036 The Evil of the Daleks

Started 29-Sep

We watched a strange recon with slow moving recreated scenes featuring a hairy armed young man in a dress as Victoria as prisoner of the Daleks.

No, not weird at all.

Look I'm a fan. It's not a perfect DW story but it's more interesting than most. This is difficult to get into because of it's length and it's involvement and depth and missing episodes are always a major hurdle.

It's the mood and the style that makes DW good. The plots are not amazing or the spectacular-ness of the production (mixed video and 16mm film in B&W). The mood and style feeding an imagined back story is the sign that DW is going well.

This is a very slow burn story. Whole episodes are devoted to scene setting. Scientifically implausible (of course) but then it doesn't make the mistake of depending on it.

This is like a Dickens Daleks crossover story. All the lace and maids and Victorian gentlemen but also the list of the minor characters: Kemel, Terrall, Kennedy, Ruth, Molly, Perry, even Bob Hall. Each has a little bit of character and some part in the plot.

The Daleks are cyphers but they serve the story as villains. For several episodes (2-5) they seem to flit into Maxtible's laboratory through those double arched doors (and presumably are backward and forwards through a wormhole to Skaro) like a head waiter checking on customers ducking into the kitchen (or an ever present wraith like threat reinforcing Maxtible's hegemony.) As the story goes on they develop into scheming buggers and plot mavens.

Waterfield and Maxtible are scientists greedy for power and riches who sacrifice their integrity at a terrible cost. Most of the other characters are merely pawns in this game.

Troughton is fantastically cool as the Doctor now. He manages to seem both scatty and busy and calm but really in command of everything when it comes down to it. Mercurially one step ahead of  the monsters but all over the place and doesn't seem to mind. Wow, that is cool. When it comes to it he will stand up to the Daleks, the Daleks' city on their home world, the Emporer Dalek and can and will do 'em in. And he makes it seem easy.

Jamie grows as a character. He's not a simple peasant like in Underwater Menace or Moonbase. He's now a surprisingly sophisticated and resourceful Ian-type replacement. Very good for the show. Hines plays him with some understatement.and ease belying the acting skill that this actually requires to make the role work. The guy should have gone on to great things maybe.

The story seems like 19th century faffing about till the end of episode 5. Then it soars.

Not a base under siege. The early plot starts as a mystery/search for the Tardis, followed by a desperate situation that sets the Doctor and Jamie against each other. In episode 6 when Maxtible's  house is destroyed and the action moves to Skaro the Daleks take centre stage. Yes, the Daleks' plan is insane (see Antony Tomlinson's review in the comments) and Maxtible's ambition is insane. But the pace and gravity picks up and overwhelms reasoned plotting anyway.


That last episode...
The missing visuals are surely not matched by the telesnaps or the half hearted animated version we saw. A noticeable feature of recovered Troughton episodes is the visual and acting flourshes directors and actors have put into the show. I'll cite Underwater Menace ep2 as one example. Web ep 4 as another. A very different prospect to watch it rather than hear it.

So the lost episode status is crippling but what does that leave us?

Well, spoiler alert... (after 51 years, if you haven't tried to watch this yet then FFS what's wrong with you?!)

A sample of the earthquake plot developments that go down in ep7:

• the Doctor is (definitely) not human (after all), 
• this story is big enough to contemplate escape to another universe or return to his home planet
• the Doctor will let everyone around him perish to defeat these Daleks, 
• these Daleks can do transmutation of metals (they are not bullsh*tting Maxtible) This according  to Sandifer is a metaphor for wizardry and universal magick. BTW the Doctor is not wrong to say that transmutation of iron to gold is possible... but it takes colliding black holes to do it....
• The Doctor says the point is why are the Daleks doing this? But does he answer.. no. Perhaps this is best described as sequel hunting ? 
• the Emporer Dalek reveals the plan is to discover the Dalek Factor and have the Doctor spread it among humans (really the climax to ep 6 but hey)... this is "suspension of disbelief required" time obviously but if you interpret this metaphorically and consider that the Daleks probably view the Doctor as corruptible and coerceable as any other human, I think I can understand why they would try this plan.
• The shock of seeing the destructive effects of Daleks questioning and arguing amongst each other is palpable after 4 seasons of implacable authority.
• ...and Victoria Watefield is the new companion through obvious necessity rather than the usual 'stumble into the Tardis' type reason.

Maybe it will be like the Cyberdummy/Toberman fight in Tomb... if it's ever discovered again.

But maybe that lack of discovery makes Evil ep7 the best example (of many) of living better in the imagination. (What JNT once possibly cynically called the 'memory cheating'.)


This is heady stuff and magnificent too. This is crying out for remake or animation or discovery.

Even the best modern series episodes are at best hoping to be this good.

Top 10 all time, easily. Just a matter of where. It just shades Power because of its scope but they're different sorts of stories. Power is about the misplaced mendacity of humans...In Power, the Daleks are predictable, deceptive but predictable and what they do is inevitable. Evil is about the lengths that Daleks will go to foment, well, their evil on people. The fate is inevitable only when the good guys stand up to them.

Gerry Davis ended his run as Script Editor, Peter Bryant started. He will take over from Innes Lloyd as producer during the next series. Next series features a string of Script Editors, many of whom are very, very DW famous. David Whitaker will do some more scripts over the next 3 years but usually rewrites of other people's story outlines so he's just about finished. Daleks won't be back for 4 1/2 years (Jan 1972). Thanks, Terry Nation and Lynsted Park Enterprises....

Series 4 ended in the UK on the day that colour television began in Europe (on BBC2, 1-Jul-1967). The series showed that change can be good for the show. The quality had picked up enormously. (Series 4 has gone from The Smugglers to this...) The ratings weren't soaring but they had stopped the freefall of the previous year and stabilised at a good enough medium. Overseas sales had picked up a little with NZ now regularly showing these eps and many African countries too.

Doctor Who has entered a roughly 10 year period of sustained excellence that will likely never be matched. This is where Doctor Who has become the best TV show of all time.



ABM Rating 3.81/4.00
LJM Rating 4.25/5.00
SPJ Rating 6.75/10.00  

No. 3 (out of 36)

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035 The Faceless Ones

Started 22-Sep

First 3 eps are quite engaging and the pace nips along.

Ben and Polly noticeably disappear in ep2.

Jamie and Sam Briggs make a replacement team almost effortlessly. Pauline Collins plays a very modern, cheeky Liver bird style of character that was no doubt immediately attractive to the production team. She did get asked and her answer was 'no, thanks'.

This is a 'base under siege' story with a domestic, metropolitan difference. Set in an airport no less.

The airport commandant (Colin Gordon) is vaguely special guest star-ish and absurdly grumpy from start to finish.


The last three eps seem whacky on paper but in a recon they seem surprising. There are certain weird bits in the plot. The Chameleons plan is insane. The last ep seems rushed and less than well thought out. Bodies in cars in the carpark for days even weeks without water, food or wee breaks would either leak, die or cook wouldn't they?

The taken over Jamie talks English not Scottish. Creepy.

This is just the second story wholly set in the (close) to present day and is more like a proto Pertwee story than anything. The plot is a sort of proto Auton story which in turn is based on the 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' body replacement trope.

Unlike The War Machines it centres on an alien presence rather than a man made threat (WOTAN and the machines.) That seems to work better for DW. The next one like this is Web of Fear. This concept is the chink of light at the end of the "base under siege" tunnel.


ABM Rating 3.30/4.00 
LJM Rating 3.50/5.00
SPJ Rating 6.50/10.00  

No. 13 (out of 35)

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034 The Macra Terror

Started 17-Sep

New titles, new logo... cool.


Thoughtful.

There's lots of hidden purpose and fake presentation n this human colony. Things are not quite what they appear. These days people would think it's a metaphor for media or fake news. But this is the 60's so it must be....Kakfaesque.

An attempt to be both deliberately scary and present a very strange, brainwash-y, dystopian society with a creepy secret at its heart. Is this satirical of communism? That's kinda odd and direct for the normally analogy free DW.

Oddly this predates the McGoohan Prisoner by about 4 months. The idea has some parallels.

Full of memorable and quotable lines.

• DOCTOR: ... Don't just be obedient. Always make up your own mind.

• PILOT: ...when he returns to the Colony, Medok will be a changed man. He will cooperate and he will obey orders. He'll be just like the rest of us.
• DOCTOR: Why do you want everyone to be the same?
• PILOT: Doctor, this Colony was founded many centuries ago by our ancestors who came from the Earth planet, like your young friends. Our ancestors believed in the virtues of healthy happiness and we have tried to keep their ideals alive. Sometimes, alas, it is necessary to use force

• PILOT: Stop! Stop! You're breaking the law! 
• DOCTOR: Bad laws were made to be broken.

• (The front of the machine opens. The Doctor comes out immaculately groomed.)
• POLLY: Oh, Doctor. You look gorgeous.
• DOCTOR: Oh, my shoes!
• BEN: Oh, they're fantastic. You can see your face in them.
• DOCTOR: Precisely. Who wants to see their face in a pair of suede shoes?

 What's very new here seems to be a deliberate attempt to scare the heebies outta the viewers. Up to this point monsters are, apart from the Daleks, Voords or Mire Beasts or Varga plants: lumbering, icky but not actually menacing. Here the monsters are scuttling threats hidden in the shadows and ready to sneak up and get ya!

The music: Dudley has discovered the synthesizer. But it's the 1967 model... and it sounds rough and sawtoothed but distinctive and too catchy...

The end of each ep1-3 is almost the same. (Wander into the dark, oily smoky place and get scared by the crabs...) Ep 2 features Polly's over the top screaming as a bonus but the echoes are noticeable.

The Macra. The prop cost £500 (a record amount of money spent on a prop at that time - the equivalent of about £15k today) and was heavily promoted as the biggest monster yet. While this episode is lost (and how several scenes were actually executed remains a mystery as you can't tell from the soundtrack), production stills reveal that there's more to making a convincing monster than just spending lots of money on it. 

The last ep has a very quick conclusion.

But the story is mind control and social control and denial of reality and propaganda, and the characters have very odd attitudes and behaviours.


ABM Rating 3.20/4.00 
LJM Rating 3.50/5.00
SPJ Rating 7.00/10.00  

No. 8 (out of 34)

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033 The Moonbase

Started 13-Sep


Of course we watched the beautifully restored BBC DVD which features the reanimated eps 1 & 3.

Just a few too many physical science oopsies for mine.

Troughton is in his element as the Doctor now, while Polly is the put upon coffee girl but she comes up with the chemical Cyber attack plan in ep3.

The Moonbase is a workplace health and safety nightmare at nearly every turn. (e.g. Send 2 guys out on the lunar surface to check the antenna. They get killed by passing cybermen then forgotten about for nearly a whole episode before "Oh wait a sec, what happened to those guys? Oh well....") The basic design of the Gravitron control room seems to consume human beings as a resource. WHY? Build some robots FFS. Offer the job to some Cybermen? No wonder so many people are hurt or seriously killed in that place. Critical path planning and incident management is a fucking disgrace. The management should be sacked.

The characters of the various crew members in the base are pretty cardboard and forgettable. Hobson's character is the sort of lackadaisical boss who needs to be one of the first sacked. He lacks knowledge, he makes up stuff on the spot, he blames others when things go wrong. The guy is appalling. Unlike Cutler of Snowcap he does not have any familial protection motivation behind his craziness. So er.....

I wonder if the international crew thing is a nod towards Star Trek which had been going in the US for nearly 6 months when this was shown. The scriptwriters in DW  obviously misunderstood the thing about women and coloureds but the international thing is obvious here where it wasn't at Snowcap.

The 'chemistry' of the "Polly Cocktail"is cack brained.
The acetone should be enough boys and girls. The adding of other stuff will just make it melt cyber plastic less quickly (i.e. reduce efficacy). Neither benzene or ethyl alcohol will dissolve plastic quickly... but they might catch fire. Given that the 'let's add more stuff' bit is arguably Ben's idea then Polly is not to blame I guess. The 'let's test it and see thing' is actually glorious though.

The handling and the delivery of the chemical is very thoughtless and cavalier too but possibly justifiable in terms of a combat situation. Given this is a kid's viewing show I am amazed there were no complaints about misuse of dangerous substances. (e.g. hey kids, let's squirt dangerous solvents in each other's eyes and blame the dog...) The first recorded complaints about horror and violence in DW are due later in 1967 and they will concern much more abstract problems.

Ben is right about using the Polly cocktail sprayer in a low pressure/vacuum environment late in ep 3. It would vaporise too quickly and be ineffective. But the modification shown (put it in a glass bottle and make a sort of 'water bomb' out of it) is not likely to work any better.

I'd have tried something very hot.
Tip: Radiant and Conductive Heat works in a vacuum. (Convective heat rather less well.)  Is there an electrocautery rig in the medical bay? Or better still a microwave diathermy unit? What about a toaster? No? Well have a look in the tool shed for an electric arc welder. If you can carry it around it would absolutely wallop one of these early Cyberman. Boil their plastic surfaces and membranes and cut through their metal skin like soap suds. There's a thermonuclear (i.e. fusion) reactor power source running the Gravitron according to Ben. Enough current to burn and keep burning.  Hook it up.....

The physics of deflecting a laser beam or photon energy weapon (of the Cybermen's in ep 4) with a gravity 'beam' or gravity field is at best a bit airy fairy.

Methinks Dr Kit Pedler, scientific adviser, is not working so well here. Maybe in the 60's fooling about with scientific and technical ideas was something you could let pass in drama terms. Problem is none of these ideas have suddenly become known since 1967 so "it was different back then" IS NOT an excuse. As SF this is kinda sloppy.

The plot is probably the worst aspect of this story. It's simple base under siege stuff obviously but consists of little more than the Cybermen attempting to sneak into the base to steal bodies or take them over (a couple of times), then they mount a full on march in and take over strategy. And the Cybermen fail easily each time. It's not compelling stuff.

When the Gravitron is turned on the Cybs in ep4 they gain upward momentum somehow and... is it antigravity that propels them from the surface of the moon? Why don't the rocks and dust near them do the same? In fact why doesn't the whole Moonbase fly upwards as well?

The music is atmospheric and sets a spooky, spacey mood. (Big improvement over The Underwater Menace.)

The sets in the Moonbase were quite futuristic and convincing. The lack of computers is strange looking to 21st century eyes. Similarly the knobs and buttons are all weirdly analogue. A major advantage of the base under siege story is that the meagre budget can be used on the single big set. This feature is taken **full** advantage of here.

This was the highest rating DW story in the Troughton era in the UK. (8-9 millions.)
The last episode was the first to be made when the production was moved back to Lime Grove Studio D. What a depressing come-down that would have been....



ABM Rating 2.50/4.00
LJM Rating 4.25/5.00
SPJ Rating 7.00/10.00  

No. 8 (out of 33)

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032 The Underwater Menace

Started 9-Sep

We watched an LC recon of ep1 and BBC DVD versions of ep2 and 3.

Memo stick to LC recons as the ones on the BBC DVD aren't as good.

TUM is not as bad as its reputation suggests.
Outrageous and different it may be but it's reputation is execrable. This is bobbing along the bottom.

The cast is quite good.
Joseph Furst (who really did talk like that) had lots of TV roles in the 50's and 60's and later in Diamonds are Forever (1971) and A Country Practice (when he moved to Australia.)
Colin Jeavons (at the time known for his work in adaptations of Dickens), later went on to a varied career in The Avengers, Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and House of Cards.
Noel Johnson (who'll be back in Invasion of the Dinosaurs) was a veteran of dozens of cop shows.
Catherine Howe was just 16 years old when she appeared in this. She went on to be an award winning studio singer (doubling voices for other actors in movies),  a writer of two history books and had a string of singles released as a folk music singer.

Interesting true fact... Peter Stephens who played Lolem in this story also played Cyril in The Celestial Toymaker. He directed a Hollywood western called "Mustang" released in 1959 which was an abominable flop.

So what's wrong with The Underwater Menace.?

The premise is ridiculous (Atlantis exists and there's fish people there), the execution is piss poor (the costumes of the fish people and the priests) the direction is lame (explain what happens in episode 4), the characters are imbecilic (Zaroff 's motives, Thous' approach, the way Ara gets rundown by everyone), the drama is not believable (people get killed and no one reacts, the fish people can't work out how to strike for themselves). No one can take this seriously, least of all the viewers.


The script is cack.  Ep2 looks quite ok when the Doctor and Zaroff are squaring off but it goes seriously off the rails after that.  The resolution is haphazard. The last two episodes consist of a series of silly plot twists and half hearted conclusions, many of which are illogical or not very clear.


The director was Julia Smith, one the very few women to direct a DW story (Paddy Russell. Fiona Cumming, Mary Ridge, Sarah Hellings, Hettie MacDonald, Alice Troughton, Catherine Morshead, Sheree Folkson and Rachel Talalay are the others). She would later be famous as co-creator and producer on Eastenders and, less successfully, El Dorado. She showed here that her previous effort on DW (The Smugglers) was no fluke. She clearly was not a good director for DW.


This ain't even a hot mess. It's cold and tastes of puke.

In the DW Discontuity Guide, Topping and Day compares TUM to Ed Wood's magnum opus. It's not as outrightly ludicrous as Plan 9 From Outer Space. But it seems to be striving to be.

1967 had arrived during the last serial. DW's third full year had seen a transformation from top to bottom. Viewers at the time must have been wondering if the fatigue from the change would finish the show off. But no... even despite the fish people.


ABM Rating 2.05/4.00
LJM Rating 2.75/5.00
SPJ Rating 1.60/10.00  

No. 26 (out of 32)

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031 The Highlanders

Started 5-Sep

Hello, Jamie.

We watched an LC recon of all 4 episodes

The first episode makes a little of the quite alien  marauding and lawless actions of the Redcoat soldiers.... and of course the outright exploitative ethical vacuum that is Grey and Perkins and their barely concealed criminal slave trading.

The highlight is the Doctor's impersonation of a German doctor (Dr Von Wer) and his duping of both Grey and his secretary Perkins to escape. Polly is great in ep2 for the gumption she shows in fighting back effectively against the redcoats when the Scots seem to have all but given in.

Overall this seems slightly interesting. The Highlanders looks very definitely a different show  to the last serial. This is a pedestrian historical-ish romp through a sordid and horrible piece of unfortunate British history.

I wonder if an influence on this story is Peter Watkins' "Culloden". This was a 1964 docudrama version of the 1745/46 highlander uprising and in particular the battle of Culloden. "Culloden" presented the battle and it's participants in TV interview style, using hand held camerawork much like a live coverage of the battle would appear if it were on modern TV. It went some way to make the Highlanders' political aims seem unlikely, misguided, divided and hopeless. The Highland Scots were shown as loyal but poor and their leaders as somewhere between gullible and insane. The English were demonised as vicious and vengeful and their Hanoverian princes as uncaring and more interested in finery, luxury and rich indolence than bloody and distasteful conflicts about such minor things as freedom, welfare and human rights. The way it did this was by in your face interview of costumed unknown actors accompanied by explanatory narrator.

So viewers familiar with Culloden would be expecting Doctor Who and the Highlanders to depict a barbaric tragedy.

DW's Highlanders shows the Scots as heroic and valorous if a little simple minded. The villains are the solicitor Grey and Trask, master of the Annabelle whose avaricious slave trading is breathtaking. This is consistent with the world of Culloden.

The other notable influences this may have is of course any number of filmed versions of the Battle of Culloden: the 1948 technicolor flop of Bonnie Prince Charlie starring David Niven, the 1953 version of the Master of Ballantrae with Errol Flynn, or indeed any of the half a dozen versions of Kidnapped. (e.g. 1948 with Roddy MCDowall or 1960 with Peter Finch)

With ep 5 of the previous serial we are now half way through the missing episodes. After this there's just 43 'picture shows' to go. I hope that's encouraging.



ABM Rating 2.90/4.00 
LJM Rating 3.50/5.00
SPJ Rating 6.80/10.00  

No. 11 (out of 31)


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