058 Colony in Space

Started 23-Jan

We watched the 2011 RSC'd DVD version.

It's good to get in the TARDIS and go somewhere else. Plus no Master (for 3 eps at least).

This one doesn't get much love from the "special" people.

I suspect this is because deeply middle class conservatives do not care for the 'hippies' win conclusion.

Luckily I am not in that group so I like Colony in Space.

Except...

The portrayal of the natives is drawn for nakedly racist colonialism and Edgar Rice Burroughs/Tarzan type tropes about 'jungle bunnies' and 'worthless savages'.

Sadly both the Master and the Doctor make casually rascist remarks about the 'primitives' in dialogue which are unfortunate. This is strange given the explicit anti-colonialist tropes just 4 stories later in The Mutants. I prefer to think of it as thoughtless rather than ideological.

The 'hippies' (Ashe, Winton, Leeson, Martin) are actually conservative - they value the 'old' ways of their own society. They want a return to simple agrarian values (significantly NOT technology free but full of values of the past like connection to soil and the nobility of manual work). These are pretty middle class 'hippies'....

The IMC corporates are the realpolitik provocateurs. They are the ones seeking change for "progress at all costs" reasons. These guys are more like pirates than pillars of society... but their aims are ultimately self defeating and corrupt.

The sacrificing choice makers are the Exarius Guardians class. They are prepared to make a change that or may not benefit their world but for reasons that speak of exhaustion and desperation. They seem to thinking long term at least....

There are some possibilities for political analysis and revisionism here. The results may be surprising.

Obviously there is a lot of political metaphor and representation (which leads to interpretation and re-interpretation some of which is based on selectivity). This gives a simulation of depth in the story.


The direction by newly qualified, wunderkind, BBC director Michael Briant (who WILL be back) is a little variable. There are good bits but the serial gunfights in ep 4,5 and 6 seem repetitive. A little more of the reveal of the Master's journey of discovery to the Doomsday Weapon would surely have been more interesting. So maybe this is a writing or script-editing problem?

The acting is generally competent.
Morris Dent is outstanding as Captain Dent, psycho chilling and a boo hiss baddie to the last. His comeuppance scene is missing from ep6.

Strong returns from John Ringham and Bernard Kay feature. Some female presence is made by Helen Worth as Mary Ashe.

There are cringey moments like when the Guardian speaks. ("My city is forbidden...")

The visual effects are not spectacular in this but I like to view them as functional, industrial and mechanistic rather than 'space-y'. The mining robot hands are made to look deliberately out of place. I think some people think this looks unconvincing. (They're meant to..) The little flatbed trucks are noisy but distinctive. The Exarius Guardian is bordering on laughable. Some low lighting would have helped. Some pinning of the little arms of the atrophied body would have made the doll seem less 'dolly'. After the effort put in to Claws... this is a particularly thoughtless attempt.

An unrecognised significant scene in this story is the Master's exchange with the Doctor in ep6. The Master offers the use of the Doomsday Weapon to the Doctor to use as he sees fit, urging him to rule in peace. Is he attempting to coerce the Doctor or recruit him or form a compromised allegiance?  The Doctor rejects the offer on principal. (He says 'absolute power is evil".) What is the Master's reaction to this rebuff, this slight? This is a story arc development in the Master's character. This stuff elevates the Master's character from pantomime villain to some importance. I only wish there was more made of it...

The politics drags this down (for both lefties and rightards). There's no way this would be made like this these days. The indigenous inhabitants of Exarius would need a credible reason to invite the colonists (or maybe the miners) to be on their planet for instance.

As DW it's standard fare. There's no speccy monsters and the drama is ordinary. It remains good to watch as TV but is in no way outstanding.


ABM Rating 3.03/4.00
LJM Rating 3.20/5.00
SPJ Rating 6.80/10   

No. 29 (out of 58)

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057 The Claws of Axos

Started 20-Jan

We watched the Special Edition with PAL sourced eps 1 & 4 and the slightly fuzzier RSC'd NTSC sourced eps 2 & 3.

This is Bob Baker's and Dave Martins' debut and Michael Ferguson's farewell to the show.

The plot in this one is both inspired and a mess.

The alien invasion trope is:

• We are aliens. 
• We are a high tech threat (lasers, energy beams, mind control, squillions of us). 
• So "take us to your leader" (so we can issue our ultimatum) 
• Then the brave, against all odds military response and then explosions. 
• And we're done. 
• Think Earth v the Flying Saucers or Independence Day or even War of the Worlds

"AXOS [OC]: Earth. Axos calling Earth. Fuel systems exhausted. Request immediate assistance. Immediate assistance. Axos calling Earth, Axos calling Earth. Fuel system exhausted."


The ep1 "Axos calling Earth" move is inspired. The Claws of Axos features a magnificent twist.

It is this.
The "We're out of gas. Can we fill up here?" approach (including a 'payment') conceals a parasitic gameplan. This neatly splts the human characters between initial hostility (the missiles) and caution (The Doctor) and then after first encounter flips the the humans into camps of greed (Chinn, Winser, Hardimann) and scepticism (again the Doctor).
The Doctor's questions about if Axons had Axonite "why did you not use it to deal with solar flares?" and "how did you run out of energy with an energy transmuter of such versatility available?" are not answered by the Axons (only an aggressive denial) and ignored by Chinn, Winser, Hardimann etc.

After that there is more confusing revelations about the nature of Axonite following particle accelerator investigation... then some messy, poorly focussed stuff about turning Axos into a time machine using the power station output. BTW one nuclear power station is unlikely to provide anywhere near enough energy to do this. The TARDIS runs on a black hole for instance.
After that in ep4 it's back to "activate the nutrition cycle" but drag 'em into a timeloop with the TARDIS to finish 'em off.... and we're done.

A great start turns into a mess.

The direction is fast and frenetic. Tellingly the location work (which features four seasons in one day miscontinuities!) is hardly noticeable. 

The production is ambitious and (mostly) looks fantastic. There are some iffy visual effects but they aren't too bad (mostly bits of the Axos ship). There are some layered video effects which are very, very good. They must have taken hours to plan and execute in the old fashioned analogue BBC tv studio. No wonder it didn't happen again.. The use of CSO has developed since two stories ago by better use of lighting and shot composition. This is the earliest use of coloured lighting which I can see in the show. The old lighting formulas (side fill and key.. nice and bright.. lovely) which are broken down so well in Series 13 (Terror of the Zygons, Planet of Evil, Brain of Morbius) have their debut here.

Performances are shouty and sometimes sketchy but they're credible. Perhaps the least effective is Paul Grist as Filer in fevered, plot dump mode while in hospital in ep3. But such performances are ok. In a story about a giant space weed taking over the Earth.....the colour of his tie or his dodgy accent aren't worth quibbling about.

The Axon costumes (both the golden body stockings and the two versions of the tentacle monster (some tentacles and lots of tentacles) are iconic and classic.

There are many classic lines of dialogue in this story.

CHINN: I have a duty to my country!
DOCTOR: Not to the world?

AXON MAN: Our worlds are uncountable light years away on the far rim of the galaxy. Our planetary system has been crippled by extreme solar flare activity. Axos is all that remains of our culture. As you can see, our science, unlike yours, has taken an organic path. This ship? This ship was not built for our journey. It was grown.
WINSER: What?
AXON MAN: Yes, grown from a single cell and now its nutrient is all but exhausted. We would like to stay. 

AXON MAN: Axonite is the source of all our growth technology. Axonite can absorb, convert, transmit and programme all forms of energy.
DOCTOR: Even radiation? Why then were you crippled by solar flare?
AXON MAN: It was already too late. 

CHINN: Minister? Will you scramble, or shall I, sir?
MINISTER [OC]: Just your report, Chinn. I'm sure that will be quite garbled enough.
CHINN: Yes, sir. Well, as I anticipated, we are having a certain amount of trouble with these UNIT people, sir.
MINISTER [OC]: We, Chinn? We?
CHINN: Well, I am, sir.
MINISTER [OC]: Are you quite sure you can handle this matter, Chinn?
CHINN: Oh, yes, sir, yes, of course! Er, about the special powers, sir?
MINISTER [OC]: Because if you are not, just remember, it's your head on the block, Chinn, not mine. 
 
MINISTER [on monitor]: Perhaps you can tell me why the sole result of the special powers I granted you, has been this catastrophic security leak?
CHINN: Catastrophic security leak? Which catastrophic security leak, sir?

HARDIMAN: What else can we do©
MASTER: Oh, nothing very much. Oh, I suppose you can take the normal precautions against nuclear blast, like, er, sticky tape on the windows and that sort of thing.
 
DOCTOR: The claws of Axos are already deeply embedded in the Earth's carcass! Soon it'll activate its nutrition cycle and the feast'll be begin. The Axonite'll cease to be dormant and it'll continue to grow, gentlemen, until every living thing is consumed. 


BRIGADIER: And you came back of your own accord©
DOCTOR: Well, I
JO: Doctor©
DOCTOR: No. No, I'm afraid not. No, obviously the Time Lords have programmed the Tardis always to return to Earth. It seems that I'm some kind of a galactic yo-yo!

In common with every other Pertwee story so far there's a stack of UNIT action. I'm trying to see it as more a narrative form or a style than boring repetition. This time there's a conflict between the usual UNIT characters and some Military Police types who put them under arrest. At least that hasn't happened  previously (except in Ambassadors... oh well.)

Interestingly the Master is verging on the merely amoral here rather than the outright evil. His aims seem to vary from personal survival to being persuaded to help. This wavering of intent culminates in the next story when he offers the Doctor a partnership, an alliance. Next time on DW....

This is a story which uses pace and surprising and strange developments well but has some crazy plot flaws.

ABM Rating 3.05/4.00
LJM Rating 3.00/5.00
SPJ Rating 8.20/10   

No. 19 (out of 57)

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056 The Mind of Evil

Started 16-Jan

This is a very UNIT focussed story which tries very hard to be action-y and has lots of wowee hardware... principally a big missile.
Ep 5 and 6 cost the most to make of any DW serial in the 70's. The budget was only exceeded by 1982's Timeflight (big aeroplane costs!) in the classic series.

The notion of the Keller machine is very sh*t Sci-fi.
It wipes minds of 'evil' (what is 'evil'? and how does it wipe minds?) and then when it's full (of evil?) it becomes voracious (possibly?) (or maybe greedy?) and starts causing people to feel fear (for some reason) and drop dead. Then by about ep4 it is merely making them clutch their heads and 'try to resist' (again how? and 'resist' what exactly?). Then the machine learns to teleport itself (only ever short distances)... The Doctor manages to stop it teleporting by placing an electro magnetic ring around it. But it 'learns' to escape that... Then Barnham (a mind wipee) finds he can calm the machine down by his presence. So they blow it up...

There's more to it than that (e.g. what about that pink dragon?)

The arbitrary body count in this is massive. Also the unexplained 'he was shot but now he's ok' count is quite high. The gunfight in ep5 & 6 is horrible to watch.

Pertwee gives his most annoying irascible performance (outrating even Terror of A's) He's annoyed at the drop of a hat and condescending and rude and arrogant... routinely but that scene in ep6 where he counters Jo's worries with "Well how do you think it made me feel?" and shoves a cup of coffee at her is also horrible.

Pik Sen Lim b 15-Sep-1944 is a Chinese Malaysian immigrant to the UK. At the time she was married to the show's writer Don Houghton. She speaks Hokkien dialect Chinese and acted as unpaid dialogue coach on the show. And Captain Yates is right. She does have very nice legs.


The Chinese spoken in ep2 and 3 is Hokkien (aka Minnan) which is a southern China dialect widely spoken in Taiwan and Fujian province. As such it probably unlikely that an official delegation of the Chinese communist government would EVER use such a dialect. But who cares..? It's cool to have it in the show....
This one is ambitious and spectacular in places but overall it's underwhelming.


ABM Rating 2.55/4.00
LJM Rating 2.90/5.00
SPJ Rating 6.45/10   

No. 32 (out of 56)


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055 Terror of the Autons

Started 13-Jan

We watched the smeary combined and vidfired restoration of 2011. Soon we'll be up to exclusively PAL master tape sourced episodes and we won't have to talk about this anymore.

This story represents a soft reboot for Jon Pertwee.
There's a new character for the Doctor, more rude and irascible, condescending and angry, impatient. Less thoughtful and reflective.
The new companion, Jo played by the fizzingly, bubbly good time gal Katy Manning is a break with traditional DW companions. Up to now the girls have been various forms of smart (Zoe was a astrophysicist, Polly was a manager, Vicki was a whizz kid, Susan was an Unearthly time lord child, Barbara was a haughty history teacher. Dodo was unclear and Victoria was a posh orphan so that's different.)
- Yates - practically the purpose of this character is to make the 2IC a regular. Up to now Munro, Knight, Hawkins etc have been guest characters, and disposable. Obvious, logical move is to make him a regular. The choice seems a bit wet but.... In later seasons the use of him as fallen hero (is traitor too strong?) is imaginative. This is the seeds of long story arc which is very new for the series. (I have a feeling it's a little unplanned however...)
The first 3 stoies of series 8 use the 1967 opening title music (less white noise and titles introduced with faded middle 8) and the 'sshh' at the end of the episode closing titles. I've never heard a satisfactory explanantion of why this was being changed so often or at all. At least the title furniture is settled for a bit since each story had wild changes in Series 7. (Volcano footage with titles like The Space Pirates, or reprised scenes with repeated scream.)
Starting with Colony in Space the opening titles will have the whoo-ee music at the title cards and the "shh" at the end fairly consistently for more than 300 episodes in a row. There will be a few revamps but the pattern is *the* same till Trial of a Timelord (1986).


CSO
This uses CSO extensively. There was some in 3B, 3C, and 3D but this has loads.
Barry Letts has found a new toy and seems intent on using it everywhere. Virtual sets abound in this story. In theory using studio based actors colour keyed against static pictures of *anything* should be licence to go crazy in DW. Here's where it flowered... er, became a rampant infestation.... There are several roughly composed shots and noisy, fringes visible which serve to undermine the realism slightly. If you're trying to be charitable about it then I guess you might argue either it's pioneering experimentation laying the groundwork for the widespread use of compositing and keying ever since or CSO makes Terror of the Autons look like a comic book come to life. But I think it's mildly distracting and probably erodes the drama a bit.

Horror
The one that gets the  attention is the cops @end of ep2. It was supposedly mentioned in UK parliament. Criticisms of this scene usually focus on the idea that menacing policemen are an image that undermines childrens' confidence in law enforcement. This is nonsense. Watch the previous 5 minutes of ep2 to get the very strong clues that these 'police' are just as imposter fake as any other Autons. Well, they're sent by Farrell and the Colonel and Yates announces by radio that they are definitely not despatched by the police station.
The only people fooled into thinking these Auton policemen are real are those who were not actually watching.

McDermot and the plastic chair - This is a worry mainly because of the lingering shot on the pulsing body which then.... stops breathing. Yeah, that needed some editing.

The troll doll - this is the most effective frightening scene in the show in my view since it predicts what happens in the house by what happens in the car. The senior Farrells are are unaware of what is obvious to the viewer. Their lack of awareness draws a sympathetic pang of wanting to help from the viewers. It is simply Hitchcock-ian audience prediction/previewing technique put to work.

Jo and the Daffodil - I can't decide if the scariest part of this is the obvious stage hand putting the plastic mouth covering on the bench for Katy (in shot!) which she then picks up and starts acting suffocated with, or the use of some unknown spray solvent (is it acetone? ugh!) by the Doctor to remove it from her mouth. (Just lucky it didn't get in her eyes I guess!)

Imagine impressionable children acting out each of these scenes in their playtime with their school friends or their siblings to experience the full, parental panic about these incidents.

DW (even Pertwee of the time) has had lots of spooky stuff and scary sequences over the years. Recently the scene in Inferno featuring RSF soldier (Roy Scammell) being murdered by Primord Bromley in the prison cell and the raw gunfights in Mind of Evil or Ambassadors of Death seemed to peak the use of violence in DW.

Society standards about what is ok to represent as entertainment had changed by the early 1970's. Cowboy movies have always showed people being shot dead. Traditionally this has usually not involved spatters or gushes of blood. Even the screams or squawks of pain or shock are limited. A new trend in cinema of the early 70's was gritty realism (read graphic violence) in films. Watch Deliverance (1972) or The Godfather (1972) to get an idea of what I'm on about. The later 70's and 80's result of this is the video nasty/bucket of blood/slasher type movie... cheap, not well made, mainly focusses on the "ick" factor, not so much the drama, the tension, the meaning, the story etc etc.
 This change was reflected in DW by bolder use of horror and violence. Is it an improvement? Is it acceptable? Can you stop it? These are rhetorical questions. In DW horror and violence has always been kind of twee compared to proper horror and nothing compared to real life. As the Skyhooks once sang "Horror movie, right there on my TV, Horror movie, it's the 6.30 news."

We now live in an era where serial killers, gang violence, casual murder and extreme body horror are almost routine in movies and tv so it can be hard to put the 1970's horror issues in a credible context.

What the 'pearl clutchers' forget is that there never was a golden age of entertainment where there was no violence. If there was it was in some peoples' heads and then only for a short while.


Notable debut 
Roger Delgado (b1-Mar-1918) is immediately effective and impressive as the Master. At once both mesmerising and intense Delgado was the only actor ever considered for this part in 1970.

The main problem with the Master is the plan he has is always nutty as squirrell sh*t. It usually involves the certain outcome that he himself will be killed by the alien threat he is assisting or he will not gain anything  much from the malevolent outcome of his plans. He is a deceitful character yet the person he is mostly deceiving is himself. The climax of this story is a very good example of this. After weeks of subterfuge, planning and subversion, setting up factories and infiltrating a circus, stealing Nestene consciousness artefacts and designing and building plastic dummies, autojets and killer troll dolls, all it takes to reject the Auton invasion is one casual (and otherwise unconvincing) remark from the Doctor about how they probably won't recognise the difference between the Master and any other animal lifeform and he instantly switches sides. No buildup of self doubt? No change in the deal from the Nestenes.  Not just as likely to switch back again? So just the instant change of mind then?

The narrative exposition style in Terror of the Autons occasionally feels like something was edited out that shouldn't have been. Another unresolvable example in ep1 how did Jo get from the Doctor's lab in one scene to creeping around the Farrell factory in the *next* shot. Ugh!

Memorable moments but overall a bit messy.



ABM Rating 2.45/4.00
LJM Rating 3.90/5.00
SPJ Rating 7.10/10   



No. 26 (out of 55)



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054 Inferno

Started 9-Jan

We watched the Special Edition DVD version with info subtitles.

This is an extraordinary DW serial. The idea was good if not entirely original. Don Houghon noticed that two real projects run by US and Soviet governments in the 50's to drill through the earth's crust were abandoned suddenly without explanation. When questioned years afterward the explanation remained classified. Why?

But the combination of this with the parallel world/alt characters/actually we have a free pass to bow the world up.. ( go!!) is irresistable.
(There's some historical argument about whether the parallel world stuff was Houghton's original idea or Letts/Dicks' suggestion.)

Breaking it down eps 3,4,5 and 6 are essentially padding. But meat not waffle.

The performances are all very good. Courtney, Pooley, Dunn, Newark, John, Benjamin, even Pertwee are all on form and eating it up. The Havoc team are never better than they are here: Walsh, Martin, Scammell, Chuntz, Ware, Horrigan (there are others).

Minor roles like John Levene as Benton involve two versions and a Primord transformation. That's what this is like. Depth and quality.

The writing is clever and the text is sparse and pared down from an initial florid draft. (Well edited Mr Dicks, never tell a three word story with a paragraph!)

This is Douglas Camfield's best directing and ironically he didn't do a large chunk of it! Keen to prevent the ruination of his reputation as a reliable director he asked Barry Letts to hush up the fact that he stopped work during the first of 4 studio sessions (location work completed a few weeks prior) due to his cardiac trouble.

How this impacted on Sheila Dunn (his other half) who was in the cast at the time is a movie in itself.

This great DW story was rescued from the catastrophe of its director having a heart attack and heading to hospital by Barry Letts stepping in as director. All he had to do was follow the camera script. Luckily he had more than a clue about how to do so.

The best aspect of Inferno is the way that the plot is clear and easy to follow throughout the story. The stunts, the costumes, the locations and the camerawork are all elements that pop off the screen in this but the script and the way it is performed are down to the director. So the credit for clarity of the story is down to Mr Camfield.

Camfield only returned to DW twice more (Zygons and Seeds of Doom in Tom's second series.) He wasn't finished as a director (there's a long list of 70's TV with his name on it). He was not happy about doing more DW for some reason. Every time he had returned to direct a DW he managed to top his effort with a better one.

There's a biography that needs to read. Book to find....(Something might have been published in 2017 but Miwk does not have it on their website now... see https://forgottentelevisiondrama.wordpress.com/2017/05/26/directed-by-douglas-camfield-z-cars-1967-69-bbc1/ )

If Douglas had not suffered a tragic early death in 1984 he would doubtless be remembered now as one of the top movie directors of the late 20th century. Imagine what a Camfield directed Black Mirror would be like then imagine what a Camfield directed Alien or Independence Day would have been like. There be no crap perfomance from minor characters or lazy flip endings. You get the idea?

Episode 6
This is a strong candidate for best ever episode of DW. It has monsters and excitement. But it also has tension and dramatic conflict (man against implacable natural disaster). It has well defined and performed characters who face this drama with intelligence, skill and persistence under enormous pressure. In short the bravest characters in DW history are Sutton, Williams, SL E Shaw. The Brigade Leader is merely part of the problem. His failure to be brave is his simple cowardice.
Ep 6 has a scary and compelling climax, believable depiction of the volcanic disaster.  It has credibility. No suspension of disbelief is required to see any of this because it is clearly depicted on the screen. This is DW at it's best.

Some people have mean things to say about the cuddly (ugly?) Primords but I'm gonna argue that's piddling compared to how the episode looks. Budget DW monsters are frequently excused but to be real these are  certainly not the worst ever.


In my opinion ep6 of Inferno is a rerun to mark on your calendar. Don't watch it too much. But watch it properly whenever you do.

DW was awesome before this and already the best TV show ever.

Episode 6 is where four brave people battled in vain against annihilation to preserve a world which they had no chance of benefiting from saving. Like being inside a massive war in which there's no chance of survival, they act on the advice of the mysterious wanderer in time and space who for some reason they believe and whose word they accept (even though he's supposed to be 'exiled' to the Earth). He's telling them that their effort and sacrifice will cause someone else to be free. But they all doomed. Would you believe it, if it happened to you? What will you predict will happen?

This is where DW became a legend...

Eps 4, 5 and 7 aren't that far behind.

New number 2.


ABM Rating 3.98/4.00
LJM Rating 4.25/5.00
SPJ Rating 9.20/10   

No. 2 (out of 54)

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053 The Ambassadors of Death

Started 6-Jan

We watched the restored colour DVD from 2012. It is somewhat smeary and variable.


The themes in this story are Britain's manned space flight programme (wha-a-at?), xenophobia, security and fascist subversion of the common good, or alternatively, gangsters and those who should know better being seduced into criminal activity by a misguided sense of duty. These are not compelling ideas and they are dealt with separately and better by both  the preceding and the succeeding stories.

The first 2 eps are quite good. The story nosedives in ep3 with a specious line about the astronauts being removed 'when the guard turned out for that security detail'. WTAF? This is very poor plotting and poor exposition. It takes quite a leap in credibility suspension to get over that and keep watching.

The stuff about 'more radiation' not less and infectious radiation is scarcely believable. The safe handling techniques on display are comical.

The bit where the 2 goons who get zapped by 'radiation' in the van and are buried at the gravel pit by Reegan is just nasty but there are questions. I do not understand why the van itself is not contaminated, why Reegan is not irradiated and why no one else seems to suffer any radiation sickness of any kind throughout any other part of the story. I guess it is not stated (merely implied) that the 2 goons were killed by radiation exposure. Maybe the Ambassadors killed them? For what reason?

Plot holes abound in ep3 and 4. (examples?)


The production history of this story is arse-wipingly perverse. It started as a commission from Peter Bryant to David Whitaker about a modern day story featuring first alien contact. It was rejected and rewritten about 3 times under Bryant and Sherwin.

When Dicks picked it up under Letts, he says he paid Whitaker off and then tried to rescue rewrite it with Mac Hulke and Trevor Ray.

Well there's a reason it had trouble. It's pants. This script probably should have been rejected. Perhaps Dicks and Letts were worried about a script drought developing like the previous year?

Why were the production office still struggling with getting decent scripts? They're gone from 10 stories a year to 4 and the ep count is nearly halved yet the Series 6 disease is back. This is very worrying suddenly.

Performances are gangster-ey from William Dysart as Reegan, stilted from Dallas Cavell as Quinlan, reticent from John Abineri as Carrington, ridiculous/bizarre/awful from Robert Cawdron as Taltalian, but surprisingly good from Ronald Allen as Cornish, and very Cyril Shaps (nervy and anxious) from Cyril Shaps as Lennox. There's an interesting on screen debut (he'd done some voice work on Seeds of death before this) from Michael Wisher as Wakefield.

The regulars are good. Pertwee has asserted some confidence in the role as the Doctor, Caroline John is relaxed and seems to be enjoying the work. Nick Courtney is clipped and curtly efficient. As yet no sign of the lazy, dad gags that developed in later series.

This has a very male dominated cast (only Caroline John as Liz and a couple of Space Control staff to break this duck). There are very nil non-white cast members. (This is not the first DW like this but when you realise, it looks like an unarguable mistake.)

The direction is competent from Michael Ferguson. This is the 3rd of his 4 DW's. (He directed War Machines and Seeds of Death. He'll be back for Claws of Axos.) In the next 30 years he be doing Colditz, The Bill and a lot of Eastenders. Michael Ferguson is 'famous' for being the props assistant who held the sucker stalk that menaced Barbara in the cliffhanger to The Dead Planet.

Model work in Ep1 is great. Very realistic looking and even Michael F admits he was stealing from Kubrick's 2001. The model work in ep5 is risible. He is stealing from The Seeds of Death here. The very tacky looking rocket model which failed in Seeds is abominable in colour. In all subsequent 70's attempts at rockets the show uses NASA stock footage.

Incidental music in this is by Dudley S again. After the luminous, Stravinksy-esque Spearhead from Space he back to the string of themes approach that worked in The War Games. The music is all conventionally realised and scored as marches or 4:4 time signatures. It's going to be improved a lot in the next few years as writing to the time code becomes technically possible. But for now it's write several longish themes and play bits of it into the studio or post dub them imprecisely when seems appropriate.


Overall Ambassadors of Death is a murky and confused story, shot very conventionally at a time when the money for action sequences was available but the budget not well controlled. I think the producers imagined they were trying for action adventure to get away from studio bound DW sci-fi. Unlike the previous 2 stories it looks, sounds and feels messy. The result  is less than impressive.

After a strong start to the series, this is clearly the weakest Series 7 story by some margin.


ABM Rating 2.15/4.00
LJM Rating 2.00/5.00
SPJ Rating 6.30/10   

No. 38 (out of 53)

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052 Doctor Who and the Silurians

Started 1-Jan-2019

I'll come right out and say it up front. This has one of the best script ideas ever filmed (and not just for DW).


The inversion of the Sherwin imposed plot restriction (stuck on Earth hey? Well it's alien invasion or mad scientist then... or is it?) is itself averted. Well done Mac Hulke.

The idea that a palaeological intelligent biped once existed, and had a scientific and industrial civilisation and that somehow some of them survived is not impossible. Any 10000 year period in the last 200 million years could have accommodated it. It's very unlikely...but where would the story be then?

As Paul Cornell pointed out it is simultaneously both symbolic of colonialist oppression of indigenous peoples' struggles and 'invasion' by aggressive outsiders.

Where the story falls down is the execution. The name "Silurians" for a start is obviously problematic but so is the timescale. The Doctor drops a 200 MYa into the convo when he's rifling through Quinn's office in ep3 (context might save him from conviction however).
This error is acknowledged in the sequel. In The Sea Devils ep2 the Doctor says they should have been called 'Eocenes' (which is not necessarily much better...but it's a neat try). The writers could have checked but they didn't. Wisely the questions of when and how is left (mostly) undiscussed but the clues that are there are contradictory.

As an action adventure DW&TS has got good characters and lots of build up. There are evocative and effective bits (end of ep2 and end of ep3) in this build up. Ep 4 and 5 are a little quiet but ep6 & 7 are very exciting.

The pathology of the alien disease is a little unlikely (that it is SO communicable and quick-acting) but the spread of pandemic is portrayed very dramatically. One slight issue seems to be however, that there is next to no mass media reaction. Consider the way the world reacted to swine flu in 2009. Headline panic right?

The costuming is not great even if it is used with some directing flair. The Silurians' latex rubber headsocks and useless feet and hands are ridiculous but the direction makes them stay in the shadows and are only revealed properly at the end of ep3.
The Dinosaur is worse. There is an actual picture of the 5 foot puppet in the DVD Photo Gallery that is hilarious.

The characters are a very well written. The actors clearly relish their parts. The contrast with Seeds of Death (just 3 stories before) is stark. Miss Dawson, Dr Quinn, Major Baker and Dr Lawrence and Permanent Undersecretary Edward Masters are actual people with motivation and weaknesses and bad habits. This sets a new bar in guest casts. Diversity is missing without leave however.

The Incidental Music is not a negative for me. I like it. Carey Blyton was a serious composer who could write very serious music. (Have a lurk here http://www.careyblyton.com/ ) The soundtrack is avant-garde. It is challenging and it is meant to make you feel uncomfortable but it is very good for the show.

Silurians is genuine attempt to make Doctor Who that is about something important. It fails somewhat in the execution but colour DW is a vast improvement, so far, on B&W.


ABM Rating 3.71/4.00 
LJM Rating 3.00/5.00
SPJ Rating 7.60/10

No. 15 (out of 52)

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