Friday, November 30, 2012

Planet of the Daleks

Dear Gary—

Planet of the Daleks does not take place on the Dalek planet of Skaro. Planet of the Daleks takes place on Spiridon, a remote planet of an invisible race of Spiridons that the Daleks have conquered, and they are now attempting to master the Spiridon technique of invisibility. This is a truly scary thought—invisible Daleks—but it is not fully developed or explored. It is a simple plot device to explain why the Daleks are on this planet; that is all.
The Doctor and Jo have stumbled out of the treadmill that was Frontier in Space and are now hot on the trail of the Daleks; or rather, the TARDIS is. The Doctor had been grazed by a bullet from the Master’s gun and only had time to send a telepathic message to the Time Lords before passing out. Operating the TARDIS by remote control, the Time Lords send the TARDIS, the Doctor, and Jo to Spiridon.

I have to say, Gary, that fresh off of Frontier in Space I feel rather like Professor Fate at the end of The Great Race—I’ve been cheated. I have come all this long way and have been cheated. The Master, and parenthetically the Ogrons along with the Earth and Draconian Empires, has been left dangling and forgotten. Now I begin a story that claims to be on the planet of the Daleks but it isn’t. The specter of invisible Daleks is raised but never explored. I expect Doctor Who to step up.
Doctor Who does not disappoint.

Skaro aside; the Master aside; invisibility aside; Planet of the Daleks is solid Doctor Who entertainment.
“You come here out of nowhere and then claim to be something out of a legend.”

Materializing out of the mists of the Doctor's time swirl, the legend that is Doctor Who sweeps away all vague disappointments.
Even though Planet of the Daleks does not take place on Skaro it does have some nice echoes of that past initial encounter between the Doctor and his mortal enemies. We have an inhospitable planet with the Daleks holed up in a city while the ineffectual Thals are on the outside unable and unwilling to cope. We have the Doctor arriving to lead the Thals on a several pronged raid on the city where the Daleks have a countdown to unleash a deadly threat to all living creatures on the planet surface. We even have someone getting inside an emptied Dalek casing to maneuver past patrolling guards.

However, while the first Doctor was simply motivated by curiosity and the desire to retrieve his fluid link, this third Doctor traveled to Spiridon with the sole purpose of defeating the Daleks. “For a man who abhors violence, I must say I took great satisfaction in doing that,” the Doctor says of disabling a Dalek. Even the Thals have traveled all this way in pursuit of the Daleks.
In the original, rather over long, Dalek adventure the Daleks were confined to Skaro and only posed a threat to the Thals. The Daleks have since emerged as a danger to the entire universe, and Planet of the Daleks (still a tad long at six episodes) has a greater sense of urgency about it and more than enough action to carry us through.

“When faced with the inevitable, don’t waste precious time by resisting it.”

The Thals have been wasting precious time. They at least had the gumption to man a space flight to track the Daleks, however now that they have landed they are hopelessly inept and not much better than their ancestors from the first story. The lackluster leader Taron attributes his paralysis of mind to caution, and later has the nerve to blame it on the presence of his lover Rebec. His compatriot Vaber, on the other hand, is far too rash.

Enter the Doctor. "Let's take a look in our pockets." The Doctor leaves no pocket unturned; he will always find a way. (Thankfully this time around the Doctor's way does not involve long treks through swamps and caves like the first time.)

As I mentioned before, the Dalek plan to adapt the Spiridon art of invisibility doesn't go very far. They have had only limited success when our story begins, and apparently they abandon all attempts in future as I am unaware of any further mention of invisible Daleks in Doctor Who history.
The second Dalek threat in our story also peters out. The Daleks intend on unleashing deadly bacteria onto the planet surface, but the native Spiridon Wester sacrifices himself by releasing it in a sealed room so that it is contained; the Daleks cannot open the room as they have not yet been immunized. Of course this wouldn’t stop them from completing the immunization process and then letting the bacteria out, or from just whipping up another batch.

These first two Dalek plots, however, do serve to keep the action flowing until the Doctor can uncover the third and real danger--a vast army of Daleks currently in cold storage on the planet.

At this point it turns out to be a good thing that the Thals have squandered their time on Spiridon just moving their stockpile of explosives from one hiding place to another. This at least has served to keep the bombs safe so that the Doctor (with the help of Jo who manages to snag two from the clutches of the Daleks) can utilize them in his plan to bury the Dalek army in a flood of molten ice.

“We have been delayed, not defeated. The Daleks are never defeated.”

That is the wonderful thing about the Daleks. They never kill the Doctor and the Doctor never quite defeats them. They will always be back as the Supreme Dalek proclaims--delayed not defeated.

Before taking his leave of the Thals the Doctor advises them, “Don’t glamorize it; don’t make war sound like an exciting and thrilling game.” Somehow I don’t think the Thals can make anything sound exciting or thrilling. All in all the Thals are rather a dull race and there is a reason that they do not return again and again to Doctor Who.

A few final thoughts, Gary, about the TARDIS before I sign off. The uncomfortable looking curvy lounge beds that the first Doctor used have been abandoned; we now have a bed that emerges from the wall at the push of a button. In fact there is an entire bank of drawers and lockers along one wall of the control room that is something new. The TARDIS interior has gone through several redesigns in recent serials; I wonder when the Doctor finds the time. One more point about the TARDIS; I find it rather hard to believe that the oxygen supply can be so easily depleted in this indestructible, miraculous, bigger (seeming infinitely so) on the inside machine.  But I will set this TARDIS anomaly aside just as I set Frontier in Space aside and let the Doctor Who magic take over.

Until next time, Gary, . . . delayed not defeated . . .

Monday, November 26, 2012

Frontier in Space

Dear Gary—

I feel cheated after watching Frontier in Space. This six episode serial is nothing more than an overlong prologue to the next in the series.
“Well that’s simple then; I mean, all we’ve got to do is find out what’s going on, who’s behind the Ogrons, where they’ve taken the TARDIS, go and get it back, and then we can all go home.”

I wish it had been that simple, Jo; I wish it hadn’t been a six episode long journey, and in the end nobody can go home.
Six meaningless episodes that are all forgotten when the Daleks show up at the end of the final installment. All are forgotten—the Ogrons, the Earth Empire, the Draconian Empire, the Master. They were all red herrings.

The whole of Frontier in Space feels as though it were slapped together because somebody realized they had a six week gap before they could air the real story (Planet of the Daleks) and so they had to hurry up and fill those six timeslots.
The result is we have the Doctor and Jo captured, rescued, captured, rescued, captured on an endless loop almost as if they were back in the Miniscope from our previous story Carnival of Monsters. We have the Doctor explaining over and over that he is not in the employ of the Draconians but rather some sort of mass hypnosis is making Ogrons appear as Draconians to Earthlings and Earthlings to Draconians all in an attempt to start a war between the two empires. Again and again we have the Earth President arguing with her general over whether or not to go to war while television broadcasts in the background describe worldwide protests and demonstrations.

“Jo, will you stop pacing up and down like a perishing panda?” But who can blame her on this treadmill of a story?
Then abruptly the Doctor escapes out of his Miniscope cycle and is shipped off to a penal colony on the moon where he repeats his war conspiracy conjectures, and where the Master suddenly appears. This serves as a brief intermission before we are spun off into another seeming cycle of futility.

Now we have the Doctor trying to convince the Draconians of his mass hypnosis theory—he has reversed the polarity so to speak; instead of Ogron to Draconian it is Ogron to Earthling; instead of the Doctor trying to convince Earth he is now trying to convince Draconia; instead of the Earth President arguing with her general the Draconian Emperor is arguing with his son.
At least the Doctor has an interested ear in the Draconian Emperor, who seems much more composed and self controlled than the Earth President. “An Emperor who does not rule deposes himself,” this wise man states, and he shares the Doctor’s view that “fear is the greatest enemy of them all, for fear leads us to war.”

But Frontier in Space isn’t leading us much of anywhere.
Off we go into yet another recurring cycle of flights on spaceships; space walks to repair/sabotage; hailing vessels that might or might not be what they appear; locked up in cells only to escape from them. I lose track of what ship we’re in, where we’re headed, and who has the upper hand.

Even the individual episode ending cliff hangers seem forced—almost as though they just filmed the whole thing in one go and then chopped it up into six equal parts, never mind at what point the break occurred.
We finally end up on the Ogron planet where the Master has established a base, but it is soon revealed that he is working with the Daleks to mastermind this war between the Draconian and Earth empires. Of course the Master only ever works to his own end, and I do love, Gary, when he sarcastically mocks, “Do not fail the Daleks indeed, you stupid tin boxes.”

“We’ll see who rules the galaxy when this is over,” the ever confident Master states.
The thing is, Gary, we don’t. This (Frontier in Space) is never really over. It just kind of ends. The General and the Prince return to Earth and Draconia respectively with some vague understanding that the truth of the mass hypnosis will be told and war averted. The Ogrons scatter in a panic. The dreaded Daleks take off with their real threat yet to be realized. The Master accidentally shoots the Doctor. The Doctor stumbles into the TARDIS with Jo and dematerializes, leaving the Master behind and sending a desperate message to the Time Lords using the telepathic circuits of the TARDIS.

And we can finally get off of this merry-go-round, a little dizzy and confused.
“Only you could manage to have a traffic accident in space.” That’s what this was; a Doctor Who traffic accident in space.

And what exactly was the point?
I would like this story much better if it had been a manageable four episodes. I would have liked it much better if there was a conclusive end to all of the plot threads. I would have liked it much better if the final few minutes did not make the entirety of the preceding six episodes seem irrelevant.

I feel cheated.
Sadly, this rather unsatisfying ending is the last we will see of Roger Delgado as the Master; he died shortly after Frontier in Space aired.

I hope, Gary, that somewhere out there . . .

Friday, November 23, 2012

Carnival of Monsters

Dear Gary—

Carnival of Monsters is a delightfully refreshing story that reminds me of the first Doctor’s adventure Planet of Giants, both serials dealing with a miniaturized TARDIS and occupants as well as an outside storyline that is independent of the Doctor. It also has certain similarities to the later Tom Baker adventure Nightmare of Eden.
What I love about Carnival of Monsters is that it is pure TARDIS adventure, or misadventure. There is no alien threat to Earth; there is no ominous plot against the galaxy; there is no heinous crime against a defenseless populace; there is no wrong to right. The TARDIS has simply landed the Doctor and Jo in a predicament and he has to first figure out what is going on and then figure out how they can escape.

This is the first Doctor Who story after the Time Lords have returned the secrets of time travel to the Doctor, and he has taken the TARDIS out for a spin.
 “Are you sure you can steer that TARDIS properly?” Jo asks in true skeptical companion form.

“Jo,” the Doctor corrects, “I don’t steer the TARDIS I program it.”
He must be a bit rusty, though, as he misses his destination of Metebelis Three entirely and lands on a ship in the Indian Ocean, or so it would appear.  “There’s something wrong here.”

 The Doctor and Jo soon realize that the passengers of this ship are stuck in a time loop of sorts—destined to live out the same few hours of the same day over and over. This turns out to be a break for the Doctor and Jo; captured as stowaways, the crew and passengers soon forget about their prisoners when the loop comes full circle.
After making their getaway through a strange hatchway, the Doctor realizes that they are inside of a Miniscope, a machine that miniaturizes and entraps creatures and their surroundings within it, a machine that has been banned by the Time Lords as an “offense against the dignity of sentient lifeforms.”

This Miniscope is the property of the flamboyant Vorg, a showman who has arrived on the planet Inter Minor with his colorfully dressed assistant Shirna only to find himself caught up in some political red tape.
The Doctor and Jo running around inside the circuitry of the Miniscope, popping in and out of various entrapped environments, being chased by Drashigs that have escaped out of their own Miniscope quadrant, is interesting enough. However it is the independent storyline unfolding outside of the machine that makes Carnival of Monsters truly memorable.

One has to laugh at the peripheral plotting and wrangling and bickering of the three stooges like tribunal of Kalik, Orum, and Pletrac as they indecisively consider what to do with the suspicious Vorg and his possibly dangerous machine. One gets caught up in the double dealing, treason, and sabotage attempted by these three jesters; even though one knows that these schemes are unconnected with the main narrative of the Doctor and Jo. One can’t help one’s self.
The inept Vorg, meanwhile, is unable to aid the trapped Doctor or stop his machine from shutting down due to the Drashig’s running amok inside of it.

“This is a time for lateral thinking.” Lateral thinking is the Doctor’s specialty, and he finds his way outside of the Miniscope where he is returned to normal size; but not for long. He has yet to save Jo and the other creatures still inside.
Hooking the TARDIS up to the Miniscope, the Doctor reenters the machine leaving careful instructions behind for Vorg as to how to extract him once again when the time is right.

This is where our tribunal of fools fumble themselves into the plot with some half-baked idea on the part of two of them to allow the rampaging Drashigs to exit the machine and wreak havoc on the planet, thus somehow allowing for a rebellion to overthrow the reigning president.
“One has no wish to be devoured by alien monstrosities, even in the cause of political progress.” One should have listened to one’s own fears.

The Drashigs do escape, but Vorg of all people manages to kill them by using the one-time sabotaged Eradicator that he has managed to fix; and he manages to recall the Doctor and Jo from the machine despite the switch having been shot by one of our trio of tricksters. The Miniscope is destroyed in the process, but the creatures inside have been returned to their own time and space by the TARDIS.
Carnival of Monsters is short and sweet at four episodes long. It has just the right amount of comedy (carnival) blended with the perfect amount of peril (monsters). It has some nice Doctor/companion moments (“They not only look like chickens; they are chickens;” cluck, cluck, cluck; “Don’t you ever admit that you’re wrong?” “No; that’s impossible too.”). It has some name dropping by the Doctor (“I took lessons from John L Sullivan himself.”).

 And it has some great support. In particular I want to mention Peter Halliday as Pletrac. All three of the actors portraying the tribunal are exceptional, but I want to single out Peter Halliday on the strength of not only this role but his prior outstanding stint in The Invasion as Packer. It is also nice to see Ian Marter in an early role before his taking on the character of Harry later in the series.
Time travel has been restored to Doctor Who; the TARDIS is back in the picture; I’m looking forward to the rest of the third Doctor’s run.

As ever, Gary . . .

Monday, November 19, 2012

The Three Doctors

Dear Gary—

The Three Doctors—can it get any better than this? Well, it could actually. It would have been much better if William Hartnell had been up to an active part rather than consigned to reading lines while trapped in a time eddy.
How magical it could have all been.

Time is not just relative; time is devastating.
“Oh, so you’re my replacements—a dandy and a clown.”

 “I am he and he is me.” Or so the Doctor says. Or is it the Doctor? Jon Pertwee, meet Patrick Troughton. The First Law of Time be damned.
The Time Lords have breached this First Law of Time (which states that a Time Lord cannot meet his previous selves) due to a force equal and opposite to their own emanating from a black hole that is draining their power.

I have a couple of things to say about this, Gary. First, this view of the Time Lords as little more than air traffic controllers is somewhat disappointing. Secondly, it seems “rather too convenient” (Alpha Centaurie didn’t know how apropos he/she was in this remark) that Absolute Laws of Time can so easily be broken. But then, where would Doctor Who be without the ability to so blithely break the Laws it makes up?
It seems there are no dire consequences for this violation; some minor bickering between the two Doctor selves is all that occurs.

“You’ve got no right to be here,” says Doctor Three to Doctor Two.
“I can see you’ve been doing the TARDIS up a bit; I don’t like it,” says Doctor Two.

In steps Doctor One to mediate: “Stop dilly dallying.”
Taking the first Doctor’s advice to heart, Doctor Three rushes out of the TARDIS and is promptly zapped “over the absolute event horizon” with Jo into the antimatter world of the black hole. The second Doctor, meanwhile, is left at UNIT HQ with Benton and a somewhat befuddled Brigadier to deal with the cleverly named “some kind of powerful organism thing.”

Doctor Two decides the best way to deal with this organism thing is to confuse it with senseless information: “I wonder if I have a television set handy.”
“Seems to be your forte Doctor--confusing people.” But the Brigadier won’t stand for confusion. He deals with what is set before him.

“As long as he does the job, he can wear what face he likes.”
The Three Doctors, however, doesn’t merely present us with three faces of the Doctor; it presents us with three distinct faces of Time Lord. We have the all powerful but detached beings who are content to sit back and watch as events unfold represented by our air traffic controllers; we have the ever curious and adventure seeking renegade who stands up to bullies represented by the Doctor(s); and we have the Time Lord gone wrong, represented in this story not by the Master but by Omega.

“A hero . . . I should have been a god!”
Omega: legendary architect of the Time Lord’s power; Omega: long believed dead, trapped in the black hole of his creation; Omega: a hero, not a god.

“Power is the only freedom that I seek; absolute power is absolute freedom.” Omega is quite literally out of his mind; in fact, he is out of his body. Omega has ceased to exist; only his will makes him so.
Omega is a triumph of a character. The inscrutable mask he wears never changes, yet it manages to project profound sadness, loneliness, bitterness, anger, and insanity in turn as the story progresses. The robes he wears, too, are deep, rich, and luxurious. He commands attention with his presence and his voice demands respect.

All of the Time Lords’ power cannot cope with this equal and opposite force Omega. It takes not one but three (or more accurately two and a fraction) Doctors.
The second Doctor soon joins the third in the black hole, bringing UNIT HQ, the Brigadier, and Benton with him for good measure.

“Now see here, Doctor, you have finally gone too far.”
The first Doctor is still confined to the TARDIS screen and can only offer counsel to the other two.  “I always had a great respect for his advice,” the second Doctor says of the first; even confined as he is in this limited role, William Hartnell still manages to exude wisdom.

Patrick Troughton, on the other hand, disarms with his childlike fervor: “Are you sure that you and he are of the same intelligence?”
Meanwhile Jon Pertwee impresses with his elegance and athletic prowess.

“Three of them; I didn’t know when I was well off.”
Three of them.

The Time Lords, for all of their might, can only sit back helplessly; Omega, for all of his might, is trapped in the world of his own creation; the Doctor, with his intelligence, enthusiasm, and flourish finds the way out of this impasse.
“Care for a Jelly Baby?”

No, Jelly Babies are not the solution, it is the recorder actually (both courtesy of Doctor Two), but it is that type of sideways thinking that suits the Doctor(s) so well and allows him to defeat the Daleks, the Cybermen, and any alien the universe throws at him, including Omega (“Mind over antimatter”).
The Brigadier, on the other hand, doesn’t think outside the box, he confronts problems head on, military style: “First we do a reccy; then we mount a surprise attack.”

Never mind that the ‘we’ he is referring to consists of simply himself and Ollis, the unsuspecting game warden who was the first to be whisked up into this world of black hole antimatter. The Brig makes his plans just as if he were commanding a troop of armed and trained soldiers.
The Three Doctors might be what this serial is all about, but the Brigadier is the stand out star.

Having the three (or two and a fraction) Doctors together is a treat; Omega is a triumph; but the rest of the story is rather hit or miss and would have been an overall disappointment if it had not been for the Brig’s priceless commentary throughout.
“It’s quite obvious to me what’s happened; you’ve been monkeying around with that infernal machine of yours.”

Everything is obvious to the Brigadier, and if it is not he makes it so.
And so I will give the last word to the Brig: “As far as I’m concerned, Doctor, one of you is enough—more than enough.”

Three is fine for the odd serial or two, but one will do for the every day. At least the current Doctor has now been given back the secret of time travel by the grateful Time Lords.
And so I send this out, Gary, looking forward to more of Doctor Three and saying a fond last farewell to Doctor One and a ‘till next time’ to Doctor Two . . .

Friday, November 16, 2012

The Time Monster

Dear Gary—

“Having picked us all up by the scruff of the neck and bundled us all in here, what do you propose to do with us?” I feel rather like the Brigadier in watching The Time Monster, bundled up and set down in a story with no real purpose or direction.
The Time Monster feels like a story that was made up as they went along, with one actor providing a starting scene and each actor in turn picking up the thread of the story where the previous actor left off, taking the plot in whatever direction their whim fancied.

Jon Pertwee: The Doctor has a dream that the Master is causing global devastation and warns the Brigadier to issue a worldwide alert.
Nicholas Courtney: “A dream—really Doctor, you’ll be consulting the entrails of a sheep next.”

Roger Delgado: The Master has disguised himself as a professor and is working on a TOMTIT (Transmission of Matter Through Interstitial Time) experiment.
Katy Manning: “I know I’m exceedingly dim, but would you mind explaining?”

John Levene: The Brigadier and Benton decide to observe the TOMTIT demonstration.
Pertwee: The Doctor devises a ‘TARDIS sniffer outer’ to locate the Master.

Delgado: The Master has hypnotized the Director of the Institute and proceeds with his time experiments to recall a mysterious creature that seems to be trapped in a crystal.
Courtney: “That’s a fearsome looking load of electronic nonsense you’ve got together.  . . .How does it all work, in words of one syllable?”

Pertwee: The Doctor uses Bessie’s Super Drive to catch the Master before he can complete his TOMTIT experiment.
Levene: The Master’s time experiments go wrong and age his assistant past 80 years.

Pertwee: The Doctor rushes in just in time: “Reverse the polarity!”
Courtney: “Doctor I wish you wouldn’t talk in riddles.”

Delgado: The Master slips out in the confusion.
Courtney: The Brigadier calls for UNIT reinforcements; “I feel as naked as a baby in its bath.”

Pertwee: The Master’s creature is Kronos who comes from a place outside of time, “a place that is no place; a dangerous place where creatures live beyond your wildest imagination.” Kronos poses a danger “to the entire created universe.”
Manning: “And a Merry Michaelmas to you too.”

Delgado: The Master calculates why his experiment has gone wrong and returns to the lab to correct TOMTIT.
Levene: Benton is on guard in the lab and foils the Master’s attempts to lure him away. “It’s the oldest trick in the book.”

Delgado: “You’re wrong Sergeant Benton, that is the oldest trick in the book.” The Master knocks out Benton, and transports High Priest Krasis from Atlantis using his TOMTIT and seizes the priest’s Seal of Kronos that will control Kronos so that he can obtain complete power over the Earth.
Levene: Benton wakes up and escapes to warn the Doctor.

Delgado: The Master calls forth Kronos.
Pertwee: The Master can’t control Kronos; he only has a partial crystal. The other half of the crystal is located in ancient Atlantis.

Levene: Benton would love a spot of tea and a marmalade sandwich.
Courtney: “This isn’t a picnic.”

Pertwee: The Doctor devises an instrument using bottles and corks and forks to interfere with the Master’s time experiments.
Courtney: “Doctor, I must insist, what are you up to?”

Manning: “You just wait and see.”
Courtney: “Doctor, please stop this silly game at once.”

Pertwee: “It was fun while it lasted.”
Courtney: UNIT forces are on the way; “Get your skates on, will you.”

Delgado: The Master calls forth historical soldiers through time to fight the UNIT forces and blows up the convoy escorting the TARDIS.
Pertwee: The TARDIS cannot be destroyed; it just needs to be up righted.

Delgado: The Master and Krasis escape in his TARDIS: “My power is greater than your imagination can encompass.”
Pertwee: The Doctor chases the Master in his TARDIS and lands inside the Master’s TARDIS so that “wherever it goes, I’ll go with it.”

Manning: “The TARDIS looks different.”
Delgado: “Good, now I’ve got him really trapped.”

Manning:”Oh, I think I’ve bruised my tailbone.”
Pertwee: “Sorry about your coccyx, Jo, but these little things are set to try us.”

Delgado: “Oh dear, what a bore the fellow is.” The Master tunes out the Doctor.
Pertwee: Old Venusian proverb: “If the Thraskin puts his fingers in his ears it is polite to shout.”  

Manning: “I just don’t get it.”
Levene: TOMTIT turns Benton into a baby and traps the Brigadier in a slow motion time bubble.

Delgado: The Master flings the Doctor out into the time vortex.
Manning: Jo saves the Doctor.

Delgado: The Master lands in ancient Atlantis and seduces Queen Galleia.
Pertwee: The Doctor and Jo arrive in Atlantis and ally with King Dalios.

Manning: Jo gets an Atlantian makeover and buddies up to the Queen’s handmaid.
Delgado: The Master sends a patsy in to retrieve the second half of the crystal that is guarded by a Minotaur.

Manning: Jo follows the patsy.
Pertwee: The Doctor fights the Minotaur thus saving both Jo and the ancient crystal that controls Kronos. “That’s what all the fuss has been about.”

Manning: “Gives me a funny feeling.”
Delgado: The Master has the Doctor and Jo imprisoned with the dying king.

Pertwee: The Doctor shares a tender Zen moment with Jo in which he describes a boyhood memory of a wise old man and “the daisiest daisy I’d ever seen.”
Delgado: The Queen introduces the Master as King to the Atlantian council.

Pertwee: The Queen turns on the Master when she learns Dalios is dead.
Delgado: The Master calls forth Kronos.

Pertwee: “He’s uncontrollable” and Kronos destroys Atlantis.
Delgado: The Master escapes in his TARDIS.

Pertwee: The Doctor chases the Master in his own TARDIS and threatens a Time Ram to destroy them all.
Delgado: “Do you think I’m going to dance to the Doctor’s tune like some performing poodle?” The Master calls the Doctor’s bluff; the Doctor can’t bring himself to destroy Jo Grant.

Manning: Jo puts an end to it all by flipping the switch.
Pertwee: The Time Ram frees Kronos who gratefully spares their lives and seeks revenge on the Master.

Delgado: The Doctor pleads for mercy for the Master and Kronos lets him go.
Levene: TOMTIT is activated and Benton reverts to his normal age still in his nappy.

The End.
Or so I imagine it going.

It’s an entertaining enough story, this strange little “gap between the now and the now;” this “hiatus in time;” this “ontological absurdity.” “The whole of creation is very delicately balanced in cosmic terms,” and it seems that a little bit of Kronos’ chaos has seeped through, sweeping order and structure away in terms of The Time Monster.  But it results in great fun.
I hope  a little bit of that fun seeps through the Doctor’s time swirl to reach you, Dear Gary . . .

Monday, November 12, 2012

The Mutants

Dear Gary—

“It’s . . .” The Mutants.
The Mutants is another six episode Doctor Who story; at several points I thought the adventure was winding down only to realize that there were one or two episodes left yet. But The Mutants is such great fun that I didn’t mind.  Any time you have a blustery character shouting, “I’m surrounded by incompetents,” you know you’re in the middle of something good.

“Marshal, you are quite mad,” the Doctor tells the leader of Skybase. “Only if I lose,” he responds. And indeed, over much of our six parts he keeps his madness under wraps, revealing it only in small doses and only when his position is threatened. But the insanity escalates with the action until there is no longer any doubt.
It is unfortunate for the empire dreaming Marshal that he is in charge of a doomed colony on a dying planet with an atmosphere that is toxic to humans and with an indigenous population that is rapidly mutating. But that is the hand he has been dealt and by golly he is going to make it work.

Problem one: assassinate the Administrator come to announce the abandonment of the colony. Problem two: bombard the planet surface with experimental terraforming rockets. Problem three: kill all of the mutants, or mutts as he calls them.
Problems solved. Or so he thinks.

The difficulty with empire building dreams is that they are dependent upon the complete and utter loyalty of everyone else. The Marshal has this to some extent with Professor Jaeger who has been trying to transform the planet’s atmosphere. “Simply obeying orders—that’s a common excuse Professor,” the Doctor admonishes him.
Not all, however, are willing to simply obey orders. The Marshal has his hands full with the discontented inhabitants of the planet Solos, lead by Ky.  He briefly has the cooperation of the warrior faction of Solos, lead by Varan, until the Marshal kills Varan’s son that is. Then the Doctor and Jo show up to start asking questions, and two of his guards, Cotton and Stubbs, start asking questions of their own.

“I’m surrounded by incompetents;” the Marshal and his plans are coming unhinged.
I want to pause a moment, Gary, to put in a word about Cotton and Stubbs. The sight of the rotund Marshal becoming increasingly frustrated and barking irritated orders through his long stick of a transmitter is highly amusing, but it’s not going to carry six episodes in and of itself. Enter Cotton and Stubbs.

When we first meet Cotton and Stubbs leisurely playing cards and ignoring the system warnings of a malfunctioning door I assumed them to be another classic Doctor Who duo of minor comic relief underlings. Not so. Cotton and Stubbs might be bored guards waiting out their time until they can return to Earth, but when faced with increasing evidence against their leader they rise to the occasion. They show a compassion and intelligence and depth of character I had not expected upon first encounter.
“Doctor! Always the Doctor!” Yes, you always have to account for the Doctor in Doctor Who. “You need me to look after you;” and you always have to account for Jo when the third Doctor is around. Curiously, though, I find them of lesser interest than the Marshal, Stubbs, and Cotton show.

The Doctor and Jo arrive on Solos with a mysterious box from the Time Lords intended as it turns out for Ky. But I quickly lose interest in the box, and when the contents are revealed to be some ancient tablets with long-lost writings on them I’m rather disappointed. And the whole mutant angle and the revelation that this is in reality a natural transformative stage in the 2,000 year life cycle of the Solonians is interesting enough I suppose but hardly worthy of six episodes.
The Doctor and Jo serve to carry the action forward, but it is the Marshal, Stubbs, and Cotton that I really look forward to. And to some extent “this is stupid; I take no responsibility” Jaeger.

I am saddened along with Cotton when ‘Stubbsy’ is killed, but I am impressed with Cotton for carrying on in the face of this devastating loss of his best mate.  In my mind Cotton is the true hero of The Mutants. Just an ordinary guy doing his job when thrust into extraordinary circumstances. He sees what is right and what is wrong and acts accordingly, regardless of his own danger or detriment to his career. He has that rarity of bravery combined with presence of mind, acting with no thought of personal gain.
And through it all he is calm and rational, contrasting nicely with the mounting hysteria of the Marshal. Although I have to say that the Marshal’s hysteria remains simmering and subdued. He always retains a hint of optimism regardless of how hopeless things seem. And he does manage to wriggle out of many a hopeless scenario, thus exacerbating his rosy delusions of grandeur. In the end it is rather anti-climatic and “rather too convenient” (to borrow a phrase from Alpha Centaurie from The Curse of Peladon) when Ky is transformed into some godlike creature and simply annihilates the pitiful Marshal.

I am glad to see, though, that Cotton continues a grand tradition of Doctor Who and elects to stay behind on Solos to help in the rebuilding process. He joins such good company as Caldwell from Colony in Space and the first Doctor’s companions Steven and (arguably) Susan.
 It helps that Cotton isn’t giving up too much by not returning to Earth; Doctor Who always seems to have an overly pessimistic view of our future, and in The Mutants we are told of a 30th Century Earth full of “gray cities lined by gray highways across gray deserts.” This is all, we are told, “the fruits of technology.” I have my own gripes against our technology dependent world, but I do think that the trees and the grass and the flowers will persist.

Now I can’t leave, Gary, without at least mentioning one quote from the Doctor: “We’d all become unpeople undoing unthings untogether—fascinating.” The Doctor posits this theory while working on his particle reversal experiment to undo the atmospheric damage wreaked by Jaeger’s terraforming rockets.  This is another plot element that is interesting enough, but doesn’t quite outshine our M-S-C show.
But I guess that is what makes Doctor Who work. We might have some mildly interesting plot elements strung together into an overlong story, but the strong support makes it all gel. Alternatively we might have some typically competent extras along for the ride on a gripping storyline. It is a rare Doctor Who when all the essentials fail us.

The Mutants certainly does not fail us. And so I send this out, Gary, hoping that it catches you somewhere in the Doctor’s time swirl . . .

Friday, November 9, 2012

The Sea Devils

Dear Gary—

OK, this third Doctor is growing on me; and it is due in large part to great scripts like The Sea Devils played out by an excellent supporting cast. It also helps that this season has had a nice mix of the earth-bound stories with those that occur on other worlds.

 The Sea Devils sees the return of the Master. He had been captured by UNIT at the end of The Daemons and kept under wraps for the past two stories, giving his reappearance in The Sea Devils a much greater impact.

“He used to be a friend of mine once, a very good friend.”

The Doctor/Master relationship is quite complex, yet it is established simply; subtly; succinctly.

The Master seems to have been living in quiet retirement on an island retreat rather than imprisonment as the Doctor and Jo come to visit him in his castle cell. The Master assures the Doctor that he has taken this opportunity to reflect upon his past sins and rethink his philosophies. We know, of course, that it is all a sham, but it does give the Doctor pause. The Doctor truly desires the reformation of his old school mate; deep down, however, he knows it is only wishful thinking. Luckily for us.

The guards in charge of the Master’s keeping might be immune to his hypnosis, but his jailor, Colonel Trenchard, is not immune to his powers of persuasion. The Doctor knowingly inquires into Trenchard’s leading characteristic; the Master has already tapped into this as his greatest weakness: patriotism. He will do his duty, for Queen and country.

The Master has convinced Trenchard that the Sea Devils of our title (cousin to the Silurians) that have been sinking ships off the coast are really foreign spies and his duty is to help the Master to defeat these enemy agents. In reality the Master is intent on aiding them.

“The pleasure of seeing the human race exterminated Doctor,” the Master offers up as his reason for helping the Sea Devils. “The human race of which you are so fond; believe me, that’ll be a reward in itself.”

At six episodes long, The Sea Devils is an action packed story, with submarines, speed boats, duels, hover crafts, helicopters, jet skis, and explosions. We even have a mine field sequence where we learn that the sonic screwdriver acts as an effective mine locater as well as can blow mines up from a distance.

Too bad the Brigadier misses out on this adventure, but Captain Hart at the naval base where much of the action takes place steps up nicely.

“This place is supposed to be top secret,” Hart mutters disgustedly upon noticing the Doctor arriving by boat; “people treating it like Brighton Beach.” Then dryly sarcastic on the phone: “I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but there happens to be a stray civilian chugging into the base.”

Captain Hart is a character after my own heart. He does get off to a rather rocky start with the Doctor, who persists in his disdain of credentials: “I never carry the things; bureaucratic nonsense.” And who makes the claim, “Horatio Nelson was a personal friend of mine.” But Captain Hart is wise enough to see through the seeming insanity to the reasoned intelligence of the Doctor. As such, he can understand when the Doctor says of the Sea Devils, “We’re not dealing with animals, Captain Hart; we’re dealing with intelligent beings.”

The short-sighted politician Walker is another story: “We’re not going to hand over the world to a lot of lizards you know.” Walker only seems happy when eating or blowing things up; and when things start to go wrong he degenerates into hilarious cowardice.

A word, Gary, about the fate of politicians in Doctor Who. They often are depicted as over-the-top stubborn, fat-headed, disagreeable imbeciles, so much so that they are rather unbelievable (think Chinn in the Claws of Axos). Walker in The Sea Devils walks that line, but he doesn’t quite stumble over it. I can imagine a man like Walker rising to the somewhat low-level of power within the government that he has achieved. He is stubborn and fat-headed, yes, but he can also stop to think about what others are telling him, process the information, and recalculate his position (granted if he deems it sufficiently advantageous to himself).

As long as we’re on supporting characters—the submarine crew is another bunch of superb actors, especially those portraying Commander Ridgeway and his ‘Number One.’ When faced with a takeover by turtle-faced Sea Devils, these men act in a matter-of-fact, stoic manner, with only the slightest of facial tics to give away the Commander’s shock and horror. And as one of the invading creatures points to an area on the map, Number One says calmly, “All right old man; get you there in no time.” Later, when tables have turned and they storm in to free their crew, and after Commander Ridgeway has shot the Sea Devil in charge (much to the Doctor’s dismay), he casually tosses the alien weaponry he has used over his shoulder (presumably to Number One off camera). It is small details like this in small roles that make a big difference in the development of the story.

 Finally I have to talk about the Sea Devils. These monsters transcend and transform their rubber suits. These are first-rate costumes for the time and budget. And the fish-net dresses they wear are the perfect touch. Watching these creatures emerging from the sea is quite a captivating sight.

 The fate of these Sea Devils is not much different than their Silurian cousins, however this time it is the Doctor and not the Brigadier to blame. The Doctor tries his best to broker peace, but between Walker and the Master he hasn’t a chance.

 “I did what I had to to prevent a war,” he says as the Sea Devil base explodes. He doesn’t do what he has to to keep the Master imprisoned, however. Using his hypnotic powers the Master manages to steal off in a hover craft with a final salute to the Doctor. He may be foiled but he is not finished.

 “He used to be a friend of mine once . . .”

 And on that note of pathos I leave you, Gary . . .

 

Monday, November 5, 2012

The Curse of Peladon

Dear Gary—

What I love about The Curse of Peladon is that we have some absolutely unbelievable, almost absurd aliens assembled together and yet everyone plays it straight. No one laughs, for example, in the face of Alpha Centauri, the hermaphroditic hexapod with one huge eye in its not so vaguely phallic shaped body and an irritatingly cartoonish high-pitched voice. Alpha Centauri is treated with all of the respect and dignity you would expect for a delegate at a galactic peace conference. And because the actors believe in what they are doing we believe it too.
I also love that the Doctor is once again traveling in time and space with his beloved blue box. The Doctor takes Jo on a test flight in his newly operational TARDIS (with a little navigational help from the Time Lords) and they land on Peladon, a rather medieval planet rich in superstition and minerals that is seeking to join the Galactic Federation; hence the assemblage of various delegates from alien worlds.

The Doctor and Jo step out of the TARDIS to find themselves perched precariously on the side of a steep mountain. The TARDIS topples over the edge, but not to worry, “The TARDIS may have its faults, but it is indestructible.”
This leads me to the third element that I love about The Curse of Peladon: the Doctor and Jo. While still in the TARDIS the Doctor says of it, “Must be on the blink,” to which Jo replies, “I might have expected it; the TARDIS always is.” The Doctor, ever defensive, comes back with, “I hope you’re as in good condition when you’re as old as she is.” I have missed these TARDIS squabbles; they are a crucial component in the Doctor/companion dynamic.

And as the Doctor and Jo emerge from the TARDIS to scale the mountainside, this easy-going rapport remains with them. I had never really thought much of Jo Grant as a companion before, but in this story the relationship that has been steadily growing since her introduction in Terror ofthe Autons becomes firmly established as one of the classic pairings in Doctor Who. Jo is more than a test tube passer; she is a friend, a confidant, an ally, a true companion.
Reaching the summit, the Doctor and Jo run into an Ice Warrior who turns out to be one of the foreign diplomats. I have to say that the Ice Warrior costume was more effective in black and white, but it is passable in color, and when a startled Doctor reacts with the appropriate amount of caution and wariness we accept these Ice Warriors as the potential menace they are.

The Doctor is mistaken for the late-arriving delegate from Earth and he plays along, introducing Jo as Princess Josephine of TARDIS. Jo dons the mantle of royalty with aplomb (taking me back to Barbara in The Aztecs) and wins the heart of an obviously smitten King Peladon (played by Patrick Troughton’s son David).
This is where everything gels: an alien world, rubber suited monsters, a Doctor/companion duo in perfect form, and a gripping story that is acted out in all seriousness as though it were a political intrigue/murder thriller taking place on Earth with nothing but human characters involved.

What makes it fun, of course, is that it is on an alien world with rubber suited monsters.
“Your legend seems violent and unpleasant and rather too convenient.” This insightful bit of dialogue comes to us courtesy of the hilariously outfitted Alpha Centauri, and the rather too convenient legend is that of Aggedor, the Royal Beast of Peladon.

Peladon’s court is beset by dissension and doubt. The King, supported by Councilor Torbis, seeks to join in the Galactic Federation. The High Priest Hepesh, however, fears this will lead to their subjugation and “the past swept away.” When Torbis is killed, Hepesh declares this to be Aggedor’s curse upon the people for turning their backs on the old ways. When further attempts are made upon the delegates, the seeds of discord are sown.
The Doctor suspects the Ice Warriors; the Ice Warriors accuse the Doctor. Alpha Centauri is thrown into a panic. Jo looks for evidence while the Doctor explores the network of secret tunnels running throughout the castle that everyone seems to know about except the clueless King.

“Did you have to get us involved in all this?”
Stumbling upon the sacred shrine of Aggedor, the Doctor is seized by Hepesh for a blasphemer, the sentence for which is death. The most that the ineffectual King Peladon can do, despite the threat of intergalactic repercussions, is to commute his sentence to trial by combat with the King’s Champion.  This leads to an ambitious hand-to-hand combat sequence with the athletic third Doctor. The Doctor is of course victorious and elects to spare the life of his opponent Grun (thus winning him over as a valuable ally for the rest of the story).

In a nice little twist, the Ice Warriors turn out to be on the side of peace and justice, and a rubber suited Izlyr eloquently explains to Jo how they have given up on their violent ways. A grudging respect is growing between the two; however the edge remains in these warriors: “In order to preserve peace it is necessary to survive.”
Meanwhile the delegate Arcturus is revealed to be in league with Hepesh to undermine the conference and keep Peladon out of the Federation. And again King Peladon demonstrates his ineptitude. Faced with clear evidence against his High Priest the King refuses to act against him, thus giving Hepesh time to organize his men for revolt.

The delegates, too, seem inadequate to the task as they argue amongst themselves whether or not to come to the aid of Peladon during this time of civil uprising.
“Centauri, stop it,” an exasperated Jo calmly but firmly states as Alpha Centauri becomes increasingly hysterical in the background while Jo and Izlyr attempt to discuss the situation in the foreground.

“Centauri, stop it,” she emphasizes.
But only the Doctor can put an end to this tangled web he has gotten them involved with.

“Haroon, haroon, haroon.”
With a bit of Venusian lullaby and a spinning mirror the Doctor tames the not-so-mythical Aggedor with a “kind of technical hypnosis;” and in a ‘hoisted on your own petard’ moment, Aggedor turns on his former master/tormentor Hepesh.

“Haroon, haroon, haroon.”
The legend is no longer violent or unpleasant, but still rather too convenient.
“What Doctor? Doctor who?” an angry Earth delegate late to the action demands as the Doctor and Jo slip away, leaving this alien world of rubber-suited monsters behind them.

And so, ‘haroon, haroon, haroon’ to you, Gary. I hope this Venusian lullaby makes its way to you somewhere in that time swirl . . .

Friday, November 2, 2012

The Day of the Daleks

Dear Gary—

For a serial called The Day of the Daleks, the Daleks are more or less minor characters in this story; however their presence is pivotal to the action, even though limited to simply echoing back from a distant 22nd Century future. But that’s how powerful the Daleks are; the mere threat of a possibility of an alternate reality ruled by Daleks can reach out through time and space and shape world events of the present.

“It’s a very complicated thing, time,” the Doctor tells Jo, “once you’ve begun tampering with it the oddest things start happening.”
The Daleks are no strangers to tampering with time, but in The Day of the Daleks it is not the Daleks themselves doing the tampering but rather a group of guerillas from the 22nd Century bent on going back to change the timeline that led to a world overrun with Daleks.

“Changing history is a very fanatical idea;”I am glad to see the third Doctor picking up this mantra from the first. Except this Doctor is not dusting off the well-worn history books of our past; this Doctor is glimpsing ahead into our potential.
It is rather mind bending. The Doctor presumably knows the Earth’s future beyond our parochial present. He knows whether or not an explosion in the 20th Century leads to World War III and in turn leads to the Dalek invasion. The guerillas come from a future in which this has already happened. This is the stuff of their well-worn history books. They have come back to step on the butterfly.

Interestingly, the guerillas don’t mind instigating the Butterfly Effect but have a problem with triggering the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, or at least according to the Doctor as he explains to Jo.
The butterfly the guerillas are intent on eliminating is one Sir Reginald Styles. Sir Reginald, they believe, lured a group of foreign diplomats under one roof on the pretext of a peace conference and then planted a bomb, killing one and all including him and triggering World War III, in the devastating wake of which the Daleks were free to invade and subjugate all of mankind.

I’ll forgive the guerillas for believing such a preposterous notion that a proper English gentleman would engineer such a suicidal mission against the world; they are from the far future and know only what their history tells them; they don’t have any first hand much less second or third hand knowledge of proper English gentlemen of the 20th Century.
What I do find maddening is the Doctor’s apparently limited knowledge of Earth’s future history. He has a detailed understanding of Earth’s history up to a point, but anything beyond the 20th Century becomes a bit fuzzy for him. He can state that Sir Reginald is doubtful as the villain; he is a bit stubborn perhaps, a mite pompous, but no war criminal mastermind he. But the Doctor cannot state for a fact whether or not there was an explosion at Auderly House during a peace conference that started WWIII.

The Doctor can say that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot on June 28, 1914; the Doctor can say that Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939; the Doctor is rather vague about what happened at Auderly House in the late 20th Century. Wouldn’t the Doctor know whether or not there was a WWIII and when and where it started?
By the way, Gary, not to jump ahead but that is one of the many things I love about the brilliant Waters of Mars—at last we have a Doctor who can commit to an historical fact that takes place in our future.

But then the Doctor would probably argue that Auderly House is not a ‘fixed point.’ “Every choice we make changes the history of the world,” he attests, and he can therefore say that these time travelers might very well change the course of history as he knows it. I would counter, why isn’t Auderly House a fixed point? Wouldn’t a major event triggering a world war become a fixed point? What determines a fixed point?
However, now I am jumping ahead of The Day of the Daleks into the more contemporary world of Doctor Who, and perhaps I am the one missing the point.

“The what’s done what?” Thank you, Brigadier, for getting me back on point. The world of Doctor Who, Gary, is dependent on the action sweeping all of these pesky questions up into the Doctor’s time swirl of action and adventure; and in the end, who really cares what is and is not a fixed point?
Of course, our time traveling guerillas care, on a practical rather than a theoretical level.

The leader of these freedom fighters is Anat, accompanied by Boaz and Shura, and initially they are labeled ghosts. But these are no echoes from the past; they are assassins from the future, and thwarted in their attempt to kill Sir Reginald they kidnap the Doctor and Jo instead.
And since I have been digressing quite a bit here, Gary, I want to say a word about the third Doctor and Jo Grant. They have settled into a nice, comfortable relationship. They have not quite reached the level of, say, the first Doctor with Ian, Barbara, and Susan, or the second Doctor and Jamie, but Jo has definitely softened some of the harsher edges of this third incarnation. I liked Liz Shaw; she was a strong, independent character. But the Doctor could never joke with her while bound and gagged in a cellar that he would prefer her with the gag on.

This third Doctor didn’t need someone to pass him test tubes and tell him how brilliant he is (to quote the Brigadier) so much as he needed someone to look out for and someone to look out for him.
This kinder, gentler Doctor, therefore, can find the time to relax and rhapsodize about a glass of wine: “A most good humored wine; a touch sardonic, perhaps, but not cynical. Yes, a most civilized wine; one after my own heart.” And can reminisce about Bonaparte: “’Boney,’ I said, ’always remember, an army marches on its stomach.’”

However, there is one glaringly anomalous and forbidding act displayed in The Day of the Daleks, and that is that the Doctor uses a ray gun to kill another; granted he kills an Ogron bent on killing him, but this flies in the face of the Doctor’s pacifist, anti-gun philosophy that has become so engrained in his character.
The Doctor self-righteously condemns the Brigadier for blowing up the Silurian tunnels; the Doctor says of the time traveling assassins, “We shouldn’t really judge them until we find out why they’re here;” the Doctor contemptuously observes, “My mistake; I was forgetting the unimaginative nature of the military mind;” and yet the Doctor unthinkingly blasts an Ogron into oblivion.

By the way, I’m not really sure what the Ogron part is in The Day of the Daleks. They seem to be a sort of hired thug, but why do the Daleks need hired thugs?
The Daleks come late to the action, preferring to let the Ogrons and their human quislings do most of the exterminating and exploiting for them. However once they firmly establish that their enemy the Doctor is involved and that their underlings are unreliable, they roll to action.

Unfortunately for them, as they advance on Auderly house so does the fanatical Shura with his bomb of Dalekanium intended for Sir Reginald, and so does the Doctor in the nick of time to convince the peace delegates to evacuate.
Bang goes Auderly House, but it is not Sir Reginald or the world diplomats who go up with it—it is the Daleks and their Ogron thugs. No longer are the time traveling freedom fighters trapped in a temporal paradox of their own making; they have not stepped on their butterfly. World War III is averted.

“The what’s done what?” Well, exactly, Brigadier. What exactly has done what? Only Blinovitch probably knows; Blinovitch and the Doctor. But they’re not telling. And why should they? That’s not the point.
I hope, Gary, that somewhere out there you get the point . . .