Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Terror of the Autons Episode Four

The Doctor shouts for help and the Brigadier hears him and runs in and saves him, thus mirroring the scene with Yates saving Jo from the troll. Only the Brigadier doesn't shoot the telephone to bits, he just unplugs it.

The Master makes a grumpy face when the telephone cuts off.

UNIT tracks down the Autons' bus and the Brigadier wants to blow it up. The Autons tell Farrel that they know they are being kept under observation.

The Doctor finds out the plastic daffodil has a plastic brain and it is thinking about "a face, or part of one." Perhaps it's still thinking about the silly face the Doctor pulled at the cliffhanger?

Jo then accidentally wakes it up when she uses the radio to try to contact Yates, and it sprays plastic in her face. The Doctor saves her, and realises that the daffodil was trying to kill her by mistaik, it should have been waiting for a radio signal sent by the Master. A Master signal? He sends Jo off to look at Mr Brownrose's list of other mannys who have been killed and find out if any had daffodils or radios.

Then, when the Doctor is on his own, the Master comes in, descending a spiral staircase, symbolic of his twisted mind, not even bothering with a disguise this time (although his music would have given him away anyhow, he's almost as bad as Jemadah from Watt on Earth). As this is their first face-to-face confrontation, their verbal sparring bears quoting:

"You've come here to kill me, of course."
"But not without considerable regret."
"How very comforting."
"You see, Doctor, you're my intellectual equal. Almost. I have so few worthy opponents. When they've gone, I always miss them."
"How did you get in here?"
"Oh don't be trivial, Doctor. I see you've been working on the Nestene autojet. My own small contribution to their invasion plan."
"Vicious, complicated, and inefficient. Typical of your way of thinking."

When Jo enters and distracts the Master for a moment, the Doctor grabs the dematerialisation circuit from the nearby table and holds it hostage so the Master won't pewpewpew them. Jo tells the Master about the plan to "bomb the quarry."
(You see, the Auton bus is in the same quarry as the fight at the start of episode three, they're not even trying to pretend it isn't the same one.)
The Master forces the Doctor to take the three of them to the quarry in Bessie, so that the Brigadier has to call off the plane that is going to drop the bomb because he doesn't want to blow up the Doctor/Jo/Bessie/the Master (delete as applicable). Instead it just flies overhead, a harmless bit of stock footage.

In the bus, Farrel is starting to resist the Master's hypno-eyes so an Auton knocks him out with a karate chop. Presumably not a Venusian karate chop, more like a Automatic karate chop. They tell the Master

"Farrel became undependable."
"Did he? His father would have been proud of him."

The Autons tie up the Doctor and Jo, and the Master gets the dematerialisation circuit from him. The Doctor manages to signal to the Brigadier from the bus by making the bus's lights go on and off in code.

The bus drives back to the radio telescope from part one. Thanks to the Doctor's warning, UNIT are already there with lots of soldiers and guns, but instead of shooting at the bus they just get out of its way as it drives past them. Jo manages to free herself and the Doctor from being tied up, and they jump off the bus.

The Master sends the Autons to shoot at the soldiers and show them how it should be done, while he runs for the radio telescope. On his way up he knocks a scientist off of a high set of steps, because we haven't had enough HAVOC stunts in this story yet.

The Doctor and the Brigadier chase him. When they get to the room, the Master says

"Too late, Doctor. The Nestenes are here!"

Outside there is a blur over the radio telescope, which I suppose must be what the Master is referring to.

"Your precious little planet is finished."
"If we're finished, then you're finished too."
"Nonsense! I helped them to come here."
"Do you really think that that thing will distinguish between you and us?"

By the time we cut back to them from a brief scene of UNIT and Autons fighting, the Master has changed his mind and has teamed up with the Doctor. ROSL! It is always, always great whenever this happens.

"Not unless we change the polarity."
"Whilst the transfer shift is still open?"
"It will fling them right out into space."
"You're right!"

Together they do a technobably thing that makes the Nestene blur disappear in a surprisingly anticlimactic way. This also causes all the Autons to fall over and go

There is an unintentionally amusing moment when the Doctor and the Brigadier are congratulating themselves on defeating the Nestenes (again), when the Brigadier suddenly notices the Master isn't there and shouts out "He's gone!" lol.

The Master runs back to the bus and goes inside. Then he comes out again with his hands up. The Doctor says

"Don't trust him, Brigadier. It's a trick."

He tries to pull out a gun but Yates is faster and shoots him first. It's a bit like a shootout in a Western, but an incompetently directed one - the Master goes for his gun when the camera isn't on him. The Doctor takes a mask off of the Master to reveal that Yates has actually shot poor Mr Farrel. The real Master escapes in his bus.

Back in the lab, the Doctor reveals that the Master actually has the Doctor's TARDIS's dematerialisation circuit, which means now they are both stuck on Earth.

"Think he'll turn up again, Doctor?"
"Yes, bound to."
"You don't seem very worried about it?"
"I'm not. As a matter of fact, Jo, I'm rather looking forward to it."

This is a strange, out-of-character moment for the story to end on. While we cats hope the Master will return soon - if we are very lucky it may even be later this season - surely the Doctor should not be looking forward to it, since the Master is "bound to" kill at least a few mannys as part of whatever his next plan is. Oh well, maybe it doesn't count so long as they're not main characters?

What's so good about Terror of the Autons?

The Master.

Roger Delgado is effortlessly magnificent from the moment he first appears, perfectly cast as the Doctor's new archenemy. If this story didn't aspire to do anything more than give him a proper introduction, it still succeeds brilliantly because of Delgado's performance, and this despite the 'tell, don't show' aspect of the Time Lord turning up to tell the Doctor and the viewers about him.

Terror of the Autons has been criticised for its similarity to Spearhead From Space the previous season, which was also written by Robert Holmes. I do not think the similarity is a weakness but a strength - it allows a story of the same length the time to introduce the Master (as well as Jo and Mike Yates, who are also new characters) within a familiar structure. So the Nestene invasion plot is of secondary importance to the setting up of the relationship the Master has with the Doctor via the multiple attempts to kill him.

The pulp-y nature of these, going from each one straight on to the next, is something we haven't really seen much of in Doctor Who since Terry Nation wrote The Keys of Marinus or The Chase. The same is true of the "terror of the Autons" of the title, that shows us lots of different ways that plastic can be made scary, from chairs to flowers to trolls to policemannys.

Of course, the latter of those is more scary in real life these days...

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Terror of the Autons Episode Three

The Doctor karate chops (Venusian karate chops) the driver so that the car crashes and he and Jo run away. The Autons pewpewpew at them, but miss, and then give chase.

The Brigadier and Yates arrive in their car, having obviously stopped off somewhere* to pick up another UNIT manny with a big gun. Guess which one of them gets pewpewpewed by the Autons?

The Doctor says

"They're Autons, bullets can't stop them!"

so Yates gets back in the car and runs one of them over. The others then get in the car with him and escape.

Farrel tells the Master that the Autons have failed to kill the Doctor and Jo. The Master is not surprised, and says

"He's an interesting adversary. I admire him in many ways."
"But you still intend to destroy him?"
"Of course. And the more he struggles to postpone the moment, the greater the ultimate satisfaction."

The Master knows how to play the game of Cat and Mouse. Purr.

The Doctor tries to use the Master's dematerialisation circuit (which he "borrowed" last episode) in his own TARDIS, but it doesn't work because the Time Lords, like Apple Inc, don't believe in backwards compatibility.

"My TARDIS might not work, but neither will his now. Wherever he is, he's trapped on Earth."

The Master now has Autons wearing giant fake faces - presumably to make it harder for the Doctor to remove them - handing out plastic daffodils to unsuspecting mannys. When they have no more flowers left to distribute, they get back on their bus.

At the Doctor's lab the Brigadier comes in with Mr Brownrose "from the Ministry." 'Brownrose' sounds a bit like 'brownnose,' is this Robert Holmes perhaps being a bit satirical with his character names? If so, this one is a bit too on the, er... nose, lol.

The Doctor pretends to be a friend of the minister in order to troll Brownrose, but he has actually come with a vital clue - he has a list of mannys who have died, and two of them were McDermott and Mr Farrel, "Production Manager and retired owner of the same plastics factory."

This leads the Doctor and Jo to speak to Mrs Farrel, who tells them about "Colonel Masters." When she says the name the Master's theme music starts playing, and the Doctor says

"I knew it."

because he is clever enough to see through the Master's almost-impenetrably cunning alias, although I suspect he needed a final hint from the music to get him there.

Mrs Farrel gives them the troll and tells them

"I found it under the curtains. It was as if it was trying to get out."

At the lab, a new telephone is being installed. For the first time we see that the Master is a master (lol) of disguise when he takes off his mask, Mission: Impossible style, to reveal that it was really him who installed the telephone.

If the Master is now in league with The Worst Company in the World, the Doctor really does have the odds stacked against him. The Master on his own is bad enough, but there's no limit to their evil.

The Doctor leaves the troll in his lab while he goes off to investigate Farrel's factory with the Brigadier. Jo is left alone in the lab when the troll wakes up. She sees it and screams for help from Mike Yates, who bans it from Twitter shoots it to bits. So bullets can't stop Autons, but it turns out they're super effective against trolls.

In the plastics factory, the Doctor finds one of the daffodils. The Brigadier asks him

"What do you want it for? They give these things away with soap."
"It's plastic, Brigadier, and any plastic artifact, anything at all, can, in the Nestene sense of the word, be alive."

There is a giant safe in Farrel's office which the Doctor opens. It is big enough to have an Auton inside, which tries to pewpewpew them, narrowly missing the Brigadier before the Doctor defeats it by means of closing the door again.

They go back to the lab and see what is left of the troll. The Doctor wants to examine the daffodil, but before he can start he gets a telephone call from the Master.

"Hello, Doctor, is that you?"

This reminds us that even though we are almost three-quarters of the way through the story, the Doctor and the Master have not actually met each other yet.

"Who is this? What do you want?"

Given that the Doctor doesn't actually say 'yes' in response to the Master's question, it would have been embarrassing for him if he had called the wrong number.

"Simply to say goodbye."

The Master then makes a high-pitched sound effect that annoyed my puppy and his doggy friends, but which also causes the unnecessarily long telephone cable to attack the Doctor.

The Doctor makes a face, which means it's cliffhanger time!

* I expect they also rescued the lions and tigers off-screen at around this point in the story, seeing as the circus does not appear again.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Terror of the Autons Episode Two

As the Doctor was at pains to establish in Inferno, he is not Batman, and so he has no trouble throwing the bomb out of the window, where it lands in the water at some unsuspecting location and then explodes. Benton says

"There's going be some complaints about that you know, Doctor."

and the Doctor gives him a look as if to say "I'll make the jokes around here, thank you Sergeant."

The Doctor explains to Yates and Benton how the Master's hypno-eyes work:

"The Master can completely control the human mind."
"So he can just take over anyone he likes?"
"No, not quite. No, some minds are stubborn enough to resist hypnosis. In any case, it doesn't last. Away from the Master's influence, the mind struggles constantly to free itself."

The Master tries to impress McDermott by showing him an inflatable chair, and then when McDermott sits down in it, it noms him.

No wonder John Cleese is looking nervous.

The Master starts to explain his plan to Farrel, now nothing more than his hypno-eyesed henchmanny:

"The human body has a basic weakness. One that I which I shall exploit to assist in the destruction of humanity."

Another Mr Farrel arrives and wants to take charge. The Master tries to hypno-eyes him, and even sets his theme music on him, but this Mr Farrel resists.

"Congratulations, Mr Farrel. Usually I can overcome opposition, but your will is exceptionally strong. One might say dangerously strong."

The Master gives Mr Farrel a plastic troll. He doesn't want it, but the Master puts it in his car anyway. When he is driving along, the troll wakes up for a bit, but then it goes back to sleep when Mr Farrel doesn't pay it any attention.

By now the Doctor has dehypno-eyesed Jo. Yates and Benton have found a lead (off-screen) to the circus from episode one, so the Doctor goes to investigate, but he won't let Jo come with him.

In a scene between the Master and Farrel (er, the one who is his henchmanny), the Master explains that he deliberately left the clue to the circus:

"You see, the bomb was by way of being a greetings card, a small little gallantry on the eve of battle. The car will lure the Doctor to the circus, and there, I shall destroy him."

Mr Farrel (the other one) has arrived home with the troll. When he is trying to mind his own business, quietly reading a newspaper (note for cats: newspapers are what mannys used to read in the olden days before the internets), it wakes up again and attacks him when he pays attention to it. Then it runs away and Mr Farrel goes

This is probably for the best because it reduces the number of Mr Farrels in the story back to a manageable number.

The Doctor arrives at the circus in Bessie, unaware that Jo is hiding in the back. The Doctor is almost immediately captured by the evil lion-capturing manny who the Master hypno-eyesed back in part one. He says

"Maybe my friend'll let me feed you to the tigers."

Does this mean he has tigers prisoner as well? Oh noes!

Jo rescues the Doctor, and then the Master sends the missing scientist from part one (who he has also hypno-eyesed) to run in with another bomb. The Doctor manages to dehypno-eyes him enough to make him self-sacrifice, so that only he gets blowed up, and not the Doctor or Jo.

The Doctor finds the Master's TARDIS key and lets himself in, making off with the dematerialisation circuit. All the circus baddys run up to him and Jo and attack the Doctor. A police car and a second car with the Brigadier and Yates drive up. The policemannys take the Doctor and Jo away, and the Brigadier and Yates are left to follow them. While the Doctor and Jo are relieved to have been rescued, we learn (though they don't) that Benton has checked and the supposed policemannys are not really police.

Jo wonders where they are being taken in the car. She looks out and says

"It's some sort of a quarry." 

When the Doctor asks the fake policemanny a question, he turns around and suddenly has a really obviously fake face...

...which the Doctor removes to show the Auton underneath - cliffhanger!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Terror of the Autons Episode One

Terror of the Autons is the first story of season eight of Doctor Who, and was first broadcast in 1971. It stars Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Katy Manning as Jo Grant, Richard Franklin as Captain Mike Yates, and John Levene as Sergeant Benton. While technically there is one more main character, his appearance in every story of season eight is supposed to be a surprise, so will therefore not be revealed at this point.

It starts at a circus where there are some lions! What a great start, even Survival didn't begin with lions. Is it a spelling mistaik do you think, should this story really be called Terror of the Lions?

They are being held prisoner in a cage by a baddy. While normally I would expect this to be followed by them immediately escaping and noming all the baddys, since this is a Doctor Who story I think it is reasonable to assume they will need to be rescued by the Doctor at some point... and then they will nom all the baddys. I can't wait for that bit!

There is the sound of the TARDIS materialising, and then a van appears like the TARDIS. Its reflection also appears in a puddle at the same time, which must have made this effect twice as expensive - the BBC splashing out for the new season, no doubt.

The door opens and out comes Roger Delgado... The Master! At last!

By having him arrive in the same scene as we saw lions, this creates an immediate association in our minds. Lions = great, therefore the Master also = great. And it is fitting that his first appearance and his last (in the original series, I mean) should be accompanied by cats, because cats are best!

The lion-capturing baddy says "Who the fuck are you?" although in some versions this is censored to the word "heck." The master replies

"I am usually referred to as the Master."
"Oh is that so?"
"Universally."

The baddy tries to get rid of the Master, but he is instantly out-baddyed by him, and we hear the first use of the Master's special bit of incidental music. He hypno-eyeses the baddy into W-wording for him.

In the next scene we see the Master steal a Nestene energy unit from a museum, where it was presumably put by Indiana Jones.

At UNIT HQ, the Doctor is in his TARDIS. He sings to himself "I don't want to set the world on fire," which... too soon, Doctor, too soon. He is doing science on the TARDIS dematerialisation circuit.

Jo Grant comes in and fire extinguishes the science when it goes on fire. The Doctor calls her a "ham-fisted bun vendor." Having thus made a good first impression, Jo announces

"I'm your new assistant."
"Oh, no."

Jo claims to be "a fully qualified agent" and lists her qualifications:

"Cryptology, safe breaking, explosives."

When the Doctor says

"I'm sorry, my dear, but what I need is a scientist."

Jo responds

"I took general science at a level."

She doesn't say at what level, which is the setup for a komedy moment later on.

Jo tells the Doctor about the theft of the energy unit from the "National Space Museum" and he becomes interested. He says "the Brigadier's an idiot" when he learns that it was him who let Dr Jones take it.

"But who would want to steal it?"

asks Jo.

"Exactly. Who, and why?"

At the "Ministry of Technology Beacon Hill Research Establishment" (thank you convenient establishing shot) there is a radio telescope. The Master goes in, accompanied by his music, and pewpewpews the manny there.

He takes the unit out of a box marked UNIT (is this because it contained a unit or because it came from UNIT? Mew, now I'm a confused cat) and plugs the unit into a computer. It moves the telescope, which is noticed by another manny. He comes in and sees the Master, then it cuts to the Doctor and the Brigadier before we see what happens next.

The Doctor is complaining about how he wants somebody with "the same qualifications" as Liz to be his assistant. The Brigadier replies with

"Nonsense. What you need, Doctor, as Miss Shaw herself so often remarked, is someone to pass you your test tubes and to tell you how brilliant you are."

which is probably the most perceptive thing he's likely to say all season. The Brigadier then admits that they are both stuck with Jo:

"Miss Grant was very keen to join us and she happens to have relatives in high places."

He deviously agrees to reassign Jo only if the Doctor tells her himself. When she comes in he can't do it, and so will be stuck with her for the next three seasons. This is good because Jo is one of the classic Companions, and I don't think the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who would have been the same without her. Is this therefore the only example evar of nepotism being a good thing?

Jo tells the Brigadier and the Doctor about the scientists at the radio telescope going missing and, realising that the age of seven-parters is over and they need to get on with the plot, they head straight there in Bessie.

There they are met by Captain Mike Yates, a character who is little more than a cheap Captain Hawkins knock-off, mew. They split up, and the Doctor goes to the radio telescope on his own.

He hears a TARDIS materialisation noise, and a manny appears in mid-air. He says he has come from 29,000 light years away. The Doctor recognises him, and he admits to being a Time Lord in case we haven't guessed by now.

"I came to warn you. An old acquaintance has arrived on this planet."
"Oh? One of our people?"
"The Master."
"That jackanapes? All he ever does is cause trouble."

This line of the Doctor's is interesting for two reasons. First, it tells us that he already knows the Master, which has led to much speculation as to whether the Doctor has met him before in the series, but played by another actor (because the Master's a Time Lord) and under an alias (because the Master's the Master). Possible candidates include the War Chief from The War Games, The Master from The Mind Robber (largely, it has to be said, on the strength of the name), the Meddling Monk from The Time Meddler, Lemaitre from The Reign of Terror, or Masters from Doctor Who and the Silurians... although the latter of those has mainly been suggested by me.
Secondly the Doctor calls the Master a "jackanapes" which must be a Time Lord insult because, so the Monkeys With Badges tell me, the word means he's an ape or monkey.

The Time Lord goes further and warns the Doctor that a "surprise" has been left inside the radio telescope room - a bomb. Now presumably if the scientists had been missing long enough for it to be reported to UNIT, somebody must surely have looked for them in their own room, so the Master must have come back to put the bomb there afterwards, which means it is intended to blow up the Doctor.
The Time Lord is not going to help the Doctor do anything about it, and vanishes, although he is very polite about it.

The Doctor manages to get to it before it blows him up. Mike Yates and "the Director" (is he another Time Lord? He sounds like one) come in. The Doctor finds one of the scientists in a box - he has been made tiny by the Master.

Meanwhile the Master is meeting with Mr Farrel, who is in charge of a plastics factory. He tells Farrel

"The people I represent, Mr Farrel, can never have too much plastic."

This is clever because it is presented as though it is a mystery what the Master's plan (Masterplan?) is, even though it is really obvious because we have already seen Spearhead From Space, so it allows us to feel smart by anticipating the direction of the story.

Now back at his laboratory, the Doctor says to Jo "I thought you took a level in science?" although he slightly fluffs the line, just not enough to warrant another take.

"I didn't say I passed."

is her reply, which reveals that she is even worse at science than the Doctor thought before, lol. Oh, please yourselves.

After a brief discussion of what the Nestenes are for the benefit of Jo, as well as any viewers who haven't seen Spearhead From Space, the Doctor tells the Brigadier to search all the plastics factories for the missing unit.
It is always unfortunate when normally smart characters have to act stupid in order to make other characters seem more intelligent, and this is a perfect example of something the Brigadier should have already thought of, but by needing to be prompted by the Doctor it makes the Doctor seem the cleverest one. Poor Brigadier, I think he had better start getting used to that.

By now the Master is taking over Farrel's factory, which just happens to be the one that Jo is investigating. She hides from the Master and Farrel, but clumsily knocks over a box to give herself away. By the next scene she has been hypno-eyesed and is telling the Master all she knows about UNIT's investigations.

The Doctor and the Master unknowingly echo one another when the Doctor says of the Master "Vanity's his weakness," and then later the Master says of the Doctor "Curiosity is his weakness." This helps establish the Master as the evil reflection of the Doctor. Also there is a hidden joke there in that neither vanity nor curiosity are really weaknesses - just ask any cat!

Farrel talks with James McDermott (played by Harry "The Day Today" Towb) about "Colonel Masters," the first of the Master's many aliases, and one of the most fiendishly subtle, who McDermott has never heard of.

Farrell goes to get the Master, and sees he has made some Autons, as well as having installed some CSO to make their factory look bigger on the inside.

In the Doctor's lab, Jo goes to open a box with a bomb in it to blow them all up, because she has been ordered to by the Master while hypno-eyesed. She even pauses to beat Mike Yates up when he tries to prevent her, although she may have done that anyway.

Cliffhanger!