Format: DVD

Warts & All: Trundlesome Robot With Big Rubber Claws

Quote: Jim’ll fix it

Review: People will say there’s something wrong with me, but I really quite like Colony In Space. A couple of sleepless nights resulted in me watching it through a little faster than planned, what with finding myself wide awake at 3 a.m. at one point,, filling the time with the final two episodes in a row and it singularly failed to send me back to sleep. Filling time, to be fair, is what the adventure does quite a bit, with tables being turned between the different factions with enough frequency it invests proceedings with a kind of perpetual motion. Albeit slightly repetitive.

I don’t doubt my very favourable memories of the Target novelisation colour my perceptions here – when the Doctor is sampling some film on the ‘entertainment’ console I’m calling to mind the brilliant depiction of an overcrowded Earth in Hulke’s prose more than I’m drawn in by what’s on screen. Still, Hulke spins a decent four-parter into six by transposing familiar Western fare onto an alien planet (only a bit less alien to those of us who live down the tracks from the St Austell clay pits where it was filmed), with peaceful colonists (ranchers) being driven off their land by a big mining corporation (greedy prospectors), while bartering and/or running into trouble with the indigenous savages (Injuns). Where the story scores mostly for me is in its SF element, with the Primitives turning out to be the descendants of an advanced civilisation, reduced to totemic worship of a Doomsday Weapon.

The aliens are very alien, with three distinct ‘castes’ and certainly the b/w photos of their mutated faces in the old Doctor Who Monster Book used to give me nightmares as a kid. The shrivelled-baby in the high chair is less convincing now, but really it’s not that badly realised and the idea is sufficiently creepy to outweight production limitations. As the leader of the aliens, he is a bit fickle though – he insists the Law must be obeyed and Jo and the Doctor be executed for trespass, even though Jo was brought to his City against her will, lets them go but warns them not to return on pain of death, then is easily persuaded to destroy his own City – and people! – to prevent the Weapon falling into the wrong hands. Despite being able to make things – like the Master’s gun – disappear at will. The IMC plot is very Scooby-Doo, fake projected giant iguanas and a rubber-clawed robot that we’re expected to believe made terrible scratch marks everywhere. But never mind, my bigger issues with this come in the gun battles, staged in a room with the interior dimensions of a barn, with automatic firearms and shooters sighting along barrels – and missing everything. Even so, on the rare occasions they hit something it’s usually a colonist or an IMC guard and lots of people die in this one. But you could be forgiven for not realising the bodies are stacking up. Would it have killed them (ahem) to have included a graveside scene or two to drive home the cost? There’s a line about tending to the wounded, but that’s it. Even the Doctor shows something of a colonialist disregard for the poor Primitives who bite the dust. And even Ashe’s sacrifice is made much more of in the novelisation than it is here. It’s that inconsequentiality of the violence and death that is more frustrating for me than the woeful marksmanship of the combatants.

Questions arise too over the Master’s role as the Adjudicator – fair enough that he’d adopt this guise as a means of finding out more about the planet, but why side with IMC – surely he’d gain more co-operation from the more easily manipulated colonists – who have in any case been there longer and are more likely to know the lay of the ancient ruins etc? There’s also a ridiculous cliffhanger where he decides that Jo and the Doctor are to fall victim to ‘stray bullets’ apparently solely because 25 minutes has elapsed and we’re due an episode end. The Doctor displays a remarkable gift for identifying planets from just looking at them and a frankly weird moment where he appears to actually consider the Master’s offer of joint rule over the universe. But despite all that – and probably more – I find myself quite enjoying it all. You’ve got Bernard Kay and John Ringham in there, familiar supporting cast faces from previous Who, you’ve got Gail from Corrie and Tony Caunter who was somebody in Eastenders, Delgado continuing to deliver evil with charm and the chemistry inherent in that Master-Doctor rivalry is always a pleasure to watch. And it offers a refreshing break from the Earthbound adventures surrounding it.

Ultimately though, I’m obliged to conclude that the TV episodes are so married in my mind to the novelisation that on some level I know what I’m watching is shorthand for a richer and fuller story that never quite made it to the screen. Mostly enjoyable.

Format: DVD

Warts & All: Missing Background!

Quote: Oh, I suppose you can take the normal precautions against nuclear blast, like, er, sticky tape on the windows and that sort of thing.

Review: Flaws of Axos, more like. A psychedelic palette, some general bizarreness and a choppy sort of pace make this more watchable than it deserves. It strikes me as a case of the writers having a really nice idea and then forgetting to include it in the finished script. Okay, it is in there, but the twist on which the entire thing turns is blown within the first 30 seconds. Surely if you’re having a bunch of ostensibly beautiful golden aliens coming in peace like a lot of aureate hippies wouldn’t it have been better to have the audience hoodwinked too and hold back on your writhing orange tentacle monsters until later? Not only does it not bother to deceive us, the con the Axons try to pull on humanity is rubbish. Listen, mate, we’ve got this miracle stuff, works absolute wonders, and all we want in return is a bit of fuel. The Doctor sees through it right away – but still lets humanity get on with negotiating an inter-species trade deal that he knows is dead dodgy. With such dumbness on display and a thoroughly unbaited and blunted hook, it’s tough to feel totally engaged in proceedings but the story (aside from some oddly laboured scenes with a ridiculous tramp who talks like a Wurzel) does crack along like a particularly colourful comic-strip.

There’s a laudable inventiveness in the design department and the interior of Axos, while short of actually credible because of all the foam rubber puppet-claws (some actors behind the scenes must have had fun groping most of the cast with those), is exceedingly alien and I love the rather leech-like ship that breathes. The HAVOC action versus the Axons is typical UNIT fare and the betentacled monsters are pretty gruesome and scary, especially unpleasant I imagine if you’re sitting down to a spag bol at tea-time. Production-wise, the stand-out flaw – the major wart, as it were – has to be the flat grey backdrop used for episode four’s sequences of Benton and Yates in a Land Rover. It’s like they used CSO but didn’t bother to put any actual background in at all. There’s also a pesky bit of flare on the giant alien eye as it bobs about and causes a bit of bother with the CSO. Stuff that would amount to tiny niggles in an immersive and engaging adventure, but here magnified because of the story’s failings.

Delgado continues to be supreme as the Master and once again we see the Doctor being perfectly horrible towards the man from the ministry, although in this case you do feel Chinn deserves it. But you also get the feeling the show has a bit of a fixation with civil service bureaucrats and ministers at this point. And again there’s a focus on the energy situation, with the UK apparently operating a highly centralised power grid – all through one complex.

Filer from the CIA is a nice addition in that he hints of the international effort to track down the Master, but he is bargain-basement American and his delirious monologue when in hospital is some of the worst exposition ever. Hats off and salutes to the Brigadier, who is particularly great when facing the Master, and I will say the villain’s change of allegiance in this is better handled and more convincing than his eleventh hour switch of sides in Terror Of The Autons.

Overall a bit of a technilurid fairground ride, but like the poor guy flailing inside the orange blob suit on the reactor floor, you can’t help thinking there’s something better in there struggling to get out.

Format: DVD

Warts & All: Big Rubber Dragon Suit!

Quote: You’re too delicate for intelligence work, Benton. You’d better go and lie down.

Review: Following the crash-bang-wallop pace of Terror Of The Autons we might expect things to slow down a bit with a six-parter, but to its credit Mind Of Evil also rattles along quite nicely. Penned by Don Houghton of Inferno fame, this also takes a fairly stock SF recipe and mixes up something reasonably exciting out of the standard ingredients.

In this case it’s a mind-sucking parasite that is rendered more interesting by virtue of its application: as a potentially humane alternative to capital punishment. It’s a great notion and it’s only a shame that aspect isn’t explored more, but of course such intriguing moral explorations have to take second place the broader Bond-style plot to derail a world peace conference and plunge the globe into World War Three. There’s a degree of confusion over the parasite’s abilities as one man falls victim to an illusory drowning and seems to have water found in his lungs. I mean, huh, how’d that happen? And I laughed when someone says it’s only about 47% full – just the idea of accurately measuring quantities of evil. But although the machine that houses the creature just looks like a Blue Peter home-made Dalek, its effects are generally and quite genuinely terrifying. The first time we see the Doctor imagining himself to be burning alive is horrific without being gory enough to put you off your tea.

It’s only a bit unfortunate that three cliffhanger endings are, but for a difference in specific illusions, exactly the same. Much of it looks pretty big budget for the BBC, with big action clashes between UNIT troops and the Master’s small army of ex-cons, the hijacking of a nerve-gas missile convoy (wait, didn’t they have a convoy hijack in Ambassadors?) and a battle at Stangmoor Prison (location filming at an old castle makes for a terrific setting) which all adds to the James Bond feel of the adventure. Plus some pretty nice model work for the big explosion at the end – always important, that.

The story makes a good effort at investing the potential international crisis an international feel, with the early spy stuff involving a US delegate, the rather intriguing character of Captain Chin Lee, who has been recruited by the Master, and the Chinese delegate with whom the Doctor gets to show off his language/dialect skills. It would’ve been nice, I think, to drop back in on the conference in some way towards the end, to remind us what is at stake as the Master prepares to launch the missile. The regulars are great, with some wry gems of exchanges between Lethbridge-Stewart and Benton, for example. Delgado is supreme and it’s quite something to see Pertwee’s unflappable Doctor so completely shaken by his experience with the parasite. Not to mention, the great reversal when the Master is confronted by the giant scary Pertwee doing the evil laugh. Brilliant! Among the supporting cast, we also have the very familiar presences of Neil McCarthy and the quietly awesome Michael Sheard and a suitable lead thug performance from William Marlowe.

The to-and-fro power struggles within the prison do at times feel like padding, but even if this isn’t quite six episodes’ worth of story, it fills its runtime pretty well. Perhaps not rated as a classic – I’ve no idea how it’s rated by others, to be honest! – because it lacks obvious monsters, although in concept the parasite is one of the scariest and more powerful things the Doctor has encountered.

Solid adventure entertainment and lots to enjoy, I’m inclined to applaud it for its impression of scale and blockbuster on a budget ambition.

Format: DVD

Warts & All: Colour Separation Overuse

Quote: Nonsense. What you need, Doctor, as Miss Shaw herself so often remarked, is someone to pass you your test tubes and to tell you how brilliant you are.

Review: Word to the wise: if you ever meet the Third Doctor, do not give him any grounds for suspicion or he will attempt to pull your face off. It’s a bit extreme, but if you’ve met the Autons once before you just can’t be too careful. Here, Holmes takes the same basic scenario of Spearhead (naturally) and steps up the pace and the ante with the introduction of the Master and a riotously colourful cocktail of ideas that lend this adventure a definite Avengers bouquet. It fairly rattles along with a lot of quickfire cuts and short scenes, quite an inventive array of murders or attempted killings – with shrinkage and placement in a lunchbox, ugly rubber troll dolls, inflatable comfy chairs, telephone flex (cue more Pertwee gurning opportunities) and plastic daffodils. And the carnival masks adopted by the Autons for the distribution of the deadly flowers have a surreal and eminently creepy quality.

Terror is an apt title, because you can really imagine a lot of young viewers especially carrying some of the imagery off to an early bedtime for a wealth of nightmares. The use of CSO is not as extensive as in some stories, but what makes it stand out here is the way it’s deployed for scenes that you’d think wouldn’t need it at all – a simple enough museum backdrop and an ordinary kitchen. This along with a couple of odd plot quirks – like, why on earth do alien artefacts get loaned out as museum exhibits? And a very swift and convenient change of mind on the part of the Master to facilitate the ending – qualifies as something of a glitch in an otherwise tour de force dash of classic Doctor Who. Other questions would include why UNIT consider a Morris Minor (?) a worthy military vehicle; does that telephone engineer bloke count as one of the actors to have played the Master? and oh dear, are big strong taciturn types the only role available to black actors in Doctor Who? but these are momentary wonderings before you’re generally drawn back into proceedings by the combination of the momentum, the quite vibrant palette and the variety of engaging performances.

I absolutely love Delgado’s Master, such a scintillatingly sinister gentleman, the perfect Moriarty foil to Pertwee’s Doctor, and great fun is had by the writer in having the Doctor complain of traits in his arch-enemy that he is, if anything, more guilty of himself – ‘vanity is the Master’s great weakness’, for one example. Jo, is a bit of a comedown from Liz Shaw for me, but she has her charms and – as the quote illustrates – serves a role. The UNIT team is joined by Captain Yates and it’s great to see Michael Wisher returning so soon after Ambassadors in the role of Farrell Jr.

The realisation of the Nestenes is a bit disappointing – an energy blob between two radio telescopes – compared to the mighty octopus-crab-spider beast depicted on the old Target novelisation, but hey, can’t be helped if the fx budget was blown on that CSO backdrop for Mrs Farrell’s kitchen. Generally terrific stuff, tailed off with a marvellously bizarre battle between UNIT troops and the carnival Autons, images that will not likely give you nightmares past a certain age but will nevertheless endure in the memory for all the right reasons. Plastic fantastic.

Format: DVD

Warts & All: Primords

Quote: Our liver playing us up again this morning, is it, Professor?

Review: Obviously, any portrayal of a fascistic UK that supports reckless fracking is completely far-fetched but other than that and the rather risible Primords this one makes for a cracking end to a great season. What’s striking is that, just as Ambassadors featured the first ever DW car chase, it’s taken this long for the series to explore the notion of a parallel universe.

As with most such stories, the parallels are a bit obvious – these are all the characters you know and love, but, you know, bad. Apart from drill engineer Greg Sutton, who is the same old rugged dependable male chauvinist in all universes. Despite they’re being myriad choices the events taking place in the parallel world follow the same course. There’s still an Inferno drilling project at the same location looking to break through the Earth’s crust and unlock untold energy – energy being a British priority after the Nuton power complex got shut down in The Silurians. And just as that project had its grumpy director and attendant civil servant, so does Project Inferno.

In this case, we have Olaf Pooley as Professor Stahlman, rather excellent and an utterly brilliant foil for the Doctor to go up against, until he has to go all Jekyll and Hyde on us – plus the superlative Christoper Benjamin as Sir Keith Gold, providing something of a rarity in DW – a rather affable civil servant who’s on the sensible side of the argument. Actually, I’m interested to know what his fascist version was like – he’s never seen, because he’s already met with an unfortunate accident at that point. The implication is that he was seeking to stop the project though so I can only conclude he was just as nice and sensible in the nasty world. For all its simplicity, the parallel universe does present tantalising hints of this alternative world, with Big Brother-like posters and a swastikish emblem, and the key regulars – Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart and Section Leader Elisabeth Shaw are terrific, Nick Courtney very clearly enjoying himself behind that eyepatch. Quite difficult to buy an evil Benton, but there you go, can’t have everything.

Ultimately, the parallel universe serves its role admirably – which is to show us the disastrous consequences of the drilling project, to deliver dramatic cost ahead of the Doctor’s efforts to avert the catastrophe. Without it all we would have as an audience would be dire warnings and just as with fracking protest groups nobody pays much attention to them. Seeing the end of the world – familiar characters set to go out in a very inglorious blaze – well, that’s one way to get us all to sit up and take notice. There’s a good deal of action and drama and an especially effective cliffhanger, with countdown and clever cuts as Evil Stahlman (actually not unlike Good Stahlman, but with beady dark glasses) trains a gun on the Doctor and the drillhead is about to blow. And it all ends with a lovely shot of Liz chuckling to herself, with no suggestion that we are never going to see her again. So it’s a parting shot that makes me sad at the same time. And always leaves me wanting to either print the screen and frame it or write a proper Liz farewell story. I know I’ll do one or the other one of these days.

Anyway, I digress. Overall, I think this makes for a rip-roaring adventure yarn. It’s just a shame about those monsters.

Format: DVD

Warts & All: You Only Die Twice. Maybe Thrice.

Quote: “It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”

Review: Wow, it’s kind of odd singing the praises right now of anything that ends with someone who has fought for a given outcome then simply walks away, but this remains one of my all-time favourite DW stories. And that’s in spite of a host of imperfections and – on this occasion – having some stretch of the rewatch spoiled by a mood so thoroughly depressed by real world events going on around me. It takes a lot to ruin a good old bit of classic Doctor Who for me, but conversely it takes a heck of a lot to shake me from my convictions when it’s a story I’ve loved for so long. Ambassadors is, in a sense, a bit before my time, but it does contain my earliest ever DW memory – that of haunting space-suited figures marching along in slow-motion. As a result, my affection for this is pretty deep-seated, although I am fully aware of its faults. What lets it down most in the visual stakes is some hammy fight sequences and (certainly when watched at an episode a day) being able to spot the same guys die more than once. Oops.

Ah well, as with Silurians, it defies the format imposed upon it somewhat, managing to come up with an interesting variation on alien invasion – the aliens are peaceful, but are exploited by a misguided and vengeful general hoping to turn the world against them. John Abinieri is great as General Carrington, lending great sympathy (“It’s my moral duty.”) to a role that always puts me in mind of General Williams in Malcolm Hulke’s later Frontier In Space.

There are a number of other guest roles that invest this one a lot of appeal: Cyril Shaps (last seen in Tomb Of The Cybermen) as a professor Liz Shaw recognises from her Cambridge days, Ronald Allen (of Crossroads!) as Ralph Cornish and the mighty Michael Wisher provides some soft-spoken David Attenborough style commentary as the news reporter on site. Some aspects of the adventure make no sense – for example, the baddies build devices to communicate with and control the alien Ambassadors, but they’re shown to only transmit simple instructions and yet they manage to pull off robberies and the like using them. It’s like trying to control sentient beings with an early programming language like LOGO. And one of the mercenaries is busted out of prison, as though he’s a key member of Carrington’s force – and he has a presence about him to suggest he’s a major player among the bad guys – but he’s never seen again, replaced it seems by the character of Reegan. Who is almost but not quite on a par with Scorby in the Seeds Of Doom: ie. a nasty piece of work who you actually almost but not quite like.

There are contrivances and convolutions to draw out the adventure to a full seven episodes, with multiple inventive attempts on the Doctor’s life and at times the pace lags, but the action sequences give it a bit of a small screen blockbuster feel and the unique cliffhanger reprise within a title sequence break injects an added sting of drama and excitement into proceedings.

The mystery surrounding the missing astronauts and the faceless visors of the figures striding around in their spacesuits really sells the menace and personally I would have preferred never to have seen what the aliens looked like under those helmets. Pertwee is fab as is Courtney’s Brigadier, but for me Liz steals the show somewhat in her scenes – even involving herself in a slice of the action, with the help of a stuntman. The quote above is from her, when she is grabbed by one of the thugs holding her prisoner and it’s an absolute gem of a moment. What firmly cements this as something special though is that ending. It’s beautifully understated – and brave. Not least because the Doctor is handing over actual peace negotiations to humans who, quite recently, blew up some caves housing another alien race. Quatermass meets Bond meets The Avengers.

Quite the cocktail and somewhat messily shaken and stirred, but downed one glass at a time it hits the spot.

Format: DVD

Warts & All: Big Rubber Dinosaur

Quote: That’s typical of the military mind, isn’t it? Present them with a new problem and they start shooting at it.

Review: What a beautifully constructed sci-fi morality tale. Finally, an alien race who have a valid claim on the Earth, because they’re not aliens and are the world’s original owners. Humans are the squatters, although it’s not their fault they evolved. Well, some of them anyway. Peaceful co-existence with the Silurians would be disaster, of course. You’d have millions of lizards coming up from underground, stealing all our jobs and the planet’s overcrowded as it is. But you can’t blame the Doctor for trying. Belligerence, primitive fears and narrow-minded bigotry plagues both sides and the reasoned voices are few.

The many arguments pit military against science, friends against each other, everybody against bureaucracy and science against biological warfare. And the story understands the reality: most such situations end hopelessly. It’s more than the Doctor’s bitter disappointment we feel on that closing note.

It’s all wonderfully played with a cast that includes Paul Darrow as a UNIT Captain, Fulton Mackay as Dr Quinn, not the medicine woman but rather a duplicitous scientist who wants to exploit the Silurians for the knowledge they can give him, and Peter (Nyder) Miles as Dr Lawrence, the officious and overwrought director of the research facility. The sniping between him and the UNIT contingent, especially the Doctor, is better than any shooting war. And he even has a curious moment of butting heads against a minor employee who seems particularly possessive over his phone. Magic. Then Geoffrey Palmer shows up as Masters, government secretary, permanent or otherwise. Bonus! His character is one of the more reasonable government officials we get to see in the Pertwee era. Amusing when he decides his course of action will be to wait on further reports and ultimately tragic when he goes on to be the carrier of an engineered plague, delivering one of the most horrific and terrifying scenarios in all Doctor Who, to my mind.

It’s Survivors territory, is what it is and gives a chilling sense of very real people keeling over and dying in the streets of London. The tension in the lab as the Doctor and Liz battle to fight a cure is easily a match for the guns and grenades action that the UNIT era is more famous for. Pertwee and Caroline John are an absolute delight here and Courtney blazes as the Brigadier. And even though ultimately he is the one who bombs the shit out of the Silurians we understand why. Everyone’s views and motives are clear and we get them, irrespective of whether we agree with them or condone their actions.

The dinosaur looks rubbish, but DW has never had a great track record with larger monsters and this is not a story about monsters. This is all about the promise and potential and the frequent shortfall and capacity for horrors/atrocities within ourselves.

Absolutely bloody brilliant.

Format: DVD

Warts & All: Rubber Tentacle Wrestling!

Quote: Shoes!

Review: After a short break, Doctor Who returns – in colour! It’s funny now we take such things for granted and I know our family wouldn’t have noticed the change since we only had a B&W telly in our house for years. Still, it was something to experience the shift in the context of my Who rewatchathon and beyond the addition of colour it’s a different show.

It feels like an Avengers episode, with plastic mannequins in overalls prowling the woods in search of pink plastic glow globes and strange shiny faced people up to no good at a plastics factory. Pertwee makes his mark as the new Doctor, even though – or maybe because – he’s supposed to be all out of sorts and disoriented post-regeneration. It creates some nice comic touches to bridge the transformation from Troughton. There’s no Steed and Mrs Peel vibe but Caroline John as Liz Shaw is an instant hit (with me anyway) and she’s shown cracking on with the science bit while the Doctor’s still searching for his shoes and his lost marbles. And when they do meet they get to share a few nice moments as (near) intellectual equals, creating an enjoyable science club dynamic with the Brigadier on the sidelines.

In some respects it’s a fairly run of the mill invasion story, the battle with Autons at the factory almost a reenactment of one with the Cybermen in Invasion, but the plastics element and the nature of the Nestenes lend it a distinctive quirkiness about it. With it all condensed into four parts it also feels like there’s a lot going on. There are oddities: the Autons’ motives for attempted kidnap of the Doctor are tenuous and who the hell would want to go see an exhibit of civil servants at Madame Tussauds? But it’s all delivered with flair and panache and it’s not shy about dishing out the scares and genuine horror along with the action. Besides the obvious hall of fame shop window mannequin rampage, Hugh Burden is memorably creepy as Channing, ably assisted by Who semi-regular John Woodnutt, and it’s even a pleasant surprise to spot dependable Prentis Hancock as a reporter.

The standard Autons are a formidable and unstoppable enemy, I do hope they’ll return. All in all, this is a new era setting out its stall right out of the gate, establishing UNIT’s credentials and promoting the Brigadier to key series regular. And much as it seems a shame to have the Doctor stranded on one planet in one time, instead of being able to freely travel anywhere between Cardiff and London, this remains my favourite new Doctor intro story.