The Power of Kroll

Oh no, I spoke to soon. What is amazing about ‘The Power of Kroll’, is not that after four great stories we are sadly let down, but that this script came from Robert Holmes. There are several reasons why this story gets a fail, but some of the blame must be attributed to the author sadly. ‘The Ribos Operation’, his previous contribution, is wonderful. The characters are rich in that story – even the rogues are likeable. Iin this one they are either functional, insignificant or just angry. Take the two main characters in point – Rankin, leader of the ‘swampies’ played by John Alberni, back again for his third story, and Thawn, in charge of the methane plant, played by Neil McCarthy (who was also in ‘Mind of Evil’). They are just angry characters, who remains unchanged by any circumstances, wanting to kill either the humans or the Swampies.

Kroll towers over the Swampies

Then we have John Leeson and sadly Philip Madoc in purely functional roles, and Glynn Owen as gun-runner Rohm Dutt, who could have been quite a character but the character isn’t fleshed out, and then is killed at the end of the second episode. A character that could have been interesting is reduced to a purely functional part.

Swampies in the ... swamp.

As for the swampies, you can’t help but feel sorry for the actors. They couldn’t afford costumes apparently, so they just stuck them in crappy wigs and painted their bodies green. Holmes has not devoted any time into making any of the Swampies interesting characters with considered motivations. It’s a pity  - these are the rightful inhabitants of Delta Magnor (they’ve been moved to this moon because it was overrun by humans), and it would have been  good to show them in a better light rather than just moronic savages.

There was the potential to make this very political as well, another comment on colonialism which we have had in stories such as ‘The Mutants’, but it

The Doctor, Romana and Rohm Dutt get stretched to the limit.

doesn’t explore this as much as it might have.

On a positive side, I think Kroll looks ok. It must have been difficult to do, and it is done by splitting the screen horizontally and some shots are more successful than others. It is clearly the story of the season where they’ve had to save money. There is a fair bit of location shooting for it, but aside from that it seems very cheap. There’s a limited number of sets, three sets for inside the refinery, and the room where the Doctor, Romana and Dutt were to be sacrificed to Kroll. So it’s a pity they could devote a few more pounds to make the Swampies look better, because they are seriously embarrassing.

So in short, it falls short. Very short.

3/10

The Brain of Morbius

The hammer-horror angle and influence continues with ‘The Brain of Morbius’. A story originally written by Terrance Dicks about a robot who tries to put the Time Lord Morbius back together. Robert Holmes rewrote the whole thing though and before Terrance new it it was a completely different story! Such is the way devious script editors work in Doctor Who I presume.

As a Time Lord I obviously know a lot about Morbius, but this is the first have heard about this addendum to his tale, and the first I have heard about these events on the planet Karn, where the Sisterhood live. What can I say? I LOVED this story!! It’s a little daft in places sure, and it’s hardly original, but after ‘King Kong’ and ‘The Mummy’ were raided for ideas, ‘Frankenstein’ was almost the logical next step.

Yes, the imagery and premise are directly stolen, we have the whole castle and storm thing going on too, but what’s not too love? Again, kids watching this story may believe ‘Frankenstein’ was just a parody of ‘The Brain of Morbius’. It’s a rollicking good tale, it’s confronting and scary too. It’s strongly directed and perfectly cast. Tom Baker is still going from strength to Strength. Poor Liz Sladen -  Sarah spends the story falling, being yelled out, almost killed by a headless monster and being blind! Liz Sladen takes it all in her stride. She is wonderfully almost disconnected from the story and world she is in because of the constant peril she finds herself in.

Condo

I think the best character though is Condo, portrayed by Colin Fay. This poor character, used and abused by Solon, who even stole his arm, immediately has the audiences’ sympathies, which grow throughout the story. When Solon shoots him over and over it’s very confronting, and sympathies only grow. Solon is played by Philip Madoc, who had been in two Troughton stories in Season Six. Perfectly cast as the crazy scientist (Doctor Frankenstein if you will), Solon is single-minded and vain. Then we have Moribius, for much of the story a brain in a jar, with a terrifying voice provided by Michael Spice.

Solon and Morbius

I love the way the story draws you in, not revealing Morbius until part two, and even then you are not sure what’s going on. It’s great story-telling. This is offset by the sub-plot with the Sisterhood of Karn, a group of women worshipping an ancient flame which provides an elixir which allows them to become almost immortal. They don’t trust the Doctor at first, but slowly they come around when he fixes the flame which has almost died, due to soot. It’s interesting – an almost atheist view is portrayed as the Doctor poo-poos their beliefs and is proved right. This holy flame is nothing more that gas from below heating rocks which provide a perfect blend to make this amazing liquid.

The Doctor challenges Morbius.

The design is wonderful I think. Limited budget and space are utilised to the fore by designer Barry Newberry. The only thing that my critical eye can ask.... does this story go too far? Did they push the boundaries of what is scary? Violent? We have a living brain in a jar. It falls onto the ground. A very effective looking monster without a head for three episodes and a giant claw, along with an arm stolen from Condo. Plenty of fights where no remorse is shown, brutal murders of the sisters, and of course, Solon firing repetitively at Condo. It caused a bit of a flap in the day. For children... yes I think it’s a bit much, especially for the under tens. But I am a bit older than that. I’ve lived for over a thousand years....

9/10

The War Games

All good things must come to an end, and so did Patrick Troughton’s time as the Doctor, and of course black and white episodes as well. To complete the story of the second Doctor we had a ten-part adventure, the second longest story in the six-year history of the programme to that point, and it was called ‘The War Games’.

I was worried beforehand. TEN parts and no Daleks? How will they sustain that, but as many others have mentioned, the story doesn’t really let up and certainly doesn’t feel like a full ten parts. Credit to the writing team of Malcolm Hulke and Terence Dicks for that.

We have the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arriving on an alien world that appears to be Earth, divided into time zones where different wars are being played out by soldiers kidnapped by the War Lord and his kind. In the central zone is the controlling base if you like, decked out futuristically. We go from one zone to the next, although most action is limited to the First World War Zone (where the story begins) and a barn in the American Civil War Zone.

The final episode is set on the Doctor’s home world, and mine incidentally, but I won’t mention its name as it hasn't been mentioned yet in the series and I don’t want to spoil it for viewers if they should reveal it later in another story.

The sets, although a little wobbly, hold up well considering there are a lot of them and they were made on sixpence. There is a lot of location shooting which really adds to the atmosphere and makes it all feel rather authentic, especially the First World War stuff. The quarry they use for the opening sequence is perhaps the best quarry they have ever used for Doctor Who!

The way they peel the banana so to speak in this story is great too. We start believing our heroes to be in the First World War. Then clearly something isn’t right, and slowly but surely more is revealed, with the final revelations about the Doctor himself.

It’s been an interesting turn in the kinds of stories throughout this sixth season, which began with ‘The Dominators’. Only two stories have the same feel and approach that so many Fifth Season stories did – principally ‘The Seeds of Death’, but also ‘The Invasion’. There is a lot more variety which produced great stories such as ‘The Mind Robber’ and ‘The War Games’, but there’s always a risk with trying something different, ‘The Space Pirates’ and ‘The Krotons’ were rather poor stories. It’s a fair price to pay though when you are trying to ‘mix it up’ and give the audience something new week after week, and it’s similar to the Hartnell years which were far less predictable and showcased a variety of styles and ideas.

‘The War Games’ is the crowning achievement of that, a wonderful idea that peels away throughout all ten episodes. Wonderful twists and turns, an absolutely stunningly good cast – Philip Madoc as the War Lord is chilling, but two of the best performances come from Noel Coleman as Smythe and David Garfield as Von Weich. Thoroughly evil performances from both. David Saville as Lieutenant Castairs was an excellent almost pseudo companion, and Jane Sherwin was great as Lady Jennifer. A strange quirk of the script that after episode five she just disappears from the story and never reappears, getting a cursory mention in the final episode.

James Bree and Edward Brayshaw - interrogating the Doctor

The only questionable performance is James Bree as the Security Chief. It’s an almost theatrical yet stiff performance as he battles with the War Chief and speaks with a bizarre slow monotone voice. Was this what was envisaged? Sometimes you wonder if the actor made the choice himself or was directed to speak in a certain way. It’s very un-naturalistic and goes against most of the other characters, perhaps with the exception of the War Chief (Edward Brayshaw) who gets a bit panto too at times, although is well over-shadowed by James Bree.

As for the regulars, well they all have a lot to do. Patrick Troughton is outstanding in his last story, but we should not forget it is also Wendy Padbury’s and Frazer Hines’ last story too. They made a wonderful pair of companions for the Doctor. Some of their work in Episodes Eight and Ten is fantastic, and very well written too as Jamie pretends to be the leader of the resistance and Zoe asserts herself. Then in the last scene with the Doctor, you can feel the sadness between the group that their journey making the show together has come to an end.

The sets are very clever, the design excellent considering how many things they needed to produce for the show. The futuristic sets, though minimal made maximum use of the small space they had and were rather psychedelic in design. The lack of money does show through at times – the controls of the time machines are magnets moved around a board. I wasn’t convinced by that at all, and there seemed to be a lot of hanging plastic sheets used. The guards costumes had very silly tight hoods on and wore strange glasses which I guess were designed to obscure their faces so that they could kill and reuse the same actors over and over again.

‘The War Games’ though owes much of what it is simply to the writing team of Terence Dicks and Malcolm Hulke who in short time whipped up an excellent story, and a fitting end to Troughton’s fine tenure as the Doctor. This story is as good as any other Patrick Troughton story. He was lucky to begin and end with two all-time classics.

9/10

The Krotons

‘The Krotons’ was a script held back for when a story fell through. In this slot was some bizarre story called ‘Prison in Space’ where the Doctor and Jamie were held prisoners by a clan of women. Extras on the DVD suggest it was going to be a bad story, and the director, David Maloney said he couldn’t direct the story that was eventually scrapped for ‘The Krotons’.

I don’t have a lot to say about ‘The Krotons’. It’s not very good to be fair. It’s two-dimensional with ludicrous robots as the main villains, with some very poor over-acting on the guest cast’s behalf. The design is a bit ho-hum and the story, frankly, is very limited.

Firstly, I don’t understand the world its set on. People live almost like cavemen and there appears to be one small village targeted by the Krotons, who never leave their machines. Are there other people on the planet? The Krotons have been there for 1000 years, subjugating the ‘Gonds’. Why don’t the Gonds just move somewhere else?

I couldn’t work out how the little village – a model shot – integrated with the learning hall, the main place in the village that things happened. I didn't get a real sense of their lives. The sets were ok, but it seemed that they were very limited in the number of sets they had. They never walked around the village on screen, we only saw inside the huts and the learning hall.

Eelek (Philip Madoc)

The exterior/filming work was better, but still the audience is given little indication where things are located to each other.

Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury are all brilliant in this story. They bring it up from being ridiculous to almost watchable! They play around with each other, the Doctor and Zoe compete on the learning machines against each other, Jamie is clueless a lot of the time which proves rather funny, they work brilliantly as a team together.

The guest cast do their best with some seriously two dimensional characters. The script does little for any of the characters. They appear purely functional. Eelek, played by Philip Madoc, seems hell bent in stirring up revolution and destruction, but why I don’t know. Then at the end, when the building looks like it will be destroyed as the Krotons take off, he runs away, and is never heard of again. His storyline isn’t vaguely resolved. The leader of the Gonds, Selris, played by James Copeland, is the most frustrating character who seems very over the top. He over-pronounces words, and I wonder if that’s from stage training – many actors of the time were principally stage actors. Selris’s death at the hands of the Krotons is not handled well by Moloney. He rushes into the Kroton craft, hands the Doctor a bottle of acid and then, after a pregnant pause, the Krotons disintegrate him.

A Kroton

Enough has been written and said by others on the Krotons themselves. They appear to wear a dress over their bottom halves. They are big robot square-shaped creatures with spinning heads and arms that can’t carry anything, let alone their huge weapons. The costumes for the Gonds, the people who live on this unnamed planet, are all the same for some reason with the exception of Selris’s costume. Plain and uniform like. That was very puzzling to me.  On a positive note with the design, there is a hose-like snake creature with an eye on it that comes out of the learning hall wall which looks very sinister. I liked that.

All in all though, this is a pretty poor story in my eyes. I was happy it was only four parts.

3/10