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

Day 445: The Seeds of Doom, Episode Five

Dear diary,

I’d been worrying that this story was going to really suffer from being a six-parter. Everything just seemed to be happening too soon. The full transformation from Keeler to Krynoid was done by the end of Episode Four, which meant two episodes of the creature stalking around the gardens of an English country home… not great telly, surely? I genuinely worried about how the story was going to fill out for another 50 minutes. I’d not taken into account the idea that the shuffling, wobbling, Krynoid creature isn’t really the focus of the threat here. Oh, sure, it’s the main monster for the story, but we’ve also got Chase to deal with, and plenty of action with other plants.

Realistically, a story which revolves around vegetation that’s ‘more animal than plant’ should feel like the most typical Doctor Who tale ever. It’s a concept that Terry Nation has been toying with since as far back as the first season. Indeed, the scene in todays episode when Sarah and Scorby are attacked by the plants coming to life in the ‘Green Cathedral’, is hugely reminiscent of The Keys of Marinus. And yet it works! It’s been such a long time since we’ve seen the concept down this well, and it’s filtered through the way the programme works by this period.

The scary thing isn’t the plants on the attack, or the way that we watch characters writhe about under them gasping for air - it’s the way the camera pans around to find Chase sat in the middle of the melee, perfectly calm and content. When people all about the darkness in this era, I think a lot of it comes down to these types of moments. It’s not all about the rubber monster suit, but rather the human characters that the Doctor and Sarah encounter.

While Chase is a great character in himself (and thoroughly dislikable, in just the right way), I’m more impressed by Scorby. He started the story off as little more - really - than ‘hired gun of the week’, but we’ve gotten the chance to see lots of different sides to him as the story unfolds. It’s nice to see what an uneasy alliance he’s formed with the Doctor and Sarah here, too, because I’d feared that when the Krynoid started to grow, he may simply switch sides. Having him be distrustful of the Doctor’s escape, and still only out to save his own skin makes him feel a much more real character than I was expecting to find. He’s not the only one I’m loving, either. I think that Amelia Ducat may have become one of my favourite characters ever! She’s such fun! Oh, how I’d love to see her head off on an adventure in the TARDIS.

And then we’ve got the Doctor and Sarah Jane in the middle of it all. I mused during Pyramids of Mars the other week that I didn’t really buy into the severity of the threat. The Doctor kept on telling us how bad things would be if Sutekh were to break free and continue his reign of terror, but it never quite felt true. Even when we take a trip to 1980 to see how bad things could get, I still didn’t believe it. Here, on the other hand, I’m completely sold on how bad the situation has gotten. The Doctor snaps at people. He shouts, and rants, and he’s very obviously scared. It’s terribly effective, and I’m really very impressed by it all - this is another one of those occasions where Tom Baker really shows us why he’s the right man to be fronting one of the BBC’s biggest programmes.

Quite aside from the characters, I’m also very impressed with the effects work. There’s a shot at the end of the episode, where the Krynoid appears over the roof of the house, and it looks flawless. Those days of yellow fringing around CSO shots feel like they’re a million miles away from now, because this looks as good as any of the best effects we’d get today. Granted, it’s only a brief shot - so I’m hoping that it’ll be able to hold this kind of standard as we move into the final episode. With the Kynoid almost at full size, we’re going to be getting a lot of shots like this coming up, I’d wager…