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)


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