Shada

Tom Baker in Narration mode.

The thinktank boys.

‘Shada’, for those who don’t know, is a unique story in the history of Doctor Who. The only story not to be completed in Doctor Who’s original 26-year run. What we have today, saved from the scrap-heap by incoming (at this point) Produced John Nathan-Turner, are a mixture of scenes that were shot by Pennant Roberts before the production was closed down. At a guess, I’d say that it’s around 50% of the programme. We have all the location footage, plus studio stuff as per location. The first two episode are mostly complete, whilst episodes five and six have very little material. The DVD is a re-release of the VHS which came out in the early to mid nineties, and features Tom Baker linking the existing footage via narration.

So what to make of this Douglas Adams’ story which had been built into the ‘greatest story never shown’ at one point, and since has been regarded as perhaps not quite living up to that, let’s be honest, pretty lofty label. The ideas are generally very clever, and very Douglas Adams. Some take the line of the difference between fairy story and science fiction far too far over to the fairy story side. The idea that reading a book backwards whilst in the TARDIS could take you to the Time Lord prison planet Shada for instance.

But there’s some great stuff too, and again the cast, Tom Baker and Lalla Ward in particular, are having a ball. There’s a wonderful aura (for want of a better word) to ‘Shada’ and it certainly is a great shame it wasn’t completed. The use of Cambridge as a location fits in with the ethos of the show at the time, and the twist that Professor Chronotis is in fact the great criminal Saryevan works very well.

The guest cast includes Bond-Villain Christopher Neame  as Skagra, who is after the Time Lord criminal because of his ability to project his mind into others. Wonderful spot on casting, up there with Julian Glover in ‘City of Death’. Glover would go on to be a Bond villain as well, and also have a similar role in one of the Inidanna Jones movies. Perhaps the best piece of casting though was Denis Carey as the bumbling Professor Chronotis. He comes across as a kind old man, very absent-minded in an endearing kind of way. Such a contrast to a master criminal, which is the point. David Hill as Chris Parsons would go on to star in ‘Waiting for God’ with Graham Crowden. Along with Victoria Burgoyne as Clare it was good casting in roles the audience sort of relates to and characters that we can care about.

Denis Carey as Chronotis.

The production. Well. Firstly, the stuff shot in 1979 looks great. The sets and locations hold up perfectly. We never see the Shada sets, or the main sets for Skagra’s ship which the Doctor re-wires to turn into a TARDIS, and we don’t see a lot of the Kraals, evil monsters created from vats who are at least part robot and are electrically charged, but they at least look better than the Nimon and the Mandrels. Certainly a very interesting design.

Then we look at the elements brought into the production for the 90s video release, all of which remain on the DVD. Perhaps sadly. Tom Baker’s

Victoria Burgoyne as Clare.

wonderful personality warmly fills the screen for the narration, which I enjoyed. The shots of the space ships and so forth though are very very ordinary, worse than they would have done back in the day. Then the killer – the music. Why John Nathan-Turner didn’t seek out the man who would have scored the story originally (he’s still alive in 2013 incidentally) I don’t know. This is story well suited to Dudley Simpson’s style. Instead, the dreadful mess that we get is composed by Keff McCulloch. I am told he becomes a regular composer near the end of the first 26 years, and even redesigns the theme music. God no! It is genuinely awful clunky music which doesn’t suit the style or era of the piece. It is utterly dreadful. If only there was an option to view the story with no incidental music!

Christopher Neame

This was to be both Graham Williams and Douglas Adams last contribution to the series. Williams had had enough and Douglas Adams had by now become famous for ‘Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy’. Such a pity that it was unfinished, because I do believe it would be highly-regard these days if it was. Not at the upper-echelon of stories, no. But a very clever, warm script backed up by some fine actors and a wonderful atmosphere.

7/10

The Horns of Nimon

Another ‘not-so-well-regarded’ story from season 17, I actually enjoyed this one too, as I did ‘Nightmare of Eden’. Sure, it’s not perfect and the monsters look twice as ridiculous as the Mandrels, but it still encompassed some great ideas and was a lot of fun.

The Nimon, based seemingly on the Minotaur, are a half-human half-bull type creature. The Heads are huge and look very heavy on the actors, with no practical way of showing that they are communicating – no mouths to speak of for example. Then from the neck down the actors are just men in black tights. And thus we probably have the main problem with the episode.

The Doctor and Romana arrive on the old ship.

Also, money seems to have been running out by this story. Not to an ‘Underworld’ extent, but the sets and the amount of extras seems somewhat limited. The idea that Skonos is an entire planet is not well conveyed. We don’t see any female Skonons which asks the audience how they reproduce. They have very fancy, yet black uniforms. Then we have Soldeed, a character of much conjecture in Who circles, played by the larger-than-life Graham Crowden.

Look, I rather enjoyed the performance as I did the character Trist in the previous story. Yes, Crowden does ham it up, but he puts everything into it. Always prefer overacting to underacting.

Graham Crowden and the Nimon.

The screen is not big enough for him! We have the ‘complex’ in which the Nimon lives. A maze where the walls move about and change location, making it very hard to escape. Why? Because it’s a giant circuit! What a great idea. Anthony Read is the writer behind the story, and with a little addition from Douglas Adams the script is pretty good.

Malcolm Terris as the delightfully OTT co-pilot.

We have the guard in the first (and second) episodes who is suddenly in charge of the space ship coming from Aneth to Skonos with the tribute to the Nimon when the Pilot is killed. Another wonderfully angry and over the top performance by the actor Malcolm Terris, who spends most of the time yelling ‘weakling scum!’ at the Anethans.

The Nimon go from planet to planet sucking it dry of everything is has, like parasites in a way. It’s a very grand concept which perhaps doesn’t come across as well as it could have, thanks mostly to budget. All the technology in the Nimon’s lab is very of the time, presumably they just had to grab whatever they could find about the place. I like the egg capsules though!

Tom Baker and Lalla Ward (wearing a very fetching outfit which looks akin to a riding outfit) add much needed gravitas to the story, even

with some comic moments that clearly went too far in the first two episodes. The Doctor’s contraption connected to the TARDIS console goes BANG at one point, and is accompanied by a series of whizzes and pops (sound effects) which are genuinely out of place and played for laughs. It’s funny, but probably a bit much. As is the Doctor pulling a badge/ribbon out of his pocket for K-9. But nevertheless Tom appears to be enjoying himself, and so does Lalla and Graham Crowden.

A bunch of Nimon.

It’s a pity that the budget didn’t exist to make this something really spectacular. I think Anthony Read had a grand design in mind when he wrote it, and if that could have been reflected better in the production this would have been much more highly regarded in fan circles today.

7/10

Nightmare of Eden

David Daker and Lewis Fiander.

If you thought the camp silliness was going to end there, you are going to be very sadly mistaken! However, ‘Nightmare of Eden’ is a highly enjoyable tale despite various issues with the story and again the monsters, the Mandrels, created by the costume department. I guess I’ll start with them because really the design doesn’t initially seem that bad, but on closer inspection they do look like large Muppet costumes. Cuddly? I don’t know about that, but the biggest issue is not the costume but the way they are shot.

The script does call for them to be used rather a lot, which compounds the problem, but if you see them in the darkness, with the big green haunting eyes then they are fine. But naturally they are seen a lot in the corridors of the cruise (space) ship where the story occurs, and  those corridors have very bright lighting. These men in suits with giant heads lumber slowly through the ship in episode four with the security guards firing uselessly at them.

Trist shows Romana the CET machine.

The story continues along the lines of ‘The Creature from the Pit’ with camp overacting, specifically in the form of the character Trist, played by Australian actor Lewis Fiander. To be honest, I rather enjoyed the performance, it’s really funny and there are some ridiculous lines. “I worked together with Professor Stein for many year, but then he died. So we stopped.’ I mean he deserves a BAFTA for being able to deliver such a line! The cast also features the return of David Daker, who played Irongron in ‘The Time Warrior’. This time he features as ‘Captain Rigg’, the Captain of the cruise ship materialised half inside another ship.

Here comes a Mandrel

The character ends up on Vraxoin, the deadly drug at the centre of the plot. He does a pretty good job of acting ‘high’. The plot actually has several very interesting threads, and was written by Bob Baker on his own, as the writing pairing with Dave Martin was by this point at an end. In fact this is the best script he’d co-wrote or wrote since ‘The Hand of Fear’, much more lively and interesting than ‘The Armageddon Factor’, and properly developed unlike ‘Underworld’. The clear message that’s being sold in ‘Nightmare on Eden’ is ‘Drugs are bad, MMmkay?’, but let’s not forget that this was a show geared towards children. Graham Williams was naturally worried about the subject matter, and would have had to keep the powers that be at the BBC happy no doubt.

But Bob Baker also gives us the idea of two ships locked together in a strange mid-space accident, and the CET machine. A little like the Scope in ‘Carnival of Monsters’, the CET stores images ripped from planets’ surfaces on crystals and plays them back on a big screen. Well, they are live pictures to be accurate. But the machine has become unstable because of the accident, and the people are able to walk into the images. It’s a great idea, very clever.

The Doctor survives the nightmare of Eden - JUST!

The more I review this one, the more I like it! However one plot point I thought was a bit… stupid was the Mandrels. They get electrocuted and turn into a powder, which is the Vraxoin, this deadly drug. (which is bad, ok?) It’s just not… believable in the slightest I would say. Then we have Jennifer Lonsdale playing Della, one of the poorest underacted-performances in Doctor Who ever. Give me over acting every day. I think it’s episode four where she gets shot. Also the special effects mistake, she grabs her stomach but gets shot nowhere near it. Then the fall to the floor is very poor. In fact, the last 3 seasons have been full of people dying badly. That needs to be taught!

It’s interesting that this story apparently was a NIGHTMARE to make. Apparently Alan Bromley, the director, was very old school. He was in charge of ‘The Time Warrior’ I think, which may be how David Daker got cast. I must admit, the direction is not as snappy as it could have been. The visuals are done on video tape, where they almost always are done on film. Some work really well, others don’t. The costumes are good except for the guards. All the passengers where sunglasses and parkers with the hoods pulled over, which is rather funny.

Look, it’s not a brilliant Doctor Who story for various reasons. It could have been taken more seriously, and it could have been directed with a lot more panache. Apparently Bromley and Tom Baker really locked horns. But Tom Baker gives a pretty good performance save one scene where he pushes it a bit far. He’s being pursued into the jungles of Eden (in the CET machine) by Mandrels. He disappears whilst being attacked and we here ‘my arms, my legs, my everything!’ I doubt that was in the script. The Mandrels were Muppets to, but with better direction I think would have been a lot more menacing. Still, I really enjoyed this one.

7.5/10

The Creature from the Pit

The Doctor and Organon face Erato.

Well, for starters you can’t fault the title, it’s completely accurate. This story does indeed feature a pit, and there is a creature in it. This creature is ‘Erato’, a sort of wobbly brain thing which at times looks ridiculous and at others looks umm… a bit rude really! And hence we have the main issue of this story.

If you’re going to try and make a story based around an alien creature that is HUGE and is basically covered in a membrane, make sure you can do it convincingly before commissioning a script. All credibility is lost when you see something as ridiculous-looking as Erato. The rest of the design in rather nice, an awesome alien jungle, with lots of mist, a palace, underground passageways and the like. Spoilt by one ridiculous creature.

Myra Frances as Adrasta.

Actually, it’s more than just the creature which makes this one of the poorer Doctor Who tales. The direction and acting approach is called into question too. The script probably needed a bit of reworking too. In the first episode we are introduced to the Lady Adrastra, the slightly evil woman who holds power on the planet Chloris. Very much your megalomaniac character, albeit a female character for a change. There’s no holding back from the actor Myra Frances here, she lets rip throughout until he death at the hands of Erato in part four (which the Doctor and Romana don’t seem that fussed about). She is hoarding all the metal on Chloris, which has a lot of vegetation but little metal. This makes her powerful. And apparently way over the top. She talks about the rebels, a fierce and dangerous gang. But when we see them, they are played as utter morons with long beards and cockney accents. And so the story does not appear to be taken seriously at all.

Add to the mix Organon, played by Geoffrey Bayldon, an astrologer who seeks answers logically enough in the stars. This is an almost totally comic character, albeit it a likeable one. Naturally hammed up to the max like all the others. It does make for some funny moments. The Doctor joins in for a bit of humour too when he jumps down the shaft to the pit, holding on to the wall, and pulls out a rock climbing book. It turns out to be in Tibetan, so he pulls out another book called ‘How to read Tibetan’. Perhaps that was going a bit too far,  but I enjoyed that moment.

K-9 makes a welcome return to the fold, after not featuring in the first two stories of season 17. In fact ‘The Creature from the Pit’ was the first filmed of the season, but was pushed back to third in the running order as they wanted to start with the Daleks. John Leeson strangely opted out of returning, and the voice is provided by David Brierly. I know people don’t particularly like the Brierly K-9, but it’s always difficult when you follow someone else’s voice and that’s what people expect to hear. In some ways Brierly gives K-9 an older sounding voice. In my book it’s not better or worse, just different. K-9 is attacked a couple of times by the ‘wolf-weeds’. Weeds shaped like balls that smother and move about on their own. Actually this was one design element I really liked.

Myra Frances and Lalla Ward.

Lalla Ward is great in this story, and Tom Baker has some fun but at least seems to be taking it more seriously than the guest cast. It’s all so pantomime to be honest. It’s not the worst Doctor Who tale either. The creation of a jungle world almost impossible to live in is very good. They used film to shoot the jungle scenes too, which adds atmosphere. The characters perhaps needed some reworking in the scripting stage, and the actors needed a different approach I feel if they wanted the story to be taken seriously by the viewers.

Lastly, Eileen Way, veteran British actress who appeared in ‘An Unearthly Child’ as the old woman, appears with a sizable part in this one. She’s pretty awesome. Even a decade later she was making TV appearances in ‘Sean’s Show’. Not a bad effort to be cast as the really old character in 1963 and then still be around doing TV nearly 30 years later. Good one Eileen….

4/10

City of Death

Hmmm, Paris is the city of Death? I’m not sure about that one! This story was conceived by David Fisher as a story called ‘Gamble with Time’. Although Fisher didn’t want to take credit for the finished product, largely written by script editor Douglas Adams, most of the concepts and ideas and indeed character names survive from the original concept.

Julian Glover

The result is a wonderful collection of barmy ideas, humour, seriousness and running up and down the Champs de L’eysee which go together to make ‘City of Death’. Add a wonderful cast, with the standouts being Julian Glover as Scaroth and Tom Chadborn as Duggan, and you have a true Doctor Who classic.

Lalla Ward grows a bit more into her role as Romana too which helps, and by now has a strong relationship with Tom Baker (which would grow even stronger). Tom is fantastic throughout this story, and we even have a guest appearance by Peter Halliday as a guard in Renaissance Europe. Peter Halliday has had numerous Doctor Who appearances, highlighted by ‘The Invasion’ and ‘Carnival of Monsters’ and it’s nice to see he pop up here again.

What a lot of Monas!

The story is perhaps just a little light on, and it’s fair to say it doesn’t use Paris quite as well as James Bond did with a fist fight on the Eiffel Tower, but we do have the first example of Doctor Who filming out of England and Wales which is nice, and it certainly helps the story. The only issue that essentially apart from a couple of scenes is that all the shots in Paris are basically the Doctor, Romana and sometimes Duggan running around. Dudley Simpson underscores them beautifully with a very memorable (in a good way) piece of music which is basically the theme song for this story.  Dada dada da, da dada dada da, da dada da da da da da….  well that’s how it goes in my head!

The Doctor finds Scarlioni again - in the past!

There is definitely too much of that throughout the four episodes, especially in the first and fourth, but it’s a lovely setting for Doctor Who. The sets are really nicely done too. We have the Doctor returning to Earth millions of years ago before life existed in the fourth episode to stop Scaroth from stopping himself from taking off, and that set could have been really bad, but for something shot in a studio it was quite good. And we have the plot of Scaroth’s foiled by Duggan landing a great punch on Scaroth’s green-spaghetti head!

Duggan is a great character and must have been a lot of fun to play. The cop who hits first and asks questions later. The story is about a creature,

Did someone say spinach linguini?

Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth, whose ship explodes millions of years ago on take off from Earth, splintering him through Earth’s history. All efforts and therefore devoted to returning to that time and stopping the explosion. Might have been good to visit more Scaroths, but they were on a budget. Nevertheless, it’s a great use of time in a story, something which Doctor Who has done surprisingly little so far.

Tom Chadborn (right) prepares to hit someone.

I say surprisingly little although there are some great examples – ‘The Space Museum’, ‘Day of the Daleks’ and ‘City of Death’ immediately spring to mind for the first 17 years, but Doctor Who is a show about space and TIME travel. Usually it’s just limited to going forward or back in time, but Doctor Who is the perfect platform for ideas like ‘A Gamble with Time’ and others.

After three extremely poor entries, City of Death is a welcome breath of fresh air. I can only hope that it continues for the rest of season 17!

8.5/10

Destiny of the Daleks

New Season, new Romana.

Terry Nation is back with his final contribution to Doctor Who in ‘Destiny of the Daleks’, a rather dull story that opens up the 17^th season where the 16^th had finished in some ways – dull. In other ways, changes were afoot. Mary Tamm sadly decided to leave the show, and so they decided Romana would regenerate. She ends up regenerating into Lalla Ward in one of the all-time strangest scenes in Doctor Who where Romana keeps presenting new ‘bodies’ to the Doctor. (no, no they were all fully clothed! Goodness me).

Romana II weeps and cries when interrogated. 

Lalla Ward would go on, I am told, to make the role her own but her Romana is very hard to like in this story. In ‘The Armageddon Factor’, Romana is tortured by the Shadow and stands brave and resolute throughout. Here she suffers the same fate but thanks to the Daleks, and she cries and screams like she does for much of the first half of this story. There are some better moments in the last half, the scenes where she plays rock-paper-scissors with the Doctor is a little reminded that she is a Time Lord, but I think that new script-editor Douglas Adams needed to work these scripts over a lot more than he did.

Tom Baker and David Gooderson as Davros.

David Gooderson has apparently copped a bit of flak for his portrayal of Davros. Michael Wisher was fantastic in ‘Genesis of the Daleks’, and now it’s Davros the Daleks have come to find to help fight the Movellans, another robot-race who are locked in a war with the Daleks. Davros is, after hundreds of years if not thousands is still alive somehow. Not only that, he’s been waiting for someone to find him in the same position he was shot covered in cobwebs. Ridiculous much? I don’t mind the portrayal of Davros here though, he is quieter, calculating and still sinister without the crazy over the top rants. Let’s be honest – over the top rants are the realm of atypical villains for the most part.

Quarry anyone?

The Daleks are willing to do whatever he says. They can’t believe the Doctor would sacrifice himself to kill Davros, then Davros asks them to sacrifice themselves to destroy the Movellan  space ship. Doesn’t make a lot of sense. As usual though some good ideas behind the Nation plot – two battle computers that can’t out-think each other. The characters are all thin at best though, with the exception of Davros who wasn’t new. The Movellans are all robots, Daleks are Daleks and the slaves the Daleks are using to clear away down to Davros (he loves shots of people lifting rocks it seems) have a sort of leader (Tyssan played by Tim Barlow) who is completely functional in the story.

Rock-Paper-Scissors explains all!

Then mix in Ken Grieve’s rather uninspired paceless direction, add a complete lack of soundtrack (Dudley Simpson is credited but there’s hardly a bar of music, especially in the final episode) and it’s a hard story to enjoy on any level. There seriously hasn’t been as little incidental music since ‘The Sontaran Experiment’, and that was a two-parter! The Director usually would tell the composer where he wanted music, and the composer would go away and sort it out. So I have no idea why the story is so under-scored, unless that’s just the way Ken Grieve liked it. Personally I think it could have done with a lot more music, especially to heighten the last episode and add a degree of excitement which was completely lacking.

The more I write the more I realise how little I liked about this one. Better stop now and give a score.

2/10