Münchhausen

This film somehow manages to be charming and fantastic despite having been made in Nazi Germany in 1943, in the very depths of World War 2. You wouldn't know it to watch it, considering the hero is favourably disposed to the Russia of Catherine the Great, and we even see their famous romance that would later form part of the Baron's unreliable backstory in the 1988 Adventures of Baron Munchausen film.

The Baron also rejects the desire for power as a motivation, which he explicitly states in a conversation with his ambitious frival Count Cagliostro. The fact that Münchhausen is in colour, something that was incredibly rare for films of this era, also helps it feel like it comes from a different time. Or perhaps I mean that it helps this film feel timeless?

The film is a clear inspiration for Terry Gilliam's take on the character, and some scenes are very closely paralleled by his superb '80s film, most obviously the Baron riding on a cannonball (which this film plays straight, and the later film both subverts and plays straight!), the wager with the Sultan over the bottle of Tokay - in this sequence there are some shots that are almost exactly replicated by Gilliam's version - and the Baron travelling to the moon in a balloon.

The SFX sprinkled throughout the Baron's fantastisch adventures are simple but incredibly well used. And the one I found to be the most effective wasn't really an effect at all, but a simple piece of audience misdirection, when the framing device for the story is revealed to us to be set in the present day (well... the present day when it was made) and not in the 18th century only when the Baron - who is dressed in a full 18th century outfit, as are all the other characters we see in these early scenes - switches on an electric light. Then a guest at his period costume ball drives away in her car.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Three Doctors Episode Four

Omega spares the Doctor, and calls this a warning shot. The Second Doctor tries provoking Omega some more, "testing the limits of his self control."

"I say, you mean all you've got to do is think of a thing, rub your magic lamp over there and shallamygallamyzoop there it is? That's jolly clever. That's jolly clever!"

To which Omega asks the Third Doctor

"Are you sure that you and he are of the same intelligence?"

Omegalolz! But the Second Doctor keeps pushing until Omega shouts so much he shakes the camera. After this the Doctors play along to find out what his plan for them is. Omega loudly monologues about how he is trapped in the black hole by a Catch-22 type scenario:

Omega: "So long as I control singularity, I can make it do my will. All these things exist because I will them to exist. Without me and the unceasing pressure of my will, the work of thousands of years would collapse into chaos in microseconds. I am, if you like, the Atlas of my world."

Third Doctor: "So, the moment you abandon control you cannot escape, and you cannot escape without abandoning control."

He wants the Doctors to take over control so that he can escape, and although they don't like it, they have to go along with it. Omega starts by wanting to remove his mask, but when the Doctors raise the mask for him, they recoil in horror because...

"You exist only because your will insists that you exist. And your will is all that is left of you."

Omega reacts to this news with a cry and then a bit of a shout.

"It is not true. I am Omega, creator of this world! And I can also destroy! Therefore I must exist!"

The camera shakes more violently as Omega shouts "all things shall be destroyed! All things! All things!" and the Doctors, seeing how distracted Omega is in his ranting, run away.

The Doctors join the Brigadier, Benton, Jo, Dr Tyler and Mr Ollis back at UNIT HQ and then they all go into the TARDIS. Omega may be threatening to destroy the entire universe, but that doesn't mean we can't have a moment of comic relief now that the Brigadier is here:

Second Doctor: "If only I could find my recorder, I could play you a little something to pass the time."

Brigadier: "We must be thankful for small mercies."

The First Doctor appears on the scanner and, seeing the size of the adventuring party that has been assembled over the course of this story, asks

"What's all this, a mass meeting?"

The three Doctors have a "telepathic conference" (as Jo calls it) to come up with a plan. Jo confirms to the Brigadier that the First Doctor is another Doctor, to which the Brigadier says

"Three of them? I didn't know when I was well off."

The Second and Third Doctors disconnect the TARDIS's forcefield generator, with the Second Doctor's recorder having got stuck in the middle of it, and then contact Omega using the TARDIS scanner screen. Omega allows the TARDIS to travel from UNIT HQ to Omega HQ.

The Doctors say they have found a way to free Omega, but he does not believe them, so they make a bargain for the Doctors to stay in the black hole with Omega if he will send the mannys back to Earth. Jo has to be specifically warned against self-sacrificing before they try this plan so that she doesn't fuck it up, and even then we see her visibly struggling with herself before she says to the Doctor

"You can't!"

Rude Jo!

The mannys all walk through Omega's singularity smoke one by one and are sent home. Even Jo, in spite of her inevitable protests.

The Doctors offer Omega the forcefield generator, but he doesn't want it, so they have to piss him off until he knocks it out of the Doctor's paws. The Doctors run into the TARDIS to escape the resulting explosion as the unconverted recorder, so still made of matter, reacts with the antimatter of Omega's floor.

UNIT HQ and the mannys (except Mr Ollis) arrive back on Earth, then the TARDIS appears a moment later with the Doctors in it. The First Doctor appears on the scanner one last time for a final goodbye, and then the Second Doctor also says goodbye and disappears.

A dematerialisation circuit materialises (er...) on the TARDIS console, sent by the Time Lords for the Doctor. He says

"The Time Lords! Look, they've sent me a new dematerialisation circuit. And my knowledge of time travel law and all the dematerialisation codes - they've all come back. They've forgiven me. They've given me back my freedom."

It's the end of the era of the Doctor's exile on Earth, an era when he was able to use the TARDIS to travel in only a third of his stories.

The last scene of the story has echoes of the first, to bring us full circle, as both show Mr Ollis. He arrives home and asks Mrs Ollis for some noms - a happy ending.

What's so good about The Three Doctors?

Not merely the template for all future multi-Doctor stories, among the most enjoyable of the many types of Doctor Who stories, The Three Doctors is a tremendously fun story in its own right - I would go so far as to say it is one of the best of its era.

Omega is a wonderful antagonist, both in how he is played by the bombastic Stephen Thorne and in the way he is connected to the Time Lords (and thus also the Doctor) and their mythology, which is expanded as a consequence.

There is not much real science in the way the black hole is used in the story, but there is just enough pseudo-science put into the dialogue to keep it on the right side of the science-fiction/fantasy divide - we viewers are never for a moment left thinking Omega is using magic, even though he might as well be. It is also just the right amount of real science to encourage curious viewers to learn more about it elsewhere, if they are so inclined.

The true heart of the story, though, is not in the setting or the plot, but in the character interactions between the three Doctors. William Hartnell, in his last appearance in the show that owes just about everything to him, sadly isn't in it all that much (because of his real-life illness at the time this was made), but he does manage to make an appearance in each episode, and he has what is possibly one of the best lines in all of Doctor Who in his "a dandy and a clown" speech.

It is the scenes between Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton's Doctors that really created the the-Doctor-doesn't-get-on-with-himself dynamic that is so fantastic to watch, and they carry the story between them. They also manage to perfectly balance the serious side of the plot with the many overtly comedic moments. The Brigadier's character may have been dumbed-down from what it once was, but it allows for some great lols - especially when he's combined with Troughton's Doctor - and all adds to the sense of fun in what is, after all, a celebration.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Three Doctors Episode Three

Omega makes his big entrance and tells the Doctor

"In the legends of your people I am called Omega."

At least he's not called Omicron, mew.

Omega calls the Doctor "brother Time Lord" and has Dr Tyler and Jo taken away so that he can talk to the Doctor alone and tell him about his "revenge." This scene is full of exposition about who Omega really is and what his motivation is, so it is worth quoting in full:

Omega: "Without me, there would be no time travel. You and our fellow Time Lords would still be locked in your own time, as puny as those creatures you now so graciously protect."

Doctor: "You knew your mission was dangerous."

Omega: "Dangerous, yes, but I completed it, and I did not expect to be abandoned. Many thousands of years ago, when I left our planet, all this was then a star - until I arranged its detonation."

Not content with telling the Doctor things he already knows, he even shows him pictures of it on his TV set.

Doctor: "You were the solar engineer. It was your duty."

Omega: "It was an honour, or so I thought then. I was to be the one to find and create the power source that would give us mastery over time itself."

Doctor: "Well, you succeeded, and are revered for it."

Omega: "Revered, here?"

With my reputation? 

Omega: "I was abandoned."

Doctor: "The histories say that you were lost in the supernova."

Omega: "I was sacrificed to that supernova. I generated those forces, and for what? To be blown out of existence into this black hole of antimatter? My brothers became Time Lords, but I was abandoned and forgotten!"

Doctor: "No, not forgotten. All my life I've known of you and honoured you as our greatest hero."

Omega: "A hero? I SHOULD HAVE BEEN A GOD!"

Omega goes to full volume with that last line, as the friendly chat gets suddenly very dangerous for the Doctor. But after a quick cut to a short scene of Jo and Dr Tyler in a cell, Omega has calmed down and is chatting normally to the Doctor again. He even uses his mind powers to create a chair for the Doctor to sit upon.

"Mind, you might say, over antimatter."

Mew. When the Doctor asks what will happen if he refuses to co-operate with Omega's plan, Omega again gets angry super-fast:

"Then you will face the wrath of Omega, you and those miserable humans who accompany you!"

The "wrath of Omega" eh? I thought this plot sounded a bit similar to Star Trek 2 Wrath of Khan. It only needs for Omega to shout "THIS IS CETI ALPHA FIVE!"

Omega gets a telephone call from his creatures to tell him that others have arrived in his world, and we see that the TARDIS has landed back inside UNIT HQ. With the SFX monster too expensive to keep using gone from outside, the Second Doctor, the Brigadier and Benton venture out, with only the Doctor realising that the entire building has been transported. As the Doctor convinces Benton of this, an unfortunate camera angle gives us a rare look directly into the TARDIS prop from outside.

The Brigadier opens the door out of the HQ and sees a CSO landscape outside instead of the environment he was expecting to find. This causes him to do a humorous double-take at the camera.

Brigadier: "Now see here, Doctor, you have finally gone too far."

Second Doctor: "I rather think we all have."

Lol. The komedy continues with

Brigadier: "Do you realise what you've done? You've stolen the whole of UNIT HQ. Now what am I going to tell Geneva, that the whole blessed building has been picked up and put down on some deserted beach? We're probably miles from London!"

Second Doctor: "I'm afraid we're a little bit further than that, Brigadier."

Brigadier: "You mean we're not even in the same country? There'll be international repercussions. This could be construed as an invasion."

Benton: "It's not just a matter of the same country, sir. If the Doctor's right, we're not even in the same universe."

Brigadier: "What? Oh, nonsense, Benton, I tell you that's a beach out there. It's probably Norfolk or somewhere like that."

This scene builds until it reaches the apex (or should that be nadir?) of the Brigadier's stupidity, and one of his all-time classic lines:

The Brigadier's stubborn thick-headedness ends up saving him, since he leaves to look for a telephone, and thus avoids getting captured by Omega's jelly creatures along with the Doctor and Benton.

Mr Ollis finds the Brigadier, hoping that he can explain what is going on, but is disappointed and instead ends up telling the Brigadier what happened to the Third Doctor and Jo in episode two. They follow the creatures taking the Second Doctor and Benton to Omega's lair.

The Third Doctor is still chatting to Omega when the Second Doctor and Benton are brought in. He attempts a bluff that they are both more mannys captured by mistaik, but Omega is clever and soon realises the truth:

"Can it be? Two Time Lords? Ha! The same Time Lord! The High Council must be desperate indeed to transgress the laws of time."

This helps show Omega is a fearsome adversary for the Doctor(s), although the Second Doctor wastes no time in identifying a potential weakness in him with how quickly he grows angry again - so angry that there is the noise of scary thunder. Omega sends them all to be put in the cell with Jo and Dr Tyler.

Having been reunited, the Doctors fall to arguing again, the Third Doctor even telling the Second 

which gets the understandable reply

"There's no need to be offensive!"

because a comparison to Twitter is a deadly insult. It is unclear if the UNIT era is set far enough into the future for Twitter to exist by then, or if the Doctors know about it from having been even further into the future at some point.

Dr Tyler tries to help, but he seems more interested in understanding the science of how the antimatter world exists than immediately practical matters such as escaping or defeating Omega. This is an excuse for the Doctors to give him (and us) some exposition:

"Well, singularity is a point in space time which can exist only inside a black hole. We are in a black hole, in a world of antimatter very close to this point of singularity, where all the known physical laws cease to exist. Now, Omega has got control of singularity and has learned to use the vast forces locked up inside the black hole."

The upshot of this is, as the Doctor says, that

"The only natural law here is the law of Omega's will."

Jo suggests the Doctors could "will up a small door" for them to escape, and this plan succeeds. They all get out of the cell and go looking for Omega's "singularity chamber," but the jelly creatures that are still waddling and milling about the place cause the Doctors to get separated from Dr Tyler, Jo and Benton.

So it is only the Doctors that reach Omega's singularity smoke machine, but Omega catches them right away. The Doctors are defiant:

Third Doctor: "If you free us, we'll plead your cause to the Time Lords. Otherwise we shall combine our wills to destroy you."

Omega: "You dare threaten to destroy me? You wish to fight the will of Omega?"

Third Doctor: "Yes, if I must."

Omega: "Then you shall, but you will fight the dark side of my mind."

The Third Doctor suddenly finds himself facing the dark side of Omega's mind. I think he is meant to have a scary face, but I don't even need Scary Cat's help with this bit, I have seen scarier. It does remind me a bit of Mr Sin from Talons of Weng-Chiang though. They do some wrestling in slow-motion, which is indicative that this episode was probably under-running.

Meanwhile Dr Tyler, Jo and Benton have run to the front door to escape the jelly creatures. There is something of a Clue moment as they are trying to get out at the same time as the Brigadier and Mr Ollis are trying to get in. 

Benton: "How did you know we were trying to get out?"

Brigadier: "We didn't. We were trying to get in."

But when the door does finally open they all run away with the creatures chasing them.

The First Doctor speaks to the Time Lords (his only opportunity to be in this episode), who have somehow found out about Omega - presumably they have been watching this episode on their TV set. They propose sending him in to the black hole as well, because

"All three are needed to defeat Omega."

Back at the wrestling, Omega says

"Those who oppose the will of Omega shall not live! Destroy him!"

I think this means that the Doctor lost the match, even though he still seems to be slow-mo struggling with his opponent. This is the cliffhanger, and it isn't a great one because it is unclear exactly what's going on - what we hear not matching up with what we see.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Three Doctors Episode Two

With the Third Doctor and Jo having been disappeared, the Second Doctor thinks the SFX monster has "gone off the boil" so he and Benton cautiously venture out of the TARDIS.

The Brigadier arrives and does a glorious double-take when he sees the Second Doctor is there instead of the Third. We get our second instance of the Brigadier's komedy buffooning when he refuses to accept the Second Doctor's explanation of what happened, not even when backed up by Benton.

"It's quite obvious to me what's happened. You've been mucking around with that infernal machine of yours, and somehow or other you've changed back your appearance and shot poor Miss Grant off to heaven knows where."

So, is the Brigadier very powerful or is he very stupid? I know which one I'd put my moneys on. If I had moneys, which I don't because I am a cat. It does lead to some funny lines though, such as

"As long as he does the job, he can wear what face he likes."

The following scene with the Time Lords doesn't do anything to advance the plot, it is essentially a recap of the events of the first episode for the benefit of any Time Lords (or viewers at home) who missed it or perhaps weren't paying attention. This was probably a good idea because a lot had to happen in part one so that we could see all three Doctors by the end of it.

The Third Doctor and Jo wake up from having sleeps in a quarry. Jo thinks they are both ded and, as it is only two episodes since she mistaikenly thought exactly the same thing at the end of The Time Monster, the Doctor doesn't put up with her nonsense for long this time, saying sardonically "it's not much like heaven, is it?"

They explore the strange world they find themselves in, and soon find the things that were disappeared from UNIT HQ by the SFX monster have been sent here too. This includes Bessie, so they get in to save themselves the walk.

They get out again when they find the pawprints of a manny to follow, and then we see (although they don't) that Mr Ollis is following them, stealthily.

Back at UNIT HQ, the Brigadier needs the Second Doctor to go on a Zoom call (well, after all, the UNIT era is supposed to be set in the near future) with his superiors at the "Security Council" but tells them that this Doctor is the Doctor's assistant because

"I decided the truth was too much for them. Assistant it will have to be."

Suffice to say, this doesn't go down well with the Second Doctor. It also gets in the way of his testing the gadget he had made to "confuse" the SFX monster, so he leaves this to Benton while he and the Brigadier are away on the call.

Benton unwisely throws a wrapping paper at the dormant SFX monster, which wakes it up. Oh Jesus Christ, Benton!

He turns the Doctor's machine on, but it doesn't help even when on full. The Doctor, the Brigadier and Benton are forced to run into the TARDIS to escape being disappeared. This is also the Brigadier's first time inside the TARDIS, and his reaction is quite different from the usual "bigger on the inside" response:

"So this is what you've been doing with UNIT funds and equipment all this time? How's it done, some sort of optical illusion?"

The Third Doctor and Jo find Dr Tyler. The Doctor tells him and Jo where they are:

"On a stable world in a universe of antimatter. An anomaly within an impossibility."

As they wonder who has brought them to this impossible planet, we see they are being watched on TV by a cloaked manny, who commands the waddling jelly creatures. We only get a glimpse of this manny for now, as his full reveal is obviously being saved for a dramatic moment. His voice is that of the unmistaikable Stephen Thorne, so it is probably Azal returning from The Dæmons.

Back in the quarry, the creatures surround the Doctor, Dr Tyler and Jo. we see that Mr Ollis is still hidden and nobody is aware of his presence, so he avoids being captured along with the others.

Jo describes the studio set they are taken to as looking like "Aladdin's* Cave," but the BBC budget can't stretch that far at the best of times. The tinkly incidental music does its best at trying to create a sense of wonder and mystery, but it is fighting a losing battle. Dr Tyler spends a scene trying to run away, but he only ends up arriving back where the Doctor and Jo are. As if to emphasise how this is just padding out the episode so that the cliffhanger can come at the right place, he even says

"That was a bit of a waste of time, wasn't it?"

A more significant scene takes place in the TARDIS, when the First Doctor again appears on the scanner and tells the Second Doctor to turn off the TARDIS forcefield. The Brigadier, who has never met the First Doctor before (although Nicholas Courtney did back when he was Bret Vyon), asks

"Who in the name of heaven was that?"

The Second Doctor, knowing how the Brigadier has been characterised in this story so far, replies

"I'm afraid you'd never believe me."

Lol.

He turns the forcefield off, and we see what happens from the point of view of the UNIT soldiers who are still waiting outside their HQ - first the creatures disappear, then a moment later the entire building vanishes. and Corporal Palmer makes a face.

Now that's what I call a facepalmer.

* If any Disney film is going to be referenced, surely it should be The Black Hole?

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Three Doctors Episode One

How many Doctors have you seen today?

The Three Doctors is the first story of season 10 of Doctor Who. It stars Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell as the three Doctors, along with Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Katy Manning as Jo Grant, and John Levene as Sergeant Benton. Although it is widely considered to be the series' 10th anniversary story, it was actually broadcast from December 1972 to January 1973, closer to the show's ninth anniversary (in November '72) than to its 10th.

It starts with Arthur Ollis finding Dr Tyler's weather balloon and getting disappeared by it. This quickly establishes a mystery of what could have caused this disappearing act. Dr Tyler makes a confused face and, in keeping with this story's already established desire to get straight to the main plot, contacts UNIT to get the Doctor's help.

It isn't just Mr Ollis's disappearance (nor even the disappearance of the letter H from his name between the Target novelisation of this story and the TV version) that brings Dr Tyler to UNIT. He also has some unusual-looking cosmic x-rays he wants the Doctor's opinion on, having already showed it to "yanks, and the other lot."

The Brigadier doesn't understand what Dr Tyler... wait, if Dr Tyler is a doctor, is he one of the "three doctors" referred to in the title?

The Brigadier doesn't understand what the two doctors are talking about, but Jo shows how much she has been learning since her first appearance when she translates their jargon for his, and our, benefit.

"He means it travels faster than light."

The Brigadier is, in this story, more of a comic relief caricature than ever before, and this is arguably the furthest he ever got from his original, more serious characterisation that we saw back in season seven. The first example of this is when he gets exasperated with the Doctor allowing Dr Tyler to use his equipment, saying 

"Make yourself at home. We're only supposed to be a top secret security establishment. Liberty Hall, Dr Tyler. Liberty Hall."

But there will be plenty more of this sort of thing to follow.

Dr Tyler just has time to develop the x-ray that has Mr Ollis's face on it before he too gets disappeared. Then we see a monster made entirely of SFX appear and slither about for a bit until it goes down the sink. It comes out of the drains and the Doctor and Jo run away from it, so it only gets to disappear Bessie.

In the lab, the Doctor sees the x-ray with the face on it and quickly deduces a lot of what has happened - the SFX monster was after him, and only disappeared the other mannys and things by mistaik.

Some other creatures appear outside. They are costumes rather than just special effects, and are quite alien-looking and effective... until they start moving, at which point their waddling makes them laughable. Benton and the other UNIT soldiers try shooting at them but bullets have no effect (as usual), which annoys the Brigadier (also as usual).

While the soldiers are distracted by the aliens, the SFX monster noms part of a wall to try and get to the Doctor, leading to the Doctor, Jo and Benton all running into the TARDIS, hoping that it will be safe with the "forcefield on."

This is the first time Benton has been inside the TARDIS, leading to some of the best evar dialogue about how it is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Doctor: "Well, sergeant, aren't you going to say it that it's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside? Everybody else does."

Benton: "It's pretty obvious, isn't it?"

LOL!

This brief moment of comic relief is followed by an escalation in the dramatic tension, since the Doctor is unable to dematerialise the TARDIS. He decides the only thing he can do is to send an SOS to the Time Lords, while Jo tells Benton (and us) that "things are pretty serious."

The scene then transitions to the planet of the Time Lords, still a very rare occurrence at this point in the series - aside from its first appearance at the end of The War Games, we have only visited it for a single scene of exposition at the beginning of Colony in Space.

The Time Lords also think things are pretty serious. There is a black hole that is noming their energy.

"Unless the energy loss is stopped the whole fabric of spacetime will be destroyed."

They want to help the Doctor but "no one can be spared." One of the Time Lords suggests the Doctor "can help himself" by them sending an earlier Doctor to join the present Doctor. The Time Lord Chancellor doesn't like this idea (presumably because it will be expensive), and says

Chancellor: "You can't allow him to cross his own time stream. Apart from the enormous energy it would need, the first law of time expressly forbids him to meet his other selves."

Sensible Time Lord: "I am aware of that, your excellency, but this is an emergency."

Chancellor: "But you can't!"

I know you don't like the idea, Chancellor, but there's no need for rude language like that!

In the TARDIS, the Doctor is confused when he finds a recorder on the console. He is even more confused when his previous incarnation reaches out and takes it.

Almost immediately the two Doctors don't get on with each other, starting with the second Doctor's

"I can see you've been doing the TARDIS up a bit, hmm... I don't like it."

The first hint of this was dropped back in Dave the Daleks, when the Doctor was irritated by meeting another version of himself for only a few seconds, but this is the first true example of it happening, and it is such a wonderful idea, that the Doctor just can't get on with himself whenever he meets himself. This was used to great effect in The Five Doctors, where there were even more combinations of Doctors to keep the concept interesting, as well as in Dave the Doctor, the 50th anniversary special, helping to make that one of the very best episodes of the modern series.

Benton recognises the earlier Doctor, because they met during The Invasion, but Jo doesn't know who the newcomer is. The two Doctors argue over how best to explain it to her, and end up only confusing Jo even more.

Third Doctor: "Jo, it's all quite simple. I am he and he is me."

Jo: "'And we are all together, goo goo ga joob?'"

Jo gets the explanation eventually, although it needs Benton's help to convince her. The second Doctor then explains why he is here:

Second Doctor: "Your effectiveness is now doubled!"

Third Doctor: "Halved, more like."

The Time Lords see that the two Doctors "refuse to co-operate" and naturally conclude that the way to solve this is to send in yet another Doctor, mew.

The First Doctor* interrupts the Second and Third's argument when he appears on the monitor. He puts them in their place with the utterly wonderful line

"Oh, so you're my replacements, hmm? A dandy and a clown."

He tells them that the SFX monster is "a time bridge" and that they should "stop dilly-dallying, and cross it!" before he fades away.

Neither Benton nor Jo have seen the First Doctor before, so Jo asks who he was. Both Doctors reply "me," and then each gets angry with the other and insist it's really "me!"

The Second Doctor tosses a coin for which one of them has to cross the time bridge, and he almost certainly cheats because he says "hard luck" to the Third without letting him look at it. They open the TARDIS doors and the Third Doctor goes out, but Jo runs out with a big

"Doctor, No!"

and so both of them get disappeared by the SFX monster - cliffhanger!

* He's technically the fourth doctor we have seen in this episode, because Dr Tyler is also a doctor, but I will use the convention that the Doctor played by William Hartnell is the First Doctor, Patrick Troughton is the Second Doctor, and Jon Pertwee is the Third Doctor. Or, when one Doctor is on his own, he can be just the Doctor. And Dr Tyler remains Dr Tyler. All clear?

Happy new year 2022

Here is the winner of our 2021 Calendar Doggy of the Year competition to wish you all a happy new year for 2022.

And a happy new year to you from all of us cats, doggys, Totoro, Dragon, Cthulhu, Monkeys With Badges, squirrels and zanni as well.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Starchaser The Legend of Orin

In the present day, when Disney is releasing Star Wars films, TV series, and spinoff media as fast as, or even faster than, audiences can cope with, it is hard to believe that in the wake of 1983's release of Return of the Jedi, demand for Star Wars was far, far greater than the supply. With Lucasfilm leaving these dollars on the table, plenty of other companies jumped on the Star Wars bandwagon to try to grab themselves a piece of the action.

Of course this had been going on ever since the first Star Wars film exploded onto cinema screens, leading to sci-fi imitators such as Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, helping to get the Star Trek film series going, and even causing films in other genres to get sci-fied up with added pewpewpew lasers, such as in Krull, or when James Bond went into space in Moonraker.

While all of these were like Star Wars, in their own way, none of them were Star Wars. And by the mid-1980s there was an audience of kittens for whom Star Wars had always been there. They wanted Star Wars, the real thing, or as close to the real thing as they could get. In that context Star Trek 2 Wrath of Khan wouldn't have counted (despite being the best film evar), but Caravan of Courage would.

This, then, is the world that gave us Starchaser The Legend of Orin. Now I'm not going to claim that Starchaser is a ripoff of Star Wars (you can find plenty of other reviewers on the internets who will, mew), but we mustn't forget the environment of 1985 that Starchaser came out into, and the influence of Star Wars upon it is impossible to ignore. It could never have taken the form it did without Star Wars, if indeed it would have existed at all...

The film starts with some captive mannys being made to do mining like they're in a Terry Nation script, with some of them getting their shirts off like Blake in Horizon. This is a promising start, purr.

Orin is one of the mannys. We can tell at once that he is a main character because he has the most fabulous '80s hair out of all of them. The robots guarding the mannys look a bit like Hordak's robots, and are introduced as obvious baddys when they whip a miner. Orin gets into a fight with a couple of robots, and is literally 'saved by the bell' that rings to summon them all to a meeting.

The mannys at the meeting start shouting for "Zygon" which I at first thought meant that they were about to watch a Doctor Who DVD and were voting for the one they wanted to get put on.

Zygon is actually the main baddy (and why he is named after the aliens from Terror of the Zygons is never even referred to, never mind explained, mew). We can tell at once he is a baddy from the scary mask he wears, and also the way he emerges out of a giant skull with fire behind him. He is actually there to give the mannys a motivational speech about mining more crystals, ending with

"So dig harder, or die!"

We are less than five minutes into the film and already it is giving out a pretty strong anti-capitalist message, not something I was necessarily expecting to see here.

Orin is back mining when he finds a sword in the stone. An old manny seems to recognise it, but he is soon killed by a robot after telling Orin only to hide it and that the baddys must not get it.

The sword then begins to play a hologram recording of an old manny, looking not dissimilar to Slartibartfast, who tells the watching mannys

"There is a world above, a magnificent universe."

encouraging them to escape, then adds, cryptically

"Find the blade."

and when the recording ends and the manny disappears, the sword's blade also disappears, leaving only the hilt.

Orin and his friend Elan are inspired by this to try to escape to the "outside world." They are followed by Cally, who is Orin's brother, a small, blind manny, and nothing to do with Cally from Blakes 7. The three of them get spotted and chased by some robots, in a short but decently exciting action sequence.

Cally gets left behind, while Orin and Elan escape out of the mine into a sci-fi base of grey metal walls, hexagonal like the Liberator's. You know, there are definitely more parallels to Blakes 7 than I was expecting to find, even if they are in minor (or should that be miner? lol) ways.

Orin and Elan get captured by robots, and Zygon decides that, before he kills them, he will show them his face, which is supposedly some big secret that he wouldn't tell anyone unless he was about to kill them anyway. He takes off his scary mask to reveal that he is a grey-skinned alien, then he strangles Elan and she goes 

which is actually a pretty shocking moment for any film, never mind one aimed at kittens, since the audience expectation is obviously that main characters should escape at this point in the plot. Films for kittens can quite often have a more sophisticated approach to death than they are given credit for, such as in Bambi, or Watership Down. Even Battle for Endor kills off the main character's family near the start.

Before he can strangle Orin as well, Zygon notices "the sword with no blade" and is distracted by it long enough to allow Orin to run away. The robots shoot at Orin but they accidentally hit a big pile of crystals instead, which explode. The roof collapses on Orin, and Zygon assumes he is also ded, but he isn't.

Orin realises that if Zygon is a baddy, then his commandment to the miners to

"Never dig up. Up is hell"

is a lie, so he does the opposite in order to escape. When he reaches the outside world, Orin sees the stars for the first time. With tears in his eyes he says to himself

"It's not a lie!"

because now he knows it to be the truth, rather than having to take it only as an article of faith. This is quite an emotional moment, and is followed by a short montage of Orin exploring this new world he finds himself in, as he crosses a number of alien landscapes.

But we can't go for too long without an action scene, so Orin meets (and gets captured by) some horrible half-alien-half-robots who want his "body parts" for themselves. They fall out and argue amongst themselves when they find the sword hilt and each wants it, until one of them cuts another in half with the sword even though it seemingly still has no blade. Then their leader impales itself on the sword's blade, which is revealed (well... sort of) to be invisible as the leader's blood runs down it.

Orin gets the sword and runs away, and is pursued by the remaining creatures.

He is rescued by Space-Sinatra Dagg Dibrimi, who mistaiks Orin for a rival smuggler. Dagg then gets attacked by a big green monster and Orin rescues him using the sword to slice at it. 

"Listen Water-Snake - I saved you; you saved me. We're even. Now beat it."

Dagg is a scoundrel, so doesn't want to team up with Orin straight away. Besides, he already has a sidekick - the computer on his spaceship, called Arthur. Wait, there's a character called Arthur but he isn't the same character as has a sword that he pulled out of a stone? Confused cat is confused.

Orin has nothing better to do, so he follows Dagg around anyway. A small glowing insect that Dagg calls a "starfly" starts following them too. A patrolling robot spaceship flies overhead and pewpewpews at Dagg and Orin, so they run back to Dagg's spaceship where Arthur shoots it down with their own pewpewpew lasers.

Arthur is sort of a cross between Zen and Orac - while he is the ship's computer, he has a similar argumentative attitude to Orac's whenever Dagg asks him to do anything.

Their ship takes off and flies towards a city. Orin has, of course, never seen a city before.

"What is that?"

"That, my little Water-Snake, is where I'm about to do my business."

That sentence has a different meaning when you're a cat, lol!

The ship is spotted by the baddys and gets shot at, leading to an action sequence that could have been inspired by any one of a number of scenes, all from the Star Wars trilogy.

It turns out Dagg has some robots of his own, which he uses to hide behind when he leaves his ship to steal some crystals, all the while still being shot at by baddy robots. Dagg is clearly supposed to fill the Han Solo role in this film's line up of characters, but when he's doing this heist he actually reminds me more of Avon. Purr. Gamma Longcat says that a lot of things remind me of Avon, and he's right. He's a clever cat, and his cleverness reminds me of Avon. Purr.

Zygon comes out and pewpewpews all Dagg's robots. Orin distracts Zygon so that Dagg can get away and, because all of his own robots have been destroyed, Dagg grabs a non-combatant robot who happened to be nearby to use as his new robot shield, even taking her onto the spaceship along with Orin when they escape.

Zygon is left behind with the knowledge that Orin is still alive. He says to himself

"It is him. A Kakan has returned."

although we don't get to know who or what a "Kakan" is yet.

The ship flies off into space where Dagg reprograms the captured "fembot" to be friendly in a manner that is coded to be distressingly like a sexual assault played for laughs. This is a scene that definitely wasn't OK even taking into account that this was made in the less enlightened times of the 1980s. The level of sexism on display here I wouldn't even expect to see in some of the worst sci-fi of the era, and it is utterly unnecessary to see it here in a film aimed at kittens. Well... Ben Steed might put it in a script, but even he would think twice about making it a komedy scene.

They fly to a planet with a silly name, which Dagg says is a "den of thieves." He decides to continue his villainous behaviour by selling the "fembot" to a slave dealer, and then goes on to a brothel to meet with a highly dubious ethnic stereotype who Dagg tries to sell his stolen crystals to. I think this might be the same planet where Avon got captured and sold as a slave in Assassin, it certainly has a similar (and thus similarly dodgy) aesthetic.

Orin has somehow learned the "fembot's" name is Silica between scenes. Hers isn't even the worst example in this film of characters not being properly introduced to the viewers - it is over 12 minutes after Dagg first appears before his full name is mentioned. I think of all the main characters, only Zygon gets a proper introduction at his first appearance.

Orin tries to rescue Silica by bidding on her, even though he doesn't have any moneys. This ensures he wins in the short-term, since his bids aren't limited to the amount of moneys he actually has, but it means that when he is unable to pay up he gets captured by the slaver.

Dagg walks away from Orin saying

"Sorry, kid, it's the law."

but then he has a crisis of conscience and buys both Orin and Silica from the slaver. As they walk away they are followed by a squad of baddys who start pewpewpewing at them. Dagg sends Silica out to act like a prostitute robot from the future to distract the baddys so that he and Orin can ambush them.

Is this definitely a film for kittens? I'm not watching the Starchaser equivalent of Flesh Gordon by mistaik, am I? It certainly seems that way at times, and I don't like it, mew. Our "heroes" escape back to their ship and take off.

The action cuts to Zygon in his lair, and we see that he is mobilising all of his resources to hunt for Orin.

"Why all this fuss over one boy?"

asks one of his henchmannys. The real answer would involve Zygon explaining about how he has to do it because Darth Vader was obsessed with hunting for Luke Skywalker, so instead he gives some enigmatic exposition about how "twelve hundred years ago" someone or something escaped from him, and he does not intend to let the same thing happen again.

Dagg still wants to sell his crystal haul, so keeps the rendezvous he made with the stereotype out in the desert. Er, I mean they meet out in the desert. The stereotype's equally stereotypical henchmanny recognises Orin and knows that Zygon has put a bounty on him. So he's both Luke and Han in this scenario.

Dagg shows loyalty to Orin, and says

"If we don't both walk out of here in the next few seconds, my ship is programmed to blow the crap out of this tent."

Ah, I think I know what's going on - the film is intended for kittens, but nobody told Dagg that. Anyhow, this allows them to get away.

Once the ship is in flight, the "starfly" from earlier reappears and flies around annoying Dagg, but Orin realises that it is trying to warn them that there is a bomb hidden in with the moneys Dagg got for the crystals. The ship flies back over the treacherous stereotypes' camp and drops the chest with the bomb in it onto them, where it explodes. So much for them.

Some more baddys fly up to them and fire a warning shot. Arthur suggests they surrender like he's C3PO. The framing of this bit is very reminiscent of the Millenium Falcon's approach to Cloud City in Empire Strikes Back. This leads into another chase scene as our heroes are pursued by multiple smaller baddy ships, who Dagg tricks into flying into the scenery to whittle their numbers down one by one. You know, like Han Solo does in another scene from Empire Strikes Back.

A pew to their windscreen shatters it and causes the ship to crash. Arthur's voice goes deep like he's HAL9000, to signify that he's dying. Are there any sci-fi computers from before 1985 that he's not going to borrow (putting it politely, mew) traits from by the end of this film? The baddys board the crashed ship where they find Dagg, unconscious, and capture him.

A mysterious horse-riding manny in a face-concealing helmet finds Orin, also unconscious but outside the ship. She takes her helmet off to reveal she is one of the mannys who was bidding on Silica at the slave auction earlier, so we know she must be a baddy. She orders her robot servant (or presumably, given what has been established about her so far, her robot slave) to bring Orin back to her "palace."

When Orin wakes up he mistaiks her for Elan, which is somewhat understandable given that they have identical facial structures and voice actresses. She is actually Aviana.

Aviana asks Orin about himself and he begins to tell her, but she doesn't believe there are any mannys in the crystal mines. The only thing that begins to convince her that Orin is telling the truth is when the invisible sword cuts through a curtain and is then an empty hilt again when she waves her paw over it.

Aviana goes on the space internets to space wikipedia to research the hilt, and finds the complete backstory about it and the Kakan, who used the sword to overthrow a tyrant 1,200 years ago. Orin recognises the picture of the old manny from the recording the sword played when he first found it. The history ends with the blade being lost after a battle on Orin's home world of Trinia.

Aviana agrees to take Orin back to Trinia on her own spaceship - it looks like she has joined the party and isn't a baddy after all (her earlier willing involvement with the slave trade will not be referred to again). They get to the planet really easily, but then neither Aviana nor Orin knows how to find the hidden mines. It is while they are blundering around looking for a way in that they are surrounded by robots and captured by Zygon. At first Aviana doesn't even know that "Commissioner Zygon" (as she calls him) is a baddy, and she tries to talk their way past him.

Orin and Zygon wrestle over the hilt, which Orin can only use to cut things sometimes and unreliably at that, but he is still better with it than Zygon who cannot use it at all.

Zygon's face is slashed to reveal he is actually a robot

"I am not just a robot, I am the robot."

Orin correctly guesses that this means Zygon is the same robot who was defeated 1,200 years earlier, who has successfully taken over the galaxy again, only from within this time. Zygon keeps him alive because he wants Orin to tell him how to use the sword, not believing that Orin has no idea himself, and has him put in a prison cell opposite Dagg.

Aviana, as the daughter of a planetary governor, is being kept alive to use as a hostage, since Zygon plans to preemptively attack her family's planet. Zygon monologues

"Thousands of years ago, on some obscure planet, a primitive chess computer was the first inorganic mind to beat man. In a few hours, I will be calling checkmate in the last such game the humans and their kind will ever play."

The starfly flies into Orin's cell. He asks it to help him by getting him the hilt, and it replies

"Don't need hilt."

Orin, who can be a bit single-minded, doesn't pause to be surprised that the starfly can talk, and he insists he needs the hilt. The starfly flies off, and quickly proves it is the most competent member of the party when it defeats a robot armed with a pewpewpew gun by flying into the robot's head, so that it shoots itself. It returns to Orin's cell with the hilt. Orin is polite enough to say "thank you" before using the sword to escape - cutting through both doors and robot guards with the invisible blade.

Orin and Dagg go to look for Aviana to rescue her, over Dagg's complaints - presumably he objects on the grounds that, lacking a Wookie, they can't even try a "prisoner transfer from cell block 1138" plan. Luckily, they do manage to locate the ship she is being held on, the flagship of Zygon's invasion fleet, and are able to stealth aboard just before it takes off.

We cut to a short scene back at Dagg's ship, to show us that Silica has repaired Arthur and the ship enough for it to take off.

Dagg and Orin enter a room with a lot of baddy robots (you know that scene where Han Solo runs into a lot of Stormtroopers...) whereupon Dagg closes the door again. The robots try to do a classic slow-cutting through the door to get at them, but not before Dagg finds a way to open the airlock in their room and jettison them all into space.

This saves Orin and Dagg in the short term, but in the longer term it alerts the other baddy ships that something is wrong when they see a lot of robots floating about. Zygon, who has by now noticed that the hilt is no longer where he put it, orders his other ships to destroy his flagship - he isn't taking any chances with Orin any more.

Our heroes, meanwhile, get to the flagship's bridge and rescue Aviana. Dagg takes over the controls of the ship and flies it down towards the planet, with baddys ships in pursuit. Verrrry conveniently, they fly near to where the ship with Arthur and Silica on it just happens to be flying. Or maybe it's a small world after all?

Guided by the starfly to the right controls, Dagg is able to send a signal that detonates the missiles on board all of the baddy spaceships. When Zygon learns what has happened, his henchmanny tells him "we've got to evacuate." (You know that bit with Governor Tarkin...)

Zygon says

"No! He'll be coming for me next, but I'll be ready for him."

Our heroes take their ships to Trinia, where they find only one way into the base open to them, as though they are being led down a single path. (You know when Luke arrives at Cloud City and...)

Zygon sets a tractor beam onto the stolen ship with Orin, Dagg and Aviana on it, but Silica pilots the other ship into its path and so she and Arthur get caught in their place. As baddy ships and robots start shooting at them, Dagg says to Orin

"Just like old times, eh Water-Snake?"

By "old times" he means about an hour ago. Either because they have control of Zygon's powerful flagship, or maybe because Dagg is just that damn good, they are winning even against the whole of Zygon's forces.

There is an amusing moment when Zygon's henchmanny tries to flee to save himself, only to run right into the path of a crashing ship as he does so, lol. This detail is superfluous to the plot, but a nice little touch.

Another crashing ship disables the tractor beam, freeing Silica and Arthur. Zygon orders his remaining ships to ram the flagship, and this manages to bring it down. Silica takes Dagg and Aviana onto their remaining ship, while Orin heads for a final confrontation with Zygon, alone...

...Except when Aviana sees Zygon she goes after Orin to try to help him.

Orin finds his way into the mine, and emerges from Zygon's fire door that he used back at the beginning of the film. This means that at first his mannys mistaik him for Zygon, until they see it is Orin really. He makes an impassioned speech.

"Ever since I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster there have been rumours, rumours that there was another world, that long ago there was more than just Mineworld. Some said it was a heaven, a paradise beyond imagination. Others said it was a hell, far worse than the world we know now. But an old man saw the truth beyond the sword, and gave his life so that I might reach out beyond these caverns, reach out to a greater world above. Well I have reached, and I have touched the stars!"

This might have gone better had it been said by Captain Kirk, since as he finishes Zygon (wearing his scary mask again) comes in behind Orin and wins the crowd back at once.

Orin fights Zygon with the sword, disarming him of his pewpewpew gun and then his mask. Seeing Zygon's true face revealed begins to turn the mannys against him. Unfortunately, Aviana then comes in and gets captured by Zygon, just like in that other great sci-fi film of 1985, Transformers: the Movie, when Hot Rod gets captured by Megatron. Given the closeness of their releases, I doubt either can be accused of copying the other, it's just a case of synchronicity.

Zygon reminds Orin of the way he killed Elan, and threatens to do the same to Aviana unless Orin surrenders the hilt. Orin does so, but Zygon is again completely unable to use it, so he throws it away and pounces on Orin with only his paws. A group of starflies appear and tell Orin

"You do not need the hilt, there never was a blade."

Orin is then able to make an invisible sword without the hilt, which he uses to cut off one of Zygon's paws (You know that bit...)

He then cuts Zygon in half, and the two halves fall down a pit (You know... wait, that one wasn't made until after Starchaser! The circle is now complete) into some lava. The miners all instantly rebel against the robots and, because their mining tools turn into pretty effective pewpewpew guns really easily, soon defeat them.

Meanwhile (should that be 'minewhile'? Oh, please yourselves, mew) the ship is still being chased. With Dagg injured, Silica is piloting, and she shoots down a baddy ship so that it crashes into the crystals, setting off a chain reaction which starts to blow up the whole base, and even threatens to collapse the mines.

Orin and Aviana lead the mannys out of the mines to the outside world, and Orin is reunited with Cally.

Orin uses his newfound magic space Jesus powers to cure Cally's blindness. The starflies appear and transform into glowy space ghosts. They are the Kakans, and they offer Orin membership in their group if he leaves behind his "human form." Orin says "not yet" and gives Aviana a meaningful look.

They accept his decision and fly away, disappearing into a constellation of stars that looks like the hilt, over which the end credits roll and theme music plays.

Starchaser The Legend of Orin is actually a mostly enjoyable film. Its frequent action scenes keep it exciting, and it tells a complete epic, space opera story in an hour and 40 minutes, which is more than can be said of many more celebrated films. 

The film's worst weakness is the gratuitous sexism and ethnic stereotyping found in some scenes in the middle, which can't even be passed off as the film being 'of its time' since these would have been just as dodgy back then. Meanwhile the biggest complaint frequently leveled at it, that it rips off Star Wars, is exaggerated.

Oh, don't get me wrong, the resemblances to Star Wars are blatantly there, but they are almost entirely on the superficial level - one could surgically remove all the Star Wars iconography and it wouldn't change the shape of the plot. On a character level there's the resemblance of the central trio of Orin, Dagg and Aviana to Luke, Han and Leia respectively, but these characters were based on archetypes that existed long before Star Wars - which is why they resonated so readily with audiences when Star Wars itself came out.

I think it would be much more accurate to say this borrows (ahem) from anything and everything sci-fi of its era, of which Star Wars was simply the biggest and best known (something true both then and now). Hence my being able to draw so many parallels with Blakes 7, even though it is much less likely that the makers of Starchaser would be familiar with it than with Star Wars.

In this way Starchaser The Legend of Orin was a forerunner of sci-fi franchises that came along later - such as Warhammer 40,000 - built on the premise that if you steal from enough different sources then you end up creating something original.