Tag: John Benton

Timestamp #57: The Claws of Axos

Michael Falkner8 Comments

Doctor Who: The Claws of Axos
(4 episodes, s08e11-e14, 1971)

Timestamp 057 The Claws of Axos

 

It’s Doctor Who in color… again! The Claws of Axos is a short serial that is much more straightforward than The Mind of Evil, which hurts it a little in my opinion.

UNIT is undergoing an inspection from Horatio Chinn, a particularly detestable politician who is throwing a tantrum because he knows nothing about the Doctor, when they detect a spacecraft filled with spaghetti monsters. I’m kidding, of course, since the spacecraft is unique to the franchise and not a bad looking model. UNIT is also hosting Bill Filer, an American agent from an unknown agency, who is investigating the Master. Chinn, ever the diplomat, secures emergency powers and tries to shoot down the spacecraft, but it evades the effort. Strangely enough, Chinn could have been the hero of the tale had he succeeded.

The ship lands and spears a homeless drifter with a Jar Jar Binks-like tongue. UNIT arrives and, with the help of scientists from the nearby power facility, investigate the ship. Filer, after being ejected from the UNIT site by Chinn, arrives on his own, is captured, and discovers the Master is also in captivity.

The Doctor gets scanned by the living ship, and the aliens determine that he is a Time Lord. The Axons appear as humanoids in gold face paint and muted leopard-print leotards, and they claim that they ran out of fuel and need time to recharge and replenish. In exchange for temporary asylum on Earth, they offer a miracle substance called Axonite that can be anything you want it to be. Strangely, they never used it for fuel.

Jo explores the ship on her own after disobeying orders to stay put, and she hears Filer calling for help. She finds a spaghetti monster and screams, drawing the UNIT team to her, but the Axons dismiss her experiences as hallucinations due to the proximity to the power core. Filer and the Master take the opportunity to escape, but are recaptured, and Filer is sent to be cloned.

Chinn calls the Prime Minister for special powers to accept the Axonite, places the UNIT team under military arrest for interfering with his authori-TAH, and sets to distributing the Axonite around the globe. Unfortunately, as the Doctor discovers, the Axonite is the means that the Axons (or really, just Axos, a single consciousness with multiple avatars) plans to use to consume the planet’s energy.

The Master negotiates with Axos for release, and gets his laser gun but not his TARDIS. He steals the Doctor’s TARDIS, has it delivered to the power plant, and works on fixing it so he can escape. After discovering that Axos wants to time travel to expand its feeding base and that they can use the reactor’s power to do so, the Doctor works with the Master to repair the TARDIS under the premise that he’s abandoning Earth as a lost cause. Once operational, the Doctor materializes the TARDIS inside Axos, tricks them into linking their drives with his, and locks them in a permanent time loop. The Master escapes into his TARDIS when he discovers the plan, and all of Axos is materialized into the Doctor’s TARDIS. The Doctor boosts the TARDIS out of it, leaving Axos stranded in the loop, and the TARDIS returns to Earth with an annoyed Doctor on board. Even with the ability to dematerialize now restored, the Time Lords have ensured that it will always return to Earth.

I’m really starting to dislike the Time Lords. Sure, I get the justice for breaking their laws, including making sure that the Doctor doesn’t leave his exile by blocking his knowledge, changing the dematerialization codes, and disabling the circuitry in the TARDIS, but then they show up only long enough to warn the Doctor that the Master is coming and that he’s a bad dude. We know full well that they can stop renegade Time Lords with little effort, but they selectively choose not to interfere in this case.

The Master is definitely worse than the War Chief, yet the latter was brought to trial on Gallifrey for his meddling. In a similar vein, The Monk‘s activities have been outright ignored by the Time Lords.

In other short notes, Paul Grist does a decent job with an American accent, and there was a lot of fun with pyrotechnics in this serial. The Doctor seems to be stepping away from his previous reserve about his past by disclosing his knowledge of time travel to the power plant scientists.

This was an okay story with some great steps forward toward restoring the travel aspects of the show.

 

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

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Colony in Space

 

 

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 #56: The Mind of Evil

Michael Falkner9 Comments

Doctor Who: The Mind of Evil
(6 episodes, s08e05-e10, 1971)

Timestamp 056 The Mind of Evil

 

The Doctor goes to prison, and the show goes back to black and white. Remind me to never lend the BBC my tape collection.

A new device, the Keller Machine, can apparently extract evil thoughts from the mind and rehabilitate prisoners. The Doctor, while attending a demonstration of the device, thinks himself above the primitive 1970s Earth, and feels vindicated after the demonstration yields one comatose prisoner named Barnham, and later, one dead medical student. Meanwhile, UNIT is running security for a world peace conference, and Captain Chin Lee of the Chinese delegation deceives UNIT to help the Master steal a nerve gas missile.

The machine is intelligent, and it feeds off of negative emotions like fear and aggression. It kills people by making them envision their greatest fears so it can feed, and the Master figures out that the machine will overpower both him and the prison, so he teams up with the Doctor to shut it down.  Starved for evil to feed on, the machine learns how to teleport directly to food sources, but it cannot function around Barnham since he completely devoid of negative emotion.

The Doctor offers to trade the missile for the Master’s dematerialization circuit, and knowing that he can’t allow the Master to roam free in time and space, he tries to trap the Master with Barnham and the mind parasite. The Master gets his circuit back in the ensuing chaos, escapes, and runs down Barnham. The Doctor sets the missile to self-destruct, taking the parasite with it.

This is twice now that the Master’s plans have threatened to overcome him: He goes big when he builds a plan to take over the world. The Doctor’s fear of his enemies is fascinating since he hardly shows it when he’s up against them. The Master’s greatest fear, the Doctor looming over him and laughing in victory, betrays his insecurity.

It’s also interesting how the Doctor is so cautious about exposing himself as a Time Lord, but he never misses an opportunity to denigrate the technology of the era in which he’s trapped. No wonder people dislike him so much.

This was a straightforward story with a couple of twists, and a good continuation of this season’s overarching theme of the Doctor and his nemesis.

 

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

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Claws of Axos

 

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 #55: Terror of the Autons

Michael Falkner18 Comments

Doctor Who: Terror of the Autons
(4 episodes, s08e01-e04, 1971)

Timestamp 055 Terror of the Autons

 

The Nestene and Autons are back. The normal title sequences are back. Liz Shaw is… not.

There are so many profanities, obscenities, expletives, and invectives I could throw out here; I guess Liz Shaw can now be the vice president of the Unceremoniously Canned Companions Club with Dodo as the president and founder. She was only around for four serials, but she deserved a lot better (especially as a strong female character) than to be written off in the off-season.

It’s infuriating!

The Doctor’s back as well, still in his fancy ruffles but with a toned down scarlet jacket. He’s still working on TARDIS and meets Jo Grant, the new assistant. Jo’s no Liz, but she’s very independent and has potential, and she did save the Doctor’s bacon from the mirror-universe-goatee-and-slicked-back-hair E-V-I-L that is the Master. I mean, if you’re gonna save the Doctor’s life, you get extra points for doing it against that guy.

The Master arrives in a TARDIS with a fully functional chameleon circuit, enthralls nearly everyone he meets like the vampires of legend, and steals a Nestene egg to invite the invasion force on down. The Doctor and his team investigate the strange signals from the radio telescope, and the Doctor gets a heads up from a random Time Lord. The Third Doctor’s run has been playing fast and loose with time travel vehicles, and this story is no exception: Time Lords can apparently travel without a TARDIS.

The Master takes the disguise of Colonel Masters and embeds himself in a local plastics factory. After killing the production manager with an inflatable plastic chair, he offs the factory’s retired owner with a demonic plastic doll activated by heat. The only way he could be more evil is by killing a puppy.

The Doctor follows the clues to the circus, but is captured by the Master’s hypnotized followers. Jo rescues him after smuggling away in Bessie, and the Doctor steals the dematerialization circuit from the Master’s TARDIS. One mob scene and thrilling Auton battle later, the escape with the Brigadier and Captain Yates. The dematerialization circuit is too new for the Doctor’s TARDIS, but the good news is that the Master is also stranded on Earth.

The Autons, disguised as cartoonish carnival figures, distribute plastic daffodils to the public as the disguised Master replaces the Doctor’s phone cable in his lab. The Doctor and the Brigadier find the plastic factory office to be abandoned with the exception of an Auton in the safe while Jo and Sergeant Benton dispatch the demon doll, and the Doctor gets wrapped up in a phone call. Okay, that phone cord bit was a good idea on paper, but quite silly in execution.

The daffodils attack Jo and try to asphyxiate her, and the Master arrives to confront the Doctor. He kidnaps the pair and places them in the bus that UNIT is about to bomb, but the Doctor communicates with Morse code through the brake lights on the bus and escapes. The Master starts to bring the Nestene invaders down to the planet, but suddenly understands that they will kill him as well. The Doctor and the Master work together to reverse the polarity of the signal and send the Nestene into deep space, and then the Master sacrifices his last follower to escape.

Let’s start with the negatives (aside from Liz’s canning), of which there are only two: There was a lot of blue-screening in this serial, which was probably reasonable for the era but got really distracting; The camera angles let us see a lot of the TARDIS interior, there’s no control room. Aside from the companion kerfuffle, my complaints are petty.

On the positives, this is a tight story told in four episodes that introduces a continuing conflict with a powerful enemy. I was riveted waiting to see how it resolved, and I want more.

 

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Mind of Evil

 

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 #54: Inferno

Michael Falkner25 Comments

Doctor Who: Inferno
(7 episodes, s07e19-e25, 1970)

Timestamp 054 Inferno

 

Time is the enemy this time around, and the weapon is the planet Earth.

Professor Stahlman, a rather arrogant child, is in charge of a nuclear powered drilling project in search of a previously untapped energy source. The project is experiencing problems, including a mysterious green goo that transforms people into some kind of emerald werewolves, so an expert is called in to help. This upsets Stahlman, who thinks that UNIT and the Doctor are already causing unnecessary interference and that Greg Sutton’s addition will only make things go slower. He even disables the computer, which provides safety guidance based on hard data, because it stands in his way.

The Doctor is using the same reactor to power experiments on the TARDIS console, which launches him into a dimensional void. Liz saves him by cutting the power, but he manipulates the situation as a goo-infected Stahlman increases the pressure to punch through the Earth’s crust and ends up on an alternate Earth that is a few hours ahead of his reality.

This alternate reality is fascist, with a UNIT analogue led by Section Leader Liz Shaw and Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart. Stahlman is still a petulant ass, and the drilling is still on track. In this reality, the crust is breached and the green slime explodes from the site. Stahlman seals himself in the drill room and exposes the crew inside to the goo, and the planet is at the point of no return. This Earth is dead.

The alternate Earth team helps the Doctor to restore power to the console after a brief demonstration of its capabilities, and the Brigade Leader tries to hijack it to save their lives. In a really nice twist, Liz kills him to defend the Doctor. The Doctor travels back to his reality and stops the drilling just in time to save the planet from the inferno.

It took seven episodes to tell that story.

I liked the return of travelling to the franchise. I’m beginning to share the Doctor’s frustration at waiting for the story to come to him. His life at this point revolves around trying to restore his mobility, and while the threats on Earth are interesting and (for the most part) exciting, exploration is one of the key themes of the show.

I liked the main “mirror universe” characters and how well Nicholas Courtney and Caroline John played them. I also liked the escalation of the conflict between the Doctor and the Brigadier. The Doctor is very abrasive toward the Brigadier – this is a trait I think is somewhat justified given how much the Doctor dislikes everything that UNIT represents in terms of military force – but it also highlights how arrogant, bitter, and self-centered he is in this incarnation. It’s like the First Doctor has returned with a slightly more cheery attitude.

There was one brilliant pop culture moment (“What did you expect? Some kind of space rocket with Batman at the controls?”) and one missed moment that highlights another difference between the Doctors (Sutton repeatedly calls the Doctor “Doc”, which his first incarnation vehemently despised).

I truly loved how empowered Petra Williams, the personal assistant to Professor Stahlman, was. She’s not a typist, she’s not to be loaned out, and she challenges the otherwise untouchable professor.

The two things I wasn’t too keen on were the antagonist and the resulting conflict. The immediate enemy was the strange wolf creatures, which are mutated by the unspecified green ooze from inside the planet. The Doctor links this incident to the volcanic eruption at Krakatoa in 1883, but to what end? The planet is saved by stopping the drilling, but the true antagonist, time, remains in play at the end. Eventually, someone else will drill into the planet in search of the power, and this will all start again. The problem wasn’t solved. It was merely delayed.

Between that and the number of episodes to tell what is really a very simple story, the serial slid from good to mediocre in quick order.

On the other hand, we finally have a threat that UNIT can stop with their guns, so at least they’re finally useful in a fight.

 

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

 

UP NEXT – Series Seven Summary

 

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 #53: The Ambassadors of Death

Michael Falkner5 Comments

Doctor Who: The Ambassadors of Death
(7 episodes, s07e12-e18, 1970)

Timestamp 053 The Ambassadors of Death

 

I spent a good part of this serial trying to figure out if the aliens were the Ice Warriors again.

A recovery capsule attempts to rendezvous with a Mars capsule that has lost contact with Earth and the whole world knows because, a concept completely (and sadly) foreign to us today, the mission is being televised. Over that broadcast, the Doctor (who has somehow removed the TARDIS control console from the blue box and is playing some crazy plot-filler shenanigans with Liz Shaw and micro-trips to the future) hears a sound that he recognizes. He and Liz make haste to the mission control center to figure it out.

Mars: Check. Time Lord familiarity: Check. It could be the Ice Warriors…

The Doctor determines that this sound is an encrypted transmission, and the slightly different version that pings back is a reply message. It’s certainly not a deep conversation; if this were a texting relationship, it would be like “hey” followed by “what up (smiley emoticon)”. There are a couple of investigations around the source of the reply and the freshly landed recovery capsule and gun fights break out. Meanwhile, General Carrington, the head of the Space Security Department, pulls a Homeland Security Department move and extracts the astronauts before UNIT arrives. He has removed the astronauts because of radiation exposure, but the astronauts now feed on it. They also emit it like a virus, which could potentially spread like a plague. The astronauts are not the humans, but rather legitimate aliens, and a criminal named Reegan and a disgraced Cambridge professor named Lennox are tending to them. The aliens don’t have enough radiation to consume and are weakening.

So, not the Ice Warriors, but instead an attempt at domestic terrorism on a large scale by way of a government cover-up, right?

By way of a convenient communications device, the antagonists send the aliens on a raid of the space center. It fails, and the Doctor goes into space to investigate astronauts he believes are still in orbit. He dodges an assassination attempt, docks with the capsule, gets intercepted by an incoming alien saucer, and learns that the aliens on Earth are ambassadors to fulfill a peace treaty with humanity.

Not a domestic terror plot. I didn’t see that twist coming.

In a far too quick resolution for an already thinly stretched plot, it turns out that Carrington met the aliens when he piloted the previous Mars probe, and he signed the peace treaty to lure them to Earth and stop what he interpreted as an invasion. The Doctor takes the ambassadors to space center to stop the general’s plan and exchange the aliens for the missing astronauts. The day is saved. The end.

Can I have the Ice Warriors instead? Please?

No, really. I felt like this story was just all over the place and had no idea where it really wanted to go. Seven episodes is just far too long for that kind of song and dance. There were some fun moments with the Doctor being all scientific again, but there were also some real groaners in here. For one, the strange titles – Main titles, teaser footage, return to the titles for “The Ambassadors… OF DEATH!” with some really bad sound editing – were annoying. For two, the “transmigration” of an object? Ugh. Far too magical despite the Doctor’s magician outfit. For three, the convenience of magic side panels on the escape van. I love my Bond moments, and I get the license plates spinning to conceal the car, but the side panels should have been a more realistic change.

Speaking of Bond, what good is an “anti-thief” device on Bessie if it’s clearly labeled, required to be switched on to immobilize the thieves, and frees the perpetrators after a short time? A thief could just steal the car and not touch the switch. Achievement unlocked: Grand Theft Bessie – +30G.

Finally, the episodes shift in and out of black and white because of more missing master tapes. I don’t hold it against the episode since I survived the first six seasons of the show, but it seems that the BBC certainly has a hard time learning from their mistakes. Especially after what comes across as a significant investment in the show’s future with color, higher production values, and so on.

But, yeah, just like the plot, my attention for this one was touch and go. At the end, I was just happy to see it go.

 

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

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Inferno

 

 

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 #46: The Invasion

Michael Falkner11 Comments

Doctor Who: The Invasion
(8 episodes, s06e11-e18, 1968)

Timestamp 046 The Invasion

 

This one starts with the ending I expected from the last serial, and it kicks things off with a bang.

After the jump to the Land of Fiction and back, the TARDIS is malfunctioning. It materializes near the moon, and has to immediately dodge an incoming missile. The visual stabilizer circuit has gone bad and causes the TARDIS to turn invisible. The travelers leave to go find Professor Travers in what they think is 20th century London. They hitch a ride and the driver tells them about International Electromatics (IE), an electronics company that has bought out the locals and caused some of them to vanish without a trace. The travelers escape the IE compound, but the pursuing security guards kill the driver outside of their jurisdiction.

Professor Travers has moved to America, but his flat is occupied by Professor Watkins and his niece Isobel (played by Sally Faulkner, no relation). Watkins works for IE, but no one can reach him, so the Doctor and Jamie go there to investigate. They are subdued and meet Tobias Vaughn, non-official Bond villain and managing director of IE, who eventually gets the TARDIS circuitry to go with the strange alien computer in his closet. That computer recognizes the duo from Planet 14 (where?) and determines that they must be eliminated.

Jamie and the Doctor leave Vaughn and are promptly followed by suits in cars. It turns out that they are from the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT), and work for recently promoted Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who we last saw in The Web of Fear. It’s been four years since the Yetis, and the Brigadier and UNIT are investigating IE. I absolutely loved how the Doctor and Jamie try to escape, realize that they can’t, so accept their situation and start playing cards in the street.

Zoe determines that if there is trouble, the Doctor and Jamie are in it (I love this!), and she pulls a Captain Kirk on the reception computer by causing it to try solving an unsolvable problem. It goes boom, and she and Isobel are captured shortly thereafter. The Doctor and Jamie return to IE to search for the ladies, and are also captured.

After this, it’s a very Bond-flavored cat and mouse game with moles in the government and staying one step ahead of Vaughn’s plans for world domination. How is he trying to take over the world? Cybermen.

I have a long list of things I love from this serial. The Doctor’s pockets are like miniature TARDISes and are a source of unending amusement as he pulls random items from their depths. It goes well with his overall character, especially with his comic running from the shooting Cyberman and jumping at each explosion. I love seeing a modern (for the serial) era feminist working with a strong female character from the future, especially when it compares with Jamie’s period-specific sexism that seems to be integral to his character. The dynamic is fantastic, and the chemistry really makes it work.

The Bond feel is a reflection of the era and the country, and it extends beyond Vaughn to the technology and the setting overall. I like the James Bond movies, so this was fun to watch. I also like the pop culture nods (“Kilroy was here” and “Teddy Bears’ Picnic“) and the in-universe “Bad Wolf” nod in the animated reconstruction.

The march of the Cybermen from St. Paul’s Cathedral was also very similar to the march in Dark Water and Death and Heaven. It’s good to see the inspiration for those scenes. It’s also good to see the links between those modern episodes and the classic ones: The Cybermen corpses in this serial are used by UNIT to develop defenses for future invasions, and that iteration of UNIT is being led by the Brigadier’s daughter. Speaking of the Brigadier, he’s an awesome character. I’m looking forward to seeing more of him in coming series.

Finally, since this is the last appearance of the Cybermen for a while, I should mention the music. I haven’t really keyed in on a lot of the background music, but I really enjoyed the theme for the Cybermen. It’s so simple, but menacing at the same time. It’s also very mechanical without taking the use of creaking and beeping sound effects. I’m going to miss it.

The only two drawbacks to this serial are writing related: First, why does UNIT continue to attack the Cybermen with pistols and rifles when only grenades and rockets are working? Second, the final rocket strikes and wrap-up scenes are kind of anti-climatic compared to the rest of the episode.

Overall, this one get a 4.5, and I round up.

 

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Krotons

 

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.