Origin Story: Expensive Luxury Cat

Big Gay Longcat reviews Dark Towers (part two)

The old legend

The friendly ghost that appeared at the end of part two is also played by David Collings but with grey hair and a beard and a moustache. He is the ghost of Lord Dark.
"Oh no, not another one!" Tracy says.

The ghost tells them of an old riddle from a legend about Dark Towers:

"Beware of two bees buzzing together.

Beware of the bird with the brown feather.

The house will be saved by the Tall Knight's treasure."

The Tall Knight is another ghost who has haunted Dark Towers for "hundreds and hundreds of years" and is even older and far scarier than the friendly ghost. There is even ominous, thunder-like noises in the background when his name is mentioned to build up how scary he is.

Outside, Benger and Bunce meet Miss Hawk (played by Juliet Hammond-Hill from Power. Together with David Collings and Servalan's randomly Scottish henchmanny, this series is a veritable reunion of Blakes 7 guest actors). Miss Hawk has heard of treasure at Dark Towers too, so this scene nicely parallels the previous scene in the red bedroom by both giving exposition while setting up the conflict to follow.

Back in the red bedroom, the friendly ghost begins to fade away and just has time to give Towser, Tracy and Edward a clue before he vanishes completely:

"Book room, four up, four along, inside, four from the end, four from the top."

Towser growls because he hears somebody coming. There are footsteps and the door begins to open, but the episode ends before we can see who it is.

The clue in the Book Room

After all the build up at the end of part three trying to make a door opening into a dramatic cliffhanger, it is only Miss Hawk that comes into the room. Because Miss Hawk isn't obviously a baddy in the way that Benger and Bunce were (though she is really), Tracy and Edward fill her in on the plot so far. She has already heard of the "Golden Book of the Tall Knight," though this is the first time the treasure is given a name from our point of view.

They go to the "Book Room" (a library) and follow the clue to a book four shelves up and four books along from the left, and then inside the book four pages from the end and four lines from the top of the page.

When I do that with Duncan's bookshelf I get the following clue:

The Deep Fix, a pop group, go to No. 1 with Felt for You, Velvet for Me.

I wonder what it means?

Edward and Miss Hawk think they have worked out the clue and leave Towser and Tracy behind, because Tracy wants to work out the meaning for herself. The episode ends with her pondering the clue, as well as the friendly ghost's riddle from the last episode.

These two episodes of Dark Towers really get the treasure hunting aspect of the plot going with clues and riddles. While the main conflict of the series is still building up, all of the pieces are now in place and there is some foreshadowing of what is to come.

Continued in Part Three.

Gamma Longcat + Big Gay Longcat

The Persuaders!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Dark Towers

Come with me, yes come with me,
To Dark Towers.
Who can tell what we shall see
In Dark Towers?
Dust and cobwebs everywhere,
Footsteps on the winding stair,
Mystery is in the air
In Dark Towers.
In the garden, in the hall,
Through the arch behind the wall,
Come and listen to the call
Of Dark Towers.

Dark Towers is a Look and Read TV series from 1981. I am a clever cat; I can both Look and Read. Not all cats can do that. Even mannys have to be taught how to do those things. Dark Towers is of interest to me because Duncan saw it when he was a little manny in the 1980s and he says it was good, but scary for little mannys or scaredy cats. Now, with the power of the internets, me and my friends can watch it too.

Dark Towers in danger!

Part one of Dark Towers begins by introducing the main character Towser. Towser is a doggy and his name is an anagram of "Towers" so maybe he is the chosen one. Towser's best friend is Tracy and they meet Lord Edward Dark of Dark Towers. Towser then runs off to get the plot started and the two mannys follow him.

Tracy meets David Collings, who is playing Lord Dark.
"Oh no, not another one!"she thinks. Lord Dark is Edward's father. Starcat thinks they should have saved that for a later episode to be a shock revelation, but I think that would have been too obvious a twist only a year after The Empire Strikes Back.

Lord Dark explains that "some Lords are poor" in a vain attempt to get us to feel sorry for the aristocracy. Then Towser, Tracy, and the Lords Dark all see a ghost in an old painting say "Dark Towers is in danger!"
That is the end of the episode.

The man in the picture

Part two picks up from exactly where part one ended. There is some great spooky music to go with the ghostly scenes in this, it is very early-80s sounding like in Doctor Who around that time. It seems that only Towser and Tracy heard the ghost's warning so the Lords Dark don't believe their house is in danger. Towser, Tracy and Edward explore the house.

Edward gives Towser a hat. Then they meet Mr Benger and Mr Bunce (played by Christopher Biggins and Servalan's randomly Scottish henchmanny from Gambit). Towser immediately recognises them as obvious baddys and growls, then goes outside and pees on their van. What a naughty doggy!

Sadly there is a blatant continuity error here as Towser's new hat disappears when he goes outside. Tsk and mew, I say. Because I am a cat.

Towser runs inside and up some stairs to "the red bedroom" and barks a lot until Tracy and Edward follow him in. Towser is clearly the brains of this party. The music and narration indicate that something important is about to happen. A ghost appears in the bed!

This is not as scary as it sounds because Towser knows the ghost is friendly and wags his tail instead of being frightened, and the ghost laughs in a friendly way to see a happy doggy.

This subversion of a typical scary cliffhanger is the end of the episode.

The first two episodes of Dark Towers are adequate at introducing most of the main characters - including Dark Towers the house itself - but the plot, despite Towser's best efforts, hasn't really got going yet.

Continued in Part Two.

The Planet of Dust

At 8 pages long, The Planet of Dust is the longest story since Fugitives from Chance, all the way back when Jon Pertwee was still playing the Doctor. This helps give The Planet of Dust the feeling of being a season-ending epic story like The Invasion of Time or The Armageddon Factor. With only one story left in Adventures in Time and Space after this, and that a very short 2-pager, this is maybe not so far from the truth.

The Planet of Dust starts as it means to go on: oddly.

As the Doctor ran a practised eye over the flickering needles and glowing lights of the Tardis control panel, Leela watched him carefully, finding her subject infinitely more interesting, if even less revealing than the complexities of the instruments that had brought them there.

Now I don't think it's the starting the story in media res that is odd, I think it is the use of the word "needles." Confused cat is confused.

There is an unusually lengthy (unusual for the Doctor Who Books Project at least) Tardis scene, filling us in on the backstory that the Doctor and Leela (whoever is playing her this time) are answering an "Inter-galactic distress signal" and they use the Tardis scanner to see the planet outside.

It was a skull, some seventeen feet in length and with two grey horns protruding from the top.

'Looks like the cow didn't make it, after all,' said Leela.

The Doctor ignored her attempt at humour.

'This is not the moon,' he chided, 'and whatever that creature was, it most certainly wasn't a cow.'

The Doctor and Leela leave the Tardis and fall through the surface of the planet to a "huge chamber" inside it (I hope it isn't a Dalek asylum). This takes until the end of page 2 - already a quarter of the story is over and hardly anything has happened yet. The slower pace of this story makes it quite boring so far. Hopefully things will liven up on page 3 when they meet a giant alien creature.

The horned, scaly head with its grinning, tooth-filled mouth, seemed an after-thought, like a cherry on top of a cake. For the body was so massive that Leela was unable to take it all in. The clawed fists were the size of houses. The squat legs were wider than a motorway. Leela felt that if the creature were to move the whole planet would be jolted off its axis.

 The creature is called Beshi and he chats to the Doctor for a bit, giving exposition about how he crashed on the planet with a colleague who went

and is now the skeleton that they saw earlier, and Beshi has been on the planet for a year with only plants for noms. The story finally begins to get more interesting when Beshi explains that he has a mad scheme:

'I mean to give these plants the ability to think for them-selves. I mean to give them the ability to walk and talk like other living things. Imagine it! A human can walk - a plant cannot. A plant can live off sunshine and rain - a human cannot. Imagine a plane that is able to walk to find water, one that can uproot itself and move out of the shadow, one with all the abilities of a human, but none of the appetite. This desert of a planet could become a paradise covered with lush vegetation.'

Beshi takes them to his laboratory.

'Follow me.'

They walked for almost half an hour down a long corridor, with the Doctor and Leela having to run, and Beshi taking one giant stride and then waiting for them. Eventually he stopped altogether.

'Perhaps it would be better if I carried you,' he said.

'Yes, perhaps it would.'

This page has two pictures on it, but the bottom one makes no sense.

They get to Beshi's laboratory at about the halfway point of the story. So far this has been so boring that I am going to go and have sleeps before I finish it. Zzzzz.

Malcolm Tucker IS the Doctor!

Peter Capaldi IS the Doctor!

Here's an exclusive first look at the new costume and redesigned TARDIS interior:

LOL, not really! This is from 1996's Neverwhere when Peter Capaldi played Islington.

I think Peter Capaldi will be great as the Doctor. I am a happy cat.

In fact, I might even say

I'm in heaven.