044 The Dominators

Started 24-Nov

This is the shortest DW serial since Tomb of the Cybermen but it seems longer and more tedious than any 6 parter.

There are several narrative mistakes. The Dominators are like bitching parents. The shoulders and the raggedy pants look silly. The Quarks are unthreatening because they look like a good shove will stop 'em. They're not swift or agile or impressively scary.
The pacing is awful. I feel asleep in ep1 and ep4 and I swear I missed nothing. Then the last ep feels rushed and the vague handwaving is frankly ridiculous.

The tunnel digging is atrociously directed. It takes place 'off screen' (maybe to save budget?) and is crucial to the plot.. Yet the nearest we get to see of it is various characters legs.

The physics of the 'seed device' is pants. The seed is designed to make a huge planet killer radioactive volcano erupt... how? Is the magma radioactive?
The seed can't generate radioactivity... yet the whole point of the project is to allow the Dominator space ship fleet to absorb radioactivity to gain energy.
Why aren't the ships designed to absorb stellar/solar radiation or cosmic rays instead? Using radionucletide energy seems very specific and difficult to obtain compared to the abundant photon energy available in space. (Maybe they cannot stand heat, like Ice Warriors?)

There are some weird shots of the Doctor on location where the direction fails to hide that it is clearly a stand in doubling for Pat. (His name is Chris Jefferies, fact fans.)

Ep3 is a 35mm film ep and does not have an "Episode 3" caption.

The story is some misbegotten garbage about peaceniks being unable to deal with genuinely aggressive threats, in this case the Dominators and their toy Quarks. It occurs to me that the 'peaceniks' are actually rather open to persuasion about aggression and though there are certain elements of intransigent authoritarians, several Dulcians (Cully, Balan, Kando and Teel) are very willing to be persuaded to resist and fight. And as for the 'aggressive' Dominators they display more anger toward each other than effective aggression toward Dulcians.
 
Several reviews go on at length about how anti-anti-war this might be. But as propaganda in support of military bolstering I think it effectively undermines itself.

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

No. 34 (out of 44)


Link to Cumulative Rankings

Rankings Scoreboard

043 The Wheel in Space

Started 18-Nov

We watched the LC recons of ep1,2,4,5 and BBC DVD's of ep3,6.

This is the first serial to have both music and sound effects done by the Radiophonic Workshop.

This seems better than I remember.

But it's very thin material.

The plot... base under siege with all the usual tropes, merely enhanced by the addition of **some** girls. There's three types here: Gemma, the smart one, Tanya, the dolly bird one, and Zoe, the juvenile one) is at least there. Regrettably, that's progress (actually). The ep2 Tanya/Leo exchange about 'pretty noses' in groan inducing.

Plot = Base under siege being infiltrated by Cybermen. That's the same as 2 out of three previous stories featuring Cybermen. This time just two (count 'em) Cybers. This is not innovative. The Cybers' costumes are only slightly revised. Notable new thing is the teardrop notches.

The Cybermats are reused and cute. The security on the Wheel space station is pretty hopeless. Duggan's discovery of Cybermats eating his so called key material (the made up 'Bernalium' which he just keeps in boxes any old where) should be a reportable incident but amazingly he doesn't get sacked for trying to hide it.

The Wheel is unexpectedly large and spacious and kinda arty and designed within. Modern 21stC space stations are cramped and functional looking (messy?) inside.

Quite why the Wheel has a Xray laser for 'defence' (against what?) and why it's so easy to disable with such chemicals as Jamie (or anyone) can just find lying around in the space station are very important yet unanswered questions. Again the security here is unexplainedly lax. Aerospace engineering is often focussed on reliability, simplicity and redundancy. That is, it won't break, but if it does it's either very easy to fix or there's another one we can use instead. The Xray laser is 0/3 on this.

The ep3 stuff about a 'star going nova' which in turn is the cause of a meteorite storm is wrong (and silly).

Maybe there's an unconscious desire by the space station people to be taken over by the Cybermen? Or they don't care about their jobs? Or the briefly mentioned 'back to Earth' campaign has some actual chance of succeeding through incompetence, indolence, lethargy in the space service?

There's some advance in video effects on show in the two eps that survive. The 'solarization' effect when the Cyberpods burst is new gear for mid 1968. (It's severely dated now but it would have been very *wowee* back then.) The overlay sparks and zaps from Cybermen are improved also.


The series 5 finale has a reputation for being a damp squib. It's not undeserved.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

In series 5 the show has hit new heights of scripting and directing but also scraped the bottom with trying to include hard science that is wrong or silly. The stuff that is unexplained or unexplainable has more credibility in dramatic terms than the misunderstood and misapplied technical gubbins. That is Web of Fear is better than Ice Warriors.

In series 5 there were 3 all time classic serials out of 7, 2 so-so serials and 2 which weren't so good. The series is much more stable and reliable than series 3.

This is the best season yet of DW according to the trend of our scores.

There are more changes coming. The transition to colour and the slashing of yearly episode count (along with concomit adjusted production schedule - 2 eps each fortnight instead of 1 per week) are the big ones. Also changed (with Enemy of the World) is the TV standard. the show is now shot on 625 line video instead of 405 line. How the new cameras coped in Lime Grove Studio D is unrecorded but it may not have been all bad since newer cameras would have been smaller and more light weight. At some point in the next year the colour video recorders would be delivered. Did any series 5/6 DW ever get recorded in colour? Ah fantasy... Obviously such recordings never survived.

Lime Grove Studio D was only partly used for Wheel in Space. Over the next year use of Lime Grove Studio D was phased out. Last ep to use it at all was Space Pirates ep1.

We have reached a point where the next 28 eps after Wheel in Space are moving pictures status. That's a great encouragement. Unfortunately the next cab off the rank is The Dominators.

Just 5 recon eps to go. Hold on, peeps.


ABM Rating 2.20/4.00
LJM Rating 3.00/5.00
SPJ Rating 5.50/10

No. 29 (out of 43)


Link to Cumulative Rankings


Rankings Scoreboard

042 Fury from the Deep

Started 10-Nov

LC recon time again. But after a file corruption problem we resorted to a JV recon after ep2.

The second thing I noticed was Dudley was back with his electronic kazoo. After 3 serials this season with stock music, 1 with none at all and just 1 (Ice Warriors) with Dudley's 60's synth this is not the refined, classic stuff of Dudley in the 70's.

First rule of incidental music is it should not interfere or be too noticeable. Er, well...

Dudley will get it right next series (Seeds of Death, Space Pirates, War Games) but it will be Spearhead from Space that is the start of his best work.

The Sonic Screwdriver appears in ep1 and it is used to undo a large bolt!!

This has a massive reputation and I feel like I'm testing myself against it.

Well other people's reviews are mixed at best:
http://geekbat.blogspot.com/2012/04/doctor-who-fury-from-deep.html

But I think this comes across awfully poorly as a recon.

The horror (Oak's and Quill's creepiness, Robson's battle against the weed takeover, the end of ep2)) and the action (helicopters, weed creature movements, people falling in drains) are both nearly entirely missing from the show because there are no moving pictures. The little clips that do exist do have a immediate, video-y, exciting look but they are all too brief.


We're left with a very 'base under siege' tale with a fairly ill-defined threat. Confusingly it even looks like the foam-y stuff from the previous story (Web..)

The Doctor (in ep4) describes the weed creature as like a human (it's clearly not).


What is the Weed creature (in fictional terms)? What is it's reason for attacking gas rigs? Why is it 'deadly'? Plus the gas is described as 'poisonous' yet *no one* dies. (Except maybe Van Luytens?)
The gas being extracted is natural gas (as Harris describes it, rightly enough, it is non-'toxic'.) BTW natural gas is mostly methane and apart from being flammable is not dangerously reactive or poisonous. In high concentrations it is asphyxiating, however. Also 'toxic' is a very ill used term. Most science-y/medical people try to avoid it these days because it has confusing connotations.
'Toxic' recently made OED's 2018 Word of the Year. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2018  That article explains how confusing....


What is the gas that the creature's taken over people breath out that debilitates? It's not methane.
At one point the rig staff use all the oxygen to 'stop' it. (I'm not sure what they're doing to it....)

If a flammable gas and pure oxygen are combined then there would be a risk of explosion and fire I reckon. These rig staff are engineers are they? Oh yeah....

The SF concept is not well thought out in my view.

Characters are kinda dull and less than innovative. Especially Robson and Harris. There are at least some ladies in this (Maggie and Megan) but they have pretty much sketched in characters.


I think I missed what happened to Oak and Quill who were bizarre and commanded interest and attention. Their actions and motivation seem separate from the weed creature's. This contributes to the poor story.

The Doctor pilots a helicopter in ep6 while name checkin Astrid from Enemy of the World. Wow...

Victoria's character is weirdly wild. Of course it's not consistent with previous stories... (welcome to DW!!) but she's turned into a frustrated academic (she was interested in dresses and politeness before this....)

Apparently there's a rumour that Jamie kissed Victoria goodbye (in that scene in ep6). The 'evidence' for this is an indistinct 'smack' sound on the soundtrack. I guess this is crap but it's another example of how much the story loses from missing the pictures...

In conclusion, we've marked this one down. The story isn't so great and the action is indiscernible. If it were ever recovered then *maybe* it would be redeemed some.

I'm really disappointed in Fury From the Deep.


ABM Rating 3.00/4.00 
LJM Rating 2.00/5.00
SPJ Rating 3.80/10.00

No. 35 (out of 42)


Link to Cumulative Rankings


Rankings Scoreboard

041 The Web of Fear

Started 4-Nov


Doctor Who does not get much better than this.

Peter Bryant now is officially in the Producer's chair. New script editor is (recently passed away) Derrick Sherwin, his assistant Terrance Dicks.

This has these the very best elements:

• The mystery, what is happening? Right from the early scenes.... "Londoners flee, menace spreads..."
• The mood, odd versus familiar...everyday Tube stations with sappers everywhere and no commuters...
• The not what it seems... when does Arnold succumb to the Intelligence's influence, what is the motivation behind what he says to Travers in ep5?
• The call back to a previous episode (which was almost a new thing at this point),
• Characters with uncertain and probably shifty motives... Chorley, Travers, even Lethbridge Stewart at one point.
• Characters with nervous or unsure positions... Evans and Chorley.
• Characters who are sensible but still get scared witless... Anne and Lethbridge-Stewart... his wobble in ep4 is so dramatic.
• There is a direct example of the main fault with the philosophy of Utilitarianism ("it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong") (as founded by 18th century Jeremy Bentham, not the DW superfan) in a line spoken by Evans in ep5 ("if the Intelligence will let us go why can't we let it have him (the Doctor)?" (Why do you trust the Intelligence? and Surely the greatest good is to eliminate the Intelligence not feed it?)
• The quiet climax with the an almost benign and pathetic villain (in the burned animated cadaver of the victim Sergeant Arnold who in turn was a not nice person when he was alive),
• The absence of any pretence this is about or for children,
• The hollow wooden clunking footsteps in the tunnels...
• The subtlety of the way the scenes in ep6 have changed into completely bizarre scenes whereas in ep 1 it seemed almost normal.

Directed by the master of spooky short form television direction. Douglas Camfield. There's no cutaway to stock footage crap in this. The episodes of the Sweeney that you remember are his. The episode of Blakes 7 he did would have been a Moloch like runaround except for him. There's a classic serials version of Beau Geste he did which is actually interesting. The guy was just bloody good.

Go find this bit, right now: Episode 4 from about 7m12s to 8m25s. It's so awesome....this would be banal exposition in any other director's hands. Of course Troughton and Courtney are helping a lot. The other two are Richardson Morgan (who'll be back in The Ark in Space) and Ralph Watson (Monster of Peladon, Horror of Fang Rock). Look at the framing and use of the music. We're standing around talking in a railway station... but this flies through the deep space of the imagination in a scary, scary way...

Read the article below for more.


This makes a strong pitch for the best ever DW.


Another new no.1


ABM Rating 3.95/4.00 

LJM Rating 4.80/5.00

SPJ Rating 8.60/10.00
 

No. 1 (out of 41)


Link to Cumulative Rankings



Rankings Scoreboard

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https://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/doctor-who/252140/doctor-who-breaking-down-a-key-scene-from-the-web-of-fear

Accessed 18-11-09

Doctor Who: Breaking Down a Key Scene from The Web of Fear

by Andrew Blair   Jan 20, 2016


"The Web of Fear" was commissioned after a positive response to "The Abominable Snowmen" by then Story Editor (soon-to-be producer) Peter Bryant, with the intention that it would close out Doctor Who’s fifth season. Rewrites for "Fury from the Deep" resulted in it becoming the penultimate story (one of many variables that resulted in Nicholas Courtney playing the role of Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart). Previously available as an audio soundtrack narrated by Fraser Hines, the film of "The Web of Fear" was returned to the BBC archives in 2013.
.....

It’s become something of an in-joke that UNIT are somewhat useless against any sort of invading force, be it a giant robot or Mike from The Young Ones, but here—before UNIT, but still in a reality where at least one soldier looked like Derek Ware—there’s nothing funny about their fight. In a deserted London, they look for the TARDIS—left in Covent Garden—as a means of escape, only to be intercepted by a group of Yeti. Bullets have some effect on them—breaking with tradition before it even started—but explosives do the job. Then the group begin running out of ammo, and are surrounded. Only Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart escapes with his life.

Filmed on December 17, 1967 and January 14, 1968, the fight between soldiers and Yeti was done under pressure of a tight schedule. The lack of daylight hours meant director Douglas Camfield wasn’t able to complete the shots he wanted in December (the rest of the film sequences took place in Stage 3 at Ealing). The actual location is North of the market (made famous, of course, by its appearances in "The War Machines" and "Invasion Of The Dinosaurs") around Shelton Street, with filming also taking place on Neal Street and Old Brewer’s Yard. Permission to use the yard (owned at the time by the grocers TJ Poupart, whose name simply isn’t funny) was most likely gained by Production Assistant Gareth Gwenlan, later to be BBC Head of Comedy and an insult in Red Dwarf.

What makes this scene work so well is that you get a sense of the soldiers' desperation in the face of a seemingly unstoppable opponent. That they do manage to destroy some of the Yeti robots (in redesigned costumes for this serial, to make them look less cuddly) but still succumb makes it worse: they’re clearly competent but out of their depth in a way that makes later UNIT-era fight scenes seem more like Golden Age comic knockabouts. Derek Ware and HAVOC staged some brutal fights in the Pertwee era (and also a fair few in the Hartnell era), but this is his best work. It unfolds like a horror film: the introduction of the threat, the attempt to fight it, the realization that you can’t as the cast is whittled down.

Douglas Camfield is rightly lauded as one of the show’s great directors, famed for his military-precision and preparation. From what we know of his approach, we can be sure that he’d have planned this meticulously. To film a seven minute action sequence on location in Central London involving men in monster costumes, gunfire, explosions, and special effects—on the budget of Doctor Who—seems like a minor miracle, especially with the rapidly dwindling daylight, plus the distraction of Fraser Hines and a Yeti-encased John Levene doing a ballroom dance around Covent Garden.

In fact, with studio scenes interspersed between location segments, you can see that Camfield is enjoying the freedom of the space. The contrast in camera work is significant, with studio scenes largely static due to the limited space. On location whips and zooms rush towards the oncoming Yeti, following the soldier's gaze, almost double-taking in shock. Multiple shots of the few Yeti costumes (six actors are credited as Yeti in the story) emerging from every conceivable nook and cranny give the impression of an unstoppable army that will keep on coming. There's a quick cut to the locked gates being attacked from the outside, one of many ways the editing conveys the fight's constant movement.

While the scene cuts back to the Doctor and Captain Knight, you can hear the gunshots in the background. Brian Hodgson added a roar to the Yeti to make them seem fiercer—a slowed-down and reverberated toilet flush, try it at home—but it seems so quiet compared to the din of the previous scenes. Lethbridge-Stewart shouts over the sound of gunfire, explosions, and roars. The scene is backed with stock music. M. Slaven's "Space Adventure (Parts 1-3)" was most likely selected because of its track record in augmenting Doctor Who monsters slowly advancing towards people. More commonly associated with Cybermen (it was used in "Tomb of the Cybermen" for the famous scenes of the waking Cybermen breaking free of their tombs), it was part of the 'Classic Series Medley' at the 2013 Doctor Who proms. Its rhythm is like stop-start footsteps, complimenting the Yeti's inexorable movement, the ominous brass alerting more sluggish viewers that there's reason to be wary.

What sets this apart from other Doctor Who fight scenes is the length, and that it's not any sort of grand last stand. It's a desperate gambit, sure, but it's to get to the TARDIS so that they might try to escape in it, rather than the final stage of a masterplan. We know it's a brutal story, as we've seen soldiers die in valiant rearguard actions out of foolish bravery (attacking a Yeti) or bad luck (their friend attacks a Yeti, and then their gun jams), but this attempt to fight back just gets nearly everyone killed.

Yet it's not the soldiers' fault. They fight well against overwhelming numbers, toppling several Yeti with explosives in well-framed and edited shots (kudos to film editors Philip Barnikel and Colin Hobson, and cameramen Alan Jonas and Jimmy Court). By keeping the frame compact and cutting before the Yetis hit the ground, it keeps the sense of movement and chaos going, while maintaining a steady pace that lets you follow the action. Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart is the focal point, when he cries out in warning to his soldiers but they fight on til the bitter end, you feel his pain as he returns to base and snaps at the Doctor. We understand. We know exactly what he's been through.

That's why it's a great scene. It's thrilling and horrific. And Lethbridge-Stewart feels every death.

Mid Second Doctor report

We've reached halfway in the Second Doctor with Enemy of the World. (i.e. the 11th of 21 stories.)

We completed DW ep

191

(ep6 of Enemy of the World) on Saturday 5 November which is

187

days into the DW Marathon Blog.

So we're ahead... still.

Just 18 more missing eps to go (3 are animated). But we had the news today that the next Charles Norton project is The Wheel in Space set to preview in December. http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2018/11/wheel-in-space-animated-mini-episode.html We do not anticipate that it will be includable in this Marathon Blog's schedule. Oh well...


There's now 660 episodes to go (the as yet unnamed Series 11 Xmas Special is ep 851).

And just 62 eps away from C-O-L-O-U-R


ABM 5-Nov-2018