This is misconceived and poorly written and directed.
It shouldn't be. But it proves that sh*t work can be done even by the best "names".
The script is hackneyed, trite and repetitious.
The best bits are aping things like The Avengers - Murdersville (1967) (the heroes encounter strangely suspicious locals in the cutesy English village doing some obviously weird and unusual doings) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1958) (the discovery of the prone, 'replacement' body in the 'coffin') but not in an innovative way. Arguably this is paralleled in Dracula (lots of versions)(open the coffin and something grabs your leg unexpectedly) and Village of the Damned (1960) (the abandoned village, ala Marie Celeste with dead people) too.
P1 has some promising creepy scenes but the Kraals and Crayford's introduction in p2 makes the plot sag like a wet cardboard box.
The Kraal costumes are poor in that the masks effectively hide the actors' performance. We just came from Pyramids of Mars where mummies and Sutekh overcame the exact same problem by startingly chilling voice acting or impassive silence. The Kraals become substandard cod Shakespearian dramatic speech merchants. It couldn't be more badly conceived. The same error occurred in Revenge of the Cybermen with Vogans. Ugh....
The sets and lighting are a very poor look after the achievement of Terror of the Zygons and Planet of Evil but they went for a cardboard game show instead. Unbelievable. Ugh....
The bomb scene in p3. Woeful. Just consider the countdown times quoted and how far each scene shows people moving in successive shots. It ain't believable. This is the director's fault.
The virus handling in p3 and p4 is unrealistic. If the biohazard is "death to the whole world population in 3 weeks" then containment is a nice glass decanter, spreading it around the Kraal detention cell to electrify Androids and Styggron waving it around and headbutting the jar and instantly dying in the rocket in p4 is gonna make it very uncontained and very unsafe indeed. Here we have use of sci-fi trope in a very dumb way. This reminds me of the biohazard containment failure in Seeds of Death.
What's with the 'G-force is crushing me' sh*t at the end of p3. Why would lying in an android pod overcome this problem? How does the rocket suddenly launching cause the Doctor to collapse onto the floor? The pictures show a rocket going from 0 to quite slow in the first few seconds.
The g-force from acceleration might take effect (briefly) after 30-40 seconds except the g-force would reduce with altitude. (Here's the Gravitational force equation LINK... note the force reduces with the square of the distance (or altitude)... ) Presumably the g-force problem is imagined by the writer who has been for a ride in an accelerating aeroplane at some time and is confused about fighter pilots who might black out at high altitude due to lack of oxygen. (Like Chuck Yeager in the Lockheed Starfighter in The Right Stuff (1983) and here..)
To be honest the risk posed from radiation, lack of air or change of pressure and temperature throughout the space trip would be much more of a problem for Sarah and the Doctor. Also I do not understand why the rocket navigation is not affected by the mass of the extra two passengers sneaking on board. BTW increased mass would slow the acceleration of the rocket and reduce the g-force.
The UNIT staff are wasted (Harry Sullivan, Grierson, Benton) or terrible (Faraday).
Crayford is terrible. Milton Johns second DW role is ruined by some terrible, incredible writing (the eyepatch, the concept of lost in space near Jupiter and 'survived' by rationing water.. what about energy, oxygen, psychological isolation effects?) and that cravat in p3 and 4.
On the DVD Philip H and Barry L admit the failure to cover the egregious plot error in p4 where the Doctor uses a E-M pulse from the station radar to put all the androids operation in one scene and then re-activate and reprogram the Doctor android to confront Styggron in the next scene. Obviously written by an idiot who has never reprogrammed anything and who does not really understand what an E-M pulse is.
And as for "the radiation's a bit high on Oesidon", hope we don't get sick by walking around in it "like a couple of 'nanas", the radiation gonna make Oesidon uninhabitable shortly so Kraals have to evacuate, oh but we'll be ok walking around in it for a time, then ignore the plot thread.... This makes the Doctor look like a dummy.
And where did the Doctor find that robot detector in p4?
I suppose the filming's ok. Tom and Liz are ok. But the best moments are undermined by the dopey plot at every turn.
This is easily the worst colour DW story so far. It competes for a wooden spoon with the worst 70's colour serials/clunkers like Revenge of the Cybermen, Robot, Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Frontier in Space and Ambassadors of Death. I scored this by comparing against things in the bottom 10 of the list so far. Not a pleasant task.
For mine The Smugglers is better (just...) Sadly there's (probably) worse to come.
ABM Rating 1.80/4.00
LJM Rating 2.50/5.00
SPJ Rating 5.90/10
No. 67 (out of 83)
Link to Cumulative Rankings
Rankings Scoreboard
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