Friday, March 29, 2013

The Stones of Blood

Dear Gary—
The Stones of Blood doesn’t make a particle of sense, but I never minded very much. Come to think of it, I never really even noticed. It’s just good fun Doctor Who. Now that I have noticed, though, I’m going to take a stab at making some semblance of sense out of it, rather like the Doctor at the start of our story unsuccessfully trying to assemble the two segments of the Key to Time.
To begin, the Doctor receives a reminder warning from the White Guardian to beware the Black Guardian. Could this be a portent for the story to come, or is it simply to serve as a recap to the audience for the season’s premise?
The Key to Time core (sometimes called the tracer) leads the Doctor and Romana to the Nine Travelers, a circle of standing stones in England, however once there the signal stops. Knowing that the segment is the Seal of Diplos worn around Vivien Fay’s neck, I can only assume that she was at the circle when they first started for it but then left. Romana doesn’t take the tracer out again when Vivien and Professor Amelia Rumford show up. However, I can’t help wondering; wouldn’t the Geiger counter sound start going wild from Romana’s backside, where she has the tracer tucked into her belt, every time Vivien Fay comes near? Romana doesn’t take it out again until after Vivien and the Professor leave and there is not a peep out of it, but wouldn’t it have a faint trace leading off in the direction of Vivien’s cottage that is just over the hill?
No matter, continuing on.
The Doctor goes off in search of answers from Mr. De Vries, the owner of the land upon which the stones stand and leader of a druidic cult operating in the area. The Doctor is surprised that De Vries knows his name and knew of his coming. This is where the crows come in. “It looks evil,” Romana says of one that seems to be hanging about. The crows lend an eerie element to the tale, and apparently communicate between Vivien and her cultist friends. At least that is the implication, and that is how De Vries knows so much about the Doctor. (“Beware the raven or the crow, Doctor; they are her eyes.”)
While at De Vries’ hall the Doctor remarks on some notably absent portraits. Lady Morgana Montcalm (“they used to call her the wicked Lady Montcalm”), Mrs. Trefusis (“she lived here for 60 years and never saw a soul”), and Senora Camara (“Was there a Senor Camara?” “He doesn’t seem to have survived the crossing from Brazil.”), all previous owners of the hall and the surrounding land, including the Nine Travelers. It’s another atmospheric scene deepening the sinister tone already established with the crows and the druids.
So far so good. De Vries is the leader of a druidic cult, chanting to his Cailleach (who is really Vivien Fay although that is not yet revealed), and communicating with her through crows. The Doctor, in search of the missing Key segment is a threat to the Cailleach and therefore De Vries (the segment being the Great Seal of Diplos around Vivien Fay’s neck although we don’t know that yet either). De Vries, under orders of the Cailleach, knocks the Doctor out. So far so good. Some appearance of order here.
De Vries, again by orders of the Cailleach (presumably), uses the power of the segment to transform objects to make himself or someone (unclear) over into the image of the Doctor (we never see this—it’s all implied and off camera) to lure Romana to her death over the treacherous cliffs (Romana being as much a threat as the Doctor for the same reasons). De Vries then gathers his circle of druids in the middle of the Nine Travelers to sacrifice the Doctor to the Cailleach.
Now this cult is rather rag-tag and the Doctor himself never really seems worried that Leonard (De Vries) will actually go through with his threat. Leonard (De Vries) does seem to take inordinate amount of time as Martha pleads with him to stop this madness while he stands awkwardly with curved knife poised above the Doctor. Good old Professor Amelia Rumford to the rescue on her trusty bicycle and the cult flees.
A brief rescue scene as Romana, bare foot (having thankfully shed those ridiculously inadequate shoes—although they did come in rather handy for judging the density of the ground early on), clings precariously to the edge of the cliff. Now send Romana back with Amelia to Vivien’s cottage (after getting her a decent pair of shoes) while the Doctor returns to confront De Vries (Leonard).
But first we have some more tracer mystery. They return to the circle. The tracer (Key core) picks up a faint signal. The Doctor has already introduced the hint of hyper space. But we know the segment is around Vivien’s neck and Vivien is in the circle when they arrive. Why doesn’t the tracer lead Romana straight to Vivien and story done? But the Doctor stops her hand, the Doctor already has his suspicions (“that’s what I thought”). My only conclusion is that the Doctor deliberately delays the discovery of the segment so he can indulge his natural curiosity. My next conclusion, since the tracer does not continue to signal, is that there must be a switch that Romana activates to make it work; I can only say that Romana has been extremely lax in her tracer duties.
Again, so far so good. I have managed to answer most of my questions. Next are the Ogri and their destruction of the hall and Leonard (De Vries) and Martha. Given the crow implications, I suppose Vivien sent message via the crows to the Ogri to carry out her command to murder Leonard (De Vries) and Martha when she hears the Doctor’s plans to go back for answers.
Side note here, Gary. I never bothered to put all of this together before. I always just watched and enjoyed and never really asked questions or tried to make sense. None of this is really spelled out for us, much is implied and much is supposition.
But back to our story.
And back to the Ogri. The Ogri are the stones located in the Nine Travelers circle, or at least three of the stones. The Ogri are silicone based life forms that need blood to live. Hence the druidic sacrifices (animal blood for the most part as far as I can tell; no human sacrifices until the attempt on the Doctor). The Ogri arrived on Earth 4,000 years ago along with Vivien Fay, aka Lady Montcalm, aka Mrs. Trefusis, aka Senora Camara, aka the Cailleach (and more aliases to come but not yet known). 4,000 years these Ogri have craved blood; has it been 4,000 years of druidic animal blood provided? Not clear. Never explained. The Ogri do go off to ‘recharge’ on a couple of camper’s  blood, so this doesn’t seem to be unprecedented, but there is no hint of disappearances or mysterious deaths in the area or associated with the Nine Travelers, so who knows how they have survived for 4,000 years or on what.
Let’s jump back to hyperspace. (“I still don’t understand about hyperspace”—Prof. Amelia Rumford. “Well, who does?”—the Doctor. “I do”—K9. “Oh, shut up K9”—the Doctor.) Vivien has rustled Romana off to hyperspace above the stone circle where a space ship has been parked, apparently for 4,000 years.
Now we veer off from the first half rather creepy, gothic, sometimes referred to as Hammeresque, story to the sci fi hyperspace second half of The Stones of Blood.
“They say it’s a theoretical absurdity and that’s something I’ve always wanted to be lost in.”
Vivien Fay, we learn, has been lost in hyperspace for 4,000 years, or at least the hyperspace ship she arrived in has been grounded on Earth for that long. We also learn that Vivien is actually Cessair of Diplos, a criminal who was being transported to trial by the Megara, justice machines who are also on board the hyperspace vehicle but locked up, until that is the Doctor lets them loose for which he is put on trial for breaking the seals on their compartment door.
OK, Gary, this is where things get a bit fuzzy. First we have a convict ship grounded on Earth; all the officers, crew and prisoners on board are dead except for Cessair/Vivien. How and why—who knows? Perhaps at the hands of dear Vivien/Cessair? And why would the Megara, who are to try the criminals, be on the same transport with the criminals? Where were they being transported to? If they were already all together at their starting point, why couldn’t they just hold the trial then and there? Why go anywhere else? Especially since the Megara have no compunction to try the Doctor on the spot. And why are the Megara locked up? The compartment they occupy is obviously intended for them since it has the distinctive seal (which is apparently sacrosanct), so why does it lock from the outside like a cell? And back to the point of all being on the same transport, wouldn’t Cessair of Diplos therefore already have been identified for the Megara? Why did they have to wait until they arrived at their mysterious destination before the officers would identify her? And do the Megara not realize that they have been locked up for 4,000 years?
But OK, those are all minor points. On to the bigger questions. Like why does Cessair of Diplos choose to remain on Earth for 4,000 years? Perhaps she isn’t technical minded and can’t figure out how to get the ship going again, but then, she has had 4,000 years to study. She obviously has some intelligence, posing as a scientist in the form of Vivien Fay. And she has the Great Seal of Diplos (Key to Time segment), which she obviously went to great lengths to steal and risked much, why doesn’t she utilize its powers more than she does? And why does she choose to remain for those 4,000 years in the same spot living as a recluse for much of it? How did she manage to get control of the Nine Travelers land and how does she manage to hold onto it for so long? How did she convince the world at large that her various personages were not one and the same? And if she wanted to keep up this illusion of different people taking on ownership of the land through the years, why did she have portraits done of herself as each of the different characters she played (only to lock them away in a priest hole)?  And then why did she wait the 4,000 years before hitting upon the idea of getting a front man?
Speaking of Leonard, how did she manage to convince him to go along with her scheme (whatever her scheme was)? OK—that’s not too difficult to answer, Leonard isn’t exactly the brightest bulb. But that begs the question, did Vivien/Cessair/Cailleach really stick around for 4,000 years with the power of the Seal/Key at her disposal just to hold sway over a middle aged couple playing at druid? And what was that druidic cult all about, anyway? Just to feed the Ogri animal blood? Ah, the Ogri—all kinds of questions abound there. Why did Cessair steal them away from their home planet? Why do they obey Cessair? Why haven’t they rampaged across the countryside these 4,000 years rather than waiting around in a circle for the cult to spill a little animal blood on them?
And what of the Black Guardian? Has he been using Cessair/Vivien? If so, when did he contact her? Surely not 4,000 years ago when she first stole the Seal/Key, otherwise, why wouldn’t he have freed her long before now and taken the segment for himself? So when? Vivien/Cessair does seem to know about the segment and that the Doctor is after it, did the Black Guardian approach her when the TARDIS first landed? And if so, again, why didn’t he just take the segment for himself? Was his sole intent to have Viven/Cessair kill the Doctor? Or was the Black Guardian not involved at all, and if not, how does Vivien/Cessair know (or at least seem to know)about the Doctor’s mission?
I give up.
No, Gary, I think I’ll simply leave the questions and enjoy the show. Because I do enjoy it. The first half is wonderfully gothic in atmosphere and the second high-tech sci fi. Professor Amelia Rumford is a delight and the Megara are fascinating (although for justice machines they don’t seem to be very just; and really, breaking a seal is punishable by death yet stealing and misusing the Great Seal, murder, impersonating a religious personage, and the removal and employment of life forms from their home planet in contravention of the Galactic Charter are not?). The Doctor’s self-defense against the Megara is classic Tom Baker, and even though Romana’s efforts at detection prove redundant they are enjoyable to watch. Let’s not forget K9 either (“Forget. Erase memory banks concerning tennis. Memory erased.”).
And that is the key to this Key to Time segment—it is enjoyable to watch.
I hope, Gary, that you enjoyed it as well as I send this out, no questions asked . . .

Monday, March 25, 2013

The Pirate Planet

Dear Gary—
“Moons of madness!” The Pirate Planet is great fun. This is one of those stories that always spring to my mind when I think of Doctor Who, thanks in large part to the over-the-top character of the Captain. Thinking of it now, the Captain is probably the origin of my affection for blustery authoritarians sputtering ‘Why am I surrounded by idiots?’ or in the Captain’s own variation, “Why am I encumbered with incompetents?”
The Pirate Planet is the second installment of the Key to Time season, and notably the first Doctor Who script penned by Douglas Adams. Douglas Adams, Doctor Who, Tom Baker, The Key to Time—it all blends superbly.
“Imbeciles! Fools! Thrice worse than incompetent idiots!” The Captain, piloting his pirate planet through space, has run up against the TARDIS in attempting to materialize. “What pernicious injuries have you inflicted on my precious engines?”
The Doctor and Romana in the TARDIS are experiencing similar difficulties. Both objects materializing at the same moment in space and time. “Danger, master, danger.”
Romana, fresh from the Academy, is still operating by the book, literally, and shakes her head at the Doctor for not using the synchronic feedback checking circuit or the multiloop stabilizer. “Oh, absolute rubbish,” the Doctor declares as he tears the page from the instruction manual Romana has been reading from. Romana had not studied “veteran and vintage vehicles” while at the Academy—she preferred “something more interesting”—“the lifecycle of the Gallifreyan flutterwing.” (“Now you’re being frivolous.”)
It’s nice that this student/teacher dynamic has not yet been abandoned or its comic implications as the Doctor tries to knock the by-the-book attitude out of Romana with his experience (523 years flying the TARDIS is nothing to sneeze at after all; 523 years of successful materializations “without a multiloop anything.”).
And I like that the Doctor’s way is not always proven to be the right way. “Excuse me . . .” “What we’d like to know . . .” The Doctor futilely attempts to grab the attention of passing citizens as Romana simply walks up to one of them and begins an informative conversation. “She is prettier than you, master,” K9 informs the Doctor by way of explanation for her success. (“Look, good looks are no substitute for sound character.”)
One word more, Gary, about Romana. Confident in her own intelligence but open to instruction, gorgeous and patrician, now add a deliciously dry wit that complements the Doctor’s. The opening TARDIS scene showcases this deadpan humor, as does the following exchange she has with a guard:
Guard (confiscating a telescope from Romana): “This is a forbidden object.”
Romana: “Why?”
Guard: “That is a forbidden question. You are a stranger?”
Romana: “Well, yes.”
Guard: “Strangers are forbidden.”
Romana: “I did come with the Doctor.”
Guard: “Who is . . .”
Romana: “Ah, now don’t tell me. Doctors are forbidden as well.”
It is the Captain, however, who steals the show in The Pirate Planet.
“Vultures of death! Ghouls!” he shouts when informed that the Mentiads are on the move. The majority of the citizens on Zanak (the pirate planet of our title) are mindless sheep praising the Captain and each “golden age of prosperity” he ushers in. The Mentiads, however, are a group of telepathic outcasts protesting the “life force dying” and always on the lookout for an addition to their ranks. But they are a rather ineffectual rabble and I’m not really sure why the Captain bothers with them; his rants are entertaining, though, justifying the Mentiad presence in our story.
And of course the Mentiads lead the Doctor to their new recruit Pralix, his sister Mula, and family friend Kimus. None of these are really noteworthy either, but they do serve to move the story along.
The story in a nutshell: the Captain moves the planet Zanak, which is hollow, through space to surround a new planet that he then proceeds to mine. The Mentiads agonize with each new “golden age” as they absorb the dying life force of the victim planet. The Doctor and Romana get mixed up in this as Romana is arrested and taken to the Captain’s bridge and the Doctor hooks up with Mula and Kimus who are concerned about the ‘kidnapping’ of Pralix by the Mentiad. All the while they have to figure out where the second segment of the Key to Time is and what it is disguised as.
But that is only the hollowed out surface of the story. Buried deep is the true core of the plot. The evil Queen Xanxia, long believed dead, is being kept alive in the last few seconds of life by means of time dams. The real purpose for the mining of whole planets is to obtain the minerals required to regenerate Xanxia permanently into the temporary projection of herself that has been until this time posing as the Captain’s nurse. The Captain is really a puppet of Xanxia, but he has a plot of his own and has been creating “the most brilliant piece of astro-gravitational engineering” the Doctor has ever seen out of the crushed remains of each of Zanak’s victim planets, and he plans on using these suspended trophies in an attempt to break free of the Queen’s control.
It is really a complex little tale, this buried Calufrax of a plot.
“Appreciate it? Appreciate it?” the Doctor spits in disgust upon first encounter with the Captain’s graveyard of a trophy room. “What, you commit mass destruction and murder on a scale that’s almost inconceivable and you ask me to appreciate it? Just because you happen to have made a brilliantly conceived toy out of the mummified remains of planets . . .” For all of his clowning, the Doctor can be deadly serious. “What’s it for?” he demands. “What could possibly be worth all this?”
“By the raging fury of the sky demon, you ask too many questions! You have seen; you have admired. Be satisfied and ask no more!”
The Doctor, of course, is never satisfied and will never ask no more. And so he finds his way to the Mentiad’s lair, to the Captain’s bridge, to Xanxia’s throne room, to the Captain’s trophy room, and to the buried surface of the consumed planet Calufrax. Calufrax is the original planet to which the Key to Time core led the Doctor and Romana, and it is the current planet engulfed by the pirate planet Zanak. And it also happens to be the second segment.
“But we can’t move that,” Romana protests when the Doctor explains that Calufrax, now reduced to its shrunken husk in the trophy room, is the segment for which they search. “If we do, we’ll just upset the whole system and create a gravity whirlpool.”
“Not if I do something immensely clever,” the Doctor replies. Never satisfied; always clever. That is the Doctor.
It is a bit of a whimper of an end for the Captain and Xanxia, though, and it all happens too quickly. The Captain tries his scheme against the Queen (despite the Doctor’s warning that it won’t work) but the Queen rather over dramatically pushes a convenient button to sabotage the Captain’s cybernetic parts and then Xanxia, or rather the projection of Xanxia as the nurse, disappears.  The rest is wrapped up in some Doctor Who wizardry that the Doctor explains, somehow using the gravity field of a hyperspatial force field to drop the shrunken planets into the hollow center of Zanak, with Calufrax spinning off to be picked up later by the Doctor. As for Xanxia and the time dams—“blow them up.”
I was sorry to see the abrupt end of the Captain. This blustery pirate with his deadly robotic Polyphase Avitron parrot (“When someone fails me, someone dies!”), and his plank that he makes the Doctor walk, and his cybernetic parts; this mastermind of “one of the most heinous crimes ever committed in this galaxy” is rather touching in the end. “My soul is imprisoned,” he laments, “bound to this ugly lump of blighted rock; beset by zombie Mentiads and interfering Doctors.” He is as much a victim as a villain, and his leave-taking of his right hand man, the long-suffering Mr. Fibuli, is simple and moving.
“You don’t want to take over the universe, do you?” the Doctor asks the Captain. “No. You wouldn’t know what to do with it, beyond shout at it.”
No, the Captain only wants to be free. “I come in here to dream of freedom,” he says of the trophy room. If it were not for the billions of lost lives these trophies represent, the Captain would almost be a noble soul.
Before taking leave of The Pirate Planet, Gary, I have to discuss “Newton’s revenge.” It is a rather funny bit as the Doctor tampers with the wiring of the anti-inertia corridor he and Romana have just exited. The guards in pursuit behind them come hurtling out and slam into the wall (“conservation of momentum is a very important law in physics”).  The Doctor then goes on to claim that he explained the concept of gravity to Newton (“dropped an apple on his head”). One more name-dropping in a long line.
But I must take leave of this second installment to The Key to Time.
Moons of madness, Gary; I hope you enjoyed this segment as much as I.

Friday, March 22, 2013

The Ribos Operation

Dear Gary—
I absolutely love The Ribos Operation; in fact, I love the entire Key to Time season. I have to remark, Gary, that by and large, as a rule, for the most part, I detest season long story arcs. I view them as a lack of faith in the show and its format. However, the Key to Time season long story arc is an exception.
The Key to Time arc, clearly announcing itself at the beginning of the season, embraces and complements the format of Doctor Who.
“Doctor, you have been chosen for a vitally important task,” the White Guardian informs the Doctor. His mission: to retrieve the six far flung and disguised segments of the Key to Time required to restore balance in the universe.
Simple, and if it sounds familiar Gary, think back to the William Hartnell story The Keys of Marinus. The Keys of Marinus was in many ways a Key to Time season in microcosm. I loved The Keys of Marinus, so the Key to Time season is in good company. And like the individual episodes of The Keys of Marinus, each serial comprising this Key to Time season is an independent storyline that stands on its own.
The Ribos Operation is the first installment introducing the White Guardian and his task. It also introduces the Doctor’s new companion Romana (Romanadvoratnelundar—“I’m so sorry about that; is there anything we can do?"). And again I have to say it, Gary. I absolutely love Romana (Mark I).
Mary Tamm as Romana—she is truly “the noblest Romana of them all.”
To begin, she is gorgeous. Cool and patrician. Sophisticated and refined. Intelligent and confident. And yet . . . there is a naïve quality to her and a warmth and depth that humanizes her in unexpected ways.
The natural antagonism of the set up is not ignored (“We have a negative empathy, Doctor”). Two Time Lords, both supremely intelligent and confident; one a hot-shot recent grad and one an experienced time traveling veteran; one foisted upon the other against his wishes. This is quite an interesting dynamic and it could have so easily gone wrong but it is handled with delicacy.
“Well,” the Doctor tells Romana, “I’d like you to stay out of my way as much as possible and try to keep out of trouble. I don’t suppose you can make tea?”
However, Romana is not your typical companion handing out test tubes and compliments: “Doctor, you’re not giving me a chance. It’s funny, you know, but before I met you I was even willing to be impressed.” And when the Doctor sulks (“You’re sulking.” “I’m not sulking.”), she is not one to cajole, conciliate, or kid him out of his mood: “That’s ridiculous for somebody as old as you are.” Finally she concludes that the Doctor is “suffering from a massive compensation syndrome.”
Romana is a Time Lord fresh from the Academy (“with a triple first”) and as such has all of the detachment of a Time Lord, but at only 139 (“I’m nearly 140, you know”)she is inexperienced and impressionable, the perfect student to take Leela’s place under the Doctor’s tutelage.
And that is where this relationship succeeds. Because at 139 Romana is still a student willing to learn. She never becomes defensive; she will stand by her point, but if proven wrong she takes it as a lesson learned and does not resent the fact. As the Doctor slowly begins to realize this a mutual respect arises between the two.  
As long as the Doctor can feel in charge: “Ground rules: rule one, do exactly as I say; rule two, stick close to me; and rule three, let me do all the talking.”
Once the ground rules are established and Romanadvoratnelundar is shortened to Romana ("it’s either Romana or Fred”), the two can get down to the serious business of finding the first segment to the Key to Time on the planet of Ribos where they have been led by the core.
And again I say: I absolutely love The Ribos Operation. Apart from the Key to Time set up, apart from the introduction of Romana, I love the story itself. This is a story without a monster. This is a story without a wrong to right. It hearkens back to early Doctor Who, William Hartnell Doctor Who, when the Doctor got caught up in events despite himself.
There is intrigue, there is villainy, but “that’s no business of ours, Doctor,” Romana points out. “I agree,” concurs the Doctor, “I wouldn’t dream of interfering.” The Doctor and Romana are on Ribos for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to find the first segment. It is this search which leads them into the middle of trouble, for it is the jethrik that is both the segment and the heart of the intrigue.
To get the jethrik/key segment, the Doctor and Romana have to get past the shrivenzale, the Shrieve Captain, Garron and his sidekick Unstoffe, and the Graff Vynda-K and his sidekick Sholakh. What fun it all is.
“Please don’t panic, Romana. Come and sit down . . . . Listen, when you’ve faced death as often as I have, this is much more fun.” Patiently teaching Romana as he chatters about jethrik with Garron while a death sentence hangs over his head, the Doctor gathers intelligence.
Garron and Unstoffe are con men intent on selling Ribos to the power hungry and mad Graff Vynda-K, with the planted lump of jethrik (“the rarest and most valuable element in the galaxy”) as bait. Unfortunately they have been found out and are being held under guard (Romana and the Doctor assumed as co-conspirators), but not before Unstoffe made off with the jethrik and the Graff’s gold.
A simple enough plot, a straight-forward story. The Doctor and Romana, on their own simple and straight-forward quest, caught up in events. What makes everything work, as in so many Doctor Who serials, is the high quality writing and the fabulous supporting cast. The Ribos Operation is chock full of great guest appearances.
It is not just the inspired teams of Garron and Unstoffe and Graff Vynda-K and Sholakh, but there is the added bonus of Binro the Heretic, not to mention the more limited roles of the Shrieve Captain and the Seeker (“All but one of us is doomed to die.”). Everyone is top notch and each is relevant to the plot.
I’ll start with Binro, arguably the least relevant character, yet the one character who adds the most depth. Binro is introduced in the third episode as a means of escape for Unstoffe, and the story could have easily left it at that. Instead we get a richly realized and touching individual, Binro the Heretic. “I know what it’s like when every man’s hand is against you,” he tells Unstoffe, and he goes on to relate his tragic history. Condemned for heresy for daring to postulate there are other worlds than Ribos, tortured and forced to recant, now living in the worst sort of squalor, broken and alone.
It is not only the story that is elevated by Binro but Unstoffe as well. The role of Unstoffe had settled comfortably into the caricature of stooge to Garron, but when he meets up with Binro he is given added dimension. “I know it for a fact,” he tells Binro of those other worlds. “One day, even here, in the future,” he continues, “men will turn to each other and say Binro was right.” It is one of those quiet, touching little moments in Doctor Who that always impresses me. After his encounter with Binro, and when he is reunited with Garron, Unstoffe seems a more thoughtful, insightful person, no longer merely a stooge but now something of a gentle conscience to the grifter Garron.
I can’t leave off without saying a word about the Graff Vynda-K (one of the all time great character names). “No one makes a fool of the Graff Vynda-K and lives.” This exiled tyrant intent on amassing an army to retake his throne could have turned into a stereotypical raving maniac. Instead there is a certain nobility in his mania as he takes a tender parting from his deceased general and gives final instructions to the last of his “Levithian Invincibles.” Then he draws one in to his mad world of glory as he soliloquizes his past battles, walking off through the catacombs to his end. I do find the Doctor’s rather flippant attitude to the fatal joke he has played on the Graff to be off-putting, but it is the only quibble I have with this story.
The Ribos Operation is not only well written and acted but it looks good too. Ribos is a backward, medieval planet but rich in ceremony, ritual, and superstition, and the costumes fit sumptuously in with this atmosphere. The shrivenzale could be a tad scarier, but then it spends most of its time in a drugged stupor and is not meant to pose any real kind of serious threat. The make-up and costume for the Seeker, too, is very effective, and I have to say that I envy Romana her dress and that marvelous matching coat that the Doctor somehow comes up with for her to wear.
Even the jethrik (scringe stone) is impressive (“You hang a bit o’ that around your neck and you won’t never suffer from the scringes no matter how cold it be.”). Ah yes, the jethrik, what it has all been about. Jethrik, without which “there would be no space warping.” This one magnificent lump of jethrik that has enough power for an entire battle fleet. It is this piece of beautiful blue stone that Garron has been carting about the universe to lure his prey that is in reality the first segment of the Key to Time. (Lucky for the Time Lords, the White Guardian, and the stability of the universe that Garron never sold this piece of jethrik for the power it harnesses.)
The jethrik, planted by Garron and Unstoffe in the relic room, stolen out again by Unstoffe, pursued by the Graff through the catacombs, switched out for a bomb by the Doctor, lifted by Garron and pick pocketed back again by the Doctor—sleight of hand, he was trained by Maskelyne.
“Simple, wasn’t it? Only five more to go.” Five more segments, five more stories. I’m looking forward and sending this out, Gary, forever hoping . . .

Monday, March 18, 2013

The Invasion of Time

Dear Gary—
Any way I look at it The Invasion of Time is a disappointment.
First, The Invasion of Time takes place on Gallifrey and I just do not find the Time Lords as a whole very interesting. The Doctor knew what he was doing when he fled this staid and stratified society and he would do well to stay away. Every time the Doctor does go home again we learn more details about this grand and glorious race that just makes them more pathetic.
In The Invasion of Time we learn that the Time Lords never step foot out of doors. They spend their entire lives (every year of their multiple generations) in the Citadel. The outside world scares them, “it’s all so . . . natural.” However there are a handful of former Time Lords who have decided to drop out and return to nature. But really, these grand and glorious Time Lords with all of time and space before them elect to roam around in small, primitive hunting bands with nothing but makeshift spears and bows? No houses, no farms, no civilization? You’d think they would have at least taken a few books with them when they left.
As for the surface of Gallifrey, there is no evidence of the burnt orange sky and silver leaved trees. It all seems a barren and inhospitable wasteland.
An obviously bored Rodan sums it up best: “Do you know, I’ve passed the Seventh Grade and I’m nothing more than a glorified traffic guard?”
All that power, all that knowledge. Nothing more than glorified traffic guards and galactic ticket inspectors.
And for a pacifistic race, why the need for all those guards? I do believe there are more guards running around than Time Lords. There also seems to be no ordinary civilian life within the Citadel. What do these Time Lords do with themselves for all their multiple generations shut up in this antiseptic world? I wonder if this isn’t hell, or at least purgatory.
It is to this sterile world that the Doctor brings Leela, never mind that he claimed he couldn’t take Sarah Jane there back just a few short stories ago. And then—he leaves her there?! Leela deserves better. She should have left at the end of The Sun Makers, gone to Earth with Cordo, Bisham and the rest. That would have been a far greater lure for her than the static life on Gallifrey. There certainly was no buildup for a romance with Andred. Andred did do his share of ogling the scantily clad Leela and seemed to admire her defiant nature, but there was absolutely zero evidence that Leela returned the feeling. No, if Leela had to leave it would have been much better if the Doctor took her in the TARDIS to join the re-colonization effort of the Earth, and maybe taken Rodan along as well.
Now let’s turn our attention to the Doctor. When first we see him he is making a deal with some unknown aliens. We of course know that he has something up his sleeve. He is not selling his soul, he is signing this pact with the devil for some good reason and we’re sure he has his fingers crossed behind his back as he finalizes the contract. But the thing is, Gary, we never do get a good explanation for the Doctor’s actions. His rationale is lame at best. He doesn’t know who these aliens are, so why exactly does he think they are such a threat that he has to go to these great lengths? What show of power have they made to him? I can’t imagine the Doctor is being blackmailed into this role. There is just no logical reason why the Doctor would think these unknown aliens would pose a serious threat to Gallifrey, especially since they are entirely dependent on the Doctor for their invasion scheme. So why does the Doctor play along? Simply say no and warn the Time Lords to be on their guards.
But he does play along, resulting in a Doctor who is not very likeable for the first few episodes of The Invasion of Time. Yes, we know he is playacting, but it is a bit unnerving to see the Doctor as the villain when we don’t have a very sound understanding of his motivations. And seeing as this is Leela’s last serial, it is disappointing that we get very little of the Doctor/companion camaraderie as a result.
“Prognostication impossible in matters concerning Doctor,” K9 tells Leela, and in The Invasion of Time this is never truer. The Doctor’s actions are inexplicable, and they result in complications and danger that could well have been avoided.
Because the aliens are pathetic. Just as pathetic as the Time Lords, only in their own way. About the only thing the Vardans have going for them is the fact that they can travel along any wavelength. But what do they do when they get to the end of that wavelength? They shimmer. Why do the pathetic Time Lords bow down to these few shimmering aliens who have invaded their Citadel? Because the Doctor, Lord President of the Time Lords, tells them to. To their credit, some of the Time Lords resist, but they are expelled by the guards, who are acting under the orders of the Castellan who inexplicably is toadying to the Vardans.
The guards themselves have factions of resistance. If Andred truly wants to be worthy of Leela, can’t he turn his gun on one of those shimmering Vardans and laugh in his face? So you can read my mind? Well, read this . . . .
What exactly are these few shimmering aliens going to do to an entire Citadel of Time Lords and guards? And when they do reveal their true nature, well, they are simply humanoid creatures, as vulnerable as any. The Doctor really needed to go to these elaborate lengths to get them to reveal themselves? Just so he can throw their planet into a time loop? Seems rather a drastic measure for such a puny threat.
But wait . . . that’s not all. The Vardans were only a red herring. Now we get the real threat. The Sontarans have been using the Vardans who have been using the Doctor.
Disappointment is building on disappointment.
The Sontarans, one of my favorite Doctor Who monsters, are not themselves in The Invasion of Time. Stor is no Linx and he is no Styre. Stor is rather corpulent and wheezes as though he were an old man on oxygen. These are watered down Sontarans and their motivation is as murky as the Doctor’s. The Sontarans are a proud and militaristic race, facing their opponents on the battlefield. This complex stratagem of invasion is not their style, and then they act like sulking schoolboys who, when they can’t get their way (control of the Time Lord power), throw a tantrum (blow up the planet).
And again we have a mere handful of invading Sontarans walking all over the Time Lords. Rather than running around in circles in the TARDIS building an ultimate weapon, the Doctor might have been better off gathering up some of the guards and a Time Lord or two and overpowering Stor and his crew. A few good whacks on the back of the neck and all would be over. Fix the transduction barrier (which he never should have dismantled in the first place) and the Sontaran fleet is repelled.
Leela and some of her outside buddies have the right idea and do knock a few Sontaran heads together, but this simple solution is abandoned for a labyrinth of confusion.
As always, there are some bright spots in this six part muddle.
“Discussion is for the wise or the helpless and I am neither,” Leela tells Rodan. I do agree that Leela is not helpless, but I can’t agree that she is not wise. She doesn’t have book smarts but she has intelligence and common sense, and she is the only one who seems to show any sense in The Invasion of Time.( At least, up until the end when she abruptly makes probably the worst decision in her life.)
Leela knows the Doctor. She knows he has a plan. She trusts him. Leela’s mind can grasp what no all-powerful Time Lord and no mind reading Vardan can.
Rodan: “Reason dictates the Doctor is a traitor.”
Leela: “Never!”
Rodan: “Reason dictates.”
Leela: “Then reason is a liar.”
Rodan: “And if I am right?”
Leela: “Then I am wrong and I will face the consequences. Are you coming?”
Leela needs to take these Time Lords in hand. Even the drop outs are nothing more than rabble until Leela whips them into shape. (A lifetime of that, though, is going to wear on her.)
The TARDIS and K9 always come through as well. “You are a very stupid machine,” K9 tells the TARDIS when attempting to communicate with it. The TARDIS, for its part, is revealed to the greatest extent it ever has been. From its indoor swimming pool, to its art gallery disguising an ancillary power station, to its work room, to its miles and miles of brick lined service tunnels that seem to lead in circles (“Doctor, we’ve been here before”).
“What nobody understands is,” the Doctor explains, “the advantage of my antiquated TARDIS is that it’s fully equipped and completely reliable.” (“Well, almost completely.”)
Finally, we have the Doctor.
Andred: “But you have access to the greatest source of knowledge in the universe.”
Doctor: “Well, I do talk to myself sometimes, yes.”
Despite his uncharacteristic bone-headedness in this story, the Doctor is still the Doctor, and like Leela we call reason a liar if reason dictates otherwise. Even at his most dictatorial nastiness we defy reason and say with Leela, “Never!” and we enjoy the show he is putting on and admire his cleverness (even though it ultimately leads to preventable tragedy).
Doctor: “People are dying out there. Men, women, Time Lords even have died in that battle.”
Borusa: “I know that.”
Doctor: “Isn’t that important to you?”
Borusa: “Should it be?”
Doctor: “It leaves you unconcerned. That’s the difference between you and me, Chancellor. I’m very concerned.”
Borusa: “Then you should remember your training in detachment.”
Doctor: “I’d rather care.”
The Doctor cares. Through it all, the Doctor cares. Bone-headed and making disastrous decisions, but he does care.  “His hearts are in the right places.” And so in a way, Gary, The Invasion of Time illustrates the true heroic nature of the Doctor. Born and bred in this detached, do-nothing society he manages to live a life (multiple lives) of caring and compassion.
The Doctor struggles at times with this detached nature of the Time Lord, but all in all he has found a balance that is truly noble. He needs to leave Gallifrey behind once and for all. But did he really need to leave Leela there? At least he left K9 to keep her company (not to worry—he has K9 Mk II on hand).
“I’ll miss you too, savage.”
I am so glad that I can leave Gallifrey and The Invasion of Time behind, but I send this forward regardless, hoping it finds its way to you somehow dear Gary . . .

Friday, March 15, 2013

Underworld

Dear Gary—
Underworld is rather underwhelming. It has some nice elements to it and is a pleasant enough story, but it is just kind of there and never really gels into anything of note.
“The quest is the quest,” our Minyans of 100,000 years journey are wont to say. Tired and uninspired, they search on for their elusive Golden Fleece, the missing P7E ship with the Minyan race bank on board. “The quest is the quest;” their memorized mantra. “A ship of ghosts, Doctor,” Jackson says, “going on and on and unable to remember why.”
That is a little like Underworld itself, the initial spark of adventure and purpose is missing and what’s left is a weary going-through-the-motions attitude. But it is still Doctor Who, and any long journey is bound to have its down time. There is still enough there to keep one going. The quest, after all, is still the quest, and Doctor Who is still Doctor Who.
“We’re on the edge of the cosmos, the frontiers of creation, the boundary between what is and isn’t, or isn’t yet, anyway. Don’t you think that’s interesting?” The Doctor still has his spark of adventure burning bright. “I feel just like a goldfish looking out on a new world.”
What he doesn’t expect, though, is for the Minyans to head straight into the nebula in pursuit of the P7E.
The entire first episode of Underworld is littered with these promising nuggets; it is the beginning of the quest. The edge of the cosmos, the birth of a new solar system, crashing through to the core of a “soft planet in the process of formation.” And the Minyans. The Minyan race itself is a gem of a story; too bad we come in at the end. Minyos has long been gone, destroyed 100,000 years ago, and we learn of its fascinating history in only the briefest of summaries from the Doctor.
New at space exploration, the Time Lords came upon the planet Minyos and offered their aid, medical and scientific, and surprisingly for the pacifistic Time Lords, better weapons. The Minyans looked upon these Time Lords as gods, but in the end kicked them out. “Then they went to war with each other, learnt how to split the atom, discovered the toothbrush, and finally split the planet.” It was this first baby step into space on the part of the Time Lords that went awry and sent the Time Lords on their path of non-intervention. Seems to me they gave up a little easily, but then the more I learn of the Time Lords the less I am impressed.
This scenario sets up the potential for an intriguing conflict when the TARDIS lands on the Minyan ship, but it is explored only slightly via the character of Herrick: “If I get one of them in my sights again, then I’ll dematerialize him for good. If they’re on board this ship, then I’ll sniff them out!” But Jackson takes command, seeking aid from the Doctor (not a god) in their quest, and Herrick is pacified. (“So you did develop the pacifier.” “Very few and too late.”)
The pacifier is another come and gone element of the story, and its only purpose seems to be to make Leela the butt of a joke. It is rather funny to see the savage Leela thanking Orfe for shining the pacifying light on her and then waxing poetic over his name. It is equally amusing when the Doctor snaps her out of her euphoric state. “Leela, Leela, listen to me. You’re primitive. Wild, warlike, aggressive, and tempestuous. And bad tempered too.” “I am?” Leela asks in wonder and the Doctor continues, “Yes. You’re a warrior leader from a warrior tribe. Courageous, indomitable, implacable, impossible . . .”
“Right, that’s enough,” Leela exclaims, pulling her knife, back to her old self.
But then it doesn’t seem so funny. “You’re all laughing at me.” Leela feels violated and betrayed and it is a credit to Louise Jameson that we feel the same with her. “I’ll smash your stupid grins off your stupid faces.” It is a cruel joke on a naïve, courageous, compassionate woman. An uncomfortable moment that is swept aside with the continuing quest.
It is the continuation of the quest wherein all the intriguing elements introduced in the first episode are set aside. The quest is the quest, long and dreary though it may be, and there is no time for explorations.
The quest itself offers up some intrigue of its own: the Tree of Life, the Golden Fleece, yet another Ark. Then there are the slave Minyans off the P7E and their guards, the Seers, and the Oracle. But it is all in service of the quest, the 100,000 year dreary long quest.
“Myths often have a grain of truth in them if you know where to look.” Trouble is myths often are more compelling than the truth.
The truth of the P7E: trapped at the center of a newly formed planet, one level of the Minyan crew has become the ruling class and the rest, the rabble, are used as slave labor to dig tunnels and process rock for fuel and food. The ruling Minyans, the guards, stage ‘skyfalls’ to keep the slave population in check. Meanwhile the race bank is being protected by “just another machine with megalomania” known as the Oracle (“There are no gods but me. Have I not created myself? Do I not rule? Am I not all-powerful?), which is in turn guarded by two Seers who have strangely mutated metal, dome shaped heads with three jewel eyes. And it is all a rather strangely mutated The Faceof Evil all over again, but not as interesting.
The questers and the P7E descendents are a truth that would be very compelling if allowed a moment to explore. The questers—Jackson, Herrick, Orfe, and the newly regenerated Tala—are all original Minyans. Direct from the planet Minyos. 100,000 years old and counting. 100,000 years they have lived and they have quested. 100,000 years they have lived a lifespan and regenerated. 1,000 times each they have regenerated. To begin, Tala has “gone past her regeneration point deliberately, just like all the others.” 100,000 years of history told in that line. How many ‘others’ have gone past their time? And these four only are left to quest on. Jackson, Herrick, Orfe, and Tala. Tala who is forced to regenerate for a one thousandth dreary time.
Presumably the Minyans were given the ability to regenerate from their ‘gods’ the Time Lords, however the Minyan regeneration is machine induced and simply renews the body back to youth. And apparently has limitless lifetimes to spare. And apparently this technology was not available to the inhabitants of the P7E.
The Minyans of the P7E have regenerated the old fashioned way—they have gone forth and multiplied (although how have the guards multiplied, given the fact that there don’t seem to be any female guards?). The Minyans of the P7E have never seen Minyos. Minyos is stuff of legends to them. Their eyes are not weary from 100,000 years of dreary long questing but rather from the everyday beating down of life under ground. In a sense, they are on a similar never-ending loop of a quest: “We are born, live, and die in the tunnels.” They are born, live, and die to process the rock. “For fuel. For processing into food so that we can go on working to get more rock.”
Minyans, in any iteration, are somewhat of a plodding, boring peoples. But their history would make a fascinating study if only the quest wouldn’t get so relentlessly in the way.
Even the plot seems to tire of it. OK, it seems to say, let’s get these 100,000 years over with already. “Then should we not give them what they want and let them depart?”
Of course there has to be a slight hitch so that the Doctor can be clever. The wrong cylinders switched out for the right cylinders, the slave Minyans hurried on board the quester’s ship, the planet about to explode, and it’s off to Minyos II.
The quest is over. Both the race bank and the bonus of the P7E descendents are safe. Although the Doctor has to convince Jackson of this: “Listen Jackson, this is your people; this is your race. Descendents of the people who came on the P7E.” Only 370 years and these Minyans will be settled on Minyos II. Given the glimpses of their history we have been given, though, I can only wonder what a mess they will make of it.
“Perhaps those myths,” the Doctor muses, “are not just old stories of the past, you see, but prophecies of the future.”
“Negative,” K9 opines, and I hope he is right and that Underworld is not a hint of Doctor Who yet to come.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

The Sun Makers

Dear Gary—
“Perhaps everyone runs from the tax man.”
Perhaps that is why I love The Sun Makers—here we have a villain that everyone can recognize and hate. And the Collector (Your Highest) is portrayed with such poetic stereotype by Henry Woolf, as is the Gatherer by Richard Leech.
Don’t get me wrong, Gary. I am a minority of one; the one person on the planet who actually appreciates the tax man. I like paying taxes. I feel as though I am paying my own way in this world. To my way of thinking, the tax dodger is one of the lowest forms of life. But taken to the extreme, as in The Sun Makers, the Collector (Your Sublimity) is as low as the dodgiest of the tax dodgers. It is the misuse, the misappropriation, the malfeasance of greed that is at the root of both your ordinary, run-of-the-mill tax dodger and your cartoonish Collector (Your Eminence). The tax dodger and the Collector (Your Elevation) both are cut from the same cloth (to my way of thinking).
And here I go again, Gary, and I am really sorry, but I have gotten off on a tangent. I feel the same about the whole anti-authority movement. In the absence of Authority you only breed bullies. It is the Bill Murray phenomenon. Bill Murray (to my way of thinking) portrays mostly bullies. And yet he is considered the hero, or the ‘anti-hero. ‘
Thankfully, in The Sun Makers, our hero tax dodger Cordo is not played by Bill Murray (rather Roy Macready).
And so in The Sun Makers you have my world turned on its head, but that’s OK because it is the Doctor’s world and not mine. The tax dodger Cordo is the hero and the Collector (Your Pinnacle) is the villain. But it really is a matter of bullies, isn’t it? Of the misuse of power and authority, whether that power is derived from the government, economy, or charisma.
In the case of The Sun Makers it is derived from the economy (“Praise the Company”).
The Company, the Gatherer, and the Collector (Your Colossus) are all just bullies who have risen to power. As in any social order, it is not the power that is corrupt, it is the people who use and abuse such power.
So much for my soap box of the week.
The Doctor, Leela, and K9 land on Pluto where they find a city, breathable atmosphere, and six suns, much to the Doctor’s surprise. “Pluto’s a lifeless rock.” Not anymore, and the Doctor is determined to find out the why and the how.
His answers start with Cordo. “It’s the taxes. I can’t pay the taxes.” (“Probably too many economists in the government.”)The peoples of Pluto, who are transplanted Earthlings bought more or less by The Company (Praise the Company), are being literally taxed to death. They are even taxed on the overtime that they work in order to make money to pay their taxes. These taxes are not only unjust but insupportable, not to mention unrepresented. I too would dodge those taxes. Unfortunately the only means of dodging are suicide or escape to a miserable existence in the under city.
“Then the people should rise up and slaughter their oppressors!” Leela shouts. But even Leela runs when the Gatherer approaches. PCM, an anxiety inducer, is being pumped into the air and the people are too afraid to rebel.
It is a simple enough story, but again it is the characters that resonate.
I’ll start with Leela. This is a stand out story for Leela, but then most of her stories are. I always knew that I liked the character of Leela and the actress portraying her (Louise Jameson), but I have grown to appreciate her depth and range in this most recent round of viewings beyond just a general liking of the role. I almost think that Leela/Louise is too good for Doctor Who; she often tends to outshine the Doctor, which is saying a lot given the fact that the Doctor is my personal favorite Tom Baker.
I think it is no accident that Leela is separated from the Doctor in many of her stories to follow a plot thread of her own making; and I know that K9 has seen new life with Sarah Jane, but in an alternate reality, and given the seeming abundance of K9 models, Leela/Louise could have teamed up with K9 for a spin off that might very well have rivaled Doctor Who. But you know, Gary, what they say of ifs and buts . . . .
And so I will stick with The Sun Makers.
From the opening TARDIS scene Leela establishes herself as a character apart from the Doctor. While the Doctor obsesses over winning at chess (“Even simple, one-dimensional chess exposes the limitations of the machine mind”), the ever instinctual Leela senses when something is not right. “Why didn’t you tell me,” the Doctor exclaims as he leaps to the TARDIS console. “I tried to but you wouldn’t let me,” Leela protests. “You didn’t.” “I did.” “You didn’t.” “I did!” “You didn’t.” “I did!” Leela will not back down, not even to the Doctor.
But she will conciliate. “Shush,” she tells K9 when she senses the Doctor’s irritation. And she will commiserate, “I’m sorry, K9, we won’t be long,” she assures the despondent tin dog who is rebuffed by the Doctor.
This TARDIS scene is mirrored with the roof scene as Leela tries to point out the suicidal Cordo to a preoccupied Doctor. The Doctor underestimates his companion. Leela is a primitive, but she is also intelligent and quick witted and nobody’s fool.
Leela’s plea to Mandrel and his motley crew of under city dwellers to rescue the Doctor is inspired. “You?” she scorns, “You have nothing, Mandrel.” Mandrel the puffed up leader of the under city. He has nothing and Leela knows it. “No pride; no courage; no manhood. Even animals protect their own. You say to me you want to live. Well I’ll say this to you: if you lie skulking in this black pit while the Doctor dies, then you will live, but without honor.” One by one she appeals to the under city rabble. Will you come, will you? No is the universal reply. Leela alone will face the danger. Leela has the courage, the bravery, the honor that Mandrel and his crew pretend to.
“I’ll come, Leela.” Leela and Cordo. Cordo the tax dodger. Cordo the meek and mild citizen who sacrificed all for the honorable decease of his father only to be crushed under by the tax burden of the unjust.
“Cordo, you are the bravest man here. Come.”
The lone Leela and Cordo lead a raid on the Correction Center to rescue the Doctor only to find the Doctor has already been released. However they do find and rescue Bisham. And here, Gary, I want to mention: with Tom Baker’s Doctor you can always see the wheels turning, and so too with Louise Jameson’s Leela. Confronted with the unexpected Leela ponders, assesses, and acts. “Check the corridor K9,” as she ponders the Doctor’s release and Bisham’s presence. “Are you fit enough to move?” as she assesses the new circumstances. “You’d better come with us. Come on,” as she reaches her decision and acts.
Leela, Cordo, Bisham, and K9. What a show they would have made.
Leela: “Ready? Forward.” Leela steps on the gas pedal and our intrepid quartet hurtles backwards. “Great Xoanan!”
Bisham: “Perhaps I’d better take over, Leela.”
What a look she gives Bisham as she concedes and changes seats. “All right. I will have the gun.”
A grazing wound from a blaster takes Leela down, but she is not down for the count. Even a straight jacket can’t keep Leela down. Defiant, never defeated.  Kicking and screaming she is carried in to the Collector (Your Amplification). “Tell this gorilla to take his paws off me” she demands. But she can also be reasonable. When the Collector (Your Voluminousness) asks why she led the raid on the Correction Center she responds straightforwardly, “Well, I heard the Doctor was in trouble, so I came to rescue him, but when I got there he’d been set free, so we . . .” “This interview is terminated,” the Collector (Your Globosity) cuts her short and she is again defiantly taken from the room kicking and screaming all the way.
Next we see her, Leela, still straight jacketed, is hanging from a peg on the wall at a 45 degree angle.
“Comfortable?” she is asked. “Do I look it,” she replies. Down but not defeated, always defiant. But the vulnerability is allowed it’s due.
Commander: “We haven’t had a public steaming for months.”
Leela: “A public what?”
Commander: “You don’t know about the steamer?” as he leaves the room laughing cruelly.
Hanging on the wall, straight jacketed, strong, defiant, but we are allowed a flash of naked emotion as she considers the unknown terror that awaits her.
The steamer is of particular delight to the Collector (Your Sagacity). “This is the moment I get a real feeling of job satisfaction,” he says in gleeful anticipation of Leela’s agonizing death screams. The Collector (Your Supernal Eminence) is more than a squinty eyed, nasal voiced, numbers cruncher. He is a sadist. It is more to him than just the mere death cry; it is the subtleties, “the deepest notes of despair, the final dying cadences. The whole point of a good steaming is the range it affords.”
But the Doctor disappoints him. The Doctor, K9, Cordo, Bisham, and, yes, Mandrel, team up to take over the main control room and to snatch Leela out from under the fiendish nose of the Controller (Your Promontory).
The sight of the Controller (Your Omnipresence) spinning himself in futile circles as he sees his best laid plans spiraling out of control (“I sense the vicious doctrine of egalitarianism”) is almost moving if he weren’t so despicable.
Gatherer Hade and his sidekick Marn are two more character studies. Hade with his sycophantic arrogance acts with conscienceless greed and blind egotism. Contemptible, yet played with the blunted edge of buffoonery.  I love his reaction when Marn states that the scanners are reporting that the Doctor is walking up and down the empty corridor in which they stand. “I don’t care what the scanners say,” Hade rejects her reading, but then . . . “I do care what the scanners say;” momentarily flustered out of his supercilious pose. But in his ignoble end, as he is hoisted above the heads of the mob and flung from the city rooftop, he maintains his pompous disdain: “Don’t you dare! I am an official of the Company!”
I have a harder time reading Marn. I think she is typical middle management, confident in her skills and proud of her work, suffering the fools above her. Opportunistic, she switches allegiance when the revolution catches up with her, but I’m not sure where her conscience falls. On the one hand, to do her job with the Gatherer well she must ignore it. But there is one moment when the Controller (Your Aggrandizement) is waxing eloquent about the dying cadences of the steamer when she squirms uncomfortably in her seat. But if she does have such twinges of conscience, it is unconscionable that she suppresses them, and so I will place her in the despicable column along with the Gatherer and the Collector (Your Grossness).
Mandrel is another case in point. Mandrel existing in the power vacuum of the under city is a bully. But when the Doctor enters the picture with conviction and a plan, Mandrel rises to the occasion and becomes a willing follower.
“What’s he doing here?” Leela asks in disgust upon seeing Mandrel in cahoots with the Doctor. But Cordo puts it in perspective: “We’ve sired a revolution, Leela. Down with the Company, eh fellas?” Mandrel is now one of the fellas, a revolutionary comrade in arms.
I have to say, Gary, that I love Cordo’s absolute glee at this point. From suicidal little Cordo with no “spirit left for fighting,” Cordo has transformed into a delightfully enthusiastic rebel. “Whee!” Even the more practical minded Bisham gets caught up in his excitement.
All that is left is for the Doctor to pull the plug on the Controller (Your Oratundity), and it is with poetic justice that he shrivels away, down into the hole in his mechanical chair as he realizes the bad news that his Company is bankrupt. “We are bankrupt. Business failure. Closure imperative. Cut losses. Liquidate. Immediate liquidation.”
Oh what a world . . .

Friday, March 8, 2013

Image of the Fendahl

Dear Gary—
 Image of the Fendahl is one of those stories that I like despite myself. I have a vague memory of really enjoying it the first time I watched it many years ago, and then being disappointed upon the re-view several years ago. I struggle with this dichotomy today, the gut level enjoyment of my youth with no preconceived notions and the surface level disappointment of my world-weary middle age with jaded eyes.
Of course, that is the eternal struggle, isn’t it Gary? But I don’t want to go off on a tangent about lost innocence or reconciling past with present. Let me just say as a disclaimer, and this can go for all of Doctor Who and not just Image of the Fendahl, that my perception of the show has changed and that if I were to have written this all those years ago it would be very different than it is today. And it may very well be drastically different if I were to write again in another thirty or forty year’s time.
But I can only write now, in the present. And what I write is colored with my present as well as my past, no matter how much I would like to stay in that protective bubble of naiveté.
And so I will start by saying that just because you put some actors in lab coats this does not mean they are believable as scientists. And if I can’t believe that these characters are serious scientists then much of the impact of the story is lost on me.
Secondly, I do not like Leela’s new hair or costume. She does not look like herself. And maybe this is why I am beginning to be annoyed by the slightly antagonistic relationship between Leela and the Doctor as I watch Image of the Fendahl. Don’t get me wrong, Gary; I like Leela; I like Leela as a companion; I like that Leela is strong and ‘savage.’ But I think that there is limited life in this dynamic and it must either grow or move on. It is beginning to become too much of a one note broken record.
I will only superficially mention the sets and monsters. If I could be more invested in the characters I wouldn’t mind the cheapness of the rest.
Having said this, though, I do have to say Gary that it is the characters who keep me invested in the story.
I’ll start with Colby. Colby is the standout of the scientists, and the least believable. The others, Thea, Fendelman, and Stael, are ordinary and run of the mill. Very fine actors, I’m sure, and they all do credit to the roles given them. But Colby is the class clown. He gets all the attention because he gets all the good lines. I just don’t think this cut-up ever made it through some serious and probably rather dreary schooling and field work to cut it as a geologist or whatever field of study in which he supposedly specialized. Much less a geologist or whatever that made a major discovery.
Yet despite this lack of faith in character on my part, I love this character.
Colby: “There’s a corpse by the wood.”
Fendelman: “What sort of corpse?”
Colby: “A dead one. What other sort is there?”
This is another rather unbelievable point. Four professional, respectable scientists find a dead body in the woods. Not one of them reports this to the police. Fendelman and Stael, OK, they have their own nefarious reasons. Colby, OK, he has his pride in work and debt to Fendelman appealed to; less convincing but OK. But Thea? What is her excuse?
Just when I’m questioning the plot, though, Colby comes out with another one: “You must think my head zips up the back.”
Fendelman and Stael treat everyone as though their heads zipped up the back, and all for some very murky reasons. The plot is really done a great disservice because it could have been very intriguing. However Fendelman and Stael, who are at the heart of it all, are not given adequate back stories. Stael in particular is sidelined with only the barest of hints that he is part of some underground cult. Just telling us that Stael is in a cult does not give us the feel of any ominous threat or any sense of gritty reality (just like clothing actors in lab coats does not necessarily make us believe they are scientists). And while the story itself is steeped in mystic lore and atmosphere, it never quite convincingly connects this up to Stael.  I get the sense that Image of the Fendahl was meant as a six part story but at the last minute was shortened to four and most of Stael was left on the cutting room floor. And Fendelman (“Is that really your name?”), who should by all rights be front and center in this story, is only used as an excuse for them all being there. Fendelman and Stael both are mere footnotes to Image of the Fendahl.
But then Colby comes out with another one: “What are you exactly, some sort of wandering Armageddon peddler?” and I forget about the holes in the plot.
Ma Tyler and her grandson Jack are two more characters I can get behind. By all rights these two should have been the footnotes, but they are given the limelight at the expense of Fendelman and Stael. That’s OK with me because they are superb, Ma Tyler in particular. Ma Tyler provides the mystical that is lacking in Stael, although this too is given rather short shrift. There is some implication that she has been “consulted” by the cult, yet she does not associate herself with them. Her mysticism is concentrated in her and not fully connected to the wider scope of the story. Yes, she can sense the Fendahl, and the actress makes us feel the foreboding: “I . . . I seen it. In my mind. Dark. Great dark. It called me. Hungry. It were hungry for my soul.” But this is a one on one connection, Ma Tyler to Fendahl. There is nothing to link her visions with the so-called cult or with any historical precedence in the village.
The Doctor explains her telepathy on a time fissure (“He’s as bad as she is. Here, what’s a time fissure?”) that exists in the woods near the cottage she has lived in all her life. “Every haunted place has one, doesn’t it?” the Doctor notes. But again, I just don’t feel the haunting. You can tell me, Doctor, that the woods have a haunted reputation, but just telling me doesn’t make it so. Yes, the opening scene with the hiker being chased by some unknown presence in the woods was eerie, but it was an isolated incident that was tied to the resonating skull in the priory and had no feel of being any part of a larger lore associated with the surroundings. In fact isolation describes the scene with the hiker—it came and went with no real explanation, it was an excuse to . . . I’m not even sure what. The scientists find one dead body and cover it up and then it is forgotten and what was the point of that? Just to show us that something mysterious was going on? To show us that Fendelman and Stael were up to something? And what’s with the blister at the base of the skull? It is all disconnected, isolated, an asterisk, a footnote.
But then we get Ma Tyler and her grandson.
Tyler: “Look, you know that I don’t believe in all that.”
Ma Tyler: “Most round here do. And when most believe, that do make it true.”
Tyler:  “Most people used to believe that the world was flat, but it was still round.”
Ma Tyler: “Ah ha, but they behaved as if ‘twere flat.”
And so, taking Ma Tyler’s wisdom to heart, I will behave as though Image of the Fendahl were flat (so to speak).
I will therefore start over. We have an eerie, haunted wood where a hiker is pursued by an ominous presence and literally frightened to death. We have a group of scientists guarding a mysterious skull that is an impossible 12 million years old and that is attacking the mind of Thea. We have an ancient and murderous cult, the leader of which is Stael who is working in secret with Fendelman on harnessing the power of the skull. We have Ma Tyler, an old soothsayer being consulted by members of the cult and warning against the powers of the wood, and her grandson Jack who loves his Gran and who will protect her with his life but who believes in none of her folklore.
Setting the stage, now is the time for the Doctor and Leela.
Leela: “It is quite clear to me that you cannot control this old machine either.”
Doctor: “What did you say, Leela?”
Leela: “Leela said . . .”
Doctor: “I heard what you said.”
Leela: “Then why ask?”
The Doctor and Leela, bickering about whether K9 is a he or an it, trading insults about the TARDIS and Leela’s ancestors, the Doctor and Leela arrive as the skull resonates, the hiker dies, the scientists cover up, and Ma Tyler becomes comatose with fright. The Doctor and Leela arrive at “this moment of destiny.”
A moment of destiny 12 million years in the making.
Colby: “Did you say that about 12 million years ago, on a nameless planet which no longer exists, evolution went up a blind alley?”
Doctor: “Yes.”
Colby: “Natural selection turned back on itself and a creature evolved which prospered by absorbing the energy wavelengths of life itself?”
The creature they speak of is the Fendahl of the fifth planet right out of Time Lord mythology (“I was frightened in childhood by a mythological horror”). A history that the Time Lords covered up with a time loop (“they’re not supposed to do that sort of thing”). But for 12 million years an escaped skull has been festering on Earth and influencing the evolution of Mankind (or so the Doctor theorizes), all culminating in this moment of destiny.
The Fendahl, a gestalt creature made of 12 Fendahleen (transformed cult members) and a core (the transformed Thea), that can telepathically freeze a person in terror and that devours life and that cannot be killed (“How do you kill death?”).
Except that it can be killed—with rock salt no less. Ma Tyler and her charms to the rescue. All that remains is for the Doctor to dump the skull in a super nova and that is the last of the Fendahl.
Image of the Fendahl is itself a sort of gestalt, but like the Fendahl not yet complete. It is missing a few of its Fendahleen parts. But with the Doctor and Leela as its core, and with Colby, Tyler, and Ma Tyler as some of its Fendahleen, Image of the Fendahl is enjoyable nonetheless.
Missing from most of Image of the Fendahl is K9, out for repair. He does get the last laugh, however.  While working on him when our story began the Doctor insisted that K9 should be referred to as it rather than he, but as our story concludes he says, “I’d better finish repairing him.”
“Ah, You called him him. You called him him!” Leela pounces, to which the Doctor replies, “I can call K9 him if I want to. He’s my dog, aren’t you K9?” K9 can’t answer his usual “affirmative” but he can nod his head as the TARDIS dematerializes.
And that is my cue, Gary, to dematerialize.