701 Survival Part Three

"There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace. We've got work to do."

EPISODE: Survival Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 701
STORY NUMBER: 156
TRANSMITTED: Wednesday 06 December 1989
WRITER: Rona Munro
DIRECTOR: Alan Wareing
SCRIPT EDITOR: Andrew Cartmel
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Survival

Karra comes for Ace and calls for her to go hunting. On Earth the Master struggles to reduce the Cheetah planet's influence on him. The Doctor worries how far Ace has changed and whether she can be brought back. Ace is found by the Doctor who reduces the planet's influence on her. He warns he of the dangers of allowing the influence to spread but she agrees using the power to bring them, Patterson and the remaining youths back to the Tardis in Perivale. The Doctor knows that the Master has been brought to Perivale by Midge so they start searching at the flats where he lived, where they find a dead cat and young girl. Ace lapses under the Cheetah planet influence detecting Midge at the youth club. Midge turns on Patterson when he arrives killing him. The Doctor & Ace track him to the top of the hill where she lapses again. Midge moves to attack them on motorcycle and Ace has to be dissuaded from fighting him. He and the Doctor charge at each other on Motorcycles and Midge is killed in the explosion. Ace believes the Doctor has gone too and is attacked by the youths but Karra appears from the Cheetah planet and drives the youths off. Karra confronts the Master but is slain by hi,. The Doctor wakes up on a nearby rubbish pile. Karra dies in front of Ace transforming back into a human as she does. The Doctor corners The Master as he tried to steal the Tardis, but the Master's feral nature takes over transporting them back to the dying Cheetah planet where they struggle. The Doctor realises they musn't fight or it will destroy the planet but the Master attacks him. As he goes to bring the rock down on him the Doctor teleports himself back to Earth and the Tardis. One of the Cheetah people comes for Karra's body leaving Ace alone on the hill where the Doctor finds her. She tells the Doctor that she wants to go home, home to the Tardis and they leave together.

"There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace. We've got work to do."

And that's it. The original Doctor Who series is finished and I concluded my viewing of the original series at 14:19 on Tuesday 19th June, a little ahead of schedule.

Yeah it's a good episode again. The Motorbike thing is a little pulled from nowhere: we don't see motorbikes until just before the scene and it all looks a little staged with the bike being left there for the Doctor to ride on. Dramatically it serves a purpose: it temporarily removes the Doctor from the action and gets rid of Midge but it sticks out like a sore thumb. It also caused problems during production: stunt manager Tip Tipping walked off the production after a disagreement with Eddie Kidd, brought in to help stage the motorbike stunt, over it's safety.

The story itself is good: Ace brings the Doctor home, albeit at a cost to herself. If I'm reading the story right Ace still has the Cheetah people influence inside her but it's sleeping as their world was destroyed. The Cheetah people have moved on somewhere else so there's the possibility that she's moved on somewhere else..... We don't know how the Master got to the planet and although we see him trapped there at the end he's escaped from similar situations before. Which leads me to the Doctor: how does he manage to escape from the planet? Is he too coming under it's influence?

In case you miss it there's an important point made about Ace in this episode, and emphasises again by dialogue art the end: When she brings the surviving humans and the Doctor home yes she does bring them to Perivale, but she brings them to where the Tardis is in the town. Perivale's not her home anymore, the Tardis is.

One new location this episode: The Medway estate is the council estate shown. The child that appears at the flat there (named Squeek) is a young Adele Silva now better known as a model and actress on Emmerdale.

This is the last episode of the Twenty Sixth season of Doctor Who, and is it turned out the last episode of the original run. The possibility that this would happen arose in post production and Sylvester McCoy was summoned to provide the voice over speech that closed the episode to give the series some sense of closure, over a forlorn and mounrful version of the middle eight from the theme music. The reasons the show were cancelled are myriad and it's not 100% clear what eventually tipped the balance. Yes it was doing well ratings wise but it had been scheduled up against Coronation Street and nothing is going to do well there. A popular theory is that the BBC didn't like Doctor Who (and science fiction in general) backed up by the BBC still not having bought Star Trek: The Next Generation despite it now being in it's third season. When they eventually did the following year it got slotted into the teen programming slot at 6pm on BBC2 previously occupied by repeats of Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. And then rumbling in the background were rumours of movies and American versions..... I've just sat down and watched Endgame on the Doctor Who - Survival DVD and virtually everyone there has a different theory/reason for why it ends without any definitive answer being given.

Script editor Andrew Cartmel was headhunted to script edit Casualty in 1990 while producer John Nathan-Turner was finally relieved of the producership when the production office was closed in 1990. At that point he was one of only two remaining staff producers working for the BBC as a system of independent production was adopted. JNT still continued to be involved with the program, producing special releases for BBC Video & Audio as well as helming the 1993 charity special Dimensions in Time. John Nathan Turner died on the 1st May 200s. Sophie Aldred went on to work in Children's television, which led to a career in voice over work. Both she and Sylvester McCoy would return for the Dimensions in Time in 1993 and McCoy would later appear as the Seventh Doctor for the US TV Movie version of the show in 1996. This was Anthony Ainley's last television appearance as the Master but he later reprised the role for the Doctor Who: Destiny of the Doctors CD-ROM video game in 1998. He passed away on 3rd May 2004 and became the first Doctor Who actor to get his obituary in Wisden.

Survival was adapted as a Target book by it's television author in October 1990. It was released on video in October 1995, and on DVD on 16th April 2007

700 Survival Part Two

"Do you know any nice people? Y'know, normal everyday people, not power-crazed nutters trying to take over the universe?"

EPISODE: Survival Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 700
STORY NUMBER: 160
TRANSMITTED: Wednesday 29 November 1989
WRITER: Rona Munro
DIRECTOR: Alan Wareing
SCRIPT EDITOR: Andrew Cartmel
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 4.8 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Survival

The Doctor & Patterson escape on horseback and find Ace & her friends. The Master sends one of the Kittlings to find the Doctor as he struggles to maintain control of himself. The Kitling on Earth brings a Milkman to their planet which is attacked by the Cheetah people provoking battle between them and the humans causing Ace to be separated from the Doctor. The Doctor & Master meet as the Doctor realises the planet is heading for destruction. The Master needs his help and explains that if they stay there they'll become more like the Cheetah people. His eyes glow yellow and he bares fangs at the Doctor. Ace helps an injured member of the Cheetah People bringing her some water. The Doctor finds them and they decide to look after the creature. The Doctor tells her they need an animal who's home is Earth to get back there. Patterson gathers the surviving human youths together to try to survive. Ace starts to feel like she belongs on the alien world. They find the humans but Midge has begun to transform into one of the Cheetah people and runs away. The Master catches him and uses Mitch to return to Earth.The Doctor explains that one of them must change to return to Earth as Ace's eyes becomes cat like and she begins to change too.....

Good stuff again this episode, almost entirely confined to the alien world with the alien race, how they work and the planet's difficulties being laid out clearly before us. Patterson's philosophy is to survive but the Doctor is thinking beyond that, how to get home, and there's indications quite early on that he thinks Ace may be changing and represents a possible route back home.

A big hurrah for Anthony Ainley returning as The Master for the first time in three years for his first appearance against the Seventh Doctor. He's the only member of the Survival Cast to have been in Doctor Who before or since, but Lisa Bowerman, as Karra the horse riding Cheetah Person we've seen, later found Doctor Who fame voicing the Seventh Doctor's companion Bernice Summerfield. Bernice was introduced in the novels and later starred in a series of audio stories for Big Finish. Outside of Doctor Who she's best known for playing paramedic Sandra Mute in Casualty (partnered with The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood's Robert Pugh) where in 1987 she became the first regular character in that series to die.

The spot the Milkman is taken from is Medway Drive in Perivale, close to the other Perivale locations..... and looking at the map on the linked page I've just realised I've driven past these locations loads of times on the A40 journeying out towards Aylesbury (and the Logopolis lay-by location)! Meanwhile the location for the Cheetah People planet is Warmwell Quarry in Dorset, used the previous year during Greatest Show in the Galaxy and close to locations used this year for Curse of Fenric & Ghost Light. Quarries used in Caves of Androzani, Death to the Daleks & Destiny of the Daleks are all close by.

This is, if you count the cancelled story Shada, the 700th Doctor Who episode. It's also the penultimate episode of the original run of Doctor Who. Join us tomorrow to find out how it all ended and what happened next.....

699 Survival Part One

"I though you were dead! That's what they said, either dead or go to Birmingham"

EPISODE: Survival Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 699
STORY NUMBER: 160
TRANSMITTED: Wednesday 22 November 1989
WRITER: Rona Munro
DIRECTOR: Alan Wareing
SCRIPT EDITOR: Andrew Cartmel
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Survival

In a suburban London street a man is washing his car observed by a cat when something leaps on him, vanishing in a burst of light just before The Doctor & Ace arrive. They have brought Ace home to Perivale so she can see her old friends. Elsewhere the cat is observing some children playing, a sight also observed by it's master who comments on what he sees. They visit a youth club she used to go to where she finds martial arts classes being run by former army sergeant Patterson who tells her most of her friends have moved on. He remembers Ace's Mum had listed her as missing and tells them four more children had vanished that month. The Doctor takes an interest in the local cats and buys some food to tempt them. The shopkeepers he buys from find their pet cat dead. Ace meets her friend Ange out collecting money for charity who tells here that all her other friends are gone. The cat finds one of the youngsters from the youth club for it's master. The youth is stalked & vanishes. While the Doctor tries to lure a cat to him Ace finds one in a playground before being confronted with a catlike humanoid on horseback which stalks her. She shouts for the Doctor but by the time he arrives she is gone, transported to a desolate alien world where she finds the body of the man seen cleaning his car. The Doctor finally finds a cat, but is grabbed by Patterson, acting for the neighbourhood watch, allowing it to escape. Ace is stalked by the cat person who id distracted by the youth which she kills. Ace is found by her friend Shreela and taken to her other friend Midge as the Doctor chases the cat but is pursued by Patterson. The Doctor finds the cat as Patterson finds him and both are transported to the alien world where they are cornered by a number of the cheetah creatures who take them to their village where The Doctor finds his old foe The Master waiting for him.

That's good stuff there. Straight forward to follow: there's something odd going on with the cat and it turns out it's linked to the cat like people (Cheetah People in the script) on the alien world who in turn are being controlled by the Master, who we got see in the shadows with weird glowy eyes but only is unveiled right at the end. Script Editor Andrew Cartmel moans about both the animatronic cat and the Cheetah People in his book as being effects that spoil the show but both work for me, as does the effect of suddenly getting higher as the victim is stalked, presumably insinuating the moment where the cat is replaced by the Cheetah Person on horseback. And there's a nice little tip of the hat with the teleport effect from Earth to the Cheetah planet: the circular white flash used is in the McCoy title sequence.

In a way there's some nice thematic stuff going on here: in the last two stories Ace has confronted her fear of the haunted house in Perivale and her feelings towards her mother: now she suddenly wants to come back home. She says she wants to see her friends but you wonder if the encounter between her and the baby Audrey has made her want to seek her mother out. But there's not just the Ace stuff going on here: this is the first episode of the final televised story in the original run and also contains the 700th episode of the series. It started with the Doctor taking two people away from their London home in an Unearthly Child comes to an end as he brings a lost girl back home to London. There's some evidence that this idea was floating around with the production team as the idea of getting home keeps popping up throughout the serial.

All of Survival is filmed on location and in fact many of the locations for the story are in Perivale, the town in West London where the story is set, rather than somewhere else substituting for them lending the story an extra element of realism. Colwyn Avenue in Perivale serves at the street where the car is washed while Bleasdale Avenue is where the Tardis lands. Horsenden Hill provides the high ground overlooking the town seen in the story, while Woodhouse Avenue is one of the other streets The Doctor & Ace walk down. The David Lloyd Centre in nearby Greenford stands on the site of the EYC Martial Arts Centre, part of the North Ealing Sports Centre, which was the youth centre in the story. Medway Parade provides the shops with number 20 Medway Parade forming the interior of the shop. Avenue West Ealing provides the pub that Ace goes in while Ealing Central Sportsground is the playground where Ace is attacked by Karra. Finally Colwyn Avenue Alley is the alley that the Doctor chases the cat down.

I'll be honest: casting comedians Gareth Hale & Norman Pace as shopkeepers Len & Harvey looks rather like stunt casting designed to attract a few column inches to the program. In 1993 they made their only other notable venture into straight acting staring as the police detectives Dalziel and Pascoe in a dramatisation of a Pinch of Snuff. When the Dalziel and Pascoe TV Series started three years later they found themselves replaced by Warren Clarke & Colin Buchanan who are now firmly associated with the roles in the minds of the viewing public whereas Hale & Pace's version is long forgotten!

698 The Curse of Fenric Part Four

EPISODE: The Curse of Fenric Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 698
STORY NUMBER: 159
TRANSMITTED: Wednesday 15 November 1989
WRITER: Ian Briggs
DIRECTOR: Nicholas Mallett
SCRIPT EDITOR: Andrew Cartmel
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 4.2 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Curse of Fenric

The Doctor, Ace & Soren are taken out to be shot but are rescued by the remaining Russian soldiers. The Fenric possessed Judsoon teleports itself to the lab hidden in the mine and summons the Ancient Haemovore. The Doctor retrieves Kathleen Dudman's chess set while Ace helps her and her baby to safety directing them to her grandmother's in Streatham. Fenric's host Judson is weakening so he transfers himself to Soren, who like Judson & Millington is a descendant of the Viking who hid the flash in the church but not realising he is now Fenric, Ace reveals to Soren the solution to the chess game the Doctor has challenged him to. The ancient Haemovore is ordered to take the poison to the sea but the Doctor reveals to him that that is the action that will create the future earth that the Ancient Haemavore has summoned from. The Fenric possessed Soren uses Ace to protect himself as she is protected by her faith in the Doctor but the Doctor brakes that faith by insulting her and the Haemovore locks both of them in the fume chamber and gasses them with the poison killing Fenric's ancient evil. Ace is shaken to discover that the baby Audrey is her mother.

It's this last episode where everything falls apart. The Ancient Haemavore is pulled out of nowhere, destroys the other Haemovores on Fenric's orders and then turns against him. Little emotional pieces for Ace keep popping up all over the place but just don't seem to fit with the rest of the show. In the middle of one of these Ace drops in this story about a haunted house in perivale which is meant to set Ghost Light up but doesn't due to the story order being joggled areound.

Really there's just too mcuh going on here. I recall at the time there were rumours of enough material to produce a fifth episode and I can believe it, this just doesn't seem to flow right for most of it's length.

I'm finding watching the later McCoy stories a bit of a task: Remembrance was great, and Silver Nemesis, despite being Remembrance reheated, wasn't bad. But the others have a common theme of not quite flowing right, too much going on and the main story not making too much sense.

Curse of Fenric was novelised by it's original author in November 1990. The video was released 3 months later adding in 6 minutes of extra footage. The DVD was released on 6th October 2003 and contains both the original broadcast version and an expanded special edition movie version helmed by Mark Ayres (no relation) the Restoration Team's sound expert who wrote the score for the original story.

Just three episodes of original series Doctor Who left.

The End Is Near.....

First three entries for new Blog scheduled from Tuesday onwards :-)

Yeah because the secret of comedy is timing I've foolishly agreed to be away from home with no net access when the Who blog "finishes" and the new one starts.....

"finishes" is a loose term....

Wednesday is Survival 3. That's the end of the original run. After that there's the McGann movie and that'll probably be 23rd November for obvious reasons.

After that....

Well we're having trouble with the new series episodes. A touch of writers block, but mainly too much pain and lack of concentration recently.

So....

A choice: wait until I've got most of the new episodes written and start publishing then (could be a long wait)

or

Do I switch publishing patterns and deliver as and when I watch and write one?

Decisions.....

697 The Curse of Fenric Part Three

EPISODE: The Curse of Fenric Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 697
STORY NUMBER: 159
TRANSMITTED: Wednesday 08 November 1989
WRITER: Ian Briggs
DIRECTOR: Nicholas Mallett
SCRIPT EDITOR: Andrew Cartmel
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 4 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Curse of Fenric

The Doctor & Ace return to the church where Wainright searches the parish records for the descendants of the Viking settlers. Ace uncovers an ancient flask in the cellar where the Navy had been digging but the church is attacked by the Haemovore creatures. The Doctor saves them with the help of the Russians. Two of the Russian soldiers escort the Doctor, Ace & Wainright through the mine shaft to the camp where they are sealed in by Millington who takes the flask from them to the Ultima machine. The Soviet commander Soren comes to parley with Millington and is arrested but freed by Ace. Wainwright is slain by the Haemovores who use the mine tunnel to get to the base. The Ultima machine sparks towards Judson and he is knocked to the floor as the Doctor enters, then stands without the aid of his wheelchair, possessed by the Fenric being Millington has been seeking.

Oooh, I can feel the story struggling to get out here but there's just stuff that keeps bringing it down. I'm still not clear quite how the Doctor repels the Haemovores from the church, but there's some kind of singing going on. The dialogue, as Ace uses her womanly charms to distract the guard is just awful. And Millington's performance is all over the place, looking like he's out of it half the time then suddenly for no reason dropping the name of Fenric into the conversation which suddenly turns out to be the name of the big villain at the end of the episode..... We've had references to him throughout the story but no idea of what he is till the Doctor describes him here as some sort of ancient evil.

By far the most recognisable figure in the series is Nicholas Parsons as Reverend Wainwright. At the time Parsons was probably best known to the average TV viewer as the host of Sale of the Century but what wasn't so well known was he had been an actor appearing in a number of West End productions. He was a voice artist for Four Feather Falls, an early Gerry Anderson series alongside his then wife Denise Bryer (who went on to voice both Commander Makara in Star Fleet and Mary Falconer in Terrahawks) and Dalek Voice Artist David Graham. Now Parsons is probably best known as the host of Just a Minute the long running Radio 4 panel game which he has hosted (or on rare occasions taken part in) every edition since it's start on 22 December 1967. At the time of his casting the news he'd be appearing was almost universally put down as stunt casting but actually he does a decent job here as the Vicar.

This story mark the last appearance in Doctor Who of Cy Town, regular extra since The Silurians in 1970 and Dalek Operator from 1973's Frontier in Space till the previous season's Remembrance of the Daleks. IMDB reckons his final appearance is as a Haemovore in episode 1 but I can't recall seeing any in that episode. Marek Anton, playing the Soviet soldier Vershinin, we saw a few weeks back as the Destroyer in Battlefield, even though that was filmed after this. Anne Reid, here as Nurse Crane, would return in the New Series episode Smith and Jones as Florence Finnegan, the disguised Plasmavore hiding in Martha Jones' hospital that the Judoon come for.

One more location this episode: Yew Tree Farm provides the tunnel location where Ace reveals to the Doctor that she's found the flask.

696 The Curse of Fenric Part Two

EPISODE: The Curse of Fenric Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 696
STORY NUMBER: 159
TRANSMITTED: Wednesday 01 November 1989
WRITER: Ian Briggs
DIRECTOR: Nicholas Mallett
SCRIPT EDITOR: Andrew Cartmel
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 4 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Curse of Fenric

The Doctor treats a Soviet soldier who has been exposed to something in the sea and persuades the Soviet Commander, Soren, not to suicidally attack the base. Returning to the church they find a new inscription on the wall before they in turn are found by Millington who shows them a chamber when the Navy are collecting a poison from a source inside. The poison is being gathered as a weapon to end the war and some has been secreted in the core of Judson's Ultima machine, which programmed to detonate it when it receives the word love. Whitehall wishes the Soviets to steal the core so they may be dealt with after the war. Two girls evacuated to the village swim in the sea and are consumed by a mist transforming them into vampire like creatures which attack and kill first a Soviet soldier, then their landlady. They come for the Reverend Wainright but he is saved by the Doctor & Ace. Ace reveals to the Doctor that she has unwittingly told Judson that the instructions are a logic diagram. He has fed it into the Ultima machine which has gone into overdrive. The Doctor is unable to stop it as mutated vampire figures rise from the sea bed.

On one level this seems quite simple: UK Forces have found a poison and are using it as weapon/trap. But into this we've got lots of Norse references, something bad having happened a long time ago, creatures rising from the sea and a seemingly inexplicable confiscation of all chess sets on the base!

When location scouting was being carried out for this story it was realised that it was possible to shoot the entire four part story on location, a distinction shared with Spearhead from Space & (sort of) Greatest Show in the Galaxy. The Naval base scenes were filmed at Crowborough Training Camp in East Sussex, while most of the rest of the locations are just across the border into Kent filmed in a town called Hawkhurst. St Lawrence's Church substitutes as St. Jude's Church where Nicholas Parsons claims he was mistaken for a real vicar! Lillesden School provides Millington's secret lab and Roses Farm is the cottage where the two girls have been evacuated to.

The only location not found in the vicinity is Lulworth Cove in Dorset which provides the beach and sea locations used during the story. This location was chosen due to the director having worked their before and two members of the production team having experience diving in the location. Both the preceding story, Ghost Light, and the following one, Survival, use locations nearby.