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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