049 The Space Pirates

Started 20-Dec

We tried a cgi recon from whorecons.com.au (yes really). and gave up after about 3 minutes. Then we resorted to the LC recon.

This story is slo-o-ow.

The Doctor's company turns up at 14m52s into ep1 and their interactions are limited to the surrounds of Alpha 7 (A little space station) until the end of ep2. No other cast members appear with them. Apparently the regulars were filmed on separate days to the main cast and the clips inserted.

The story begins with pirates raiding a little space station. Then some wanky space police (Hermack, Warne and Penn) who faff about (uselessly) chasing these raids.

Intro'd in ep2 are Milo Clancey and then Madelaine Issigri.

Milo Clancey is clearly a tribute to/obvious ripoff of Gabby Hayes, noted Western character actor. Another way to describe this is 'Stinky Pete' off Toy Story 2 (1999)

The Issigri 'bum' hairstyle helmet is intriguing but not at all attractive.

Dudley Foster as Caven is consistent and menacing without being anything other than dull. Dom Issigri is possibly more annoying and incoherent than Milo Clancey.

The spaceship model work is of a high standard but seems too relaxed and graceful to add any excitement. The spaceship chasing and distances and time scales are either ignored or un-thought out.

The sets are limited to about 4 max per episode. As for location filming.... none, zip, nada, nothing.


The last episode is dire. The climax in particular seems soporific. Caven's ship is almost casually exploded by Space Corps action.

A big fault lies with the direction. In The Space Pirates direction seems too lackadaisical for a tight DW story. Actors are allowed to go wild without much thought. Jack May as Hermack and Donald Gee as Warne are particularly egregiously ill disciplined. They needed a note, mate! They were terrible.

The pace is slow and slower.. Michael Hart did not make a return to DW.

I get the feeling this is a 4 parter stretched out a lot.

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Marathon progress notes
Marathon progress Space Pirates ep6 (243 episodes down) was watched on day 239 of the marathon.

See www.timeanddate.com

Five Four Three One NONE recon eps to go....

Recons concluded 9.06pm 24-Dec-2018

Here's another way to experience recons...I found I needed this to follow The Space Pirates.
Transcripts link here http://dwtpscripts.tripod.com/2nddoc/yy/yy0.html
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ABM Rating 2.00/4.00

LJM Rating 0.75/5.00

SPJ Rating 0.95/10



No. 48 (out of 49)

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048 The Seeds of Death

Started 16-Dec

Bloody 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)

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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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047 The Krotons

Started 11-Dec

As with The Invasion this one is very familiar.

I find myself 'singing along' with the dialogue. This one I had as a sound recording as early as May 1982 so I've heard this a lot.


As I have noted before elsewhere this story is very familiar to many DW fans since it's 1981 UK repeat. Consequently there has been a long period of time for fans to pick it to pieces. Typical reviews seem to concentrate on the idea that the costumes and the visual effects aren't very good.

Well, name one 60's DW where the costumes and visual effects are anything better than 'ok'.


Such critiques as these are kinda pointless in my opinion.

Apart from the Krotons themselves, they're mostly ok.

The acting is competent to good in this , the costumes are 'Bobi Bartlett' (distinctive in a 1968 kinda way that has never come back into fashion), the script is tight and sparkles with wit and lines the actors clearly relish. The dark patches on Vana's pants are a little bit rude looking.

The angry student riot stuff is almost allegorically plucked from the headlines of 1968 but nearly no one remembers that now.

Zoe's shorty skirt is eye-watering. I feel pervy looking but it's amazing for a young boy.

The Krotons' 'skirts' are also unwatchable but not because they're attractive. The episode 3 scenes featuring the Kroton's POV expedition in the Wasteland cannot be attributed to arty direction but simple practicality.

This is of course Robert Holmes first DW script, apparently a rehash of a rejected Out of the Unknown storyline that Terrance Dicks found in the filing cabinet. The premise is an isolated relatively low tech alien community which has been invaded long ago by a high tech spaceship which it turns out has put the occupants into a suspended state. We join the story as two 'students' are graduating the Learning Hall and being sent into the Kroton's spaceship. The Doctor's crew are the ones who notice these students are damaged and (in one case) disposed of as waste by the spaceship. The plot pits the Doctor's realisation of the truth against the Gonds bubbling and fizzing internal politics of disinformation and lack of curiosity. The Gonds' conflict is presented as inward and unnecessary. The threat posed by the Krotons is unrecognised, doubted, then exposed and then vanquished.

The curious thing is that the Krotons are a unfamiliar crystalline life form with very unusual biochemistry. Also the timescale is centuries. This is the unheralded great SF bit in this story.


How similar is this plot to the Dominators? Doctor's crew helps low tech vulnerable on some planet overcome the invasion of a small two life-form crewed spaceship of resource predatory aliens who are motivated by survival. The story and style are starkly different.


There seems a musical, even a operatic note to the dialogue in this. It is atonal and disjointed (it's not Oklahoma! more like Nixon in China) but there seems a lot of lines delivered by actors in a strange, off-normal way. The dialogue is dense and delivered very quickly. It is heavily rehearsed (probably).

I'll cite Beta's opening dialogue in ep1 from 18m23s. Beta's lines in particular are delivered in an odd lowering tone end inflection. Either it's clumsy delivery or very calculated. It does not seem sloppy.

• BETA: Selris ...
• SELRIS: Ah Beta, come and meet our guests. My friends this is Beta, our controller of science and my son's good friend.
• BETA: That's what I'm here for. Do you know what Thara's planning? He and some students have gone out to the Learning Hall. They're going to wreck the machines.
• SELRIS: No
• BETA: You've got to stop them Selris. I came as quickly as i could. But they'll be there by now.
• SELRIS: Is it too late?
• DOCTOR: Not if we cut through the wasteland."

There is no incidental music, only BBC Radiophonic Workshop sound effects; almost a sound design. This follows similar experiments in Wheel and Dominators.... The sound effects are timed to enhance scenes, to frame the scenes. (Or maybe I've listened to this 15 times too many...)


The Doctor's and Zoe's goofy delaying in ep4 is delightful. (How do I wear this? Oops, butter fingers...Oh I wanted to stand there.) There's a point to it as well (...playing for time while the Krotons are 'poisoned'.) This illustrates the subtle depth this piece has.

The Krotons ep1 is the highest UK rated Troughton episode.

This is a lot better than its reputation.


ABM Rating 3.25/4.00 
LJM Rating 3.10/5.00
SPJ Rating 3.50/10.00

No. 29 (out of 47)


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046 The Invasion

Started 05-Dec

Lots of ECU

Lots of OTT acting, especially from Kevin Stoney but also from Peter Halliday, Ian Fairbairn and Edward Burnham. Even Nick Courtney is shown to be visibly swaggering.

Obviously the actors are bigging this up since the script and the direction are good enough to allow it.

Consider the contrast here from Kevin Stoney's Vaughn to Ronald Allen's Rago in The Dominators. Theatrical medium shots are replaced by fast cuts and ECU and the result is wa-a-a-ay different.

The incidental music needs a mention. After the stock music of series 5 and Dudley's occasional forays into wild analogue synthesiser mode (Fury, Ice W's and Macra Terror but not Evil for some reason.). The cues presented here by Jazz musician Don Harper are spooky and used effectively throughout. Douglas Camfield is developing here. He'll be doing this style of thing again.


The 8 eps make this epic rather than dull, even though we don't even see a Cyberman till near the end of ep4.

The action in ep 7 and 8 is technologically out of date now and seems twee. It probably has some physical problems as well. A large rocket launched 50k miles into space is going to take more than 12 minutes to arrive. Launched at a record 16.3 km/s solar escape velocity in 2005 the New Horizons probe took 9 hours to go past the Moon's orbit (about 240k miles) (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#cite_note-airspace20150710-81.) At that speed the Russian rocket would take about 81.5 minutes to reach the Cybership. But a 60's rocket would not capable of launching at anything like that speed and the episodes are only 25 minutes long, so...

As for neuristors, de-polarisers, "emotional" circuitry and the Cerebration mentor.... handwaving waffle.


I think the external filmed 'action' sequences (esp. in ep2 & 3) are not Troughton's best side. He struggles a bit with 'action' scenes. It's more the sort of thing Jamie or the UNIT guys are suited to.

In the studio however he is excellent. I'll cite the scene in ep7 where he confronts Vaughn in his office. Cool fantastic... no scenery chewing, just awesome to the max.

The episode cliffhangers are mostly very good in this story. Late in Hartnell's run I commented that the Ark had a good one for ep2 and that generally they weren't so great up to that point.
In Troughton's era, cliffhangers have been better and better but Invasion has some absolute belters.

• Ep7 (Is this what you wanted Vaughn to be the ruler of a dead world?!), 
• Ep5 (They're coming at us from both sides.), 
• Ep4 (Throb throb throb throb throb, plink, plink plink, plink... who-ee woo)
• And of course ep 6 (It's the Cybermen. We've just seen 100's of them, coming up out of the sewers. Clong, clang, clung. Denk, dink, donk, dunk, denk, dink, donk, dunk, (repeat) )

A thought I had while watching this in the marathon blog context was this. How much better is the end of ep6 The Invasion than anything in ep4 of The War Machines?? The time 2.5 series....from mid 1966 to about Nov/Dec 1968.

The Invasion is a milestone and a landmark and a great example of what DW can be. It will be bettered. It will be copied. It is itself a rehash of previous attempts. Nowadays it's a curious and out of date B&W tv serial. But it's a classic DW B&W tv serial.



ABM Rating 3.49/4.00 
LJM Rating 4.40/5.00
SPJ Rating 8.20/10.00

No. 5 (out of 46)

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045 The Mind Robber

Started 02-Dec

It can be said that sometimes out of great adversity often comes something great. Certainly that cannot always be true. But The Mind Robber definitely fits that cliche.

The start of Series 6 is a script disaster that rolls on and on for the whole series. The Dominators is cut short by an episode after Sherwin can't get Bryant and Haisman/Lincoln to communicate properly. (and as a consequence they lose series 6 finale "Laird of the McCrimmon".)

Suddenly there's an episode short and nothing to film. Sherwin comes up with ep1 The Mind Robber. A startlingly white, light filler featuring no new sets (the TARDIS console room and a white void and a black void), reused costumes (the White Robots are reused from two Out of the Unknown eps ("The Prophet" and another)) and the regular cast.

Somehow it works....

Then the rest of the Mind Robber kicks off with the TARDIS dissolute and the rules of drama and narrative beating a hasty retreat into the middle distance. The thing is like a 'punk' fractured pantomime. A forest of words, characters from books appearing out of nowhere, Jamie reduced to a photograph and reassembled wrongly by the Doctor, unicorns, a Medusa, D'Artagnan, Lemuel Gulliver and the Karkus being judo flipped by Zoe. Troughton deserves big praise for holding it together with a convincing performance.

Another factor in this success is new director 35yo David Maloney who directs like he knows what he's doing. He's going to do a few more serials in Series 6. David will return to direct some much more DW before this marathon is over including some which are at the very summit of DW greatness. Before this he was uncredited Production Assistant on The Rescue, The Romans, The Time Meddler and The Ark. Later he was producer of favorites such as Blakes 7 and the John Duttine version of The Day of the Triffids. He died a bit too young in 2006 at the age of 63. Probably DW's no.2 most accomplished director.

The Mind Robber is a fantasy world story of DW that works. Everything you see is screaming at you this is unbelievable, this cannot be happening. But then you must suspend your disbelief and the story will start to work. Just when it seems like it's about to fall apart it picks up. It's an amazing and psychedlic experience.

A previous attempt at this style was little short of a disaster (Celestial Toymaker) so this presented quite a risk for the producers. But confidence and luck plus a little good judgement made this.

Not the best ever but a firm favourite that stands the test of time.



ABM Rating 3.78/4.00 
LJM Rating 4.50/5.00
SPJ Rating 7.80/10.00

No. 4 (out of 45)

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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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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.

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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)


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