The Rings of Akhaten, Cold War & Hide

The Rings of Akhaten

‘The Rings of Akhaten’ is clearly not a fan favourite. Maybe it’s because people don’t like ‘singing’ in Doctor Who – it’s not the first time singing has featured mind you, we heard singing in ‘Planet of the Ood’ for example and ‘Gridlock’, but it does feature perhaps most prominently in this tale by Neil Cross.

To be honest, my main criticism of ‘The Rings of Akhaten’ is simply that it appears to be more ‘style’ than ‘substance’ as it were. It looks rather nice, with the exception of the creature which is basically the sun that the asteroids are circling. A face appears in the sun and it is a little dodgy to be honest. But the planet itself looks rather splendid with a nice assortment of aliens on it. This is the real Clara’s first journey in the TARDIS, so in true ‘The End of the World’ spirit, we get a cavalcade of aliens to suggest to Clara what she will be in store for in the future.

Emilia Jones

The story starts with the Doctor, a little creepily, visiting moments in Clara’s past. We see where the leaf that Clara gives to the monster comes from and why it’s significant – without it, her parents would never have met. But perhaps they needed a bit more on this leaf which saves the day in the end.

We also see now just how much of an obsession Clara has become for the Doctor – again a little creepy I guess. We have a little girl – Mary

Gejelh, played by Emilia Jones as a main character who is supposed to keep the monster asleep with her song. As annoying as kids may be, they always seem to cast well. She does a good job. The story tends to drag a bit and loses a good portion – 5 minutes at least at a guess, to nothing but singing. But I don’t get the hatred for the episode either, I rather enjoyed it despite its issues.

6.5/10

Cold War

Liam Cunningham.

‘Cold War’ sees the much anticipated return of the Ice Warriors to Doctor Who in an episode set inside a Soviet Submarine Captained by Zhukov, played by Liam Cunningham – of ‘Game of Thrones’ fame. Written by Mark Gatiss and directed by Douglass Mackinnon, this story is much improved from Gatiss’s previous Doctor Who outings, the last of which was an incredible snooze-fest in ‘Night Terrors’. Obviously Mr Moffat and Mr Gatiss are good buds. God help us if he ever gets to write a two-part story!

Whilst there is a lot to like about the tale – it is stylishly directed, the Ice Warriors (albeit just one) return, some great acting by Cunningham and David Warner as Professor Grisenko, I failed to experience the ‘wow’ that many fans did it seems. There’s not much to the tale. They find the Ice Warrior in the ice at the north pole and decide to take it back to Moscow, it comes to life, kills, escapes from its suit, returns to its suit, decides to destroy Earth but gets

beamed up to an Ice Warrior ship.  That sums up this 45 minutes of Doctor Who in a nutshell.

And that’s 45 minutes of Doctor Who. I question what they are doing with Clara – she gets a bit to di here but I am not sure of its significance, being sent into to talk to the Ice Warrior. It’s a pity that Nicholas Briggs decided to completely change the voice too. I rather liked the hissing!

An Ice Warrior unmasked.

It is a bit derivative. It’s basically ‘Dalek’ on a smaller scale. Plus I wasn’t convinced by the Ice Warrior out of the armour with long and spindly fingers and hands. That didn’t quite ring true for me. The armour, however was a very true to the original modern interpretation. That liked. Not so much the voice. It’s not a bad story by any means, but it kinda felt like – ‘time to bring an old foe back, hmmm why not the Ice Warriors! We also should set an episode in a submarine! In the 80s! With some Duran Duran!’. I’m not sure of the point of the episode I guess. It doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with the 7B arc.

6.5/10

Hide

Jessica Rayne.

‘Hide’ is well.. ok. It’s not very special, but it’s not dreadful either. It’s not very exciting or action packed, there’s a nice twist at the end with the strange tree-creature (which I’m sure had a name) being in love with another such creature stuck in a different dimension. It’s light-hearted in places. Dark in others.

We have a Professor Alec Palmer (Dougray Scott), living in a house, trying to track down ghosts because he’s haunted about what he did in the war. We are in 1974 by the way.

With him is Emily Grayling, played by Jessica Raine (who portrayed Verity Lambert in An Adventure in Space and Time incidentally). She’s sort of physic – she has some link to the ghosts, but it seems they are also secretly in love with each other.

I liked the idea of the first human to travel through time being stuck in a different dimension where time is moving much slower than ours, which is part of the plot. I didn’t like the opening where the Doctor and Clara arrive and declare themselves ‘Ghostbusters’, as if once wasn’t more than enough! There’s your Moffat again I think, he loves those lines before the opening titles roll! shame on him!

Dougray Scott.

Neil Cross wrote the episode, and it’s clear he’s not the man to turn to for a high paced adventure! However it is nicely directed (Jamie Payne) and shot. Very creepy, very moody, but probably not as scary as they were hoping for. Jenna Louise Coleman gets a decent crack in this one and does very well. Matt Smith is as mad as ever and I keep wishing he’d tone it down a little, or mature just a little. It’s all very matter-a-fact and there’s not a lot of concern for the lives of Grayling and Palmer when he decides to use Grayling to connect to the other dimension. Which is reminiscent of Eccleston and Hartnell in some ways. But both changed during their time and found more compassion. Smith has compassion, but it seems a very selective compassion in some ways.

6/10

The Seeds of Death

We return to a base-under-siege format for ‘The Seeds of Death’ and see the return of the rather immobile Ice Warriors in a story which takes place on Earth and the moon. It’s a lot of fun really. The regulars are great and the guest cast is fantastic. It’s a six parter that moves well and doesn’t get bogged down, and my friend Andrew tells me it was the first Troughton story he saw which apparently makes it special. His favourite Doctor, I should add, is Patrick Troughton.

I did enjoy this story, and although it’s not brilliant, it’s a very strong story in the style of the previous season. Season Six, which we are now in, has been experimenting up to this point, and this is the first and only return to monsters and base-under siege, the staple diet of the fifth season which ended with ‘The Wheel in Space’.

It’s full of amusing curiosities, such as the death effect for the Ice Warriors’ weapons which twist and distort the victim, and a computer which announces everything that is happening to expedite the plot outside the story show on screen. The computer is constantly telling the audience and indeed the characters what is happening in other countries around the world. The seeds themselves, designed to create foam and change the atmosphere of Earth, are basically just balloons that get bigger and then burst. It’s simple, but effective most of the time but looks dodgy at others.

The direction is rather good. I gather the story stretched its budget to the limit, and Terence Dicks had to re-write most of the final four parts, I believe mostly for budgetary reasons. There is a bit of evidence of the budget not quite stretching all the way – the sets wobble a bit, mostly on the moonbase, but I didn’t notice it until the production notes on the DVD told me! The corridor sets are apparently just one or two used over and over again, shot in different ways from different angles, inter-dispersed with halls of mirrors which don’t make a lot of sense, but look rather stylish!

A look at the dubious costume design of the Seeds of Death.

The one thing that really dates the futuristic stories though is the use of old TV sets for monitors. There are a few here. Then we have the costumes. I’m sorry, they are awful! It is the worst costumed story I have seen. The plastic suits with stripes that make it look like people have their underwear on the outside is seriously embarrassing. Then to put it on older actors looks ridiculous. Only the Doctor, his companions and Gia Kelly escaped this awful costumes.

Alan Bennion as Slarr, the Ice Warrior Leader.

And the Ice Warriors of course! These lumbering great beasts are great villains, but I have to admit at times they look far too slow to do anything. Add to the fact that their hands are very impractical, and maybe they don’t stack up as great monsters. They were able to dig out the costumes from the previous appearance which was good, and I think it’s fair to say, with Wendy Padbury apparently pay half the cost of her costume so she could keep it, costumes were done on the serious cheap in this story.

The foam seems to be exactly the same as what was used in ‘Fury from the Deep’ – well if it worked once, why not? For a futuristic story there aren’t a lot of special effects. The exterior shooting seems to fit in quite well with the studio stuff which is good.

Trohgton at his best.

The cast are stellar. Troughton, Hines and Padbury all have some good moments, Troughton takes a holiday during episode four (I think) when he’s replaced, perhaps not too subtly, by an unconscious double. Well, I’m sure he wasn’t actually unconscious. 

Louise Pajo as Gia Kelly.

Louise Pajo is perfect casting for Gia Kelly, a role which was originally to be male, which would have left Zoe as the only female character in the story! Louise Pajo, people may be interested to know, had a role a few years later in the first season of Prisoner, the Australian TV show, not the British!

Terry Scully, whose personality might have been similar to the character he played, Fewsham, was perfectly cast. He appeared in Terry Nation’s ‘Survivors’, but had to be replaced during the shooting for mental health reasons. Then we have Christopher Coll as Mr Phipps, a great character we build sympathy for as an audience only to have him killed in episode four George R.  Martin style. Ronald Leigh-Hunt  as Commander Radnor and Philip Ray as Professor Eldred complete a great ensemble.

It’s a highly enjoyable tale, and was the first black and white story to be released on video. It’s easy to see why.

7.5/10

The Ice Warriors

As Jamie says at the very start of this story – ‘Oh Doctor, you've just landed us farther up the same mountain’ or something similar. A very interesting choice from the production team to have two stories in a row with such similar settings/location, although in fairness there was little to no snow in ‘The Abominable Snowmen’.

Victoria screams her lungs out chased by an Ice Warrior.

‘The Ice Warriors’ has only two of the six episodes missing. Episodes two and three possibly see the most pace so it will be great when the DVD release is out later this year and they are represented with animation. As it stands in May 2013, I have had to watch the reconstructions from Loose Canon, who have done a great job with these two episodes.

As a story it’s a step up from the previous one. There are some interesting characters and some interesting paradigms presented. The setting is interesting too – in the future, the world has been plunged into a second ‘ice age’. To achieve the appearance of living in a snowy winterland the production team did really well on its limited budget. Yes, there was a reliance on poly styrene, and there are moments where it looks very dodgy, but on the whole it held up quite well.

The discovery of this new creature, dubbed the “Ice Warrior” in the ice is a great little idea, even if it is a bit ‘Quatermass’ again. There is a lot going on over these six parts, a battle between the importance of authority and science – and in this story science and scientists like the Doctor and Penly are almost painted as artists who need their space to be creative and can’t comply with society’s rules.

The action centres around the Ioniser and the base from which it operates. Cleverly located in an old house of some historic value, meaning they didn’t have to create a futuristic control room which may have turned out dodgy. Again, we are presented with a base-under-siege combined with monsters situation. The Ioniser is of course essential to the safety and well being of Earth, much liked the Gravitron in ‘The Moonbase’ was.

The Leader of the base, Leader Cleg, is a dyed to the wool autocrat, and will only act if instructed by a computer. Another theme is man’s reliance on machines. Patrick Troughton is simply wonderful here, his Doctor is even more anti-establishment than Hartnell’s was. Victoria gets a but to do in this story, which is nice for Deborah Watling, but poor Jamie is paralysed from the legs down in episode three and spends two or more episodes lying down or being pulled through the snow by Penly. Still, it probably wasn’t too taxing on Fraser Hines.

Angus Lennie (left) as Storr.

Angus Lennie plays Storr, the crazed scavenger who has rejected all of scientific ways with a wonderfully over the top accent. As was the character. Leader Clegg was perfectly cast too. Peter Barkworth does a great job and the limping was a nice touch. And then we have Bernard Bresslaw, veteran of so many Carry On films, as Varga, the Ice Warrior leader. This means we never see his face, he is hidden under the huge armour which must have made the Ice Warrior costumes as uncomfortable as any for a Doctor Who monster. I like the way they speak like a snake hissing, but sadly a fair bit of dialogue is very hard to hear. I hope the DVD release can clean that up.

Patrick Troughton and Peter Barkworth.

All in all, it’s a pretty epic story which will make more sense to viewers once the two missing episodes are animated because a lot goes on there. The Doctor and Victoria are trapped in the Ice Warrior space ship for the remainder of the story, but the pacing is still pretty decent over the six episodes, unlike the previous story.

7.5/10