Still no updates sorry

Err, yes. Somehow haven't found time since move to New Zealand to add any updates, but sometime soon... sometime...

"So where's the rest gone?"

...I hear you cry! Yes, I know I haven't updated this recently - I found I was spending so much time writing about the stories I was cutting great chunks out of the available time I had to actually watch them in...! Figuring that it was silly to watch 100 minutes and then take another 20 or 25 (a whole extra episode's worth) to blog my review, I decided to let things slide here for a bit and concentrate on actually watching the episodes. More reviews will be coming soon, or as soon as I can find time to type them up around moving to New Zealand in sixteen days' time!!

By the way, I'm proud to report that I made it - my 'Survival' bid was a success, reaching that very story in the early hours of Christmas Eve following a heroic effort that involved watching everything from 'The Trial of a Time Lord' onwards in a single gargantuan session broken only by an inadvertent catnap on the sofa during 'The Curse of Fenric'. Finishing 'Survival' at 6:45am on December 24th, I promptly went on to watch the 8th Doctor movie before discovering that I couldn't find tapes or the DVDs of the new series anywhere; deciding that I'd completed my mission within the original spirit of the quest, I went home for Christmas and promptly missed 'The Christmas Invasion' while in London due to my family eating our festive dinner in the evening. Got back to parents' in south Wales after a few days in Norfolk to find that video had failed to record, so missed out again! Now back in Aber, have just started watching the 2005 series again (two episodes so far) courtesy of Tony's DVD and will watch the 10th Doctor's debut after this!

'Terror of the Zygons'

TERROR OF THE ZYGONS
4 episodes

Marvellous - a strong return to form after the disappointing end to the last series. Once the initial novelty of Tom Baker in a tam o'shanter has worn off, the atmosphere of the Scottish setting is maintained through some great scenery, interesting locals, neat touches (the stag's head bugging device is cool) and wonderful incidental music. Ian Marter shines in his last regular appearance as Harry, turning in a surprisingly intense performance as Sullivan's Zygon double, with the shot of him half-hidden in the barn, one eye staring menacingly up into the camera as he stalks Sarah being particularly memorable. Lis Sladen is as good as usual, showing again here how well she does 'frightened', and the character is as curious and resourceful as ever when exploring the Duke of Forgill's castle. John Woodnutt turns in an excellent triple performance as (briefly) the Duke, the Duke's impersonation by the Zygon Broton, and Broton in his true form. The latter seems to have put some thought into the idea of conquering the Earth, and remains unflappable even in the face of the Doctor's matchless jibe (brilliantly poking fun at the series' own limitations) "Isn't it a bit large for just about the six of you?" - surely one of Doctor Who's greatest ever lines... Even evoking momentary sympathy when he points out that his race can never go home, Broton's death seems almost tawdry as he is shot down by the Brigadier - who at long last has his wish fulfilled to meet an alien menace that isn't impervious to bullets! In UNIT's last proper appearance, Lethbridge-Stewart gets to reclaim a good deal of his old authority, and is as ever backed up capably by Benton; the latter's "Why are you whispering?" exchange with the Doctor after he rescues him and Sarah from the decompression chamber is lovely, as is the Doctor's inducement of a trance in his companion and himself to protect them from its effects.

The design wotk is excellent: the rubbery, suckered Zygon skin makes for great costumes, and their spaceship's correspondingly fleshy controls match up very effectively. The model work of it taking off and in flight is amongst the best I've witnessed to date in the series. Alas the infamous Skarasen lets the side down, being waaaay less than convincing - although the scene where it almost tramples the Doctor on the moor is surprisingly effective. I maintain that the crucial mistake the designers always make with creatures like that is that they make the eyes, though small on the model, too big relative to the scaled-up size of the beast - therefore you get a giant monster that instead of beady reptilian eyes has large and hence cute ones - it's like a huge scaly cyborg puppy, which naturally isn't all that nasty looking! Fortunately the Skarasen's shortcomings were evidently clear to the director, who wisely kept it off camera as much as possible although he was unable to do much about the laughable shot of it rising from the Thames to terrorise London. Fortunately too the best Who is almost benefited by such cheesily bad effects, and the fact the largely blameless beastie is allowed to return happily to Loch Ness at the end is really rather nice of the Doctor and the writers!

8/10

Episodes watched: 297
Episodes still to watch: 425

'Revenge of the Cybermen'

REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN
4 episodes

Oh dear. After the grandeur of the last adventure, this one brings us back down to Earth with a squelchy bump. Not literally to Earth, mind you - in a neat cost-saving scheme, we see 'The Ark In Space''s marvellous sets reused as the Nerva Beacon, the same (in story) place at a different stage of its history. The crew include Ronald Leigh-Hunt's Commander Stevenson, who comes across rather similar to his Radnor in 'The Seeds of Death' - which, I discovered today in the midst of watching 'Revenge of the Cybermen', I watched just twelve days after the actor's death at the age of 88 - and William Marlowe's likeable Lester; the latter's interesting fact is that he previously appeared as Mailer with the Master in 'The Mind of Evil' and subsequently married Roger Delgado's widow Kismet, who herself provided spider voices in 'Planet of the Spiders'. They also have in their midst a traitor in the form of Jeremy Wilkin's Kellmann, who thanks to the title's massive giveaway is to no-one's surprise revealed to be working for the Doctor's old enemies the Cybermen. It's a little more surprising when later on he's revealed to be a triple-agent working for the inhabitants of the nearby tiny world of Voga, but this is cancelled out by it being correspondingly harder to care by that stage. The Cybermen are coming to destroy Voga, the 'Planet of Gold', as (despite this never having been hinted at before) the metal is their one weakness and the planet is hence a rather large thorn in their collective side. The Vogans are unfortunately such a dull bunch it is hard to care whether they live or die despite the above-average quality of the actors playing the principals. The most arresting feature of their decor is the prominent Celtic-knot-esque design of the circular logo that appears everywhere on Voga, but which is (later) famously known throughout the Whoniverse as the Seal of Rassilon, father figure of the Time Lords - more fun can be had speculating exactly how the Vogans come to be using said design as well as the Gallifreyans (not to mention wondering at which point they'll demolish Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass) than actually watching this story, truth be told...
The singular achievement of the race, who are confined below the surface on a world that seems to be no more than a large comet, is to apparently maintain air and gravity despite the odds astronomical physics would suggest against such circumstances being likely. Ah well, they're still better than the Cybermen, who are uncharacteristically emotional, use Cybermats that need to be hugged to the neck to attack effectively and have as their leader a posing fool who struts across the room with hands on hips in the heat of debate with the Doctor at one point... and, amusingly, whose 'earmuffs' and 'handle' headpiece are distinctively black rather than silver, which has the unfortunate effect of making him look like the Cyber poster boy for Grecian 2000. Actually, scratch that - despite Voga being so ridden with gold they make jewellery, home furnishings and decorations, and even guns out of it, the Cybermen nevertheless launch an attack on the planet (evocatively filmed in Wookey Hole caves, where I had the willies scared out of me on a school outing aged ten) and effortlessly mow down the Vogan soldiers - evidently the formidable natural defences against the Cybermen availed to them have dulled the Vogans' wits to the extent that they didn't think to make their actual bullets out of gold too; a minor but strategically ill-advised oversight... Still, they've got a big rocket to launch in defence - which, comically, is stunt-doubled by a Saturn V in NASA stock footage... Meanwhile, there is a plan to crash the whole beacon into Voga, with a rolling drum of landscape brilliantly standing in for the surface terrain whizzing by the windows.

Feel I can't leave this review without touching on The Discontinuity Guide's expose of a sizeable plot hole - after Sarah is infected by a Cybermat, the Doctor transmats her to expel the toxin from her system as it 'can only transport human tissue' - which leads to the interesting quibble of why it doesn't leave people as naked as the day they were born and totally mangle a travelling Cyberman. Well, sort of interesting. Ah, sod it, I've had enough - I'm outta here.

5/10

Episodes watched: 293
Episodes still to watch: 429

'Genesis of the Daleks'

GENESIS OF THE DALEKS
6 episodes

So here we have it - one of the towering high-water-marks in Doctor Who history, and to be truthful something of a bittersweet moment for me. Having worked my way in order from the beginning to the middle of the programme's epic run, uncovering many hidden gems along the way, this is the very last of the acknowledged top-tier true 'greats' of Who that I've never ever seen: I've already watched 'Pyramids of Mars', 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang', 'City of Death' and 'The Caves of Androzani' in years past, which are probably the only serials of comparable standing that come chronologically after this, so after today there are no more treasures of such magnitude to be unearthed.

I'm glad to say that 'Genesis of the Daleks' is every bit a good as they say it is. A startling reimagining of the monsters' making, their real-life creator Terry Nation drags his most famous spawn out of the rut that they and he had got into in their last few stories in the grandest of style. From the shockingly powerful opening shots of Thal soldiers being mowed down in slow-motion, this is Doctor Who at its bleakest and grimmest. The nightmare that the Doctor and friends walk into on Skaro is epitomised by the Nazi-like figures of Nyder and his Kaled troops (even the relatively appealing General Ravon is played by future ''Allo 'Allo' Lieutenant Gruber Guy Siner), while even the Thals, previously seen as friendly and pacifistic, enter into the horrors of war with gusto. Peter Miles' Nyder is excellent - as fanatical and ruthless as his superior, he is the public face of the growing atrocity that is his master's work, and his duplicitous efforts to root out opposition amongst the Kaleds are particularly nasty. The Kaleds in general aren't too nice either, with their ethnic cleansing policy that sees the scarred and malformed Mutos banished into the wildnerness of no-man's-land.

And then there's Davros. Ruthless, malevolent, mad and utterly evil, Davros is perhaps THE iconic villain of the Who canon. He looks fantastically twisted and deformed, with blind eyes superceded by the electronic third one in the middle of his forehead, a single withered arm, and trapped in his wheelchair whose design echoes his later creations. Michael Wisher's performance is nothing short of superb; considering the limitations imposed by mask, wheelchair and the character's infirmity, he does an excpetional job with little more than his voice alone, and when that voice has in previous stories been used for the Daleks themselves it makes sense that it is chilling, bitter and powerful, without ever slipping into caricature. Davros comes across in this story as someone almost on the far side of madness, who cannot be reasoned with by the Doctor in a way that even the Master, say, could be - this is vividly portrayed in the fantastic scene where the Doctor compares the Daleks to releasing a virus that would wipe out all life in the cosmos, and instead of realising his wrong Davros contemplates this idea and decides that he would indeed do that for the ultimate power it would grant him, his feeble fingers clutching and smashing an imaginary phial of the plague. It is an electifying moment.

The actual Daleks arrive late in the day - naturally, since this is the tale of their creation and what led to it - but new, sleek and gleaming, they are very effective when they do. Exterminating the Thals and Kaleds with equal disdain on their creator's insane orders, it is only when they wipe out Davros' remaining loyal henchmen, even Nyder, that he realises the magnitude of his achievement and folly - he has made them to accept the survival of no other race, and so in the end they even turn mercilessly on him.

It's not perfect, of course - there is a notorious diversion involving giant mutant (and unconvincing) clams attempting to snack on Harry that is pretty needless in its entirety, Sarah's cliffhanger fall from a rocket gantry is awesome until its cheap cop-out resolution, and both of the two warring factions seem to pop in and out of the other's citadels with alarming ease considering they've been waging a war of attrition and espionage for a thousand years, apparently practically on each other's doorsteps. Still, these small quibbles are trifling when laid against the general excellence on display, and perhaps the most iconic scene in Who history - the Doctor's legendary "have I the right?" quandary over whether he can justifiably destroy the Dalek race at the moment of their birth, sparing millions from suffering but unwilling to prevent the positive side-effects that would occur along the way and unwilling to commit genocide. Whatever the arguments for and against, this is Doctor Who at its best.

And, as I say, the last that I will have the priviledge of experiencing as a myth turning into actuality before my eyes. Forty-two years after the programme began, twenty-plus years of having it as part of my consciousness, sixteen years after it was taken off the air, eight years since I became a born-again Whovian, started to hear about these great adventures of the past and began to watch them with a novice's enthusiasm, and fifty days and two hundred and eighty-nine episodes into this quest, the last of the giants has fallen. There are no more of the truly exalted, fabled stories that I have yet to witness, no more epochal achievements of writing, directing and acting that have yet to lay bare their riches in front of me - none that still survive, anyway. It is a great day, but a sad day. On I go...

9.5/10

Episodes watched: 289
Episodes still to watch: 433


Four complete stories in one day - a new record, if not actually the most episodes watched!

'The Sontaran Experiment'

THE SONTARAN EXPERIMENT
2 episodes

A real oddity, this - the first two-parter for many years (and last for many more), 'The Sontaran Experiment' is so lean and efficient it in some ways makes a mockery of the adventures that take two, three or more times as long to get their story told. Shot, uniquely, entirely on location in Dartmoor using outside-broadcast videotape, the serial's look bridges the divide between traditional studio video and location film footage; the locations are excellently used and terrifically atmospheric. In a sense, this sequence of stories is a nod to the programme's early years, presented as a linked chain of adventures that follow on directly one from another, and it is a nice throwback to find that the end of 'The Ark In Space' segues straight into this new story. The group of human settlers look convincingly ragged and hunted, with Glyn Jones' (writer some years earlier of 'The Space Museum', peculiarly enough) South African accent lending a nice multi-national touch. The patrolling robot even looks properly threatening, and the loathesome Sontaran Styre makes for a great baddie... shame the title so gives the game away, much to the writers' understandable displeasure. It's another nice touch that Sarah mistakes him for Linx, the Sontaran of 'The Time Warrior', and Kevin Lindsay indeed makes a welcome return inside the costume - although the two are not in fact identical like she says they are. Styre's horrible experiments are some of the nastiest things yet seen (or referred to) in Doctor Who, and his equally nasty comeuppance is greatly satisfying! It's a pity the Sontarans don't return to the programme after this, I have to say, as I'm rather fond of the potato-headed brutes actually...!

A swift but highly enjoyable diversion, then - but in context of this season, it's an appetiser for the huge main course to follow...

7.5/10

Episodes watched: 283
Episodes still to watch: 439

'The Ark In Space'

THE ARK IN SPACE
4 episodes

Wow. I'd forgotten this was so good - a claustrophobic exercise in body horror that succeeds on every level. That we find ourselves aboard a space station in the far future immediately distances this new era from the largely Earth-bound previous one, and the opening episode is spectacular in a very understated way: featuring no-one bar the regulars for the first time since 'Inside the Spaceship' eleven years earlier, it brilliantly establishes the setting, where a hive-like space station carries the hibernating survivors of humanity in an eerily clinical, silent solitude. The rapport between the Doctor and Harry is great, and Lis Sladen shows how well she plays fear when her character nearly gets suffocated. The contemporary viewing public must have realised something was up, as well - the second episode subsequently pulled in the highest viewing figures the series had ever recorded, its 13.6 million finally topping the mark set almost exactly a decade earlier by part 1 of (of all things) 'The Web Planet'... Once the other characters start to wake up things get moving nicely, and are an interestingly mixed bunch - the cool, calm Vira manages to thaw slightly by the end, the doomed Noah transforms compellingly into a green mutant alien creature, Rogin is engaging and makes a poignantly cheerful sacrifice at the end to save the Doctor and his compatriots, while the Wirrn make for impressive and threatening monsters. The sets are tremendous, cold, clean and evocative of the damaged future world they represent, and the modelwork is decent - although not as good as the replacement CGI shots of the station that are viewable on the DVD and which I checked out afterwards! The plot spools out very nicely through the four episodes; again in contrast to the end of the Pertwee era, this is a fine example of how a bloated six-parter with not enough to say is trounced by a sharp four-parter where the action needs to come thicker and faster. Tom Baker's Doctor is excellent; you'd swear he'd been in the role for years so easily does he acclimatise, effortlessly combining the best of his predecessors (wise, playful, action-man) into a unique new package. Roll on the next story...

9/10

Episodes watched: 281
Episodes still to watch: 441

'Robot'

ROBOT
4 episodes

Well, here we are. The era of the most popular and longest-reigning Doctor of them all is upon us, with seven years' worth of Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor stretching out ahead of me - fortunately full of a great number of the programme's finest moments, by all accounts!

This first adventure for the new incarnation gets the Baker years underway with what is essentially a throwback to his predecessor's style of story. Having got the regeneration (the first onscreen since 1966) out of the way, we are treated to an extremely idiosyncratic new Doctor - dressing up in an assortment of bizarre costumes before settling on the familiar scarf, hat'n'coat ensemble, spouting random gibberish, and performing a hilarious skipping routine with Harry Sullivan that was possibly the funniest thing I've seen in the series yet. That around him things are much as usual - Sarah, the bemused Brigadier, Benton, the contemporary (well, you never could be quite sure with UNIT stories...) setting - serves to nicely highlight the difference in the new incarnation's character, and Tom Baker makes for an immediately engaging presence. Storywise, this is fairly standard fare, but full marks for the costumiers at least for lifting the titular giant robot above what could have been a shocking piece of design into something quite special; yes, it looks like a kid's cartoon of a robot, but it does look like a robot and not a man in a suit, which is definitely worthy of praise. Michael Kilgarrif's performance lends real pathos to the creature, as it veers between the destructive impulses it is being given and something like genuine compassion for Sarah - it's also a timely promotion of the actor back to his 'Tomb of the Cybermen' status after being reduced to Second Ogron in 'Frontier In Space'... The supporting cast are a mixed bag, with Patricia Maynard's appropriately icy Miss Winters (nice use of neo-Nazi imagery, too...) totally outshining her nothing deputy Jellicoe, while Edward Burnham's Professor Kettlewell is such an archetypal mad professor it's bonkers - while he's very good, the character is shoehorned into an abrupt 'heel turn' where he suddenly becomes one of the bad guys almost needlessly and not entirely convincingly.

Talking of not entirely convincing - I can't not mention the silly CSO finale, where it's decided the big robot isn't threatening enough so they make him grow to King Kong proportions via some rather poor CSO work, at which point he was never going to avoid picking up a screaming Sarah like a doll in his hand... that's actually like a doll too, not just a size contrast unfortunately. Nice use of the model tank in the foreground to semi-disguise the differential there, though. And, of course, this story is notable for introducing us to Dr. Harry Sullivan, UNIT medic who slips into shot as if he's been unobtrusively wandering in the background for years and unexpectedly (in context) ends up as a new travelling companion for the Doctor and Sarah. Looking ahead, I realise now that I've clearly seen some of Harry's stories before, yet until Locus reminded me of him a week or two back I'd totally forgotten his existence and was convinced there were no male companions save Adric after Jamie. Whoops... Whereas '70s Doctor Who almost exclusively had a single female companion for the Doctor at any given time, we get a different dynamic for a while here, and it's a refreshing change - Sullivan makes for a likeable Ian Chesterton-style figure, whose presence manages to shake up the established TARDIS crew pattern, which isn't a bad thing, and Ian Marter (already a veteran of 'Carnival of Monsters' is excellent in the role.

Not a great story, but then it doesn't try too hard to be one and thus succeeds quite well on its own merits; plus. at four episodes it doesn't outstay its welcome and all in all fares rather bettet than the last couple of serials... I look forward to seeing where things go next...

7/10

Episodes watched: 277
Episodes still to watch: 445

'Planet of the Spiders'

PLANET OF THE SPIDERS
6 episodes

Oh crikey... what a way to go. The Third Doctor's last story is as tedious as the previous adventure, with six more episodes of padding and largely dull action. Yes, the spiders look good, but they are also more interesting than most of the human characters, which is not so good. There is an pointless chase of epic proportions in episode 2, to allow Jon Pertwee to indulge his passion for vehicular antics one last time, where the Doctor goes all James Bond and pursues the spider-possessed Lupton in the 'Whomobile', a gyrocopter and a hovercraft, the sheer effort of which is more than slightly undermined by the villain teleporting to safety seemingly on a whim. We get the belated swansong of Mike Yates, returning after his ignominious departure in 'Invasion of the Dinosaurs', but unless I dropped off and missed something he appears to have vanished two-thirds of the way in with a complete absence of fanfare. Admittedly I was very tired, but the last four episodes followed a pattern broadly incorporating twenty minutes' viewing followed by half an hour's inadvertant snoozing, an attempt at rewinding to the last thing I remembered only to doze off again for a moment and accidentally go back forty-five minutes, watching some more as I didn't recognise it, then hitting another familiar patch and realising I'd obviously missed some earlier without even noticing, and finally fast-forwarding to my actual drop-off point and attempting to watch another episode or so - the whole blurring together in a horrifying CSO-clogged switchback ride that seemed never-ending on at least two occasions. On the plus side, there is a nice update on the progress of Jo and Cliff's Amazon adventure when the blue crystal arrives back at UNIT HQ at the beginning of the story, so setting up the Doctor's fateful return to Metebelis 3. Good use is made of K'Anpo and/or Cho-Je (the latter delicately portrayed by Kevin Lindsay in a performance astonishingly removed from his previous Sontaran role), with a rare confronting of the issues raised by the Doctor's continuous curiosity with and interference in temporal affairs. There is, significantly, the first description of Time Lord 'regeneration' - and ultimately the real thing, with an emotional goodbye from the Third Doctor to Sarah Jane and the Brigadier as Jon Pertwee's features blur and are replaced by those of Tom Baker.

Looks like the show's in safe hands, anyway...

4.5/10

Episodes watched: 273
Episodes still to watch: 449

'The Monster of Peladon'

THE MONSTER OF PELADON
6 episodes

I actually watched this 'properly', i.e. an episode at a time, over the course of a couple of days. More by accident than design, but probably for the best - this is so dull, I suspect getting through a series of episodes at once could have been difficult at best... Featuring many of the same elements as its prequel, this is essentially 'The Curse of Peladon Redux' - some posts are held by different people but doing essentially the same things as their predecessors, while the topical issue-of-the-month is the then-contemporary miners' strikes that feed into the plot as a lot of stupidly badger-haired miners standing around in tunnels arguing. While it is fun to have back Alpha Centauri and a glimpse of Aggedor, the Ice Warriors hold back to so late in the day that I'd forgotten about their presence... ironically creating a nice surprise that I wouldn't have had if the adventure had gone faster, and forcing the previously antagonistic Peladonian factions to cooperate against the new threat, but not alleviating the tedium that has reached terminal inertia by this point. It is disappointing to see the Martians' characters reverting more to stereotypical baddies, even if it is made clear that these ones are a breakaway group unrepresentative of their race. Eckersley is the only interesting support player, driven seemingly just by financial gain rather than despotic mania - except in one ill-advised speech where he temporarily wants to be master of the galaxy - and played with a kind of laid-back insouciance by Donald Gee. Queen Thalira is endearingly wide-eyed and innocent but more than a little wet, for which she gets a highly unsubtle Women's Lib lecture from Sarah. Speaking of whom, was it really necessary to have her believe the Doctor is dead twice in one adventure, especially considering what's coming up?? I guess I should mention that a good portion of the plot hinges on the unlikely factor of the Peladon mines - that's mines - apparently having not only central heating but air conditioning, but frankly I've lost heart by this stage...

4.5/10

Episodes watched: 267
Episodes still to watch: 455