Avon's Smile

I like Avon's smile. Here he is in Death-Watch smiling and wearing big shoulder pads:

I think Tarrant likes Avon's smile too.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Counter Plot

Counter Plot is part 5 of the Daleks' Master Plan by Terry Nation. It is only the second episode of this story that still has pictures - the first is Day of Armageddon, and there is only one more after this one out of the 12 parts of the story.

When last we saw our intrepid heroes... Sara Kingdom has shot Bret Vyon but the Doctor and Steven have escaped. Sara is working for Mavic Chen who is a baddy and in with the Daleks, and she wants her mannys to find the Doctor and Steven and shoot them dead.

The Doctor and Steven run into a strange room (we know it is strange because Steven says "strange room" when they go in it) with mice in it. Sara comes in to capture them but then the lights go on and off...

...and they all make funny faces.

Two other mannys are responsible for this - they have been doing an experiment - they go in the room to find the Doctor, Steven and Sara have vanished. So have the mice, but they were supposed to vanish because that was the point of the experiment.

They are busy still making faces and Steven and Sara are jumping up and down in space somewhere. Sara's mannys want to know what has happened so one of the science mannys tells them:

"They're many light years from Earth by now - moving towards a strange planet in a strange galaxy, the nature of which we can only guess at."

Karlton is Mavic Chen's baldy henchmanny.

Karlton finds out the Doctor and Steven and the Taranium they stole are all now on planet Myra and he tells Mavic Chen.

Mavic Chen rants about being powerful for a bit...

...and then, presumably, tells the Daleks about it so they can go to Myra to get the Taranium.

The Doctor wakes up in a jungle. "The mice couldn't have done that," he says.

He's right - mice are not clever enough to be able to build intergalactic teleports.

Steven wakes up before Sara and he takes her gun so she is captured. But something invisible is making big footprints - they are on a planet with invisible monsters.

The Daleks get to Myra and find the mice. They think the mice are their enemies and so they exterminate the mice! That is a terrible thing to happen to poor, defenceless mice - a waste of perfectly good noms. Then the Daleks find out about the invisible monsters when they shoot one.

The Doctor also fights off an invisible monster, in a very odd fight scene.

But now the Doctor knows where they are, because he knows the monsters are the Visians of Myra.

Steven argues with Sara to convince her they are not baddies. She is sad for killing Bret because he was her brother. But just after Sara joins the goodys, the Daleks shoot more Visians and surround the Doctor, Steven and Sara.

The Doctor says "I'm afraid, my friends, the Daleks have won."

That is the exciting end of this episode. What will happen next? To be continued, maybe, but some other time because now it is time for sleeps for me. Bye bye. Zzzzz

Best Book Ever

This is my best book ever! It is Terry Nation's Dalek Special from 1979. It is all about Daleks, as you might expect.

Mystery Solved

I have finished watching Sharpe now, and I have found out the answer to Gamma Longcat's riddle about what the end of Sharpe has to do with the Eurovision Singing Contest. It is this:

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Day of Armageddon

Day of Armageddon is part 2 of the Daleks' Master Plan by Terry Nation. It starred William Hartnell as the Doctor and Peter Purves as Steven. It guest-starred Kevin Stoney as Mavic Chen.

The Daleks' Master Plan is a very old Doctor Who story from the time when TV was still in black and white and they didn't always keep the programmes for new cats to watch years later. Part 1 (The Nightmare Begins) is missing in this way so I will just review part 2 for now.

It starts with the Doctor in a jungle. He sees there are Daleks outside his TARDIS and he hears they are going to do a thing called "Operation Inferno" but he doesn't know what that is. Maybe they are going to drill through the planet's crust? That way they could steal the planet's core like they tried to do in the Dalek Invasion of Earth.

This is Mavic Chen. He is a baddy.

Mavic Chen is doing squiggly writing when an alien comes in. He is Zephon, master of the 5th Galaxy, and he wears a big cloak like the Evil Emperor in Return of the Jedi. Mavic Chen and Zephon are both in on the Daleks' plan.

Of course the Daleks are plotting to get rid of Mavic Chen later - Mavic Chen is a baddy but the Daleks are always bigger baddys. That is one of the reasons they are so great, as Terry Nation cleverly shows us here in this story.

This is Steven Taylor. He is a goody.

Steven and Katarina are the Doctor's Companions in this story, along with Bret Vyon - a Space Agent who they met in part 1. Steven and Katarina are hiding from the Daleks in the jungle. The Doctor meets them while Bret sees the Daleks with flame guns.

Daleks with flame guns are even scarier than usual.

Steven has not been well because he got hurt when they were in Troy. The Doctor tells him "you mustn't try to run before you can walk. Even though you might have to."

The Doctor and Steven and Bret argue about what to do.

The Daleks are setting fire to everything, so to get away from the fire the Doctor takes them towards the Dalek city - the Doctor is the clever one and has realised that the Daleks will not expect them to do this.

Mavic Chen and his new friend Zephon are watching the fire from the city. Zephon thinks he is too important for the Daleks to start their plan without him so he waits outside while Mavic Chen goes in to the Daleks' meeting where they will tell everyone their plan.

The Doctor's party sees lots of spaceships and Bret recognises Mavic Chen's ship. They meet Zephon and Bret knocks him out. The Doctor puts on Zephon's cloak so he can go in disguise to find out the Daleks' plan.

The Daleks have lots of aliens at their meeting and they all look different.

Nobody in the meeting knows Zephon is really the Doctor now. The Daleks tell everyone their plan: they have invented a Time Destructor, with which they can conquer the universe. It is powered by Taranium, the rarest mineral in the universe (and it sounds a bit like 'Tarrant' too so it must be good).

Mavic Chen has spent 50 years to get enough Taranium because it is only found on one planet in the universe. In a later episode of this serial we find out that it is the planet Uranus, which is in the solar system where Mavic Chen come from.

Zephon wakes up and sets off an alarm. Everybody in the Daleks' meeting is confused and the Doctor steals the Taranium and runs away with all the Daleks and the aliens chasing him.

Steven, Bret and Katarina steal Mavic Chen's spaceship, but when the alarm goes off Bret thinks the Doctor has been captured, and he wants to leave the planet without the Doctor so the Doctor would be left behind with all the baddys. Oh noes!

That is where the episode ends. Woo-oo, woo-oo, goes the Doctor Who music.

The Daleks' Master Plan is an exciting space adventure by Terry Nation and although it is very long, being 12 parts, lots happens in the early episodes like this one with scary Daleks and Mavic Chen plotting and our heroes being brave and clever.

It is very sad that there are no pictures for parts 3 or 4 any more. In part 3 the Doctor manages to get on board before the spaceship takes off, then the Daleks make the spaceship land on the planet Desperus, which is a prison planet just like Cygnus Alpha in Blakes 7.

In part 4 Kirksen, one of the prisoners from the planet, gets on board the ship before they can escape the planet and he tries to hijack them. He captures Katarina but she opens the door so she and Kirksen go out into space. Everybody else is saved by this but they are very sad that Katarina is dead.

They go to Earth where Mavic Chen has convinced all the other Space Agents that Bret is the baddy instead of him so Sara Kingdom shoots Bret when she sees him. That is where things are at the start of the next episode where there are pictures - part 5: Counter Plot.

Longbombs!