Format: DVD
Warts & All: Bad hair day!
Quote: You’re sure you don’t want to stay and take the job, Doctor? Civil service post with a pension.
Review: You know, I used to find this really frustrating because the first half relies mostly on characters like High Priest Ortron and Queen Thalira being so stubborn, obtuse and blind to the evidence before their own eyes that it stretched credibility. But now in a post-Brexit world, I realise it’s actually pretty credible. It’s still frustrating, mind you. But this is a six-part visit to Peladon and it’s plain the writer has to spin events out and generate drama, with another pig-ignorant High Priest and the most painfully naive monarch imaginable totally unwilling or slow to believe the Doctor, despite being vouched for by his old friendly hermaphrodite hexapod, Alpha Centauri. It gets tedious and there’s three whole episodes before the Ice Warriors show.
At which point, the story totally misses a trick and bungles a thread which could easily have filled out the middle and replaced some of the tortuous contrivance and running around tunnels in the earlier stages with some interesting intrigue. It is unreasonable of me to expect nuance and subtlety in a story with Dr Tyler from The Three Doctors looking like Hair Bear with silver streaks. (His bunch of miners have similar perms and it’s really tough to take their rebellion seriously as a result.) But within less than the space of episode 4, the Ice Warriors are revealed as villains and I’m left with a sense of missed opportunity.
After taking that step to show them as a reasoning civilised race and members of a Galactic Federation, it’s fair enough and another decent twist to have them return as baddies, but why squander the potential to have the Doctor – and us – deceived a good while longer? Azaxyr is a ham-fisted conspirator at best, not bothering with any pretence at playing a representative of the Federation, ordering mass executions and what have you. Eckersley’s complicity is better concealed and it’s not especially relevant to anything but Donald Gee (last seen hunting miner Clancy in The Space Pirates) looks a bit like Tom Baker in his Genesis Of The Daleks Thal guard outfit. Albeit, unlike the Peladon miners, he doesn’t have the perm.
The ghost of Aggedor plotline is all a bit too Scooby Doo for my liking and it’s a bit distracting having the Ice Warrior with the exceptionally big head stomping around. It’s good to have a bit of variety within an alien race, but that one stands out like a sore thumb. And because the overall story’s not brilliantly engaging, my mind tends to wander and I wonder what that Ice Warrior’s story might be. Merits would have to be Pertwee and Lis Sladen who are thoroughly engaging and it’s lovely to see the affection Sarah Jane has developed for the Doctor at this point, most notable on the two occasions she believes him to be dead. And she demonstrates some of that famous SJS pluck, pressing on even when she might be stranded on this alien world, with the Doctor lost to her. Centauri is quite endearing too, although I don’t remember him (?) being so uppity about females before.
And I felt sorry for Aggedor when he’s shot in the struggle with Eckersley at the end. Beyond that, I can’t claim to have cared a great deal about the other characters involved or the situation on Peladon. Sarah gives Queen Thalira nice lesson in womens’ lib, but there’s not any great sense it will stick – mainly because Thalira is sooooo pathetic.
So while everything ends on a positive note, in contrast with the actual optimism in Curse, back when Peladon joined the Federation, I was left with the impression of a planet that was ultimately doomed. But maybe that’s also an element of our post-Brexit situation colouring my experience of this visually colourful but mediocre tale.
