Month: November 2017

Timestamp #135: Planet of Fire

Michael Falkner9 Comments

Doctor Who: Planet of Fire
(4 episodes, s21e13-e16, 1984)

 

It’s a strange mashup between a primitive religion theme and an unstoppable menace.

Crossing a barren volcanic landscape, two men in tattered clothes offer up a distinctly Middle Eastern vibe. The cross cuts to two other men discussing matters of faith and pilgrimages in a pristine palace environment further that flavor. The two travelers crest the volcano and find nothing, confirming their belief that the god Logar is a myth. That’s a slightly different pilgrimage than I expected.

Meanwhile, an archaeological expedition led by Howard Foster is dredging the ocean in search of artifacts. They find one with strange triangular markings, which are shared on the younger of the two men in the palace. In fact, the Mark of Logar makes the man a Chosen One, and his queries into his role in society are met with the same answer that has plagued religious challenges since time eternal: TRADITION!

“One day, it will all be clear to you.” Uh-huh. Right.

The Doctor depressively obsesses over the Daleks when robotic screaming from the other room snaps him and Turlough into action. Kamelion has plugged into the TARDIS data banks. Turlough tries to disable the link and picks up a distress signal. Turlough disables the signal by tearing apart the relays in the console (and lies to the Doctor about his role in such). The TARDIS changes course to intercept the signal and the Doctor devises a method to triangulate the distress signal.

As the archaeologists pull into port on the island, we meet a woman named Peri (Howard Foster’s stepdaughter) who is planning to leave on a trip with friends to Morocco. After some tense back and forth, Howard relents and allows Peri to go. Howard unloads the boat but strands Peri as he ferries in the rest of the artifacts. Peri loads her clothes, Howard’s wallet, and the double-triangle artifact into a bag and attempts to swim for shore. Unfortunately, she doesn’t make it far before floundering.

Back on shore, the TARDIS arrives and the Doctor and Turlough examine the artifacts. Turlough returns to the TARDIS and overloads the console, preventing Kamelion from making contact with an unknown entity, presumably a place called Trion. Turlough then sees Peri on the scanner and rushes to her rescue, taking her back to the TARDIS and discovering the triangle-marked artifact. It turns out that Turlough conveniently has the same Chosen One mark on his arm.

After inadvertently stiffing a local restauranteur over a glass of water, the Doctor traces the distress signal back to the TARDIS – specifically, to the artifact – and questions Turlough about the data core inside the mysterious device. As the Doctor labors, Peri has dreams about Howard’s treachery, and Kamelion shapeshifts into Howard’s form. Under his control, the TARDIS dematerializes while Kamelion-Howard interacts with the travelers and Peri.

This whole time, the religious group has been debating over the prophecies of Logar and the revelations of the non-believers who hiked the volcano. The congregation receives a sign from their god. The TARDIS arrives, presumably fulfilling the prophecy of an outsider coming to their civilization. When the Doctor and Turlough explore the area, Kamelion changes again, this time triumphantly celebrating his control of the TARDIS as the Master.

That man has so many lives. He must be part cat.

Peri attempts to escape and fails, though the altercation forces Kamelion to overcome the thrall of the Master for a time. Kamelion uses the time to prepare a message for the Doctor. Unfortunately, the Master’s TARDIS arrives soon after, and the renegade Time Lord reasserts control over Kamelion and forces her (and Peri) to leave the Doctor’s TARDIS. A seismic event causes the Master’s TARDIS to topple, breaking the psychic link and providing Peri the window she needs to run.

Kamelion is unable to lift the Master’s TARDIS, so he returns to the Doctor’s TARDIS with the plan to materialize it inside the Master’s capsule. Luckily, Peri has stolen a component from the console. Kamelion-Master gives chase as Peri makes her way toward the Doctor and Turlough, who have just been sheltered by the non-believers. Kamelion-Master catches her, but Peri forces a standoff by dangling the circuit board over a cliff. She persuades Kamelion to re-emerge and uses the distraction to escape once again, but as the Master resumes control, he is mistaken as the prophesied outsider by the priest from the story’s opening.

The Doctor warns the non-believers that their hiding spot isn’t safe: It is in the same vent tunnels that the impending volcanic eruption will use to release its pressure and magma. The non-believers take the Doctor and Turlough to the congregation where Turlough recognizes the technology. It is from Trion, and potentially from his father’s ship. Turlough convinces Malkon, the Chosen One, to take him to the Place of Fire where Malkon was found. The triangular mark on Turlough’s arm is sufficient to sway Malkon.

Meanwhile, Kamelion-Master arrives and surprises the Doctor as Peri catches up to Turlough and briefs him on what has happened. In a rather tense and perilous sequence, Kamelion-Master orders the sacrifice of the entire congregation as leverage to get the circuit board back. Peri, Turlough, and Malkon arrive to save the Doctor, and while Malkon unsuccessfully stalls for time, Peri and Turlough turn off the flames at the source. Malkon tips off the Doctor and plays dead after being shot, prompting the Doctor to confront Kamelion-Master. The Doctor nearly succeeds in releasing the android from the Master, but Kamelion-Master has the Doctor and the non-believers locked away. When Peri rushes to the Doctor’s defense, Kamelion-Master takes her and the congregation to the Master’s TARDIS. Turlough arrives shortly thereafter, releases the Doctor and the non-believers, and reveals that Malkon may very well be his brother.

The congregation uprights the obvious styrofoam pillar and Kamelion-Master pulls Peri into the time capsule. The Doctor arrives and, after some persuasion of the believers by Turlough, attempts to stop the Master. Unfortunately, the Doctor’s TARDIS has been sabotaged and the Master escapes. Luckily, he hasn’t gone far: The pair arrive in the heart of the volcano and Kamelion-Master coerces Peri to cooperate on pain of death.

It’s a conspicuous dichotomy, but I do like the Master’s dark control room.

Kamelion-Master initiates another seismic event and Turlough loads all of the civilians into the TARDIS. The Doctor discusses Logar with the head priest, Timanov, and learns of the sacred blue flame within the volcano. When Kamelion-Master turns on that blue flame, the congregation takes it as a sign of mercy and retreats to their bunker for celebration. The Doctor grills Turlough for information, but the boy is silent and the Doctor settles for an analysis of the fire chamber. Meanwhile, Peri escapes from Kamelion-Master and takes refuge in the Master’s TARDIS. When she attempts to use the control box to disable Kamelion, she finds a miniature Master hiding within.

Huh?

Peri kicks the box in disgust and knocks it over. That disrupts the Master’s control over Kamelion and causes him to scurry like a rat for safety in the TARDIS console. There he taunts Peri and shorts the circuitry for the TARDIS door, prompting Peri to leave the capsule. He then figures out a way to restore his control over Kamelion.

The Doctor and Turlough discover that the blue flame is fueled by Numismaton gas, which has healing powers. They use it to mend Malkon’s wounds, then they devise a plan to save the people on the planet. Turlough was a Trion political prisoner, but he is willing to risk himself to call for a rescue ship. His captors used this planet as a prison for undesirables, covering their technological control of the volcano with legends and myths, but the pending eruption is too large for the tech to handle.

The Doctor reunites with Peri as he and Amyand (the lead non-believer) make their way to the Numismaton control room. He finds that the Master has already started an irreversible chain reaction, but he is able to slow it for a time. The Doctor swipes components for his own TARDIS, then discovers the Master’s condition inside the control box. It turns out that the Master accidentally shrunk himself and needs the flame to restore his former glory. Kamelion, back under the Master’s control, ambushes the team and forces them to leave.

Amyand dons a fire suit – effectively becoming Logar – and goes for help. Meanwhile, the Doctor conceives a plan to short-circuit Kamelion. The plan works, and Kamelion requests a coup de grâce to end his potential threat. Sadly, the Doctor complies and then continues his work. Amyand arrives at the bunker, convinces the congregation to leave, and gives Turlough the parts for the TARDIS. Once Turlough installs the parts, the TARDIS follows the Master’s TARDIS to the flame control room, but without Turlough onboard.

The blue flame ignites, restoring the Master to his proper form, but the normal flame returns shortly thereafter and (supposedly) destroys the Master. The Doctor and Peri seek refuge in the TARDIS as the eruption begins. It lands near Turlough, who has just received word that his exile is rescinded. Turlough doesn’t want to leave, but both he and the Doctor know that it’s for the best.

After a brief farewell, the Doctor offers Peri the chance to travel with him. After all, she still has three months left on her vacation.

 

Starting with the departures, I’m conflicted. I haven’t liked Turlough from his debut in Mawdryn Undead, and his selfless acts here didn’t ring true to me. It’s almost as if he resigned himself to his fate (and avoided any negative repercussions by pure chance) instead of surrendering himself because it was the right thing to do. He had nothing left to lose, and it seemed like he was using the Doctor as a convenient sanctuary.

Kamelion, on the other hand, was a wasted opportunity. I mean, look at him. The android was virtually unstoppable, and while I enjoyed the Terminator vibe I think that his heel turn and subsequent demise would have had much more meaning if he would have been involved in more than two stories. Otherwise, it’s merely a clearing of the decks before Peter Davison leaves in the next story.

In place of Turlough and Kamelion, the Doctor picks up Peri. I like her strong will and I hope the damsel-in-distress vibe dies off quickly as she settles in.

 

Other than that, this was a fairly strong story hampered by a contrived plot about the incredible shrinking Master. It was good to see him back, and the twist was a nice touch, but there had to be a better way to explain his stature than his foolish tinkering. I also noticed that I had to rewind periodically to sort out the characters because of their uniform costumes, genders, and ethnicities.

 

Next time, we say goodbye once again. It’s hard to believe that we’re already here.

 

 

Rating: 3/5 – “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.”

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Caves of Androzani

 

 

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

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Timestamp #134: Resurrection of the Daleks

Michael Falkner20 Comments

Doctor Who: Resurrection of the Daleks
(2 episodes, s21e11-e12, 1984)

 

This story gets dark fast and leaves a lot of room to think in the end.

In a disused modern day alley, several men in anachronistic costumes run from police officers and their machine pistols. When the runners (and one innocent bystander) are shot down, they are transmatted to a nearby starship. There are two survivors as the execution squad beams away, and they return to the warehouse to warn others only to find that the time corridor has been closed. They are spooked by a remaining executioner who kills one, but the other (a man named Stien) escapes. The executioner returns to the starship and the crew sets course for a nearby prison station, assuming an attack posture.

Meanwhile, the TARDIS has been careening out of control through a time corridor since the end of Frontios. The danger of destruction is quite real (so says the Cloister Bell), but in moments the time capsule stabilizes and materializes near the murder alley. The travelers set out in search of the time corridor they detected, but instead, they find Stien. They investigate the warehouse, lose Turlough under mysterious circumstances, and find a military bomb disposal squad.

All things considered, can we call the exchange even? I guess not.

The battlecruiser arrives at the prison station and the latter is no match for the starship’s might. The station is invaded by Daleks who make short work of the defending humans, but they are driven back by surprise mines in the corridors. The invading humans flood the airlock with gas and drive the prison staff back, and an attempt to destroy the prisoner the Daleks seek fails. We also find out that Turlough has transmatted to the Dalek ship.

The prisoner of interest is Davros. As the prison crew works to destroy him, they are overcome by the face-melting side effects of the gas and a human raiding party. Back on Earth, the Doctor and the military compare notes before being confronted by a Dalek who traveled through the time corridor. Tegan is injured, and the Doctor advises to shoot for the eyestalk and after the Dalek is blinded, the soldiers toss it out a second-floor window and watch it explode. At this point, the Daleks know that the Doctor is on the battlefield.

Four human survivors prowl the passageways of the prison station in an attempt to mount a resistance, possibly by way of the station’s self-destruct sequence. Meanwhile, Turlough finds the chamber housing the corpses from the story’s prologue and nearly loses his lunch, the Doctor cleans up the Dalek in the alley, and the invaders revive Davros at his prison cell. Davros is incensed to learn that the Movellan-Dalek war did not go well for his children and that the Daleks now rely on human allies to survive. The Movellans developed a virus to attack the Daleks, forcing the Daleks to seek Davros and develop a cure.

On Earth, the soldier watching the Dalek remains doesn’t notice movement under the pieces and parts and only realizes his mistake when the Kaled mutant strangles him. The hunt is on for the murderous wayward blob, which is further complicated by the arrival of an execution squad. On the ship, the Daleks find Turlough skulking, recognize him as the Doctor’s companion, and allow him to roam to use him as bait. Soon after, he passes several stealth checks (good DEX score?) and ends up on the prison station, but is soon intercepted by the resistance survivors.

Those Dalek-inspired helmets for the human invaders are something else.

The Doctor’s team hunt for the Kaled mutant, finding a stray cat before locating the alien and gunning it down after it takes a chunk out of another soldier.

(And, yes, the Doctor is using a gun again so we can put down that old myth. TV Tropes has done some pretty good work on that already. Let’s just say that the Doctor doesn’t use guns often and call it good.)

The Doctor and Stien head back to the TARDIS to investigate the time corridor as the soldier who was bitten by the Kaled goes bonkers. The search for the infected goes south when three Daleks appear in the warehouse and, with help from the execution squad, take everyone hostage. The TARDIS materializes on the Dalek ship, and Stien double-crosses the Doctor. The Daleks move in for the kill, but the Supreme Dalek puts that to a halt. Apparently, the Doctor and his companions are to be cloned (on a bed of bubble wrap nonetheless) and used as an assassin against the Time Lord High Council.

The resistance team finds the self-destruct mechanism and begins working on it. To avoid becoming a martyr, Turlough suggests using the time corridor to escape the blast. Turlough joins resistance member Lieutenant Mercer to scout the path out, but the way to the time corridor is swarming with Daleks, and when they return to the self-destruct chamber they find it under siege. Turlough deduces that Davros is still on the station. He’s right, of course, and the Dalek leader is slowly building an army of humans and Daleks using a mind-control device. The resistance team in the chamber is destroyed and Davros begins an analysis of the virus which has been stored in the warehouse all this time (and explains the location’s importance in the story).

Back on Earth, Tegan and Professor Laird (the military team’s scientist) engineer an escape from the execution squad before they are transferred to the Dalek ship. Tegan escapes as Laird remains behind to sell the bluff. Laird is captured and Tegan is pursued by the executioners for a short time before being captured herself. Laird is killed attempting escape and Tegan is forced into the time corridor. When she arrives on the other side, she finds Mercer and Turlough and begins plotting the Doctor’s rescue.

In the cloning chamber, the Doctor’s procedure is slowed by the emergence of the real Stien’s memories. Stien begins downloading the Doctor’s memories but short circuits as the real Stien emerges. The Doctor and Stien meet up with Tegan, Mercer, and Turlough, and the group returns to the TARDIS after destroying the tapes housing the Doctor’s memories. The Doctor leaves the companions in the safety of the TARDIS and sets out to kill Davros, joined in his reluctant and heavy task by Mercer and Stien.

The Doctor arrives in the lab and takes aim on Davros, but his gruesome task is interrupted by an argumentative distraction by Davros and the re-emergence of Stien’s Dalek programming. With Mercer dead, Stien runs off into the station, leaving the Doctor locked out of the lab and separated from Davros. Back on the TARDIS, the time capsule initiates a time-delayed flight (which the Doctor programmed) through the time corridor to the warehouse (which the Doctor did not program). They arrive in time for an all-out (and one-sided) battle between the Daleks and the remaining soldiers, but they end up snagging a sample of the Movellan virus before seeking refuge in TARDIS. During the battle, the Daleks split allegiances and create two warring factions: The Imperial Daleks led by Davros and the Renegade Daleks led by the Supreme Dalek.

A Dalek civil war cannot end well.

Stien arms the self-destruct while the Doctor returns to Earth and plants bombs on various Daleks before joining the companions in the TARDIS. Back on the station, Davros unleashes the Movellan virus against the Renegade Daleks, killing the Daleks and (in an unforeseen consequence) himself. Similarly, the Doctor introduces the virus into the warehouse, killing every Dalek inside.

The Supreme Dalek contacts the Doctor and promises him that the Dalek race will survive. Before the Daleks can implement this plan, the self-destruct triggers, destroying the station and the docked ship. The threat is over with the exception of the surviving execution squad. Gotta leave room for a sequel, right?

The Doctor and Turlough prepare to leave, but Tegan hesitates. She is disgusted by the massacre and can no longer follow the Doctor in his current mindset. In a heartbreaking farewell, she runs away, and her parting words remind the Doctor of who he truly is. Dejected, he and Turlough depart, and as the TARDIS fades from view, Tegan returns to tell the absent Doctor that she will indeed miss him.

 

“Brave heart, Tegan.” She certainly did have that in this story, as it takes a lot to tell off the Doctor when he’s really screwing things up. My appreciation of Tegan has been up and down through her tenure on the TARDIS, and this story didn’t do a lot by removing her from the plot for a significant portion of the story, but her exit highlighted her strength. She brought heart to the team, and she’ll be missed.

She also highlights a small trend in the show this season. Every one of the stories in the Twenty-First Series have showcased a lot of death, and Warriors of the Deep highlighted the start of the trend with a plaintive plea: “There should have been another way.” Tegan slapped the Doctor with her farewell, reminding him that he can be more. That he should be more.

He’s going to need to be more now that he’s alone with Turlough. I don’t like Turlough.

On the story side, setting aside everything already mentioned, I enjoyed the serial and how well the story was constructed. The plot moved efficiently and kept me engaged. The big downside was the magnitude of the deaths, especially the obviously gratuitous ones like Laird, the innocent bystander in the alley, and the treasure hunter at the docks.

Finally, it was nice to get the ties back to the Doctor’s history – the memory download highlighted Turlough, Tegan, Nyssa, Adric, both Romanas, K9, Harry Sullivan, Sarah Jane Smith, Jo Grant, the Brigadier, Liz Shaw, Zoe Heriot, Jamie McCrimmon, Victoria Waterfield, Ben Jackson, Polly Wright, Dodo Chaplet, Sara Kingdom, Katarina, Steven Taylor, Vicki Pallister, Barbara Wright, Ian Chesterton, and Susan Foreman – which I feel keeps a strong tie through the franchise. All of the other issues aside, it’s nice to have a sense of continuity with the franchise’s title character.

 

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Planet of Fire

 

 

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #133: Frontios

Michael Falkner13 Comments

Doctor Who: Frontios
(4 episodes, s21e07-e10, 1984)

 

Base under siege… again.

An expedition is studying minerals underground when the mine shaft collapses around them, killing the team (and colony) leader, Captain Revere. Chief Orderly Brazen, head of security for the colony, swears the remaining members to secrecy. His scientific officer, Mr. Range, fervently disagrees.

On the TARDIS, the Doctor is fidgeting, including obsessing over the placement of the hatstand. The time capsule drifts into orbit of Frontios, home to the survivors of human civilization after the Earth collided with the sun. The Doctor refuses to set down, fearing contamination of the civilization since it is on the edge of Gallifreyan knowledge, but the TARDIS is forced down by a meteor shower. The same meteor shower has bombarded the surface, and soon enough the travelers are engaged to help the injured. The Doctor is taken aback by the primitive state of the colony, and he asks Mr. Range to not speak of his influence on their society. Word of unidentified attacks piques the Doctor’s interest and he tosses aside the non-interference policy to lend a hand.

Word of the TARDIS’s arrival makes its way to the colony’s leader, Plantagenet (Captain Revere’s son, presumably named for the House of Plantagenet), and he muses that it may the beginning of a prophesied invasion.

Tegan and Turlough note that the TARDIS interior has deformed, but the Doctor doesn’t pay attention to their concerns. Tegan and Turlough offer to help solve the medical bay’s lighting problem with help from a colonist named Norna. The plan is to break into the nearby crashed colony ship and steal a jar of acid to amplify the chemical lights. They are interrupted by Plantagenet and Brazen, but after they leave the trio sneak into the ship.

Range explains their history to the Doctor: After the ship crashed, their technology was destroyed and the survivors spent the ensuing decade tilling the fields until the bombardments began. Plantagenet joins the discussion and expresses his doubts, and the Doctor warns that the constant paranoia will destroy what’s left of the colony. As a new series of bombardments begin, the trio of thieves bring the acid jar to the medical area and the Doctor suggests that they should depart, leaving the colonists to their own fates. Unfortunately, the bombardment strikes the TARDIS. All that is left is the hatstand in the rubble of the destroyed time capsule.

Wait… what?

Well, then.

The travelers are reeling from their loss, but are brought back to reality by the firing squad that surrounds them. Norna jumps to their defense, suggesting that if the Doctor is an invader, then he should remain alive to reveal the mystery of the bombardments. The colonial leadership decides to kill the Doctor until Turlough steps in with the hatstand to defend the Time Lord. The leadership relents and the Doctor agrees to analyze the meteorites and solve the mystery, but as Plantagenet attacks Turlough, he collapses and clutches his heart. The Doctor recognizes the symptoms of a glancing blow by a meteorite and has the man taken to the medical center.

The colonists have never seen a hatstand? Really? Okay.

Tegan learns more about the colony, including the existence of Retrogrades (those who have abandoned the colony) and the predilection of the orderlies to shoot the deserters on sight. She also notes a set of secret files labeled “Deaths Unaccountable,” but Range forbids her from looking at them. The Doctor and the medical team arrive and use the new lighting system as a defibrillator. The man is saved, and the leaders are more trusting.

Norna and Turlough analyze the meteorites and discuss why digging underground is forbidden. Turns out that the planet is hungry. Turlough notes that the samples are dated after the closure of the quarry, so he starts snooping about. He and Norna take a trip into the tunnels from the serial’s opening scenes and find that the rock is “moth-eaten.” Further in, the rock turns slick and polished, and as the pair explore they are followed by two creatures.

The Doctor and Range return to the research room, leaving Tegan with Brazen in the medical room. When Tegan accidentally mentions the unaccountable files, Brazen breaks into the files and moves to confront Range. Meanwhile, Tegan finds Plantagenet on the ground, but when she leaves to find help, he is pulled into the soil. Just outside, the colonists are becoming restless and starting to loot the colony ship, and Tegan takes the opportunity to escape from Brazen. She returns to the colony ship and follows the Doctor and Range into the tunnels.

Turlough remembers something about “Tractators,” which he screams to the Doctor and Range before entering a catatonic state. The Doctor and Tegan go ahead and find a group of the creatures holding Norna in a gravity field. They spot the Doctor and drag him in as well, but Tegan saves them by using her chemical lamp as a fiery distraction. Tegan takes Norna to safety while the Doctor investigates the Tractators. Tegan and Range race off to help the Doctor, but the Doctor and Tegan are snared in another gravity field. The Doctor repeats Tegan’s trick to free them.

Range returns to Norna, watching as Turlough continues to babble. It turns out that the Tractators invaded his homeworld, and the rantings are the ancestral memory bubbling to the surface. Range and Norna escort him to the surface. Topside, Brazen breaks free and finds Orderly Cockerill looting. He is escorted out of the colony ship to the waiting Retrogrades, but Brazen does nothing to help him when the Retrogrades attack for the rations Cockerill stole. His body is pulled into the soil without a word from his fellow looters. Brazen meets up with Range at the entrance to the quarry, and Range’s group is arrested.

The Doctor and Tegan witness Cockerill being pulled below the surface, and the presence distracts the Tractator and disrupts Cockerill’s disappearance. Since he supposedly defied the hungry earth, the Retrogrades start to admire him.

Upon questioning, Range reveals that his records are evidence of the myth that Frontios buries its own dead. Brazen overhears Turlough’s rantings, and the pieces all come together: Revere and Plantagenet may still be alive because the Tractators need living minds. Underground, the Doctor and Tegan discover that the Tractators are sentient and intelligent, but it’s unclear why they are tunneling.

The lead Tractator, Gravis, confronts Plantagenet, waiting for their old extractor driver’s mind to die before replacing it with the human’s. As Brazen leads a team (guided by a captive Range, followed later by Turlough who takes Range’s place) into the tunnels, Gravis sends the extractor as bait to lure the Doctor. When it catches up to them, it is being driven by the enslaved mind of Captain Revere.

Gravis knows of the Doctor by reputation and is intrigued by Tegan’s accidental reveal of the TARDIS (or what’s left of it). The Tractators have been stranded on Frontios for five centuries and are eager to get on their way. The Doctor convinces Gravis that Tegan is an android (thus, saving her from being installed in the extractor) and learns that the Tractators are responsible for the bombardments and the original crash of the colony ship. Plantagenet is almost installed in the extractor, but the Doctor frees him thanks to a distraction from Tegan and Turlough. They all nearly escape, but Turlough is mesmerized by the machine and inadvertently traps Brazen in its clutches.

That boy is an idiot.

Luckily, Brazen is able to run the machine out of control and destroy it. Using the information that the team has gathered, the Doctor concludes that the Tractators are building a gravity drive so they can pilot the entire planet like a starship. They also learn that there is a second excavator machine, because redundancy. It also has a new pilot thanks to all the humans running about in the caves.

Topside, Norna is attacked by a Retrograde, saved by Cockerill, and learns of her savior’s armed revolution with his new followers. Cockerill ties her up, but she breaks free and informs the revolutionaries of the threat below.

Tegan discovers that the walls of the TARDIS are growing in the cave system, which helps when the team is chased into the console room. It’s non-functional but serves as a suitable distraction to isolate Gravis from the rest of the Tractators courtesy of his desire to leave the planet. The Doctor tricks Gravis into reassembling the time capsule, an act that places the occupants into the TARDIS’s dimensions and severs the Gravis’s psychic link to his own kind.

The Doctor and Tegan drop the Gravis on the uninhabited moon of Kolkokron. Upon their return, they gift Plantagenet with the hatstand in exchange for his silence in the Doctor’s interference. When they dematerialize, the TARDIS malfunctions and is pulled toward the middle of the universe, setting up the next adventure.

This was an okay base-under-siege story. We get some background on Turlough (though I still couldn’t care less about the character), a new bit of trivia about how the TARDIS can be destroyed and reassemble itself, and some decent action with a new (if somewhat underwhelming) enemy. Also, the Doctor breaking out the spectacles to investigate the machine was fun.

The big problem I had was the loose thread of Cockerill and the Revolutionaries (there’s a band name for you), who were warned about the threat underground but were never seen again in the story. That’s a bit sloppy.

 

 

Rating: 3/5 – “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.”

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Resurrection of the Daleks

 

 

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #132: The Awakening

Michael Falkner3 Comments

Doctor Who: The Awakening
(2 episodes, s21e05-e06, 1984)

 

A new adventure starts by showing us that “it’s just a joke” often isn’t.

A schoolteacher named Jane Hampden is being harassed by English civil war re-enactors. She thinks they’ve taken things too far, but Sir George and his band blow off her concerns because she just doesn’t get it.

You know, despite all the anger in fandom over the Thirteenth Doctor, it’s pretty obvious that Doctor Who has been pretty progressive for quite a long time.

The Doctor is taking Tegan on a special trip to visit her grandfather, but the TARDIS is acting strangely. When they materialize, they find a man in a crumbling structure, but the man runs away. Based on the man’s clothing, the travelers have arrived in the 17th century, but the TARDIS coordinates read as 1984. As our heroes explore, smoke pours from a crack a wall. They don’t see it, and neither do they see the re-enactors who round them up and take them to Sir George.

Sir George’s retinue informs Tegan that her grandfather is missing, and she angrily storms out. After having her purse stolen, she sees flashing lights and the ethereal image of an old man before being rescued by Turlough. After the Doctor sneaks away, Sir George sends his men to find the travelers based on Tegan’s grandfather. After all, “something strange but wonderful” is coming to the village.

The Doctor pursues a man carrying Tegan’s purse back to the church, and in short order, Tegan, Turlough, and the Doctor join forces with Will Chandler, a supposed 17th-century peasant. As the Doctor convinces Will of the truth of his temporal dislocation, Tegan and Turlough return to the TARDIS and see the flashing blue lights again. They are soon captured while searching for the Doctor, and Tegan is forced to adopt the role of Queen of the May.

Will and the Doctor discover a hidden passage from the church to the manor, conveniently decorated with the face of something called Malus. They join up with Jane, who is being pursued, and hide from Sir George’s forces. While in hiding, they find a sample of tincalvic, a metal mined by the Tereleptils on the planet Raaga for the people of Hakol. Hakol is a place where psychic energy is harnessed, and the metal is part of a spacecraft or probe. As they return to the church, they discover a large face emerging from the crack in the wall, and after surviving a psychic projection from the Malus, they escape to the tunnel.

En route, the Doctor talks to Jane about the Malus, which is feeding off the psychic energy of the war games. The Doctor fails to convince Sir George to stop the war games, and Sir George orders Colonel Woolsey to execute the Doctor’s team. Woolsey disobeys by switching sides and collaborating with the Doctor to stop the threat. Meanwhile, Turlough encounters Andrew Verney, the man who discovered the Malus and was imprisoned by Sir George to keep it secret.

So, the Doctor places himself on the front lines of the Queen of the May celebration, and Woolsley delivers a mockup of Tegan to draw off the soldiers. Verney and Turlough break out of their cell, while the Doctor collects Will, and everyone converges on the church to battle the Disney Imagineer façade that is the Malus.

The Malus fights back by draining all the psychic energy from the villagers to battle the Doctor, but the energy is wasted when a random redshirt runs in and is decapitated by projected soldiers. Sir George, completely under the thrall of the Malus, confronts the Doctor. The Doctor logics his way into Sir George’s head and the battle between good and evil disarms the leader. In a surprise move, Will pushes the helpless man into the gaping maw of the Malus. The Doctor says cold-blooded murder is okay, but we all know that it’s really not.

The Doctor shepherds the whole lot to the TARDIS and takes off just in time as the church collapses around the self-destructing Malus. The Doctor makes arrangements to put everyone back in their proper places, and Tegan convinces everyone to convince the Doctor to stay in the village for a while. After all, they came to visit her grandfather, and Mr. Verney is right there.

Nothing says family reunion like running for your lives, right?

This one was a compressed evil alien versus the village scenario, and it was just okay. The team is working well together (which is good) but the narrative took a lot of shortcuts to fit the two episode limit (which is bad). I usually don’t mind the special effects, but the face of Malus was particularly laughable. What wasn’t funny was the Doctor excusing cold-blooded murder. That’s not in character at all.

 

Rating: 2/5 – “Mm? What’s that, my boy?”

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Frontios

 

 

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #131: Warriors of the Deep

Michael Falkner6 Comments

Doctor Who: Warriors of the Deep
(4 episodes, s21e01-e04, 1984)

 

Welcome to the dark ethical corner.

We last saw the Silurians and the Sea Devils in the Third Doctor’s era, and now they’re teaming up to attack an underwater base. From the opening and the title, I assume that’s where the base was, but there are armed guards in the passageways. Are armed incursions that frequent despite being isolated by high pressure water?

Anyway…

A Silurian submersible triggers the base’s sensors but disappears soon after. The commander launches a probe to investigate, ready to fire missiles at their enemy on a moment’s notice, but the probe is destroyed. The Silurians are investigating the fate of their Sea Devil brothers (presumably the ones who were entombed when their underwater base was destroyed back in the Third Doctor’s era), curious as to why the latter have not woken up after so long. They find the sleeping Sea Devils and awaken them from their slumber.

On the TARDIS, the Doctor is driving and Turlough announces his decision to remain aboard for the near future. The Doctor is skeptical of this decision (as am I) but informs the lad that they are headed to Earth and that he should inform Tegan. When they materialize, they find themselves in Earth orbit and under the guns of a sentry satellite. The TARDIS dodges the sentry’s weapons and materializes in the sea base’s engineering section. Being the Doctor and crew, the travelers explore the area and the Doctor determines that they have arrived in another cold war era in Earth’s history. While exploring, they trip a security alert and run for the TARDIS.

Ensign Maddox, a young and inexperienced officer who temporarily replaced an officer who was killed in a freak accident, is nervous about going to war. After the probe is destroyed, the station commences a missile run, and Maddox freezes under the pressure. After being coerced into the sync chair, the missile run is revealed to be a simulation and Maddox collapses. The ensign is taken to the infirmary where he is declared unfit for duty, but the medical staff (Doctor Solow and an officer named Nilson) suggests reprogramming the young officer’s brain. The commander releases the sensitive reprogramming disk to their custody before returning to the bridge. We also discover that Solow and Nilson are working for the enemy as a freshly rebooted Maddox is returned to duty.

En route to the TARDIS, the Doctor sets the station’s reactor to overload as a distraction, but they are discovered by the roving security teams. The Doctor defends his companions, an act that sees him falling off the catwalks into the waters below as they run away. The Doctor takes the opportunity to swim into a nearby hatch.

What’s with that one guard knocking senselessly on the wall?

The Silurians, led by Icthar, and the Sea Devils, led by Sauvix, hatch a plan to attack the seabase. Meanwhile, Turlough is captured, the Doctor dons a guard’s uniform, another set of guards miss their disrobed comrade lying in a passageway, and Tegan meets up with the Doctor. The “what have you been eating” joke was a little funny, but only once in the two-minute span that it was repeated.

Turlough spills what he knows about the Doctor and the TARDIS, but before he is taken away for a mind probe, he is rescued at gunpoint by the Doctor. Meanwhile, the roving guards find the TARDIS and walk right in (oh, for the love of…!), establishing a tentative trust between the travelers and the base commander. This trust is tested when the Silurian battlecruiser approached the base and the commander opens fire against the Doctor’s recommendation. The Silurians turn the energy beam back on the base with their deflectors, opening a way through the base’s defenses.

The Doctor harbors a lot of regret about the Silurians, who he calls a noble species who only wanted to live in peace. He tries to persuade the commander to his cause but is interrupted by the Silurian forces as they attack with a creature called the Myrka (which is pretty much a seaweed-clad space pantomime horse). While the base is distracted, Solow and Nilson activate Maddox’s programming, forcing him to work for them as they sabotage the base.

Tegan and the Doctor are trapped in the airlock as the Myrka smashes through the inner door. The commander orders the airlock to be sealed, locking Tegan and the Doctor inside with the Myrka. Turlough runs from the guards, who then take station as the Doctor and Tegan fight the Myrka. Turlough ends up on the bridge and coerces the crewman to cycle the door. The Doctor and Tegan escape, but the Myrka jams the door with its leg, escaping into the base and wreaking havoc.

At Airlock Five, Commander Vorshak and the Doctor confer with considerable confrontation. The Doctor enacts a plan to stop the Myrka as the Sea Devils breach the airlock and push back the human defenders. As the commander’s team seals the corridor bulkhead, Turlough arrives and is pressed into service with his rifle. The Sea Devils burn through the bulkhead, and the commander heads for the bridge to call for help, an act that will reveal the base’s location to the world.

The Doctor’s team assembles an ultraviolet radiation beam projector in the Myrka’s path. Meanwhile, Doctor Solow leaves the bridge with Maddox’s disc, intent on delivering it to her superiors, but contact with the Myrka (and an ill-fated karate kick) end her journey in short order. The guards return the disc to Vorshak, which clues him into the nefarious schemes afoot. He returns to the bridge, confronts Nilson, and discovers Maddox tearing the computers apart. Vorshak tries to stop Maddox, and Nilson disables Maddox with his controller. Back in the corridor, the Doctor kills the Myrka with the ultraviolet beam, looking somewhat sad about the necessity.

Vorshak questions Nilson, but the traitor gets the drop on the commander (and the Doctor and Tegan as they report in). Maddox comes to his senses and draws his sidearm, but Nilson kills him with the control box. After a brief scuffle, Nilson takes Tegan hostage and leaves the bridge with the promise that once he leaves, the base will be destroyed. The Doctor receives word that the intruders have taken Turlough and security officer Bulic hostage, prompting him to pursue Nilson, catching up to him at the ultraviolet generator. Tegan distracts Nilson, and the Doctor blinds him with the beam. Nilson stumbles into the Sea Devils and they kill him, then they take aim on the Doctor and Tegan but the situation is temporarily defused when the Doctor identifies himself. Tegan is ushered to the holding cells while the Time Lord is reunited with Icthar.

The Doctor negotiates with Icthar, but the Silurian is jaded by the last two attempts at peace and plans to instigate mutually assured destruction among the humans so that the Silurians can take the planet. Icthar forces Vorshak to start the launch process while Tegan and Turlough spearhead an escape and rescue attempt. In the escape attempt, the Doctor joins the human survivors and infiltrates the chemical storeroom. A Sea Devil inadvertently triggers a hexachromite leak and is dissolved. The human soldiers suggest using it on the invaders on the bridge, and the Doctor angrily dismisses the proposal, opting for a non-lethal solution. Unfortunately, a missile alert warns them that launch is imminent and the Doctor decides to follow the lethal recommendation.

Sauvix finds the group and threatens the Doctor’s life. Officer Preston sacrifices herself as Bulic gasses the Sea Devil, and the team continues to the bridge. The Doctor pleads for peace one last time, but the Silurians and Sea Devils fight until the gas overtakes them. Tegan gives them oxygen while the Doctor syncs with the computer, stopping the missile launch at the last moment. In the process, the commander is fatally wounded by Icthar, who is then killed by Turlough.

The day is saved, but the price is high. The Doctor, in a mix of anger and sorrow, looks upon the carnage and remarks, “There should have been another way.”

 

At its core, this was a decent base invasion/chase story. I enjoyed seeing the noble Silurians and Sea Devils again, and despite a little padding and the large amounts of violence, this tale was quite good. I did appreciate the Doctor sticking to his values until it was proven by the Silurians that there was no other way, and I’m glad to see the message of intellect and romance triumphing over brute force and cynicism shining through.

We haven’t seen it in a while, and it has an added power here: The Doctor obviously keeps the message in his hearts, but today he failed to achieve it… and it’s tearing him apart.

 

 

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Awakening

 

 

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.