008 The French Revolution

AKA The Reign of Terror

Started it Wed 30-May

Once again a sort of character piece. The historical stuff has not gone out of style. Back when this was made Tale of Two Cities as a movie and a book was well known. Now Les Miserables and Black Adder 3 make this no less well known.

The studio bound farmhouse fire which ends ep1 is acceptable in context.
The 18h century 'sewerage' horror is hinted at darkly and effectively. Lily made a joke about the prison conditions faced by Barb, Ian and Susan in ep2 being much worse than on Skaro... which is quite true. Say what you like about Daleks but they keep a city clean!

The action is very Dennis Spooner. He'll be back of course when we get to the Romans and the Time Meddler. The drama is presented as little set pieces often with a 'comedic' character e.g. the road gang supervisor in ep3.

The last episode is the nearest to spectacular for two reasons. The Napoleon cameo: several bits of dialogue earlier in the series hinted at meeting historical figures. Indeed the Tardis travellers had met Kublai Khan and Marco Polo but here's one that everyone recognises.

Also the 'our destiny is in the stars' ending. This is a series finale after all. This might have only made any sense on original transmission in the UK since overseas viewers saw DW serials in different blocks (with repeats too(!)) to the UK (until the mid 70's anyway).

According to the doco on the DVD the production was somewhat troubled with the Hungarian director Henric Hirsch having a breakdown and struggling to complete his work. Also this is the serial (from ep5 I think) where the production moved from Lime Grove to Television Centre Wood Lane. (They'll be back..... but not for a year or two.)

Overall this is a vignette. It's not like a complete story but many little things sticky taped together.


ABM Rating 2.75/4.00
LJM Rating 3.50/5.00
SPJ Rating 7.50/10.00 

Peak Ranking No. 2 (out of 8)

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007 The Sensorites

This is slow and padded out to b*ggery.

There's about 25 minutes of plot in 6 episodes.

The Sensorites costumes are terrible. Their face masks are a disaster.

There's half an ok idea in the story but it gets buried under a metric sh*t ton of padding.


ABM Rating 2.00/4.00
LJM Rating 1.75/5.00
SPJ Rating 3.50/10.00 

Peak Ranking No. 7 (out of 7)

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006 The Aztecs

More accomplished, better acting, much better set design.

The music is brilliant and very memorable. Done by Richard Rodney Bennett (famed for some big film scores Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), and Murder on the Orient Express (1974), each earned him Oscar nominations and some serious modern music after this) and a real set of musicians.

The story is a serious time travel fantasy. 'You can't rewrite history, not one line.'

Proper Doctor Who....  

ABM Rating 3.75/4.00
LJM Rating 3.00/5.00
SPJ Rating 7.50/10.00 

Peak Ranking No. 1 (out of 6)

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005 The Keys of Marinus

This is cheaper and more transparent than the previous serial. There are plenty of terrible visual effects (the plastic ice in ep3), lamentable action (the horrible fighting in ep4), boring and lazy direction and camerawork, the wobbly sets and some hammy acting (the wife of the bad guy in ep 5 and 6).

The script is tame codswallop. It's a basic quest story. It has been done better many times since.

The whole quest notion is eroded by the 'Oh well just blow up the Conscience of Marinus now Yartek is in control" ending. If that was a live option then why didn't the keeper do this in ep1 and save everyone the bother? That's an awfully huge plot hole.

George Colouris is quite a famous actor. He was in Citizen Kane (1941) for instance. His role is very short and not real impressive. I sense that he was seriously over the hill at this point in his life. He's in ep1 only. Blink and you'll miss him.

Also notice:

• Francis de Wolff is slumming it in ep3 and 4 (Jedikiah off The Tomorrow People and lots more movies dating back to the 1930's)
• Donald Pickering in ep5 (first of his 3 DW guest star appearances, films and TV from the 50's to the 00's)
• Edmund Warwick in ep3 (noted stand in for Hartnell)
• Raf De La Torre ep 5 & 6 (lots of films 50's to the 70's)
• Fiona Walker (Lady Peinforte in Silver Nemesis indeed!)
• Robin Philips (Altos) went on to be quite an important director on Broadway and in other big theatrical productions. Not sure if he took those shorty shorts with him but...

... The guest cast in this is probably the most notable aspect of the story. When Julian Glover is in next season's The Crusade, the publicity was 'hey great actors wanna be in this... good sign". But for some reason they don't say that about The Keys of Marinus which based on the above list has arguably DW's best cast of the 1960's.

The story is diverted by the Millenius trial stuff in ep5 and 6. It's probably a better story and by the time the keys and the pyramid bit comes back on, it's something of a let down.

ABM Rating 2.50/4.00

LJM Rating 1.90/5.00
SPJ Rating 3.00/10.00

Peak Ranking No. 4 (out of 5)

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004 Marco Polo

This is a completely missing serial. We watched recons.

We watched the colour flash animation version of The Roof of the World (ep1) (edgy and sketchy but effective). Then the Loose Cannon colour stills version of ep2 (looks ok). We watched a B&W SIMS generated animated version for Ep3. Intriguing use of a gaming technology but it has the curious effect of 'recasting' every character as some computer "sprite" which leads to confusion about which character is which. So we went back to the Loose Cannon stills version for the rest.

This is a slowish, long read kind of story. It has the problem that more than half of the cliffhangers are bad guy Tegana about to threaten something or someone.

The story/plot is kind of unimportant. It seems to take second place to the character interaction.
Marco Polo is drawn as a desperate diplomat. Kublai Khan as a fussy old man. Other characters are cardboard cut out villains or bystander 'ticket inspectors' of some sort.

A good production and an interesting setting. Not what you expect if you want Daleks and terror but intriguing in other ways.


ABM Rating 3.00/4.00
LJM Rating 3.50/5.00
SPJ Rating 6.50/10.00 

Peak Ranking No. 1 (out of 4)

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003 Beyond the Sun

Also known as The Edge of Destruction

A deliberate padding episode, curious for the initial ideas it reveals which are mostly forgotten now decades later. (But see Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways...)

 The silly flip ending (the 'fast return switch' getting stuck) seems ludicrous but surely that reflects the advances in expectations of everyday technology in the last 54 years.

ABM Rating 2.50/4.00
LJM Rating 1.00/5.00
SPJ Rating 7.00/10.00 

Peak Ranking No. 3 (out of 3)

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002 The Dead Planet

AKA The Daleks, The Mutants, The Survivors
(Note that ALL of these titles will be reused in coming decades except the one I've called it)

It has some Terry Nation related problems in the plotting and the characterisation but the Daleks themselves steal the show, guaranteeing legend status.

55 years on it's very easy to spot all the undeveloped Dalek tropes and interpret them as 'mistakes'. But make no mistake the Daleks were stunning to watch and made this serial work fantastically well at the time.

Not a perfect production and obviously ageing weirdly.

The anti-radiation drugs are bizarrely wrong. After about ep3 the radiation sickness completely disappears and is not mentioned again. I count this as a mistake and an egregious one.

The last two eps seem to be a paint by numbers action adventure movie trope boring grind. The story seems to STOP while they act out misconceived rope dangling 'tension' scenes. This is as boring as batsh*t.


ABM Rating 3.00/4.00
LJM 1.75/5.00
SPJ 7.00/10.00

Peak Ranking No. 2 (out of 2)

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