Space Buttons

Despite the impending pantomime season this is nothing to do with a Space Panto written by Terry Nation. Sorry to disappoint, zanni.

This is actually about the visible futuristic space buttons I just noticed on Avon's costume, which you can see here:

Isn't it odd that I never noticed these before? I suppose I must have been too busy looking at Avon.

Purr.

Doctor Who Night 2023: The 60th Anniversary

Since this year is the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who, we had a special extra-looooong Doctor Who Night. Its theme was 'the Bad in the Good and the Good in the Bad.' Even the theme was long!

Caves of Androzani

The Good

Just about everything. I mean. this story is about as close to purrfection that a Doctor Who story can get without having either Paul Darrow or cats in it. Robert Holmes wrote a lot of great stories, but this is his magnum opus in which every character and plot thread come together beautifully. There are three great cliffhangers out of four episodes, culminating in the greatest depiction of the Doctor's regeneration at the end. It's Peter Davison's best story as the Doctor, and Colin Baker's too for that matter.

The Bad

This Magma Beast costume isn't all that great.

Other than that, the only downside to Caves of Androzani is that Doctor Who can't be as good as this all the time. It is Doctor Who written for adults, which is nice to have occasionally. And I mean really written for adults, with grown-up political themes and characterisation, not just putting in gratuitous sex and swearing (like Torchwood, mew). But even though the series could do with being like this more often than it is in reality, the makers mustn't forget the core audience of kittens and little mannys for too long.

If the BBC wanted to make a grown-up sci-fi series they could easily do it, but it wouldn't be Doctor Who. It would be more like... Blakes 7.

Earthshock

The Good

While not in the same league of quality as Caves of Androzani (few Doctor Who stories are), Earthshock is an attempt at making a blockbuster action story on a BBC budget, and it is a pretty good attempt for all that.

A lot of this story's reputation rests on the shock appearance of the Cybermannys at the end of part one, which was a genuine surprise twist for TV audiences in 1982 (it isn't called Earthshock of the Cybermannys for a start), but that doesn't hold up today since it is hard to avoid the presence of the Cybermannys on the DVD box, or the iPlayer episode thumbnails. But even without that it holds up, with the Cybermannys used well as an implacable foe for the Doctor, and we get some classic Cybermanny tropes returning, such as a traitor among the mannys and having Cybermannys bursting out of their cardboard containers to go on a march.

The Bad

This special effect doesn't hold up. They might have got away with it in the era before home video, DVD, iPlayer, etc. but even then it gets used twice because it appears in the cliffhanger to part three and then in the reprise at the start of part four, so twice the opportunity to spot the joins.

You might be surprised that I also consider the death of Adric to be a bad thing. Reducing the number of Companions from three to two was undeniably a benefit of this - almost every story of season 19 showed us proof that three Companions was too many - and choosing the most annoying of the three to get rid of was also to their credit, but the way this was done was... not great.

First, you're never going to convince that Doctor Who is an 'anyone can die' kind of show. It's not The Sandbaggers. Likewise, killing off a Companion to show 'consequences' doesn't W-word when there are dozens of other occasions when the regulars survive similar situations. These general complains aside, the specific way in which Adric was killed off was handled badly because he dies off-screen, and the only confirmation we get in Earthshock that he is definitely ded is that the end credits change to be silent* and over a picture of Adric's destroyed badge on a black background.

Without the meta-confirmation this could simply have been a cliffhanger, with audiences reasonably expecting that Adric would be rescued by the Doctor using his time machine in the next episode. So by having Earthshock end in this way it winds up being a problem for the next story as well...

But before we get to that...

Dimensions in Time

This 30th anniversary story is (for now) the midpoint of Doctor Who's history, so it seems appropriate that it should be the midpoint of our Doctor Who Night celebration.

The Bad

A 15 minute long story that had to juggle all the surviving Doctors, as many Companions as they could get, the Rani and a "menagerie" of monsters, plus a crossover with Eastenders and a requirement that it be shot in 3-D would have been a struggle for even the best of writers. But the way this was written it barely holds together in a coherent manner, with one thing happening after another for reasons that even Sylvester McCoy rattling off technobabble cannot justify.

The only thing that saves this from being utterly terrible is that it isn't long enough to outstay its welcome as a bit of lightweight Children in Need entertainment from the strange days of the 1990s after the cancellation of the original series.

The Good

It's undeniably lovely to see some of the Doctors and Companions on screen together again, regardless of the nonsense they're taking part in. This is also the only time that Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart appeared together with Colin Baker's Doctor, allowing him to complete the set.

The scene where Lalla Ward as Romana meets Grant and Phil Mitchell (Ross Kemp and... the other one) and icily no-sells their cockney hardmanny act is the one genuinely good bit, ending on her delivering the punchline

"Doctor who?"

By the way, Dimensions in Time is canon. All cats know this to be true.

Time-Flight

The Bad

So why can't the Doctor save Adric again?

Tegan: "We can change what happened if we materialise before Adric was killed."

Doctor: "And change your own history?"

Tegan: "Look, the freighter could still crash into Earth. That doesn't have to be changed. Only Adric doesn't have to be on board."

Doctor: "Now listen to me, both of you. There are some rules that cannot be broken even with the TARDIS. Don't ever ask me to do anything like that again. You must accept that Adric is dead."

It's come to something when Tegan is the voice of reason, mew. If we take into consideration some of the stunts the Doctor would later perform with the TARDIS in the new series (especially when it came to saving River Sue) then it seems like he just didn't want to save Adric.

But this isn't even the worst of it. Within a minute the Doctor suggests a "special treat to cheer us all up" and after that Adric is practically forgotten about! This is then followed by a knockabout komedy bit when the Doctor dashes out of the TARDIS in a panic to check the cricket scores in a newspaper.

The story has barely begun, and Time-Flight has started as it means to go on. The Master is the baddy in it, but he spends the first half in disguise as "Kalid" for no reason other than so he can be revealed as the Master at the end of part two (including rigging up some green slime to come out of his face when he is 'killed' as Kalid). The studio sets are poor, and many of the effects rubbish - I have to wonder if most of the budget for this got spent on Earthshock instead. Either that or they spent it on getting that Concorde wheel into the studio!

Having just thinned down the regular cast by disposing of Adric, we now get a number of guest characters acting as additional, temporary Companions - Professor Hayter (played by Nigel "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" Stock) and the three crewmannys from the Concorde (including among them Michael "Sandbaggers" Cashman). Hayter gets to make a noble sacrifice, while the Concorde pilots act like comic relief in their clumsy attempts to help the Doctor, including trying to fly the TARDIS like their aeroplane.

Therein lies the main problem with Time-Flight - that of its tonal inconsistency. If it had been an outright comedy then it could have succeeded much better on its own terms (save for being inappropriately placed right after the tragic - stop laughing - death of Adric), but the light-hearted bits sit uncomfortably alongside the attempts at serious drama.

The Good

Those comedic elements are the parts of the story that W-word best, from the comedy of errors at Heathrow that leads to the Doctor getting involved in the story in the first place (including the exasperated airport manager and his security manny, the latter played by Sir Frank from Yes Prime Minister), to Anthony Ainley's purposefully melodramatic performance as "Kalid" (though this might have been better if it had avoided certain racial stereotypes that mean it hasn't dated well), to the good-natured Concorde crew's clumsy attempts at assistance, and then culminating in the Doctor leaving Tegan on Earth by mistaik.

The Doctor didn't seem in too much of a hurry to go back for her either...

Arc of Infinity

The Bad

What is the worst thing about Arc of Infinity? Giving us Gallifrey on the cheap so the BBC production team could have a holiday film in Amsterdam? No. Wasting Michael Gough in a nothing part? No. Time Lords called "Damon" and "Talor" (pronounced as "Tailor")? No. The ridiculous-looking Ergon monster costume? No. Besides which, that's barely more silly than the helmet Colin Baker has to wear as Commander Maxil. The fact that they produced a story where the Doctor won by (effectively, to all intents and purposes) gunning down the baddy? Not quite, though that is an unforgivable way to end a Doctor Who story.

The worst thing about Arc of Infinity is that it is boring. The first three episodes are some of the most padded in the show's run - quite an achievement for a four-parter. They certainly wanted to get their money's worth out of the Amsterdam filming, with loads of extraneous shots on location bulking out the runtime. At the same time the events on Gallifrey move at a glacial pace, with Maxil and his guards shuffling the Doctor and Nyssa in and out of different rooms just in the hopes that we don't notice that they're not actually doing anything to progress the plot.

Then, in part four, we get something genuinely interesting and unique in the show's history happening (see "The Good" below) and instead of spending time on this, it instead focuses on an extended chase through Amsterdam, showing off the location as much as possible. This was a story with its priorities in all the wrong places.

The Good

Basically, it's this scene.

Omega (Peter "Davo" Davison, although he's voiced by Ian "Stuart Hyde" Collier) has escaped from the anti-matter universe into the real world, but the "transfer" is unstable so he only has a limited amount of time before he is either sent back or else goes

He spends most of this time running away from the Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan, but gets a momentary respite when he stops and watches a quaint touristy steam organ and listens to it play a tinny version of Tulips from Amsterdam. He smiles at a little manny, and we get the sense that this is Omega enjoying his freedom while he can. The story has been at pains to tell us Omega is "insane" and must be stopped (and, to be fair, he has just recently murdered a manny in order to take his clothes for a disguise), but this is us seeing another side to him - the part that only wants to live and be free.

A metaphor for the brevity of life itself, this moment is all too fleeting.

Coda: The Daleks in Colour

Not strictly part of Doctor Who Night, but I also watched this this week.

The Bad

If you want to bring new mannys into watching the classics of Doctor Who, then colourising them makes sense, since it is well-known that, just as doggys see the world only in black and white, some mannys simply cannot watch TV when it is black & white.

What makes no sense, however, is cutting down a properly long seven-parter to less than half its runtime, and still filling it full of flashbacks to scenes from earlier in the selfsame story! Was the target audience for this not only mannys with no attention span but also no short-term memory? Mew!

The only conclusion I can draw is that this was an attempt to cut down Terry Nation's first masterpiece so that it resembled the sort of episode one might see in the new series of Doctor Who. My suspicions were confirmed by the incidental music - slathered over every second of every scene, and doing its best to drown out the dialogue. The resemblance to a modern television production was uncanny. RTD must be so proud - they've turned something written by El Tel in the 1960s into something that could have been produced by him today.

The Good

This scene has lost none of its power after 60 years. Purr.

* Well, that is if we don't count the alternative version:

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.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Planet of the Daleks Episode Six

The Doctor, Taron, Codal and Rebec escape from the Dalek by means of the Doctor throwing his Spiridon coat over it. By the time the Dalek has finished announcing

"I CANNOT SEE! VISION IMPAIRED!"

they have run away. This leads into more running around the corridors of the Dalek base being pursued by Daleks, similar to scenes we saw back in part three - even down to the Daleks trying the same plan of trapping our heroes in the "lowest levels" of their base. Except this time that is where the Doctor wants to get to, because they already have the set for it that is where the Dalek army is being kept.

The Daleks hear that the "Dalek Supreme" will "touch down on Spiridon shortly." They also now know that the Doctor is the Doctor:

"HE IS THE ONE KNOWN AS THE DOCTOR, THE GREATEST ENEMY OF THE DALEKS."

It is interesting that it took them so long to figure this out, and that it makes no difference to the plot that the Doctor is their "greatest enemy."

Outside, Jo and Latep see the Dalek Supreme's spaceship landing. The Dalek Supreme is a mix of gold and black, and it has bigger lights on its dome and a torch for its eye, so we can tell it must be a Very Important Dalek.

Jo: "I've never seen a Dalek like that before."

Latep: "He's something very special: one of the supreme council."

I'm not sure how Latep could know this, but it's not important, fun as the idea of Thal secret agents spying on the Dalek supreme council to get the latest gossip is. The Dalek Supreme even has his own incidental music, which we hear as he comes into the Dalek base and orders the Dalek army to be thawed out. He then turns on one of the local Daleks:

Dalek Supreme: "THE ACTIONS OF THE ALIENS HAS CAUSED CONSIDERABLE DISRUPTION OF OPERATIONS ON THIS PLANET."

Dalek: "THIS WAS A MATTER BEYOND MY CONTROL."

Dalek Supreme: "YOUR ORDERS WERE TO EXTERMINATE THEM."

Dalek: "IT HAS NOT BEEN POSSIBLE! WE HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO USE THE BACTERIA BOMB!"

Dalek Supreme: "THE RESPONSIBILITY WAS YOURS! YOU HAVE FAILED! THE SUPREME COUNCIL DOES NOT ACCEPT FAILURE!"

The Dalek Supreme then exterminates the unfortunate Dalek.

The Dalek army starts to wake up and some of them begin to move around, so the Doctor knows he hasn't much time left to do his plan. There are also Daleks trying to break in to exterminate our heroes, although they are stopped by an improvised barricade instead of the door so can't do another classic slow-cutting this time (signs of the previous slow-cutting remain in the set, which is a nice touch). A Dalek from the army, still woozy and grumpy from having just been woken up, knocks down the bomb before the Doctor can put it in position, so the Doctor has to climb in among the still-sleepy Daleks to get it back.

The Doctor finally explains his plan to the Thals and, of course, us:

Doctor: "Well, this whole area is simply honeycombed with ice tunnels. Now, a bomb put in the right place could so weaken those walls that the pressure of the ice would burst through the walls and flood this entire chamber."

Taron: "Bury the lot of them?"

Doctor: "That's the theory."

Rebec: "But it won't destroy them, just put them back into their deep frozen state of suspended animation."

Doctor: "Yes, but it would take centuries to melt them out."

Latep and Jo come in from the ventilation shaft and Latep uses one of the bombs to blow up the Daleks who have just breached the barricade. Then they join up with the others, meaning the separation of our heroes into two groups was completely pointless... except for making the story longer.

The Doctor and Codal set the other bomb, and it blows up more of the Daleks that were chasing them, as well as letting the "molten ice" in to make the Dalek army all wet and cold and unhappy. Poor Dalek army, they only wanted to have sleeps.

The remaining Daleks in the control room see what is happening, and are good enough to pass this on to us:

Dalek: "SENSORS REGISTERING ICE NOW ADVANCING THROUGH UPPER LEVELS!"

Dalek Supreme: "ADVISE SUPREME COMMAND THAT OUR ATTACK FORCE IS TOTALLY IMMOBILISED, AND THAT WE ARE THE ONLY SURVIVORS. SET SELF-DESTRUCT ON ALL INSTRUMENTS. WE ARE ABANDONING!  WE ARE ABANDONING! WE ARE ABANDONING! WE ARE ABANDONING! WE ARE ABANDONING!"

The Thals realise they can steal the Dalek Supreme's spaceship to get back to Skaro.

Codal thanks the Doctor and makes a gesture to him, which the Doctor returns. I suspect this gesture is the Thal equivalent of the manly handshake. Taron and Rebec also want to thank the Doctor (I said "thank"), but in a different way:

Taron: "Doctor, we'd never have succeeded without all your help. I wish there was some way of thanking you."

Doctor: "As a matter of fact, there is."

Rebec: "Yes Doctor?"

Doctor: "Throughout history, you Thals have always been known as one of the most peace loving peoples in the galaxy."

Taron: "I hope we always will be."

Doctor: "Yes, well, that's what I mean. When you get back to Skaro, you'll all be national heroes. Everybody will want to hear about your adventures."

Taron: "Of course."

Doctor: "So be careful how you tell that story, will you? Don't glamourise it. Don't make war sound like an exciting and thrilling game."

The Doctor gives both of them manly handshakes (and a Mary Whitehouse-sanctioned kiff for Rebec only) before he says goodbye.

Latep has asked Jo to come back to Skaro with him. Smoove, Latep, very smoove - even cat relationships aren't that fast. Jo says

"No, I'm sorry, Latep. I'm very fond of you, but you see, I've got my own world and my own life to go back to."

She gives him a consolation kiff on the cheek. 

Latep turns and immediately offers a manly handshake to the Doctor. Smoove. What a player.

The Doctor and Jo watch the Thals take off in the captured spaceship, but then they see the Dalek Supreme and the surviving Daleks coming after them and have to run back to the TARDIS. There is one final peril from the spore-spurting plants - a nice mirroring and callback to the opening of the story, just as you would expect from a master-craftsmanny like Terry Nation - and then they are safe.

The Dalek Supreme pews uselessly at the TARDIS as it dematerialises, then he turns to his minions and gives them a pep talk:

"PREPARATIONS WILL BEGIN AT ONCE TO FREE OUR ARMY FROM THE ICE. WE HAVE BEEN DELAYED, NOT DEFEATED. THE DALEKS ARE NEVER DEFEATED!"

The final scene is a coda in which Jo wants to go home to Earth instead of exploring the "many hundreds" of other worlds with the Doctor. This is a gentle bit of foreshadowing for what is to come in the next story, while also resembling the sort of bridge between episodes that used to be common in the more serialised era of the early years of Doctor Who.

What's so good about Planet of the Daleks?

What a treat it must have been for viewers of the show's 10th anniversary season - first the old Doctors returned, now the Doctor's oldest enemies return, written by their original writer, and in the same old style the programme used to be written in, even.

In the days* when it was not possible to watch the older Dalek stories whenever you wanted, this was a throwback to those early stories, with the Thals making their first appearance since the very first Dalek story, and the Doctor and Companions going constantly from one peril to the next as they move through the plot.

But those black-and-white, Hartnell-era stories were really only proto-Nation compared to Planet of the Daleks. Here we can see the full complement of El Tel's tricks of the trade all together in one story, a Best of Terry Nation if you will, or a Terry Nation's Greatest Hits: a countdown, a plague, a self-sacrifice, a hostile alien environment, a MacGyveresque solution to a problem, a character with a name like 'Tarrant,' "space medicine," etc. etc. As a wise cat once said:

Terry Nation, Terry Nation,

Terry Nation, that's what you need

If you want to be the best

And if you want to beat the rest

Oo-oo Terry Nation's what you need;

If you want to be a record breaker, oooooh.

And Terry Nation has never been more of a broken record than here.

Pertwee Six-Parter Padding Analysis

The amount of padding in this story is highly subjective, because, for a story with surprisingly short cliffhanger reprises (and even no reprise in one case), the main plot is very slight. Planet of the Daleks takes the form of an adventure story, with the heroes going from one peril to the next, and so the central plot is really just something to hang those escapades upon. This inevitably leaves a lot of the episodes' run time that could be considered inessential to that main story and therefore 'padding.'

Cutting out all the inessential sub-plots or side-perils could probably reduce this story down to about two parts, which can make it hard to watch in a single sitting because that two partsworth of main plot can feel very stretched when spread across six. This is felt even more acutely if watched back-to-back with Frontier in Space (given its own issues with padding) and I pity the fool that attempts to marathon those 12 episodes all together, even if they are intended to make one epic story between them. 

* Of course we are still living in those days, since there are still multiple episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan, containing plenty of Nationy goodness, that remain missing.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Planet of the Daleks Episode Five

Taron and Codal knock out a Spiridon so they can steal its purple coat for a disguise (also to look fabulous). Then Codal gets confused and forgets which one is Taron, lol. Other than that they are able to easily beat the Spiridons now that they have given away their one considerable advantage of being invisible.

The Doctor and Jo are approached by Wester, the friendly Spiridon who saved Jo earlier. Jo somehow knows his name even though it has not been mentioned on-screen before now. Wester tells them about the Daleks' "bacteria bomb."

Vaber is taken to the Daleks. He tries to run away but the Daleks exterminate him, as well as an unlucky Spiridon who happened to be standing nearby at the time. Taron and Codal steal back their bombs and run away, with the Daleks pursuing them shouting "PURSUE! PURSUE!"

The Doctor has a plan involving the "molten ice pools" and he says "it's an odd phenomenon, the water on this planet. It sustains sub-zero temperatures and yet remains semi-liquid." I don't think we're likely to get any more of a science lesson than that, it's just an excuse for Terry Nation to include ice volcanoes in his story.

The Daleks arrive at the plain of stones where the Doctor and Taron wrestle the first Dalek, and Jo, Codal, Latep and Rebec wrestle with the other Dalek, until they both end up in the pool of water molten ice, which they don't like at all because it is cold and wet.

In fact, Taron says

"The shock of the sudden cold must have killed them straight away."

This allows Rebec to 'do an Ian' and pretend to be a Dalek, while the Doctor, Taron and Codal disguise themselves as Spiridons. Jo and Latep are sent with a bomb to try and blow up a tunnel to bury the Dalek army, so where they're going they don't need robes coats.

The disguised team get inside the Dalek base, and see that Wester has already bluffed himself inside by asking to speak to the Daleks' "section leader." The Doctor is somehow able to recognise Wester even though he is wearing the same purple coat as all the other Spiridons wear. And no, it's not racist to say that they 'all look the same' when they are all invisible, mew.

Wester takes the lid off the Daleks' bacteria tank and then goes

a classic example of a self-sacrifice. This makes one of the Daleks in the laboratory very unhappy and it says

"WE CANNOT LEAVE HERE. NO ONE CAN ENTER. WE CAN NEVER LEAVE HERE. NEVER! NEVER! NEVER!"

getting increasingly agitated as it goes on in a typical Daleky way. This is because the Daleks in the laboratory are immune to the bacteria, but none of the other Daleks have been given the antidote yet. They can't get the antidote without going into the laboratory, and they can't go into the laboratory without the antidote.

The (real) Dalek that came in behind the disguised team spots that one of the Thals has a visible boot under his coat and so cannot be an invisible Spiridon. It shouts out

"WAIT! YOU ARE NOT SPIRIDONS! EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY!"

Cliffhanger! Cliffhanger! Cliffhanger!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Planet of the Daleks Episode Four

There is, unusually, no recap at all of part three, and this episode begins with the Doctor's plan succeeding and he, Taron, Codal and Rebec all lift off into the ventilation shaft. The Daleks burst into the room and say that our heroes must be hiding, because they don't think to look up... for a while at least.

They send for "an anti-gravitational disc" so that they can chase after our heroes, and we all know Daleks love chases almost as much as doggies.

Terry Nation, meanwhile, loves a countdown, so the Daleks find the Thals' explosives and set their timers going so they will explode. After the Daleks have gone, Jo sneaks in and changes the countdown timers. Unfortunately for her, a big rock then lands on her hed and knocks her out, leaving her in peril of being blown up when the countdown has finished counting down.

When Jo wakes up she makes an "oh noes" face before running off with two of the explosives, leaving the third to blow up the Daleks who have come back to check on why they haven't exploded already.

With a Dalek chasing them up the shaft (oo-er), the three Thals get to the top in the nick of time, but the improvised hot air balloon tears and drops the Doctor down part of the way, leaving him still in peril. Taron and Codal drop down ropes to the Doctor while dramatic music plays, until they can pull him up to safety. Then Codal and Rebec drop down rocks on the Dalek, sending it back to the bottom where, presumably, it will have to start the chase all over again from the start.

Jo meets up with the Doctor and the Thals. Their reunion is written in a slightly comedic way as the Doctor can't believe Jo is still alive:

Doctor: "Jo, you were on that Thal spaceship. I saw it destroyed."

Jo: "No, I wasn't."

Doctor: "But you were."

Jo: "No, I wasn't."

Having failed to catch our heroes, the Daleks turn to their backup plan. They have "A BACTERIOLOGICAL CULTURE THAT WILL DESTROY ALL LIVING TISSUE" and they plan to release it. I think they have nicked this backup plan from the Silurians.

The Daleks keep their bacteria in a container that makes it look a bit like a 1980s gunge tank. They say it will be "READY FOR RELEASE IN HALF A SPIRIDON DAY."

Taron is full of self-doubt, so the Doctor gives him some encouragement:

"The moment that we forget that we're dealing with people, then we're no better off than the machines that we came here to destroy. When we start acting and thinking like the Daleks, Taron, the battle is lost."

This is an odd line because it sounds a bit like the Doctor is describing the Daleks as "machines," but the Daleks aren't machines, they are aliens that live inside machines. And this was written by Terry Nation, the creator of the Daleks, so I'm sure he wouldn't forget a thing like that.

Vaber and Latep meet up with the others, so all of the surviving Thals are together. They plan to go to "the plain of stones" where it will be warm at night - sounds sensible, we cats like sleeping on the shelf above the radiator for much the same reason.

Jo teaches Latep about the strange manny custom of the "handshake," accidentally starting off a Doomed Romance subplot when Latep mistaiks Jo's friendly greeting for a manly handshake, which has quite a different meaning.

The plain of stones has its own set, dimly lit to build the atmosphere, and helped by the sounds of scary noises coming from all around our heroes. Vaber and Taron resume their argument about who should be in charge and what they should do, and they wrestle over it. Taron wins and says

"I am still in command here and, like it or not, you will obey orders. And believe me, Vaber, if you don't, I shan't hesitate to kill you."

While the other Thals are having sleeps, Vaber steals their explosives and goes off alone to try to blow up the Daleks. Taron and Codal go after him, leaving the others behind at the plain of stones, where they get surrounded by the spooky eyes of lots of animals in the darkness.

This would have been a great scary moment for a cliffhanger, but instead the episode continues for a moment longer. We see Vaber get captured by Spiridons, visible in their big purple coats. It would have been less embarrassing for him if Vaber had at least been caught by some invisible ones.