Monday 26 April 2021

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Seeds OF DEATH Episode Two


The Ice Warrior leader (who is played by Alan Bennion, who also played Izlyr in Curse of Peladon) tells Fewsham to repair the teleporter again, and says
"Now you know what will happen if you fail... You will die."
It definitely seems as though he is going to leave his threat as an implicit one, but then he decides his meaning isn't clear enough so makes it explicit by tagging on those last three words.


There is a lengthy scene of Radnor and Kelly (when she is able to see over the top of her boss) trying to persuade Eldred (must live) to let them use his rocket, which the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe join in just to try and get the plot going.


On the Moon, Phipps, one of the mannys who wasn't captured by the Ice Warriors back in part one, successfully hides from the Ice Warrior that is hunting for him.


Because they don't have any astronauts on Earth (they "gave up training astronauts years ago" says Radnor) then the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie are going to go in the rocket. Is this set in the terrible future from Sapphire & Steel's Assignment Three where there aren't any animals? Because doggys and monkeys are good at crewing spaceships, just ask the Soviets or the Americans. The French were even clever enough to send a cat into space!


The episode takes its time showing us the countdown to the rocket launch, to parallel the real-world space race launches that took place around this time and which viewers in 1969 would be familiar with, but which now seems laborious padding to us in the far future of 2021. This is similar to scenes of the Doctor going into space in Ambassadors OF DEATH - what is it about stories with "OF DEATH" in the title that the Doctor always seems to go into space in them?



The rocket launches successfully but the communication with Earth is borked. Jamie says
"Och no, this is worse than the TARDIS."
Lol.

Fewsham repairs the teleporter and the Ice Warrior leader tells him to let it receive teleports from Earth. Now that they don't need to care about their rocket plan, Kelly and two of her mannys go straight to the Moon. The Ice Warriors hide so they only meet Fewsham, who acts very suspicious and doesn't tell them the truth about how they have been invaded by Martians. Who would believe him anyway? I mean, what are the chances of that happening..?*

Phipps is still in the same room we saw him hiding in earlier. He has spent his time setting up a machine, and when an Ice Warrior comes in (still looking for him) he uses his machine to pewpewpew it. Unfortunately, in order to plug this machine in, he has to unplug the rocket homing beam that the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie were relying upon to guide them to the Moon - a plot point that would later be used for a joke in an episode of Red Dwarf, but here it is the exciting cliffhanger.


* I know I made a similar joke in the Curse of Peladon review, but this is the earlier story so this joke technically happened first.

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