITTED: Monday 08 March 1982
WRITER: Eric Saward
DIRECTOR: Peter Grimwade
SCRIPT EDITOR: Antony Root
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 9.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Earthshock

This is one of those occasions where I'm going to say go away and order the DVD NOW if you haven't yet seen it. Trust me on this one. You will be making an excellent choice.

We need to look at this episode in two halves. I say halves but it really splits into "most of the program" and "the last 20 seconds". Why will become obvious..... As it is we're going to have to do this one blow by blow......

On Earth, in the year 2526, Professor Kyle has called in the Army to help search her seven colleagues lost surveying a fossil rich cave region.

A big hello here to the Helmets worn by the troopers. They'll go into the costume store and reappear again and again.

The sole location work for this story is the surface scenes at the mouth of the cave dig which were filmed at Springwell Quarry in Rickmansworth.

In the caves bellow two black clad figures wander the tunnels.
Dimly lit tunnels! Wooo! You might think this isn't an obvious thing to celebrate but it enhances the atmosphere no end when you can't quite see what's happening in the tunnels and that *something* should be there. Sadly as Doctor who goes on there's an increasing amount of overlighting sets so stuff filmed in a tunnel like this you'd be able to see everything in perfect detail. Credit to director Peter Grimwade (Full Circle, Logopolis, Kinda).

There's two of these black clad figures identified as Male and Female. The actor playing the male one is Barney Lawrence, a regular extra on the series who'd been a Marshman in Full Circle (uncredited in part 1), a guard in State of Decay (uncredited) and a Foster in The Keeper of Traken (uncredited). Uncredited here again he'll return as a seabase guard in Warriors of the Deep (uncredited).

Scott's line here "I realise going down again must be hard" is one of the all time greatest double entendres in the entirety of Doctor Who.

As the party of army troopers, led by Lieutenant Scott, makes it's way into the tunnels, two trooper, Walters & Snyder, are left on the surface detect odd momentary flares on their lifeform scanner. The Doctor & Adric argue in the Tardis with Adric insisting he wants to return home to E-Space. The Doctor says no but Adric insists on making the calculations.
This is the first time we've seen Adric's bedroom in the Tardis. Instead of the traditional walls with roundels he's got our old friend the tessellating triangle/hexagon patterned panels seen ad nauseum since The Mutants
One of the troopers, Baines, is injured and is taken back towards the surface while the communications between surface and the party underground are disrupted. The Doctor materialises in tunnels and the Doctor goes out for a walk, with Nyssa & Tegan accompanying him, leaving Adric in the Tardis to make his calculations.
The Doctor's Line "I'm going out, I may be sometime" is a famous quote from Captain Oates, a member of Robert Scott's Terra Nova Antarctic Expedition, as he walked from his tent in a blizzard to die. Note that the commanding officer of the Troopers is also Lieutenant Scott, played by actor James Warwick. He's one of the few actors from Doctor Who with a Babylon 5 episode on his CV, appearing in Exogenesis as Matthew Duffin. He has also voiced Qui Gon Jinn in many Star Wars computer games.
On the surface the scanning team pick up the Doctor, Nyssa & Tegan in the tunnels, and transmit the position to the troopers in the tunnels. Snyder leaves Walters on the surface and descends to help the wounded party. Nyssa finds dinosaur bones in the tunnel walls leading the Doctor to explain to her that he believes the Dinosaurs were wiped out by an Asteroid impact.
Hang the loaded gun on the wall.....
The wounded party encounter the black figures in the tunnels and their signals flare & disappear on the life form scanner as Snyder hears their screams before her signal too disappears.
The shot of Snyder's remains with her name badge lying in a gooey mess stayed with me as a child: for some reason the white panel, with that black font reminded me of a Smarties packet!
The troopers stop to rest and Walters informs Scott of the disappearance of Snyder & the wounded party. Sgt Mitchell takes a couple of troopers back to look for the missing men. Walters detects more scanner flaring close to Mitchell. Scott, Kyle & the Army party arrive at the dig site as Mitchell's team find the remains of their colleagues. They encounter the black figures and report to Walters but are cut off. The Doctor, Nyssa & Tegan enter the dig chamber and are captured by Scott and his party who blame them for the deaths of Kyle's team and Scott's missing soldiers. The Doctor protests his innocence. In the Tardis Adric detects an odd signal.
The music heard here is a little audio clue to what's coming.
The rockfall in the cavern is cleared, personal effects of the missing archaeological team are found and a hatch is uncovered. The Doctor is ordered to open it but as he goes to they are attacked by the black clad figures. The troopers return fire while everyone takes covers and the Doctor identifies their attackers as androids.
Loved those laser blasts as a child
Kyle recognises the androids as the killers and wonders why they were attacked by them, saying that there's no reason for them to do so. The Doctor replies that whoever's controlling the Androids thinks there is.....
Dimly lit tunnels, an almost unseen menace stalking & killing people, the Doctor mistaken as a murderer. It's all fabulous stuff and a really decent episode of Doctor Who. Doctor Who does Troopers in the future hunting for something years before Aliens. Top work from Peter Grimwade. But just a few seconds later and you'll have forgotten all but the sketchiest of details due to what happens next .. ...
Everything the Androids see is relayed to a control room elsewhere where three giant silver figures stand watching. Their leader orders the androids to "Destroy them, destroy them at once!"

Yes, the Cybermen are back! For the first time since 1975 (excepting the cameo in Logopolis and the planned appearance in Shada) the Cybermen are in a Doctor Who story. There's a generation of children who would have grown up not knowing who the Doctor's second greatest enemy was because the show had lost it's reliance on returning monsters after after Tom Baker's first year. Since then the Daleks have been in the show once in 7 years and the Sontarans once. The Master's appeared four times but three of them have been in the relative recent past. But I saw this and I knew immediately who these silver robot things were. By the time Earthshock came out I'd probably read several Doctor Who books with the Cybermen in: Revenge & Tomb were in my local library and The Cybermen (Moonbase) was an early purchase all of which featured a very similarly styled Cyberman on the cover.

And the lengths that the BBC went to to conceal their presence was huge: The live feed from the cameras wasn't shown on monitors in TV Centre as recording happened. John Nathan-Turner turned down a Radio Times cover to promote the story. David Banks and Mark Hardy were credited in that week's Radio Times as "Leader" and "Lieutenant" respectively without a hint of the word Cyber being used. But it did the trick: the buzz in the playground the next day was "Did you see Doctor Who last night? The Cybermen are back!"

Earthshock is perhaps the last time that Doctor Who manages to do anything big in secret without people knowing about it and, as we'll see, it does it twice. The New Series has had two goes. One worked: nobody knew Billy Piper was in series 4 until she appeared in the closing moments of Partners in Crime. The other earlier one, the appearance of the Daleks in Army of Ghosts/Doomsday they very nearly got away. Unfortunately at the National Television Awards, shortly before the show aired, a Dalek was requested for some publicity photos. The props department sent the black Dalek Sec which at that point hadn't appeared in the series clueing fans in that the Daleks were coming back. Surprisingly this wasn't picked up on in the press who at the time were taking a big interest in the series to the extent that certain details were showing up in National Newspapers only known to certain high ups at the program. You can read Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter by Russell T Davies for constant references to plot details being given away and RTD wondering how the press had got hold of the information. Since that book was published Christopher Eccleston revealed he had been phone hacked.....

Since this is the first appearance of the new Cybermen we need to say a big hello to the actor playing the Cyberleader, David Banks. He'll return to the role for all of the Cybermen's appearances during the 1980s and his excellent performance will do much to shape the perception of the Cybermen.

Most of you will be aware I've got a few blog entries in advance for the blog. Well over time the lead has got quite substantial. The first time I got to 50 episodes ahead I thought I was doing well. Then I got to 100 hundred episodes and spotted that I was getting close to only needing to watch 4 episodes a week for the rest of the blog's time period. 2 weeks ago, the last weekend in February 2012 I started the Davison episodes and shortly afterwards I spotted that the 30th anniversary of this episode was fast approaching. Consequently I watched it on the morning of 8th March 2012, exactly 30 years after it originally aired.

Friday 22 June 2012

577 Black Orchid Part Two

EPISODE: Black Orchid Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 577
STORY NUMBER: 122
TRANSMITTED: Tuesday 02 March 1982
WRITER: Terence Dudley
DIRECTOR: Ron Jones
SCRIPT EDITOR: Eric Saward
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 10.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Black Orchid

The Doctor finds Lady Cranleigh & Latoni and shows them the body he's found. They take him back to his room where he changes into his returned costume. Anne meanwhile has been put to bed by a hideously disfigured man. When she awakens she finds Lady Cranleigh and Latoni rebinds the disfigured man. The Doctor comes to the party in costume where he is identified as the assailant by Anne and arrested by Sir Robert Muir, the chief constable of the county, a guest at the ball. Lady Cranleigh refuses to give the Doctor an alibi. The Doctor tells Muir of a second dead body, but when he is taken to the cupboard it is empty and the Doctor is taken away with his companions. The Doctor asks to be taken to the railway station but when they get there the Tardis is gone. They are taken to the police station where the Tardis sits in the yard and the Doctor unlocks it admitting the Police Man. The disfigured man escapes again, setting a fire. The police receive a call that another body has been found and the Doctor takes them to the manor in the Tardis. The figure confronts Lord and Lady Cranleigh, but when the Doctor & his friends enter he mistakes Nyssa for Anne and seizes her. Lady Cranleigh admits the man is her elder son George. Charles confronts his brother on the roof of the burning manor, and the Doctor talks him into releasing Nyssa, proving she is not Anne. George falls to his death from the roof. The Doctor stays for the funeral, and Lady Cranleigh presents him with a copy of George's book, The Black Orchid.

That's a novel for Doctor Who. Yes it's the first story since the Highlanders in 1966 not to feature any alien life form, and no science fiction element except the Tardis. But it could be the first Doctor Who story not to feature science fiction or historical events..... I suppose the Smugglers is it's nearest anticendant in Doctor Who: while not featuring actual historical events or figures it does feature a story set in a specific era. What it's most like is an Agatha Christie novel, in particular Hercule Poirot. You could see Poirot getting off the train, with Hastings being drafted into the cricket match and the fiance being Miss Lemon's double. I doubt you'd get away with the story as it is now, you could see some science fiction horror being inserted into it, perhaps having George slowly mutating as a result of contact with some alien artifact. The only problem with that is that perhaps that's a bit too reminiscent of Seeds of Doom. But it works as a story, it's something a bit different and it proves that the two part story is a viable format. And the fifty ish minutes that this story takes up are the equivalent length of one modern episode of Doctor Who.

This is the first two part story since the Sontaran experiment in 1975, which in turn was the only two parter outside the Hartnell era (1964's Edge of Destruction and 1965's The Rescue). Two parters are the solution in the fifth Doctor's era to the problem of having a season length that doesn't divide by 4, the preferred length of a story. But wait! Didn't John Nathan-Turner secure extra funding at the start of season 18, Tom Baker's last, to make a 28 episode season instead of the traditional 26 episode one? What happened to the extra money? I think we can safely say that 2 episodes worth of money went making K-9 & Company this year. Next year is only 22 episodes but would have been 26 if Warhead had been made (yup there's some strike action coming: see Enlightenment, King's Demons & Resurrection of the Daleks for details). The remaining two episodes worth were spent on The Five Doctors with the rest of the episode being paid for as a joint production with the Australian Broadcasting Commission.

Several of the cast here are known to us, or will be shortly. Probably the most famous face in this serial is Moray Watson as Chief Constable Sir Robert Muir. just look at that CV! Doctor Who and his Star Cops appearances are mere footnotes. Don't take IMDB's claim that he's the father of Emma Watson at face value: the famous one is a different person altogether! Playing Lord Charles Cranleigh is Michael Cochrane. He'll be back as Redvers Fenn-Cooper in Ghost Light, but before then we'll see his younger bother Martin Cochrane as Chellak in the The Caves of Androzani. And his wife's more famous sister as well...... Playing George Cranleigh (credited as The Unknown in the first episode & the Radio Times to disguise his true identity: there's more of this next episode!)is stuntman Gareth Milne who will be back doubling for Peter Davison in Warriors on the Cheap sorry I mean of the Deep. He'll work with Peter Davison again on Campion, which has a similar period setting. Ivor Salter plays Sergeant Markham: he was previously the Morok Commander in The Space Museum and Odysseus in The Myth Makers.

Black Orchid was repeated on 31st August & 1st September 1983, the third story from this season to get a repeat that summer. As to what happened to the 1982 repeat season..... well see the end of the next story. It was released as a novel by the story's author in Spetember 1986 (HB) and February 87 (PB), the last Peter Davison story to be released by Target Books leaving Resurrection of the Daleks un-novelised. It was released on video in July 1994 in a double pack with the preceding story, the Visitation, and on DVD on April 14th 2008.

One is a tinsy bit excited about tomorrow and the three days following....

Thursday 21 June 2012

576 Black Orchid Part One

EPISODE: Black Orchid Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 576
STORY NUMBER: 122
TRANSMITTED: Monday 01 March 1982
WRITER: Terence Dudley
DIRECTOR: Ron Jones
SCRIPT EDITOR: Eric Saward
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 9.9 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Black Orchid

In a country house a male nurse is murdered by an unseen assailant. The Tardis arrives at Cranleigh Halt railway station where the Doctor, in a case of mistaken identity, is invited to take part in a Cricket Match and then, following a decent performance, back to Cranleigh Manor for a fancy dress ball where it is discovered that Lord Charles Cranleigh's fiancée Anne is the exact double of Nyssa. Lord Cranleigh's mother shows the Doctor the Black Orchid, a flower brought back from the Amazon by her now deceased elder son George, a famous botanist. A figure, tied up in attic slips his bonds and escapes. The Doctor is given a Harlequin outfit while Nyssa & Anne wear identical costumes. The Doctor discovers a secret passage in his room and explores it, but while he is gone his costume is stolen. Lady Cranleigh is called away during the ball by an Amazonian, Latoni, who tells her his friend has escaped. A man dressed as the Harlequin arrives at the ball and dances with one of Anne/Nyssa. The Doctor finds a secluded attic room, and then a dead body in the house. The Harlequin dances Anne into the house where he assaults her, and then strangles a servant. Anne faints and the Harlequin moves in to strangle her.....

This isn't a bad episode at all.... now we look at it knowing what the unseen figure is but at the time when I first saw this I was wondering what sort of alien being the Cranleighs had in their attic! But oh dear, we're back with doubles again. We've done this a few times recently: We had a double of the Doctor in Meglos and a projection of Adric disguising he'd been kidnapped in Castrovalva. Now we get an exact double of Nyssa and someone doing dastardly deeds while wearing a costume the Doctor was scheduled to be wearing. Doubles appears to be a favourite of the current production team: we'll see it again in various forms in Arc of Infinity, Mawdryn Undead, Kings Demons & Resurrection of the Daleks plus it had at one point been planned as a plot element for The Five Doctors as well. Perhaps a slight amount of overuse?

The cricketing aspect of this episode ties in with the Doctor's costume but does throw up a problem. In Four to Doomsday the Doctor claims to have taken 5 wickets for New South Wales with his Chinamen. The Chinaman is a left handed slow bowler's delivery, here he is bowling with his right arm and, or so he claims, fast. Peter Davison genuinely dismissed one of the batsmen in this sequence and is obviously very pleased with the feat. He is confused at one point with the other cricketing doctor, W.G.Grace, who had been dead for some years by the time this story takes place in the 1920s.

The Railway station used in this episode was filmed at Quainton Road near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire which as well as bring part of BR was at one point also a far flung outpost of the Metropolitan line. it's popular with Television programs due to it's proximity to London and having steam locomotives on site (I've seen it in Midsomer Murders) but the steam footage here is actually taken from another BBC program, God's Wonderful Railway. The Police Station, seen in the second episode, is filmed nearby. The Cranleigh Manor exteriors were shot at Buckhurst House, which is located in Buckhurst Park, the major location for Castrovalva. Withyham Cricket Club, where the match was played, is also part of the same estate.

Wednesday 20 June 2012

575 The Visitation Part Four

EPISODE: The Visitation Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 575
STORY NUMBER: 121
TRANSMITTED: Tuesday 23 February 1982
WRITER: Eric Saward
DIRECTOR: Peter Moffatt
SCRIPT EDITOR: Antony Root
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 10.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Visitation

The Doctor frees Tegan & Mace from the Terileptil control. The Terileptil leader leaves for the city with the plague, sending the miller to secure the house and the Android to bring the Tardis to Earth. The Android scares off the men holding Adric and follows him back to the Tardis where Nyssa destroys it with the sonic device. Escaping from their cell the Doctor, Tegan & Mace free deactivate Terileptil control system. Adric brings the Tardis to the house and the Doctor seeks the Terileptil in the nearest city, London, by tracing some high technology emissions. They materialise outside a bakery where the Miller's horse & cart are waiting. Going inside they confront the Terileptils but in a scuffle the bakery is set on fire and the Soliton gas explodes. The Doctor has the remaining plague samples thrown in the fire and he makes an exit with his friends in the Tardis as Mace stays to fight the flames. As the Tardis leaves the London Street Name is revealed - Pudding Lane.

The Doctor causing The Great Fire of London is another entry into the cannon of his interference in/contribution to historical events including, but not limited to, the invention of fire, the burning of Rome, making sure the Battle of Stamford Bridge occurred and inventing the Trojan Horse. Historians argue as to whether the fire actually did contribute to stopping The Great Plague but here it foils the Terileptil plot.

The Visitation isn't a bad story, building on genuine historical event, the Plague & the Fire, and adding a science fiction twist to it. It's competently done, easily accessibly & understandable and there's not really a lot wrong with it. On the strength of this it's writer Eric Saward got the script editor's job and he'll be making an important contribution for the next few years.

The Visitation was repeated in 1983 as the first of that summer's repeat stories over the evenings of 15th to 18th August. The author novelised his script in 1982 and it was the first Target novel featuring the fifth Doctor to be released and the first to bear a photo cover. It was released on video in July 1994 in a double pack with the following story, Black Orchid, and on DVD in January 2004.

Tuesday 19 June 2012

574 The Visitation Part Three

EPISODE: The Visitation Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 574
STORY NUMBER: 121
TRANSMITTED: Monday 22 February 1982
WRITER: Eric Saward
DIRECTOR: Peter Moffatt
SCRIPT EDITOR: Antony Root
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 9.9 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Visitation

The Doctor's execution is interrupted by the village head man, who is controlled by the Terileptils, and has them locked up in the barn's harness room. The Terileptil leader attaches a slave bracelet to Tegan and she is put to work. Adric returns to the Tardis and aids Nyssa building the sonic device. The Terileptil leader reports to his compatriots that he has discovered group of time travellers and intends to acquire their ship. The Android attacks the barn taking the Doctor & Mace prisoner returning them to the house. The doctor confronts the Terileptil leader offering to take him home but he refuses, being a fugitive having escaped from the Tinclavic mines on Raaga, Adric goes to find the Doctor but is captured by villagers. The Terileptil has the miller load his cart with the chemical he has been developing. The Doctor tries to escape, but the Terileptil destroys his sonic screwdriver and tells him he has been developing a genetically modified plague to wipe out humanity. The Terileptil leaves, with the controlled Tegan given instructions to open the cage containing plague rats when he has gone. The Doctor tries to talk her out of it as her hand moves towards the fastening of the rat cage....

The Sonic Screwdriver 16 March 1967 - 22 March 1982: "I feel like I've lost an old friend" comments the Doctor. of course it would be easy enough for him to build a new one but, like K-9 previously, producer John Nathan-Turner had taken against it, feeling it was effectively a get out of jail free card for the series to do anything with, so it had to go. If only he could see it now....

There's some loose stuff round the edges of this episode that's worth thinking about: we discover the Terileptil leader has been creating a genetically enhanced version of the plague to wipe out humanity. Has he been conducting trials local to the house? In episode 1 Richard Mace says the plague has been worse here than in most places since the comet in the sky. It's not explicitly stated but it's worth thinking about.....

The Tinclavic Mines on Raaga will pop up again in a later story: episodes 613 & 614 The Awakening, also set in an English village.

Playing the Terileptil Leader is actor Michael Melia, then mainly known as an actor that played heavies. In 1990 he gained national recognition as Queen Vic LandlordEddie Royle in Eastenders. He's not the first actor to play a Queen Vic Landlord to appear in Doctor Who: Mike Reid (Frank Butcher) was in the War Machines. The Vic's most famous Landlord will be along in a short while (Episode 620 Resurrection of the Daleks part 2).

Two locations were used in this serial: The Tithe Barn in Hurley serves as the house but the woodland scenes are filmed at Black Park, previously the location for Adric's debut story Full Circle. Under the Heathrow flightpath (somewhat ironically as it's serving as Heathrow in the middle ages) filming was constantly interrupted by plane noise..... until the Heathrow air traffic controllers went on strike during the last day of filming enabling the shooting schedule, built around the plane times, to be completed far earlier than expected.

Monday 18 June 2012

573 The Visitation Part Two

EPISODE: The Visitation Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 573
STORY NUMBER: 121
TRANSMITTED: Tuesday 16 February 1982
WRITER: Eric Saward
DIRECTOR: Peter Moffatt
SCRIPT EDITOR: Antony Root
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 9.3 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Visitation

The Doctor reveals himself, having found a way through the illusionary but seemingly solid wall. He, his friends & Richard Mace explore the house's cellars, finding caged rats and an alien machine producing the flammable Soliton gas. They are in turn found by an Android, dressed as Death but while escaping from it Tegan & Adric are captured. Doctor, Nyssa & Mace find a half buried escape pod, but are trapped in it by villagers controlled by the alien visitors. Adric & Tegan are interrogated by an the Terileptil leader then flung in cell. They manage to get out of the cell but Tegan is recaptured as Adric escapes through the house's window. Nyssa is sent to the Tardis to build a sonic device to destroy the android while Doctor & Mace go to speak to the Miller who they had seen leaving the house. They are trapped in the Miller's barn by villagers and sentenced to death as plague carriers.

Good stuff again, not really a word wrong I can say about it! The "Oh no, not again" line at the end of the episode is a nod to the end of the third episode of Four to Doomsday where once again The Doctor is pushed to the floor and is about to be beheaded! The line dropped into the story that the Soliton gas, which the the Terileptils breath, is highly flammable will become significant later. As Terrance Dicks has been known to say "if you show a gun hanging on the wall you have to use it later"

Chronologically this is is Eric Saward's first involvement with Doctor Who. The script was developed under previous script editor Christopher H. Bidmead, who encouraged Saward to apply for the script editor's job when he left. He discovered that the post had already been filled by Antony Root who'd been given a 3 month attachment to the show but when Root left to work on Juliet Bravo Saward won the post and indeed ended up giving the final polish to his own script.

The Mace character is taken & adapted from some of Saward's previous scripting work for Radio 4. In these Mace is a Victorian actor/manager who becomes involved in strange mysteries but is otherwise similar to his Doctor Who version. He was played on the radio by Geoffery Matthews but on the TV by well known actor Michael Robbins, probably most famous for his appearances as Arthur Rudge, Stan Butler's brother in law in On The Buses.

Sunday 17 June 2012

572 The Visitation Part One

EPISODE: The Visitation Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 572
STORY NUMBER: 121
TRANSMITTED: Monday 15 February 1982
WRITER: Eric Saward
DIRECTOR: Peter Moffatt
SCRIPT EDITOR: Antony Root
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 9.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Visitation

1666: The squire and his family are settling down for the night when they are interrupted by first lights in the sky and then an inhuman visitor to their house. The Doctor is once again trying to return Tegan to Heathrow Airport in 1981 and while he gets the location right they find themselves some 300 hundred years too early. Chased away from the village they make the acquaintance of Richard Mace, an itinerant thespian, who shelters them in the barn he has been using. He tells them of the comet seen in the sky, and the Doctor takes an interest in the necklace he's wearing, an object he found in the hayloft. Nyssa finds powerpacks in the barn so the Doctor decides to call on the barn's owner, the local squire. When the door isn't answered the Doctor & Nyssa gain entry via an unlocked window, finding weapons missing, spilt gunpowder and a damaged powerpack. Exploring the house the Doctor is intrigued by a wall at the foot of a staircase. Nyssa admits Adric, Tegan & Mace but when they return to the staircase the Doctor has vanished and something locks them in.

Cracking episode that, fab. From the opening scenes with the family, through the richness of Mace's speech to the mystery of the ending. Job well done all round.

Amusingly two of the most famous actors in this story are killed off in the first few minutes. The Squire is played by John Savident who even then was reasonably well known. He'd recently done a memorable turn in the Blake's 7 episode Orbit as the scientist Egrorian but would later gain national recognition (and press notoriety) as Fred Elliot in Coronation Street. Anthony Calf (not to be confused with the Steve Coogan character Paul Calf) plays Charles, the Squire's son. He has a CV as long as your arm and is married to the actress Caroline Harker. The Squire's servant Ralph is played by John Baker, the only member of the entire cast with prior Who form having appeared in Colony in Space as a Timelord.

Saturday 16 June 2012

571 Kinda Part Four

EPISODE: Kinda Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 571
STORY NUMBER: 120
TRANSMITTED: Tuesday 09 February 1982
WRITER: Christopher Bailey
DIRECTOR: Peter Grimwade
SCRIPT EDITOR: Eric Saward
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 8.9 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Mara Tales (Kinda / Snakedance)

Karuna leaves Aris' party of Kinda tribesman and returns to the cave. The Doctor tells her that Panna is dead but she says she is Panna. While Hindle, with Sanders' aid, builds a cardboard city populated with cut out people Aris has the Kinda construct a wooden replica of the TSS. With it he confronts the real TSS, badly controlled by Adric, which opens fire on Aris, injuring him, before the Doctor calms Adric down and releases him. The Doctor & Todd confront Hindle, who has hidden in a box pretending to be a jack-in-a-box and blames Sanders for ruining the surprise. Becoming distraught when one of the cut out men has it's head ripped off he goes to destroy the dome, but Todd distracts him with the box of Janna which he opens bathing his face in light. The Doctor traps Aris in a ring of mirror like solar panels causing the snake tattoo to crawl off and become giant size before being banished from the corporeal world. Todd transmits a report that Deva Loka is unfit for colonisation and the Doctor, Adric & Tegan, reunited with a recovered Nyssa, leave in the Tardis.

Hmmm. Either I have completely missed the point or Kinda is a lot simpler than people make out, all the plot seems obvious to me. In places I find some of the acting superb, Simon Rouse in previous episodes, but here the cardboard city and boxes just reminds me of Play School putting me off rather.

And what point does the TSS serve? There's little it does that couldn't just have been a man wandering about in the jungle. Yes OK in this episode it injures Aris but you could accomplish it some other way, say Adric pushing past him and knocking him over. It strikes me that it's an element inserted into the story as "a robot for the kids". Probably cost a quid or two as well.

Then there's the snake. Hated by Doctor Who fans everywhere as an example of "a bad effect ruining an otherwise good story". I look at it and think there's not much wrong with that. But the popular voice prevailed and an alternate CGI version was created for the DVD.

Kinda was repeated the following summer on 22nd to 25th August 1883 a week *after* the Visitation, the next story but recorded first, was repeated. A similar situation affected the previous winter's Five Faces repeat season where Carnival of Monsters was shown before Three Doctors.

The story was novelised by Terrance Dicks in 1984, released on video in October 1994 and on DVD, with it's sequel Snakedance, as part of Doctor Who - Mara Tales Boxset.

Friday 15 June 2012

570 Kinda Part Three

EPISODE: Kinda Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 570
STORY NUMBER: 120
TRANSMITTED: Monday 08 February 1982
WRITER: Christopher Bailey
DIRECTOR: Peter Grimwade
SCRIPT EDITOR: Eric Saward
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 8.5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Mara Tales (Kinda / Snakedance)

A green figure pops out of the box like a jack-in-a-box, causing much humour but moments later the power fails taking the lights with it and the cell door opens. The Doctor's face is bathed in light then he, Todd & Sanders experience a vision of the Kinda people with Panna & Karuna beckoning them to a cave. Taking advantage of the power loss they leave the dome. Now convinced of a threat Hindle has the domed rigged with explosives to destroy it in the event of an attack. The Doctor & Todd encounter the Kinda tribe and then Aris, who empowered by the Mara has become the first male Kinda to speak. Karuna leads the Doctor & Todd away to the cave where Panna lives but Aris follows them and telepathically coerces Karuna to come with them. Adric attempts escape from the Dome using a TSS. The Doctor & Todd experience a vision of time pieces nearing midnight at which point the clocks stop and they awaken to find Panna dead.

All sounds quite simple doesn't it? And yet that's just not the whole story, there's so much more going on that I'm just not getting in terms of meaning of what I'm seeing. And that's a little off putting.

Playing Sanders is veteran actor Richard Todd. The story has it that Matthew Waterhouse offered him advice on television acting during the making of this production. Confusingly there's also a character called Todd, played by Nerys Hughes, formerly of The Liver Birds. Putting in superb performance as the unhinged Hindle is Simon Rouse later to find fame as Detective Superintendent Jack Meadows in The Bill. As well as Rouse and Jeff Stewart (PC Reg Hollis in The Bill & Dukkha in the first two episodes here) a third Bill regular appears in this serial, Graham Cole (PC Tony Stamp), as a Kinda Tribesman. One of the other Kinda Tribesman is actor Glenn Murphy, later to appear as Dibber in the first four episodes of Trial of a Time-Lord and to find fame as George Green in London's Burning. It's recently come to light (via the DVD) that one of the Kinda children in this episode is actor Jonny Lee Miller of Trainspotting and ex-husband of Angelina Jolie fame. At the opposite end of the age spectrum is Mary Morris playing Panna. As well as appearing in one of the very first TV Science Fiction series, A for Andromeda she was a female Number 2 in The Prisoner episode Dance of the Dead. Adrian Mills, playing Aris, would later be a presenter on That's Life and has gone on to be a Children's TV producer. The Kinda Trickster is played by comedian Lee Cornes probably most familiar as the barman in Bottom, teacher Mr. Hankin in Grange Hill and Paranoia in the penultimate episode of the first series of Red Dwarf, Confidence and Paranoia.

Thursday 14 June 2012

569 Kinda Part Two

EPISODE: Kinda Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 569
STORY NUMBER: 120
TRANSMITTED: Tuesday 02 February 1982
WRITER: Christopher Bailey
DIRECTOR: Peter Grimwade
SCRIPT EDITOR: Eric Saward
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 9.4 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Mara Tales (Kinda / Snakedance)

Hindle imprisons The Doctor, Todd & Adric. Two Kinda women lie in wait for Sanders, who is in the TSS. They are interrupted by Aris, who communicates with the younger women, Karuna, his worry for his brother held hostage in the dome but is dismissed by the older women, Panna, who insists they continue with their plan. As Sanders approaches he is presented with a wooden box which he opens bathing his face in light.... Tegan is still trapped in the black void where she argues with copies of herself. Dukkha offers her a way out and accepting a snake tattoo moves from his arm to hers. After dressing the two Kinda hostages up in uniform Hindle summons the prisoners to the control room where he announces plans to clear the jungle with fire and acid. Adric feigns co-operation with Hindle to smuggle The Doctor a key to his cell but is caught. Tegan awakes under the wind chimes, possessed by the Mara. She sees Aris and follows him, the snake tattoo & Mara possession transferring to him. Just as Hindle is about to pronounce sentence on Adric, Sanders returns to the dome, a changed man, and presents Hindle with a present, a wooden box which he asks Hindle to open. Hindle sends The Doctor, Sanders & Todd back to the cells and has them open it.

Hindle's just completely barking, how did someone like that ever get on an expedition? Or was it X months of "practical jokes" by Sanders (see the start of Episode 1) that made him like that. So the base element of the plot is understandable. But the other bits.... somehow, while under the influence of the wind chimes, Tegan has made contact with another realm and allowed the Mara to travel over into our world? A bit odd even for Doctor Who.

The man responsible for this tale is Christopher Bailey. He is real. He exists. Doctor Who magazine tracked him down for an interview, he's in the documentaries on the DVD. He is not, as some have claimed in the past, a pseudonym for either singer songwriter Kate Bush or playwright Tom Stoppard. In reality he is a lecturer of English at the University of Brighton who wrote this script heavily influenced by Hindu & Buddhist mythology. Most of the names have meaning somewhere along the line and derive from Buddhism as well. In the black void Dukkha is "suffering", Anatta is "not-self" and Annica means "impermanence" while in the real world the old woman Panna's name means "wisdom" and her guide/pupil Karuna's name means "compassion".

Wednesday 13 June 2012

568 Kinda Part One

EPISODE: Kinda Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 568
STORY NUMBER: 120
TRANSMITTED: Monday 01 February 1982
WRITER: Christopher Bailey
DIRECTOR: Peter Grimwade
SCRIPT EDITOR: Eric Saward
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 8.4 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Mara Tales (Kinda / Snakedance)

The Tardis lands on the planet Deva Loka, with Nyssa being left in the ship attached to a delta wave augmenter to help her sleep. An humanoid expedition from another world is also on the planet which has been reduced to 3 people: the expedition scientist Todd, the mentally unstable security chief Hindle and their older leader Sanders. The Doctor, Tegan & Adric encounter a set of wind chimes in the forest, but Tegan, overcome by the effect gets left behind. The Doctor & Adric find one of the expedition's empty Total Survival Suits which Adric accidentally activates causing it to take them back to the base. Tegan finds her mind in a dark environment where an odd couple, with snake tatoos on their arms, are playing chess and she finds herself pestered by a strange figure. Hindle is suspicious of the Doctor & Adric, but the other except them. However when Sanders takes the TSS out to explore Hindle seizes the moment and holds the visitors at gun point.

Kinda: I haven't a hope of explaining this one properly to you. There's more going on here than meets the eye, which thus far is essentially a standard colonisation tale with some commentary on British Colonialism & attitudes thrown in. It's when you start digging you realise there's more to it. Look at the sequence with Tegan in the black void. The couple playing chess, Anatta & Anicca, mirror Adric & Nyssa playing draughts at the start of the episode, with the lean to structure taking the place of the Tardis and Dukkha, the other odd figure, taking the place of the Doctor......

Two of the actors in the dream sequence are well known outside of Doctor Who. Anna Wing, playing Anatta, would shortly become famous playing Lou Beale on Eastenders. She is the mother of Mark Wing-Davey, who was both the TV & Radio Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and, currently aged 97, is believed to be the longest lived actor to have appeared in Doctor Who*. Playing Dukkha is Jeff Stewart who would later find fame as PC Reg Hollis in The Bill. He's not the only Bill regular in this serial either...... In fact this serial is a mine of fabulously well known guest stars but only one of them, an extra, has anything even approaching form in other Doctor Who stories.

* Since I wrote that my attention has been drawn to Zohra Sehgal, the actress who played Sheyrah, the attendant to Ping-Cho in Marco Polo who turned 100 on 27th April, 1912 becoming the first Doctor Who actor to reach that landmark.

Tuesday 12 June 2012

567 Four to Doomsday Part Four

EPISODE: Four to Doomsday Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 567
STORY NUMBER: 119
TRANSMITTED: Tuesday 26 January 1982
WRITER: Terence Dudley
DIRECTOR: John Black
SCRIPT EDITOR: Antony Root
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 9.4 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Four to Doomsday

Nyssa deactivates the robot executing the Doctor saving his life. The Doctor, Adric & Nyssa are taken to Monarch where the Doctor feigns co-operation. Nyssa is held hostage to insure his good behaviour and a recreational is organised. The Doctor convinces first Adric and the Lin Futu to help him. They rescue Bygon and recircuit him and then free Nyssa. The Doctor & Adric attempt to get the Doctor to the Tardis using borrowed space gear but they are interrupted by first Persuasion & the Enlightenment. Both ministers have their circuits thrown overboard but not before the Doctor is cut loose. He uses a cricket ball's momentum to propel him to the Tardis which he brings back to the ship. Monarch deactivates the ship's life support forcing them to use the breathing gear again. The Doctor takes Monarch's poison to the Tardis but Monarch intercepts them. The Doctor throws the poison at Monarch which kills him: he was still organic. The Tardis crew take their leave of Bygon and the android copies, but once they are in the Tardis Nyssa collapses.

The recreational stuff is wearing a bit thin by this stage in the story but at least it proves useful to the plot with the dragon dancers providing the cover needed to abduct Bygon from the hall. Monarch's demise might seem a little contrived, suddenly he's flesh when they've made him out to be an android for the last few episodes. But it is hinted at: who else is eating the food and why else does he have the ship restore the atmosphere? However the Doctor does seem a little quick to be removing his helmet afterwards.

Putting my cricket buff hat on I am forced to explore one of the Doctor's claims in this episode: the claim that he once took 5 wickets for New South Wales bowling Chinamen. Fine in itself. But later this episode when he throws the ball he does it right handed, and 3 stories later we'll see him having a bowl and he definitely bowls right handed there. Is the Doctor ambidextrous or has he changed which hand he uses between regenerations?

So how's the serial as a whole? Well it's a little bit of an oddity. Stratford Johns makes Monarch into a decent villain and Persuasion & Enlightenment are suitably slimy henchmen. Enlightenment is perhaps a little underused and Persuasion spends most of this episode coming into Monarch's chamber ad getting sent out again. But while the threat to the Tardis crew is there, the overall menace to Earth seems remote and the recreationals get a bit repetitive after a while.

Four to Doomsday was novelised in 1983 by Terrence Dicks. It was released on video in 2001 and on DVD in 2008.

Monday 11 June 2012

566 Four to Doomsday Part Three

EPISODE: Four to Doomsday Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 566
STORY NUMBER: 119
TRANSMITTED: Monday 25 January 1982
WRITER: Terence Dudley
DIRECTOR: John Black
SCRIPT EDITOR: Antony Root
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 8.9 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Four to Doomsday

Nyssa & Adric are taken to Monarch where Adric, taken in by the leader, co-operates but Nyssa resists. Adric is sent to ask the Doctor to admit Monarch to the Tardis while Nyssa is taken away to be turned into one of Monarch's robots. Tegan is appalled by what's happening on the ship and wants to leave but the Doctor gets her to remain in the quarters while Bygon shows him the bits of the ship Monarch has kept hidden. She argues with Adric, seeking the Doctor, and accidentally knock him out before fleeing to the Tardis to try to get it leave, eventually succeeding. The Doctor is show the mobilliary where the poison is kept and Nyssa is being converted. They free her but Persuasion apprehends them, removing Byron's control circuit and sentencing the Doctor to death at the hands of the Greek gladiators.

What I remember most about this episode from when I was younger: I was ill and missed it. It basically fills in the story a bit and pushes Tegan over the edge.

Shall we have some more comparisons with the The Black Hole? (see episode 2 for all the ones we've already found)

Crewmember of visiting ship sent for conversion and saved: Kate McCrae/Nyssa
Crewmember of visiting ship attempting escape in their vessel: Harry Booth/Tegan
Crewmember of visiting ship siding with being in charge of large ship: Alex Durrant/Adric
Crewmember of large ship siding with visitors: Old Bob/Byron
Commanding officer of large ship wanting to do something insane: Reinhardt believing he can travel through black hole/Monarch wanting to go faster than light believing he'll go back in time and meet himself as God.

None of the guest cast have previous Doctor Who form but several are quite well known. Philip Locke playing Bygon was the assassin Vargas in the James Bond film Thunderball while Burt Kwouk, playing Lin Futu, should need no introduction at all. He also appeared in James Bond films, in his case the original Casino Royale, Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice. On the big screen he's most famous as Cato in the Pink Panther while contemporary BBC viewers would have seen him in Tenko with former Doctor Who companion Louise Jameson. In recent years he was the narrator of the spoof Japanese betting show Banzai.

Playing Monarch is Stratford Johns, an actor well known for role as Inspector Barlow in Z-Cars which he reprised in Softly, Softly and several spin offs from that. Paul Shelley, playing Persuasion, has a long television career to his name including an appearance in Blake's 7:Countdown as Major Provine. He's the brother of Francis Matthews, the voice of Captain Scarlet. Annie Lambert, here playing Enlightenment, has also had a long career in television which includes a recurring, but unnamed, role in Space 1999.