Monday 26 October 2020

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Colony in Space Episode Two


A manny comes in and saves the Doctor from being menaced by the robot, even allowing him to reshoot the scene in such a way as to help the Doctor look more dignified when he falls over.


This helpful manny is Caldwell (Bernard Kay), who comes from IMC, the "Interplanetary Mining Corporation," and who claims he didn't know about colonists. This must be a very small planet that whole groups of mannys don't know about other groups and yet keep running into one another all the time, or maybe he is lying like Norton from episode one was?


Caldwell seems to be less of a baddy after he finds out two mannys have already been killed, and seems genuinely sad to hear it from the Doctor, but he does still capture the Doctor to take him back to his speaceship. On the way there they drive past the nondescript bit of quarry where the Doctor left the TARDIS and he sees that it is gone.




On the spaceship it is confirmed, in a scene that we see but which the Doctor is not present for, that the mannys from IMC are baddys who plan to lie to the colonists (just as Caldwell has already lied to the Doctor) that they have "just arrived" and are "surprised and shocked that the place has been colonised."


Their leader is Captain Dent (Morris Perry, Danglars in the BBC's 1964 adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, a similarly avaricious villain to the one he is playing here), and the plot thickens when it turns out that Caldwell really was surprised at the deaths of the colonists, but quickly guessed that Morgan (Tony Caunter) was responsible. Dent and Morgan are clearly greedy enough to do mining and make moneys from it at the expense of the colonists who want to live here, and Caldwell is tempted by this as well, enough to overcome his conscience for now.


Dent talks to the the Doctor to try to persuade him

"What's good for IMC is good for Earth."

but when he fails he quickly orders Morgan to have the Doctor killed and make it look like another monster attack.



On the way back the Doctor and Morgan get attacked by some aliens. The Doctor stops Morgan from shooting them so that he can have a gratuitous fight scene with them.


Meanwhile, the obvious baddy Norton gets the colonists to show him all the ways in which they are vulnerable, such as only having one electrician-engineer, Jim.

"We'd be lost without him."



In the next scene Norton goes straight over to Jim and murders him and frames an alien for it.


Norton then sabotages the power so that the lights go out. Mary says

"Don't worry, Jim'll fix it."

which makes Jo giggle. This is forgivable on the part of Jo, who is from the UNIT era and so doesn't know any better, but for a manny from the future like Mary it is in very bad taste for her to make a joke about one of the most infamous baddys in the BBC's history.


Back in the colonist's house, the Doctor explains his suspicions to Morgan:

"I think the whole thing has been faked by somebody who wanted to frighten the colonists away."

"But these claw marks? I mean, something made them."

"Yes, they could have been faked by some sort of mechanical device."

"You mean with something like this?"



So episode two ends in almost exactly the same way as episode one, with the Doctor being menaced by a robot, except this one has big komedy klaws on it. As if aware how un-menacing this makes the robot, Morgan tries to up the dramatic tension by drawing his gun and saying

"Purely business, you understand? Nothing personal."

He delivers the line in such a businesslike manner that it is only scary in the way that unrestrained capitalism destroying planets to make a few mannys rich is scary... and I suspect this was the writer's entire point, mew.

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