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 30^th 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 . . .

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 . . .

 

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 . . .

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 22^nd 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 22^nd 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 20^th 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 20^th 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 20^th 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 20^th 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 . . .

The Daemons

Dear Gary—

“It really is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.” And The Daemons really is the perfect story for this time of year. “That means the occult . . . well, you know . . . the supernatural and all that magic bit.”

The Doctor, however, will have none of it. The Age of Aquarius, the occult, the supernatural, witches, the devil, magic . . . “Everything that happens in life must have a scientific explanation . . . if you know how to look for it that is.”

“How infuriating can you get,” Jo says of the debunking Doctor.

But it’s all great fun, debunking myths and while doing so creating new ones. And it’s all rather paradoxical, a science fiction show, a show full of gods and monsters, a show of the fantastic and unreal refuting the fiction with faux facts.

It’s rather like the Doctor scoffing, “A rationalist existentialist priest indeed.”

Doctor Who embraces this irony, and never more so than in The Daemons.

We start with an archaeological dig excavating an ancient burial mound called the Devil’s Hump near a village called Devil’s End on the eve of Beltane. Professor Horner derides the local white witch’s warnings as mere superstition, but the Doctor rushes in with warnings of his own. He is too late, however, and as the mound is opened an icy blast of wind kills the professor and freezes the Doctor.

It is not the devil that is unleashed, however, and this is not Hell freezing over. This is the Master, posing as the local vicar, calling forth an alien being who has been using the Earth as a laboratory. This alien being, a Daemon named Azal, has been aiding and influencing Mankind down through the ages as a scientific experiment.

The Daemons, the thawed out Doctor (who apparently has “the constitution of an ox”) explains, are an amoral race of beings, and “all the magical traditions are just remnants of their advanced science.”

This is where I have to agree with Jo—how infuriating can you get? The entirety of Human history trivialized as an alien science project.

“I sometimes wish I worked in a bank.” Leave it to the Brigadier to interject a much needed dose of reality into the proceedings. Whether it is the devil or a Daemon, black magic or science, just take care of business . . . “five rounds rapid.”

Azal is nearing the end of his experiment and ready to decide if it has been worthwhile or if Earth is a failure ready for the rubbish bin.

“This planet smells to me of failure.” Doesn’t sound very promising for Earth’s future.

But a giant Azal and his gargoyle minion Bok, aided by the Master and his troop of mesmerized villagers, is no match for the Doctor, Jo, the Brigadier, Captain Yates, Sergeant Benton, and the white witch Olive Hawthorne.

Everyone gets in the game on this one, even Bessie, and it is all quite fun. What with the wind whipping, living gargoyles, costumed revelers, great horned beasts, satanic rituals, maypole dances, human sacrifices, traditional folk music, and a burning at the stake, who wouldn’t get caught up in the magic? (Or “psychokinetic energy” as the Doctor would term it.)

The Brigadier is briefly locked out of the action by a heat barrier that has been placed around the village, but some tense motorcycle chases and equipment rigging moments with the Doctor effectively breaks through in a typical Doctor Who conjuring trick, and the Brigadier advances on this enchanting circle of Hell with nonplussed bravado.

And I have to give a great deal of credit to the Doctor on this one, Gary. For all of his insolence, when Jo unexpectedly lays into the Brigadier the Doctor comes to his defense: “Jo, the Brigadier is doing his best to cope with an almost impossible situation, and since he is your superior officer you might at least show him a little respect.” Amen. Now if the Doctor would only take a little of his own advice once in a while . . .

Let’s not forget the Master in all of this. The Master is trying to convince Azal to transfer his daemonic power to him so that he can take over control of the planet. Azal briefly considers the Doctor for this role but in the end rejects him in favor of the Master and marks the Doctor for death.

In steps Jo. Jo stands in the way of Azal’s bolt of electricity; Azal is dazed by this baffling display of self-sacrifice, and his confused rage literally consumes him.

Love has saved the day. “It really is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius,” as Jo says.

“Science, not sorcery,” says the Doctor. But is it science or is it fiction? Is it magic or is it psychokinetic energy? Is it the devil or is it a Daemon?

All I know, Gary, is that The Daemons is Doctor Who magic; both science and sorcery.

Colony in Space

Dear Gary—

At last Doctor Who is getting back to the TARDIS; back to traveling in time and space; back to its roots; back to Time and Relative Dimension in Space.

The Doctor has been working on the TARDIS to bypass the Time Lords’ homing control (he hopes) at the same time that the Time Lords are deciding, “We must restore his freedom—as long as it serves our purpose.”

The result is that the Doctor and Jo take off in the TARDIS, but the Time Lords determine the destination. The destination turns out to be the planet Uxarieus in the year 2472. The Doctor is excited just to be able to once again explore “the wonders of the universe,” whereas Jo disappoints the Doctor by lamenting, “I don’t want to think of it; I want to go back to Earth.”

Thankfully the Doctor doesn't oblige and return to Earth immediately. Parenthetically, Gary, I find it rather amusing that the show holds rather a dim view of the Earth's future. As we are told, in 2472 there is "no room to move; polluted air; not a blade of grass left on the planet; and a government that locks you up if you think for yourself."

But back to Colony in Space; back to time and space; back to a story that I can finally get behind. Like The Mind of Evil there are multiple storylines in Colony in Space, but unlike The Mind of Evil they are not thrown into a bag and jumbled up together; rather the events occur as a natural progression of the plot. We are also treated to some strong supporting characters appropriate to the narrative.

To begin our tale, the Doctor and Jo meet up with a group of farmers unsuccessfully trying to colonize. Not only are their crops dying inexplicably but now they have giant lizards that have started to attack and a mining company that is claiming prior rights to the planet. To top it off, the leader of the colony, Ashe, is plagued by disgruntled settlers questioning their choice of planets.

The Doctor is consumed with “scientific curiosity” and begins to seek explanations for the crop failures and lizard attacks. This leads him to the IMC mining ship captained by the dastardly Dent who will stoop to most anything, including murder, to gain control of the rich mineral deposits on Uxarieus. However he has his own dissenting voice to contend with in the person of Caldwell.

The first few episodes of Colony in Space are well paced with conflicts and conflicts within conflicts. With pitched battles, kidnappings, arguments, sabotage, and even psychological turmoil. All of the skillfully scripted drama we come to expect from a good Doctor Who serial.

Only after this discord has sufficiently simmered do we get a dash of the Master to spice things up before we get an all-out boil.

The Master has become the de facto villain in this eighth season of Doctor Who. He has appeared in every serial. We come to expect him. To my mind, Gary, Colony in Space is the most effective use of him to date.

The Master arrives in disguise as the Adjudicator come to settle the dispute between the colonists and the mining company. He clearly has his own agenda, but he cleverly plays the two sides against the middle, biding his time until he can achieve his own purpose. He has complete control of the situation, including the Doctor who is unable to discredit the Master, lacking his own credentials as he is.

The Master’s purpose is to find a supposed doomsday weapon that is concealed somewhere on the planet. This links in the primitives of Uxarieos who up until this point have had a peripheral part to play in the waging campaign for the planet.

The primitives have been helping the colonists, however it has been established that they can turn violent if crossed. The Doctor and Jo have also discovered the primitive under-city presided over by a Guardian and have determined that this was once a thriving and advanced society.

The Master now provides the linking piece. This is why the Doctor has been sent by the Time Lords. This is why the Master has descended. The colonists and the miners, as it turns out, are peripheral; they are the straight edges and the filler. The primitives are the centerpiece. They hold the last and final portion of the puzzle. They are the creators of the super weapon the Master seeks and the Time Lords wish to conceal.

The primitives have long since forgotten the significance of this weapon; only the Guardian knows of its devastating power, which during its testing phase created the Crab Nebula. The Guardian and the Master.

The Master once again tries to sway the Doctor to his side: “We’re both Time Lords; we’re both renegades; we could be masters of the galaxy.”

“Absolute power is evil,” the Doctor counters.

“One must rule or survive; that’s a basic law of life,” the Master argues.

“I want to see the universe, not rule it,” the Doctor concludes as he engages the self destruct mechanism on the weapon (why do all evil devices of this sort have such an easily accessible self destruct mechanism and why hasn’t anyone hit it either accidentally or deliberately long before?).

As the weapon explodes, however, we need to wind up the plot. For even if the miners and colonists turned out to be peripheral to the puzzle, they are central to the action and we care what happens to them.

Ashe has sacrificed himself to save his people; Caldwell ‘s conscience has overcome his greed and he has decided to join the colonists; radiation emanating from the super weapon has been eliminated so that crops will now grow; a real Adjudicator is on his way from Earth to settle the dispute over the planet’s future. 

And the Doctor and Jo are sent back to the waiting Brigadier only moments after they left him. Back on Earth, back with UNIT, but back with a semi-working TARDIS.

“I want to see the universe, not rule it;” that is the essence of the Doctor, and I am so glad that Doctor Who has finally gotten back to its essence.

I hope, Gary, that somewhere out there you too are seeing the universe and will someday see this.

The Claws of Axos

Dear Gary—

“The claws of Axos are already deeply embedded in the Earth’s carcass.”

It is the imagery of Axos that really brings The Claws of Axos to life. As the Doctor says, “Before you start annihilating the thing why don’t we just take a look at it?”

Axos is an organically grown ship that has landed on Earth, and it looks rather remarkable given the budget constraints of Doctor Who at the time. From the outside it looks vaguely like a sea anemone sticking up out of the land; inside is a psychedelic world of soft membranes, dripping ganglia, and lobster claws grabbing out at you from the walls (the only cheap looking aspect of Axos). At times the inside of Axos is rather like being in a fun house while on an acid trip.

In fact there are several hallucinogenic type moments inside Axos that are simply stunning. The kaleidoscope of colors and the disembodied revolving heads create some dizzying visuals. And then the talking eye stalk that hangs down from the ceiling is a trip in itself.

The Axons, too, are impressive in their humanoid form with their golden skin, masses of molded curls, and smooth pupil less eyes.  (The one flaw is the obvious zipper down the back.) The true Axon form is also striking as hulking blobs of deadly tentacles, although they are more effective in close up rather than shown lumbering along from a distance. I am a bit confused by the one rather bizarre mummenshanz like globule that appears inexplicably on the lab floor, but then we do learn that everything Axos is all a singular organism so I guess it’s just a pimple that erupts.

But beware Axons bearing Axonite. All that glitters is not gold. Axonite “can absorb, convert, transmit, and program all forms of energy.” This might seem like manna from heaven, but as the Doctor points out, “I doubt if even Axonite can increase the growth of human common sense.”

There seems to be a worldwide shortage of common sense in The Claws of Axos; so much so that I find it rather implausible.  Call me naïve, but I just don’t believe a person like Chinn could exist, and if he did exist I just don’t believe he would ever be put in such a position of power. This type of hard headed stupidity makes me mad—not the stupidity itself but the use of this as a character device to advance a plot when it is so astonishingly far-fetched that anyone would really act this way.

And then there is the rest of the world. If alien beings landed with some sort of miracle substance it would not immediately be shipped to every major city and government. It would be quarantined; it would be studied; it would be debated; it would be held up in red tape.

But then our story would be held up and we wouldn’t have this cancerous growth enveloping the world and we wouldn’t have the Doctor teaming up with the Master yet again to defeat the enemy.

It is an interesting plot twist, Gary, when the Doctor seemingly turns on his beloved Earth and decides to abandon it to its fate; and then in a double twist he apparently cooperates with the Axons to give them time travel so that they can feed on the entirety of time and space in return for exacting revenge on the Time Lords. If this were not Doctor Who I could almost believe this third Doctor of such betrayal; but not quite. Although I think it would have made a most entertaining show having the Doctor and the Master traveling about together as a dynamic cosmic duo.

Instead the Doctor seizes the opportunity to trick the Master into fixing his TARDIS and to trap Axos (and he hopes the Master) in a time loop from which they can never escape. Of course the Doctor can escape simply by boosting his power, so I wonder why the Master who has his own TARDIS available to him, or Axos with its thinking molecule, can’t escape just as easily.

The Doctor himself rather amusingly stumbles a bit over his explanations once back in the company of the Brigadier and Jo as he tries to illustrate the concept of a time loop. And then he admits that he is 90% certain . . . “well pretty certain” that the Master remains locked in that loop of time.

The Doctor also remains trapped. Despite the Master having fixed his TARDIS, the Time Lords have programmed it to always return to Earth. “It seems that I’m some kind of a galactic yoyo,” the Doctor exclaims.

And so I end on that inspired imagery courtesy of The Claws of Axos and hope that somewhere in that galactic yoyo of a time swirl these echoes will be heard.