9 Jan 2009, 1:40 am
Dorney
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The Green Death 1:
One of my major regrets in not being, ahem, quite as speedy with my rewatching as I'd once intended is that it becomes hard to really get a sense of the journey of the show. Getting through the first season or so was a really enlightening experience - the real sense of the first few stories as a genuine serial. If something was repetitive, you noticed. If someone left the show, you could see if you really missed them (and you really appeciate Hartnell so much more).
But sometimes it accentuates flaws. It dawned on me as I watched the first episode of this story that it's been ages since we've had a serial that actually looks good. Much as I may have liked the divine Carnival of Monsters, it's got a noticeably garish quality. There's something about The Green Death that just feels... well real, really. And it's a massive relief.
Of course, it's probably the juxtaposition. We've had six episodes of juvenile runaround in an unconvincing set, with everything desperately trying (and failing) to appear futuristic and just ending up looking cheap. The jarring and slightly false sense of quality that turns up pretty much the second that story has its sole outing onto film probably proves the point. But we're not dealing with ersatz quality here. This seems, so far, to be the real thing.
Film is so much more pleasing than the harshness of video. That doesn't inherently make anything better on it's own, obviously, but it helps. Watching the Metebelis 3 sequences in this story, it's hard not to think its predecessor would be so much more likeable if they'd had the money to shoot it all like this. The softness understandably takes the edge off the naff special effects aliens, and the lighting and sound do their very best to make the whole thing suitably eerie. There's an hilarious moment when the Doctor runs back into the TARDIS which is immediately attacked by about a dozen different things and weapons from a dozen different directions, but beyond that it's remarkably atmospheric. It's an example of the show realising it can't do something properly so trying to find a way around it. As opposed to either not realising, or hoping no-one notices.
The Doctor is largely absent with this little sub-plot for this episode, but this doesn't really matter. Partially this is down to the fact that, as Jo says, Prof. Jones is very much a younger version of him, and he fills a lot of the same plot function. But it's mainly down to the treatment of Jo. Again we have an example of the perspective that watching this story right up against Planet of the Daleks brings - Katy Manning is a revelation. Within the shifting of two episodes there's a real and obvious change and the character appears completely different.
I've not been against Jo, but when she's written with a bit of verve and a spikey quality, as she is here, you do spot what you've been missing. She's all personality, and there hasn't been much of that throughout her run. She's only been allowed to be generic. Still, at least she gets to shine sometimes, which is more than can be said of others.
The reality factor keeps playing in with the main storyline. The general plotline (an oil manufacturer and their nearby coal mine) is refereshingly every day after an endless stream of scientific establishments, military bases and universities in the Earthbound stories, and the environmental concerns are down to Earth (if you'll pardon the expression). And even the chauffeur as thug echoes a certainly 'gritty' quality as it's clearly influenced by Ian Hendry's similar role in Get Carter. Only the last few minutes betray that this isn't entirely going to be a relatively straightforward Doomwatch-esque tale of pollution. As it stands at the moment it's an intriguing hook that may or may not be successfully integrated into the main story - though I must confess, that the moment the adult tone is broken by Stevens pulling out a massive pair of comedy headphones, a little part of me was wishing it could have been something less overtly fantastical.
Because the general attitude and tone of the show gives this story a serious and mature feel. It makes you forgive the comedy bird's legs in the same way that Jaws makes you forgive the rubber shark. It feels like a children's show made with the same integrity and respect of an adult show. Edge of Darkness for the family, if you like. Very promising.
#764 10 Jan 2009, 12:17 am
The Secretive Bus
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I must admit, I find the bit with Jo reading the newspaper and complaining about pollution etc whilst the Doctor natters on about Metebelis pretty excrutiating to watch. Maybe it's the obvious dialogue or the direction or Manning's overtly chirpy acting but the "Oh no!... They can't!... Criminal, absolutely criminal!... Don't they know the pollution that'll cause!" stuff sounds jarringly fake. I'm not sure why it sticks out for me but it's some of the worst acting by a companion in the era, by my reckoning. Manning seems stuck in panto mode for a lot of episode 1, though she is admittedly pretty good for the rest of it.
#765 10 Jan 2009, 1:14 am
Dorney
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Secretive Bus
"I must admit, I find the bit with Jo reading the newspaper and complaining about pollution etc whilst the Doctor natters on about Metebelis pretty excrutiating to watch. Maybe it's the obvious dialogue or the direction or Manning's overtly chirpy acting but the "Oh no!... They can't!... Criminal, absolutely criminal!... Don't they know the pollution that'll cause!" stuff sounds jarringly fake. I'm not sure why it sticks out for me but it's some of the worst acting by a companion in the era, by my reckoning. Manning seems stuck in panto mode for a lot of episode 1, though she is admittedly pretty good for the rest of it. "
I see where you're coming from - the newspaper stuff is contrived, and it's a touch broad - but in context, and after six episodes of being generic on Spiridon it probably comes across an awful lot better!
#766 10 Jan 2009, 11:21 pm
Dorney
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The Green Death 2:
Interesting piece of construction, this episode. It's, on the surface, something of a makeweight episode. It's very clear quite early on that an awful lot of the episode is about the fallout from the cliffhanger resolution (in deed, Jo hasn't managed to get out of the mine by the time the end of the episode comes around) rather than driving an ongoing storyline. The forward motion of the story stops whilst it focuses on a subplot.
Now this could cause alarm bells for people who've been reading my witterings for a while. A lack of forward momentum is precisely what causes a story to fall apart and feel like padding. It doesn't matter whether that momentum is fast, and it doesn't matter whether it is relevant to the main storyline, as long as things are going somewhere. And to its credit, this episode maintains a sense of urgency to the sidestep, leaving it involving. There are a few issues - Dr Jones and the Doctor's abortive attempt to invade Global Chemicals is something of a non-starter (not least cos it's hard to imagine where they get a cherry picker if they can't find cutting equipment), though it does offer up some good character moments. Once again the air of 'realism' floats in the vague vacinity, and the villains are all remarkably believable. Stevens is coming across as a serious and urbane villain for a start, and their reaction to the Doctor raiding the plant is, if anything, understated. They all seem like real people rather than comic book style supervillians.
This does point to the one major flaw so far. It's all very well giving the whole thing an air of sobriety and shooting it like a proper drama, but that does mean that any time any of the more fantastical elements turn up they look ridiculous. They're so incongruous they jar. The headphones in episode one (if more archaic now than then) are a good case in point, as is the mysterious boss figure and the hypnosis all of which gestures towards the more traditional style of Who we're used to.
Anyway, I digress. As I said the episode is, on the surface, investigating a side alley (but with enough drive for this not to feel like a waste of our time). But then the characters suddenly stumble over the green goo and the maggots, and suddenly we see that it is part of the main plot line. In a neat bit of writing, the minor problem to be solved has led to the investigation, rather than the Doctor simply instigating it himself. Everything ties together well and leaves the episode feeling quite well put together.
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#767 12 Jan 2009, 12:48 pm
Raveen
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
"Much as I may have liked the divine Carnival of Monsters, it's got a noticeably garish quality. "
Thankyou so much, I've been trying to put my finger on exactly what about Carnival I don't like and garish is the word I've been failing to find all this time.
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#768 14 Jan 2009, 10:10 pm
Dorney
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The Green Death 3:
The faintly jarring mix of weird 'sci-fi' style additions with quasi-realistic eco-drama that slightly marred the last episode is being to grow on me. Either that, or it's just judged a little more carefully this time. In many ways, it's becoming the icing on this particular cake. The odd combination of quirky, traditionalist sci-fi gubbins (such as possesion and hypnosis) combined with the mundane. It makes this feel like a Doctor Who version of Edge of Darkness. The Whoniverse impinging and insisting itself on the real world. That and the central premise is intriguing. The last episode ended with a great strange sequence as the Maggots arrive. Tying this to the strange hypnosis stuff and the green dead people in the episode seems impossible. One episode along and yes, it's fairly clear where the Maggots are coming from, and where the Green Death is coming from - but there are clear implications that there's yet more going on...
It's particularly noticeable with Stevens, who's fast becoming my favourite character. For the chief villain he retains a remarkable amount of realistic humanity. You can truly believe this guy could exist. His confrontation with the Brigadier feels like a scene we've seen played out in dozens of cop dramas and is all the better for it. The sequence where he forces a subordinate to commit suicide, yet is protesting to his Boss that there is no need is fantastic. As he sits down and places his head in hands when it is finally done, the story genuinely makes you feel for its bad guy, something I can't recall happening in a long time. It's fairly obvious that this story is a little more complex, a little greyer than usual. And it's not just limited to Stevens. Precisely what's going on is still unclear, as the motivations of characters like Elgin are not what we usually expect from characters in his position within the villainous empire.
Outside of all that, the story is continuing in a strong manner. It's not particularly fast moving, I'll admit, and the plot is slight, but the set pieces are genuinely tense and interesting (the escape from the mine here is nicely done), there's enough of a logical progression in the set pieces (and enough of them).
The episode ends with a dinner party that quickly becomes the main talking point of the episode. In itself, it's a little odd - the Brig and Jo suddenly doing themselves up all formal, all the laughing and joking seems an entirely strange response to what they've gone through in the last day (not least because one of the people they've met is apparently dying in hospital all the time). But it does work out extremely well in terms of how it illustrates character, and specifically Jo. Now, if I'm honest, I don't totally buy the Jo/Cliff romance. It seems to happen a little quickly and for no real reason - up to now, pretty much all the time they've spent together was in his lab, where she wrecked everything. He seems cross, and then suddenly they're pretty much sorted.
However, if you can buy the fact of them falling in love in the first place, the developing romance is well handled. The faint combination of embarassment and enthusiasm is played perfectly, but even better is the Doctor's obvious jealousy and sabotage. A beautifully judged moment of actual character interaction, it really rounds the episode off perfectly.
#769 17 Jan 2009, 2:46 pm
Dorney
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The Green Death 4:
It's traditionally believed that episode four is the point where the momentum of a six parter begins to dry up. Most stories are ending at this point, this is the episode where new things need to be fed in if the story is to continue successfully. And The Green Death does manage to achieve this quite effectively.
Now there's a degree to which it has it slightly easy in this regard. The first three episodes don't entirely have much story going on in them, being largely based around the set up and resolution of one major set piece - Jo getting trapped down the mine. By providing enough obstacles this has managed to feed a good few episodes worth of material, so in a very real sense episode four is where the story proper has to kick in.
And so it does. This episode is all about escalation. What had started out as a fairly low key, if deadly, threat is now being built into a major problem. The sequences of the maggots forcing themselves out of the ground are generally well done (even if the models are, bizarrely, more convincing than the real maggots shot against miniature sets) and genuinely a little disturbing. Slowly something that seemed initially beneath UNIT is moving towards crisis point. This ramps up the excitement and anticipation for the closing episodes.
There's also the arrival of Mike Yates as a spy. It's only when you watch the series in sequence that you get a hint to the true impact of this - he's been pretty much gone for an entire year, so you've all but forgotten he exists. But it certainly is a good way to use a character who's been borderline redundant since the beginning, more so with the TARDIS' ability to travel removed. Again, it gives the story a little extra kick, a little extra mystery. You wonder where this new element is going to lead the story and that hooks you in again at the point where you need something new to keep you going, the element of surprise.
And of course the big kicker is the climactic revelation of the boss' identity as the computer. Now, this one I'm not entirely sure about. The low key sci-fantasy of the first three episodes has worked rather well played against a comparitively naturalistic backdrop. The evil computer is a concept that could push the delicate balancing act over. At the same time, the fact that it is a computer rather than an alien is something of a relief, as it does at least fit in with the quasi-realistic milieu. Obviously, it's hard to judge at this point, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.
Beyond that, there are only a few points to note - I'm not totally convinced by the Doctor's various disguises. The charlady outfit is a kind of broad joke that feels slightly out of place with the generally serious tone of the rest of the story. And the Milkman is flat wrong - Pertwee plays it as a comedy caricature so it looks fake. It's hard to see how the guard buys it. It's hard to mind either of them too much in context though.
Still good.
#770 18 Jan 2009, 9:32 am
Doc Phibes
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
"Beyond that, there are only a few points to note - I'm not totally convinced by the Doctor's various disguises. The charlady outfit is a kind of broad joke that feels slightly out of place with the generally serious tone of the rest of the story. And the Milkman is flat wrong - Pertwee plays it as a comedy caricature so it looks fake. It's hard to see how the guard buys it. It's hard to mind either of them too much in context though. "
Pertwee was, what, 1.91m tall? A 6'3" cleaning lady? Personally, I found the babbling old Milkman faaar more believable. Loved 'em both though. I wish they had let Pertwee do more disguise bits, at least one or two a season. But, I was brought up on Mel Brooks and High Anxiety, where I learned the best way to get past security is not to be anonymous, but an extremely annoying caricature.
I'm enjoying the reviews. Keep 'em coming. Oh, and The B.O.S.S. is the best! Love him.
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#771 18 Jan 2009, 11:09 am
Dorney
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Doc Phibes
"Pertwee was, what, 1.91m tall? A 6'3" cleaning lady? Personally, I found the babbling old Milkman faaar more believable. Loved 'em both though. I wish they had let Pertwee do more disguise bits, at least one or two a season. But, I was brought up on Mel Brooks and High Anxiety, where I learned the best way to get past security is not to be anonymous, but an extremely annoying caricature. "
It's hard not to like the comedy milkman to a degree, I'll confess. I think, like McCoy, Pertwee is a far more interesting comic actor than a straight man. But if I think my problem was best summed up by a review I saw recently that said it's clearly not the Doctor playing the milkman, it's Pertwee. Whilst Pertwee is undeniably brilliant at those bits, it feels somewhat alien to the fairly straight laced 3rd Doctor.
#772 18 Jan 2009, 12:20 pm
Dorney
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The Green Death 5:
If there is a flaw with this episode, it's the fact that after part 4 has gone to such lengths to escalate the situation, part 5 doesn't entirely go with the momentum. The level of concern and activity still seems about the same as in the previous four episodes. The ideal reaction would be a sense of the situation getting critically out of control. But it stalls slightly. The helicopter blowing a couple of things up seems a minor league stopgap solution at best, and the lightning fast possession and recovery of Yates is something you'd expect to find a bit earlier, rather than when the story should be building.
These are minor quibbles though, as the story is still pretty darn good. BOSS is, so far, a fantastic creation. Super-powered megalomaniac computers are ten a penny in sci-fi, but BOSS manages to transcend the mediocrity of his genre by entertaining a very dry wit. None of the bland booming monosyllables of WOTAN here, this evil computer has a personality.
And it's also a neat little trick that his main aim is small - success for Global Chemicals. This again means that the story comfortably straddles the realistic and the fantastical. Now I've read stuff that makes me think this is all going to go to pot in the final episode, but for the moment it works ok.
Elsewhere, the story is having to stall, somewhat. The Doctor nearly escapes BOSS, then gets captured to no end, and escapes again. The bad guys discover Mike's a spy, brainwash him for about a minute (and the sequence when he reappears at the Nuthutch is really strangely done, it has to be said) and then discover he's a spy again (though, admittedly, in one of the great sub-genre of cool cliffhangers - like Ambassadors 2, one that sounds rubbish when written down, but kind of works on the telly). Further subclause on that is that the loss of Elgin (due to actor illness) sort of works and also doesn't. His vanishing from the plot is nicely enigmatic, as if he's been dealt with and shoved out of the way, and you can't help but feel it works better than if he had taken the scenes of Roy Skelton's replacement character of Jones, which would be almost desultory. The Elgin figure barely appears in this episode (which would have been his last) and that would have left it feeling like the character drifts off. As it stands, he's removed from the story when he's still making an impact, which is a stronger exit. Now, Jones doesn't really impact in this episode as a result, and is slightly misjudged (it makes little sense for him to be a member of the management we haven't seen - surely generic guard would have felt more plausible?). But overall, I think it works remarkably well.
Anyway, back to the stalling. It's at its clearest with Cliff. Having discovered the cure, he now has to be kept unconscious because revealing it would start the end of the story too soon. Still, it's all done enjoyable enough, and with enough verve and character you don't mind.
#773 19 Jan 2009, 8:22 pm
Dorney
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The Green Death 6:
There's something difficult with reviewing this episode. It really shouldn't work. But somehow it does.
An awful lot of things are wrong with the resolution. Firstly, the incredibly convenient revelation that Cliff Jones' fungus is fatal to the maggots is... well, absurdly convenient. Not just in the fact, but also in the discovery (when one maggot just pops along to eat some at exactly the right point). Furthermore, the bizarre way that even despite this, it takes a few more deductive leaps before figuring out that this might also heal people victimised by the titular disease itself (and incidentally - what happened to the thuggish chauffeur chap? We assume he's dead, but are never really told, which is a bit wimpy, surely. Still, at least it makes Elgin's disappearance less of a problem when he's not the only one). And the magical healing properties of the blue ctystal go well beyond convenience into full on deus ex machina.
In fact, there are other moments of remarkable convenience. At this point, you do begin to wonder what qualifications are required to get a job as a guard at Global Chemicals, given how ridiculously easy Mike's escape from their clutches is. At least the Doctor's break in makes a bit more sense, though again you have to wonder how much thought BOSS put into his plans, because he's got no real reason to hypnotise his subjects again. All he does is hand himself defeat on a plate.
There's also the fact that the giant maggot plot and the mental computer plot never really intersect. This means that the plot of this episode largely consists of the Doctor switching off one plotline, before rushing away to switch off the other. The cliche of a six parter as a four parter combined with a related two parter is clearly realised here.
And yet it all sort of works. When I say 'all', I'm fairly obviously discarding the giant fly (which is more about the design of the model than anything else) and the dodgy moments of CSO, not least because if you can't suspend your disbelief for them, you've no business watching Who anyway. The combination of a relatively straightforward, heightened reality thriller tone to the story with a commited cast means that the messier bits work a bit better than they should. Because, of course, real life is messy. The two plot lines don't tie up particularly neatly... but they do tie up.
The resolutions being low key work as well. You can't really have a big ending to these essentially small (well, smaller) stories. The maggots being defeated by nature is entirely appropriate, as is resolving the BOSS storyline by appealing to Stevens - for once, a villain's sudden change of attitude at the last second is entirely apt, because Stevens has been pitched throughout as a genuine human being, so his attack of conscience isn't an absurd stretch - emphasised by the little tear on his cheek as the room is about to explode. Indeed, the sequence of BOSS' destruction is one of the most beautifully put together scenes I've seen in this show. The psychedelic colouring combined with the FX and strong performances from the two central performers give this a bigger impact than the subsequent explosion.
Though of course, that isn't really the end. Finally we reach a sequence that seems now to be one of the most influential in the history of the show - Jo's departure. I say influential because it's clearly a major contributor to the closing sequences of the last three series of the current show - the departures of Rose, Martha and Donna, and the lonely Doctor. But, if I'm honest, it does slightly show those others up. Not that they're bad, don't get me wrong. But the way all the emotion of the final scenes is underplayed means it has far more impact and subtlety than it's new series brethren. The sequence is generally expertly played (though one can't help but feel sorry for Richard Franklin, who's trying desperately to squeeze in everything the script isn't giving him an actual chance to say), particularly by Pertwee, and has a hauntingly memorable quality. A pretty damn fine conclusion to a pretty damn fine story.
#774 20 Jan 2009, 12:19 am
Phil W
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Hurray! I've always been a fan of The Green Death, at least in part because it was one of the very first DW stories I ever saw as a child (I think I had seen Planet of Evil, Revenge of the Cybermen, Pyramids of Mars and The Seeds of Doom, all of which hooked me on the show, so the Pertwee must have been a repeat at some point in the mid 1970s here in NZ). But I've always been happy that it is a good story too (for example I think it is comfortably better than the Sea Devils, which itself isn't bad).
As always it is fascinating to read you reviews, Dorney. You drop hints that you aren't so familiar with this one, though, or have I inferred something incorrectly?
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#775 20 Jan 2009, 10:16 am
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
The Green Death 6:
"There's something difficult with reviewing this episode. It really shouldn't work. But somehow it does.
An awful lot of things are wrong with the resolution. Firstly, the incredibly convenient revelation that Cliff Jones' fungus is fatal to the maggots is... well, absurdly convenient. "
Real life is like that, though. Witness penicillin. Serendipity existed before Doctor Who.
I find it more absurd that some/most of the Doctor's victories have to be so laborious and without good luck. He really does live in a flippin' depressing universe.
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#776 20 Jan 2009, 12:36 pm
Dorney
Time Lord
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil W
"As always it is fascinating to read you reviews, Dorney. You drop hints that you aren't so familiar with this one, though, or have I inferred something incorrectly? "
No, that's right. Given things like personal taste and availability, there are some stories I've simply not watched as often as others. In a few cases, of which I think the Green Death is one and Daemons was certainly another, I deliberately didn't rewatch them after a point as I knew I was doing this.
Certainly, there are a few coming up that I am very wobbly on - Revenge of the Cybermen, for example, and Planet of Evil are both pretty much blank slates to me, and I very much look forward to rediscovering them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AlMiles
"Real life is like that, though. Witness penicillin. Serendipity existed before Doctor Who. "
Whilst that's undeniably true, you reach the problem that drama isn't reality. There are rarely well constructed stories, or proper endings. Real life has to be shaped into a dramatic form. And an ending that relies on luck is less satisfying than one that doesn't.
(Actually, to clarify that a touch - luck itself isn't a problem. For example, the cure for the Ice Warrior spores in Seeds of Death is found in a similarly chance way... but because the cure's something incredibly easy to come across, it feels less of a problem. Here it's the way it's almost double or treble the convenience. Jo just happens to knock fungus onto the slides. A rare fungus that is pretty much impossible to find anywhere in the UK apart from this one house. And so on... That's not just lucky, that's incredibly lucky.)
#777 20 Jan 2009, 1:06 pm
AlMiles
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Well, yeah - that's pretty much the definiton of "serendipity"!
I don't find it too pat when it happens a few times in 800-odd episodes. Some shows are like that every single week...
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#778 20 Jan 2009, 1:47 pm
Tiger
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Thanks for your reviews Dorney, always informative and they give an interesting slant on stories I either liked or disliked making me rethink my views on some of them.
You've confirmed my views on Frontier in Space though. Rather over rated given that its one hop from a cell to another with very little actual story.
It will be interesting when you get to the end of the Pertwee era to get to your views on it as a whole. Its suffered from the 'Pertwee backlash' conception since the early 90s. Whether its still suffering from that (and if it is, is it deservedly so) is an interesting subject, but having wathced the show in order, it will be interesting to get your view whether the Pertwee era now deserves a re-appraisal and whether it is superior or inferior to the show in the 60s. Its all a matter of taste though of course......
Showing posts with label season ten. Show all posts
Showing posts with label season ten. Show all posts
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
Planet of the Daleks
2 Dec 2008, 12:34 pm
Dorney
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Planet of the Daleks 1:
One of the problems I had with the second Incredible Hulk film released this year was that because of the mixed reception the previous film had had there had clearly been a lot of thinking at Marvel.
The first film had included an origin story, back story and so on. But at the same time, they didn't want to remind people of it. The question was how much to acknowledge that.
It's a tricky question, and clearly one that they took time to think about. For my money, too much time. Because there's a fatal indecision at the heart of the Incredible Hulk movie. They clearly didn't decide whether it was a sequel of a reboot until well into the process. And as a result, the movie doesn't quite succeed as either. With a truncated origin story, it doesn't really work as a launch and it's opening scenes are clearly influenced by the end of the previous film. But at the same time, there are elements that completely contradict it.
You can see where I'm going with this, can't you? Planet of the Daleks 1 has the same problem. Is it part one of a new story - or part seven of another?
At least part of it only makes sense as the continuation of Frontier in Space. Within this story alone we've no idea (and it's never explained) why the Doctor is in quite a state at the beginning, for example. And as the opening episode to an action adventure serial, ten minutes of Katy Manning talking to herself whilst she walks through a not particularly menacing forest is hardly a grabber.
And yet - it also seems to think it's a story of its own. Now, I don't entirely mind the cliffhanger revelations of Daleks in stories where they're named in the title, for reasons I discussed under Day of the Daleks - but here it's just daft. They had a big dramatic reveal a week ago. They don't need one now. In deed, to pitch that as the big shock of the finale is odd, because surely the big twist at this point isn't that it's a Dalek, it's that it's an invisible Dalek? And it's certainly the former that it's pitched as, with the Doctor's exclamation of surprise being the big clue - and that's just barking. The Daleks are clearly still out there at the end of the previous episode, the Doctor's going after them, he meets Thals, he even talks about Daleks, for crying out loud. Why's he surprised?
He's surprised because the odd structure means that despite the Doctor clearly being after the Daleks at the end of the last story, the story's still hamstrung by the duality. Because Nation, at least in part, views this as part one, he's got to hold off the plot for an episode to get to the reveal. The episode becomes about breaking the continuity, rather than running with it.
And that's a bit sad, because this story could have launched with a bang rather than the Doctor going in and out of a coma as the story dictated. It could have carried on the momentum, but Nation's inability to work with an unusual structure means that the episode is just a bit disappointing.
OK, it's still watchable enough. There's always something going on, the writings all right, and there are some potentially entertaining (if unoriginal) ideas at work. Ultimately, however, it's just not as interesting as it could have been, and remains a placeholder episode.
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#750 5 Dec 2008, 3:08 pm
Xipuloxx
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
"Nation's inability to work with an unusual structure means that the episode is just a bit disappointing. "
It seems to me that it's a little unfair to place the blame at Nation's feet without evidence of where the blame lies. I mean, unless you know how much he was told about the ongoing plot, it's impossible to judge how good a job he did. If he didn't know what was going to happen in the previous story, it's entirely understandable that he'd just write a more-or-less normal Dalek story, and leave it up to the script editor to make it fit into the series' continuity. Even if Nation did know and fumbled the ball, it's still the script editor's job to pick it up (though in that case at least the blame would be shared).
It's like the bit at the beginning of Girl In The Fireplace where Mickey and Rose are getting on fabulously, despite the fact that at the end of the previous ep she obviously didn't want him along, and there's clearly only been a very short time in between. Some people criticised Steven Moffat for not making his episode match better with the previous one, which I thought was uncalled-for, given that he had obviously written his episode without knowing how the previous one was going to end. Other people have the specific jobs of editing scripts and overseeing continuity; the writer is only reponsible for his own job.
Apart from that little niggle, good review as always!
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#751 6 Dec 2008, 6:38 pm
Dorney
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Xipuloxx
"It seems to me that it's a little unfair to place the blame at Nation's feet without evidence of where the blame lies. I mean, unless you know how much he was told about the ongoing plot, it's impossible to judge how good a job he did. If he didn't know what was going to happen in the previous story, it's entirely understandable that he'd just write a more-or-less normal Dalek story, and leave it up to the script editor to make it fit into the series' continuity. Even if Nation did know and fumbled the ball, it's still the script editor's job to pick it up (though in that case at least the blame would be shared)."
To be honest, if an episode doesn't work, the script editor should always share some of the blame (he should point things out).
But, to me, it's fairly clear that the problem with the episode is that it doesn't know whether it's an episode one or an episode seven - and that means, to me, that it has to be by and large Nation's fault. Because whatever he was told, whatever he knew about the season's structure, he doesn't manage to pull off either option.
#752 7 Dec 2008, 3:26 am
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
"To be honest, if an episode doesn't work, the script editor should always share some of the blame (he should point things out).
But, to me, it's fairly clear that the problem with the episode is that it doesn't know whether it's an episode one or an episode seven - and that means, to me, that it has to be by and large Nation's fault. Because whatever he was told, whatever he knew about the season's structure, he doesn't manage to pull off either option. "
In the novelisation of "Frontier" (titled "Doctor Who and the Space War"), original author Malcolm Hulke doesn't even have the Doctor being shot - he's perfectly healthy and awake as the book ends. Then as the subsequent novelisation starts, he's suffering the after-effects of a gunshot and comatose! One could argue that maybe Hulke was working from the original scripted ending and not Paul Bernard's hasty revised effort due to the Ogron-eater re-edit. But this was years later and the programme as broadcast was well-known. If Hulke can't make it tie into the subsequent (already screened) episode, he's no better than Nation!
Also, if the script for "Frontier" was mucked around with to cope with what was shot, and what was removed by Letts & Co in editing, we can't know what Nation had intended to include or exclude without seeing his script. The whole transition looks a bit of a fiasco from producer and director(s) on down.
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#753 8 Dec 2008, 3:08 pm
Llama Roddy
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ISTR reading an interview with Malcolm Hulke in which he explained that he'd deliberately left the cliffhanger ending out of the novelisation tp provide closure for readers who didn't know or have the subsequent book. His books never did stick to a straightforward duplication of what appeared on screen, which is part of the reason they're so much better than a lot of the later novelisations. If you don't like this particular instance of his going a different way from the televised version, so be it, but it was never a matter of inability to tie things in with the start of PotD.
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#754 8 Dec 2008, 5:28 pm
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Llama Roddy
"ISTR reading an interview with Malcolm Hulke in which he explained that he'd deliberately left the cliffhanger ending out of the novelisation tp provide closure for readers who didn't know or have the subsequent book. His books never did stick to a straightforward duplication of what appeared on screen, which is part of the reason they're so much better than a lot of the later novelisations. If you don't like this particular instance of his going a different way from the televised version, so be it, but it was never a matter of inability to tie things in with the start of PotD. "
That clean-break philosophy could explain why Nation started his story in such a way though - the Daleks were a "shock revelation" because, with a production team that wanted as many "first nights" or jumping-abord episodes as possible in a season (budget allowing), it'd be barmy to have a 12-part story with one "first night" and 11 continuations... and "Planet" is clearly a completely new cast and plot, rarely if ever referring back to the events of "Frontier", so Nation may not have been the sole chooser of this approach, he could even have been directed to use it (and Dicks clearly didn't amend the script on this point).
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#755 12 Dec 2008, 12:44 am
Xipuloxx
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AlMiles
"That clean-break philosophy could explain why Nation started his story in such a way though - the Daleks were a "shock revelation" because, with a production team that wanted as many "first nights" or jumping-abord episodes as possible in a season (budget allowing), it'd be barmy to have a 12-part story with one "first night" and 11 continuations... and "Planet" is clearly a completely new cast and plot, rarely if ever referring back to the events of "Frontier", so Nation may not have been the sole chooser of this approach, he could even have been directed to use it (and Dicks clearly didn't amend the script on this point). "
But my point was that, although it's been a while since I've watched it, it seemed to me that Part 1 of "Planet" was, in fact, a fairly normal Dalek story Part 1, with only the whole "The Doctor is ill" thing tacked on to tie it into the previous story. Therefore I'd say seems like Nation simply wrote it as a normal Part 1, and left it up to Dicks to tie it into the ongoing plot.
Now, I agree it doesn't really work as it is, but without knowing how much he knew about the previous story, it's impossible to say whether that is Nation's fault for writing it poorly -- i.e. leaving Dicks with an impossible task because Nation's script simply didn't fit and the reworking it required was too much in the time available -- or whether he was simply doing the best job he could under the circumstances -- i.e. writing a story that worked on its own, and leaving continuity issues to others.
I could be misremembering, of course, and maybe it really is more of an uncomfortable halfway house than I recall. But I'd still say we don't know how much of the finished script was written by Dicks, and we can't simply blame Nation without that knowledge. Maybe it is a structural mess, and "doesn't know whether it's an episode one or an episode seven" -- but that could be because Nation wrote it one way, then Dicks rewrote it the other way.
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#756 17 Dec 2008, 11:07 pm
Dorney
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Planet of the Daleks 2:
There's something inherently charming about an episode that all but admits it's filler. A sort of honesty that you can't help but admire.
The buzz with the Thals this episode is that they don't have a plan. They're hanging round a bit, slowly getting picked off, waiting. And as anyone's who read this thread will know, this translates into: no plot. No one doing anything means no story.
OK, that's a bit of an over-simplification here, because the Daleks are at least up to something - the whole invisibility thing. But because the characters we're following are doing their level best to avoid the Daleks (and couldn't do anything if they met them) then that doesn't really get us anywhere. Throughout the episode we're just waiting to the revelation of the final seconds - something to push a bit of urgency into the story, give the characters something to aim at.
So without a plot to keep it going, what are the twenty five minutes filled with? Well, firstly, we've got a few leanings towards arguments about the morality of war, and the obligations of a soldier, and a meditation on cowardice - all of which is interesting enough, if broadly written (as you'd expect from a family show). Already it's fairly clear that there's going to be a bit of worthy moralising in this story, though as ever with Nation it's a bit hard to tell what the message is - Horsfall for example is presented as noble and wise - but it's hard not to see some worth in Hancock's suggestion that they really ought to be doing something. And this is all a bit weird from the man who created Blake's 7. The side effect of this is that the Thals aren't really presented as individual characters but as archetypal thematic avatars - wisdom, recklessness and fear. Though given that the Daleks are essentially the same, this isn't really a major problem.
Blunt as it may be, straightforward as it may be, there's something likeable in Nation's comic strip style. Again it's easy to forget that the man's other tv shows tend to have a more adult bent (albeit played with a fairly boy's own feel) and that this feel is fairly deliberately tailored. This is intentional pulp and as it is it works - in deed, I'd go so far as to say that given the obvious limitations in realising the world, it's almost the best thing to do - the broader stroke suit the environment. It's fun.
And the next episode might even have a story.
#757 19 Dec 2008, 7:03 pm
Michael S Collins
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Keep going, Dorney. you'll be home and dry before you know it.
Hope your career's still going strong.
Michael
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#758 21 Dec 2008, 7:39 pm
Dorney
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Planet of the Daleks 3:
Now that's more like it.
You know, people often talk about PotD as being a blatant remake of the first Dalek story. It's not hard to see a certain degree of logic to this, but I think it's slightly fairer to say that it's similar conceptually rather than a remake. So it contains a lot of the same basic elements (Daleks and Thals, aliens jungle surrounding alien city) just juggles them with a new plot.
Most of the time.
Episode three is the exception. It's probably exarcebated by the black and white (and boy, that's a bit of a shock when you're so used to colour - completely forgot it was coming up!) but episode three does rather feel like it's The Daleks in twenty five minutes. So many specific elements turn up again - the heroes using tunnels leading into the base that are based around piping, other heroes trapped in a cell luring in a Dalek and disabling it, peril in lifts, two seperate teams meeting up, heroic sacrifice.
And by ramming it all together we get a cracking episode. After two installments waiting for things to happen and with precious little actual threat, we have a great boy's own yarn of escape. It's comparitively straight forward (and often reliant on ludicrous coincidence - of all the vents Varon choses he picks the one the Doctor's just about to walk past!), but it's fast, and with some genuine Dalek menace giving it high stakes. One of the things that makes it work is the real sense that they're in trouble - the Doctor consistently getting forced deeper into the city, Daleks at every corner, the effort made to imply dangerous levels of cold in the tunnels and the emphasis on how it's a dangerous plan - it all racks up the tension. OK, it's not without it's flaws. General Von Klinkerhoffen's self sacrifice seems utterly pointless from both his perspective and in terms of story, he's barely said a word anyway so it doesn't matter a stuff to us. The ice volcano stuff comes out of nowhere as does the biological stuff the Daleks are supposedly working on. Oh and Jo really doesn't feel the urge to do anything useful (though to be fair the Doctor seems to have forgotten the fact she's supposed to be dead). But at the same time, crappier elements of previous episodes are skipped (little spiridon action means we don't have to put up with anything else like Tim Preece's interpretative dance sequence). And the ending, whilst almost certainly scientific balls, is mental enough to work as precisely the sort of audacious get out the build up needs (when things are getting difficult, you need the escape route to be insane otherwise it diminshes the threat - if the situation is desperate, the resolution must be desperate too).
So, all in all, rather good fun.
#759 27 Dec 2008, 8:32 pm
Dorney
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Planet of the Daleks 4:
If you want to know what the problem with this story is, episode four provides the result. It's like the entire six parts in microcosm.
After the surge in quality of the previous episode, the script keeps this up. There's a fairly limp resolution to the cliffhanger, though admittedly one that was fairly obviously coming up last time anyway (episode 3: it's not working, episode 4: oh, it is, sorry, my mistake...), but it still manages to keep the tension going for the first ten minutes or so.
And then it just stops. The rest of the episode returns to tedious runaround and strange moralising speeches that don't make an awful lot of sense. And it's relatively clear why.
The reason the first half works (and the third episode too) is focus. There's a clear sense of purpose and drive. The story's going somewhere. It knows where it's going and it's going there. But the moment our heroes escape from the Dalek city, that stops. We're back to the first couple of episodes with a lot of Thals mooching around not quite sure what they're going to do.
I remember someone somewhere suggesting the game of 'Tell me the plot of The Armageddon Factor' as a fun way to bemuse a fan, and I suspect that it's true of this story as well, albeit for different reasons. There simply isn't one. What's it about? The Daleks are after invisibility (a promising idea that's basically been forgotten), they're developing a bacteria, they've got a frozen army. The story can't decide what it's central thrust is, and that's probably why the Thal storyline is equally vague - after all, how can your heroes fight the villains when the villains don't have a clue what they're up to.
It's a shame because we're stuck in a position where most of the Thals are cyphers with one word personalities (that fade in and out according to the requirements of the plot - no cowardice from Preece for a couple of episodes, you'll note), which almost doesn't matter if you've got enough story driving it through (let's face it, it's a Nation staple). But without, the story becomes a character piece without any characters.
It's not all bad, though. We finally get at least an attempt to tie the story to Frontier (though it's hilariously tenuous and with the Doctor practically admitting that it makes little sense). But generally it doesn't work. When a major plot point is trying to find a warm place to sleep you know you're in trouble.
#760 31 Dec 2008, 1:01 am
Dorney
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Planet of the Daleks 5:
OK, so I lied.
Turns out that it isn't just episode three that's a little too influenced by its authors earlier material. This episode does it as well. But we'll get to that.
It's odd that this episode, and this story, spends an awfully small amount of time letting its stars do anything. It takes over six minutes for the Daleks to even appear in this episode, for example. But this is nowhere more pronounced than in the bacteriological warfare subplot. The token friendly Spiridon, Wester (forgotten for a couple of episodes until his return is convenient) turns up at the camp and warns our heroes about the planned virus. And it doesn't really seem to fuss them in the slightest.
Let me reiterate that point. A virus that will wipe out every single thing on the planet is less important to them than destroying a currently inactive army of Daleks. Er, why? Surely that should be your priority. The frozen army can wait, help the friendly invisible chappie.
It's made even worse by the resolution of this subplot - the Doctor and Taron watch as Wester sacrifices his life to save everyone... and once again, the Doctor doesn't seem to give a toss. He just suggests they move on.
It's all deeply frustrating, as this plotline that keeps insinuating it's a major plot point actually turns out not to affect any of the main cast at all. It distracts the Daleks for a bit, keeps them looking busy, and is eventually resolved by a minor supporting character who we haven't (if you'll forgive the pun) seen in a couple of episodes. It really should connect with the Doctor in some way, shouldn't it? Otherwise it's just a sideshow.
To be fair, the plot of this episode is, largely, about the Doctor trying to get into the Dalek city to actually achieve something. He speaks for the audience when he tells Taron that he's tired of just running away (but surely, to be able to sit down and write these lines and not realise there's a problem with your storyline... well, that beggars belief). This leads to a glorious line when Jo offers to be a lure for the Daleks because she's 'tired of being hunted'. So you decide that the best thing to do when you're tired of being hunted is: get someone to hunt you. Yeah, that makes sense.
And here we get the repeat of the first Dalek story again, as the Doctor and friends imobilise a Dalek or two through a handy weakness (cold killing them on impact -which makes the notion of the frozen army a little odd, though I guess not impossible), before chucking out the disgusting creature inside (and once again, we cut away) before being led in, in a handy Dalek & his posse formation. It works well enough (and the location filming makes the whole thing seem much less unrealistic).
It's all OK, but it's just a shame it's taken this long to get going. The original serial was at this point three episodes in, remember. That's the problem - no forward momentum. No-one doing anything for a grander purpose than filling out a bit of time until they can do something else.
7 Jan 2009, 10:36 am
Dorney
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Planet of the Daleks 6:
I’ve often felt that the final episode of a story should be one of the easiest to write. Set up enough in the earlier episodes, and the finale should be a comparative doddle as you just have to let it all roll. But there’s a problem with that. Don’t set up enough and you’ve got far too much time to fill.
That’s Planet’s problem. It’s all very well writing a story about inaction and an inability to complete – after all, that’s essentially the story of Shakespeare’s most iconic play – as long as you use that time profitably. And it’s even more clear here that the time has been wasted. It’s all been a desperate attempt to fill in as much time as possible.
You see, now the Thals have finally decided that it’s time to act… well, it’s all just terribly easy. It’s the equivalent of Hamlet just going up to Claudius and stabbing him. They go down to the lower level and blow up what they need to blow up. The Daleks half try to follow them, but get barricaded out. And, as if to rub our noses in it, Jo and her bland friend (who’s done absolutely nothing in the story apart from give her someone to talk to – which would be almost acceptable if Jo had herself done any more than mooch around the jungle filling in time and giving the show something to cut away to. No wonder I can’t remember his name) abseil in down the incomprehensibly unguarded chimney that our heroes previously escaped from. Why didn’t they all do that? Why the over-complicated and nearly fatal ‘Spiridons and guard’ routines?
The earlier episodes haven’t bothered to set anything up, so the resolution has to be correspondingly simple. There just isn’t enough to fill this episode with. There’s some effort to disguise all this with some half hearted attempts to inject a bit of threat or danger – ‘oh my god, we’ve dropped the bomb amongst the Daleks!’ ‘Oh my god, the Dalek Rebec was in has been destroyed!’ ‘The explosion hasn’t released the ice volcano like we planned!’ ‘There are poisonous plants squirting between us and the TARDIS’. But you can tell it’s half-hearted due to the way the threat is resolved instantly, in the dullest manor imaginable – ‘Oh well, the Doctor can just climb down and pick it up.’ ‘Oh, she got out.’ ‘Oh, actually it did.’’Oh, just cover your face and leg it.’ None of it’s tied to the plot, none of it changes the direction. Hell, even the arrival of the Supreme Dalek is just something to distract us with, as he doesn’t do anything at all either. Apart from blind himself every time he speaks.
And then it’s all over. Jo’s mate asks her to go back to Skaro, after they’ve displayed less chemistry than a broken Bunsen burner (I mean, is it even supposed to be a romance?). Jo declines, which turns out to be the right decision because, typically of the story, Latep (all right, I looked it up) seems not to be bothered in the slightest by this, heading straight off to the spaceship with nary a tear or backward glance.
All in all, it’s a wasted opportunity. Frontier promises, and Planet just doesn’t deliver. And not only that, it actively, consciously doesn’t deliver, it’s about not delivering. Which is hardly a good thing.
#762 7 Jan 2009, 1:01 pm
fortmap
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And yet Planet of the Daleks was the story that made a fan. Well - the novelisation, to be precise.
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Dorney
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Planet of the Daleks 1:
One of the problems I had with the second Incredible Hulk film released this year was that because of the mixed reception the previous film had had there had clearly been a lot of thinking at Marvel.
The first film had included an origin story, back story and so on. But at the same time, they didn't want to remind people of it. The question was how much to acknowledge that.
It's a tricky question, and clearly one that they took time to think about. For my money, too much time. Because there's a fatal indecision at the heart of the Incredible Hulk movie. They clearly didn't decide whether it was a sequel of a reboot until well into the process. And as a result, the movie doesn't quite succeed as either. With a truncated origin story, it doesn't really work as a launch and it's opening scenes are clearly influenced by the end of the previous film. But at the same time, there are elements that completely contradict it.
You can see where I'm going with this, can't you? Planet of the Daleks 1 has the same problem. Is it part one of a new story - or part seven of another?
At least part of it only makes sense as the continuation of Frontier in Space. Within this story alone we've no idea (and it's never explained) why the Doctor is in quite a state at the beginning, for example. And as the opening episode to an action adventure serial, ten minutes of Katy Manning talking to herself whilst she walks through a not particularly menacing forest is hardly a grabber.
And yet - it also seems to think it's a story of its own. Now, I don't entirely mind the cliffhanger revelations of Daleks in stories where they're named in the title, for reasons I discussed under Day of the Daleks - but here it's just daft. They had a big dramatic reveal a week ago. They don't need one now. In deed, to pitch that as the big shock of the finale is odd, because surely the big twist at this point isn't that it's a Dalek, it's that it's an invisible Dalek? And it's certainly the former that it's pitched as, with the Doctor's exclamation of surprise being the big clue - and that's just barking. The Daleks are clearly still out there at the end of the previous episode, the Doctor's going after them, he meets Thals, he even talks about Daleks, for crying out loud. Why's he surprised?
He's surprised because the odd structure means that despite the Doctor clearly being after the Daleks at the end of the last story, the story's still hamstrung by the duality. Because Nation, at least in part, views this as part one, he's got to hold off the plot for an episode to get to the reveal. The episode becomes about breaking the continuity, rather than running with it.
And that's a bit sad, because this story could have launched with a bang rather than the Doctor going in and out of a coma as the story dictated. It could have carried on the momentum, but Nation's inability to work with an unusual structure means that the episode is just a bit disappointing.
OK, it's still watchable enough. There's always something going on, the writings all right, and there are some potentially entertaining (if unoriginal) ideas at work. Ultimately, however, it's just not as interesting as it could have been, and remains a placeholder episode.
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#750 5 Dec 2008, 3:08 pm
Xipuloxx
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
"Nation's inability to work with an unusual structure means that the episode is just a bit disappointing. "
It seems to me that it's a little unfair to place the blame at Nation's feet without evidence of where the blame lies. I mean, unless you know how much he was told about the ongoing plot, it's impossible to judge how good a job he did. If he didn't know what was going to happen in the previous story, it's entirely understandable that he'd just write a more-or-less normal Dalek story, and leave it up to the script editor to make it fit into the series' continuity. Even if Nation did know and fumbled the ball, it's still the script editor's job to pick it up (though in that case at least the blame would be shared).
It's like the bit at the beginning of Girl In The Fireplace where Mickey and Rose are getting on fabulously, despite the fact that at the end of the previous ep she obviously didn't want him along, and there's clearly only been a very short time in between. Some people criticised Steven Moffat for not making his episode match better with the previous one, which I thought was uncalled-for, given that he had obviously written his episode without knowing how the previous one was going to end. Other people have the specific jobs of editing scripts and overseeing continuity; the writer is only reponsible for his own job.
Apart from that little niggle, good review as always!
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#751 6 Dec 2008, 6:38 pm
Dorney
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Xipuloxx
"It seems to me that it's a little unfair to place the blame at Nation's feet without evidence of where the blame lies. I mean, unless you know how much he was told about the ongoing plot, it's impossible to judge how good a job he did. If he didn't know what was going to happen in the previous story, it's entirely understandable that he'd just write a more-or-less normal Dalek story, and leave it up to the script editor to make it fit into the series' continuity. Even if Nation did know and fumbled the ball, it's still the script editor's job to pick it up (though in that case at least the blame would be shared)."
To be honest, if an episode doesn't work, the script editor should always share some of the blame (he should point things out).
But, to me, it's fairly clear that the problem with the episode is that it doesn't know whether it's an episode one or an episode seven - and that means, to me, that it has to be by and large Nation's fault. Because whatever he was told, whatever he knew about the season's structure, he doesn't manage to pull off either option.
#752 7 Dec 2008, 3:26 am
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
"To be honest, if an episode doesn't work, the script editor should always share some of the blame (he should point things out).
But, to me, it's fairly clear that the problem with the episode is that it doesn't know whether it's an episode one or an episode seven - and that means, to me, that it has to be by and large Nation's fault. Because whatever he was told, whatever he knew about the season's structure, he doesn't manage to pull off either option. "
In the novelisation of "Frontier" (titled "Doctor Who and the Space War"), original author Malcolm Hulke doesn't even have the Doctor being shot - he's perfectly healthy and awake as the book ends. Then as the subsequent novelisation starts, he's suffering the after-effects of a gunshot and comatose! One could argue that maybe Hulke was working from the original scripted ending and not Paul Bernard's hasty revised effort due to the Ogron-eater re-edit. But this was years later and the programme as broadcast was well-known. If Hulke can't make it tie into the subsequent (already screened) episode, he's no better than Nation!
Also, if the script for "Frontier" was mucked around with to cope with what was shot, and what was removed by Letts & Co in editing, we can't know what Nation had intended to include or exclude without seeing his script. The whole transition looks a bit of a fiasco from producer and director(s) on down.
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#753 8 Dec 2008, 3:08 pm
Llama Roddy
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ISTR reading an interview with Malcolm Hulke in which he explained that he'd deliberately left the cliffhanger ending out of the novelisation tp provide closure for readers who didn't know or have the subsequent book. His books never did stick to a straightforward duplication of what appeared on screen, which is part of the reason they're so much better than a lot of the later novelisations. If you don't like this particular instance of his going a different way from the televised version, so be it, but it was never a matter of inability to tie things in with the start of PotD.
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#754 8 Dec 2008, 5:28 pm
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Llama Roddy
"ISTR reading an interview with Malcolm Hulke in which he explained that he'd deliberately left the cliffhanger ending out of the novelisation tp provide closure for readers who didn't know or have the subsequent book. His books never did stick to a straightforward duplication of what appeared on screen, which is part of the reason they're so much better than a lot of the later novelisations. If you don't like this particular instance of his going a different way from the televised version, so be it, but it was never a matter of inability to tie things in with the start of PotD. "
That clean-break philosophy could explain why Nation started his story in such a way though - the Daleks were a "shock revelation" because, with a production team that wanted as many "first nights" or jumping-abord episodes as possible in a season (budget allowing), it'd be barmy to have a 12-part story with one "first night" and 11 continuations... and "Planet" is clearly a completely new cast and plot, rarely if ever referring back to the events of "Frontier", so Nation may not have been the sole chooser of this approach, he could even have been directed to use it (and Dicks clearly didn't amend the script on this point).
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#755 12 Dec 2008, 12:44 am
Xipuloxx
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AlMiles
"That clean-break philosophy could explain why Nation started his story in such a way though - the Daleks were a "shock revelation" because, with a production team that wanted as many "first nights" or jumping-abord episodes as possible in a season (budget allowing), it'd be barmy to have a 12-part story with one "first night" and 11 continuations... and "Planet" is clearly a completely new cast and plot, rarely if ever referring back to the events of "Frontier", so Nation may not have been the sole chooser of this approach, he could even have been directed to use it (and Dicks clearly didn't amend the script on this point). "
But my point was that, although it's been a while since I've watched it, it seemed to me that Part 1 of "Planet" was, in fact, a fairly normal Dalek story Part 1, with only the whole "The Doctor is ill" thing tacked on to tie it into the previous story. Therefore I'd say seems like Nation simply wrote it as a normal Part 1, and left it up to Dicks to tie it into the ongoing plot.
Now, I agree it doesn't really work as it is, but without knowing how much he knew about the previous story, it's impossible to say whether that is Nation's fault for writing it poorly -- i.e. leaving Dicks with an impossible task because Nation's script simply didn't fit and the reworking it required was too much in the time available -- or whether he was simply doing the best job he could under the circumstances -- i.e. writing a story that worked on its own, and leaving continuity issues to others.
I could be misremembering, of course, and maybe it really is more of an uncomfortable halfway house than I recall. But I'd still say we don't know how much of the finished script was written by Dicks, and we can't simply blame Nation without that knowledge. Maybe it is a structural mess, and "doesn't know whether it's an episode one or an episode seven" -- but that could be because Nation wrote it one way, then Dicks rewrote it the other way.
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#756 17 Dec 2008, 11:07 pm
Dorney
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Planet of the Daleks 2:
There's something inherently charming about an episode that all but admits it's filler. A sort of honesty that you can't help but admire.
The buzz with the Thals this episode is that they don't have a plan. They're hanging round a bit, slowly getting picked off, waiting. And as anyone's who read this thread will know, this translates into: no plot. No one doing anything means no story.
OK, that's a bit of an over-simplification here, because the Daleks are at least up to something - the whole invisibility thing. But because the characters we're following are doing their level best to avoid the Daleks (and couldn't do anything if they met them) then that doesn't really get us anywhere. Throughout the episode we're just waiting to the revelation of the final seconds - something to push a bit of urgency into the story, give the characters something to aim at.
So without a plot to keep it going, what are the twenty five minutes filled with? Well, firstly, we've got a few leanings towards arguments about the morality of war, and the obligations of a soldier, and a meditation on cowardice - all of which is interesting enough, if broadly written (as you'd expect from a family show). Already it's fairly clear that there's going to be a bit of worthy moralising in this story, though as ever with Nation it's a bit hard to tell what the message is - Horsfall for example is presented as noble and wise - but it's hard not to see some worth in Hancock's suggestion that they really ought to be doing something. And this is all a bit weird from the man who created Blake's 7. The side effect of this is that the Thals aren't really presented as individual characters but as archetypal thematic avatars - wisdom, recklessness and fear. Though given that the Daleks are essentially the same, this isn't really a major problem.
Blunt as it may be, straightforward as it may be, there's something likeable in Nation's comic strip style. Again it's easy to forget that the man's other tv shows tend to have a more adult bent (albeit played with a fairly boy's own feel) and that this feel is fairly deliberately tailored. This is intentional pulp and as it is it works - in deed, I'd go so far as to say that given the obvious limitations in realising the world, it's almost the best thing to do - the broader stroke suit the environment. It's fun.
And the next episode might even have a story.
#757 19 Dec 2008, 7:03 pm
Michael S Collins
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Keep going, Dorney. you'll be home and dry before you know it.
Hope your career's still going strong.
Michael
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#758 21 Dec 2008, 7:39 pm
Dorney
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Planet of the Daleks 3:
Now that's more like it.
You know, people often talk about PotD as being a blatant remake of the first Dalek story. It's not hard to see a certain degree of logic to this, but I think it's slightly fairer to say that it's similar conceptually rather than a remake. So it contains a lot of the same basic elements (Daleks and Thals, aliens jungle surrounding alien city) just juggles them with a new plot.
Most of the time.
Episode three is the exception. It's probably exarcebated by the black and white (and boy, that's a bit of a shock when you're so used to colour - completely forgot it was coming up!) but episode three does rather feel like it's The Daleks in twenty five minutes. So many specific elements turn up again - the heroes using tunnels leading into the base that are based around piping, other heroes trapped in a cell luring in a Dalek and disabling it, peril in lifts, two seperate teams meeting up, heroic sacrifice.
And by ramming it all together we get a cracking episode. After two installments waiting for things to happen and with precious little actual threat, we have a great boy's own yarn of escape. It's comparitively straight forward (and often reliant on ludicrous coincidence - of all the vents Varon choses he picks the one the Doctor's just about to walk past!), but it's fast, and with some genuine Dalek menace giving it high stakes. One of the things that makes it work is the real sense that they're in trouble - the Doctor consistently getting forced deeper into the city, Daleks at every corner, the effort made to imply dangerous levels of cold in the tunnels and the emphasis on how it's a dangerous plan - it all racks up the tension. OK, it's not without it's flaws. General Von Klinkerhoffen's self sacrifice seems utterly pointless from both his perspective and in terms of story, he's barely said a word anyway so it doesn't matter a stuff to us. The ice volcano stuff comes out of nowhere as does the biological stuff the Daleks are supposedly working on. Oh and Jo really doesn't feel the urge to do anything useful (though to be fair the Doctor seems to have forgotten the fact she's supposed to be dead). But at the same time, crappier elements of previous episodes are skipped (little spiridon action means we don't have to put up with anything else like Tim Preece's interpretative dance sequence). And the ending, whilst almost certainly scientific balls, is mental enough to work as precisely the sort of audacious get out the build up needs (when things are getting difficult, you need the escape route to be insane otherwise it diminshes the threat - if the situation is desperate, the resolution must be desperate too).
So, all in all, rather good fun.
#759 27 Dec 2008, 8:32 pm
Dorney
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Planet of the Daleks 4:
If you want to know what the problem with this story is, episode four provides the result. It's like the entire six parts in microcosm.
After the surge in quality of the previous episode, the script keeps this up. There's a fairly limp resolution to the cliffhanger, though admittedly one that was fairly obviously coming up last time anyway (episode 3: it's not working, episode 4: oh, it is, sorry, my mistake...), but it still manages to keep the tension going for the first ten minutes or so.
And then it just stops. The rest of the episode returns to tedious runaround and strange moralising speeches that don't make an awful lot of sense. And it's relatively clear why.
The reason the first half works (and the third episode too) is focus. There's a clear sense of purpose and drive. The story's going somewhere. It knows where it's going and it's going there. But the moment our heroes escape from the Dalek city, that stops. We're back to the first couple of episodes with a lot of Thals mooching around not quite sure what they're going to do.
I remember someone somewhere suggesting the game of 'Tell me the plot of The Armageddon Factor' as a fun way to bemuse a fan, and I suspect that it's true of this story as well, albeit for different reasons. There simply isn't one. What's it about? The Daleks are after invisibility (a promising idea that's basically been forgotten), they're developing a bacteria, they've got a frozen army. The story can't decide what it's central thrust is, and that's probably why the Thal storyline is equally vague - after all, how can your heroes fight the villains when the villains don't have a clue what they're up to.
It's a shame because we're stuck in a position where most of the Thals are cyphers with one word personalities (that fade in and out according to the requirements of the plot - no cowardice from Preece for a couple of episodes, you'll note), which almost doesn't matter if you've got enough story driving it through (let's face it, it's a Nation staple). But without, the story becomes a character piece without any characters.
It's not all bad, though. We finally get at least an attempt to tie the story to Frontier (though it's hilariously tenuous and with the Doctor practically admitting that it makes little sense). But generally it doesn't work. When a major plot point is trying to find a warm place to sleep you know you're in trouble.
#760 31 Dec 2008, 1:01 am
Dorney
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Planet of the Daleks 5:
OK, so I lied.
Turns out that it isn't just episode three that's a little too influenced by its authors earlier material. This episode does it as well. But we'll get to that.
It's odd that this episode, and this story, spends an awfully small amount of time letting its stars do anything. It takes over six minutes for the Daleks to even appear in this episode, for example. But this is nowhere more pronounced than in the bacteriological warfare subplot. The token friendly Spiridon, Wester (forgotten for a couple of episodes until his return is convenient) turns up at the camp and warns our heroes about the planned virus. And it doesn't really seem to fuss them in the slightest.
Let me reiterate that point. A virus that will wipe out every single thing on the planet is less important to them than destroying a currently inactive army of Daleks. Er, why? Surely that should be your priority. The frozen army can wait, help the friendly invisible chappie.
It's made even worse by the resolution of this subplot - the Doctor and Taron watch as Wester sacrifices his life to save everyone... and once again, the Doctor doesn't seem to give a toss. He just suggests they move on.
It's all deeply frustrating, as this plotline that keeps insinuating it's a major plot point actually turns out not to affect any of the main cast at all. It distracts the Daleks for a bit, keeps them looking busy, and is eventually resolved by a minor supporting character who we haven't (if you'll forgive the pun) seen in a couple of episodes. It really should connect with the Doctor in some way, shouldn't it? Otherwise it's just a sideshow.
To be fair, the plot of this episode is, largely, about the Doctor trying to get into the Dalek city to actually achieve something. He speaks for the audience when he tells Taron that he's tired of just running away (but surely, to be able to sit down and write these lines and not realise there's a problem with your storyline... well, that beggars belief). This leads to a glorious line when Jo offers to be a lure for the Daleks because she's 'tired of being hunted'. So you decide that the best thing to do when you're tired of being hunted is: get someone to hunt you. Yeah, that makes sense.
And here we get the repeat of the first Dalek story again, as the Doctor and friends imobilise a Dalek or two through a handy weakness (cold killing them on impact -which makes the notion of the frozen army a little odd, though I guess not impossible), before chucking out the disgusting creature inside (and once again, we cut away) before being led in, in a handy Dalek & his posse formation. It works well enough (and the location filming makes the whole thing seem much less unrealistic).
It's all OK, but it's just a shame it's taken this long to get going. The original serial was at this point three episodes in, remember. That's the problem - no forward momentum. No-one doing anything for a grander purpose than filling out a bit of time until they can do something else.
7 Jan 2009, 10:36 am
Dorney
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Planet of the Daleks 6:
I’ve often felt that the final episode of a story should be one of the easiest to write. Set up enough in the earlier episodes, and the finale should be a comparative doddle as you just have to let it all roll. But there’s a problem with that. Don’t set up enough and you’ve got far too much time to fill.
That’s Planet’s problem. It’s all very well writing a story about inaction and an inability to complete – after all, that’s essentially the story of Shakespeare’s most iconic play – as long as you use that time profitably. And it’s even more clear here that the time has been wasted. It’s all been a desperate attempt to fill in as much time as possible.
You see, now the Thals have finally decided that it’s time to act… well, it’s all just terribly easy. It’s the equivalent of Hamlet just going up to Claudius and stabbing him. They go down to the lower level and blow up what they need to blow up. The Daleks half try to follow them, but get barricaded out. And, as if to rub our noses in it, Jo and her bland friend (who’s done absolutely nothing in the story apart from give her someone to talk to – which would be almost acceptable if Jo had herself done any more than mooch around the jungle filling in time and giving the show something to cut away to. No wonder I can’t remember his name) abseil in down the incomprehensibly unguarded chimney that our heroes previously escaped from. Why didn’t they all do that? Why the over-complicated and nearly fatal ‘Spiridons and guard’ routines?
The earlier episodes haven’t bothered to set anything up, so the resolution has to be correspondingly simple. There just isn’t enough to fill this episode with. There’s some effort to disguise all this with some half hearted attempts to inject a bit of threat or danger – ‘oh my god, we’ve dropped the bomb amongst the Daleks!’ ‘Oh my god, the Dalek Rebec was in has been destroyed!’ ‘The explosion hasn’t released the ice volcano like we planned!’ ‘There are poisonous plants squirting between us and the TARDIS’. But you can tell it’s half-hearted due to the way the threat is resolved instantly, in the dullest manor imaginable – ‘Oh well, the Doctor can just climb down and pick it up.’ ‘Oh, she got out.’ ‘Oh, actually it did.’’Oh, just cover your face and leg it.’ None of it’s tied to the plot, none of it changes the direction. Hell, even the arrival of the Supreme Dalek is just something to distract us with, as he doesn’t do anything at all either. Apart from blind himself every time he speaks.
And then it’s all over. Jo’s mate asks her to go back to Skaro, after they’ve displayed less chemistry than a broken Bunsen burner (I mean, is it even supposed to be a romance?). Jo declines, which turns out to be the right decision because, typically of the story, Latep (all right, I looked it up) seems not to be bothered in the slightest by this, heading straight off to the spaceship with nary a tear or backward glance.
All in all, it’s a wasted opportunity. Frontier promises, and Planet just doesn’t deliver. And not only that, it actively, consciously doesn’t deliver, it’s about not delivering. Which is hardly a good thing.
#762 7 Jan 2009, 1:01 pm
fortmap
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And yet Planet of the Daleks was the story that made a fan. Well - the novelisation, to be precise.
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Frontier in Space
19 Aug 2008, 11:17 pm
Dorney
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Frontier in Space 1:
Out of all my Doctor Who videos Frontier in Space is unique. It's the only VHS which I've left the price label on since the day I got it. I'm still not sure why. Tradition, probably. The irony is that it's one of the few in my collection that I didn't actually buy. I didn't steal it, don't panic, don't call the police. I won it in a DWM caption competition. The picture was one of Mel in the Paradise Towers pool with the yellow cleaner. My caption was " 'ere love - wanna look at my mussels". Hilarious. I'd like to remind you that these days people have been known to pay me to write comedy. I can't believe it either. (For those of you who are interested, the main winner that got published in the mag was: 'Of course, in custard I'm completely undetectable' which is genuinely amusing).
I mention all this as a way of filling in time because Frontier 1 is an odd episode, odd for reasons that lodged themselves in my mind the very first time I saw it. If you watch it, try to do so without checking out the timing or the clock. You see, I reckon that it will end significantly before you expect it to, as that’s what happened the first time I saw it.
You see, it's one of the least eventful episodes of Who I've ever seen. The Doctor and Jo arrive on a spaceship, that the Ogrons raid (disguised as Draconians), then they leave. That’s it. We don't even see the majority of the raid as all of the characters are unconscious throughout (one of the humans is knocked out, hilariously, because the Doctor uncharacteristically throws him at the attakers the moment they burst in). There’s a couple of world building chats between the crewmen, and politics on Earth, but it’s kind of hard to remember exactly what is said in them for more than about ten seconds.
And yet… it’s not boring. Somewhat uselessly, I’m not exactly sure why. Usually an episode can fill with character development and detail… but here, there doesn’t seem that much of it. I’m not sure what’s taking up the time.
I’m wondering if it’s actually the amount of plot packed in, despite little going on. Bear in mind that the central mystery of the initial episode (the mistaken identities of the Doctor, Jo, the Ogrons and the crewmen) is solved by the Doctor pretty instantly. OK, it’s all a lot of talk, but it’s plot advancing talk. Now, whilst this may be the story’s entire story blown in seconds (though I’m not convinced that Hulke could make that failing), it does mean that it’s entertaining. And, I suppose that the revelations do make you question something new – the villain’s motivation. In deed, there’s something quite intriguing about the initial mystery not being ‘what’ is going on, but ‘why’.
So a good start, if low key and not exactly memorable, it still manages to be engaging and interesting.
#732 21 Aug 2008, 7:06 pm
AlMiles
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Yay! I know we've had our spats in the current-affairs threads, well one of them anyway, but it is a genuine delight to read your thoughts, Chairman Dorney, especially with the episodes relatively fresh in my mind. You do have genuine insight and really help me to crystallise my own perception of them as a result - you give a perspective which allows me to frame where I stand on elements of the story, instead of being unaware why certain things in its execution or its apparent intent delight me or niggle. That's not to say I mirror your reactions to every bit, of course. But I do like it when you look anew at an unpopular episode and find something of interest. I enjoyed Frontier very much, and if you have any trouble 'backing up' your VHSs of any stories where necessary, well *cough* there are means, let me know...
Are you approaching this DWM 'Time Team'-stylee, pretending not to know what is coming next at least in story terms? Seems sensible - preserving the fresh viewing perspective you've brought to it so far makes sense. But what about production details, for instance when it is Roger Delgado's final story (not that I'm saying this is, of course!) do you pay more attention to how well he is employed and hark back to how his 'arc' (for want of another term) has played out against the series as a whole? Do you find yourself watching for certain scenes of, shall we say, historical repute or disrepute or take everything as it comes?
"Frontier" was an unknown to me beyond the Hulke novelisation. And I think the Pertwee era stands up robustly in written form - as inventive and satisfying a collection of adventures as in any other era of the show. Back in the 70s-mid 80s there was no other way to judge it (bar a dodgy VHS of "Day"). Regardless of execution, I find Hulke's stories to be worthy (and not always dull. Except 'Colony/Doomsday Weapon', obviously - only an Earth 2 producer could admire that). The political machinations, misplaced distrust and deceit formed a Master plan worthy of great enjoyment, and the return of the Ogrons was an early fanboy frisson too. Somehow I felt the Daleks must be around the corner, especially as Vorg had pointed out/reminded us one story before that the Ogrons were their servants... there's also some nice design to enjoy in this story, always a boon to someone like me who preferred visual imagination over plodding plot necessity.
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#733 21 Aug 2008, 10:53 pm
Dorney
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AlMiles
"Yay! I know we've had our spats in the current-affairs threads, well one of them anyway, "
You know, except in one or two relentless cases, I can never really remember having 'spats' with anyone!
Quote:
"Are you approaching this DWM 'Time Team'-stylee, pretending not to know what is coming next at least in story terms? "
I do slightly view it in the overall context of what I know about the show, later episodes. The problem there, is that these are the only classic series episodes I've watched in 5 years (well, with three exceptions - two stories, Invasion and DMP where I did watch newly found/recreated episodes, but in both cases I'd already watched them - the other more recently, and I'll keep that to myself for the moment). And even then, a lot I won't have seen for years before then. So to a degree, I'm coming at them fresh. So, with Frontier, for example, I can remember the odd cliffhanger, the presence of the Master and the Daleks... but that's about it. So it's an odd combination of knowing what's coming up and not having a clue.
#734 23 Aug 2008, 11:17 am
The Secretive Bus
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Sadly I can remember most Who episodes like the back of my hand (I wish I could erase most of my knowledge of it to make way for my degree, but alas...). It was quite exciting to get the Reign of Terror CD recently as I'd never heard episodes 4 and 5 before, nor had I seen the other episodes in years. Then I realised the story is completely pants.
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#735 23 Aug 2008, 3:32 pm
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
"You know, except in one or two relentless cases, I can never really remember having 'spats' with anyone! "
True, thinking about it I was probably disagreeing with someone else but Tenth Planet tends to polarise everything into two "camps" on every issue and in one thread I was definitely in the other "camp"! Nice to return to more pleasant corners of the forum...
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#736 24 Aug 2008, 2:01 pm
mircalla
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I hope you won't mind the interruption but as one who's Dr Who collection is so far from complete that a review like this is impossible, I wanted to say that reading this thread is giving me a great deal of enjoyment. As I read the comments I can either return to my own vhs / DVD or relive the episode in my head.
However, AlMiles, if Androzani, Talons, Genesis and Inferno belong to adolescent boys, I've been carrying on a successful masquerade for many years!! I do agree with you about the impact of mood. My list would certainly be different to that in the Torygraph but for varying reasons on different days. My real quibble would be why isn't Invasion in there somewhere. I find myself returning again and again to the Troughton videos and DVDs that I own, remembering what an excellent Doctor 2 was. I was besotted with the programme from the first episode but I think that when Pat Troughton arrived I began to love the Doctor and have managed to do so ever since.
I do occasionally, after visiting the forum, wonder if I am too uncritical as I find something to love in every story when it does at times seem as if some longer-standing forum members positively hate something I've just enjoyed but have decided to be philosophical - after all, I'm not claiming that any of it is perfect or that I can't perceive any flaws, just that it is always worthwhile. I'm currently avoiding completing a dissertation and running out of time as I write this (instead of the 14,000 words I have to complete by Friday!) because I'm helping my stress by running as much Who as possible with the occasional intrusion of Star Trek or Stargate Atlantis and am left feeling that Doctor Who, overall, achieves a quality of inspiration, variety and imagination that nothing else approaches - as near to perfect as we are likely to get.
Also, before I shut up, did want to congratulate Dorney on a wonderful description of why Carnival of the Monsters works so well.
#737 30 Aug 2008, 3:09 pm
Dorney
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Frontier in Space 2:
One of the problems of writing this thread is that occassionally you'll watch an episode and then just not have the time to write up the review before going off to do other things. Case in point, I watched Frontier in Space around about the 22nd August. But because of various things I had to go off and do, I didn't get to write it up immediately. So it gets put off. And then, of course, the further you get away from it, the harder it is to remember precisely what it was you liked or disliked about the episode. Making the review harder to write still, and meaning you put it off a bit more, leading into a fairly vicious circle.
Sometimes, however, that doesn't matter. Sometimes you get lucky. And, quite frankly, I got lucky with Frontier in Space 2. Because this episode is so defined by one basic idea, that that's the only thing I have to remember. This is a Doctor Who episode entirely about the Doctor getting locked up. A lot.
You see, once in a while an episode comes along that is padded so shamelessly you just have to admire it. The Doctor and Jo get imprisoned and released about four or five times in this episode, and it just reaches the point - roughly as the Ogrons storm the human complex disguised as Draconians... as if the Draconians hadn't genuinely raided the same place about five minutes earlier - where the episode is pretty much winking at you. This episode isn't just padded. It's saying 'yeah, I'm padded. So what?'
And once again, it sort of gets by. OK, it's never a classic episode, but prison escapes are sort of fun and by ramming so many on top of each other, it manages to be pacey and fun, despite very little happening. In deed, the weakest bits of the story are those parts where it isn't so shameless - the Doctor's little anecdote about previous experiences with mind-probes is a little bit forced and uncomfortable, reminding me a little of my least favourite bit of padding ever (Vicki and the magic castle from the Chase). By pretending to have a point it actually comes over far worse than the pointless running around bits do, which is daft but possessed of a strange sort of sense.
That's not to say the episode is completely shallow, of course. The interrogation scenes (with the Doctor basically reiterating what we already know) are engaging, and the repetition actually helps - because it grants the show a decent stab at realism with nothing immediately turning up to cause anyone to believe him. Of course he'd be held in prison for yonks. And the Draconians are already a striking and interesting alien - and a bemusingly non-recurring one at that.
But, ultimately, this episode is about prison cells. And far more entertaining than that sounds.
#738 30 Aug 2008, 11:24 pm
Dorney
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Frontier in Space 3:
Of course, there is just taking the piss.
After the hilariously rubbish resolution to the cliffhanger (emphasising it's pointlessness by not advancing the plot an inch and being resolved in about five seconds flat - a fabulous contrast to the desperate padding of part two's two minute reprise), we get an awful lot more imprisonment.
Well, that's not fair. It's just one imprisonment, but it goes on quite a bit. Basically, to break the monotony of the last episodes batch of cells, we get the Doctor sent to a lunar penal colony. And it's odd, because it seems as well that he's sent to a completely different plot.
There's an awful lot of discussion about the Peace Party (and in deed, riots elsewhere are referred to in the main plot, both in dialogue and footage, although this is admittedly anti-Draconian), and we're clearly meant to judge this as being the victims of a fairly fascist society... but this is problematic as the society we've met up to this point isn't bad. OK, General Williams is portrayed as fairly one-note heavy militarist, but the Earth president... well, she seems to be a decent enough sort. There's no real sense of dictatorship, and her natural inclination is towards peace to a degree that is almost ridiculous (I mean, think about it - none of us are keen on war, but a woman in her position is supposed to make those hard decisions for us. With Draconians raiding and killing her subjects, breaking into her facilities and murdering people, her avoidance of declaring war seems overly pacifistic - fortuitous for the plot, obviously, due to it being the right choice, but slightly unbelievable in a proper politician).
So given that the state doesn't appear overly fascist, and that the Doctor doesn't seem to be bothered by it, and given that Peace Party never really explain their grievances, and given that the Doctor never really has any interest in helping them out, or bringing down the government - we're left in the slightly unpleasant position of having to wonder if they properly are just a bunch of terrorists. It's genuinely unclear. There's a sense that they're supposed to be sympathetic figures - the bizarrely performed Dale taking the Doctor on his escape with him for the greater good - but without anything to justify their position, and with the Doctor not condemning and fighting against their permanent incarceration (he doesn't want to free them, he just wants to get out himself) what are we supposed to take from this?
Well, confused material aside, it still manages to be entertaining. It’s a miracle this story. I suppose it helps that prisons are inherently tense, and whilst the story refuses to progress (the 3rd Doctor no further along in the plot at the end of this episode than two parts ago), it has an inherent dramatic tension. In many ways it feels like a little side adventure (mainly due to it forgetting the Draconians completely), and that’s probably why it works. Yes, it’s padding, but it’s dramatic padding – it’s roughly the same as the Doctor’s mind-probe story in the last episode, but it’s acted out, and it’s comparative success proves the ‘show, don’t tell’ adage..
Back on Earth, things perk up with the appearance of the Master. Ironically, whilst Jo and the Doctor have been wasting their time, hanging around various irrelevant prisons, the Master’s actually popped over to involve them in the plot himself (he’s clearly bored, and wants to make trouble for himself). He get's one of his most gloriously off-kilter, out of character lines in the series ('for the whole of your natural?'), but generally, he's still fun. Of course, it does mean that most of the remaining mystery of the plot (which there hasn’t been much of since the first ten minutes) is stripped away, so I’m not sure where it can go from here on in.
#739 5 Sep 2008, 9:12 am
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
"Back on Earth, things perk up with the appearance of the Master. Ironically, whilst Jo and the Doctor have been wasting their time, hanging around various irrelevant prisons, the Master’s actually popped over to involve them in the plot himself (he’s clearly bored, and wants to make trouble for himself). He get's one of his most gloriously off-kilter, out of character lines in the series ('for the whole of your natural?'), but generally, he's still fun. "
Heheheh. I do love those moments when Delgado allows his natural cockney to break through.
The original Master really was impossible to hate, wasn't he? Gave some credibility to the Doctor always letting him off (and even pleading for him at his post-Daemons trial). Not sure why the later, Universe-entropifying version got the same treatment, that one was clearly mad but this fellas most amusing.
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#740 9 Oct 2008, 5:43 pm
Dorney
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#741 11 Oct 2008, 11:45 am
Dorney
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Frontier in Space 4:
One of the difficulties with reviewing on an episodic basis, especially with a six parter, is that a lot of the flaws in an story persist and you risk repetition. A repetitious story leads to a repetitious review. Take this one, for example.
Once again, this tale's bizarre insistence on blowing all of its mysteries at the top means there really is no plot to hang on to. We know what's going on, and so it's all just procrastination until the point where the Doctor can switch the plot off. As a result, we've got a series of mini-adventures, all based around the Doctor being locked up somewhere.
Whereas episode three at least manages to do something with this format, seemingly developing it's own one episode storyline, episode four is weaker. By and large just the Master, the Doctor and Jo in a ship, this episode is largely reminiscent of the insanely dumb fourth episode of the Time Monster.
However, unlike that previous atrocity, this one just about works. Just. Whilst the action doesn't really progress the story - the Doctor going through a convuluted attempt to escape, that just ends with him in the Master's power again, before the Draconians arrive and capture them all - it's pitched quite straightforwardly. Sure, it's not massively exciting, but it isn't particularly dull either. And I suppose that does make sense on a certain level. This story, and it's sequel, were intended to be viewed as a twelve part epic, divided in two, reminiscent of DMP. And viewed in that context, it begins to make sense.
As I've probably wittered on about before, an epic doesn't entirely play by the same rules as a regular story. It's less about plot or plot complexity and more about journey. In other words, it doesn't matter if the individual story doesn't shift gears every episode as long as plenty of stuff happens along the way. A full journey. We need to feel that getting through this is dangerous and complicated. It's not about the characters minds, it's about their endurance.
So it doesn't really matter if the set pieces don't entirely progress the story, as long as they work well enough as set pieces. And by and large, so far, they do.
Oh, before I finish, one quick note. There's some lovely direction in this episode - the idea of the Master using his own security cameras to contact the Doctor on the bridge is decent enough - but the lovely touch is that when he starts, we cut to him broadcasting to an empty bridge, with the implication of the Doctor having already rushed off the bridge to help Jo. It's a terrific way to convey energy and pace.
#742 13 Oct 2008, 11:53 pm
Dorney
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Frontier in Space 5:
After a fairly empty episode, we get to one that's fairly packed. With episodes one and four in particular being plotted almost entirely about single set pieces, this one is basically all go, and more reminiscent of episode two's frenetic series of capture escapes. Like that episode, there's a faint sense of pointless sound and fury (we don't really need two seperate, and swiftly resolved, Ogron raids - they could quite easily grab Jo at the first attempt with about the same effect). Equally, the increased pace does rather mean that a lot of the realism goes out the window - after loads of episodes of long journeys across time and space, with the Master needing a sleep before getting to the Draconian homeworld, they manage to get back to Earth in about half an hour.
Oddly though, they do manage to get quite a bit of half-decent drama in there. The scenes in the Draconian palace are well put together, and take a realistic approach to the logic of how people would react to the Doctor's claims. Neatly, they're almost exactly the same as the earlier scenes (again in episode two) which is either a gorgeous bit of mirroring or a bit of lazy characterisation depending on your perspective (the Draconian emperor is, like the president, conveniently unwilling to act). OK, this realistic approach is disappointingly resolved by the Master having to turn into a bit of a moron, overlooking something rather obvious in a contrived manner. Heck, it technically resolves the main problem of the serial, with proof that the Ogrons are faking the entire war, and is far too simple (and in deed, arbitrary, with the Doctor being pretty much a bystander) as a conclusion to the plot motor. But this sequence and the follow up sequence where the general realises how he made a mistake earlier (in a manner alarmingly reminiscent of Babylon 5) are genuinely interesting character exploration in a way the rest of the story really isn't.
#743 14 Oct 2008, 12:37 pm
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
!(in a manner alarmingly reminiscent of Babylon 5) "
Well its creator was a fan of British TV, certainly Blakes 7 and The Prisoner, so no doubt he wouldn't have minded also borrowing from a show transmitted in between those two.
And US science fiction series don't mind plundering the Pertwee era for their own means - right up to entire stories, settings, characters and plots being identical. Just look at "Earth 2".
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#744 14 Oct 2008, 6:23 pm
The White Guardian
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I've just browsed through your recent reviews and loved them! I can't wait to see your reactions to TB's stories.
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#745 24 Oct 2008, 10:45 am
Dorney
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Frontier in Space 6:
There’s something a little… disappointing about this episode. Something dispiriting. Because if ever there was an episode of Who that defined ‘less than the sum of its parts’… well, it’s this one.
It should be great. It’s the mid point of an epic, the culmination of one story thread before another launches off. We’ve had five episodes of scale and prisons, build up and build up. Then a climax at the villains base, surprise Daleks. Done right, this should have been a classic episode. So why isn’t it?
Well one is that the episode doesn’t quite feel like a climax. On one level it isn’t, of course, as the story does continue into the next. But that’s the central difficulty with pitching it as two distinctly different tales, with wholly different plots. On some level the first one has to end properly. There’s a real sense of indecision about this episode. Is it just another part of a longer tale… or the end of one half of it?
The disconnect is obvious from the opening. We’re in the final episode – everything should be hurtling to a climax. There’s no time for sub-plots. So why do we waste time in the first few minutes with a staggeringly generic Draconian attack on the Doctor’s ship?
Actually, to be fair, I can tell why it’s there. There are only two strands in the plot at the moment (the Jo half and the Doctor half) and there’s got to be something to cut to. Equally, given the amount of time this story has spent emphasising the time element of space travel, the Doctor’s plotline jumping directly from Earth to the Ogron planet would seem ridiculous, so something has to happen en route. But it’s all done in a rushed way (this sort of thing pretty much took up the whole of episodes one and four – probably a bit too far the other way, but you know what I mean). Equally, it’s fairly nonsensically presented – would the Earth authorities really not warn Draconia there was a special ship coming through? And they keep trying out excuses why the Draconian prince they have on the ship can’t just call them off: ‘they won’t take the time to listen’, ‘they’ll be hard to persuade’. Wouldn’t you at least, y’know, try? Personally, I think it would have made a lot more sense to cut down some of the more padded material of episode four, shunted the episodes along a bit (we’d only miss out on some rubbish cliffhangers) and left the entire last episode a battle for survival on the Ogron homeworld.
And that does kind of lead to a general criticism of the episode. A lot happens… but most of it doesn’t have a point. There’s precious little sense of why it’s going on. As with the absent attempts to hail the Draconians who attack, the Earth president doesn’t try and persuade the people that they’re actually under attack from a third party on the basis that they’ve got no evidence. So she sends soldiers across the galaxy to the villain’s base, where they get killed or locked up. Then the Doctor sends them back home to try and persuade their respective people’s of the truth. But they still don’t have any evidence. The entire trip across the galaxy has no point.
Likewise, the Master allows Jo to escape, so she can broadcast a message to the Doctor as a trap. She broadcasts on a short wave radio that only he can hear (as the Master has detected his ship approaching). This way, says the Master, when the Doctor arrives, they’ll be ready for him.
But hold on – he’s broadcast on a short wave radio to a ship that he knows the Doctor is on, that he knows is approaching them? So surely he doesn’t need Jo to broadcast a signal in order to be ready for the Doctor. He already knows the Doctor is there. How much more readiness does he require? What new information does he gain from Jo’s ‘trap’? Why doesn’t he just shoot the ship down? OK, I know he comes up with a lame excuse to the Daleks – he wants the Doctor to watch the war - but, really, that’s just the Master being a cretin, as he was perfectly happy to kill the Doctor simply a few episodes ago.
And speaking of the Daleks, what the hell are they doing here? They don’t do anything! Yes, it’s a great reveal, but what’s the logic behind it? They travel through space, half a dozen of them or so, have a brief chat with the Master then sod off again. It’s like they’re the foreman of a building site popping in to check that the builders are still doing they’re job. It’s a bit rubbish isn’t it? Though it does lead to one of the most delightful lines in the series – we catch the tail end of a conversation the Master’s having over the radio with them when they’ve left which starts with him saying ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’ To a DALEK. As if just after leaving they’ve phoned him up in a panic. Like a nervy mum.
It’s all basically about trying to make it look big and exciting to conceal the fact that there’s no actual ending. And when I say that, I’m not talking about the damb squib/ vanishing Master/weird editing thing. Nothing actually happens that concludes the plot. We have to assume that the Draconians and the Humans are going to make peace.
It’s a shame, because a proper conclusion would have tied it all together, and made the episodic nature feel part of a whole. As it is, I’m just going to have to take it in part with Planet and see how that works.
#746 28 Nov 2008, 6:49 pm
skinsale2
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I originally sent this post as a private message but I couldn't so I will have to post it here. Dorney I would like to thank you for your awesome reviews as they have inspired me to write my own on The Doctor Who Ratings Guide. So thank you Dorney for inspiring me to do something interesting for a change
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Dorney
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Frontier in Space 1:
Out of all my Doctor Who videos Frontier in Space is unique. It's the only VHS which I've left the price label on since the day I got it. I'm still not sure why. Tradition, probably. The irony is that it's one of the few in my collection that I didn't actually buy. I didn't steal it, don't panic, don't call the police. I won it in a DWM caption competition. The picture was one of Mel in the Paradise Towers pool with the yellow cleaner. My caption was " 'ere love - wanna look at my mussels". Hilarious. I'd like to remind you that these days people have been known to pay me to write comedy. I can't believe it either. (For those of you who are interested, the main winner that got published in the mag was: 'Of course, in custard I'm completely undetectable' which is genuinely amusing).
I mention all this as a way of filling in time because Frontier 1 is an odd episode, odd for reasons that lodged themselves in my mind the very first time I saw it. If you watch it, try to do so without checking out the timing or the clock. You see, I reckon that it will end significantly before you expect it to, as that’s what happened the first time I saw it.
You see, it's one of the least eventful episodes of Who I've ever seen. The Doctor and Jo arrive on a spaceship, that the Ogrons raid (disguised as Draconians), then they leave. That’s it. We don't even see the majority of the raid as all of the characters are unconscious throughout (one of the humans is knocked out, hilariously, because the Doctor uncharacteristically throws him at the attakers the moment they burst in). There’s a couple of world building chats between the crewmen, and politics on Earth, but it’s kind of hard to remember exactly what is said in them for more than about ten seconds.
And yet… it’s not boring. Somewhat uselessly, I’m not exactly sure why. Usually an episode can fill with character development and detail… but here, there doesn’t seem that much of it. I’m not sure what’s taking up the time.
I’m wondering if it’s actually the amount of plot packed in, despite little going on. Bear in mind that the central mystery of the initial episode (the mistaken identities of the Doctor, Jo, the Ogrons and the crewmen) is solved by the Doctor pretty instantly. OK, it’s all a lot of talk, but it’s plot advancing talk. Now, whilst this may be the story’s entire story blown in seconds (though I’m not convinced that Hulke could make that failing), it does mean that it’s entertaining. And, I suppose that the revelations do make you question something new – the villain’s motivation. In deed, there’s something quite intriguing about the initial mystery not being ‘what’ is going on, but ‘why’.
So a good start, if low key and not exactly memorable, it still manages to be engaging and interesting.
#732 21 Aug 2008, 7:06 pm
AlMiles
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Yay! I know we've had our spats in the current-affairs threads, well one of them anyway, but it is a genuine delight to read your thoughts, Chairman Dorney, especially with the episodes relatively fresh in my mind. You do have genuine insight and really help me to crystallise my own perception of them as a result - you give a perspective which allows me to frame where I stand on elements of the story, instead of being unaware why certain things in its execution or its apparent intent delight me or niggle. That's not to say I mirror your reactions to every bit, of course. But I do like it when you look anew at an unpopular episode and find something of interest. I enjoyed Frontier very much, and if you have any trouble 'backing up' your VHSs of any stories where necessary, well *cough* there are means, let me know...
Are you approaching this DWM 'Time Team'-stylee, pretending not to know what is coming next at least in story terms? Seems sensible - preserving the fresh viewing perspective you've brought to it so far makes sense. But what about production details, for instance when it is Roger Delgado's final story (not that I'm saying this is, of course!) do you pay more attention to how well he is employed and hark back to how his 'arc' (for want of another term) has played out against the series as a whole? Do you find yourself watching for certain scenes of, shall we say, historical repute or disrepute or take everything as it comes?
"Frontier" was an unknown to me beyond the Hulke novelisation. And I think the Pertwee era stands up robustly in written form - as inventive and satisfying a collection of adventures as in any other era of the show. Back in the 70s-mid 80s there was no other way to judge it (bar a dodgy VHS of "Day"). Regardless of execution, I find Hulke's stories to be worthy (and not always dull. Except 'Colony/Doomsday Weapon', obviously - only an Earth 2 producer could admire that). The political machinations, misplaced distrust and deceit formed a Master plan worthy of great enjoyment, and the return of the Ogrons was an early fanboy frisson too. Somehow I felt the Daleks must be around the corner, especially as Vorg had pointed out/reminded us one story before that the Ogrons were their servants... there's also some nice design to enjoy in this story, always a boon to someone like me who preferred visual imagination over plodding plot necessity.
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#733 21 Aug 2008, 10:53 pm
Dorney
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AlMiles
"Yay! I know we've had our spats in the current-affairs threads, well one of them anyway, "
You know, except in one or two relentless cases, I can never really remember having 'spats' with anyone!
Quote:
"Are you approaching this DWM 'Time Team'-stylee, pretending not to know what is coming next at least in story terms? "
I do slightly view it in the overall context of what I know about the show, later episodes. The problem there, is that these are the only classic series episodes I've watched in 5 years (well, with three exceptions - two stories, Invasion and DMP where I did watch newly found/recreated episodes, but in both cases I'd already watched them - the other more recently, and I'll keep that to myself for the moment). And even then, a lot I won't have seen for years before then. So to a degree, I'm coming at them fresh. So, with Frontier, for example, I can remember the odd cliffhanger, the presence of the Master and the Daleks... but that's about it. So it's an odd combination of knowing what's coming up and not having a clue.
#734 23 Aug 2008, 11:17 am
The Secretive Bus
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Sadly I can remember most Who episodes like the back of my hand (I wish I could erase most of my knowledge of it to make way for my degree, but alas...). It was quite exciting to get the Reign of Terror CD recently as I'd never heard episodes 4 and 5 before, nor had I seen the other episodes in years. Then I realised the story is completely pants.
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#735 23 Aug 2008, 3:32 pm
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
"You know, except in one or two relentless cases, I can never really remember having 'spats' with anyone! "
True, thinking about it I was probably disagreeing with someone else but Tenth Planet tends to polarise everything into two "camps" on every issue and in one thread I was definitely in the other "camp"! Nice to return to more pleasant corners of the forum...
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#736 24 Aug 2008, 2:01 pm
mircalla
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I hope you won't mind the interruption but as one who's Dr Who collection is so far from complete that a review like this is impossible, I wanted to say that reading this thread is giving me a great deal of enjoyment. As I read the comments I can either return to my own vhs / DVD or relive the episode in my head.
However, AlMiles, if Androzani, Talons, Genesis and Inferno belong to adolescent boys, I've been carrying on a successful masquerade for many years!! I do agree with you about the impact of mood. My list would certainly be different to that in the Torygraph but for varying reasons on different days. My real quibble would be why isn't Invasion in there somewhere. I find myself returning again and again to the Troughton videos and DVDs that I own, remembering what an excellent Doctor 2 was. I was besotted with the programme from the first episode but I think that when Pat Troughton arrived I began to love the Doctor and have managed to do so ever since.
I do occasionally, after visiting the forum, wonder if I am too uncritical as I find something to love in every story when it does at times seem as if some longer-standing forum members positively hate something I've just enjoyed but have decided to be philosophical - after all, I'm not claiming that any of it is perfect or that I can't perceive any flaws, just that it is always worthwhile. I'm currently avoiding completing a dissertation and running out of time as I write this (instead of the 14,000 words I have to complete by Friday!) because I'm helping my stress by running as much Who as possible with the occasional intrusion of Star Trek or Stargate Atlantis and am left feeling that Doctor Who, overall, achieves a quality of inspiration, variety and imagination that nothing else approaches - as near to perfect as we are likely to get.
Also, before I shut up, did want to congratulate Dorney on a wonderful description of why Carnival of the Monsters works so well.
#737 30 Aug 2008, 3:09 pm
Dorney
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Frontier in Space 2:
One of the problems of writing this thread is that occassionally you'll watch an episode and then just not have the time to write up the review before going off to do other things. Case in point, I watched Frontier in Space around about the 22nd August. But because of various things I had to go off and do, I didn't get to write it up immediately. So it gets put off. And then, of course, the further you get away from it, the harder it is to remember precisely what it was you liked or disliked about the episode. Making the review harder to write still, and meaning you put it off a bit more, leading into a fairly vicious circle.
Sometimes, however, that doesn't matter. Sometimes you get lucky. And, quite frankly, I got lucky with Frontier in Space 2. Because this episode is so defined by one basic idea, that that's the only thing I have to remember. This is a Doctor Who episode entirely about the Doctor getting locked up. A lot.
You see, once in a while an episode comes along that is padded so shamelessly you just have to admire it. The Doctor and Jo get imprisoned and released about four or five times in this episode, and it just reaches the point - roughly as the Ogrons storm the human complex disguised as Draconians... as if the Draconians hadn't genuinely raided the same place about five minutes earlier - where the episode is pretty much winking at you. This episode isn't just padded. It's saying 'yeah, I'm padded. So what?'
And once again, it sort of gets by. OK, it's never a classic episode, but prison escapes are sort of fun and by ramming so many on top of each other, it manages to be pacey and fun, despite very little happening. In deed, the weakest bits of the story are those parts where it isn't so shameless - the Doctor's little anecdote about previous experiences with mind-probes is a little bit forced and uncomfortable, reminding me a little of my least favourite bit of padding ever (Vicki and the magic castle from the Chase). By pretending to have a point it actually comes over far worse than the pointless running around bits do, which is daft but possessed of a strange sort of sense.
That's not to say the episode is completely shallow, of course. The interrogation scenes (with the Doctor basically reiterating what we already know) are engaging, and the repetition actually helps - because it grants the show a decent stab at realism with nothing immediately turning up to cause anyone to believe him. Of course he'd be held in prison for yonks. And the Draconians are already a striking and interesting alien - and a bemusingly non-recurring one at that.
But, ultimately, this episode is about prison cells. And far more entertaining than that sounds.
#738 30 Aug 2008, 11:24 pm
Dorney
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Frontier in Space 3:
Of course, there is just taking the piss.
After the hilariously rubbish resolution to the cliffhanger (emphasising it's pointlessness by not advancing the plot an inch and being resolved in about five seconds flat - a fabulous contrast to the desperate padding of part two's two minute reprise), we get an awful lot more imprisonment.
Well, that's not fair. It's just one imprisonment, but it goes on quite a bit. Basically, to break the monotony of the last episodes batch of cells, we get the Doctor sent to a lunar penal colony. And it's odd, because it seems as well that he's sent to a completely different plot.
There's an awful lot of discussion about the Peace Party (and in deed, riots elsewhere are referred to in the main plot, both in dialogue and footage, although this is admittedly anti-Draconian), and we're clearly meant to judge this as being the victims of a fairly fascist society... but this is problematic as the society we've met up to this point isn't bad. OK, General Williams is portrayed as fairly one-note heavy militarist, but the Earth president... well, she seems to be a decent enough sort. There's no real sense of dictatorship, and her natural inclination is towards peace to a degree that is almost ridiculous (I mean, think about it - none of us are keen on war, but a woman in her position is supposed to make those hard decisions for us. With Draconians raiding and killing her subjects, breaking into her facilities and murdering people, her avoidance of declaring war seems overly pacifistic - fortuitous for the plot, obviously, due to it being the right choice, but slightly unbelievable in a proper politician).
So given that the state doesn't appear overly fascist, and that the Doctor doesn't seem to be bothered by it, and given that Peace Party never really explain their grievances, and given that the Doctor never really has any interest in helping them out, or bringing down the government - we're left in the slightly unpleasant position of having to wonder if they properly are just a bunch of terrorists. It's genuinely unclear. There's a sense that they're supposed to be sympathetic figures - the bizarrely performed Dale taking the Doctor on his escape with him for the greater good - but without anything to justify their position, and with the Doctor not condemning and fighting against their permanent incarceration (he doesn't want to free them, he just wants to get out himself) what are we supposed to take from this?
Well, confused material aside, it still manages to be entertaining. It’s a miracle this story. I suppose it helps that prisons are inherently tense, and whilst the story refuses to progress (the 3rd Doctor no further along in the plot at the end of this episode than two parts ago), it has an inherent dramatic tension. In many ways it feels like a little side adventure (mainly due to it forgetting the Draconians completely), and that’s probably why it works. Yes, it’s padding, but it’s dramatic padding – it’s roughly the same as the Doctor’s mind-probe story in the last episode, but it’s acted out, and it’s comparative success proves the ‘show, don’t tell’ adage..
Back on Earth, things perk up with the appearance of the Master. Ironically, whilst Jo and the Doctor have been wasting their time, hanging around various irrelevant prisons, the Master’s actually popped over to involve them in the plot himself (he’s clearly bored, and wants to make trouble for himself). He get's one of his most gloriously off-kilter, out of character lines in the series ('for the whole of your natural?'), but generally, he's still fun. Of course, it does mean that most of the remaining mystery of the plot (which there hasn’t been much of since the first ten minutes) is stripped away, so I’m not sure where it can go from here on in.
#739 5 Sep 2008, 9:12 am
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
"Back on Earth, things perk up with the appearance of the Master. Ironically, whilst Jo and the Doctor have been wasting their time, hanging around various irrelevant prisons, the Master’s actually popped over to involve them in the plot himself (he’s clearly bored, and wants to make trouble for himself). He get's one of his most gloriously off-kilter, out of character lines in the series ('for the whole of your natural?'), but generally, he's still fun. "
Heheheh. I do love those moments when Delgado allows his natural cockney to break through.
The original Master really was impossible to hate, wasn't he? Gave some credibility to the Doctor always letting him off (and even pleading for him at his post-Daemons trial). Not sure why the later, Universe-entropifying version got the same treatment, that one was clearly mad but this fellas most amusing.
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#740 9 Oct 2008, 5:43 pm
Dorney
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#741 11 Oct 2008, 11:45 am
Dorney
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Frontier in Space 4:
One of the difficulties with reviewing on an episodic basis, especially with a six parter, is that a lot of the flaws in an story persist and you risk repetition. A repetitious story leads to a repetitious review. Take this one, for example.
Once again, this tale's bizarre insistence on blowing all of its mysteries at the top means there really is no plot to hang on to. We know what's going on, and so it's all just procrastination until the point where the Doctor can switch the plot off. As a result, we've got a series of mini-adventures, all based around the Doctor being locked up somewhere.
Whereas episode three at least manages to do something with this format, seemingly developing it's own one episode storyline, episode four is weaker. By and large just the Master, the Doctor and Jo in a ship, this episode is largely reminiscent of the insanely dumb fourth episode of the Time Monster.
However, unlike that previous atrocity, this one just about works. Just. Whilst the action doesn't really progress the story - the Doctor going through a convuluted attempt to escape, that just ends with him in the Master's power again, before the Draconians arrive and capture them all - it's pitched quite straightforwardly. Sure, it's not massively exciting, but it isn't particularly dull either. And I suppose that does make sense on a certain level. This story, and it's sequel, were intended to be viewed as a twelve part epic, divided in two, reminiscent of DMP. And viewed in that context, it begins to make sense.
As I've probably wittered on about before, an epic doesn't entirely play by the same rules as a regular story. It's less about plot or plot complexity and more about journey. In other words, it doesn't matter if the individual story doesn't shift gears every episode as long as plenty of stuff happens along the way. A full journey. We need to feel that getting through this is dangerous and complicated. It's not about the characters minds, it's about their endurance.
So it doesn't really matter if the set pieces don't entirely progress the story, as long as they work well enough as set pieces. And by and large, so far, they do.
Oh, before I finish, one quick note. There's some lovely direction in this episode - the idea of the Master using his own security cameras to contact the Doctor on the bridge is decent enough - but the lovely touch is that when he starts, we cut to him broadcasting to an empty bridge, with the implication of the Doctor having already rushed off the bridge to help Jo. It's a terrific way to convey energy and pace.
#742 13 Oct 2008, 11:53 pm
Dorney
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Frontier in Space 5:
After a fairly empty episode, we get to one that's fairly packed. With episodes one and four in particular being plotted almost entirely about single set pieces, this one is basically all go, and more reminiscent of episode two's frenetic series of capture escapes. Like that episode, there's a faint sense of pointless sound and fury (we don't really need two seperate, and swiftly resolved, Ogron raids - they could quite easily grab Jo at the first attempt with about the same effect). Equally, the increased pace does rather mean that a lot of the realism goes out the window - after loads of episodes of long journeys across time and space, with the Master needing a sleep before getting to the Draconian homeworld, they manage to get back to Earth in about half an hour.
Oddly though, they do manage to get quite a bit of half-decent drama in there. The scenes in the Draconian palace are well put together, and take a realistic approach to the logic of how people would react to the Doctor's claims. Neatly, they're almost exactly the same as the earlier scenes (again in episode two) which is either a gorgeous bit of mirroring or a bit of lazy characterisation depending on your perspective (the Draconian emperor is, like the president, conveniently unwilling to act). OK, this realistic approach is disappointingly resolved by the Master having to turn into a bit of a moron, overlooking something rather obvious in a contrived manner. Heck, it technically resolves the main problem of the serial, with proof that the Ogrons are faking the entire war, and is far too simple (and in deed, arbitrary, with the Doctor being pretty much a bystander) as a conclusion to the plot motor. But this sequence and the follow up sequence where the general realises how he made a mistake earlier (in a manner alarmingly reminiscent of Babylon 5) are genuinely interesting character exploration in a way the rest of the story really isn't.
#743 14 Oct 2008, 12:37 pm
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
!(in a manner alarmingly reminiscent of Babylon 5) "
Well its creator was a fan of British TV, certainly Blakes 7 and The Prisoner, so no doubt he wouldn't have minded also borrowing from a show transmitted in between those two.
And US science fiction series don't mind plundering the Pertwee era for their own means - right up to entire stories, settings, characters and plots being identical. Just look at "Earth 2".
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#744 14 Oct 2008, 6:23 pm
The White Guardian
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I've just browsed through your recent reviews and loved them! I can't wait to see your reactions to TB's stories.
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#745 24 Oct 2008, 10:45 am
Dorney
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Frontier in Space 6:
There’s something a little… disappointing about this episode. Something dispiriting. Because if ever there was an episode of Who that defined ‘less than the sum of its parts’… well, it’s this one.
It should be great. It’s the mid point of an epic, the culmination of one story thread before another launches off. We’ve had five episodes of scale and prisons, build up and build up. Then a climax at the villains base, surprise Daleks. Done right, this should have been a classic episode. So why isn’t it?
Well one is that the episode doesn’t quite feel like a climax. On one level it isn’t, of course, as the story does continue into the next. But that’s the central difficulty with pitching it as two distinctly different tales, with wholly different plots. On some level the first one has to end properly. There’s a real sense of indecision about this episode. Is it just another part of a longer tale… or the end of one half of it?
The disconnect is obvious from the opening. We’re in the final episode – everything should be hurtling to a climax. There’s no time for sub-plots. So why do we waste time in the first few minutes with a staggeringly generic Draconian attack on the Doctor’s ship?
Actually, to be fair, I can tell why it’s there. There are only two strands in the plot at the moment (the Jo half and the Doctor half) and there’s got to be something to cut to. Equally, given the amount of time this story has spent emphasising the time element of space travel, the Doctor’s plotline jumping directly from Earth to the Ogron planet would seem ridiculous, so something has to happen en route. But it’s all done in a rushed way (this sort of thing pretty much took up the whole of episodes one and four – probably a bit too far the other way, but you know what I mean). Equally, it’s fairly nonsensically presented – would the Earth authorities really not warn Draconia there was a special ship coming through? And they keep trying out excuses why the Draconian prince they have on the ship can’t just call them off: ‘they won’t take the time to listen’, ‘they’ll be hard to persuade’. Wouldn’t you at least, y’know, try? Personally, I think it would have made a lot more sense to cut down some of the more padded material of episode four, shunted the episodes along a bit (we’d only miss out on some rubbish cliffhangers) and left the entire last episode a battle for survival on the Ogron homeworld.
And that does kind of lead to a general criticism of the episode. A lot happens… but most of it doesn’t have a point. There’s precious little sense of why it’s going on. As with the absent attempts to hail the Draconians who attack, the Earth president doesn’t try and persuade the people that they’re actually under attack from a third party on the basis that they’ve got no evidence. So she sends soldiers across the galaxy to the villain’s base, where they get killed or locked up. Then the Doctor sends them back home to try and persuade their respective people’s of the truth. But they still don’t have any evidence. The entire trip across the galaxy has no point.
Likewise, the Master allows Jo to escape, so she can broadcast a message to the Doctor as a trap. She broadcasts on a short wave radio that only he can hear (as the Master has detected his ship approaching). This way, says the Master, when the Doctor arrives, they’ll be ready for him.
But hold on – he’s broadcast on a short wave radio to a ship that he knows the Doctor is on, that he knows is approaching them? So surely he doesn’t need Jo to broadcast a signal in order to be ready for the Doctor. He already knows the Doctor is there. How much more readiness does he require? What new information does he gain from Jo’s ‘trap’? Why doesn’t he just shoot the ship down? OK, I know he comes up with a lame excuse to the Daleks – he wants the Doctor to watch the war - but, really, that’s just the Master being a cretin, as he was perfectly happy to kill the Doctor simply a few episodes ago.
And speaking of the Daleks, what the hell are they doing here? They don’t do anything! Yes, it’s a great reveal, but what’s the logic behind it? They travel through space, half a dozen of them or so, have a brief chat with the Master then sod off again. It’s like they’re the foreman of a building site popping in to check that the builders are still doing they’re job. It’s a bit rubbish isn’t it? Though it does lead to one of the most delightful lines in the series – we catch the tail end of a conversation the Master’s having over the radio with them when they’ve left which starts with him saying ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’ To a DALEK. As if just after leaving they’ve phoned him up in a panic. Like a nervy mum.
It’s all basically about trying to make it look big and exciting to conceal the fact that there’s no actual ending. And when I say that, I’m not talking about the damb squib/ vanishing Master/weird editing thing. Nothing actually happens that concludes the plot. We have to assume that the Draconians and the Humans are going to make peace.
It’s a shame, because a proper conclusion would have tied it all together, and made the episodic nature feel part of a whole. As it is, I’m just going to have to take it in part with Planet and see how that works.
#746 28 Nov 2008, 6:49 pm
skinsale2
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I originally sent this post as a private message but I couldn't so I will have to post it here. Dorney I would like to thank you for your awesome reviews as they have inspired me to write my own on The Doctor Who Ratings Guide. So thank you Dorney for inspiring me to do something interesting for a change
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Carnival of Monsters
21 May 2008, 11:29 am
Dorney
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Carnival of Monsters 1:
I’m going to start this one by declaring an interest. Carnival of Monsters is the first Doctor Who story I ever saw. Five Faces of Doctor Who repeats, 1981, BBC2. The cliffhanger to episode three leaps out in my memory very clearly (and unlike the third cliffhanger of the Three Doctors, I remember it correctly!).
So obviously I have a certain nostalgic fondness for this story. But putting that aside, trying to be objective… well, it’s still pretty much perfect, isn’t it?
Long time readers of my ramblings may recall that I’ve often suggested that Who fans tend to select what they think of as classics based on how ‘adult’ it feels (in order to reinforce their own comfort with an obsessive interest in what’s often regarded as a ‘children’s show’) and as a result are dismissive of anything that’s not obviously telling us how ‘serious’ it is all the time – say through lots of violence, a lack of humour, etc. To be fair, it’s not exactly limited to Who fans – theatre and cinema tend to praise the straight and the serious (the ‘worthy’) as better than the light and frivolous, as if that’s somehow a poorer relation, as if making someone smile has less artistic value than making them cry. See how the Oscars never go to impeccably made comedies or comic performances (I mean, Sean Penn’s wail-fest in Mystic River better than Bill Murray’s Lost in Translation subtlety, or Johnny Depp;s original tour-de-force performancein Pirates of the Caribbean? Get real). I always like to judge a story not by how worthy it is, but by how well it is made – what its intentions are and how well it succeeds in achieving those intentions.
Which is why I was annoyed by the furore when Carnival was announced as the second Pertwee DVD, over such obvious fan favourites as Sea Devils, or Green Death, or Inferno. As if it was bad. Because it just isn’t. It’s about as beautifully realised a piece of television as the Pertwee era ever managed. Those others have a sombre tone, but they’re nowhere near as impeccable. It’s tragic that people can’t appreciate a story this well written simply because it’s got a day-glo set and some jokes.
Look at this episode in particular. It’s about as good an opening as you can get. The initial hook is gorgeous, and entirely reliant on our status as a viewer – what on Earth connects these two strikingly different plot lines? The gaudiness of the alien world is a vital part of this, of course, as it offers a huge contrast to the naturalistic classic serial feel of the SS Bernice sequences, emphasising the differences and exacerbating our confusion.
But there’s more to it than that. The Inter Minor sequences in this episode are incredibly clever writing – for one specific reason I’ll get to in a moment. On the surface, they’re sparkling. The grey skinned inhabitants are beautifully and wittily written, a note perfect parody of bureaucracy, with their own distinctive speech patterns and behaviour. The Lurmans are equally swiftly drawn, recognisable types we understand. After four not especially exciting stories, this is Robert Holmes really becoming the writer we know – an avoidance of the bland clichés of science fiction, rewriting it all into something quirkier, more distinctive.
But the reason those scenes are so clever is not the deft characterisation and humour – it’s the fairly fundamental problem they avoid. In order to preserve the suspense it is vital that we don’t know what the Scope is, or what it does. Explain that and it becomes fairly obvious where the Doctor and Jo actually are. And the Inter Minor plot can’t really go anywhere until we know that. So the script has a difficult balancing act to pull off – it has to have the Inter Minor sequences (other wise there’s no mystery) but it also can’t really do anything with them (otherwise there’s no mystery). So, once again, we have an exercise in procrastination – but here we have a model example of how to do it, because you genuinely don’t notice. The time is filled with beautiful character work, world building, neat little touches of humour. Every scene has a clear purpose and drive to it. It always seems to be progresses. It’s gorgeous slight of hand.
Equally, the Doctor and Jo’s scenes are exactly how these stories need to work. Constantly moving, always with a purpose. The Doctor has his own sub hook for the story (his determination they’re not on Earth) and that drives his section of the script (which again is, by and large, about avoiding getting anywhere in the overall scheme, just a minor mystery to unravel). Notice how every scene is about something, going somewhere. All engaging, all involving. Nothing is there just to fill time.
About as dazzling an opening episode as you’re going to get. And whilst I may be biased, I’m also right.
#713 21 May 2008, 11:34 am
The Secretive Bus
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You got through the entire Three Doctors review without mentioning Hartnell once!
Everybody bangs on about the dandy and a clown line but for my money his finest line in the story, and indeed the last line Hartnell ever says in Doctor Who (so it's a fairly emotional moment too from that perspective, especially if he's your fave), is the "And considering the way things have been going... well I shudder to think what you'd do without me!"
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#714 21 May 2008, 4:25 pm
Dorney
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To be honest, there's not much to say about him in it, really, and most of what there is you've already covered (his appearance is a little depressing). You get the occassional blast of 1st Doctor there ('stop dilly dallying - and cross it'), and the respect accorded him by the others is a decent touch. It's bittersweet.
#715 23 May 2008, 8:25 pm
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Secretive Bus
"You got through the entire Three Doctors review without mentioning Hartnell once!"
Everybody bangs on about the dandy and a clown line but for my money his finest line in the story, and indeed the last line Hartnell ever says in Doctor Who (so it's a fairly emotional moment too from that perspective, especially if he's your fave), is the "And considering the way things have been going... well I shudder to think what you'd do without me!" "
A lovely line, and a far better swansong than "Stay warm!"
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#716 23 May 2008, 8:40 pm
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dacar92
"Hartnell never looked so old as he did in the 3 docs, for obvious reasons. So, where did the TL's take him out of time and space? Sometime during the 4th episode of Tenth Planet? "
Jon Preddle's "Timelink" posits that the 1st Doctor garden scenes (here, and in The Five Doctors) occur during the "missing four days" at the end of The War Machines (before he goes off with Ben and Polly. This fits quite well with the Doctor needing to recover from WOTAN's hypnotism attempt and perhaps spending time in the country at his friend Sir Charles Summer's residence. Dodo was also meant to be staying there, but had probably gone off to stay with relatives by then (or something)...
Of course, the garden could also be the one which John Lucarotti had the Doctor "semi-retired" to during his prologue/epilogue to "The Massacre" (Target novelisation).
In any case, due to low temporal energy, the garden scenes and the timescooping (of both One and Two, come to think of it) have to be near the end of their incarnations. The Doctor was severely aged by the Time Destructor in The Daleks' Master Plan, and also suffered a great drain of life energy in The Savages, so after those two stories seems likely. During Tenth Planet 3 or 4 (just before his recovery in 4) would fit except for the shots of him in a garden on the Time Lords' screen.
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#717 8 Jun 2008, 4:52 pm
Dorney
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Carnival of Monsters 2:
One thing you may or may not have noticed as a major predilection of mine in these reviews is the concept of padding. This strange notion Doctor Who fans have that unless a story is all plot, plot, plot, the material is ‘padding’.
You see, for me, there’s no such thing, well, not as such. You only have good writing, or bad writing. Every story has sequences that are used to fill in time, it isn’t all story. And that’s a good thing. Cos if it was just story, everything would seem shallow and bland. The meat of a script happens in the gaps between the plot bits. The bits where people are given personalities, lives, proper identities. Where the world is built. You write those bits badly, or not at all, that’s when you get what’s commonly regarded as ‘padding’. Write them well, and nobody notices. I promise you could name me any classic story you like, that you think doesn’t have an ounce of fat and I could find you something that really, really doesn’t need to be there.
Of course, sometimes this can create a problem. If you need to cut it down, the detail is the first bit you’re going to go for, because by definition it’s unnecessary. But it’s a temptation that has to be resisted, because it’s what gives the story life. As I write this, I’ve just finished watching the Silence in the Library two parter, and it has a specific element that’s a case in point – the fact that two characters share the name Dave is completely irrelevant to the plot. But without it, you have a slightly less interesting, real world. All of a sudden these characters are so much more human.
And this is important in regards to Carnival of Monsters because it gives you some important context. You see, if you are going to use the word ‘padding’, then Carnival is one of the most padded stories of all time.
Look at this episode. Nothing that even vaguely resembles plot happens. We get the expository sequences explaining the plot of the first episode, identifying what the Scope actually is… but then what? The Doctor and Jo spend the episode going for a bit of a wander trying to escape from wherever they are. On Inter Minor, lots of conversations go nowhere, and the characters distract themselves with little subplots that don’t really progress. The simple fact of the matter is that there really isn’t enough plot to sustain four episodes. The Doctor can’t escape for a while yet, the Inter Minorans are just filling in time til he can. If padding was inherently bad, this episode would be awful.
But it just isn’t, and that’s because the time is used well. It’s used for witty exploration of character for example. Everyone in this script feels so distinct, so full. OK, some of that is helped by the fact that they’re all pitched as broad stock figures to a degree, but they’re written with such charm this hardly matters. The touches of humour and quirkiness really aid this as well – one of the truisms of a script is that comedy helps. Give someone a couple of jokes, suddenly they comes across better. Because everyone likes someone who tells a few jokes, don’t they? Again, they stop being ‘characters’, they become ‘people’. There’s never a sense that anything as pointless as filling in time is going on. The time is being used. No matter how consequence-less a sequence is (the Eradicator being used on the Scope for example), they always feel like they’re scenes with direction and purpose.
And even then the script has the balls to comment on its own nature. Beautifully, there’s an utterly irrelevant action sequence that turns up out of nowhere, simply on Vorg’s whim. The script is directly having one for the sake of it, because that’s what the show does, and acknowledging that. The Drashigs are there for a bit of entertainment value, monsters for the kiddies, and that’s how they’re described. The Doctor and Jo are basically trapped inside a television show, getting menaced by things at the right points because they need to be.
So ultimately, this episode is about nothing whatsoever – and yet it’s also tremendous fun.
#718 20 Jun 2008, 8:57 pm
Dorney
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Carnival of Monsters 3:
Watching this episode, it strikes me that this is the first - of about two, maybe three stories - that's got an organic structure.
Now, you might not understand what I mean by that so I'll try to explain. Before this story starts there is no plot. No story is going to happen, nobody is up to anything.
That a plot arrives is a natural and, yes, organic process simply from setting a few disparate groups of people in opposition and seeing what happens. The plot develops from the characters operating in a normal and straightforward way, and that causing other people to do something new, and it all following on in a chain. Kalik, for example, must be the only Doctor Who villain who only comes up with his evil scheme half way through the story. Up until that point he's a jerk, but he's not actually a villain. This is a story driven by developing the personalities, by the way the characters interact. A status quo that the Doctor upsets with his arrival.
The only other Who story I can think of that does something similar is Androzani - the Doctor and Peri operating as a catalyst for the pre-existing tensions within a political situation to explode. I have a sneaking feeling Ribos Operation has a similar aspect, but it's been a while since I've seen that. Maybe Mysterious Planet.
It is of course no coincidence that they're all by Robert Holmes. Regular readers (both of them) can possibly remember my frustration at how long it takes for the proper Robert Holmes to arrive. For all their conceptual invention, the Auton stories are dull, the less said about Space Pirates the better, although I do think the Krotons is undervalued. Well, he's here. Holmes is all about character. Detailed, quirky, utterly real, and identifiable characters. So naturally, plot's not going to be a major concern of his. That's not to say they have bad plots, obviously, they're impeccable. But that the plot is defined by the characters rather than the other way round.
There's a real sense in this episode of all the threads coming together. All the seperate elements of the story begin to impact on the others - and I'm not just meaning in the obvious ways with the Drashigs attacking the boat and Kalik's developing evil plan. But it's tying up little details - the Doctor needing rope from the boat, the dynamite from there damaging the scope and so on. The construction is beautiful. Pretty darn brilliant stuff.
#719 23 Jun 2008, 7:11 pm
The Secretive Bus
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The problem comes with the ending; I think you'll revise your opinion when you watch episode 4 again. Holmes sets up the characters and tensions etc beautifully, no doubts there, but because it takes so long for Kalik to come up with a plan the plan itself is a bit rubbish and is dealt with hurriedly. The same thing goes for The Time Warrior, which has wonderful characters but the plot goes back to Terror of the Autons territory with lots of set pieces designed to fill out 100 minutes, complete with a sudden ending that doesn't justify the length of the story.
Come to think of it, Holmes really wasn't much of a plotter. Everybody loves Pyramids and Talons but everybody also complains about the rushed endings. And The Deadly Assassin has a big plot point that comes out of nowhere halfway through part 4. The Caves of Androzani is, for me, the only totally accomplished work of his and part of that is due to the direction - witness The Ribos Operation which in structure is nearly identical to The Caves of Androzani (lots of existing tensions and figures with whom the Doctor and companion barely interact until part 2 and even then they have little to do with the moving story) but seems a bit boring because the direction is rubbish.
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#720 28 Jun 2008, 5:43 am
AlMiles
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That's a good point about "Ribos", and though it's a much-vaunted story (the superb design, great acting and... er, Prentis Hancock? ) I always felt the Seeker was naff (cliched old witch) and Unstoffe terribly mundane... perhaps it's just his haircut
Anyway, though I prefer "Ribos" to "Androzani" (the latter just being the usual 1980s Saward sadomasochism, IMO, despite Petey being greater than ever), surely the usual one that gets unfavourably compared to Androzani is "Power of Kroll" - for having much the same plot if nothing else... how do you think they compare, Bus? Must admit I haven't seen Kroll for years, I'm quite looking forward to seeing Abineri, Madoc and McCarthy, even though I know their talents are wasted in this.
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29 Jun 2008, 12:32 pm
The Secretive Bus
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The Power of Kroll gets compared to Androzani simply because there's a bit of gun-running in it. Otherwise in structure and themes it's a completely different story! Going by the "pre-existing tensions snapped by presence of Doctor" bit, the chaps at the refinery go off to shoot the gun runner off their own bat. The Doctor spends the rest of the time doing traditionally Doctorish things and saving the day multiple times. The Doctor of Androzani is merely trying to stay alive and doesn't directly contribute to anybody's downfall, nor does he achieve anything other than to save Peri and get back to the TARDIS in time to turn into Colin Baker. So there's no similarity between the stories at all.
Fair enough in Ribos the Doctor ends up killing the Graff but the other characters kill each other off. The Doctor spends the first two episodes not getting involved in anything and the second two running away from the baddies. It's also the Doctor that upsets things by his very presence, making everybody paranoid or suspicious and thereby ruining Garron's money making scam.
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#722 3 Jul 2008, 2:07 pm
Dorney
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Carnival of Monsters 4:
This most beautiful and elegant of stories comes to a beautiful and elegant finish.
It's odd to see how much plot is crammed into this episode, given the fairly light content of the previous three. Well, I say odd, but it's not really, is it? They've slightly run out of time. And they need to get through it. Yet, it never feels rushed, or crowded.
And indeed, it's somewhat unfair to suggest that there hasn't been much in the previous three. This is a fairly blatant slow burner of a story, with several disparate thread set up and left to trail before eventually being tied together. All of the set ups start to pay off, the repetition on the ship hits home, and so on. It's all dealt with in elegant simplicity.
For example, the resolution of the Kalik storyline. It's interesting to note that the DWM Pertwee special from years back pointed out that the Doctor doesn't get involved in this ('the main thrust of the storyline' it said) until episode three. Now that's wrong on several levels - the fact it's episode four pretty much being the least of them.
The fact is the Doctor doesn't even realise there's an evil villain in the story at all. As far as he's aware, the whole story is about him rescuing himself and Jo and saving the other inhabitants of the scope. He simply isn't aware that there's another plot. And that's why the swift resolution of said plot doesn't really matter.
Because it's a punchline. The Inter-Minorans are all cretins to a man, but in the grand comic tradition, one of them thinks he's a genius. The only difference is the script doesn't let us realise this until the last moment. One of my favourite jokes of this episode is the fact that Kalik spends a good two minutes explaining to Orum how they'll be perfectly safe from the Drashigs as they cause mayhem and destruction - then promptly gets killed pretty much instantly as their only victim. This is a low key story. Defeating a grand villain in a grand way in such a tale would be out of keeping and disappointing. Much fitter that he turns out to be a rubbish villain, who defeats himself, and has his entire scheme foiled by a supporting character.
The other problem with that DWM thing is that it's a sideshow, not the main thrust. The central thrust is the zoo/television metaphor that is the Scope. Kalik isn't the villain, not really, or at the very most a secondary one. Vorg is the villain. An unthinking, daft one, but the villain nonetheless. What he's doing is at least as bad as what Kalik fails to do... but the key difference is that crucially, when push comes to the shove, he decides to be brave, because he's a decent chap at heart.
And that's why this story is great - it's a genuinely lovely tale filled with wit and heart, where the villains are misguided and likeable rather than out and out bad (heck, even the subsiduary ones are more entertaining than evil). It's honest and true about humanity. Just because it's slight and small and not self important or 'worthy', doesn't mean it's not as good as more ostensibly serious scripts. Along with Inferno, the best story of the Pertwee era.
#723 4 Jul 2008, 2:12 am
Xipuloxx
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*Applause*
Thanks for that Dorney. Carnival is a great story IMO, and it just doesn't get anywhere near enough love. Largely, I think, because people keep expecting it to be something it's not. But it does what intends to do, and does it brilliantly.
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#724 4 Jul 2008, 12:12 pm
Dorney
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Xipuloxx
"But it does what intends to do, and does it brilliantly. "
You've just nailed precisely what I think a good script/story is. Ask yourself firstly what does this story want to do? Secondly, how well it achieves that.
Hefty drama isn't inherently better than comedy. It just keeps yelling at you that it's important.
#725 4 Jul 2008, 12:48 pm
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
"Hefty drama isn't inherently better than comedy. It just keeps yelling at you that it's important."
That's pretty much what I thought when I read The Daily Telegraph's new "Top Ten Who Stories" list:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main...o-episodes.xml
Androzani? Talons? Genesis?? Inferno??? Mainly the grim and heavy stories favoured by adolescent boys. One of the great things "Classic Who" does is mixing humour with the grimness.
"The Seeds of Doom", with astonishing direction by Douglas Camfield, has the perfect mix of sharp witticisms and suspense/mystery/horror. That easily beats "Talons".
"The Massacre" (interestingly, like "Blink", a "Doctor-lite" story) is perhaps the second-best Hartnell after the superlative and assured "The Aztecs", though I prefer the immaculate writing and performances of "The Crusade" or the devil-may-care abandon of the epic "Daleks' Master Plan" (both Camfield again - I'm spotting a pattern here).
Amusing that they mention "Inferno" as being a great example of Camfield's work - apart from the pre-filmed exteriors and one studio session, the rest was directed by Barry Letts after Camfield fell ill. Ever the hard taskmaster, Camfield (whose wife was in "Inferno") had to visit a cast member on "Seeds" who had also been hospitalised. Although his wife was all sympathy, Camfield himself just asked the actor when he would return to work!!
They need more humour in the list, and Troughton excels at the combination of laughs and thrills. "Power of the Daleks" is the ultimate Dalek story, but also the ultimate regeneration story. And you have to go a long way to beat "The Invasion" (guess what - Camfield again).
However, I love Carnival because it was the first Target book I ever got (it was a birthday present from my Nan) - took me ages to pick it up, but when I had, I became a real fan as opposed to just someone who watched the show.
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#726 4 Jul 2008, 4:31 pm
The Secretive Bus
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
"Carnival of Monsters 4:
This most beautiful and elegant of stories comes to a beautiful and elegant finish. "
Ah, well then. Colour me "wrong".
I do like the story a great deal, don't get me wrong, but it's very plotless and I prefer my stories to have a narrative thrust. That's what the Kalik plotline seems to be there for and the sudden ending after so many scenes of him plotting and scheming doesn't strike me as any sort of punchline, more a "Oh my God I've five minutes to end the story" convenience. Since Holmes' last story was Terror of the Autons and the next one is The Time Warrior (both of which end suddenly out of nowhere) I don't buy that Holmes suddenly became a master craftsman of plotting for one story.
It's a good collection of set pieces and the performances are wonderful but the lack of a real plot lets it down. Still, it's miles better to what comes next.
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#727 7 Jul 2008, 10:55 am
Richard2801
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AlMiles
"...Androzani? Talons? Genesis?? Inferno??? Mainly the grim and heavy stories favoured by adolescent boys. One of the great things "Classic Who" does is mixing humour with the grimness.
"The Seeds of Doom", with astonishing direction by Douglas Camfield, has the perfect mix of sharp witticisms and suspense/mystery/horror. That easily beats "Talons".
...However, I love Carnival because it was the first Target book I ever got (it was a birthday present from my Nan) - took me ages to pick it up, but when I had, I became a real fan as opposed to just someone who watched the show.
A splendid review of Carnival as ever, John, pulling out much of its greatness - it's an odd one for me, having loved it like AlMiles as a kid from the book (has there ever been a better bit of blurb than "The Doctor and Jo land on a cargo ship crossing the Indian Ocean in the year 1926... Or so they think"?), but feeling now that though it's very entertaining, there's something not quite right. Perhaps it's that the TV story always misses some of the little polishes from Terrance’s book for me (and Pertwee nicks most of Jo's best lines), while the book just doesn’t have enough sparkle on its own to be Terrance's best. So, in my head, there's a more satisfying fusion of both.
Pop fact: half-way through doing the special sound for this story, Brian Hodgson resigned to found his own studio, so Dick Mills took over from here until 1989 – which means that the Drashig cry, one of the most memorable sound effects for me, was down to both of them. It’s Brian’s original scream into the mike, with Dick’s treatment on it.
But back to AlMiles on the Torygraph (above). I agree very much with the thrust of your post, but it seems to me a natural consequence of devising a list of individual 'best stories' rather than a list of stories that represent what's best in the series. Two of my favourite seasons are 13 and 16, for example, but I wouldn't call either 'representative' on their own - one's too grim and violent to sum up the breadth of the series, the other too playful and funny (14's a better mix of both, but that's by-the-by). So unless you set out to make a list that deliberately ticks off stories for, say, horror, playfulness, wit, strangeness, big ideas, monsters, villains, action, dialogue, alien worlds, past, present and future - or whatever else you think good Doctor Who encompasses - it's almost inevitably going to have something missing.
The other problem with making a list of ingredients, of course, is that no fan's going to agree with any other fan on which stories have them. I was fascinated to see your attack on "the grim and heavy stories favoured by adolescent boys" being illustrated by The Talons of Weng-Chiang, and then calling The Seeds of Doom "the perfect mix of sharp witticisms and suspense/mystery/horror". For me, it's quite the opposite. There are some fabulous moments of humour in Seeds, but they're overwhelmed by the horror in what's probably the most violent, macho show in the series' history; Talons, on the other hand, never fails to crack me up, whether it's Greel's hysteria, Jago's bombast or Litefoot trying to eat like Leela. Even Caves is funnier for me than Seeds, with Morgus's blackly comic asides. So I'm not saying either of us is right or wrong; just that it shows the perils of saying 'this story is definitively such-and-such', and that you made me smile by picking as your perfect mix the very story I'd think of if asked to name a "grim and heavy" one "favoured by adolescent boys" that I'd still say was pretty good
(Alex, borrowing Richard)
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#728 7 Jul 2008, 6:51 pm
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard2801
"But back to AlMiles on the Torygraph (above). I agree very much with the thrust of your post, but it seems to me a natural consequence of devising a list of individual 'best stories' rather than a list of stories that represent what's best in the series. Two of my favourite seasons are 13 and 16, for example, but I wouldn't call either 'representative' on their own - one's too grim and violent to sum up the breadth of the series, the other too playful and funny (14's a better mix of both, but that's by-the-by). So unless you set out to make a list that deliberately ticks off stories for, say, horror, playfulness, wit, strangeness, big ideas, monsters, villains, action, dialogue, alien worlds, past, present and future - or whatever else you think good Doctor Who encompasses - it's almost inevitably going to have something missing."
The other problem with making a list of ingredients, of course, is that no fan's going to agree with any other fan on which stories have them. I was fascinated to see your attack on "the grim and heavy stories favoured by adolescent boys" being illustrated by The Talons of Weng-Chiang, and then calling The Seeds of Doom "the perfect mix of sharp witticisms and suspense/mystery/horror". For me, it's quite the opposite. There are some fabulous moments of humour in Seeds, but they're overwhelmed by the horror in what's probably the most violent, macho show in the series' history; Talons, on the other hand, never fails to crack me up, whether it's Greel's hysteria, Jago's bombast or Litefoot trying to eat like Leela. Even Caves is funnier for me than Seeds, with Morgus's blackly comic asides. So I'm not saying either of us is right or wrong; just that it shows the perils of saying 'this story is definitively such-and-such', and that you made me smile by picking as your perfect mix the very story I'd think of if asked to name a "grim and heavy" one "favoured by adolescent boys" that I'd still say was pretty good "
True, and a lot depends not only on my memories of a story (I haven't rewatched Talons for ages, but had just passed Seeds in my marathon 1963-2008 episode-by-episode rewatch) but on my mood. Sometimes I'm in a mood to reflect on Talons and all the (Robert) Holmesian humour, black as it may be, comes to the fore - the Doctor berating the policeman, Litefoot and Jago, "Trumpet Voluntary" into a bowl of goldfish etc... and other times the giant rat devouring people, "bent-face", Mr Sin and his knife, and the draining of innocent maidens predominates. Keeping both in mind at once is difficult. I agree that the grimness of Seeds is definitely there on screen, especially for those with a visual memory - the sly humour of most of the dialogue is more prevalent to those with a mainly auditory memory, so for me it only remains in mind when I've recently seen it - I soon forget dialogue, but never images.
And if I'm in a jolly mood when I put it on (as I usually am, because I know I'm in for a delicious treat) then I'm more attuned to pick up the humour. Watching Dr Who can be fascinating, and even if my faulty memory makes me think of Androzani as a morose gun-fest, I am sure when I actually watch it again Holmes's wicked humour will make a powerful impact on me. And hopefully Talons will be a perfect mix of humour and grimness for me when I reach it... perhaps I was too hasty in emphasising its dark side (though the tone of the Torygraph article indicates that humour isn't high on their list of points that recommend a story).
Interesting points you make about Carnival, especially the Hodgson/Mills crossover! I may not have a good auditory memory but I've been paying attention to the sound design on this rewatch/marathon. It's the series greatest technical strength and always worth concentrating on.
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Dorney
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Carnival of Monsters 1:
I’m going to start this one by declaring an interest. Carnival of Monsters is the first Doctor Who story I ever saw. Five Faces of Doctor Who repeats, 1981, BBC2. The cliffhanger to episode three leaps out in my memory very clearly (and unlike the third cliffhanger of the Three Doctors, I remember it correctly!).
So obviously I have a certain nostalgic fondness for this story. But putting that aside, trying to be objective… well, it’s still pretty much perfect, isn’t it?
Long time readers of my ramblings may recall that I’ve often suggested that Who fans tend to select what they think of as classics based on how ‘adult’ it feels (in order to reinforce their own comfort with an obsessive interest in what’s often regarded as a ‘children’s show’) and as a result are dismissive of anything that’s not obviously telling us how ‘serious’ it is all the time – say through lots of violence, a lack of humour, etc. To be fair, it’s not exactly limited to Who fans – theatre and cinema tend to praise the straight and the serious (the ‘worthy’) as better than the light and frivolous, as if that’s somehow a poorer relation, as if making someone smile has less artistic value than making them cry. See how the Oscars never go to impeccably made comedies or comic performances (I mean, Sean Penn’s wail-fest in Mystic River better than Bill Murray’s Lost in Translation subtlety, or Johnny Depp;s original tour-de-force performancein Pirates of the Caribbean? Get real). I always like to judge a story not by how worthy it is, but by how well it is made – what its intentions are and how well it succeeds in achieving those intentions.
Which is why I was annoyed by the furore when Carnival was announced as the second Pertwee DVD, over such obvious fan favourites as Sea Devils, or Green Death, or Inferno. As if it was bad. Because it just isn’t. It’s about as beautifully realised a piece of television as the Pertwee era ever managed. Those others have a sombre tone, but they’re nowhere near as impeccable. It’s tragic that people can’t appreciate a story this well written simply because it’s got a day-glo set and some jokes.
Look at this episode in particular. It’s about as good an opening as you can get. The initial hook is gorgeous, and entirely reliant on our status as a viewer – what on Earth connects these two strikingly different plot lines? The gaudiness of the alien world is a vital part of this, of course, as it offers a huge contrast to the naturalistic classic serial feel of the SS Bernice sequences, emphasising the differences and exacerbating our confusion.
But there’s more to it than that. The Inter Minor sequences in this episode are incredibly clever writing – for one specific reason I’ll get to in a moment. On the surface, they’re sparkling. The grey skinned inhabitants are beautifully and wittily written, a note perfect parody of bureaucracy, with their own distinctive speech patterns and behaviour. The Lurmans are equally swiftly drawn, recognisable types we understand. After four not especially exciting stories, this is Robert Holmes really becoming the writer we know – an avoidance of the bland clichés of science fiction, rewriting it all into something quirkier, more distinctive.
But the reason those scenes are so clever is not the deft characterisation and humour – it’s the fairly fundamental problem they avoid. In order to preserve the suspense it is vital that we don’t know what the Scope is, or what it does. Explain that and it becomes fairly obvious where the Doctor and Jo actually are. And the Inter Minor plot can’t really go anywhere until we know that. So the script has a difficult balancing act to pull off – it has to have the Inter Minor sequences (other wise there’s no mystery) but it also can’t really do anything with them (otherwise there’s no mystery). So, once again, we have an exercise in procrastination – but here we have a model example of how to do it, because you genuinely don’t notice. The time is filled with beautiful character work, world building, neat little touches of humour. Every scene has a clear purpose and drive to it. It always seems to be progresses. It’s gorgeous slight of hand.
Equally, the Doctor and Jo’s scenes are exactly how these stories need to work. Constantly moving, always with a purpose. The Doctor has his own sub hook for the story (his determination they’re not on Earth) and that drives his section of the script (which again is, by and large, about avoiding getting anywhere in the overall scheme, just a minor mystery to unravel). Notice how every scene is about something, going somewhere. All engaging, all involving. Nothing is there just to fill time.
About as dazzling an opening episode as you’re going to get. And whilst I may be biased, I’m also right.
#713 21 May 2008, 11:34 am
The Secretive Bus
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You got through the entire Three Doctors review without mentioning Hartnell once!
Everybody bangs on about the dandy and a clown line but for my money his finest line in the story, and indeed the last line Hartnell ever says in Doctor Who (so it's a fairly emotional moment too from that perspective, especially if he's your fave), is the "And considering the way things have been going... well I shudder to think what you'd do without me!"
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#714 21 May 2008, 4:25 pm
Dorney
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To be honest, there's not much to say about him in it, really, and most of what there is you've already covered (his appearance is a little depressing). You get the occassional blast of 1st Doctor there ('stop dilly dallying - and cross it'), and the respect accorded him by the others is a decent touch. It's bittersweet.
#715 23 May 2008, 8:25 pm
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Secretive Bus
"You got through the entire Three Doctors review without mentioning Hartnell once!"
Everybody bangs on about the dandy and a clown line but for my money his finest line in the story, and indeed the last line Hartnell ever says in Doctor Who (so it's a fairly emotional moment too from that perspective, especially if he's your fave), is the "And considering the way things have been going... well I shudder to think what you'd do without me!" "
A lovely line, and a far better swansong than "Stay warm!"
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#716 23 May 2008, 8:40 pm
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dacar92
"Hartnell never looked so old as he did in the 3 docs, for obvious reasons. So, where did the TL's take him out of time and space? Sometime during the 4th episode of Tenth Planet? "
Jon Preddle's "Timelink" posits that the 1st Doctor garden scenes (here, and in The Five Doctors) occur during the "missing four days" at the end of The War Machines (before he goes off with Ben and Polly. This fits quite well with the Doctor needing to recover from WOTAN's hypnotism attempt and perhaps spending time in the country at his friend Sir Charles Summer's residence. Dodo was also meant to be staying there, but had probably gone off to stay with relatives by then (or something)...
Of course, the garden could also be the one which John Lucarotti had the Doctor "semi-retired" to during his prologue/epilogue to "The Massacre" (Target novelisation).
In any case, due to low temporal energy, the garden scenes and the timescooping (of both One and Two, come to think of it) have to be near the end of their incarnations. The Doctor was severely aged by the Time Destructor in The Daleks' Master Plan, and also suffered a great drain of life energy in The Savages, so after those two stories seems likely. During Tenth Planet 3 or 4 (just before his recovery in 4) would fit except for the shots of him in a garden on the Time Lords' screen.
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#717 8 Jun 2008, 4:52 pm
Dorney
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Carnival of Monsters 2:
One thing you may or may not have noticed as a major predilection of mine in these reviews is the concept of padding. This strange notion Doctor Who fans have that unless a story is all plot, plot, plot, the material is ‘padding’.
You see, for me, there’s no such thing, well, not as such. You only have good writing, or bad writing. Every story has sequences that are used to fill in time, it isn’t all story. And that’s a good thing. Cos if it was just story, everything would seem shallow and bland. The meat of a script happens in the gaps between the plot bits. The bits where people are given personalities, lives, proper identities. Where the world is built. You write those bits badly, or not at all, that’s when you get what’s commonly regarded as ‘padding’. Write them well, and nobody notices. I promise you could name me any classic story you like, that you think doesn’t have an ounce of fat and I could find you something that really, really doesn’t need to be there.
Of course, sometimes this can create a problem. If you need to cut it down, the detail is the first bit you’re going to go for, because by definition it’s unnecessary. But it’s a temptation that has to be resisted, because it’s what gives the story life. As I write this, I’ve just finished watching the Silence in the Library two parter, and it has a specific element that’s a case in point – the fact that two characters share the name Dave is completely irrelevant to the plot. But without it, you have a slightly less interesting, real world. All of a sudden these characters are so much more human.
And this is important in regards to Carnival of Monsters because it gives you some important context. You see, if you are going to use the word ‘padding’, then Carnival is one of the most padded stories of all time.
Look at this episode. Nothing that even vaguely resembles plot happens. We get the expository sequences explaining the plot of the first episode, identifying what the Scope actually is… but then what? The Doctor and Jo spend the episode going for a bit of a wander trying to escape from wherever they are. On Inter Minor, lots of conversations go nowhere, and the characters distract themselves with little subplots that don’t really progress. The simple fact of the matter is that there really isn’t enough plot to sustain four episodes. The Doctor can’t escape for a while yet, the Inter Minorans are just filling in time til he can. If padding was inherently bad, this episode would be awful.
But it just isn’t, and that’s because the time is used well. It’s used for witty exploration of character for example. Everyone in this script feels so distinct, so full. OK, some of that is helped by the fact that they’re all pitched as broad stock figures to a degree, but they’re written with such charm this hardly matters. The touches of humour and quirkiness really aid this as well – one of the truisms of a script is that comedy helps. Give someone a couple of jokes, suddenly they comes across better. Because everyone likes someone who tells a few jokes, don’t they? Again, they stop being ‘characters’, they become ‘people’. There’s never a sense that anything as pointless as filling in time is going on. The time is being used. No matter how consequence-less a sequence is (the Eradicator being used on the Scope for example), they always feel like they’re scenes with direction and purpose.
And even then the script has the balls to comment on its own nature. Beautifully, there’s an utterly irrelevant action sequence that turns up out of nowhere, simply on Vorg’s whim. The script is directly having one for the sake of it, because that’s what the show does, and acknowledging that. The Drashigs are there for a bit of entertainment value, monsters for the kiddies, and that’s how they’re described. The Doctor and Jo are basically trapped inside a television show, getting menaced by things at the right points because they need to be.
So ultimately, this episode is about nothing whatsoever – and yet it’s also tremendous fun.
#718 20 Jun 2008, 8:57 pm
Dorney
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Carnival of Monsters 3:
Watching this episode, it strikes me that this is the first - of about two, maybe three stories - that's got an organic structure.
Now, you might not understand what I mean by that so I'll try to explain. Before this story starts there is no plot. No story is going to happen, nobody is up to anything.
That a plot arrives is a natural and, yes, organic process simply from setting a few disparate groups of people in opposition and seeing what happens. The plot develops from the characters operating in a normal and straightforward way, and that causing other people to do something new, and it all following on in a chain. Kalik, for example, must be the only Doctor Who villain who only comes up with his evil scheme half way through the story. Up until that point he's a jerk, but he's not actually a villain. This is a story driven by developing the personalities, by the way the characters interact. A status quo that the Doctor upsets with his arrival.
The only other Who story I can think of that does something similar is Androzani - the Doctor and Peri operating as a catalyst for the pre-existing tensions within a political situation to explode. I have a sneaking feeling Ribos Operation has a similar aspect, but it's been a while since I've seen that. Maybe Mysterious Planet.
It is of course no coincidence that they're all by Robert Holmes. Regular readers (both of them) can possibly remember my frustration at how long it takes for the proper Robert Holmes to arrive. For all their conceptual invention, the Auton stories are dull, the less said about Space Pirates the better, although I do think the Krotons is undervalued. Well, he's here. Holmes is all about character. Detailed, quirky, utterly real, and identifiable characters. So naturally, plot's not going to be a major concern of his. That's not to say they have bad plots, obviously, they're impeccable. But that the plot is defined by the characters rather than the other way round.
There's a real sense in this episode of all the threads coming together. All the seperate elements of the story begin to impact on the others - and I'm not just meaning in the obvious ways with the Drashigs attacking the boat and Kalik's developing evil plan. But it's tying up little details - the Doctor needing rope from the boat, the dynamite from there damaging the scope and so on. The construction is beautiful. Pretty darn brilliant stuff.
#719 23 Jun 2008, 7:11 pm
The Secretive Bus
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The problem comes with the ending; I think you'll revise your opinion when you watch episode 4 again. Holmes sets up the characters and tensions etc beautifully, no doubts there, but because it takes so long for Kalik to come up with a plan the plan itself is a bit rubbish and is dealt with hurriedly. The same thing goes for The Time Warrior, which has wonderful characters but the plot goes back to Terror of the Autons territory with lots of set pieces designed to fill out 100 minutes, complete with a sudden ending that doesn't justify the length of the story.
Come to think of it, Holmes really wasn't much of a plotter. Everybody loves Pyramids and Talons but everybody also complains about the rushed endings. And The Deadly Assassin has a big plot point that comes out of nowhere halfway through part 4. The Caves of Androzani is, for me, the only totally accomplished work of his and part of that is due to the direction - witness The Ribos Operation which in structure is nearly identical to The Caves of Androzani (lots of existing tensions and figures with whom the Doctor and companion barely interact until part 2 and even then they have little to do with the moving story) but seems a bit boring because the direction is rubbish.
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#720 28 Jun 2008, 5:43 am
AlMiles
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That's a good point about "Ribos", and though it's a much-vaunted story (the superb design, great acting and... er, Prentis Hancock? ) I always felt the Seeker was naff (cliched old witch) and Unstoffe terribly mundane... perhaps it's just his haircut
Anyway, though I prefer "Ribos" to "Androzani" (the latter just being the usual 1980s Saward sadomasochism, IMO, despite Petey being greater than ever), surely the usual one that gets unfavourably compared to Androzani is "Power of Kroll" - for having much the same plot if nothing else... how do you think they compare, Bus? Must admit I haven't seen Kroll for years, I'm quite looking forward to seeing Abineri, Madoc and McCarthy, even though I know their talents are wasted in this.
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29 Jun 2008, 12:32 pm
The Secretive Bus
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The Power of Kroll gets compared to Androzani simply because there's a bit of gun-running in it. Otherwise in structure and themes it's a completely different story! Going by the "pre-existing tensions snapped by presence of Doctor" bit, the chaps at the refinery go off to shoot the gun runner off their own bat. The Doctor spends the rest of the time doing traditionally Doctorish things and saving the day multiple times. The Doctor of Androzani is merely trying to stay alive and doesn't directly contribute to anybody's downfall, nor does he achieve anything other than to save Peri and get back to the TARDIS in time to turn into Colin Baker. So there's no similarity between the stories at all.
Fair enough in Ribos the Doctor ends up killing the Graff but the other characters kill each other off. The Doctor spends the first two episodes not getting involved in anything and the second two running away from the baddies. It's also the Doctor that upsets things by his very presence, making everybody paranoid or suspicious and thereby ruining Garron's money making scam.
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#722 3 Jul 2008, 2:07 pm
Dorney
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Carnival of Monsters 4:
This most beautiful and elegant of stories comes to a beautiful and elegant finish.
It's odd to see how much plot is crammed into this episode, given the fairly light content of the previous three. Well, I say odd, but it's not really, is it? They've slightly run out of time. And they need to get through it. Yet, it never feels rushed, or crowded.
And indeed, it's somewhat unfair to suggest that there hasn't been much in the previous three. This is a fairly blatant slow burner of a story, with several disparate thread set up and left to trail before eventually being tied together. All of the set ups start to pay off, the repetition on the ship hits home, and so on. It's all dealt with in elegant simplicity.
For example, the resolution of the Kalik storyline. It's interesting to note that the DWM Pertwee special from years back pointed out that the Doctor doesn't get involved in this ('the main thrust of the storyline' it said) until episode three. Now that's wrong on several levels - the fact it's episode four pretty much being the least of them.
The fact is the Doctor doesn't even realise there's an evil villain in the story at all. As far as he's aware, the whole story is about him rescuing himself and Jo and saving the other inhabitants of the scope. He simply isn't aware that there's another plot. And that's why the swift resolution of said plot doesn't really matter.
Because it's a punchline. The Inter-Minorans are all cretins to a man, but in the grand comic tradition, one of them thinks he's a genius. The only difference is the script doesn't let us realise this until the last moment. One of my favourite jokes of this episode is the fact that Kalik spends a good two minutes explaining to Orum how they'll be perfectly safe from the Drashigs as they cause mayhem and destruction - then promptly gets killed pretty much instantly as their only victim. This is a low key story. Defeating a grand villain in a grand way in such a tale would be out of keeping and disappointing. Much fitter that he turns out to be a rubbish villain, who defeats himself, and has his entire scheme foiled by a supporting character.
The other problem with that DWM thing is that it's a sideshow, not the main thrust. The central thrust is the zoo/television metaphor that is the Scope. Kalik isn't the villain, not really, or at the very most a secondary one. Vorg is the villain. An unthinking, daft one, but the villain nonetheless. What he's doing is at least as bad as what Kalik fails to do... but the key difference is that crucially, when push comes to the shove, he decides to be brave, because he's a decent chap at heart.
And that's why this story is great - it's a genuinely lovely tale filled with wit and heart, where the villains are misguided and likeable rather than out and out bad (heck, even the subsiduary ones are more entertaining than evil). It's honest and true about humanity. Just because it's slight and small and not self important or 'worthy', doesn't mean it's not as good as more ostensibly serious scripts. Along with Inferno, the best story of the Pertwee era.
#723 4 Jul 2008, 2:12 am
Xipuloxx
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*Applause*
Thanks for that Dorney. Carnival is a great story IMO, and it just doesn't get anywhere near enough love. Largely, I think, because people keep expecting it to be something it's not. But it does what intends to do, and does it brilliantly.
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#724 4 Jul 2008, 12:12 pm
Dorney
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Xipuloxx
"But it does what intends to do, and does it brilliantly. "
You've just nailed precisely what I think a good script/story is. Ask yourself firstly what does this story want to do? Secondly, how well it achieves that.
Hefty drama isn't inherently better than comedy. It just keeps yelling at you that it's important.
#725 4 Jul 2008, 12:48 pm
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
"Hefty drama isn't inherently better than comedy. It just keeps yelling at you that it's important."
That's pretty much what I thought when I read The Daily Telegraph's new "Top Ten Who Stories" list:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main...o-episodes.xml
Androzani? Talons? Genesis?? Inferno??? Mainly the grim and heavy stories favoured by adolescent boys. One of the great things "Classic Who" does is mixing humour with the grimness.
"The Seeds of Doom", with astonishing direction by Douglas Camfield, has the perfect mix of sharp witticisms and suspense/mystery/horror. That easily beats "Talons".
"The Massacre" (interestingly, like "Blink", a "Doctor-lite" story) is perhaps the second-best Hartnell after the superlative and assured "The Aztecs", though I prefer the immaculate writing and performances of "The Crusade" or the devil-may-care abandon of the epic "Daleks' Master Plan" (both Camfield again - I'm spotting a pattern here).
Amusing that they mention "Inferno" as being a great example of Camfield's work - apart from the pre-filmed exteriors and one studio session, the rest was directed by Barry Letts after Camfield fell ill. Ever the hard taskmaster, Camfield (whose wife was in "Inferno") had to visit a cast member on "Seeds" who had also been hospitalised. Although his wife was all sympathy, Camfield himself just asked the actor when he would return to work!!
They need more humour in the list, and Troughton excels at the combination of laughs and thrills. "Power of the Daleks" is the ultimate Dalek story, but also the ultimate regeneration story. And you have to go a long way to beat "The Invasion" (guess what - Camfield again).
However, I love Carnival because it was the first Target book I ever got (it was a birthday present from my Nan) - took me ages to pick it up, but when I had, I became a real fan as opposed to just someone who watched the show.
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#726 4 Jul 2008, 4:31 pm
The Secretive Bus
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorney
"Carnival of Monsters 4:
This most beautiful and elegant of stories comes to a beautiful and elegant finish. "
Ah, well then. Colour me "wrong".
I do like the story a great deal, don't get me wrong, but it's very plotless and I prefer my stories to have a narrative thrust. That's what the Kalik plotline seems to be there for and the sudden ending after so many scenes of him plotting and scheming doesn't strike me as any sort of punchline, more a "Oh my God I've five minutes to end the story" convenience. Since Holmes' last story was Terror of the Autons and the next one is The Time Warrior (both of which end suddenly out of nowhere) I don't buy that Holmes suddenly became a master craftsman of plotting for one story.
It's a good collection of set pieces and the performances are wonderful but the lack of a real plot lets it down. Still, it's miles better to what comes next.
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#727 7 Jul 2008, 10:55 am
Richard2801
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AlMiles
"...Androzani? Talons? Genesis?? Inferno??? Mainly the grim and heavy stories favoured by adolescent boys. One of the great things "Classic Who" does is mixing humour with the grimness.
"The Seeds of Doom", with astonishing direction by Douglas Camfield, has the perfect mix of sharp witticisms and suspense/mystery/horror. That easily beats "Talons".
...However, I love Carnival because it was the first Target book I ever got (it was a birthday present from my Nan) - took me ages to pick it up, but when I had, I became a real fan as opposed to just someone who watched the show.
A splendid review of Carnival as ever, John, pulling out much of its greatness - it's an odd one for me, having loved it like AlMiles as a kid from the book (has there ever been a better bit of blurb than "The Doctor and Jo land on a cargo ship crossing the Indian Ocean in the year 1926... Or so they think"?), but feeling now that though it's very entertaining, there's something not quite right. Perhaps it's that the TV story always misses some of the little polishes from Terrance’s book for me (and Pertwee nicks most of Jo's best lines), while the book just doesn’t have enough sparkle on its own to be Terrance's best. So, in my head, there's a more satisfying fusion of both.
Pop fact: half-way through doing the special sound for this story, Brian Hodgson resigned to found his own studio, so Dick Mills took over from here until 1989 – which means that the Drashig cry, one of the most memorable sound effects for me, was down to both of them. It’s Brian’s original scream into the mike, with Dick’s treatment on it.
But back to AlMiles on the Torygraph (above). I agree very much with the thrust of your post, but it seems to me a natural consequence of devising a list of individual 'best stories' rather than a list of stories that represent what's best in the series. Two of my favourite seasons are 13 and 16, for example, but I wouldn't call either 'representative' on their own - one's too grim and violent to sum up the breadth of the series, the other too playful and funny (14's a better mix of both, but that's by-the-by). So unless you set out to make a list that deliberately ticks off stories for, say, horror, playfulness, wit, strangeness, big ideas, monsters, villains, action, dialogue, alien worlds, past, present and future - or whatever else you think good Doctor Who encompasses - it's almost inevitably going to have something missing.
The other problem with making a list of ingredients, of course, is that no fan's going to agree with any other fan on which stories have them. I was fascinated to see your attack on "the grim and heavy stories favoured by adolescent boys" being illustrated by The Talons of Weng-Chiang, and then calling The Seeds of Doom "the perfect mix of sharp witticisms and suspense/mystery/horror". For me, it's quite the opposite. There are some fabulous moments of humour in Seeds, but they're overwhelmed by the horror in what's probably the most violent, macho show in the series' history; Talons, on the other hand, never fails to crack me up, whether it's Greel's hysteria, Jago's bombast or Litefoot trying to eat like Leela. Even Caves is funnier for me than Seeds, with Morgus's blackly comic asides. So I'm not saying either of us is right or wrong; just that it shows the perils of saying 'this story is definitively such-and-such', and that you made me smile by picking as your perfect mix the very story I'd think of if asked to name a "grim and heavy" one "favoured by adolescent boys" that I'd still say was pretty good
(Alex, borrowing Richard)
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#728 7 Jul 2008, 6:51 pm
AlMiles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard2801
"But back to AlMiles on the Torygraph (above). I agree very much with the thrust of your post, but it seems to me a natural consequence of devising a list of individual 'best stories' rather than a list of stories that represent what's best in the series. Two of my favourite seasons are 13 and 16, for example, but I wouldn't call either 'representative' on their own - one's too grim and violent to sum up the breadth of the series, the other too playful and funny (14's a better mix of both, but that's by-the-by). So unless you set out to make a list that deliberately ticks off stories for, say, horror, playfulness, wit, strangeness, big ideas, monsters, villains, action, dialogue, alien worlds, past, present and future - or whatever else you think good Doctor Who encompasses - it's almost inevitably going to have something missing."
The other problem with making a list of ingredients, of course, is that no fan's going to agree with any other fan on which stories have them. I was fascinated to see your attack on "the grim and heavy stories favoured by adolescent boys" being illustrated by The Talons of Weng-Chiang, and then calling The Seeds of Doom "the perfect mix of sharp witticisms and suspense/mystery/horror". For me, it's quite the opposite. There are some fabulous moments of humour in Seeds, but they're overwhelmed by the horror in what's probably the most violent, macho show in the series' history; Talons, on the other hand, never fails to crack me up, whether it's Greel's hysteria, Jago's bombast or Litefoot trying to eat like Leela. Even Caves is funnier for me than Seeds, with Morgus's blackly comic asides. So I'm not saying either of us is right or wrong; just that it shows the perils of saying 'this story is definitively such-and-such', and that you made me smile by picking as your perfect mix the very story I'd think of if asked to name a "grim and heavy" one "favoured by adolescent boys" that I'd still say was pretty good "
True, and a lot depends not only on my memories of a story (I haven't rewatched Talons for ages, but had just passed Seeds in my marathon 1963-2008 episode-by-episode rewatch) but on my mood. Sometimes I'm in a mood to reflect on Talons and all the (Robert) Holmesian humour, black as it may be, comes to the fore - the Doctor berating the policeman, Litefoot and Jago, "Trumpet Voluntary" into a bowl of goldfish etc... and other times the giant rat devouring people, "bent-face", Mr Sin and his knife, and the draining of innocent maidens predominates. Keeping both in mind at once is difficult. I agree that the grimness of Seeds is definitely there on screen, especially for those with a visual memory - the sly humour of most of the dialogue is more prevalent to those with a mainly auditory memory, so for me it only remains in mind when I've recently seen it - I soon forget dialogue, but never images.
And if I'm in a jolly mood when I put it on (as I usually am, because I know I'm in for a delicious treat) then I'm more attuned to pick up the humour. Watching Dr Who can be fascinating, and even if my faulty memory makes me think of Androzani as a morose gun-fest, I am sure when I actually watch it again Holmes's wicked humour will make a powerful impact on me. And hopefully Talons will be a perfect mix of humour and grimness for me when I reach it... perhaps I was too hasty in emphasising its dark side (though the tone of the Torygraph article indicates that humour isn't high on their list of points that recommend a story).
Interesting points you make about Carnival, especially the Hodgson/Mills crossover! I may not have a good auditory memory but I've been paying attention to the sound design on this rewatch/marathon. It's the series greatest technical strength and always worth concentrating on.
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