Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Death to the Daleks Part Four

The Doctor is able to use the sonic screwdriver to tell which parts of the floor are safe and which are dangerous. It's as easy as pi!

Once he and Bellal are past it, the Daleks soon arrive at the floor trap and the first Dalek rolls straight into it. It gets electriced, but still manages to cross to the far side. The second Dalek shoots the floor a bit before crossing safely. This scene helps reestablish the Daleks as a credible threat, since they are able to withstand a trap that would have killed our heroes.

The Doctor and Bellal are being watched on TV by a mysterious figure. Either this is a metatextual reference to the viewers watching at home, or else it is an alien at the "heart" of the city.

In a seemingly empty room, Bellal gets hypno-eyesed into trying to shoot the Doctor with the Dalek gun. Dalek guns are so dangerous they can threaten the Doctor when the Daleks aren't even there! The Doctor again uses the sonic screwdriver to make a noise (one of the more reasonable uses it gets put to, it is a sonic screwdriver after all) that causes Bellal to hesitate long enough for the Doctor to dispaw him of the gun. Then Bellal is freed from the hypno-eyes, and they are both permitted to pass into the next room.

The Doctor has a theory about the city's purpose in doing all these tests to allow them inside:

"By passing these tests we've proved that we have an intelligence level that could be useful. We might have some knowledge or science that they could add to their databanks."

He adds to this

"Well, if I'm right, the ultimate test will be an assault on our sanity, so be ready for it."

The next room has flashing lights and distorting SFX in it. The Doctor shouts out

"Fight it! It's an illusion. It's an illusion! You have no substance. No truth! You do not exist. You do not exist!"

When it passes, the Doctor looks very tired and ready for some sleeps. He probably had enough of this sort of thing back in The Mind of Evil. The Doctor and Bellal go into the next room and see the alien watching the TV, but the TV is blank and the alien slowly collapses and disappears.

The real brain of the city is not an alien, but a small plastic box that looks like a prototype version of Orac. The Doctor tries to break it, but the city fights back by starting to manifest two mannys. The Doctor says this means

"The city is creating antibodies. They're trying to neutralise us."

It's a race against time to see who can break who first.

Outside the city, the Daleks have given the mannys Galloway and Hamilton two bombs with which to blow up the beacon on the top of the city. This is an odd subplot in that, if it succeeds, it will render everything that the Doctor and Bellal have been doing in this episode redundant. They climb to the top where Galloway decides they only need one bomb for this, and can keep the other for later.

Sarah helps Tarrant escape, which leads the Dalek who was guarding her to overact itself to death:

"HUMAN FEMALE HAS ESCAPED. I HAVE FAILED. FEMALE PRISONER HAS ESCAPED. I HAVE FAILED! I HAVE FAILED! SELF-DESTRUCT! I HAVE FAILED! DESTRUCT! I HAVE FAILED! DESTRUCT! FAILED! FAILED! FAILED!"

The antibody creatures attack the Doctor and Bellal. The Daleks arrive (sadly we did not get to see how they got past the last two tests) and the creatures attack them instead, allowing the Doctor and Bellal to run away - the Doctor's sabotage allowing them to run all the way back out of the city. The Daleks also want to run away, and start shouting

"EVACUATE! EVACUATE! EVACUATE! RETIRE TO CITY ENTRANCE. FASTER! FASTER!"

The Daleks make Galloway and Hamilton load sacks of Parrinium onto their spaceship. The Doctor and Bellal meet up with Sarah and Tarrant, but they are all captured by the Daleks just after the bomb goes off and destroys the city's beacon. Instead of killing them, the Dalek acts like a classic James Bond baddy by both telling the Doctor their plan:

"WE HAVE ALL THE PARRINIUM WE NEED. WITH IT, WE CAN FORCE THE SPACE POWERS TO ACCEDE TO OUR DEMANDS. IF THEY DO NOT, MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ON THE OUTER PLANETS WILL PERISH."

and then leaving them to die in a slower but more diabolical way than just shooting them would be:

"WHEN OUR SHIP IS IN SPACE, WE WILL FIRE A PLAGUE MISSILE ONTO THE SURFACE OF THIS PLANET. THE PLAGUE WILL DESTROY ALL LIFE AND MAKE FURTHER LANDINGS HERE IMPOSSIBLE."

But the Daleks haven't noticed that Galloway isn't among their prisoners any more - who would have though that their racist 'all mannys look the same (except for the Doctor, who almost always looks different)' attitude would come back to nom them?

The Daleks' spaceship takes off, leaving our heroes behind. Sarah reveals that she and Tarrant switched the Parrinium for "bags of sand" and the real Parrinium is on the mannys' spaceship.

The Daleks are getting ready to fire their "plague missile" from their computer with Chock-a-block buttons when Galloway blows them all up with the bomb - a classic self-sacrifice from El Tel as a climax for the story.

The Doctor and Sarah see the city melting, as though it were made of polystyrene and had had polystyrene cement poured all over it by a clumsy SFX manny. The Doctor says

"It's rather a pity in a way; now the universe is down to 699 wonders."

What's so good about Death to the Daleks?

Death to the Daleks* carries on from the previous year's Planet of the Daleks in being full of Terry Nation goodness: a mysterious planet and city to explore (with parallels to the Dalek's own city on Skaro from their very first story), a Tarrant, a plague, a rare chemical with MacGuffin properties, mannys (and aliens) being used as slave labour, a threatening figure who turns out to be an ally, a once-advanced civilisation now fallen to barbarism, puzzles used as an intelligence test, a race against time, and all ending with a self-sacrifice. It really feels like El Tel went out of his way to fill his scripts with all the things we love about his stories.

It is also notable for being the last Dalek story of the original series not to feature Davros, and as such it is the last time the Daleks get to be "brilliant technicians" and scientists in their own right, on top of being murderous pepperpots who like shouting "EXTERMINATE!"

That said, the Daleks are possibly at their least threatening ever in this story. It's not their lack of "projected energy weapons" that's the cause of this, but rather the distinctly unthreatening incidental music sting that accompanies and undermines them wherever they go.

So sadly I must conclude Death to the Daleks is not all good mews - as well as the usual trouble with pacing in part one to ensure the cliffhanger comes in the right place, there are other signs of difficulties with the scripting or the production process. Most obviously there is the subplot with the bomb - necessary for the story's conclusion, yes, but invalidating much of the Doctor's own adventures in the process. Said adventures in the Exxilon city are also oddly paced, and while the cliffhanger ending to part three is brilliant, it has the feeling of being unintentional or unplanned as a point upon which to end an episode.

While Bellal is a great character and worthy one-off Companion for the Doctor, his accompanying of the Doctor to the city means Sarah has to be left behind in the less interesting (but functional) subplot involving the spacemannys and their need for Parrinium. This may mean Sarah has been sidelined in her third story, but it allows us to switch between the two plotlines and so pad out the runtime. That this should be required in only a four-part story is not a good sign, and may indicate that Terry Nation - perhaps uniquely of all Doctor Who writers - was more suited to writing longer stories than short ones.

* Oh, apparently it is called that, mew. Just when you think El Tel is at his most predictable, he pulls a complete subversion of a standard story naming convention out of his writer's hat of tricks. Good old Terry Nation!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Death of the Daleks Part Three

El Tel has a thing about metal tentacles attacking heroes - he would later use something similar in Redemption - although I don't think he likes them as much as the makers of Japanese cartoons seem to.

Sarah meets Bellal, who is a friendly Exxilon. Before they can help the Doctor, they have to hide from the Daleks who are coming, along with their komedy theme tune. 

The Doctor hides from the tentacle until a Dalek comes and draws its attention and gets pewed instead of the Doctor. Then he goes back to Sarah and describes the tentacle as a "root."

"Yes, it must have been one of those sort of underground support systems for the city, I should imagine."

Sarah asks him what happened to the Dalek.

"The root: one. Dalek: nil."

he replies. They run away with Bellal before the other Dalek returns to the scene. This leads into a chase scene that is once again utterly undermined by the undramatic music that is accompanying the Daleks everywhere in this story.

When they are safe, Bellal gives the Doctor and Sarah exposition about the Exxilons:

Bellal: "Exxilon had grown old before life had even begun on other planets. Our ancestors solved the mysteries of science, built craft that travelled through space. They were the supreme beings of the universe."

Doctor: "What destroyed their power? War?"

Bellal: "No. They created their own destruction. Using all their knowledge, they built a city that would last through all of time."

Sarah: "And they succeeded. It looked as though it was built only yesterday."

Bellal: "They used their sciences to make the city into a living thing. It could protect itself, repair itself, maintain itself. They even gave it a brain."

Doctor: "I see. So the city became an entity, though greater and more powerful than the many small parts that had created it."

Bellal: "Yes, it then had no need of those who had made it. Our people had created a monster. They tried to destroy it. Instead it destroyed them, and drove out the survivors. Now we, and the other Exxilons you met, are all that remain."

The Exxilons are now divided into two groups, one that worships the city, and Bellal's group who want to destroy it but don't know how.

At the same time the Daleks have deduced that the city is responsible for their energy being drained. They too want to destroy it, and plan to send a patrol of two Daleks to go to the city to investigate it.

A root appears and pews an alien, then a Dalek.

Back with the Doctor, Bellal and Sarah, they are talking about the pictures on the side of the city. The Doctor says he has seen them before.

Doctor: "On the walls of a temple in Peru."

Sarah: "Oh, that's impossible!"

Doctor: "Yes, that's what they said about the Peruvian temple as well. Yes, it's one of Earth's great mysteries, that no primitive man could possibly have built such a structure. Well, now we've solved it."

When they reach the city the Doctor says

"Well now, that must be one of the 700 wonders of the universe."

then he sends Sarah to warn the spacemannys to get away as soon as they get power back, before the Daleks get a chance to betray them. Though really I think he just wants to go off with his new friend Bellal, lol.

The Doctor and Bellal reach the city and see the picture markings.

Doctor: "It's beautiful. Beautiful."

Bellal: "To you, perhaps. To us, it is evil."

Good thing Bellal is here, or the Doctor could end up with his face getting melted. They are still looking at the "symbols" when the Daleks approach, their music in tow as ever and presumably making stealth even more difficult for them than normal. They start shooting, but the Doctor and Bellal get inside just in time, because the Doctor had luckily just solved the puzzle of how to open the door:

Bellal: "What did you do?"

Doctor: "Well, I simply picked out the symbol that appeared to be different and traced its outline on the wall."

Bellal: "And that made it slide open?"

Doctor: "Well, I can't think what else."

The Doctor is so clever he can even solve puzzles by mistaik.

They are trapped in a room unless they can solve another puzzle, with skeletons of aliens who didn't manage to solve it left there as a warning of what will happen if they can't. This test is a fiendish maze, that takes the Doctor more time to explain to Bellal than to solve himself. It was harder for them to find the puzzle than to solve it, which must have been very embarrassing for the skeletons.

They get into the next room just before the Daleks get into the room they have left behind, which does add an extra element of danger to the Doctor and Bellal's situation, that they have to solve their own puzzles in less time than the Daleks take to solve theirs, so that they are always at least one step ahead and can avoid being exterminated. This added bit of jeopardy helps make up for the fact that the tests themselves are not proving very challenging on their own.

The Doctor and Bellal are proceeding cautiously forward through corridors when suddenly the Doctor says

"Stop, don't move!"

In front of them there is a red pattern on the floor.

Cliffhanger!

The crash into the end credits is perfectly timed, and this is one of the all time great cliffhangers, because it is so mysterious. It could mean absolutely anything, and we have no idea whatsoever what could lie in store for the Doctor and Bellal next episode. Unless we have seen this story before, of course. Mew.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Death of the Daleks Part Two

The Daleks have had their weapons' energy drained just like the TARDIS lights (although I notice the lights on the Dalek domes still go on and off as usual). The Doctor comes forward and smugly says

Doctor: "Well, well, well. Daleks without the power to kill. How does it feel?"

Dalek: "KEEP AWAY! KEEP AWAY!"

The Daleks are scared of the Doctor, lol. While this will one day become commonplace (and so detract a lot of credibility from the Daleks as a galactic menace), it is still a novelty here.

Captain Railton suggests "joining forces" and, though the Doctor warns him not to trust the Daleks, even he has to admit that they could be useful:

"They're brilliant technicians. It was their inventive genius that made them one of the greatest powers in the universe. Remember that."

The other mannys don't like it, but they have to go along with it.

The Daleks confer among themselves and we hear (part of) their secrets that they are keeping from the Doctor and the mannys. Obviously the Daleks will want to betray the mannys as soon as "they are no further use," but also they want the Parrinium for a secret reason (though we don't get to know what that is yet), and there are more Daleks than the four the mannys have seen, and these are being kept hidden for now.

The Doctor, the mannys and the Daleks travel side by side through a location that looks a lot like the location where the Doctor and the Daleks met in Frontier in Space, with lots of high vantage points from which they can be secretly observed by Exxilon aliens. The komedy incidental musical theme, introduced when the Daleks first appeared, recurs here and robs the scene of any dramatic potential.

The aliens attack. Railton is shot and goes

The Daleks shout "EXTERMINATE!" repeatedly, but uselessly, because they can't exterminate anything without their pewpewpew guns. The aliens surround and batter one of the Daleks until it explodes, creating an iconic image for this story.

The aliens capture the Doctor, the mannys and two Daleks, and take them to the other plot where Sarah has been since she got captured, and where the incidental music is more fitted to creating a suspenseful atmosphere. They are all locked in a big cell together, which presents an amusing sight of Daleks being imprisoned in the same place as mannys and trundling about in circles - their equivalent of pacing up and down, I suppose.

Back on their spaceship, the hidden Daleks have managed to make guns that they can use in spite of the energy drain - the Dalek equivalent of the Doctor's oil lamp W-wordaround.

"HURRAY FOR OLD-FASHIONED GUNPOWDER," they don't say. They even use a tiny TARDIS to test their new old guns on, lol.

With these they are able to easily kill the aliens they encounter.

"PRIMITIVE WEAPONS MODERATELY EFFICIENT."

is the Dalek assessment.

The Doctor and Sarah are about to be sacrificed when the Daleks come in and save them by shooting aliens and causing confusion, allowing the Doctor and Sarah to run away. Sarah, who has not seen Daleks before, thinks they are robots (so not a fan after all, then) and asks the Doctor how come they haven't been drained of their energy.

Doctor: "Because they're only half robot, Sarah. Inside each of those shells is a living, bubbling lump of hate."

Sarah: "You mean they've got legs?"

Doctor: "No, they move by psychokinetic power."

Sarah: "I see."

Doctor: "Do you?"

Sarah: "No."

Lol. This is as good an explanation as we are likely to get as to why Dalek technology is only affected by the energy drain when the plot needs it to be.

With the tables turned and the aliens now the prisoners, Galloway, who is now in charge of the mannys, is under the mistaiken impression that they are still in equal partnership with the Daleks. The Daleks soon put him in his place when he tries to tell them what to do:

Dalek: "YOUR ADVICE IS NOT REQUIRED."

Galloway: "Now, wait a minute... we agreed we're working together."

Dalek: "WE ARE IN COMMAND! YOU WILL OBEY OUR ORDERS!"

This being a Terry Nation story, the Doctor and Sarah aren't safe for a moment, they have run from one peril straight to another. In the tunnel they are in they hear the raring of a monster. As if that isn't enough peril, they are also being followed by two Daleks and (separately) an alien. The Doctor leaves Sarah behind on her own, in order to increase the tension and double the potential for jeopardy.

This allows for a double cliffhanger, as first Sarah is confronted by the alien who was stalking them, and then the Doctor sees a giant metal one-eyed snake. Hmm, I wonder what could have inspired a monster like that?

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Death of the Daleks Part One

Death to the Daleks* is the third story of season 11 of Doctor Who, starring Jon Pertwee as the Doctor and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith. It was written by Terry Nation, purr, so is bound to be fantastic. Let's get stuck straight in.

It starts with a manny running around a location until he gets shot by an arrow fired by an unseen assailant - a classic Terry Nation opening, somewhat reminiscent of The Android Invasion, or a smaller-scale version of the first scene massacre in Genesis of the Daleks. I expect he would probably have done something similar in Planet of the Daleks as well if only he hadn't had to recap the ending to Frontier in Space.

The Doctor and Sarah are in the TARDIS when the lights go out. The Doctor turns on "the emergency units" so that we can still see what's going on, but they soon turn off too. The TARDIS materialises in a rocky location, but inside it is dark and quiet. Sarah turns a torch on, but it soon goes dark as well. The Doctor eventually lights an "oil lamp" which stays on, prompting Sarah to say a line that you probably couldn't get away with these days:

"Hurray for old-fashioned oil."

There isn't enough power to open the TARDIS door, so the Doctor has to open it with his own paws using a "crank handle."

Outside they find a scary rock that makes Sarah scream. the Doctor thinks it is "some sort of lifeform that has become petrified," which is another classic Terry Nation concept, reminiscent of when the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan explored Skaro's petrified jungle. The one thing you can always rely on with El Tel is that he will never come up with a new idea when reusing an old one will do.

The Doctor and Sarah lay out the mystery at the heart of this story:

Doctor: "Some power emanating from this planet has stopped the TARDIS's energy banks. Now logically that power can hardly be of geological origin."

Sarah: "You mean somebody or something has caused it?"

Sarah goes back into the TARDIS to get more appropriately dressed for this planet's climate (perhaps a really long scarf?) or, as the Doctor puts it:

"Oh for heaven's sake girl, go and put something warm on."

As soon as Sarah and the Doctor are separated, two mysterious figures in big cloaks start to follow the Doctor. I'm glad I didn't try to count the number of Terry Nation clichés to be found in this story, I would already have run out of cat numbers. When he stoops to look at something on the ground, the mystery mannys run in and knock out the Doctor.

When Sarah leaves the TARDIS and starts looking for the Doctor, she is also followed by a cloaked figure. She finds the Doctor's oil lamp, and it has blood on it. Oh noes! These scenes are terrific at establishing atmosphere, helped out by the incidental music.

Sarah runs back to the TARDIS, but the cloaked manny is there already because the door is still open. Seeing two cloaked mannys outside, Sarah cranks the door closed. The one inside the TARDIS goes all POV monster on her and makes her scream, but then she beats it up with the crank handle. Opening the door once again, Sarah runs away.

Sarah wanders around trying to avoid more cloaked figures in a scene that goes on for a little bit too long, until she accidentally finds the pulsating, glowing white City of the Exxilons.

When the Doctor wakes up, he quickly escapes from his captors by using some Venusian Oojah on them. He also spends rather a long time wandering about on his own (no cat ever claimed that ensuring that the Daleks turn up just in time for the first cliffhanger was easy) before he meets a manny that attacks him. A second manny stops the fight and says sorry to the Doctor. These are Galloway and Captain Railton, the latter played by John "moral duty" Abineri. They take the Doctor back to their base where he meets the rest of their mannys, including Jill Tarrant.

Tarrant! Good old Terry Nation, as dependable as whatever it is that makes clocks go. The only surprise is that none of them is called Dortmun.

They think Sarah will be safe from the cloaked alien Exxilons "just so long as she didn't go near that forbidden city of theirs." Uh-oh! In a textbook case of dramatic irony, we know that is exactly where Sarah is.

"They treat it as a sort of shrine. If you're caught near it, it's certain death."

Even as they speak it fades to show Sarah looking at the city (with vaguely churchy incidental music to emphasise the point about it being a scared sacred place), until an alien runs up and captures her.

Back at the spaceship, the mannys give the Doctor more exposition, this time about why they are on this planet:

"Well, the outer worlds are being ravaged by a disease. The colonists are dying in their thousands. Another ten million men, women and children will die unless we help them, and help them quickly. Every hour we're stuck here on this planet, the death toll's mounting."

They are here for a rare mineral that will cure this disease. Sadly it is not Taranium, it is called "Parrinium." Another spaceship is coming in to land, so the mannys all rush to see if it is friendly.

A group of the aliens have Sarah prisoner. They do some vaguely religious-sounding chanting while one of them commands

"Prepare her for sacrifice!"

It feels as though Sarah has found herself in a tonally totally different story to the one the Doctor is in - more folk horror than space adventure; more The Dæmons than The Daleks.

The spaceship, a flying saucer, lands and it is only then that one of the mannys says

"That doesn't look like an Earth ship, sir."

They're not the most observant of mannys, are they? But he's right, because when the door opens out come... Daleks!

This dramatic revelation is completely undermined by the ludicrous, comical incidental music that, for some reason, accompanies the Daleks exiting their ship. This despite the first thing the Daleks say being the threatening and scary line:

"THE EARTH CREATURES ARE TO BE EXTERMINATED. FIRE AT MY COMMAND. TOTAL EXTERMINATION. FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!"

The Daleks fire their weapons for a few seconds, long enough for us to get a reaction shot of the Doctor and Tarrant being scared (but, crucially, not being exterminated) before the end credits start. This could almost be a subversion of a typical end of part one Dalek cliffhanger, since the question viewers are left asking is not 'What will happen next?' or even 'How will the Doctor escape from this one?' but rather 'What in space just happened?'

* Is that really the title? It looks wrong somehow, surely it should be Something of the Daleks? Power, Evil, Day, Planet, Genesis, Destiny, Resurrection, Revelation and Remembrance all fit that pattern - is this really the odd one out? Ah well, never mind, I'll get the thumbs to fix it in the edit, mew.

You Only Review You Only Live Twice Twice

Big Gay Longcat and Expensive Luxury Cat review James Bond: You Only Live Twice (part two)

The appearance of Burt Kwouk as a senior SECTRE henchmanny confirms that Goldfinger is as much a part of the overarching SECTRE plot that spans all of Sean Connery's Bond films as any of the others. While it is true that Burt Kwouk's character did get shot by Goldfinger, and presumably killed, this film isn't called You Only Live Twice for nothing.

Number One meets with two mannys and, as usual, gets Blofeld to do the talking for him. He shows the mannys his pool with piranha fish in it, so that they know he is a cat who means serious business. They were going to pay SECTRE to start World War 3 between the USA and USSR, and Number One wants $100 million in advance - although he presumably wouldn't have much time in which to spend it.

Next he summons in Mr Osato and Number 11 to tell them that the manny they met wasn't Mr Fisher really, it was James Bond. He can tell because only Bond uses a Walther PPK gun. This means that Bond is alive (again) and that they failed to kill him (again). Osato blames Number 11, and Blofeld delivers the classic line

"This organisation does not tolerate failure."

He sends them away, but then uses a secret floor button to drop the bridge over the pool when Number 11 is on it, so she drops in and gets wet. She also then gets nomed by the piranhas, which is almost as bad.

Blofeld shouts at Osato

"Kill Bond! Now!"

or maybe it is Number One shouting, because it sounds a bit like

"Kill Bond! Meow!"

Tiger Tanaka takes Bond to his "ninja training school" where the ninjas train in fighting and shouting at the camera.

"The art of concealment" indeed, mew. They also have gadgets like Q, and Tiger shows Bond a pew gun hidden in a cigarette - hmm, I wonder if that is foreshadowing at all? Tiger wants Bond to do some ninja training, which seems reasonable, but the rest of his plan is as laughable as it is pointless - he wants Bond to "become a Japanese" and to "take a wife" so that he blends in.

To "become a Japanese" involves Bond getting put in some make up and a bad wig. We don't know why they bothered, considering all those other times when Bond hasn't disguised his face even slightly, and can only conclude they must have had some kind of minimum quota for the racism in the film, which a spot of gratuitous yellowface helped them reach.

Bond is sleeping next to Aki when a SECTRE assassin tries to poison him, but misses and gets Aki instead. She goes

Aki had to be killed off to make way for a different character to take part in the sham marriage, which Tiger is still insisting upon as a vital part of his plan. It is utterly baffling why this plot point is necessary - even more so than why it was part of Tiger's plan in the first place - since Kissy Suzuki appears within a couple of scenes of Aki's death, fills exactly the same function in the plot as Aki and, by replacing Aki in this way, completely undermines the film's theme of mannys living twice.

No second life for Aki, it seems, unless of course she actually is Kissy Suzuki - who is never named as such on screen, after all, so she could conceivably be Aki - and has merely taken the more conventional way of living a second time by being played by a different actor. Yes, we must conclude that Aki and Kissy are the same character, and anything that might contradict this can be safely ignored as less of a plot hole than why SECTRE would want to provoke a war between two superpowers with enough nuclear weapons between them to destroy the entire world.

The wedding scene is the most appalling padding and it drags on for ages. Finally the plot is allowed to proceed as Bond, Tiger and the new Aki go to the island. They see the funeral of a manny who died in a cave and, since it is the only clue they have, Bond decides to investigate it.

The cave shows Bond which volcano to investigate, and when he and Aki reach it they find that the wet bit inside is really "metal." It starts to open underneath Bond's feet, so now they know it is really a hollowed-out volcano lair. Aki goes to get Tiger and other ninja reinforcements, while Bond stealths his way into the lair before the roof closes again.

The Americans have launched another spaceship, so SECTRE is preparing to send their own spaceship to nom it. Bond rescues the spacemannys from the first American spaceship, and they help him steal a spacesuit so that he can pretend to be one of the SECTRE spacemannys. We are not clear on what Bond's plan is beyond this point, maybe Bond just really wants the chance to be a spacemanny and go into space? Sadly for Bond, he'll have to wait for a later film in order to realise that ambition, because he gets caught by Blofeld and taken to the control room.

 

"James Bond, allow me to introduce myself. I am Ernst Stavro Blofeld." 

Blofeld reveals himself to be being played by Donald Pleasance. He does this by leaning forward slightly, when really he should have done it in a much more dramatic fashion, such as by spinning around on his chair. Nevertheless it cannot take away from the cleverness in the fact that the first time that we, the audience, ever see Blofeld's face is at the same time as Bond himself does.

"They told me you were assassinated in Hong Kong."

"Yesh, thish ish my shecond life."

"You only live twice, Mr Bond."

Clang!

The scene of the SECTRE rocket launching is slow and lengthy, but unlike the fake wedding scene earlier it is incredibly tense and dramatic because the stakes are so high and yet Bond has been captured and is forced to watch it all powerlessly. There is some hope, however, as we see Tiger and his ninja army approach the volcano. But Tiger may have brought too many ninjas for them to be effective, as SECTRE starts shooting them with hidden guns.

Blofeld tells Bond

"The firing power inside my crater is enough to annihilate a small army. You can watch it all on TV. It's the last programme you're likely to see."

In a subtle but amusing touch, the television screen they look at is in the place of the fourth wall, so it looks to us as though they are looking at us.

"Well if I'm going to be forced to watch televishion, may I shmoke?"

Bond has identified Blofeld's weakness - he can't resist the chance to make a witty remark. What is a strength in our hero is a weakness in his enemy - the difference being that Bond waits until after he has killed a baddy before he quips about it.

"Yes, give him his cigarettes. It won't be the nicotine that kills you Mr Bond."

Bond uses the cigarette to shoot a baddy, and then he pulls the lever to open the crater floor. Or is it the lair ceiling? Confused cats are confused, and only Ceiling Cat knows the true answer. Bond gets recaptured, but not before he has let the ninjas in.

The ninjas start blowing up the base, and they and the SECTRE henchmannys get into a gunfight. (Some of the ninjas have brought their swords to this gunfight, and this reveals that some of the SECTRE mannys are really robots, because they make the same metal noise when they get stabbed as when they parry with their own weapons.) Blofeld closes the shielded "shutters" to keep the control room safe. More importantly, it keeps Number One safe too... or does it?

Despite Blofeld's claim that the shutters are "impregnable" the ninja bombs explode a hole into it. Bond may be happy but Number One does not like this one little bit. In case you don't speak cat, here is what he is saying at this moment:

"Blofeld you idiot! Your plan has gone wrong, again, and now I'm getting scares! This organisation does not tolerate failure, remember? Next time I'm going to get another actor to play you - get me Savalas on the Tellyphone!"

Blofeld opens a secret passage and then says

"This is the price of failure, Mr Bond."

before he shoots Osato. Then he says

"Goodbye Mr Bond."

but Tiger rescues Bond with a ninja throwing star to Blofeld's paw, causing his second shot to miss. Notice that Number One escaped into the secret passage, off screen, in between shots. Blofeld then escapes in his tiny monorail before he, too, disappears in between shots.

Bond, Tiger and Aki now have to fight their way back into the control room so they can use the button (which Blofeld conveniently demonstrated to Bond earlier) to make the SECTRE spaceship self-destruct.

In Bond's way is Blofeld's big henchmanny Hans, so they have a fistfight until they end up on the bridge over the pool, which Hans ultimately ends up falling off to become piranha noms. Bond quips

"Bon appétit."

which would have made more sense if it had previously been established that Hans was French, mew.

Bond blows up the SECTRE spaceship in the nick of time, but Blofeld still has one spiteful trick to play. His monorail has taken him to another self-destruct switch, and this one is for his lair.

The lair starts to blow up, and it looks like the volcano is erupting with flows of lava and everything - perhaps the implication is that the self-destruct has actually caused a volcanic eruption? Bond, Tiger, Aki and some of the ninjas escape down a tunnel to the cave Bond discovered earlier. From there they can swim to the sea, where some friendly planes are dropping very convenient inflatable dinghies for them. Bond and Aki get into one together, while Tiger and the other ninjas all just seem to vanish.

Well, they are ninjas.

Bond and Kissy-Aki are having kiffs when a submarine rises up from underneath them. We see that M and Miss Moneypenny are on board, so presumably it is the same one they were on earlier in the film, in a vague attempt at bringing the narrative full circle in the hopes of arriving at a form of thematic closure. M orders Miss Moneypenny to

"Tell him to come below and report."

"It'll be a pleasure, sir."

And so, aside from a slow pan away from the submarine over which the end credits commence rolling, the film ends on Miss Moneypenny smirking at the thought of interrupting Bond while he is in the middle of having kiffs. Naughty Miss Moneypenny.

Expensive Luxury Cat's rating: Expensive and Luxury