Started 16-DecBloody hell this is a poor DW serial.
This is another base under siege. But that is just the start.
The central plot weakness is the T-Mat system.
It's made every other transport system redundant yet it's experimental and just been introduced.
There's only one person who 'understands' it (Miss Kelly).
From the labels on screen it appears to service mostly European and North American locations. Tokyo and Canberra are the only exceptions. Are South and central America, Africa, Middle East and Southern Asia and China are not part of this world then? What happened?
T-Mat seems to be controlled from the moonbase (like a central exchange.)
Wouldn't a geostationary satellite suffice? In fact Radnor and Miss Kelly discuss this as a temporary measure in ep5. His means the designers made this (very poor) choice at some point.
The basic lack of network security means that it is vulnerable to a moonbase infiltration. And their defence methods are not thought out at all. It seems crazy that there are no telemetry sensors that tell the operators when a successful transfer has taken place. Chunks of the plot depend on this very curious oversight.
It's so badly designed and implemented that worldwide food shortages will take place as early as ep3 when it stops working in ep1...
Assuming that this is meant to be allegorical in some way, is this more of Brian Hayles "warnings" about the future of technology? (Hint: Like in The Ice Warriors that's based on his naive assumptions about engineering.)
In ep1 there's a weirdly ineffective attempt to hide the identity of the invader on the moon T-Mat base. And then they flub it by forgetting to make the dramatic reveal. Is this a mistake? Sloppy direction?
In ep2 there's lots of poor model shots of the rocket. We've had some shockers (Dalek Invasion of Earth, Moonbase) in the first few years of DW. And some judicious minimalising (Tomb, Ice Warriors). Recent serials have shown some improvement. (Wheel, Invasion). The model shots here are just woeful. And the space capsule scenes are disappointing too.
In ep3 there's more terrible model shots. The broken transmitter in the moonbase is shown to use vacuum tubes. And the first of many lines alluding to the radio beam guiding the rocket/fleet to the "target" is made. This becomes a kind of technobabble shorthand for actual space navigation. It is nonsense.
In ep4 there's an appallingly badly directed sequence when an Ice Warrior is T-Matted to Earth Control. Eldred and Radnor stand by while the Ice Warrior proceeds to sonic people left and right. They call for "guards, guards" who then promptly rush in. The guards let loose with percussion fire in Eldred's and Radnor's direction. Yet they are not hit. They don't even duck. The Ice Warrior disappears behind some scenery and Radnor announces that the guards are all dead. This bit is so lame.
The temperature control in the moonbase is crazy. The heating control is measured in centrigrade and Zoe winds it up to set it at 60 deg C. Apart from that being an air temperature that would make humans collapse let alone Ice Warriors, there's the issue of control delay. The moonbase seems reasonably large, perhaps the size of a large building like an office block. To regulate to a temperature like that using air conditioning or central heating would probably take a day or so. (Unless there's an almighty powerful aircon installed.) Was the idea to get the temperature to spike rapidly? It would likely then go out of control quickly. The modern building level climate control would surely be more sophisticated than this.
Why is there only one control for this and why is it centrally located? Same lame brain designer who did the T-Mat network?
Why are the Ice Warriors so dumb as to attack the Earth (5/8 of it's surface is water) with the "Seeds of Death" (which are vulnerable to water)??
The lack of biosecurity measures (aka “quarantine”) adopted by the T-Mat staff is appalling. A weird ball of unidentified stuff appears from space and they immediately try touching it! FFS! It bursts gas or spores or whatever and they deal with it by using the extractor fan to vent it outside thus spreading it perfectly and contaminating every surface in their air system.. Well done, ya dorks!
Again dialogue incorrectly describes the spores as “toxic”. At most it appears to be an irritant.
The characters are: angry base under siege tropes (Radnor), badly acted unconvincing whinebags (Fewsham), boring (Eldred), cool (Gia Kelly), gay in those leathery pants (Slaar), even gayer (the bedazzler he used his helmet)(the Grand Marshall). Everyone else is less than a cardboard cutout.... There are no complex characters with proper motivations or backgrounds or human emotions just shouty tropes. At least Ice Warriors had Penley.
Troughton is asleep in ep4 for some reason (he's knocked out by an exploding seed pod in ep3 20m30s and stays that way till ep5). He sprouts amazing sideburns at some point which disappear in on location shots.
In ep5, the chemistry of attacking the fungus is nuts. If sulphuric, hydrochloric, citric acids (of unknown concentration but probably aqueous base) are ineffective why would water have any effect? The Doctor and Eldred bring a seed pod inside and use no, nil, zero, nada biocontainment whatsoever.
As for what the spores do... in ep5 (about 13m30s) the Doctor speculates about the change in Earth atmosphere that the fungus will create when they “consume plant life”. Fungus that rots vegetable matter creates (very slowly) methane and CO2 (mostly). Eldred says he has calculated that oxygen will be reduced to 0.05 times 'normal'. The Doctor says this will make the atmosphere just like Mars.
Nuh-uh, sorry that's plain crap. The Martian atmosphere consists of approximately 96% carbon dioxide, 1.9% argon, 1.9% nitrogen, and traces of free oxygen, carbon monoxide, water and methane. Pressure at the surface of Mars is approximately 0.6kPa (Earth is 79% N, 20% O, 1% everything else at 101.3kPa).
This story might be 50 years old but the atmosphere of Mars is not newly discovered. It's been well known since the 1920's. Why was no one able to check an atmospheric science text about this (or even an encyclopedia)?
The costumes are strange for the T-Mat staff. The guys seem to wear weird y-fronts. It looks better on the only woman... The security guards helmets are a difficult trivia get. The Ice Warriors look great but we’ve seen ‘em before. They're unable to see people hiding nearby very well at all and they are somewhat slow and lumbering to be really threatening.
The Ice Warriors are killed pretty horribly by the sun ray lamp gear on several occasions by Phipps, Miss Kelly and Jamie and, sadly in ep6, the Doctor. This is not good for the show.
The repeatedly used in-studio shot showing the the screen in vertical thirds with two close up things each side of the screen and a greater depth of field action shot in the centre looks a good idea but it does get overused. There might be a new camera lens and some attention to lighting and lighting design at work here. It's wasted.
The music is pretty good. It's Dudley's best soundtrack yet by quite a way.
Is it Brian Hayles? In the Ice Warriors he wrote about how the atmosphere on Mars is mostly nitrogen (which was wrong). I think this marathon has proved one very decisive thing and that's I don't like Brian Hayles stories.
Worst Troughton story easily. (And I think this will include the next story in that. We'll see next!)
ABM Rating 1.95/4.00
LJM Rating 1.00/5.00
SPJ Rating 1.50/10.00
No. 46 (out of 48)
Link to CumulativeRankings
Rankings Scoreboard
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QUESTION TO PONDER
Like 8 other Troughton stories, Seeds.. is set in the future with rockets, and space and spandex outfits and stuff. See analysis below.
Is this reflective of a contemporary fascination? Or a cultural trend? 1969 was Apollo year after all.
The First Doctor is about the past.
Past 13 (out of 29) A, D, F, H, M, P, R, S, U, V, W, Z, 2C,
Present 5 (out of 29) A, J, R, V, 2B,
Future 8 (out of 29) G, K, L, R, T/A, V, X, 2D
Alien 8 (out of 29) B, C, E, N, Q, T, Y, 2A,
Second Doctor is mostly in the future
Past 4 (out of 21) 2N, 2L, 2F, 2Z
Present 6 (out of 21) 2V, 2R, 2Q, 2L, 2K, 2G,
Future 9 (out of 21) 2Y, 2X, 2S, 2P, 2O, 2M, 2J, 2H, 2E
Alien 3 (out of 21) 2W, 2U, 2T,
Third Doctor is mostly in the present/UNIT
Past 3 (out of 24) 3O, 3P, 3U,
Present 15 (out of 24) 3A, 3B, 3C, 3D, 3E, 3F, 3G, 3J, 3K, 3L, 3O, 3R, 3T, 3W, 3Z,
Future 7 (out of 24) 3H, 3M, 3N, 3Q, 3X, 3Y, 3Z
Alien 3 (out of 24) 3D, 3P, 3S,
Fourth Doctor went to alien planets
Past 5 (out of 42) 4G, 4M, 4S, 4V, 5H,
Present 9 (out of 42) 4A, 4F, 4J, 4L, 4N, 4X, 5H, 5M, 5V
Future 14 (out of 42) 4C, 4B, 4D, 4H, 4Q, 4R, 4T, 4W, 5A, 5C, 5E, 5K, 5N, 5P,
Alien 19 (out of 42) 4E, 4K, 4N, 4P, 4Q, 4Y, 4Z, 5B, 5D, 5F, 5J, 5G, 5L, 5Q, 5R, 5P, 5S, 5T, 5V
Fifth Doctor is evenly distributed
Past 7 (out of 20) 5W, 5X, 6A, 6C, 6F, 6H, 6J,
Present 8 (out of 20) 5Z, 6C, 6E, 6F, 6K, 6M, 6P, 6Q
Future 5 (out of 20) 5Y, 6B, 6L, 6N, 6P
Alien 8 (out of 20) 5Z, 5W, 5Y, 6D, 6G, 6K, 6Q, 6R
Sixth Doctor is future-ish
Past 2 (out of 11) 6X, 6Y,
Present 2 (out of 11) 6T, 6W,
Future 7 (out of 11) 6S, 6T, 6W, 6Z, 7A, 7B, 7C
Alien 5 (out of 11) 6V, 6Y, 6Z, 7B, 7C
Seventh Doctor is past-ish
Past 5 (out of 12) 7F, 7H, 7K, 7N, 7Q
Present 3 (out of 12) 7K, 7M, 7P
Future 2 (out of 12) 7G, 7L,
Alien 4 (out of 12) 7D, 7E, 7J, 7L,
- Some stories are set in several times eg. 1V.
- Some stories are set in space or on alien worlds and feature minor characters from Earth in the future (eg. 3M, 3Y)
- Some stories feature Earth like characters but the time or their origin is never stated explicitly. (eg. 6G, 6R, 4H)
- Some stories feature human characters from a particular time setting but they are clearly not on Earth in their original time (eg. 2Z, 6H, 5W)
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