Ice Station Zebra

The film Ice Station Zebra, 50 years old this year, is forever linked to the series The Prisoner by the presence of Patrick McGoohan, who took time away from the one to make the other, infamously leading to Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling being as bad as it is.

Not only that, but also his character in this is very similar to that of Number Six (and, not coincidentally, that of John Drake* from Danger Man) - a British secret agent, secretive, used to working alone and keeping his thoughts to himself. And like in The Prisoner he has no name given in this, since "Jones" is stated to be a codename. He even thumps a table at one point, although I didn't notice if it broke any saucers.

I can't tell if nobody told McGoohan he wasn't supposed to be the main character, or if somebody did and he thought "we'll see about that!"

Two and a half hours may be a pretty standard length for a movie these days but in 1968 it seems it was felt an intermission was required at the halfway point. How fortunate then that the story has two clearly identifiable halves - the journey of the submarine to the titular ice station, and then what happens when they get there.

So the journey there is structured almost like the opening of an Agatha Christie murder mystery - we are introduced to all the main characters, almost one-by-one, get to know them as they establish their relationships with each other - who knows who already, who trusts who, and who doesn't - all within the confines of an environment that none of them can leave, in this case a US Navy nuclear submarine on its way to a rescue mission. Then, instead of a murder, we get an act of sabotage, and the revelation that the saboteur must be one of them. (Technically the sabotage could have been set up back at the naval base, but then my comparison doesn't work so just go along with it. Anyway, the saboteur does turn out to be one of them so it's fine. Mew.)

The submarine scenes are, while not slow, quite leisurely, dialogue-heavy, character-building scenes alternating with scenes of the submacrewmen going about their business, and interspersed with cinematic shots of the submarine surfacing or diving as required. The goal here is not so much to build suspense - although it does, in a kind of claustrophobic way - but to make the sudden moment of action when the sabotage goes off seem all the more unexpected for us the audience as well as the characters.

The sabotage itself is dealt with with only one fatality among the crew, so when the intermission comes it is hardly a cliffhanger moment (in fact the interval is placed at a moment of calm between events), but the identity of the saboteur remains unknown and is carried forward as a mystery for the second half.

Part two is itself divisible into two sections – the first is all action, all the time, as our heroes leave the matter of the saboteur in their midst aside to battle against the arctic environment for their survival. The bit where some of the mannys fall into an ice crevice and have to be quickly rescued before it closes up and traps them is the sort of adventure serial stuff that Terry Nation would (and did) put in his Doctor Who stories whenever he got the chance.

Once they reach Ice Station Zebra itself it lets up slightly, but only slightly, as the cast divides up between those helping the survivors (and questioning them about exactly what happened there, allowing the exposition to come out somewhat naturally), and those searching for the MacGuffin – a set of satellite photos that would give the possessing nation a huge advantage in the Cold War, as McGoohan explains to Rock Hudson’s character in a lengthy scene of pure exposition. At least McGoohan has the skills to pull this off, helped by some good-natured back-and-forth with Hudson about whose country is most to blame for the Soviets getting their hands on the technology.

Speaking of the Russians, the second half of the second half kicks in when they turn up, having waited for the weather to clear before flying in. For the good guys, the fight for survival against the elements is replaced by the fight to survive against an overwhelming force of Soviet paratroopers.

The identity of the saboteur is revealed to us before the rest of the characters, building suspense very effectively and leading to the film’s most shocking moment where McGoohan is tricked into shooting the wrong manny!

But after that the film rather loses its momentum – not helped I’m sure by McGoohan’s character being injured and having to take a back seat for most of the last act. The stand off between the Russians and the Americans is stagily directed, with the Russian commander standing around explaining the situation in simple, unambiguous terms lest there be any confusion as to what is going on. The resolution is at least reasonably well foreshadowed, with Hudson possessing a device to ensure neither side wins – a destruct switch that Terry Nation would have been proud of, although I’m sure he would have added a countdown or two in there also.

* "Jones" obviously isn't Drake or Number Six since he keeps a gun under his pillow, something neither of them would ever do. He could maybe be Curtis from The Schizoid Man though...

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Silver Nemesis Part Two

Part two kicks off with a big impressive fight between the Nazis and the cybermannys, which the cybermannys win easily because they have pewpewpew guns and the Nazis (in contravention of a number of science fiction genre tropes) do not.

Lady Peinforte joins in the fight by shooting a cybermanny with an arrow and it goes

Meanwhile Richard is still scared.

The Doctor says

"A Cyberman killed with an arrow? But that's ludicrous!"

Thus preempting the cries of Doctor Who fans down through the years since this was made.

"Unless, of course, the head's made of gold. The only substance to which they're vulnerable."

he adds, so that's all fine then. The Doctor recognises the arrow as being one of Lady Peinforte's, so now he knows she is here. In the confusion of the fighting, the Doctor steals the silver bow from out of De Flores's special case, and Lady Peinforte and Richard spot the Doctor so now they know he is here too.

Lady Peinforte knows it is the Doctor as soon as she sees him, so that means either he met her since his last regeneration or else she has the ability to know him no matter what he looks like.

Lady Peinforte shoots an arrow at the Doctor and Ace as they run back to the TARDIS but it only hits the indestructible TARDIS door, where it sticks out of it ready to come in useful later on in a classic example of Clarke's Arrow (a dramatic device named after the writer of Silver Nemesis, Kevin Clarke).

De Flores and his son Karl are the last surviving Nazis on the scene, so they run away with the special case, not knowing the bow is not inside it any more. The Doctor and Ace go back to 1638 Windsor for a pointless scene that they could easily have done earlier, but the pacing and editing of this middle episode are not as tight as they maybe could have been.

Lady Peinforte and Richard wander around 1988 Windsor in their 17th century clothes looking cool but very conspicuous. Two mannys mistaik them for "social workers" and try to rob from them, which does not end well for the mannys since Richard is finally able to comprehend a situation that is not so different from his own time - what he does to them happens off screen, but they are next seen by us tied upside down from a tree wearing only their pants, lol!

This bit is, at first glance, pure padding the same as the scene with the Doctor and Ace in 1638, but it actually serves an important purpose in showing Richard's emotional journey coming to terms with his situation. Also it show that Richard is not to be fucked with.

By now back in 1988, the Doctor and Ace use the jazz music from part one to jam the cybermannys trying to send a message to their reinforcements in space. Then they find the two mannys in the tree, who still think Lady Peinforte and Richard were social workers. Teh satires!111

Lady Peinforte and Richard are following the arrow pulling them towards the main body of the Nemesis, which at the end of the fighting was taken by the cybermannys. They see Richard's gravestone, which Lady Peinforte recognises at once for what it is, and this scares Richard even more than he was before.

"He saw worlds end and begin."

Lady Peinforte has her own tomb, a much bigger one, nearby. This is where the cybermannys have taken the Nemesis. Unlike Richard, Lady Peinforte is not at all worried about being near or even in her own grave - she is more annoyed by not finding the Nemesis inside.

"My lady, where are your bones?"
"What matter?"

The cybermannys are confused that Lady Peinforte has not been driven mad by "the fact of her death" and then their plan goes even more wrong when Richard shoots one of them with a gold arrow and so the rest retreat.



The Doctor and Ace find the cybermannys' spaceship and Ace blows it up with Nitro Nine. This serves to keep them away from the main plot while the antagonist factions fight each other. The Doctor takes this opportunity to give Ace (and us) some more exposition about the Nemesis:

"Listen, Ace. The Nemesis generates destruction. It affects everything around it. I launched it into space, but unfortunately with an orbit that brings it back to Earth every twenty five years. Take the twentieth century. It appeared in 1913."
"The eve of the First World War."
"Twenty five years later?"
"1938."
"Hitler annexes Austria."
"1963?"
"Kennedy assassinated."
"1988?"

Only two stories ago, Remembrance of the Daleks featured a MacGuffin superficially similar to the Nemesis in the form of the Hand of Omega. But while the Hand of Omega was a Gallifreyan "remote stellar manipulator" that, in the wrong hands, could be used as a powerful weapon of mass destruction, the Nemesis is an actual Time Lord weapon, "created as the ultimate defence for Gallifrey, back in early times." The way the Doctor describes its powers to Ace makes it sound like the One Ring: what exactly it does is vague, but so strong it influences events even when it is not actively being wielded, and everybody wants its power for themselves sooner or later.

De Flores and Karl do a deal with the cybermannys but obviously both sides plan to betray the other as soon as they have taken the Nemesis back from Lady Peinforte. De Flores and Karl run in to capture Lady Peinforte, but Richard distracts them by giving in so quickly - surrendering both the statue and the silver arrow - that he and Lady Peinforte can escape down her tomb's secret passage.

The statue comes to life long enough for its hands to grasp the arrow. Still mostly unseen but glowing like a ghost out of Dark Towers and accompanied by incidental music to match, combined with the Doctor's earlier warnings of its power, the Nemesis already has a strong presence at the heart of the story.

De Flores thinks he has won but his special case is empty (he and Karl do a comedy double-take when they find out) and so he still lacks the bow to have the complete statue. The cybermannys come in and betray him.

With the tape deck they are using to jam the cybermannys, the Doctor and Ace see the cybermannys have a lot more spaceships out in space. This is an attempt to end part two by upping the stakes to make the story look and feel a bit more "epic" in scope, but it is not a very successful way to conclude the episode as it lacks any sense of immediate peril for our heroes and the stakes have not been raised in any meaningful way.

Part two of Silver Nemesis is a mixed affair. It contains too much padding and it feels like the Doctor and Ace are separated from the main storyline for too much of the time, even if this is technically necessary to allow for infighting between the baddy factions and for the Doctor to have the time to give out vital exposition.

But the scenes with Lady Peinforte and Richard in them are excellent, and really well acted by Fiona Walker and Gerard Murphy. We may only be two episodes into their story, but they have already become two of the most interesting supporting characters in all of Doctor Who that aren't played by Paul Darrow. I am left wanting to see more of them and know more about them.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Silver Nemesis Part One

Silver Nemesis is President Donald J Trump's favourite Doctor Who story.
It is the third story of season 25 and was specially themed around silver to celebrate Doctor Who's 25th birthday, which is why it has cybermannys in it because they are silver, or at least look silver. It stars Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor and Sophie Aldred as Ace.

Silver Nemesis has an unusual structure in that there are three separate sets of baddys as the antagonists to the Doctor and Ace. We are introduced to two of these groups at the beginning of the episode but the third is kept back for a surprise reveal at the cliffhanger ending, although I have already given away who they are.

The episode begin with a caption:

South America
22nd November 1988

We hear Wagner's music playing and see a manny with an '80s computer. Herr De Flores is about to shoot a birdy with a bow and arrow when he gets some "wonderful news" from the manny with the computer. We don't get to know what the news is yet, maybe his computer game has finally loaded? (I am too young a cat to get this joke, but I am reliably informed that it makes sense if you are old enough to remember the 1980s.)

In

Windsor, England
1638

(thanks to a second on-screen caption for keeping us informed) Lady Peinforte and Richard - played by Fiona Walker and Gerard Murphy, the former was in I Claudius as Agrippina and was also in Doctor Who all the way back in Sentence of Death, the latter was the Narrator of The Lord of the Rings - are also playing with bows and arrows and about to shoot a birdy. This cleverly parallels what De Flores was doing in the previous scene and establishes a thematic link between them, even though they haven't met.

Lady Peinforte has a silver arrow. They are about to leave her house but we don't find out where they are going yet, just as we don't know what De Flores's news was. This helps build up suspense over the first few scenes.

De Flores makes a speech to his henchmannys in which he mentions "the fuhrer" and then they toast "the fourth reich" so as to make it as clear as possible that they are Nazis. De Flores has a silver bow as well as a special case to keep it in.

The Doctor and Ace are listening to music when the Doctor's alarm goes off to remind him to do something that he has forgotten to do, but then he can't remember what it is he has forgotten, silly Doctor! Then they get shot at by some mannys (perhaps to encourage them to get on with the plot, there are only three parts to this story after all) and run away back to the TARDIS.

Lady Peinforte and Richard plan to kill Lady Peinforte's other henchmanny just to make it clear that they are baddys as well, since you have to work quite hard at that when one of the other factions in your story is Nazis. They drink a magic potion to travel in time from 1638 to 1988, but to cover up the fact that this makes no sense they make one of the best jokes in Doctor Who evar:

"Afraid?"
"Yes, my lady."
"When I employed you, you lead me to believe you were a hardened criminal."
"As my lady knows, before I entered your service I was found guilty of a large number of offences."
"Then have the courage of your convictions."

LOL!

The Doctor and Ace travel to Windsor to look for the silver bow, not knowing the Nazis have it. The Doctor finds a fez instead.

Now in 1988, Lady Peinforte and Richard are confused by technology. Richard is scared again but Lady Peinforte is not, which helps to further differentiate and develop their characters.

The comet Nemesis lands. The Nazis are on the scene but need to wait for the comet to cool down before they can capture it. Lady Peinforte and Richard also need to wait to get their paws on the Nemesis, but the local police arrive and capture it first.

The Doctor and Ace take the TARDIS back to Lady Peinforte's house in 1638 where they find the dead henchmanny. Ace (and through her, we the viewers) start to get the backstory from the Doctor about how he has known Lady Peinforte before, and how the Nemesis is made from "a living metal" called Validium and is a weapon of mass destruction. The Doctor is careful to let the exposition out a little at a time so as to not confuse us, but this does make this feel a lot like the sequel to a story that I haven't seen because it doesn't really exist - and while that sometimes works, it is not a technique that stands up to scrutiny because it is really just the writer cheatily avoiding introducing his setting and characters properly.

The policemannys get gassed, which is why they are not a fifth faction involved through the rest of this story.

Now it is time for some completely unnecessary padding - the Doctor and Ace go to Windsor castle in 1988 for some hijinks where they nearly meet the Queen and then get chased around the castle for a bit by some mannys. This couldn't be more irrelevant to the plot if it tried.

Lady Peinforte also isn't doing very much at that moment, but she is by far the most interesting character we have seen because she knows the Doctor and has a mysterious past relationship with him, and she talks to Richard about how she wants the Nemesis in order to have revenge on him.

The Nazis decide it is time to capture the Nemesis. De Flores is not very clever as he doesn't think it is important that the police have already been gassed by some unknown third party. He is more concerned with the arrow being missing from the statue, which makes him annoyed. So now we know the answer to the question "how do you make a Nazi cross?"

The Doctor and Ace arrive to get back into the plot. The Nazis capture them and De Flores thinks the Doctor has the arrow (presumably because he is the only other main character that he has met at this point), while the Doctor has noticed the gassed policemannys and tries to point out that this is important.

The Nazis threaten to shoot Ace unless the Doctor gives them the arrow that he doesn't have, but then a spaceship arrives and distracts them. It is the cybermannys, who have arrived just in time for the cliffhanger!

If we ignore the pointless padding scenes, this is a fantastic first episode. All three factions of baddys have their own character and points of interest for us viewers, especially the mysterious Lady Peinforte who knows the Doctor's secrets and so has the potential to be one of the Doctor's greatest adversaries... even if her past history with the Doctor isn't a "real" past history (one from previous television stories) but a cheat, somehow that only adds to the mystery.

The Gold Robbers

The Gold Robbers is a TV series from 1969 so obscure that, at the time of writing this, it doesn't even have its own Wikipedia page. It has been released on DVD by Good Old Network though, which is how I have now seen it.

This is a strange cross between a police detective drama and a '60s telefantasy series - a gang of baddys led by a devious and shadowy mastermind steal five-and-a-half million pounds of gold (worth many tens, if not hundreds, of millions of pounds in today's moneys) and murder a policemanny in the process, but instead of putting Department S or The Avengers on the case, it falls to the more realistic police CID to catch the robbers.

The main character is DCS Craddock* as played by Peter Vaughan, best known for playing Denethor in The Lord of the Rings. He is a manny ahead of his time, possessing a difficult personal life more frequently found among '90s TV detectives.

Unlike in most telefantasy series, Craddock does not solve the case in a single episode. It takes him the whole 13 parts of the series to get to the bottom of it, a bit like how it took Captain Sisko seven seasons to sort out problems that Captain Kirk would have wrapped up inside an hour.

This is because the baddys are well-organised, disciplined and ruthless. But they are not invincible - because the job was so big, they had to involve amateurs in specialist roles. This plus other small slip-ups let Craddock and his team get their first breaks.

As the series progresses we spend more time with the baddys as they experience problems of their own - they have all this money but cannot spend it easily without being suspicious. Some of them want to use the money to stop being baddys, while others enjoy being baddys for its own sake. Cracks begin to appear as they don't trust each other, and these are made worse when Craddock starts arresting some of the little fish (nom!) and the mastermind has to start killing his own mannys to try and stop Craddock following the chain up to the top.

Craddock is also not infallible, as we see him and his fellow policemannys make mistaiks in the course of their investigations. Craddock often makes up for this by playing hunches that are right and trusting his instincts even when he lacks evidence (we know when he is right because we have already seen the baddys do it, shades of Columbo in this), and he bluffs more than one baddy even when he has a weak paw. He many not be John Steed, but we know he'll get there in the end.

This is an interesting and worthwhile series, with a fine cast and some great twists along the way that more than justifies its length. The Gold Robbers deserves to be better remembered.



* Craddock was the name of a character in Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. so this is a proper Terry Nation-ish sort of name for our hero.

Happy new year

Here is the winner of our 2017 Calendar Doggy of the Year competition to wish you all a happy new 2018.

And a happy new year to you from all of us cats as well!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol Part Three

Madame de Gaulle was said to have been lunching with the American ambassador at the time of her husband's retirement when she was asked what she was most looking forward to in the years ahead.

She thought for a moment before announcing boldly "a penis."

A startled hush fell over the table until the former president leant over and said "my dear, I think it's pronounced 'happiness'."

Fifi lives! She is covered in comedy bandages and being looked after by Mrs Thatcher, but Fifi is alive! I am happy about that, not least because I don't think it would be a good message for the BBC to send out to its viewers that they can solve their problems by blowing up the Prime Minister's pets.

Trevor comes to tell the Doctor that he is leaving Terra Alpha and shows him a long list of everybody Mrs Thatcher has had "disappeared" (killed), just in case we had forgotten how much of a baddy she is since watching part two.

The Doctor has a microphone and sings a song (in a French accent for no reason) and Earl plays the music to go with it. He has a plan and says

"Everything is beginning to fall into place."

The Happiness Patrol arrive and are about to shoot the Doctor, but he acts so happy that they get confused and don't shoot him. The demonstrators join in and the Happiness Patrol end up pointing their pewpewpew guns at each other because they're the only ones who aren't acting happy. This allows Ace and Susan Q (her friend, who is at long last named out loud for our benefit) to escape from them (again) (again) (again).

Mrs Thatcher and her husband Joseph C hear an announcement:

"Happiness will prevail. Chaos in Forum Square. Fighting has broken out in the ranks of the Happiness Patrol itself. Happiness will prevail."

This is the first of several things that we are not shown happening but are told have happened by way of Public Exposition Announcements.

Fifi goes to chase some more aliens in the pipes, despite how well that went for her in the last episode. Fifi is a silly doggy, but she is cute and cuddly.
The Doctor, Earl and Ace go in the pipes with the aliens and join in getting chased by Fifi. The Doctor and Earl play music to make the studio set fall on Fifi and so Fifi gets squashed and they all get away.

Next the Doctor and Ace visit the Kandyman (again, at least for the Doctor). They take it in turns to troll the Kandyman so he doesn't know which one he wants to kill first until he tosses a koin to help him decide.

"I'm finding this rather tiresome. Heads or tails, Doctor?"
"Tails. Well?"
"That would be telling."

Oh what a giveaway. I think that particular line of dialogue has let the manny out of the bag with regards to the writer's influences for this story. The Doctor and Ace use the Kandyman's own kitchen utensils and ovens (which are a Health & Safety nightmare, fortunately for them Mrs Thatcher's regime has no use for such Political Korrectness) against him until he runs away and escapes into the pipes. The aliens then get into the Kitchen and they turn the "fondant surprise" upon the Kandyman.

By now there is a full scale revolution against Mrs Thatcher going on off-screen, which we only get to hear about from the announcements. These always begin by saying "happiness will prevail" even though they go on to announce that things are going very badly for the strong and stable Happiness Patrol.

Mrs Thatcher tries to act as though nothing is wrong in front of her henchmannys, though secretly she is preparing an escape shuttle. Except in the next scene Gilbert M and Joseph C steal it and fly away in the shuttle without her.

To celebrate their victory, Earl plays his music over the loudspeakers. Mrs Thatcher hears it as she tries to run away, but the Doctor meets up with her (again) for them to have a final confrontation.

"You can't get away, Helen A."
"There's a scheduled flight in an hour. You can't stop me, Doctor."
"Oh I know I can't. But it's not me you're running away from."
"Who is it, then?"
"Yourself. That's why you'll never escape."
"They didn't understand me."
"Oh, they understood you only too well. That's why they resisted you."
"I only wanted the best for them."
"The best? Prisons? Death squads? Executions?"
"They only came later. I told them to be happy, but they wouldn't listen. I gave them every chance. Oh, I know they laughed sometimes, but they still cried, they still wept."
"Don't you ever feel like weeping, Helen A?"
"Of course not, Doctor. It's unnecessary. And those that persisted had to be punished."
"Why?"
"For the good of the majority. For the ones that wanted to be happy, who wanted to take the opportunities that I gave them."
"What were these opportunities you gave them? A bag of sweets? A few tawdry party games? Bland, soulless music? Do these things make you happy? Of course they don't. Because they're cosmetic. Happiness is nothing unless it exists side by side with sadness. Two sides, one coin."
"You can keep your coin, Doctor, and your sadness. I'll go somewhere else. I'll find somewhere where there is no sadness. A place where people know how to enjoy themselves. A place where people are strong, where they hold back the tears. A place where people pull themselves together."
"Where there is no compassion."
"Where there is control."
"A place where there is no love."
"I always thought love was overrated."

And then Mrs Thatcher... Oh, it seems she is not actually called Mrs Thatcher in this, she is called Helen A. I am a silly cat. I can't understand why I thought she was Mrs Thatcher.

And then Helen A sees Fifi, who goes

This makes Helen A sad. It makes me sad too. Poor Fifi, all she wanted to do was nom things.

With that the plot is all over, or as the Doctor says:

"'Tis done."

Ace paints the TARDIS blue again (although to be fair that is the first time we have seen it being painted blue in this story), and the final exchange is, of course:

"Will they be all right, Professor?"
"Happiness will prevail."

The Happiness Patrol is one of the most savage and scathing attacks against authoritarian governments ever seen in Doctor Who (and that means ever seen full stop), and so it remains as politically relevant today as it was in 1988.

The final confrontation between the Doctor and Helen A is the heart of the matter, in which the Doctor exposes her for what she really is: she does not want mannys to be happy, she wants them to act as though they are happy no matter what her government does. To keep any sadness on the inside. To keep quiet. To conform.

Like all tyrants who pretend to democracy, she claims she is acting "for the good of the majority" and therefore that means anyone who disagrees must be in the minority, and can be portrayed as a handful of remoaning killjoys out to sabotage "the will of the people" - which in turn justifies any actions to

The Doctor is the moral polar opposite of Helen A. He recognises that the appearance of happiness is not the same as real happiness, and that enforced conformity does not equal approval. He knows that the mannys of Terra Alpha are not free until they can choose for themselves whether to be happy or sad, whether to agree with Helen A or to oppose her, and in their confrontation he pushes her until she admits this too.

At the end of their dialogue it is revealed that Helen A knew this all the time, but still chose to do what she knew to be wrong, and then when she cries for Fifi - and by extension herself - it is because under the façade of happiness Theresam A was the most unhappy of them all.

In the end, happiness does prevail.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol Part Two

After a recap of the final scene of part one where the Doctor and Earl Sigma are caught by the Kandyman, part two begins with Ace - once more a prisoner of the Happiness Patrol - who sees some black-clad mannys demonstrating against Mrs Thatcher and the Happiness Patrol. This is very brave because the Happiness Patrol are obviously going to kill them for being "killjoys."

The Doctor tricks the Kandyman into sticking himself to the floor so he can't kill them. Then the Doctor and Earl escape from the Kandyman into some pipes where they meet some aliens. At the same time, in a parallel plotline, the aliens are also helping Ace to escape from the Happiness Patrol (again). Then the Doctor meets Trevor Sigma (again) and trolls him (again). Aside from introducing the friendly aliens, this episode seems to be repeating itself a lot.

Mrs Thatcher decides to let her doggy Fifi go into the pipes to nom Ace and the aliens when she hears about the escape. Fifi chases Ace and an alien until they blow her up with some of Ace's Nitro Nine. Ace is, as usual, very quick to resort to explosives to solve a problem.

Trevor takes the Doctor to see Mrs Thatcher where he trolls her for a bit by pretending to be too important to answer any of her questions (such as who he is or whose side he is on), then he goes off to meet up with Earl again.

The way the Doctor moves from scene to scene, to meet with the required supporting characters in turn, makes the world of Terra Alpha feel very small - but deliberately so, as though attempting to make a plausibly realistic alien planet within the confines of a television studio was not even being attempted by the makers of this programme. Either that or all establishing shots of the Doctor travelling from place to place had to be ruthlessly edited out to make room for more scenes of Ace escaping from and being recaptured by the Happiness Patrol.

When Earl hears the Doctor is on his way back to the Kandy Kitchen, he says

"Not the Kandy Kitchen."

in a very similar way to

I think this may be a deliberate reference, as this era of Doctor Who is notorious for its many gratuitous callbacks to the earlier years of the show - another example of this here is the Doctor telling Trevor his name, or rather his "nickname," is "Theta Sigma", which is a reference to The Armageddon Factor from season 16.

Two Happiness Patrol mannys are waiting to shoot the demonstrators from the start of the episode, but the Doctor sneaks up on them and trolls them into throwing away their guns. This is another demonstration of the Doctor's moral philosophy, similar to the bit when he said

"Weapons: always useless in the end."

back in Remembrance of the Daleks Part Three. (Although, as in that story, this is somewhat undermined by how effective Ace's Nitro Nine continues to be.)

Mrs Thatcher wants to execute another prisoner, Ace's friend from earlier (whose name has still not been given on-screen), using the Kandyman's "fondant surprise" but the Kandyman is still stuck to the floor. The Doctor comes in and offers to release him if the Kandyman will stop the fondant surprise.

Ace tries to rescue her friend and ends up getting captured (again) (again) instead, but at least they don't get killed by the fondant surprise because the Doctor is successful. Trevor tells Mrs Thatcher that the rules say she has to use a different method to execute them next time, but this doesn't worry her too much as she has plenty. Mew and hiss, Mrs Thatcher is a pantomime baddy.

The Kandyman, who is no longer stuck to the floor, wants to kill the Doctor so the Doctor sticks him to the floor (again) and then leaves to find Ace. He meets up with Earl (again) and they see a poster of Ace, who is going to be appearing at "the Late Show at the Forum" - this is obviously going to be Mrs Thatcher's next attempt at executing her, although we will have to wait until next time to see it, as it is the end of the episode.

This episode contains a lot of repetition, and so feels like it is mostly padding. Escapes and recaptures, and revisiting earlier locations and characters, are so frequent (and so quickly reversed) that it is tempting to view this as deliberate commentary upon the padding often seen in the middle of a typical Doctor Who story.

While Ace has been continually moving from captive to escapee and back again ever since she parted company from the Doctor in part one, the Doctor has been more proactive in this episode - since (easily) escaping from the klutches of the Kandyman, he has been acting like a force of nature, sweeping into scenes with Trevor, Mrs Thatcher, the Happiness Patrol snipers, the Kandyman, even Earl, and taking them over effortlessly - none of them know how to deal with the Doctor because he does not fit into their view of how the world of Terra Alpha functions.

While many baddys (and some friends, for instance Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) have experienced this of the Doctor over the years, here it is particularly fitting because of the allegorical nature of The Happiness Patrol. Terra Alpha is like the Village, it stands for all that is worst in manny society, and all that is worth fighting against. The Doctor has fought against plenty of power-mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermannys, and the like before now. This time he is up against Mrs Thatcher.

Happiness will prevail!