Day 318: The Curse of Peladon, Episode Four

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 318: The Curse of Peladon, Episode Four

Dear diary,

You could almost be forgiven for thinking that this might be Jo’s final story in the series. It’s her seventh story, which gives her almost twice as many as Liz, and equal to Victoria and close to Zoe. She’s suddenly become a very useful asset to the Doctor, providing the solution to many of the problems they’ve faced in this story, from finding the tunnel in Episode One to helping keep the peace as best she can. Oh, and then there’s a love story.

I said back at the start of the story that I was hoping Jo would be kept front and centre throughout, and I think it’s fair to say that she’s been pretty well-served in that respect. What’s lovely is how real her personal story throughout the last four episodes has felt. You can really see Jo and King Peladon falling for each other, and the final scene in which he asks her to stay and she has to decline without giving a valid reason is genuinely heartbreaking. That they get to part with a kiss is a lovely touch, and it helps to flesh out the characters even more.

Right back at the start of The 50 Year Diary, I expressed surprise at just how three-dimensional the companions were. There’s something of a myth that’s built up over the years that all the new series companions are fully formed while all the classic ones were merely ciphers. I’m constantly waiting for the standard to drop, but on the whole I’ve not been disappointed. Victoria was something of a blip, but all the companions so far have had a quality to them that I’m surprised to see, and I think it’s another benefit of watching through in order like this.

A lot of my good feeling toward this episode seems to be born from the last five minutes of it. The conversation between the Doctor and Jo about how they arrived on Peladon at this precise point in its history was welcome, as I’d been wondering earlier on how the Doctor had managed to bring them here. It’s nice to see that Jo’s wish to get back to Earth next is echoed by the Doctor. I’ve not really been keeping track of his character’s evolution over the last few stories, but I think we’re seeing a shift now.

The first few stories of this era saw him desperate to get off the planet and return to his wanderings in time and space. Now that he’s getting occasional trips out courtesy of the Time Lords, he seems to be finding himself a bit more settled at UNIT. It’s something that still has a way to go (and I’ll try to remember to keep an eye out for it as I move forward), but I think we’re seeing a very definite change in his persona, and it’s for the better.

I’m also pleased to see the arrival of the real Earth ambassador at the end of the story. It’s something I thought was going to be a bit of a plot hole - and at one stage I even wondered if the Doctor was the real ambassador, set in place by the Time lords themselves. It’s interesting to note how different the Third Doctor is in his assumed role when compared to his Second incarnation during The Power of the Daleks. There’s never been a more clear contrast between the pair!

I’m looking forward to moving to another story, though. The Curse of Peladon simply hasn’t captured my imagination in the way I was hoping it might, and having had a break from him for a week or so, I’m looking forward to seeing the Master again. I’m all for the series trying to break up the monotony of Earth-based a bit, but hopefully the next one will be more to my tastes…

a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 317: The Curse of Peladon, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Over the first half of this story, my biggest complaint has been that it’s simply too ‘talky’. Almost every scene boils down to the cast (some of whom are dressed in mildly amusing alien outfits) talking at each other, while not a lot else happens.There’s a scene in today’s episode, for example, where the various delegates of the Galactic Federation debate the merits of leaving the Doctor to his fate. It should be a great scene in which Jo finds herself facing a wall of opposition while trying to save her best friend’s life… but I just sort of watched it without engaging.

Equally, today’s episode has shown that when it’s done well, a dialogue-heavy scene can be absolutely brilliant. I’m thinking specifically of the exchange between Jo and King Peladon, in which she asks for his support and he tells her that he can’t give it, before asking for her hand in marriage. If you were to strip away the fact that David Troughton is wearing such a sparkly purple costume, this could very well be a scene from any period drama between a king and his love and set in a castle.

It’s helped, too, by Katy Manning turning in her best performance to date. She’s never been bad in her role, but she’s never been as good as we see here. I’ve heard people hold up her attempt at saving the Doctor’s life in The Dæmons as her golden moment (and, indeed, I believe it was scenes from that story which helped her win the job during auditions), but for me, this episode sees far and away her best acting, and it’s the first time that I think I’ve ever seen Jo as a proper grown up.

It’s a shame, then, when we see her blunder in to the tunnels and interrupt another of the Doctor’s experiments. During Episode One, I said “we’re a million miles away from the character who was introduced at the start of last season”, but suddenly we’re given a scene that’s almost identical to her very first! It feels like they’re trying to use this story to give Jo the space and freedom to grow as a character, but then every so often they need to resort to giving her that traditional ‘companion’ dialogue, so that the Doctor can explain his clever plan to the viewers at home.

It’s quite fun watching the Doctor put together this clever plan, too. Seeing him tinker with odds and ends to create the device he needs is so very right for this incarnation (there’s an image on the DVD cover art for the story that’s taken from this scene, and it’s just looks like the Third Doctor in his natural habitat!), and then it’s good to see him using this device to hypnotise Aggedor (and Jo!)

But I wonder if he’s also one of the things that’s stopping me from engaging with this story. It feels odd to not see this Doctor grounded so much in the Earth. Even during his last excursion from the planet we were in a time that looked even more like the 1970s than the actual 1970s do! For all he may look right tinkering around with technology, the Third Doctor simply looks a little out of place around these corridors and tunnels.

It is nice to see him engaging in the fight sequence at the end, and even though I knew it was a stunt man in the overhead shots, it took me a little while to actually notice it. It’s good to see him refusing to kill his opponent at the end, though I worry that it may come back to haunt him yet. In all, I’m still just not taken by this story. I’m hoping that Jo’s sudden prominence as a character may make her vital to the conclusion, and that it may be enough to give the tale a last-minute surge…

a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 316: The Curse of Peladon, Episode Two

Dear diary,

The oddest thing about this story is that I keep thinking how much greener the Ice Warriors look here than in their last few appearances. Yeah, yeah, I know that they’ve only ever shown up in the programme during the black-and-white era, but I never imagined them as looking this green before. I wonder if I’ve been thinking of the Cold War colouring, in which it’s more of a muted aqua-green that the all-out version on display in this story?

I’m really loving the struggle between the Ice Warriors and the Doctor, though. The idea that he’s so sure they’re in the wrong based on past encounters is nicely played against the idea that they equally suspect him or wrong doing. Having been involved in Doctor Who fandom over the years means that I’m well aware that the Ice Warriors are an innocent party in this story, but that gives me a nice platform from which to watch the action unfold.

For example, it’s noted early on in the story that the various races of the Federation have all had violence in their history, but that they now keep it under control - a nice foreshadowing of this revelation later on in the story. I’m looking forward to the Doctor’s reaction to the change in lifestyle for the creatures, though I’m suspecting that they may string it out a little bit first, with Jo trying to convince him. Certainly, tension seems to be creeping in among all the delegates now.

Sadly, I’m still just not all that into things. It feels just like The Dæmons, in that there’s nothing inherently wrong with the story, but I’m just not getting hooked in the way that I should be with Doctor Who. This episode is still very talky in places, and I can almost feel my attention beginning to wander as the scenes go by.

I am enjoying the involvement of Alpha Centuri, though. It’s one of those creatures from Doctor Who history that you’re always vaguely aware of. I often group the character together in the same box as the Moxx of Balhoon. When the new series was starting up in 2005, there were loads of images around of the Moxx, so people just sort of knew he was there in the series somewhere. Equally, I think the same is true with Alpha Centuri (although one person when told I was now doing this story responded by calling Alpha Centuri the ‘dick in a cape’…).

There’s just something about the character’s voice that really makes me smile, and I’m rather impressed with the costume, too. I’ve always assumed that it was a fairly basic creature, with everything pieced together as best they could. Actually, it’s really well made. There’s a few moments when the head has to turn, and it just looks good! Usually things like this would leave me complaining that it doesn’t quite work out, but no! Hooray! I think if this story wants to do better in my estimations, we need more of Centuri!

a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 315: The Curse of Peladon, Episode One

Dear diary,

Ah, Peladon. This is another one of those stories that I’ve never seen, and I’m in two minds about. On the one hand, I’ve always liked the idea of the Third Doctor making two trips to the planet during his era (for the same reason I enjoy the Tenth Doctor returning to New New York a season after his previous visit). There’s a moment in the Sarah Jane Adventures episode Death of the Doctor in which Jo and Sarah both reminisce about trips to Peladon and get very excited by the very fact that they both visited the same place at different times. That whole scene paints the place as very romantic, and a lovely memory for the pair.

On the other hand, I can distinctly remember my friend Huw reaching the mid-Pertwee era in a marathon of his own last year and suddenly losing the will to continue. When I told him this week that I’m about to start on this story, he rolled his eyes and groaned. It’s hardly the most encouraging of signs, is it?

I don’t think things got off to the best of starts with today’s episode, either. I’m visiting family this week, which means I’ve seen today’s episode on a screen several times larger than I’m used to. The only other episode of the marathon I’ve watched on a screen this size was The Underwater Menace Episode Two. In that instance, I was thrilled to be seeing it on a larger space! The print was in a shocking condition in places, but that just added to the charm of the whole thing! Today, I spent the first five minutes wondering if the restoration work on this story had just gone terribly wrong somewhere. It was all terribly over-exposed, and I could barely make out what was happening in some places. Thankfully, after a while the screen seemed to figure out what was wrong and corrected itself, giving me a far better image than the one I had been watching. A quick check online tells me that The Curse of Peladon is one of the worse-off prints in the archives, so I’m guessing that didn’t help.

Once I was past all of that, though… I was just a bit bored. A lot of this episode seems to just be people standing around talking at each other. To some extent, I don’t mind this. It’s exposition, and it’s necessary to get us up-to-speed with events. Since Jon Pertwee took over the TARDIS, we’ve only had a single story set away from Earth, and even that had a tag scene at the start and the end to give us some context to the adventure. Here, we get a name-check for Mike Yates to explain why Jo is all dressed up, but other than that we’re almost entirely removed from the setting we’ve come to expect from the programme. It needs some exposition to save us from being completely lost at sea.

But then it doesn’t stop. We get long conversations about the legend of the planet (which seems to be coming to the fore in some kind of Scooby Doo-like plot), about ‘protocol’, about the Galactic Federation, about the Ice Warriors, about King Peladon’s ascent to the throne… it just goes on and on. I’m hoping that now we’ve got all of this out of the way, the next three episodes can be all about action and adventure to make up for it.

It sounds like I’m being unfairly harsh on the episode, and in some ways I am. I decided that I just couldn’t forgive it after the entrance of the Ice Warriors was somewhat badly handled. I’m a Doctor Who fan. I know that the Ice Warriors are a part of the Peladon stories (they’re so intertwined with the stories that - along with Alpha Centuri - they’ve been a part of every Peladon story, on telly, in books, and on audio). Despite all this, as today’s episode played out, I completely forgot that the lizard men from Mars would be putting in an appearance.

Therefore, when they do show up for the first time, about three-quarters of the way through the episode, I should have been really excited! A great surprise-that-I-knew-was-coming-but-forgot-about, if you know what I mean. Sadly, they first appear as bumbling down a corridor as the Doctor and Jo first emerge into the castle. An Ice Warrior is shot from behind as it waddles along, and it just left me thinking ‘oh yeah, they’re in this…’

The whole situation worsened as I recalled how well their appearance in The Seeds of Death was handled - teasing the viewer of their presence because you knew they were there, but they just wouldn’t show you! A real shame. It’s odd, and I’ve never noticed it before, that after Pertwee’s first two seasons featured no returning monsters from the 1960s, we now get two in as many stories! The Ice Warriors weren’t shouted about quite as much in the pre-publicity, but they’re very much in the same boat as the Daleks - they’ve both fought the Doctor on multiple occasions in the black-and-white era before vanishing from the screen for a few years. Here’s hoping that my interest will perk up as the story goes on, and that they’re not wasted here in the same way the Daleks were during the last story.

I can’t just complain, though. The scenes between the Doctor and Jo are lovely, and just like various Doctor/companion teams of the past, they’re quickly becoming able to salvage any situation for me. Jo’s been given plenty of opportunities today to prove her worth, and we’re a million miles away from the character who was introduced at the start of last season. It’s Jo who finds the tunnel into the castle, and it’s her intervention that helps out when they’re put under pressure from the members of the Federation. I’m hoping that - with her posing as a princess in a story featuring a king - this can become her story and really let her shine throughout.

The sequence of them climbing the mountain up to the castle looks fab, and it’s one of the best-looking bits of the episode. The Restoration Team website tells me that it’s a film-clip donated by John Ainsworth, reinserted into the rest of the footage, which likely helps with the quality - so thank you, John! The downside is that it doesn’t help the rest of the story - when we cut from the Doctor and Jo on the rain-lashed cliff face directly to a (rather drab looking) BBC studio set it doesn’t half lose some atmosphere…

a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 314: Day of the Daleks, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Almost as soon as I realised that Day of the Daleks was a story in which people come back from the future to prevent a certain chain of events from happening, I knew that the guerrillas would be the cause of that particular time line. It’s a strand of science fiction that’s reared its head time and time again over the years, in everything from The Twilight Zone (in a story that sees Hitler killed as a baby, and then replaced by another child… who grows up to become the ‘Hitler’ we know from history) to the third Harry Potter book.

There’s a risk that this story could suffer from being based around such a well-known concept, but I’ve rather enjoyed it. Watching the Doctor piece everything together is fun (obviously he’s not read The Prisoner of Azkaban by this point!), and I was even slightly surprised that they’d managed to overturn everything by the end of the story. For a while, I suspected that they’d tie this Dalek occupation of the planet into the one from Season Two, and simply gloss over the fact that this back story doesn’t fit the one we were given way back then. It’s good to see that it’s not the case, and that the Doctor is able to save the day in the end.

I’m disappointed by how much the big ‘Return of the Daleks’ has been wasted in this story, though. The production team at the time really went to town to shout about the return of the Doctor’s greatest enemies, but then they barely feature throughout the entire story. Perhaps the biggest shame is that Pertwee only gets to direct a single line at his foes, when he warns them that they can’t succeed in their plans. Over the years, many of the actors to play the Doctor have commented that they really didn’t feel that they ‘owned’ the role until they’d faced off against the Daleks, so it’s a shame to see that Pertwee’s first meeting with them is a bit wasted.

Even away from the Doctor, these Daleks feel like a bit of an anti climax after nearly five years away. As a fan of the programme, I’m well aware of the ‘Three Daleks and some Ogrons’ battle at the end of the story. Knowing that I was planning to watch an episode of this story in its Special Edition form, I was almost tempted to do so for this one, in the hope that it could improve the scene. As it is, I decided that part of Doctor Who’s charm is that we get the invasion of a world peace conference by three Daleks and a couple of gorillas. The highlight is surely when one of the Daleks gingerly opens the back door to the house, and slowly moves inside, with all the charm of a neighbour calling in for a cup of tea.

When I think back to the Dalek stories of the 1960s, the moments that stand out to me are when they’re at their most impressive. The Dalek production factory from Power. The Egyptian massacre during Masterplan. Even that first shot of the plunger headed towards Barbara. The Dalek image from this story really should be the sight of them filing out of the tunnel interspersed with the Ogrons – in many ways it’s designed to be similar to that shot from Power. Even this doesn’t quite work for me, though. The implication throughout has been that the gold Dalek is the top dog, but they re-use this prop in the sequence a few times, just as they do with the standard grey drones. The ultimate effect is that having only three of them becomes even more obvious.

I’m also surprised to see that the ending to this story is pretty much the same as the ending to the last story – the main building around which the action has been set is blown up. Once again, it’s a very good effect (I’d probably go so far as to say that this shot, along with the destruction of the church in The Deamons count as the best effects shots of the 1970s so far), but when you’re watching the stories in quick succession, it does rather feel like de ja vu.

It sounds like I’m really having a moan about today’s episode. Almost everything I have to say about it is broadly negative. And yet, I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s the kind of episode that I can simply switch off and watch. I don’t need to pay much attention to the plot, because I know what’s happening. For today, it’s all about watching UNIT get blasted by the Daleks. It means, though, that I’m in a bit of a tricky place today.

When I give my rating out of ten to an episode, it’s based simply on gut instinct. I usually declare my score out loud to the flat as the end credits roll, almost as a way of cementing it in my mind. The last three episodes have all been a ‘7/10’, but I’ve enjoyed this one more than the last few episodes. It’s certainly not an 8/10 (it just doesn’t feel like an 8/10), so let’s call it a high…

Mind you, UNIT’s not going to be tasked with any more peace conferences, I’m guessing. The last one saw them lose a missile that could start a Third World War, and even if they’ve managed to save the delegates from death, they’ve failed to spot a man in the basement of the house with a bomb. Having failed to find the Doctor and Jo hidden in the same location a few episodes ago, you think that really someone should have a word with the Brigadier about what this ‘security’ work involves…

a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 313: Day of the Daleks, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Over the last week or so, people have been getting in touch with me about this story. I've had messages on Twitter, via the 50 Year Diary's Facebook page, and even one text from a concerned friend. All of this correspondence centred around one key issue - ensuring that I watch Day of the Daleks as the original version. I remember the hype surrounding this story's release a few years ago. 2|entertain released a teaser at one stage that said something about a title which would bring an exciting new dimension to the Doctor Who DVD range. Guesses varied from a rerelease of certain stories post-converted into 3D to a release of Dimensions in Time on DVD (I'd buy it. And before anyone else asks, yes it will be getting an entry when the time comes!)

Two years have passed since this story's DVD release, and time doesn't appear to have been all that good to it, because all the messages I received told me to make sure that I steer clear of the 'Special Edition' version of the story, because it's basically pants.

To tell the truth, I'd not even considered watching it any other way than the original broadcast version. I'm not in any way desperate to make this a 'pure' marathon that sticks only to the original versions of the stories (and I'd made a mental note to watch at least one story with new effects switched on), but I'd not even thought about seeing this version in its new, 21st century glory. Of course, once everyone started getting in touch to make sure, it completely settled it. I'd have to watch the special edition.

I've held off until now. Episodes One and Two have been watched via 'disc one', and thus have been the regular versions of the episodes. Today, though, I decided to switch things up a little, and go for the enhanced version. I think I decided that it wasn't for me about thirty seconds into the cliffhanger reprise, when the Dalek-revealing cliffhanger I praised yesterday was smothered by some overpowering CGI materialisation effects. It was probably the perfect example that just because you can add CGI to something doesn't necessarily mean that you should.

After that, I can't really say that the differences really made an impact on me. The sparks and bolts during the trike chase (I know the Third Doctor's a man of action but a trike? Really?) were a nice touch, and certainly made it look a bit more action-packed than the original version, but it didn't really mean all that much to me. As you'll have no-doubt ascertained from that last sentence, I have been back to watch the original version so I could compare the differences, but I only skipped through to key moments.

One thing that I thought looked better in the Special Edition was the Doctor's mind scan. In the original, we get a few still photos of the Doctors flashed up on the screen, and in one instance on a Hartnell photo, you can see where they've failed to frame it properly. That same image also comes across as having a bit too much contrast on - which is an issue I seem to recall that photo having in an early issue of Doctor Who Magazine, too! Obviously the BBC Photo Library didn't have many good-quality copies!

The Special Edition replaces it with clips of the Doctors taken from other episodes instead, and they make a bit more of an impact for me. It's the first time, really, that we've had any kind of flashback like this so blatantly, and I think the moving images made it seem all the more special for me. I wasn't expecting to see the older Doctors, but worried when they flashed up on screen that I might get a nostalgic pang, and long for the days when I could accompany the Doctor down into the Underground or to the Cave of Skulls.

If anything, though, I'm rather liking Pertwee again in this story. I can't describe it (and believe me I've been putting off the writing of today's entry in the vague hope that I'll suddenly find a way!), but Jon Pertwee here looks better than he ever has as the Doctor. There's something about his style in this story, with the shirt slightly undone and looking a bit tired that really works for the character, and it helps to sell the threat of the situation just that little bit more.

That's good! Of course there's a big threat! It's the return of the Daleks - the Doctor's arch enemy! - after almost five years away from the programme! And yet… they're hardly in it. We've had a couple of minutes of Daleks huddled around in a small room (with a single brief excursion to the tunnel), and that's it. I'm hoping they're going to be a big part of Episode Four, or something will have really gone amiss…

The voices surprised me today. I'd completely forgotten that Nick Briggs had re-recorded them for the Special Edition, and about half way through their brief appearance today, I worried that I might have been mistaken yesterday and that they had remembered a ring modulator! So ingrained in my mind is Briggs' Dalek voice that it just feels natural when you hear it!

It's back to the regular edition to round out the story tomorrow, but I'm glad I've taken this little side-step into an alternate reality. I love that the DVD range has been able to include little curiosities like this within the releases, as they help to make the story of Doctor Who just that little bit richer. I think I'll be sticking with the originals from now on, though…

a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 312: Day of the Daleks, Episode Two

Dear diary,

One of the special features on the Day of the Daleks DVD is a clip from Blue Peter, in which Peter Purves talks about viewers having 'long memories' to remember him ever being a companion in Doctor Who. They go on to talk about receiving a lot of letters asking if the Daleks will ever be returning to menace the Doctor again, and as the three props from this story circle the studio, we're teased that if enough people keep on asking, they just might be there on the Doctor's next adventure.

Purves also says that the Daleks have 'created probably a greater impact than any other monster before or since' within film and television. I'm wondering about these 'long memories' though. As I said yesterday, the four-and-a-half years between The Evil of the Daleks and this story is a really long time, and I'm wondering how many of the younger audience members would have remembered the Daleks at all? Are any of my readers of a vintage that they can remember this story first airing? Were you excited to have the Daleks back, or was it just some monster from the Doctor's past?

(Incidentally, there's another special feature on this DVD in which a class of children receive a Dalek model they've won in a Radio Times competition. The reporter asks - if they're all so scared of the Daleks - why they wanted one in their classroom, and the response effectively boils down to 'it was our teacher's idea… Obviously there were at least some children not all the bothered by the return of the pepper pots.)

It would seem that the programme makers have forgotten all about the Daleks, too. People often talk about this story having somewhat dodgy Dalek voices, and while I can't say that I particularly noticed yesterday, it's definitely obvious today. The voices have been created in the studio, and they've forgotten to bring a ring modulator (even the Daleks on the Blue Peter clip got that right!) It;s almost as though the voices are being provided by people who half remember what a Dalek is supposed to sound like, but hasn't bothered to check. Thus we get them soun-ding out ev-e-ry syl-a-ble, some-times to the point of mad-ness.

It's not all that over powering, because the creatures barely appear in today's episode either. They're playing a really long game with us in this story, but now that Jo is in the 22nd century, and the Doctor has encountered a Dalek in a tunnel (in a great cliffhanger. The effect of the Dalek suddenly appearing is very well done - it's a shame that this wasn't our first sight of them after all this time), I think we're headed for more Dalek action.

One of the sad things about this episode is that we seem to be back to UNIT not really knowing what they're doing. 'We've searched the house and the grounds' Captain Yates tells the Brigadier when reporting the disappearance of the Doctor and Jo. They can't have searched very thoroughly, though, can they? The missing pair were in the cellar the whole time! Added to that, you've got a pair of guerrillas running around the property, too, and you've got a group of actual gorillas running around in the grounds at intermittent intervals!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 311: The Day of the Daleks, Episode One

Dear diary,

One of the things that I keep banging on about in relation to this marathon is the idea that it makes me experience Doctor Who in a set order. When I look at the DVDs on my shelf, I can see that there's Dalek stories pretty regularly for the first four years, then a gap followed by another four years of solid Dalek tales, and then they come intermittently for the rest of the 20th century series. They're all just 'facts'. Watching everything in order from the start means that I get to really experience those gaps… and that makes them seem all the more bizarre.

The gap between The Evil of the Daleks and this story is around four and a half years. That's just about equal to the distance between the first broadcast of Planet of the Dead and the publication of today's entry. That feels like a huge amount of time! From my point of view in the marathon, I last saw a full Dalek story in late June, and so much has happened since then.

I think I've always just found it strange that after so long away from the series, the Daleks suddenly come trundling back in once again, and finally establish themselves as a key part of the Doctor Who formula. Over the last four seasons, they've proven that the Daleks aren't entirely necessary for Doctor Who to survive any more, but now that they've turned up once again they're forever ingrained as a key factor. Maybe the same would happen if they'd brought back the Voord in the early 1970s? Maybe not.

Over the course of the 1960s stories, I found myself falling for the Daleks. I'd never really been a fan before, but suddenly I could completely understand their appeal. Making their return here and now sadly reminds me why I was never fond of them in the first place - the Daleks in the colour stories always tend to look a bit tatty. In some ways, I shouldn't be all that surprised. Parts of the Dalek props used here have been turning up ever since the first Dalek story in 1963, so they've been through a lot since then, but all the same it's a bit of a let down. Such a song and dance was made about their return to the series that I'd rather hoped they would look fantastic, at least in their first colour appearance.

Still, it's probably not fair for me to really judge them yet. In traditional Dalek style, they don't properly arrive until the cliffhanger for Episode One (though we do get a brief glimpse of the gold version about half-way through the episode). Everything else on display, I'm rather enjoying. The Doctor still comes across as a bit pompous (the cheese scene is often cited as an example of this characteristic), but he's back to being somewhat nicer to Jo. She gets to have some fun scenes with Benton and Yates, and Nick Courtney has plenty of chances to do his 'exasperated' acting.

In some ways, it feels like we're back to the kind of story that I enjoyed so much in Season Seven. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but it probably doesn't hurt that the Doctor's got the console out of the TARDIS again and there's a scene of time displacement not all that dissimilar to the one from the opening episode of The Ambassadors of Death. It does lead me to wonder, though… When do UNIT settle down into a HQ?

I've always thought of UNIT as having their HQ in an old country house. It's where they're based in The Three Doctors, for example, and the same lab set turns up in Planet of the Spiders and Robot. I'm sure I've read somewhere that the house in Pyramids of Mars is the same one (or becomes the foundations to the UNIT version at least). When they appear under St Pancras for Spearhead, I assumed that it was because they were still new and waiting for a permanent location. The rest of that season sees the Doctor setting up shop on a temporary basis wherever they happened to be that week. Season Eight then gives us several very different looking settings for them to work from. And now today we seem to be set inside a castle of some sort, judging from the architecture! It looks quite nice and all (though the Doctor's still painting his doors with that horrible green paint), but it just seems odd.

I'm glad to have the pepper pots back, no matter how beaten up they might seem. I'm hoping that the next few episodes will help me rekindle my love for them - and for the series as a whole…

a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 310: The Dæmons, Episode Five

Dear diary,

I think that my dislike of The Dæmons is possibly more the fault of Season Eight than simply this story. It's the same problem that Fury From the Deep had coming towards the end of Season Five - I've simply had enough. Barry Letts has commented over the years (indeed, he does so on the DVD for this story) that having the master show up in every single story simply didn't work, and I think that's where my issue lies - I'm bored of the Master, so I'm spending a chunk of this story counting down to his eventual capture.

It's not helped by the fact that - on the whole - Season Eight has been a real let down. I spent so long heading towards the Pertwee era and simply dreading it, but then the stories from Spearhead through Inferno really gave me hope. Well, with the possible exception of Ambassadors. Since then, though, I seem to be giving out a lot more middle-of-the-road scores, and I'm just not enjoying the series in the way I'd become accustomed to.

As I say, it's not really the fault of The Dæmons. I'm sure that the story is actually quite good. It's got a reputation as being the Pertwee story, so it must be doing something right. Indeed, today has got several great special effects going for it. The shots of Azal growing to full size look brilliant (one shot in particular, of his head against the cavern ceiling is probably the best use of CSO we've ever had), and I'm even rather fond of the heat barrier being opened up. It's not the greatest effect in the world, but it's exactly what I was expecting, and they pull it off well.

The crowing moment has to be the church blowing up, though. Supposedly, there were complaints at the time when people thought the BBC had blown up a real church just to provide the conclusion to a Doctor Who story. I've always thought that the idea was ridiculous, but looking at it here, I can see why some people might have believed it! The effect is brilliant, and the explosion couldn't be better (truth be told, this production team are very good at explosions. They're almost always gorgeous!)

It's very nice to see the season ending on our regulars having fun, too. I loved the ending of Inferno leaving the Doctor and the Brigadier on slightly awkward terms, but it's good to see that changing a little more as time goes by. It's a lovely note to end on, and the final shot of the camera pulling back out to show the village as a whole is beautiful.

And yet… it still hasn't struck a chord with me. There came a time about half-way through today's episode where I suddenly realised that I didn't really have the first clue what was going on. I was watching it, and I was paying attention, but it was going in one ear and out the other as the images flashed about a bit on the screen. Throw in a conclusion where this all-powerful creature is destroyed by Jo taking a step to the left and I was completely out of the loop.

I think - as with Fury From the Deep - this is one of those stories that I'll need to watch again, once I've finished the marathon. Watched away from all these other Third Doctor stories, and with (hopefully) fond memories of this team, I may find a lot more to like in here.

There's no stopping, though, and tomorrow I set out onto Season Nine! It's the first story in a while to not feature the Master turning up (hooray! I've grown to like the man, but I need a break!), and it's the first time I've had a Dalek story since June, which feels like ages ago. Here's hoping that it can get me back on track again, and that the ninth season can help move the Pertwee years back up in my estimations again…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 309: The Dæmons, Episode Four

While I'm sorry to say that I'm still not really bothered at all by The Dæmons, I am pleased to report that today is by far my favourite episode of the serial. There's just so many moments in here that have really appealed to me, and most of all, it's raised a few laughs, too.

This is the point where I start to become a yo-yo, and I tell you that despite my dislike for the way the Doctor was behaving in yesterday's episode, I've really enjoyed him today! I knew that things were on the up when the Brigadier asked the Doctor if he was positive that he knew what he was doing, and he replies 'my dear fellow, I can't wait to find out!' The whole exchange reminded me of a similar one between the Second Doctor and Jamie (in which the Highlander asks the Doctor if he knows what he's doing and the response comes as 'oh what a question! Of course I don't!')

From there, we get another action sequence as the Doctor hurries back to the village on a motorbike and finds himself shot at (still nothing all that special in the direction, sadly), and then the best scene that we've had in the entire story, as the Doctor finds himself trapped by a troupe of sinister Morris Dancers. The whole scene of entrapment is great to start with, as it moves from playful fun to something genuinely scary, but I think it's the following scene in which the Doctor is revealed to be a 'wizard' which really works for me.

I'm pleased to see that Bessie's remote control feature is being used for an actual plot reason - it seems just that bit too convenient at the start of the story when he used it to trick Jo, having installed it at just the right time - and it's a brilliant sequence from start to finish. When the Third Doctor is having fun, I think I can enjoy him a whole lot more, and this scene is the perfect example of that.

Perhaps the thing that's striking me the most about this story is the sets. I don't often draw attention to them, because they don't always stand out in every single story, but the ones we've got here are pretty special. I think it's a testament to the work that's been put in that I spent several minutes today trying to figure out if Jo's room at the pub was a set or filmed on location with everything else (I think I'm right in saying that The Dæmons has one of the highest film-to-video ratios of the era, so it's not too unbelievable). It's the little set of steps down to the door that does it - you don't normally get that kind of attention to detail.

The set of the cavern is pretty good too, and again there's a set of steps to help give the space a slightly different feel. The lighting used here is pretty good, too, which always helps. I can't help but wonder how Azal fits, though. We're constantly told how tall he can grow, and it would somewhat undermine the cliffhanger if he has to start crouching down under a low ceiling after a while…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 308: The Dæmons, Episode Three

Dear diary,

When I wrote yesterday about this story reminding me of Quatermass and the Pit, I feared that it might be flippant of me. I was basing the link simply on the scene of the Doctor and Jo exploring the hidden spaceship and the fact that it had recently been discovered unexpectedly during a dig. Actually, though, this is very much like that third Quatermass serial, innit?

The mysterious spaceship turns out to be the craft of a species who periodically visits Earth and who have inspired our mythology - particularly when it comes to horned creatures being the devil. I have to say that this similarity isn't really heeling The Dæmons win me over any more, because suddenly I'm just too busy trying to spot other connections.

Earlier today, I was tying to explain the issues of 'popular' stories to my other half. I mused that The Dæmons probably isn't any better or worse than Colony in Space, but because I'm coming into the story expecting something from years of reputation, everything's just a bit of a let down. I'm automatically marking this story down a few points because it's just not as good as I'd expected it to be, and I think it's the same issue that's plagued stories from Evil of the Daleks to Fury From the Deep.

The thing is, there's still a lot to like here! It's the perfect example of the Pertwee years as being action packed, in a scene that sees a helicopter chase end with a big explosion! The Doctor takes off on a motorbike! Jo gets thrown (gently) from Bessie! I'm just not bothered by any of it. The direction isn't bad, but it's just very workaday. I was excited to see the return of Christopher Barry because the last two stories he directed fared pretty well with me… but then I remembered that neither existed in the archives, so what I'd enjoyed were the telesnaps! Going back to Barry's last surviving story - The Romans - I seem to recall it was nothing special there, either.

The Master is very good in this one, and it's nice to see him getting the chance to really use his powers of persuasion. He's somewhat hampered by calling in the gargoyle when things get out of hand, though. The design is nice enough, but when it's prancing around on the screen it just looks a bit naff - nowhere near as scary as I'd always assumed it to be. The effects when it disposes of someone are quite good, but it's still just a bit of a let down for me. At least Roger Delgado really suits those glasses.

To some extent, I'd been enjoying the relationship between the Doctor and Jo, and it had been helping me along a bit, but today he's just downright dismissive of her in places. It's the kind of character that I remember the Third Doctor as being, and I think it's the one I always associate with a dislike of the era. In yesterday's episode when he asks Jo if she failed latin as well as science, it comes across as a bit of a joke: just some banter between good friends. Today, he comes across as simply being a bit of an arse, and it's not really helping me to enjoy the story…

Once UNIT are properly in the village and we can get a big, end-of-season battle, I think I may start to get more involved, but it's looking increasingly like The Dæmons may end up on the pile of 'classics' that just don't appeal to me…

 a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 307: The Dæmons, Episode Two

Dear diary,

This is very suited to being the last story of the season, because it feels like the final day of school for the year where, instead of boring old lessons, the teachers stick on a film (When I left school, Pirates of the Caribbean had just been released on DVD and video, so it was always the film we saw. Problem was that each lesson was only an hour long, so I’ve seen the first half of that film more times that I care to count), and you get to spend the day out of uniform.

The Doctor and Jo have gone off on their own mission (as with the opening to The Mind of Evil, it’s lovely to see them pairing off without UNIT in tow to begin with, as it really helps their friendship seem more genuine than Jo simply being assigned to pass the Doctor test tubes), Benton and Yates have gone for a ride in the Brigadier’s helicopter and they’re both out of uniform, and the Brig himself has taken the night off and spent part of today’s episode tucked up in bed.

I think this is the kind of ‘UNIT era’ that I’ve always had in mind when picturing ‘the Pertwee Years’. Way back under The Invasion, when I complained that the UNIT of the 1970s was never as vast or well funded as it had been when fighting the Cybermen, this is what I was thinking of. Season Seven surprised me, but now we're firmly into the era of the 'cosy' UNIT, where a select few members of staff become our reliable buddies. I shouldn't really complain, because I do like Benton, Yates et al, but it just feels a bit more 'safe' than I'd like.

We're not all that far removed from Season Seven in some ways, though, because we seem to be in for a remake of Quatermass again (this time it's more Quatermass and the Pit that I'm thinking of). The final scenes in the mound where the Doctor and Jo discover a space ship buried where no one expects it started setting alarm bells off in my head, but I don't think that's a bad thing. For a start, I rather like Quatermass and the Pit (which is more than I can say for this story…)

Oh, no, that's not really fair. The Dæmons is just another one of those stories where there's nothing wrong with it, but I can't seem to understand why it's got such a massive reputation to it. There’s plenty of threat going on, with giant footprints stretching out across the landscape (and they look brilliant when viewed from the air!), vans (and sticks) bursting into flame as they try to approach the village, and the Doctor being out cold (ho ho!) for much of the episode, but it's just kind of happening. I'm not excited by any of it.

Still, it's early days, and perhaps watching a very autumnal episode with the sun blazing through the window from an unseasonably nice day isn't the best setting for the story. Perhaps tomorrow I'll wait until dark before tuning in…

 a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 306: The Dæmons, Episode One

Dear diary,

If Colony in Space was interesting to me (well, to start with, anyway) because I knew next to nothing about it, then The Dæmons is interesting for almost the exact opposite reason. I've never seen this story, but I know it takes place in a small village, features the Master summoning up something akin to the devil, has a troublesome gargoyle on hand to keep UNIT busy, and ends with the church blowing up. I also know that it's considered to be one of Doctor Who's proper 'classics'.

That last fact worries me a little bit. Stone cold classics haven't always fared well with me during this marathon - The Evil of the Daleks and Fury From the Deep stand testament to that - and I'm also taking into account Nick Mellish's words on the subject, in which he described The Dæmons as 'the most over-rated Doctor Who story ever.' Sorry, Nick. There'll be a lynch mob at your door by morning. I'm quite glad to have these opposing viewpoints, because it means that I'm not going in completely wide-eyed and expecting things to be brilliant… which is a good job, really.

Now, don't get me wrong, this was a perfectly good episode, and there's a lot of rather nice little moments that I'll come to in a minute, but it wasn't a particularly Fantastic episode. Sometimes I find myself sitting forward on the sofa really gripped by that day's instalment, whereas today was more of a 'sitting back and watching' experience. That's not through lack of trying on the story's part, mind. The atmosphere is successfully built up throughout the 25 minutes, and it's genuinely quite tense by the time that the cliffhanger arrives. The fact that it features so much night-time location work simply adds to the atmosphere - it's still rare to see in Doctor Who of this age.

And what a pace it's moving at! I assumed somewhere around the middle of the episode that opening the Devil's Mound would be the cliffhanger to Episode Three, or possibly even Episode Four, but they've already gone and done it! They're racing ahead. Even the Master, who was fashionably late to the last story has gotten an awful lot done. His appearance here is handled much better than it was in Colony in Space, too, giving us a great reveal of him as the Reverend Magister. I'm going to assume - based on past form - that he plans to use Azal to destroy the world so that he can then rule over it. Or something.

The story isn't shy of being about 'the supernatural and all that magic stuff', as Jo puts it. In the opening moments, during establishing shots of the village being battered by a thunderstorm, we're given images of a frog, a cat, and an owl (also a dog, but that's less of a magical creature, traditionally…). Miss Hawthorne is shown calming the winds, and even Bessie is seen to move 'magically' around outside the Doctor's workshop (though this is later revealed to be the Doctor with a remote control). I'm not entirely sure how they're going to account for it all, since the series has always taken the stance that all 'magic' has a scientific explanation (indeed, that's what the Doctor says here, and I think this might be the first time that it's mentioned).

I'm going to assume that the most striking bit of 'magic' we see - the wind compelling a local policeman to attempt murder with the aid of a hefty rock - is somehow caused by the Master's hypnotism being somehow 'transmitted', but I'm looking forward to finding out. I bet the Doctor Who production team weren't popular this season, though. There were lots of complaints during Terror of the Autons about the policeman ripping his face off to reveal it was a monster, but I think this policeman gets the scarier job: it's a genuinely chilling moment to watch him robotically pick up the rock and lift it towards the back of Miss Hawthorne's head…

 a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 305: Colony in Space, Episode Six

Dear diary,

Will Brooks and the Doctor Who Marathon.

Will Brooks sat his freshly-poured glass of Pepsi (other colas are available) down on the table, and settled on to his battered red sofa. Striking the space bar of the Mac, that day's episode started to play. As the titles played out, Will scribbled a note onto his sheet of blue note paper: 'Colony 6'.

Dutifully, Will had gone through a similar routine to this on many of the previous 304 days that year, working his way through the entire back catalogue of Doctor Who one episode a day. That journey had brought him to here, an episode in which not a great deal captures his imagination, and he's left with very little to write about for you fine people to read.

…I'm half tempted to add in a line about my 'pleasant, open face', but I've not shaved for a few days so it's not that pleasant. At the start of this story, I told you that I only knew a few things about it. Well, sort of knew a few things about it. Having now watched all six episodes, I've come out with a mixture of things I got right and things I got wrong. Good enough.

Thing is, several of the Pertwee stories represent the 'black holes' in my Doctor Who knowledge - Colony in Space just happens to be one of the more proficient gaps. This was perfectly proved about half way through today's episode, when the Master finally tells the Doctor why he's on this planet - because he wants to steal a 'doomsday weapon'. At this point I suddenly realised something - the Target novel Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon is a novelisation of this story.

Yeah, yeah, you all knew that. I get it. But I didn't! I thought that was a novelisation of The Mind of Evil, simply because the Doctor is trying to get his hands on… well… a doomsday device that will end the world! It's an easy mistake to make, I'm sure you'll agree. But then I started thinking about how odd it was to give the book that title.

Several of the early Targets use different names to the broadcast stories, but they normally go for some kind of key selling point, or something that neatly sums up the plot. Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters is a fairly spot on - if basic - way of describing Doctor Who and the Silurians. Doctor Who and the Daleks is a fab title for (you've guessed it) The Daleks. And who could fail to fall in love with Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster?

But the eponymous Doomsday Weapon doesn't turn up until the last episode of a six-part story! If you'd asked me to guess where this was going even as late as yesterday, I'm not sure I'd have predicted that they'd have a weapon capable of wiping out the Sun. It's a great idea and all, and the fact that it can put me in mind of an earlier plan by the Master means that he's at least being consistent in his ideas, even if he's doing it on a different scale now, but it does just sort of crop up. And then, just as quickly, it's gone. The Doctor is asked to destroy the device by pulling that really handy lever sticking out the top of the main control panel. Better hope no one ever pulls that by accident - bit of a design fault.

Oh, I think I'm just bitter. Colony in Space started off so well, and I was really enjoying it to begin with but by the time we'd reached the end here, I was just bored. The one moment that did make me sit up and take note was the Colonist's spaceship blowing up as they tried to take off (my notes on that moment are unpublishable on a family website), because I was shocked they'd had the sheer nerve to go through with it, but then it turns out they're all fine and well. Even the noble sacrifice Ashe made didn't reverse my slight disappointment that they'd mostly survived. Is that bad of me?

I think what surprised me the most was my reaction to Nick Courtney turning up again in the closing minutes. There's a danger of taking him for granted when he's simply there in every story, but seeing him arrive to welcome the Doctor back (well, sort of) raised a smile. I'm glad that we'll be seeing more of him in the next story…

 a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 304: Colony in Space, Episode Five

Dear diary,

I've wait it before, but one of the things I'm really enjoying about the Third Doctor's era is the sense of continuity. More now than perhaps any time since Season One, it feels like we're watching an unfolding tale, as things come back into play from recent episodes. We've already seen it on a couple of occasions this season, when the Doctor steals the dematerialisation circuit from the Master's TARDIS, and it's used as a bargaining tool (briefly) in the following story. Today, we get reminded that the Doctor still has a key to that TARDIS, and when he tells Jo that's where they're heading, she comments that she's not seen 'the Master's horse box' around here anywhere, acting as a nice callback to Terror of the Autons, which was quite a while ago when this was originally broadcast - we're almost right the way through the season from that one!

It serves as a nice chance to top up Jo's knowledge of life in the TARDIS as it was for companions before the Third Doctor. It makes sense for her to assume that it always looks like a police box, because the Doctor's TARDIS did when they arrived on this planet. Still, it's good to see them drawing attention to it all the same. It's a level of detail that I'd never realised existed in these stories before now, and which only really becomes obvious when doing a marathon.

And what a TARDIS they've found themselves in! The simple action of moving the doors to a position other than left of the screen has been a way to indicate that we're in a TARDIS belonging to another person since the very first time we saw another TARDIS (right back in The Time Meddler), but it really does work. On top of that, we see the outside of the doors while we're inside the console room. At first, I wondered if we were seeing something we shouldn't, but no! It's actually been planned! Of course, it only works because the Master has disguised his machine as a much larger space ship, but it's still a bizarre thing to see - and it really sells the idea to me of this being a more advanced model!

Further in to the console room and it's all gone a bit wrong. I complained yesterday that the Master pretending he was an adjudicator made him look like some kind of middle-management figure, and a row of filing cabinets in the main room of his ship - filled with information about mining, no less! - doesn't really help to make him seem cool again. There's more hints of the obnoxiously 1970s design creeping into the set here, too. On the other hand, we get to see the printed roundel wall forming a major part of the Master's control room, so at least they're getting their money's worth from it before the retirement!

More importantly, though, it's the return of the Sonic Screwdriver! Hooray! After its brief appearance as a 'door handle' in Inferno, the device has been strangely absent from the Doctor's bag of tricks, so it's nice to have it back again. And this is the closest to the tool we all think of as being the Sonic than we've ever seen. Here, the Doctor uses it to study the alarm in the Master's TARDIS, and deduce that there's a convenient gap at the bottom for them to crawl under (he then proceeds to snap at Jo to keep 'flat to the floor' while he sort of shuffles though at whatever height he fancies).

You'll have no doubt have noticed that I'm focussing all my attentions today on a single scene from the episode, and not a lot else, and that's simply because I don't really have a lot else. The Doctor complained in the last story that he's some sort of yo-yo, and the same isn't far wrong for this story - the IMC ship is forced to leave the planet. They stay. A struggle ensues and they decide to leave. Following a scene out in space (with, it has to be said, a great planet model and some of the better CSO this story has to offer), they decide to head back down to the planet again.

Even the Doctor is at it, heading back and forth from the Master's TARDIS to the colony and the City - the whole story could do with a bit of a trim. I was hoping that the Master turning up might be enough to keep from boredom setting in, but sadly, it doesn't seem to be doing the trick…

 a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 304: Colony in Space, Episode Five

Dear diary,

I've wait it before, but one of the things I'm really enjoying about the Third Doctor's era is the sense of continuity. More now than perhaps any time since Season One, it feels like we're watching an unfolding tale, as things come back into play from recent episodes. We've already seen it on a couple of occasions this season, when the Doctor steals the dematerialisation circuit from the Master's TARDIS, and it's used as a bargaining tool (briefly) in the following story. Today, we get reminded that the Doctor still has a key to that TARDIS, and when he tells Jo that's where they're heading, she comments that she's not seen 'the Master's horse box' around here anywhere, acting as a nice callback to Terror of the Autons, which was quite a while ago when this was originally broadcast - we're almost right the way through the season from that one!

It serves as a nice chance to top up Jo's knowledge of life in the TARDIS as it was for companions before the Third Doctor. It makes sense for her to assume that it always looks like a police box, because the Doctor's TARDIS did when they arrived on this planet. Still, it's good to see them drawing attention to it all the same. It's a level of detail that I'd never realised existed in these stories before now, and which only really becomes obvious when doing a marathon.

And what a TARDIS they've found themselves in! The simple action of moving the doors to a position other than left of the screen has been a way to indicate that we're in a TARDIS belonging to another person since the very first time we saw another TARDIS (right back in The Time Meddler), but it really does work. On top of that, we see the outside of the doors while we're inside the console room. At first, I wondered if we were seeing something we shouldn't, but no! It's actually been planned! Of course, it only works because the Master has disguised his machine as a much larger space ship, but it's still a bizarre thing to see - and it really sells the idea to me of this being a more advanced model!

Further in to the console room and it's all gone a bit wrong. I complained yesterday that the Master pretending he was an adjudicator made him look like some kind of middle-management figure, and a row of filing cabinets in the main room of his ship - filled with information about mining, no less! - doesn't really help to make him seem cool again. There's more hints of the obnoxiously 1970s design creeping into the set here, too. On the other hand, we get to see the printed roundel wall forming a major part of the Master's control room, so at least they're getting their money's worth from it before the retirement!

More importantly, though, it's the return of the Sonic Screwdriver! Hooray! After its brief appearance as a 'door handle' in Inferno, the device has been strangely absent from the Doctor's bag of tricks, so it's nice to have it back again. And this is the closest to the tool we all think of as being the Sonic than we've ever seen. Here, the Doctor uses it to study the alarm in the Master's TARDIS, and deduce that there's a convenient gap at the bottom for them to crawl under (he then proceeds to snap at Jo to keep 'flat to the floor' while he sort of shuffles though at whatever height he fancies).

You'll have no doubt have noticed that I'm focussing all my attentions today on a single scene from the episode, and not a lot else, and that's simply because I don't really have a lot else. The Doctor complained in the last story that he's some sort of yo-yo, and the same isn't far wrong for this story - the IMC ship is forced to leave the planet. They stay. A struggle ensues and they decide to leave. Following a scene out in space (with, it has to be said, a great planet model and some of the better CSO this story has to offer), they decide to head back down to the planet again.

Even the Doctor is at it, heading back and forth from the Master's TARDIS to the colony and the City - the whole story could do with a bit of a trim. I was hoping that the Master turning up might be enough to keep from boredom setting in, but sadly, it doesn't seem to be doing the trick…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 303: Colony in Space, Episode Four

Dear diary,

You know how sometimes you meet someone and they’re just cool. Effortlessly calm, and collected, and fun, and just… cool. Usually when you meet someone like this you’re either jealous of them or you simply hate them. They always have the right line to say at just the right moment. The person you fancy would much rather be with them. They’ve literally rolled out of bed and left the house that morning, but they look fantastic without even trying. That was The Master when he first appeared in Terror of the Autons.

While the Doctor was blowing up the TARDIS again at a garishly decorated UNIT HQ (that awful green door made a comeback at the start of this story – please tell me that this is the last time we’ll see it?), being hassled by the Brigadier, and getting his experiments ruined by Jo, the Master has just swanned onto Earth in a fully-functional TARDIS, and hypnotised the first person he meets into doing his bidding. He even gets that first line spot on – ‘I am usually referred to as the Master’.

The thing with those naturally ‘cool’ people is that at some point it all falls apart. There comes a time when you realise that – actually – they’re just like you. They haven’t just rolled out of bed, but spent two hours getting the right look. They don’t know the right thing to say all the time, they just happened to be on form that day. Eventually, you have ‘the moment’ where you see through the cool exterior and see the real person.

It feels a bit like that’s happened today with the Master. We’ve grown accustomed to seeing him in the back of luxury cars lighting up a cigar and using other people to do his dirty work because he’s got such a strong power of persuasion. But then today we see him at what appears to simply be his job. He confirms to the Doctor that he’s not really the adjudicator (of course), but we get several scenes of him just getting on with the job of impersonation and he comes across as some sort of boring middle-management type.

Even the direction has stopped trying to make him look cool. His arrival is briefly treated as a secret, being shot from behind as he enters the colony, and with an extra large collar so that we don’t accidentally spot the back of his head (although the second he arrived on the scene I’d figured out it must be him – we were running out of time for him to turn up!), I thought we were in for a great reveal where the Doctor walks in, the adjudicator turns around and… dun dun dunnnn!

But no. Having built up the suspense a little during his approach to the building and his first meeting with Ashe, we then simply cut to a shot of him inside. There’s not even a ‘turning around’ shot: he’s already done it! It’s a pity, because this feels like the point that the master officially stops being cool. He was already in danger of losing some mojo when every story boiled down asking the Doctor for help because he’d overlooked an element of the plan, but this just finalises it.

Things might start to pick up once the story gets back underway. Much of today’s episode seems to boil down to the Doctor and Jo being captured and escaping, and then once they’re done with that, we go for a debate between the scientists and IMC, before ending with a battle, because it just wouldn’t be a Pertwee episode without some kind of action sequence. Now that all the elements have been introduced, things might start looking up again…

5/10 

 a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 302: Colony in Space, Episode Three

Dear diary,

The one thing that I was entirely certain of about this story has yet to occur – I’m still waiting for the Master to turn up. It’s a shame that I know he’s in every one of the Season Eight stories, because it means I’ve been watching these last few days just waiting for one of the characters to rip off their face, revealing it as a clever disguise for the Doctor’s new arch enemy. At first I thought it might be the colony’s leader (he has a beard!). Then I assumed it might be Norton, especially when he turned out to be working for IMC. Or perhaps he’s the captain of the ship, and he’s being so ruthless because he needs something from this mining mission? At one point today, when one of the ‘natives’ looked particularly like a man in a costume, I thought he might whip off the mask and greet Jo. I’ve now decided that he’s either a) playing the part of the adjudicator, and is on his way to the planet, or b) hanging out in the natives’ hidden city. Knowing him, he’s probably their king by now.

While it means that I’m spending a few of the quieter sections of the story wondering when he’s going to be turning up, I think the story is going to need the Master before too long. If this were a four-parter, we’d be at the point of going out quite well. Episode One introduced us to the colonists. Episode Two brought in IMC. Episode Three has seen the colonists rising up against IMC. It wouldn’t surprise me if Episode Four saw the Doctor brokering an alliance between the colonists and the natives, and IMC being booted off the planet. I could go along with that. It wouldn’t leave the story as any kind of ‘classic’, but it would be a slightly above average example of Doctor Who.

Knowing that there’s still another three episodes to go makes it all seem like far more of a slog. I don’t know if there’s enough story left to fill out 75 more minutes, but having the Master turn up to complicate matters may help to hide that fact somewhat. I’m glad that we’ve been able to have a good few episodes without him, though, as it really does feel like a well-needed breather from his dodgy schemes.

I’m still slightly surprised how much this feels like a ‘first story’ for Jo, despite the fact that she’s been a part of the programme for a while now. Seeing her first trip out to an alien world gives us a new angle for looking at the character, and her reaction to the TARDIS going missing is brilliant. The Doctor’s fairly laid back about it, but then he’s used to losing the ship. Heck, in Season One, most stories featured him getting separated from the TARDIS within the first five minutes, by a tomb door, or a forcefield, or someone stealing the lock. If anything, he is slightly more worried by it here than we usually see (or, at least, he bangs on about it a lot more), but maybe that’s because the Time Lords brought him here? He’s not used to being this out of control of the situation, and he’s probably worried that they’ll strand him there.

For Jo, the TARDIS has always simply been an old police box (she even admits in the first episode of this story that she didn’t really believe that the Doctor could use it to traverse time and space), but now she’s suddenly found that it’s her only link back to Earth, and their only way of escaping the planet. It’s nice to see that she doesn’t simply accept it because she’s been a companion for a while – it makes her seem all the more real. I’d imagine that she just gets used to the idea of travelling to other worlds after this, so it’s good to see them starting of by being a bit different.

But she just happens to have taken a course in escapology once which helps her escape the handcuffs? really? Did she take it at the same school she failed her science qualification?

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 301: Colony in Space, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Styles always cycle back around again. During my last year at university, the look I'd been spotting for three years suddenly found itself thrust in the spotlight as being 'on trend'. Right the way through the summer of 2010, I was suddenly very cool, because I was wearing all the right things. Of course, these were the same 'right things' which - 12 months earlier - other people wouldn't have been caught dead wearing. After a while I decided to have a bit of fun with it, and I'd turn up to lectures in increasingly bizarre combinations, to see how far I could push the envelope. Surprisingly far, as it transpired. And then, as ever, the styles move on and something else becomes cool again. I've still got all those once trendy clothes (I call them 'idiot hipster', now) because at some point, they'll be fashionable again, and I will be cool.

It's the way they things have always gone. The 1980s seem to have been 'making a comeback' for several years now, with styles, music, and movies from that decade being given a reappraisal and brought back into being cool. Even Sylvester McCoy's Doctor has seen a huge upswing in popularity in the time since I started wanting into fandom, and it's nice to see him being given the attention he deserves.

In the year 2472, it would seem that the 1970s are making a come back into fashion, because everyone seems to be embracing the hairstyles - and the facial hair - of the period. I mean really, if you were to show this episode to someone and ask them to guess when it was made, I think it's fair to say they'd be aiming their guess around the 1970s. At one point, there's even a joke about 'Jim'll Fix It' - which makes Jo laugh! Perhaps oddly, Colony in Space was made a few years before Jim'll Fix It first his screens, but in hindsight it seems as though the production team is making a knowing nod to the programme.

All of this is only highlighted by the fact that they've all got fairly typical 'futuristic' costumes on. It's been so long since I saw anything other than 'contemporary' clothes, but it seems bizarre that this story - the one not set in (or around) the 70s is the one that looks most like them! I don't know if it's simply because we're in colour now, but this story has the look that I tend to think of for Doctor Who in this period. The style of the sets and the costumes feels very much in keeping with hazy memories of a few Tom Baker stories, and it's nice to see the programme moving into this style. We've got another alien planet quarry, but I think it works quite well - it's not become a joke just yet.

I'm most impressed by the design of the Interplanetary Mining Corporation's ship, though. It's a bit odd in places, and some of the colours are a little bold, but it looks good. The contrast between this and the colony really does hit you, and I think that makes it work all the better. I'm hoping we'll get a chance for the Doctor to explore it a bit more later in the story, as it would be a shame to loose such an interesting design so quickly.

I've realised today that there's another thing I knew about this story, without even knowing it. There's an image of the Doctor being menaced by the claws of the robot here, which I've seen plenty of times before. The image clearly shows the animal-like claws and the metal poles as the arms, but you can't see the body of the 'creature'. I'd always assumed that you never saw the metal poles on screen and it was just an unfortunate choice of framing the image, so imagine my surprise at discovering that it's meant to look like that!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 300: Colony in Space, Episode One

Dear diary,

It feels strange to be writing this one, because I’ve not actually watchedtoday’s episode yet. I wanted to capture this feeling, though, becauseColony in Space is one of those stories about which I know pretty muchnothing. I wanted to make a list of the things that I think I know about it, and see how close to the mark I get (or look like a complete idiot a few says from now if I turn out to be wrong on all counts…).

There’s only a few of these stories left in the marathon for me, because once we start hitting the late 1970s (and especially the 1980s and beyond), I know plenty about ever story, even if I’ve never seen them myself. I think that this and The Mutants represent the last two ‘black holes’ in my Doctor Who knowledge.

So, what do I think I know about this story? Well, I ‘know’ it’s the first time that this incarnation of the Doctor makes it to a planet other than Earth, and of course the Master is there (of course he is, that’s the only thing that I’m completely sure about). I think that it’s the first story of the 1970s to not feature Nicholas Courtney, and I *think*UNIT is absent, too. There’s a little voice somewhere in the back of my head that says this is the first time we actively see the Doctor sent on a mission by the Time Lords, but I don’t know how accurate that might be.

And that’s it! The sum total of my (potential) knowledge on Colony in Space. I could be entirely on the money, or I could be way off. That’s all part of the fun though – usually when I reach a story I know little-to-nothing about, I go though this ritual in my head where I almost test myself to see how close I can get, and I thought it might be fun to do this one in public so that you can all revere me. Or laugh at me. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, the DVD is loaded into the drive, my notepad is at the ready, and here we go…

Well… I was a bit right. Also a bit wrong. As things go, that’s not too bad. This is the Third Doctor’s first trip to a planet besides Earth, and the Time Lords have sent him (he doesn’t know that for certain yet, but he suspects it). I was expecting more of a meeting between the Doctor and his people, akin to the bowler-hatted messenger in Terror of the Autons, or the opening to Genesis of the Daleks, but this works. The opening scene here - where the Time Lords stand around in a dark room and discuss the using the Doctor to do their dirty work – feels like a great season opener, in which they recap the basic terms of the Doctor’s exile.

I was surprised to have the Brig turning up, but it makes perfect sense that he does. I thought the story simply opened with the TARDIS arriving on some alien world (or being taken there by the Time Lords), but having now actually seen it properly, of course you need the Brigadier to show his face. Way back during The Daleks’ Master Plan, I described my criteria for determining a companion to be that you’d have to explain their absence from a story. While I’d argue that the Brigadier isn’t a companion (as the Pertwee era goes on, there’s less of a need to explain the absence away), at this point in the narrative, wedo need to see him left behind.

It feels like this is the Third Doctor’s subtle arc – tinkering away with the TARDIS. We’ve seen him move from failed escape attempts inSpearhead From Space through to completing a new circuit and leaving the Earth behind today (with a bit of a hand from the Time Lords), and we need to see him making the departure for there to be any impact. I’m assuming now that we might get the Brig showing up again at the end of Episode Six, just to serve as a means of integrating the Doctor back into the ‘regular’ set up.

Opening on Earth means that we get to see Jo’s first reaction to the TARDIS, too. I’d sort of assumed that she already knew about it all (having decided that she’s been the Doctor’s assistant for something like a year now), and since the climax to the previous story hinges largely on the idea that the Doctor has used his Time Machine to save the day, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to her that everything he’s said is true.

But then, Jo was left completely perplexed by the Doctor’s explanation of a time loop yesterday (she wasn’t alone – the whole room was baffled!), and I wonder if he’s juts been loathe to let anyone else into the ship while he’s working on it? It’s a great scene, and we get the first ‘it’s bigger on the inside’ reaction that we’ve seen in some time. I love that she’s not jumping into it with both feet, but is more timid. Jo ended up rather thrust into the Doctor’s world when she joined UNIT, and now she’s even further out of her depth.

What was odd is that they seem to have forgotten how to do the TARDIS take off. Both when it departs from UNIT and when it arrives on Uxarieus, it simply cuts out of (or in to) shot. I’d say that it’s a case of them simply forgetting how it used to be (they’ve not had cause for a TARDIS take off in two years), but they got it right in the last story! It just looks a bit odd, which is a shame. I’m pleased to see the return of the view outside the TARDIS doors, though, with the planet right on their doorstep. The blow-up photo wall has been moved from the ‘lobby’ to the back of the console room to make its final appearance in the programme, having been around since the very first episode.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 299: The Claws of Axos, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Those of you who have been following The 50 Year Diary for a while now will no doubt have noticed how often I state my surprise at actually liking the Third Doctor. I've made no secret in the past of the fact that he's always been my least favourite incarnation, and I think it's fair to say that these five seasons were the point of the marathon that I was seriously worried about.

And yet, I'm repeatedly given cause to really like this incarnation! All the things I've thought of as bad traits are still there (I don't know if he's more dismissive to Jo than the previous Doctors were to their companions, or it's just the way that Pertwee does it, but he does seem to like sidelining other people), but there's so many layers to the character that I'm finding myself drawn to.

In today's episode, when he suddenly appears to turn rogue and form an alliance with the Master, there was a moment that I really believed it. He's tried to take off in the middle of an adventure before, leaving UNIT in the lurch, so when he suggests to the Master than he's rather leave Earth to its fate and get off the planet with him, I was genuinely interested in seeing this side of the character come back. He goes on to a lovely speech about not wishing to spent the rest of his life 'as a heap of dust on a second rate planet to a third rate star,' and it really does feel like he'd take off in a heartbeat.

It didn't take long for me to twig that he was really just using the Master, and it's simply because he's started to turn the Master's own arguments against him. 'We're both Time Lords,' he reminds him - the exact same plea that the Master used in The Mind of Evil when he needed help. If this were the modern series, with a show runner's guiding hand steering events, you could almost believe that this was seeded in, but I think it's more just luck than anything. It's the perfect example of the marathon working its magic again, because this moment carries so much more weight having seen everything from the start of the Doctor's exile to here.

When he's actually making his goodbyes and heading into the TARDIS - really playing up the moment to convince the Master that he's being quite serious - it's Pertwee at his finest. For an actor so famed at the time for his comedic roles, he really does excel when given scenes of anger or contempt. I especially love the way that he ends by saying goodbye to Jo, adding 'I shall miss you!'

It's good to finally see this version of the Doctor inside the TARDIS, here, although it has the unfortunate effect of making the already cramped set look even smaller when there's two people in there! Oddly, beyond the interior doors is the printed roundel backdrop that had become so familiar throughout the 1960s, giving the odd effect that the Doctor has added a hallway (it's especially jarring when the Master enters the police box and immediately arrives through these doors - it would look seamless if they'd had a shot of the power complex beyond the doors. With all the CSO work being slipped into the series these days, I'm surprised they didn't use it here!)

As the first story of the 1970s to really feature the TARDIS, it's fitting that it plays such a vital role in the resolution of the tale. I vaguely knew that Axos ended up trapped in a time loop, so it was fun watching the plan come together, and seeing the Doctor slowly manipulate people - the Master, mainly - into position for the plan to work. Axos has escaped the time loop a few times in alternate media, though the only one I've experienced was the DWM comic strip from a few years ago, featuring the Eleventh Doctor and Amy. It's certainly one of my favourite strips from recent years.

It's telling that the strip didn't feel the need to radically redesign the Axons, either. They use the near-infinite budget of the medium to make the creature more impressive (at one point, a large Japanese skyscraper becomes a giant axon), but it's still very much the same design. There are moments of today's episode where they really do look fantastic - usually when being shot in close up attacking the UNIT jeep. Unfortunately, when we cut to a wider shot they don't look quite as menacing. At one point, one of them has mounted the bonnet, and his legs wave up and down as the car drives on. Not their finest moment…

On the whole, I've been really impressed by The Claws of Axos. Having only ever had it on as background noise in the past, I'd assumed that there wasn't enough here to keep me interested, but I've been pleasantly surprised, and it's given me the boost of enthusiasm that I needed to pick up the middle of the season…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 298: The Claws of Axos, Episode Three

Dear diary,

It feels like the reappearance of the TARDIS console room should be a bigger deal than it is. We’ve not seen it since the end of The War Games, which was well over a month ago for me, and on original broadcast it would have been mere weeks away from two whole years. When it turns up again, it should make a massive impact, a feeling of homecoming. As it is, I’m left just sort of thinking ‘oh. There’s the TARDIS…’

It’s a hangover from being so familiar with the programme as a whole. I’m so used to seeing different versions of this same console room throughout the original twenty-six years that it doesn’t feel odd to be back here again. We’ve got a new TARDIS console on show, too, which makes the decision to keep it in a shade of pale green even more baffling. I can understand them not painting the prop for its few appearances in Season Seven (why bother? It’s a needless expense), but when you’re building one from scratch…

I’m pleased to see that they’ve dressed it up a bit to suggest that the Doctor really is working in there – it would have looked terribly off if it were simply the same as we’d always seen it. The one downside is just how cramped it all looks. When we got the first view inside the ship in An Unearthly Child, the sheer size of it really worked in its favour. It felt impressive to see this huge futuristic space tucked inside this battered old police box. Here, we've got the doors, a single wall (boasting an unusual CSO scanner screen in one of the roundels), and the console.

I also have to wonder… how would this have felt on first transmission? As I've said, the audience won't have seen inside the TARDIS for two years by this point, and yet it's simply treated as being 'matter of fact' that this is what's inside the ship, as if we're supposed to know it. There would have been children watching The Claws of Axos who couldn't remember back as far as the funny little Second Doctor, so this must have been a bit of an anti-climax.

For all I've grumbled over the last few days about having the Master turning up so frequently this year (there's only been a single episode in which he doesn't make an appearance), I'm really enjoying him today. With the Doctor trapped aboard Axos, the Master is filling his role admirably, and it helps to further highlight all the similarities between the two characters.

I don't think that much of his dialogue while helping UNIT would be out of place coming from the mouth of the Third Doctor (indeed, while I knew of the line 'You could take the usual precautions…sticky tape on the windows, that sort of thing', I'd always thought it was a line spoken by the Doctor), and his entire attitude towards events isn't all that far removed from our hero, either. The way he ponders over the TARDIS console working out if he can get it going again isn't a million miles away from what the Doctor was doing back in Doctor Who and the Silurians, or Inferno.

That's not to say that the Doctor doesn't get to shine a bit today. I'm really enjoying all the effects that we're being given in the Axos ship - although I've got a sneaking suspicion that I shouldn't like them. It still feels a bit like Michael Ferguson is melting a box of crayons over the camera lens, but it really works. Most impressive is the way that the Doctor and Jo communicate with one of the golden Axons - and the shot alters slightly on the screen as the head spins from side to side. I believe the effect was a achieved by fading between a few different shots of Bernard Holley* as the Axon, and it's an interesting new take on 'video conferencing', which has become a bit commonplace in the series (even Chinn is at it today…)

The spaghetti Axons get a chance to stand out a bit, too. Seeing the creature roam around the power complex is perhaps the first time since Spearhead From Space that I've really understood Jon Pertwee's oft-repeated comments about 'Yeti on the loo', but it looks so brilliant to see this odd creature against such an industrial backdrop. It's helped by the way it attacks (tendrils shooting out and blowing up their prey), and even though I can see exactly how they've achieved the effect, my mind sort of overlooks it and makes it work just right. An eight year old would love that moment. Heck, somewhere in my mind, eight year old me is loving it!

*Another name to add to my 'The cast from The Tomb of the Cybermen turning up in the Pertwee era' list. If we don't get one in Season Nine it won't matter too much - Season Eight has been a buy-one-get-one-free…

 a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 297: The Claws of Axos, Episode Two

Dear diary,

We're very much in a period of change for Doctor Who in the last season of the 1960s, and the first few of the 1970s. We've seen departures from several key production personnel from the programme - David Whitaker made his last contribution with Season Seven, while Timothy Coombe bowed out under the last story - and watched the arrival of several other key movers and shakers to the programme's history - Barry Lett's joined with The Enemy of the World, while both Terrance Dicks and Robert Holmes made their debuts with Season Six.

The Claws of Axos is a story that acts as a change in both directions. We get the first story to be written by 'The Bristol Boys', Bob Baker and Dave Martin, who'll be turning up a few times throughout this decade, and provide some pretty important stories to the show. At the same time, this tale is the last to be directed by Michael Ferguson, who'd been with us as a director on several occasions over the last few years.

It's lovely, watching through the series in order, how much you notice each individual styles. You can tell when they've got Camfield in the director's chair because everything is so well polished and done. David Maloney has a trademark style, too, that works very well with whimsical shots. Ferguson has several of his own little signatures, and several of them turn up in these episodes.

You've got the shot of a high-tech institution made to look huge with clever use of CSO (he did the same in The Ambassadors of Death), The return of the foam machine (the last time it makes an appearance in the programme, I believe), and even the return of some ma-hoo-sive sideburns on Bill Filer (both those last two, or three if you're giving that facial hair room to breathe, were in The Seeds of Death).

Something we do get today would perhaps be more at home coming from David Maloney, though. The shots of Bill Filer being replicated by Axos are some of the most bizarre, triply things that we've seen in Doctor Who. They're certainly reminiscent of the Kroton's ship, but whereas that occasion seemed to make the most of the monochrome look by giving us brightly-lit characters against a dark background, this scene positively delights in using every colour on the spectrum. I'd argue that this one scene justified the higher cost of a colour TV licence for the whole year.

Elsewhere, I'm still enjoying the story. It's nice to see the Doctor so suspicious of the Axons (or, I suppose, just 'Axos', now), and it's a good follow-on from Doctor Who and the Silurians. Here, he's berated Chinn and the Brigadier for being so ready to destroy the ship and the creatures, but he doesn't trust them. He even pretends to be on their side just to keep them sweet, while later confirming to Jo that he knows they're lying. I've never really payed all that much attention to the design of the golden Axons, but it actually looks pretty good. We get another 'face melting' shot today in the form of one of these creatures being absorbed back into the ship, and it really does work well.

When the first images were released of the Heavenly Host from Voyage of the Damned, Doctor Who fandom had pretty much made up their mind that it would see the return of Axos - how could it not? That design clearly takes some inspiration from here. I'm also quite fond of the 'spaghetti Axons' (as I insist on calling them in my notes). Today, I've dug out the Axon figure from the cupboard to sit by the computer with the Master (he's been hanging around the keyboard since I started this season), but having actually started watching the story properly now, I'm a bit disappointed that it's not the same design as these spaghetti monsters. I assume that they toy version of the creature is what Professor Winser is now turning into, but I think I'd rather the version covered in tentacles…

 a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 296: The Claws of Axos, Episode One

Dear diary,

Back in the days before I had a formal structure to my Doctor Who viewing, I used to quite often use the DVDs as ‘background noise’. I’d be pottering around the flat, with the story simply playing out in the corner somewhere. Not paying attention to it, but knowing it was there all the same. I can’t tell you many of the stories I’ve ‘watched’ in this way, but I know that The Claws of Axos was one of them. As with many of the Pertwee DVDs, I’d had it sat on the shelf for a while, and never watched it. One afternoon, I decided that enough was enough, and it was time to actually make an effort with the Third Doctor.

Of course, it simply became more of the ‘background noise’, and I don’t think anything highlights this fact more than the way it ended. By the time the story finished, I was in the bath. My flat at the time had a bathroom just off the living room, so I was able to keep half an eye on the telly while I was in the bath (though I was probably reading a book, meaning that I wasn’t paying any notice to the Doctor and Jo running around on the screen). After a while, I became aware that the story was looping. It’d gone back to the menu screen, and I couldn’t figure it out – I’d always assumed that The Claws of Axos was a six-parter for some reason. Suddenly discovering that it was much shorter seemed to make it more bearable, so I resolved to sit down and watch it properly.

Here we are, three years or so on, and I’m finally doing that. It can’t have been that much of an epiphany, because I’ve never bothered to make the time for it before. It means that this is the second of the Pertwee-era special edition DVDs that I’m watching having never really seen it before (though it’s not quite as bad as with Inferno, where I don’t think I’d ever watched a second of the disk): I’m basically their ideal audience – buy twice, watch once!

Know what, though? This episode was great! Right from the off, I found myself making an enormous amount of notes – things that I wanted to bring up here. Key among them comes right at the start – the Brigadier covering for the Doctor’s lack of records. I spoke a lot yesterday about the way that the pair don’t love each other, but have a kind of mutual respect, and this scene perfectly sums it up. The Brigadier confirms that the Doctor is his responsibility, and it’s a lovely moment.

In fact, all of those early scenes with UNIT at their HQ are fab – we get to see the Third Doctor’s rage again, which showed itself so well during Season Seven. There’s even a tiresome government official standing in his way – It’s almost like we’re watching a Season Seven story. With that comes a familiar feeling – that wishing that we could see this story spruced up for a HD release. I know it couldn’t happen (even if the film sequences could be rescanned for Blu ray, I’d imagine the fact it’s needed a special edition means that there’s some issues with the quality), but I’d love to see the UNIT convoy converging on the Axon ship in better quality.

This is the first time that I’ve really noticed it, but UNIT is actually quite well manned. Back during The Invasion, I made a comment that the series didn’t always have UNIT as such a large organisation, but actually there’s a fair few of them! I wonder if I was thinking more specifically of the ‘inner circle’ of UNIT, made up of the Brig, Benton, and Mike (with Corporal Bell thrown in for good measure, since this is her second story in a row)? Either way, it look quite impressive when the military units approach the ship, and I’m glad that I’d been misremembering the size of the Taskforce.

Mind you, anything rolling up to the location would look better than our chap on a bike. ‘Pigbin Josh’ has become something of a joke within fandom, an a term applied to several characters who crop up in this era, from Spearhead in Space to The Three Doctors and beyond. I’ve always known the joke of the character, but never realised just how close to the truth it was! We effectively follow his journey through the first half of the episode, as he occasionally mumbles in a thick accent. I’m not sure exactly what he’s saying, but it sounds an awful lot like ‘ooh arr’. The discovery of his body is strangely affecting, though and accompanied by a fantastic shot as his head ‘caves in’ on itself. The fade to white and cut away to Mike seems to imply that the rest of the image is too horrific to watch. Very well handled indeed.

Not quite such a good effect is the enlargement (and subsequent shrinking) of the frog. There’s lots of examples of CSO cropping up in these 25 minutes, and some is handled better than others – the shots inside the Axon ship are pretty well handled on the whole, even if they do occasionally leave some fringing around the edges. When it comes to the frog, though, it would appear that a side effect of using Axonite to grow your crops is that large chunks of the target simply vanish altogether!

I think the only thing that was a real disappointment today was the arrival of the Master. I said yesterday that I was looking forward to his return, but I thought they might give us a week off. The Mind of Evil doesn’t introduce him into the events until the second episode, and I thought the same might have been true of this story. It feels like after the very obvious goodbye scene for the character in the last episode, suddenly having him pop up again here is a bit naff. At least we find him in a position of weakness, captured in the Axon ship, which gives us a slightly different dynamic on the character. For all his ‘clever’ plots and schemes, mind, he does often find himself in need of the Doctor’s assistance…

 a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 295: The Mind of Evil, Episode Six

Dear diary,

If there’s one thing that Don Houghton is great at, it’s pitching the relationship between the Doctor and the Brigadier at just the right level. There’s no doubt that this is the same man who wrote those closing moments of Inferno, in which the Doctor decided he’s had enough and makes to leave for good – the antagonism between the pair is at its very best in these scripts.

Still, it’s nice to see that things have at least softened a little between the pair. There’s less outright dislike here, and more a sense of gentle teasing. The Brigadier arrives in the prison and shoots the enemy just in time to spare his Scientific Advisor’s life, and the Doctor asks if – just for once – the man could arrive before the nick of time. Later on he jokes that aside from losing both the missile and the Master, the Brig is doing very well in his job. It’s far friendlier than we’ve seen between them for some time, but it’s great to still see them playing off each other.

It’s a shame that I’ve still not really enjoyed this story. When today’s episode started, I thought it was strange that they’d gone back far enough to show a reprise of UNIT storming the prison – it felt like ages ago. It’s another one of those situations where I simply couldn’t remember what had happened in the cliffhanger, despite only seeing it 24 hours before. The Mind of Evil hasn’t boasted the best cliffhangers that we’ve ever had on the show. Several of them are essentially the same thing (the Keller Machine attacking someone. Usually the Doctor.), and the others just haven’t lodged in my memory. The positive is that we get to see a few shots of the Doctor’s old enemies (Cybermen, and Daleks, and Ice Warriors, oh my!), but there’s some odd choices in there. A Zarbi is bizarre enough, but Koquillion? Really? He’s one of the Doctor’s greatest fears?

What struck me the most about today’s episode is how much it feels like a nice ending to the appearance of the Master in the series. The dematerialisation circuit that the Doctor stole in Terror of the Autons makes a reappearance in the denouement, and the master takes it back, before heading off to the stars. During their final phone conversation (this pair spend a lot of time on the phone, don’t they?), the Doctor muses that they won’t be seeing the Master for a while, and he agrees, adding ‘By the way, Doctor, enjoy your exile!’ For all intents and purposes, it feels like we’re saying goodbye to the character after ten episodes and that we’re ready to move on to something different. Were the Master to suddenly turn up at the end of the season as a surprise, I think it would work brilliantly.

Sadly, I know that’s not the case. He’ll be back again in the very next story. So much for not seeing the Doctor again for ‘quite some time’! And yet… I’m specifically looking forward to it. The idea of this character turning up so frequently this season was one of the things not really exciting me about this run of stories, but I’ve been so won over by the man that I can’t help but anticipate their next battle.

Mind you, his plan is a bit rubbish again this week, innit? He’ll use the missile to spark off a war, destroying the Earth… and then take over of ruler to the now-dead planet. Not sure he’s really thought that through…

 a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 294: The Mind of Evil, Episode Five

Dear diary,

For the first couple of episodes in this story, it seemed like everything was going well. My interest had been raised back up after the season opener, we were seeing a better relationship between the Doctor and his companion, the setting was one that I liked, and everything seemed to be moving in the right general direction. Over the last couple of days, though, I've started to find my attention wandering.

I think there's a couple of reasons for it, but I'm not sure which is having the bigger effect. For starters, we've now pretty much entirely moved away from the contemporary London setting that I was so loving to begin with. As nice as the prison looks, it just doesn't have the same feel that all that location shooting in ordinary streets did. Secondly… the more I think about it, the more the plot just doesn't hold together. UNIT are supposed to be providing security to a major world peace conference, but by the time of today's episode, half the force has been attacked by the prisoners, another half is storming the prison itself, and the three top men (I know that - strictly speaking - Yates and Benton aren't really the 'top men' of UNIT, but they are in the eyes of anyone watching the Pertwee years!) are all away from the main conference, too.

Who's looking after things in London? I know they've removed the Master's influence on Captain Chin Lee, but at a conference where several delegates have been murdered and important documents have gone 'missing', you think they'd need to have someone keeping an eye on things!

And then you've got poor Jo - she's not been outside the prison walls since Episode One, and most of the time she's spent locked away in that cell. All of this means that I'm noticing far more the different variations on the old 'capture-and-escape' routine that usually pads out a third episode.

It's not all bad. Today we get a fantastic sequence in which UNIT storm the prison, and it's possibly the most useful we've ever seen them. It comes on the heels of a scene in which the Brigadier pretends to be delivering provisions (and the whole story is justified simply by hearing Nick Courtney - in as 'man-in-the-street' voice possible - use the word 'nosh'), and then it's all brilliant from there on out. The soldiers sneaking from the back of the van ready to attack is great, and the storming of the castle (complete with men climbing the walls!) is one of the best directed sequences we've had in a while. Director Timothy Combe has been with us in one form or another since as far back as The Keys of Marinus, so it's a shame to see him making his departure from the programme in this serial.

The attack on the prison does have to go down as another one of those things that just doesn't quite make sense, mind. The Brigadier is presented with a map and a suggestion is made that there could be a secret way in - it is an old castle after all. Luckily enough, there is! That's convenient. The Brigadier even knows the way. Also convenient. Above and beyond that - and despite the place now being home to hardened criminals - the secret passageway has never been blocked off. That's really convenient.

And also a little bit stupid.

But then they don't seem to use the secret entrance! They simply drive up to the gate with a big old van of nosh! There was one moment when a group of UNIT soldiers ascended some steps which seemed to be coming from a tunnel, and I assumed that it must be the secret way in, but it can't be because it's too bloody obvious! The prisoner's would be in and out as they please. It's never a good sign when I start to worry more about things not adding up than simply enjoying the story, so I'm hoping that things turn around for me in the final instalment. This story also marks the final contribution of Don Houghton to the series, and he did so impress me with Inferno a few weeks ago, I'd love to see him leave on a high…

 a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 293: The Mind of Evil, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I think the thing I'm enjoying the most about The Mind of Evil is how well it showcases the Doctor and the Master as enjoying their little squabble. When John Simm took over the role in 2007, much was made about the fact that he was a Master to play specifically against David Tennant's incarnation of the Doctor. He was young, and energetic. He would talk at a million miles per hour and pull faces in just the same way. It was an incarnation of the character designed to work against the Tenth Doctor, and I'm not sure how well he would fit in playing opposite any of the others.

Having never really watched this incarnation of the Master before, my main exposure to the character has been in the form of the Ainley version - who played against four incarnations from Tom Baker to Sylvester McCoy. Sure, he's got lots of characteristics that I instantly equate with being quintessentially 'Master-ish', but he isn't tailored to each individual version of his nemesis. I think he works fairly well against them all to some extent, but you can tell he's not custom-created.

The only other point of reference that I've really got comes in the form of the Master's precursor - for want of a better word - the Meddling Monk. Peter Butterworth was a great foil for William Hartnell, and came at a time when the character had softened somewhat. It meant that his little giggles and smiles fitted perfectly with the Doctor we'd been getting used to throughout the second season, but he was able to bring out the fire at the heart of that incarnation.

Moreso than the Monk, though, I'm finding that the Delgado Master is very much designed to be a part of the Third Doctor's life, and this episode highlights that perfectly. At various stages, they each call Jo 'my dear', and if the point had been lost on us, they abandon all subtlety and go for a full-on crossfade between the characters at one point, which has the odd effect of looking a bit like a dodgy regeneration. It's a joy to watch the pair of them on the screen together, though, and the moment that the Master frees his foe from the attack of the Keller Machine is wonderful.

'We're both Time Lords,' he pleads, and it gives us a dynamic that we've never been able to see in the series before. There's shades of the same argument used in The War Games, when the War Chief tries to make the Doctor help him, but it's great to see that angle being played out with a long-running character (or, at least, a character who will become long-running).

Yesterday's episode gave us perhaps the best examples of the Doctor and the Master playing a game with each other - the Doctor strolls into the Governer's office to find his nemesis sitting behind the desk, and simply says 'Yes… I thought as much…' while he takes his seat. A few scenes later, having made his escape, the Doctor barricades himself in with the machine, only to find the Master waiting casually for him behind the door. We've just watched the Doctor make his way across the prison in a proper action sequence, but the Master greets him by saying 'I thought you'd make for here…', before setting up the cliffhanger.

The pair are simply playing a game with each other, and it's a great counterpoint to all the high-stakes playing out elsewhere in the story. Today sees the missile being taken out of UNIT's hands (Again, you have to wonder why this lot have been entrusted with such high-stake jobs - I know it's the Master pulling strings in the right places, but surely there must have been a real wall of objection?!), and a wholesale slaughter of their soldiers - but it still feels as though the Doctor and the Master are playing cowboys and indians for fun. It's brilliant - and I'm really glad to see why people are always banging on about Delgado being THE Master.

 a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 292: The Mind of Evil, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Terror of the Autons feels like an absolute age back – everything here feels much more to my liking. I think it’s Jo who highlights this best. We’re a far cry from the character who’d managed to ruin the Doctor’s experiment and get hypnotised by the Master all on her first day at UNIT. The Jo in this story is far more confident and resourceful, seizing her opportunity to end the prison riot and trying to make the most of the situation. It’s odd to say it, but I think Jo here feels more like the kind of Doctor Who companion that I’ve gotten used to in this marathon – they’re not always the sharpest tools in the box, but they often highlight why they’re such a boon to the Doctor’s life.

It’s also lovely to see how much her relationship with the Doctor has evolved since the last story. It was evident right from the start, in the way the pair first drove up to the prison. They’re comfortable with each other, and more than that, they’re happy with each other. What’s great in today’s episode is the moment the Doctor learns about the riot in the prison, and his first reaction is to jump up and ask after Jo’s safety.

All of this does make me wonder, though… just how much time has passed since the events of the second Nestene invasion attempt? It feels like the Doctor and Jo have spent quite some time together, getting used to each other. It could just be that after the events of Terror of the Autons, all their barriers were down and they were able to simply become good friends - but if feels like they've been together for a fair old while by this point.

Equally, today sees the revelation that Professor Keller - inventor of the machine causing all this trouble - is actually the Master. A few episodes ago we're told that the machine was installed at Strangmoor prison almost a year ago. Does this mean that the Nestene attack was even further back than that? I think the Doctor's tinkering with the Master's TARDIS simply prevented him from leaving Earth, as opposed to playing with time, so he could have nipped back twelve months or so to begin his work?

I'm still avoiding any real discussion of a UNIT timeline at this stage (I've still not seen enough to make any definitive statements on the subject), though the third volume of the About Time books suggests a placement of October 1971 for Terror of the Autons and somewhere in mid-to-late 1972 for this story (and the next few, too). For now I guess I'm happy to go along with that. Throughout Season Seven, it was implied that large stretches of time happened here and there, in which Liz simply assisted the Doctor with making repairs to the TARDIS, so I suppose the same could have been happening here.

'm also wondering if that's why UNIT have been given a task as comparatively mundane as looking after security at a peace conference (compared to fighting off aliens, anyway)? There's been little alien activity on the planet since the Master fled the radio telescope, so they're being reassigned to other tasks to justify their existence? I will be trying to piece together my own timeline later on in this era, but for now I'll keep monitoring events…

 a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 291: The Mind of Evil, Episode Two

Dear diary,

One of the things I've found most rewarding about doing The 50 Year Diary is finding that Doctor Who is far richer than I'd ever realised. There's always little coincidences that crop up, which makes experiencing it all in sequence all the more rewarding. It's things like Nicholas Courtney helping the First Doctor to fight the Daleks, before returning to the Time Lord's life in a different role, or seeing the evolution of Doctors and companions over the years.

Today it's all about those few places in time and space which just attract aliens. I had a wonderful feeling when watching bits of today's episode that I'd been here before. It was when the road sign for 'Cromwell Gardens' appeared that I thought 'ah! The First Doctor fought the War Machines around there!' before suddenly realising that - actually - he'd trapped a War Machine in that very spot! Because I've never seen The Mind of Evil before, I didn't know that the series had ever returned to this location, but suddenly noticing it gives me such a great feeling - it's a whole extra layer to what I'm watching, and gives me a slightly odd nostalgic pang for William Hartnell!

It has to be said that this same scene is a wonderful example of why CSO isn't always the answer. When Captain Chin Lee makes her phone call, it looks so much better than a similar scene in the previous story, in which the background had been added via Colour Separation. It just feels more natural. Actually, all the location work in this story is lovely, and it feels like the right kind of setting for me. Central London is a location that I praised in The War Machines (fittingly, it seems!), The Invasion, and Doctor Who and the Silurians, and it's great to see so much time being spent here. I wonder if this might be another problem I had with the last story - the setting of a circus was just too 'out there' for what appeals to me?

Watching Benton (badly) try to keep tabs on a suspect, or seeing the Master stroll across a park just feels much more real to me, and I think that all helps. The shot that appealed to me most is only a few seconds long - the Doctor and the Brigadier exit the house and walk along the road. It's simple. It's short. It's real. It looks so good to see the Doctor out and about in his fancy dress (and it's become even more fancy dress now, with the addition of the red jacket) amongst real people going about their lives. It really helps to focus the series as being set in then contemporary Britain.

In some ways, I should be disappointed to see the Master turning up again today (I knew he was in the story - indeed, it's the only thing that I do know about this one!), but I was actually quite pleased to see him. It helps that he arrives on the scene utilising a disguise very well once again, and that once he has shown his face, he's back to being very suave. It's another chance to draw a comparison with The War Machines - there, I said that the Doctor looked out of place sat in the back of a car, as I was so used to seeing him out and about on Mechanus, or back in time during the Crusades. Here, the Master just looks right dressed smartly and smoking a cigar as he sits in the back of a car to hold a 'meeting'.

The way he hypnotises Chin Lee paints him as being very in control of the situation, and he feels like a genuine threat. While UNIT are busy running around, out of their depth, he knows exactly what he's doing, and he seems to be rather enjoying himself…

 a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 290: The Mind of Evil, Episode One

Dear diary,

It’s funny how simply being onto a new story has instantly turned around my mood – I’ve enjoyed today’s episode a lot more than I did anything from Terror of the Autons. I think it helps that everyone seems to be far more settled into their roles now, too. The Doctor and Jo laugh and joke as they approach Dracula’s castle – sorry, the prison – and his messing about into the security camera is brilliant - very Doctor, and I don’t think it would look out of place if Troughton or Tom Baker were doing it.

Once we’re inside, the Doctor is back to his usual pompous self… but I quite like that! He undercuts the demonstration of the Keller Machine at every turn by chipping in his own commentary on the situation. Rude and arrogant, yes, but it’s very in keeping with this incarnation, and I’m finding myself quite liking it. Professor Kettering's reactions to the constant interruptions are great fun, too.

As for the machine itself… well that’s nonsense. At one point, then Doctor asks what happens to all the negative energies once they’ve been extracted is that they’re simply stored in there – but not to worry because it’s only 65% full. Surely they’ve not thought this through, though? What happens in a few more experiments time, when it’s teetering on the 100% full mark? Do they construct another machine and bury this one as though it were nuclear waste? I’m surprised (although pleased) that the Master hasn’t turned up today, but I’m guessing he’s probably on his way to steal the machine, or he’s the one behind the invention in the first place.

It’s really good to see the Doctor and UNIT working on different missions. They can’t be foiling an alien invasion every day of the week, so it’s good to see them being given something more ordinary to do in managing the security for a peace conference. I’ve seen their performance before now, mind, so I’m not sure that I’d trust them with such an important job… I think what pleases me is that I’m just as interested by their story as I am the one that the Doctor is following up.

We get a good opportunity to see the Brigadier out on his own, away from the Doctor, too. I’ve said it a few times over the last few months, but we really are lucky to have an actor like Nicholas Courtney be so vitally involved with the programme. He does a great stock in ‘apathetic’ and 'exasperated' acting, and his reactions to Captain Chin Lee today aren’t a million miles away from the way he finds himself feeling in the Doctor’s company.

I think what’s impressed me the most about today’s episode is the colour of it. Until very recently, this tale only existed as a black and white copy, but restoration for the DVD has seen the entire serial returned to full colour for the first time since the 1970s. It's been brought back to life by hand-colouring several key frames, and then using a number of techniques to make this work for the full story.

It’s the work of the very talented Stuart Humphryes and Peter Crocker. Now, I knew they’d colourised this story. When it was announced, everyone was so excited about it. It’s telling that I only remembered the fact after I’d started writing this entry – the work is fantastic. I can’t begin to imagine the amount of patience needed to complete a project like this, but it’s well worth it because it looks gorgeous.

It does make me wonder, though, about a specific scene of the episode. During the demonstration of the Keller machine – while I’d forgotten about the recolourisation of the episode – I made a note about how good it looked once the lights were dimmed and the room was bathed in a pale blue light. Far more effective than the regular lighting on the set, and I was all ready to declare it as being better than a lot of the lighting we get in the programme. I’m wondering now if it would have looked as good as that originally, or if some of it is down to to the skill in the colouring? Either way, it looked stunning, and brought me completely on board with the story. We’re off to a good start…