Doctor Who - Silver Nemesis (1988)

Finding myself discussing 1980s Doctor Who recently I decided I just had to watch some last night. So I dragged out Silver Nemesis, from 1988.

I know it’s an episode that has a fairly dire reputation, but I’ve found that some of the most reviled Seventh Doctor stories are the ones I enjoy most (like Paradise Towers and The Happiness Patrol). And while most of the criticisms of Silver Nemesis are valid (the plot is overly complicated, the various plot strands don’t quite come together, and the cybermen are absurdly vulnerable) it was still rollicking good fun.

When you have a female 17th century black magician, an ageing Nazi trying to usher in the Fourth Reich with the aid of alien technology, a setting that jumps back and forth between 17th century England and 1980s England, some bizarre and horrendously destructive piece of Gallifreyan technology that the Doctor may well have been responsible  for unleashing, some intriguing hints about the Doctor’s dark and mysterious past and secrets about himself he would prefer not to have revealed, plus you have Ace getting to blow stuff up, how can you not have fun?

It also has a fine supporting cast, with the standout performance being by veteran actor Anton Diffring as a crazed Nazi with a Wagner fixation. Fiona Walker is also excellent as the equally crazed Lady Peinforte, the 17th century dabbler in black magic and time travel with her own plans for world domination.

I was always quite fond of Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor, although nowadays I find Ace to be just a little bit tiresome.

Maybe there are just too many interesting ideas thrown together, but perhaps the biggest problem is that it’s only a three-parter. Usually the major problem with classic Doctor Who is an excess of padding, but this is a rare case of a story that might have benefitted from an extra episode. I still thought it was great fun.

Doctor Who - The Krotons (1968)

The Krotons was the fourth serial in season six of Doctor Who and originally aired in late 1968 and early 1969. This four-parter is one of the few Second Doctor serials to survive in its entirety. It illustrates some of the strengths and weaknesses of the series at that time.

This was the first Doctor Who story penned by Robert Holmes who would go on to write much better stories for the series.

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive in an unnamed planet inhabited by a humanoid race called the Gonds. The Gonds are not however the rulers of the planet. They are held in absolute subjection by the Krotons although no-one has ever seen a Kroton. The Krotons are assumed to live inside “the machine” and issue their instructions via a disembodied electronic voice or in writing. The Gonds are only allowed to learn what the Krotons teach them through their “teaching machines” in the Hall of Learning. Periodically the two most promising Gond students are selected to serve as companions to the Krotons. They disappear through a door and are never seen again. As we will later learn they are drained of their mental energies and then destroyed.

The arrival of the Doctor and his party precipitates a crisis. The Doctor and Zoe have much greater mental capacities than any of the Gonds and the Krotons intend to use their mental energies to achieve something they have been trying to achieve for a thousand years, but the Krotons are about to face a serious challenge to their rule.

It’s not a great story but it’s perfectly adequate. It’s the execution that is the problem. The sets are uninteresting and the costumes are dull although Zoe’s costume (apparently made from plastic-coated paper) is quite startling and rather appealing.

The Krotons must be among the most embarrassingly silly monsters in the whole history of Doctor Who. In the audio commentary Bobi Bartlett, who was responsible for the costumes, makes the valid point that the design of the Krotons should have been treated as a special effect rather than being left to the costume department. I’m sure she did her best on the pitiful BBC budget but the Krotons just don’t work at all. Even a small child would be more likely to react to them with laughter than with terror. Doctor Who was never given anywhere near the budget a science fiction series required. Most of the time the budgetary constraints are overcome by the sheer imagination and ingenuity of the technical staff but there were serials that did suffer very badly from the inadequate funding and this is one of them.

The acting is fine. Philip Madoc, who would go on to feature in many Doctor Who adventures, is the standout as the ambitious and unscrupulous Eelek. Madoc steals every scene he’s in, as he always did.

I have mixed feelings about Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor. I appreciate the fact that he was trying to make his interpretation of the role as different as possible from William Hartnell’s and I think that was a sound idea. Hartnell’s First Doctor was crotchety and rather arrogant so Troughton makes his Doctor whimsical, amiable and at times not entirely sure of himself. That’s all fine and good but for my tastes he overdoes the whimsicality just a little. I also feel the the Second Doctor is not quite alien enough compared to the First Doctor. The Doctor is not human and while he’s generally well disposed towards humans he is not one of us and he has his own agendas. This aspect of the Doctor’s character seems to me to be under-emphasised by Troughton.

Jamie (Frazer Hines) is always fun and he gets a pretty reasonable fight scene in the opening episode of The Krotons. While the Doctor generally prefers to avoid violence, and in particular avoids engaging in violence himself, he was never a pacifist and Jamie’s fight is a good example of the Doctor’s philosophy towards violence. He is quite prepared to let others resort to violence when its necessary. In this serial the Doctor is also quite prepared to encourage the Gonds in violent resistance to the Krotons. 

Brian Hodgson's sound design (which takes the place of conventional incidental music) is a highlight.

As usual the BBC’s DVD presentation is excellent with a worthwhile audio commentary and some good documentary features.

The Krotons is by no means a complete failure and it’s better than its dubious reputation might suggest. All it needed was a bit more money to make the Krotons convincing and a bit more inspiration from the set designer. There are some amusing dialogue exchanges between the Doctor and Zoe, some reasonable ideas and there’s Philip Madoc in fine form, all of which are enough to make it worth a look.

Doctor Who - The Ark (1966)

The Ark was the sixth serial in season three of Doctor Who and was originally transmitted in March 1966. The script was by Paul Erickson and Lesley Scott. It’s a rather ambitious story although it has its problems.

The Doctor along with his companions Steven and Dodo arrive on what they believe to be the Earth. They are in a jungle and while the animals are clearly Earth animals they come from all parts of the globe. This leads Dodo to assume they have landed in Whipsnade Zoo. But if they are in a zoo, why does the ground vibrate? They soon find out that they are of course in a spaceship.

Equally importantly, they appear to have travelled a very long way into the future. The Sun is about to explode and destroy the Earth. The entire human population (and apparently the whole animal population as well) are on board the ship, reduced to micro-cells. There are however quite a number of living humans, known as the Guardians. Also on board the ship are the members of a race known as the Monoids. The Monoids seem to function as servants although they also appear to be treated well.

The arrival of the Doctor and his companions has potentially disastrous and tragic consequences. Dodo has a cold. Pretty soon several of the Guardians have caught her cold. This is a problem since these future humans have no resistance to ancient diseases and their medical knowledge is rather rudimentary given the fact that most diseases were eliminated millions of years earlier. The Guardians are frightened and dismayed by this strange malady and react in a rather unfortunate manner, putting the Doctor, Steven and Dodo on trial. This is not the wisest course of action since the Doctor is the only person who might possibly be able to treat the disease. 

This serial changes course dramatically at the end of the second episode (with a very clever and very effective end-of-episode cliffhanger). This is one of the rare occasions on which Doctor Who writers really took full advantage of the Doctor’s ability to travel in time. To say anything more would involve spoilers and it’s a clever enough idea that it would be a great pity to spoil it.

The relationship between the humans and the Monoids turns out to be not quite as it originally seemed. And the fate of humanity hangs in the balance.

This serial features two alien races. The Monoids are not a bad concept and the idea of a single eye where you would expect to see a mouth is not a bad one. On the whole though the Monoids are not really very effectively rendered. The shaggy wigs are very unfortunate and the shambling gait also tends to make them dangerously close to being comical. The Refusians are much more unconventional and they work fairly well.

The sets are quite impressive and the jungle looks rather good - it’s inhabited by a number of real animals including an elephant! The costumes of the Guardians are a bit iffy - apart from looking a bit silly they’re also rather revealing.

This is an example of Doctor Who’s ambitions outrunning its budget but generally speaking it works reasonably well. And you have to admire the production team’s willingness to be so ambitious.

This is the first serial I’ve seen featuring Steven and Dodo and as companions go they manage to be fairly personable and not actively irritating. 

The years were starting to catch up with William Hartnell and he was starting to display a worrying propensity for fluffing his lines but he was a fine actor and he doesn’t allow this to have an adverse effect on his performance. Hartnell made a huge contribution to the early success of the series by taking the role seriously and by avoiding the temptation to make the Doctor simply a loveable dotty old man. His First Doctor is prickly and has quite an ego but he is also keenly aware that his ability to travel through space and time involves heavy responsibilities. If he makes a mistake, such as bringing a deadly virus to an isolated population as he unwittingly does in this serial, the consequences can be catastrophic. So it’s not surprising that he’s sometimes rather cantankerous.

The extras accompanying the BBC’s DVD presentation include a mini-documentary arguing for the influence of H.G. Wells on The Ark. Certainly the relationship between the humans and the Monoids is rather Wellsian, Wells being fond of inserting his somewhat half-baked political ideas into his fiction. 

The Ark has some good ideas, an ambitious story and a willingness to use the time travel angle boldly. The uneven quality of the makeup and the effects are minor quibbles. 

This is a First Doctor serial that has not only survived in its entirety but in fairly good condition as well.

On the whole this is a pretty satisfying Doctor Who adventure. Recommended.

Doctor Who - The Curse of Peladon (1972)

The Curse of Peladon went to air in early 1972 as the second story of season nine of Doctor Who. By this time the Doctor is no longer confined to Earth and he’s just taken the Tardis for a test spin. And gets caught up in some delicate diplomatic negotiations on the planet Peladon.

This somewhat backward planet has applied for membership of a galactic federation. The Doctor rather unexpectedly finds himself acting as the delegate from Earth. With Jo Grant being passed off as a royal observer, Princess Josephine of Tardis.

Among the other delegates are some old foes of the Doctor, the Ice Warriors. But the Ice Warriors have a major surprise in store for the Doctor.

The young and inexperienced king of Peladon (played by David Troughton) is anxious that his planet’s application for membership should be accepted but he faces fierce opposition from his High Priest Hepesh (Geoffrey Toone). Another major obstacle is the past - Peladon is still a society ruled by ritual and superstition. One of the chief superstitions is the belief in the Curse of Peladon, a belief that the legendary Aggedor (a kind of monstrous god) will return to take vengeance on anyone who defies the planet’s traditions.

It soon becomes obvious that there’s dirty work afoot and that someone intends that the meeting of the representatives of the members of the galactic federation should end in failure.

An unusual feature of this serial is that the Doctor gets a fight scene. And not just a fight scene, but a fight to the death with some rather nasty-looking edged weapons. It’s odd to see the Doctor, so often the champion of non-violence, indulging in some pretty enthusiastic violence but then the Third Doctor was never quite so wedded to the non-violence doctrine as some of the other incarnations of the Doctor.

The opening episode shows Jo Grant being quite quick-witted, handling her audience in the throne room rather adroitly. Jo in fact is given plenty to do and she also gets the opportunity to demonstrate considerable physical courage in confronting a monster single-handedly. 

This story features several alien races and a monster. The monster is not quite scary enough. The aliens are more successful. One thing Doctor who has to be given credit for is tying to create genuinely non-human aliens. The delegate from Alpha Centauri, a hermaphrodite hexapod, is a brave attempt that doesn’t quite come off. The delegate from Acturus on the other hand is something of a triumph - a very alien alien indeed. 

The costumes are generally fairly impressive. An interesting point made on the commentary track is that at this stage the Doctor, although he has a very definite fashion look, does not wear exactly the same outfit all the time. In later years the Doctor’s clothes would become a sort of uniform, remaining identical from story to story, which makes it slightly more difficult to take the Doctor seriously as a real person rather than a comic book-type hero.

In general the approach of producer Barry Letts and story editor Terrance Dicks was fairly serious. The tried to make the show the way you would make any ordinary drama series, rather than in the style of a children’s science fiction series. This was a very deliberate decision and it was a correct one. And a very successful one - the early 70s would see Doctor Who’s popularity skyrocketing. 

There are some impressive sets and some very fine model work - the shots of the Tardis plunging off the cliff face are exceptionally well done. This serial is also notable for the subdued lighting, in pleasing contrast to the flat overlit look so common in television of its era.

The performances of the guest stars are effective with David Troughton being very good as the young king of Peladon. Geoffrey Toone makes Hepesh a rather compelling character and certainly far more than just a conventional villain.

As always with the BBC’s Doctor Who DVDs the audio commentaries are a highlight, with producer Barry Letts, story editor Terrance Dicks and star Katy Manning all contributing a good mix of information and amusing anecdotes.

Attempts have been made to see this episode as a commentary on political events of the time such as the UK’s decision to join the Common Market. Some over-enthusiastic fans have even seen the Time Lords as representing the CIA! On the audio commentary both Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks pour scorn on such interpretations, pointing out the dangerous tendency of critics and fans to over-interpret and to find meanings that were never intended.

The Curse of Peladon is on the whole a successful story and thoroughly enjoyable Doctor Who adventure. Recommended.

Doctor Who - Enlightenment (1983)

Enlightenment was the third serial in the Guardian trilogy which formed a major part of the twentieth (1983) season of Doctor Who. The trilogy had begun with the excellent Mawdryn Undead and continued with the reasonably good Terminus.

By his time the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) was down to just two companions, Tegan and Turlough.

Enlightenment was writer Barbara Clegg’s only Doctor Who script which is rather a pity since it combines some interesting science fictional ideas with an oddly moving storyline.

The Doctor has received a rather garbled message from the White Guardian. All he knows is that he has to stop someone from winning a race. The Tardis arrives on board an Edwardian racing yacht. The atmosphere on board is subtly disconcerting. None of the crew members can remember coming aboard. The officers are scrupulously polite but seem rather distant and emotionless. The First Mate takes quite a shine to Tegan but his attentions towards her are slightly disturbing. It’s not so much that he doesn’t seem to know how to communicate with a woman - it’s more that he seems unsure how to communicate with a human being. He just doesn’t seem to comprehend emotions.

Pretty soon things become much stranger. The yacht is not a sailing ship - it’s a spaceship. It’s engaged in a race with other spaceships, all of which have the appearance of sailing ships but from a bewildering variety of different time periods. Although they are spaceships they behave like sailing ships. The crews are sent aloft to set the sails. 

This story introduces the Eternals, one of the more interesting alien races in Doctor Who. They normally exist outside of time but the only way they can tolerate the boredom of eternity is by seeking diversion. The only way they can find diversion is by making use of mortals whom they refer to as Ephemerals. In fact the only way they can experience any kind of emotion or excitement or mental stimulation is by raiding the minds of Ephemerals and emotion, excitement and mental stimulation are things they crave with a kind of desperation. The Eternals are not really evil, just entirely amoral. And while they’re frightening and cruel in some ways in other ways they’re more to be pitied. They’re a splendid idea and Enlightenment explores that idea with intelligence and subtlety.

This serial’s other great strength is the concept of sailing ships in space. It’s a concept that has been used before (and since) but it’s never been handled quite as cleverly as this.

This serial is also notable for its visual style. Instead of the uniform overlit very flat style that is so familiar in TV programs of its era Enlightenment is full of shadows and low-key lighting. Director Fiona Cumming was anxious to shoot it this way and to her surprise and delight she found that Fred Wright, the man in charge of the studio lighting, was happy to experiment with moody low-key lighting approaches. Apart from being wonderfully atmospheric and considerable enhancing the story it also gives this serial a rather modern look.

Designer Colin Green helped out with some very good set designs. The costumes are great fun as well with the pressure suits being delightfully bizarre. Janet Fielding was also given the opportunity to look rather stunning in an Edwardian evening gown although her dress caused a certain amount of controversy by being excessively “provocative” - and considering the truly stupendous amount of cleavage she’s displaying that’s not entirely surprising. It does at least give us the chance to see a remarkably sexy and very feminine Tegan.

The support cast is mostly very strong, with Keith Barron being particularly good as the icily courteous but slightly creepy captain of of the yacht and Christopher Brown being even more disturbing as First Mate Marriner. Lynda Baron perhaps goes too far over-the-top as the captain of The Buccaneer.

Mark Strickson as Turlough gets to do a bit of actual acting while Janet Fielding as Tegan underplays her performance nicely. This is one serial in which Tegan comes across as a very sympathetic and rather likeable character. Peter Davison is as solid as ever.

Enlightenment is included in the Guardian Trilogy DVD boxed set and the BBC really went to town with the extras on this release. Apart from some good featurettes and an excellent audio commentary by Peter Davison, Mark Strickson, director Fiona Cumming and writer Barbara Clegg we also get (on a second disc) a completely re-edited feature film-length version of Enlightenment with new CGI special effects. 

Unfortunately this new version has been matted to make it appear widescreen and the results are very similar to the horrific results we used to see with pan-and-scanned widescreen movies. The framing in many scenes is terribly wrong, sometimes ludicrously so, with the Doctor’s head totally lopped off in one scene. The CGI effects do look very good. I personally dislike CGI because it always looks so fake but in a Doctor Who story about sailing ships in space it isn’t a major problem. The re-editing does remove some of the obvious padding but it also tends to dissipate the effect of the episode cliff-hangers.

The idea of trying to re-edit an 80s Doctor Who serial to appeal to modern audiences is not however an entirely bad idea (although not to my personal taste) and the result is certainly infinitely superior to any of the episodes of the horrible 21st century Doctor Who series.

The original four-part Enlightenment serial is well-written, well-made, well-acted and visually pleasing and includes some excellent ideas. An impressive example of 1980s Doctor Who at its best. Highly recommended.

Doctor Who - Terminus

My dislike for the new Doctor Who has been so intense that for some time it has even turned me off watching the old episodes, which I used to love. I’ve finally managed to get over that (although I still detest the new series just as much). So recently I watched Terminus, the second of the so-called Black Guardian trilogy, a Fifth Doctor serial from 1983.

This is not a very highly regarded episode but it has its virtues. Its biggest problem is the problem that afflicted the series for most of Peter Davison’s run as The Doctor - too many companions. As Davison points out on the commentary track, apart from the difficulties of trying to find something for each of the companions to do the worst aspect of this was that it allowed little scope for the characters of any of his companions to be developed in any depth, and as Davison notes the saddest part of this was that Nyssa was potentially a very promising character but her potential was never developed.

The story itself has a good deal of scientific silliness (always a plus in my book) and some good ideas. Terminus is a gigantic space structure that is used as a hospital for lepers. Only it seems that this is a hospital from which no patients ever return.

Writer Steve Gallagher threw a good deal of Norse mythology into this one, with mixed but interesting results. 

Turlough is still supposed to be trying to kill The Doctor but in fact he does nothing whatever of any consequence in the entire four-part serial. Tegan has even less to do. Nyssa on the other hand does actually get to do some important things and she does finally get (ironically much too late) to show some character development.

This one boasts some fairly impressive sets and some remarkably silly costumes. The Doctor and his horde of companions encounter a couple of space pirates who look like something out of an old Buck Rogers serial but with 80s hairdos. The costumes of the guards on Terminus apparently proved to be wildly impractical but they actually look rather cool. That’s also a big guy in a costume that makes him look like a huge friendly dog, much to Steve Gallagher’s disgust since his original conception of this key character was very different and would have been a lot creepier.

This is notorious as the “Nyssa drops her skirt episode” although no-one has ever satisfactorily explained why she does so. Certainly neither Sarah Sutton nor writer Gallagher had any idea why she was asked to do this. In fact it’s just one of a series of scenes in which Nyssa appears in some startlingly suggestive poses.

Terminus had a disastrous production history and director Mary Ridge, who hated the idea of doing science fiction anyway, seems to have lost control badly. The episode has a lot of pacing problems, even by the standards of 80s Doctor Who.

Despite all this the good ideas are enough to keep things reasonably interesting and Terminus really isn’t all that bad. Visually it’s actually remarkably good bearing in mind the horrendous budgetary constraints the show was made under. And it does have some pretty effective horror moments.

The commentary track gives Peter Davison the opportunity to vent many of the frustrations he felt about doing the series. It’s clear that he loved the series but was saddened by the fact that episodes like Terminus had the potential to be a lot better than they turned out. He actually makes some pretty good points and it’s one of the more interesting of the Doctor Who commentary tracks.