The Time of Angels, Flesh and Stone & Vampires in Venice

Allow me to start by apologising. I had meant to follow the worst stories of all by the best, but I have decided to reserve judgement until I have got through every single episode. Sorry for the break as well, it's been the anniversary week so a lot has been going on. For now, I return to the marathon where I left off, early in Series 5...

Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

Alex Kingston is back!

Amy looks at a recording of an angel.

River Song (Alex Kingston) returns in this two-part story featuring the return of the Weeping Angels. It’s a strong story, well-paced full of suspense and in most ways living up to the promise of the Angels returning, although you’d have to say they are not the Daleks and if they bring them back again we are talking about the law of diminishing returns. But they worked well in this story.

Instead of River Song becoming clearer, Moffat (the writer) appears to have gone down the track of

making her more mysterious and confusing, deliberately posing the question ‘who is she’? to the audience. I’m not sure how this will all play out, and I still think she was best as a one off character. It’s straight away confusing because she is obviously younger than ‘Silence in the Library’ – where she died, and yet she not only recognised the tenth Doctor, but was surprised he didn’t know who she was.

And she lets us know she’s coming back later in the series at the end. She’s a prisoner, she killed ‘a good man’, who it is strongly hinted at was the Doctor. So waters are murkier still.

Still darn creepy on their second outing.

The story is shot in some caves and with the addition of a bit of CGI they look stunning, Moffat creates some amazing and gripping moments, like when Amy is stuck in a trailer with a video of an angel and she can’t get out. The time crack from episode one is back – although we’ve seen it reappear at the end of the previous two episodes two, which is the series theme it seems. On the other side of the cracks lives the vortex, and when you get sucked out, you are erased from time.

This leads to some great scenes with Amy when some of the soldiers disappear through it and they can’t remember, but Amy does as she’s a time traveller. The ending is great too, when the ship’s gravity is powered down and all the angels fall through the crack. It was a clever twist, and a very effecting ending to a strong tale.

And of course, we also have Ser Jorah Mormont himself (Iain Glen) in this one. What more could you want. Good to see the show back on its feet after two wobbly weeks.

8/10

Vampires of Venice

Redesigned console room.

The Doctor is confronted with some interesting ladies.

The previous episode ended on a strange note, with the Doctor and Amy returning to England, the Doctor finding out Amy is about to get married and then Amy throwing herself at the Doctor. So when this story opens on Rory’s stag party (Amy is marrying Rory by the way), the weirdness continues and the Doctor pops out of a cake (instead of a stripper).

The Doctor is being portrayed by Matt Smith as someone who really doesn’t have much idea about

Helen McCrory guest stars.

people. It’s strange that the Doctor can regress in such a way after regeneration, but I have to say it works nicely and provides some great comic moments. The Doctor takes Amy and Rory on a getaway to Venice back a few hundred years.

Turns out there are vampires there – ok fish from another planet, but for want of a better word. It looks beautiful, they did a great job in recreating Venice. We get a somewhat stock-standard story with

The Doctor does what he does best - he saves the day!

lots of running around and danger, and the Doctor winning through in the end. It’s all very competent without being a stand-out episode, the creatures look rather good, the plot is not complicated, there’s a healthy dose of humour mixed with the sci-fi and historical elements. I liked it.

7/10

Snakedance

Martin Clunes as Lon with Collette O'Neil

‘Snakedance’ is Christopher Bailey’s sequel to ‘Kinda’, and although it’s not as thought-provoking or skilfully crafted as the first story, it’s a decent piece with some lovely characters and superb acting, which makes it generally enjoyable even if it still suffers from unconvincing snakes and a very confusing ending which really needed to be explained but wasn’t

John Carson (second from left)

Martin Clunes heads an all-star guest cast as the son of the Federator who wears quite the most ridiculous costume I’ve ever seen – a sort of short white dress with blue clouds on it. Hmmm, yes very fetching. His mother, Tanha, is played by Collette O’Neil, also a very good performance but special mention must go to John Carson as Ambril, whose reactions to the Doctor and general disposition are a real hoot.

Janet Fielding gets to do a bit more of the evil voice and evil acting, even if she comes across as a whining wimp in the first few scenes at the thought of the Mara returning. I thought Adric had left? Maybe she was filling the breach.  I like the ideas, and some of the sets too. The image they went for was Morocco inspired like a huge bazaar. Tents and colours abound.

My issue is seriously with the lighting.

It’s always hard to light for exterior when shooting multi-camera on a set, but this is very poor. I always feel like it’s a set. Even the cycloramas on the stuff that was filmed belies the actual location of filming – they are white! The set is a bit polystyrene too. The inside of the palace or wherever the Federators’ wife and son are staying is good, and I LOVED the six faces of delusion mask (brilliant moment in the story).

Manussan street

Snake finale with Janet Fielding

So it was a real mixed bag. Some stuff is downright creepy, the scenes in the hall of mirrors are some of the best from a writing and directing point of view. And then we hit the end. The Doctor communicates in the middle of a supposed desert with Dogon, the old high priest or some telepathically and goes back to the cave. The Mara appears, the Doctor holds out a small crystal and does something unexplained with his mind and he kills the Mara. In the next story he explains the Mara can only be killed between stages of its becoming or some waffle like that, but I was just left wondering why the Mara lost.

Costumes are a bit much really. Lots of layers, yet

apparently we are close to a desert. Also, everything looks clean and new. Much as I like the colour purple, perhaps tan and brown would have given a better sense of the location? It’s just so… so… so studio. And you get no concept of the full town, where the palace is or anything, or how far from the desert the town is either.

But it’s a lot of fun but it really is like watching a play. The designer Jan Spoczynski was very wrong for the show it seems. Enjoyable story thanks to the cast.

6.5/10

Arc of Infinity

Amsterdam

Better than ‘Time-Flight’. Just. That’s not saying much is it? I’m sorry this isn’t going to be a long review today. Johnny Byrne managed to write one of the most forgettable Doctor Who stories here which consists of an entire episode of running around Amsterdam. Gawd! And a conclusion which is the Doctor shooting Omega, the villain of the piece.

Instead of getting the incredible Stephen Thorne back to reprise this role, one I truly believe there was no need to bring back anyway, they got in Ian Collier who was in ‘The Time Monster’ and frankly the role worked better as a shouting loony than trying to turn him into something he wasn’t. It’s a bit convoluted, the Time Lords are done just as bad as they were in ‘The Invasion of Time’, except they were now more eighties, and generally it’s a boring groan-fest of rubbish, not auguring well for the rest of the season to follow.

It’s also full of ridiculous coincidences, especially that last episode Tegan went away and the next they bump into her in Amsterdam because her cousin, who is also from Australia without the apparent accent, has been caught by Omega because he happened to need a place to sleep for the night and his incredibly geeky friend thought a crypt would be the place to go.

Colin Baker as Maxil.

Then we have Colin Baker as Commander Maxil, he would go on to play the Doctor but for some reason this part and that of the new Castellan (Paul Jericho) has been written with both having venomous hatred for the Doctor. Why? No idea don’t ask me I just work here. Borusa has regenerated again and is now President. Michael Gough camps up the Time-Lord traitor Hedin who apparently was a great friend of the Doctor but we’ve never heard of him in 20 years of them making the show.

Omega's new mask

Ian Collier

The show starts with the Doctor repairing parts of the TARDIS by opening ‘roundels’. Hmmmm, did they have to give the circles on the walls names? I’m sure the series would have survived without that. The sets are plastic and bright, too long again spent in the TARDIS. Time Lord technology looks like something created by Mattel. It’s DREARY! Seriously dreary. The script is nonsense, Omega runs around looking like Peter Davison and suddenly they change the actor rather than do split screen and it’s so obviously. And don’t get me started on the ludicrous Ergon.

Rubbish.

1.5/10

Black Orchid

When Nyssa met Anne

This is going to be a hard one to review. A short story at only two parts, ‘Black Orchid’ is almost ‘filler’ – they had 26 episodes for the series and JNT didn’t want to do six-parters, which in all fairness was a very good call. The last two broadcast six-parters were very slow drawn-out affairs. However, instead we get ‘Black Orchid’, a two-part purely historical story with a wobbly plot by a man whose attitude was ‘it’s only Doctor Who’.

Terrance Dudley’s ‘Four to Doomsday’ was okay, lacking a fair bit in action but okay. If they offered him a commission it seems he took it, he was a working writer after all. ‘Black Orchid’

Peter Davison plays a rather unconvincing shot to be honest.

struggles to fill out TWO parts though. I mean we have a cricket game taking up a good chunk of episode one, and episode two wastes time taking the Doctor and companions to the police station.

Why? Because the plot itself is one of those ‘what’s going on’ type plots. Once you piece together the shabby plot points and kill the protagonist there’s nothing left. Instead we get prolonged parties, dancing and Adric eating a lot of food. The companions become purely functional, even more so than they have been. Adric is superfluous to the plot again, and Tegan is just there to explain strange Earth traditions to the two alien companions. Nyssa gets a double, for some strange reason, and the Doctor spends 30 per cent of the story wandering secret corridors. It’s naff and boring.

Charleston time!

What tops the dreadful plotting off is Terrence  Dudley getting himself into a hole with the Doctor accused of murder. How does he prove his innocence? He blows his alien cover and shows the police the inside of the TARDIS! It’s not something ever done before and hopefully not again. It’s purely and simply a plot point. It’s dreadful, lazy writing from Dudley. At that point the story was completely lost to me.

Peter Davison points out in the commentary another plot hole where he tells everyone not to let George Cranleigh know he doesn’t have Anne (Nyssa’s double) on the roof, but in fact Nyssa.

The Doctor and Lady Cranleigh.

Then he goes up there and that’s the first thing HE tells the guy! George has been to South America and something bad happened to him and his features got distorted and he went mad and lost the ability to speak it seems. What a horrible caricature was presented on screen. And his own family kept him tied up on a bed all the time! I mean really. Please! Don’t ask an audience to buy this crap.

Can't fix your plotholes? Take everyone into the TARDIS.

Then the cricket scene. Apart from the one ball Peter Davison bowled on the stumps which took a wicket, it’s woefully directed. The shots must have been done in a hurry because it doesn’t look like real cricket at all. The ball moves so slowly, the shots that Davison hits would be lucky to get past cover, the catch he takes clearly did not come off a bat. It seems like they had ten minutes to shoot the cricket game shots and they had to make do.

They dialogue is mostly expositional, especially from Tegan. Grrrr. Bad. BAD. BAAAAAD.

2.5/10

Kinda

‘Kinda’ is a very different story in a season of different stories. However, it works on so many levels unlike ‘Castrovalva’, and that is because, purely and simply, good writing. Good writing, good ideas and good characters. Good exposition, a good mix of action in there with it, Christopher Baily’s first Doctor Who story is the first Peter Davison story I have liked.

There is a point to the story, unlike Bidmead’s rubbish which is a scientific concept gone awry. It has its fault, principally in production values and the fact that the giant snake at the climax of the story is rubbish, and that is a major issue because it’s the resolution and end of the show and that needs to convince your audience. The CGI version on the DVD is obviously a much better rendition of a giant snake, but perhaps they were asking too much of the production team initially. Still, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect a better effort than what they originally gave the viewers.

The Doctor enters the dome.

But let’s forget that. The script is complicated without being convoluted, which is very important for Doctor Who because once you’ve got a convoluted script the amazing production values will simply not get you out of that hole. Baily’s script has the two stories combined really. That of the Mara coming, and ancient force which comes to the Kinda world via Tegan’s dream. The ideas of collective dreams are great, the strength in collective dreaming is what prevents the Mara from coming through. Janet Fielding gets some great stuff as well.

Simon Rouse is brilliant as Hindle.

In the dome we have the plot of two men who have gone completely mad. The Doctor but principally Adric have the job of humouring them both. Hindle is wonderfully portrayed by Simon Rouse,

who would go on for a very many years in ‘The Bill’. His madness is not underplayed at all, but you never get the sense of over-acting. In fact it’s an incredibly believable performance. Richard Todd as Sanders loses his mind when he opens the kinda box, but it’s a very different kind of looney to Hindle. It’s great that someone with such a resume as Richard Todd threw himself into the role so wholeheartedly.

Mary Morris as the 'Old Woman'

Nerys Hughes was great support as Todd, and Mary Morris played the old woman Panna, and her look was absolutely amazing. Peter Davison’s performance is his strongest yet. Mathew Waterhouse finds Adric in distressing situations again, as he always seems to week after week. I feel quite sorry for the guy to be honest. I think he did his best but his character appears to written just to whine, complain and get into stupid situations. This story is no exception sadly and it would have been nice for a writer to take his character and develop it!

The Doctor shows the fool a trick,

Having said that it’s better than Nyssa – who was written out of this story at the start and only reappears once the whole thing is dealt with. This linked in apparently with her fainting at the end of the previous story. She uses a machine called a ‘delta-wave augmenter’ to give her some proper sleep. Very weak pointless bizarre stuff.

The sets were as good as you could hope for when doing a jungle for video in a small studio. They weren’t great and it would have been much better if they used filming and Ealing Studios, but this one was completely studio bound, as was ‘Four to Doomsday’. The dome sets were good, but you never really believe you’re on an alien world. The Kinda, the locals, also don’t exactly

This is NOT the CGI snake.

convince. Their costumes are a bit too nice and uniform – they all sort of look the same. Perhaps a lack of water of mud is another contributing factor.

‘Kinda’ though is an engrossing, interesting, at times funny story. It’s offbeat in some ways, larger than life in others and easily the best story since Peter Davison took over.

8.5/10

Logopolis

Tom Baker and Mathew Watherhouse

One thing that feels imminent is the end of the fourth Doctor, all the way through season 18. Things had changed and a change in the lead man was what was needed to really reboot the series and launch it unapologetically into the 80s. The final tale of season 18, Logopolis, sees Tom Baker say goodbye in a script written by Christopher H. Bidmead, which seems to indulge the author a lot.

Not to say that this is a bad story. It certainly has an epic feel to it, but it is absolutely riddled with issues. But let’s start with the new companion – Tegan Jovanka. When she appears in episode one with her Aunt Vanessa, there are some great exchanges between the two. Breath of fresh air? Definitely! A real feeling relationship with a bit of humour. John Nathan-Turner cast Janet Fielding as the Australian air-hostess, and the casting was perfect.

The Doctor is found in the TARDIS cloister room. The cloisters ring impending doom, so at the final story for the fourth Doctor, it’s fitting to start there. The set is rather nice too. All of a sudden the Doctor wants to repair the chameleon circuit, and decides to materialise around another police box. Turns out the Master already did that, so we have a TARDIS inside a TARDIS inside a TARDIS… the conundrum continues on and on. Except that unlike

in ‘The Time Monster’ they are all the Doctor’s TARDIS, which makes little sense. The Master dematerialises, but the issue continues, and yet there the Master is to kill Auntie Vanessa. Bidmead, that who sequence makes no sense at ALL!

The Logopolitans await the Doctor's arrival.

As I said, Bidmead seems to be playing with ideas, but he forgot to make something that made sense. We have all this guff about materialising the TARDIS underwater to flush the Master out. We have the Watcher – a projection of the next Doctor. I liked that idea. We end up on Logopolis where the Monitor and the Logopolitans are trying to harness the power of the CVE to stop the Universe disappearing thanks to entropy.

Apparently the collapse of the Universe has started, and only Logopolis stands between the Universe and total disintegration. Pity the planet looks so rubbish. I mean really it does, it’s the final story for a great Doctor and the corridors and backdrops look like white tarpaulins with a bit of sand. It’s a dreadfully unconvincing design.

Anthony Ainley and Sarah Sutton

Oh yes so the Master is back, now played officially by Anthony Ainly in a frilling costume with tails. That’s right –TAILS! Pantomime much? Although much of performance is pitched softly with chilling undertones, so I think he did a good job in his first full story as Master. We will have to wait and see if he returns. Did he need to go the beard, just like Roger Delgado? Probably not.

Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) suddenly shows up, brought to Logopolis by the Watcher – why? Don’t really know. She is manipulated rather callously by the Master whom she believes is her father briefly, but she adds little to the story. She sees her planet, Traken, destroyed in a heartbeat by entropy on the TARDIS screen. Considering the Master has also taken over her father’s body, I guess I expected her to be a bit more upset than she was. In fact the rate that the TARDIS scanner shows the entropy taking over the Universe, you’d think the whole Universe would be gone in 1-2 minutes. Perhaps hard to show but it seems impossible that anything survived.

The Master and Doctor face off.

The Doctor and the Master team up in a chilling end to episode three. They end up at Earth’s Pharos Project, a disk aimed at the sky, to send information taken from Logopolis to keep the CVE open and save the Universe. This they do, but the Master turns around and sends a bulletin to the Universe that if they don’t accept him as supreme leader he will destroy the CVE and the Universe with it. The Doctor then climbs out onto a moving gantry to disconnect the cable, he does but falls to his doom. This at least prevents the master from destroying the CVE. The Master runs away as guard approach the control room connected to the gantry. It’s not shot very well sadly, and the use of a still photograph of Anthony Ainley to show he is watching the Doctor’s struggle to get to the cable is frankly laughable. But I guess Peter Grimwade, the Director, was very stretched on both budget and time.

It's the end, but the moment has been prepared for.

On the fake Astroturf below the dish, the Doctor is joined by his companions, and then the Watcher. They become one, and the Doctor has a new face – Peter Davison. That scene was done nicely bar some of the replayed clips of enemies and friends, which had out of sync sound and were unneeded. The style of combining the two (in fact three) actors was different from previous regenerations, and I liked that very much.

The story is a real mixed bag. It’s big on gloom doom, but not on action. I still don’t understand why a CVE – Charged Vacuum Embointment, which it has been established as a gateway to E-space, can stop entropy. I don’t understand WHY the Universe was decaying to the point of no return. I do understand they wanted to link back to E-space and therefore the CVEs gained importance. I don’t understand why some shots are grainy, others are blurry, and the look of the thing is very inconsistent.

It has an epic feel, needed for a Doctor’s finale. It’s well acted for the most part. The design is stretched too far – and dolls are used to represent the shrunken remains of the people the Master kills with his Tissue Compression Eliminator. Not convincing at all. It smacks of a story that struggled to get made to be honest. It’s a little to ideas-focussed for mine. But Tom Baker – what an amazing 7 years he gave to the part. Wonderful wonderful performance over the years, and he is wonderful in his final tale.

6.5/10

The Keeper of Traken

I don’t know what to say. After two good stories, Johnny Byrnes’ ‘The Keeper of Traken’ falls terribly flat in my opinion. I can’t say I was ever drawn into this story, or grew to like the characters save perhaps Nyssa (Sarah Sutton). Despite Bidmead’s wish to make the series more ‘scientific’, this story is full of mysterious ‘sources’, and a man that appears and disappears at will in his chair.

The Doctor and Adric meet the Keeper

And it’s so dull. It’s terribly serious for most of the time and there is a lot of capture, escape, recapture even more that the standard Doctor Who tale. Let me start with a positive, I love the design. It’s beautiful, really, this story features some of the most ornate and detailed corridors in the show’s history. They were not lit well at all sadly, in particular the outdoor scenes which were shot in the studio and it’s very very obvious. It’s  case of never knowing whether the scene is indoors or outdoors, which shouldn’t be an issue for the audience, but it clearly is.

Geoffery Beavers as the Master.

The Master returns, played very well I think by Geoffrey Beavers. He underplays it wonderfully, his soft, chilling voice adds another dimension to the part. The make-up is based on the job done for Peter Pratt in ‘The Deadly Assassin’, but doesn’t go as far in being hideous. As a result people will compare the two appearances and frankly this one is not as convincing as the previous.

Anthony Ainley as Tremas.

The plot is a bit confusing. The Melkur. Appears to be a TARDIS. With the Master’s TARDIS inside. Although I would prefer to believe it was a sort of shell connected to the Master’s TARDIS. He has two TARDIS’s now? The whole plot is basically political manoeuvring to get Kassia (played well by Sheila Ruskin) into the Keeper’s position so that the Master can take the power of the Keepership and rule the Universe or something along those lines.

The acting is strong. We also have John Woodnutt as one of the council, and of course Anthony Ainley as Tremas who would become the Master by the end of the story in a bizarre scene where he loses his long white hair, becomes much younger and appears in a frilly costume. Despite excellent casting, the story has very little action, goes round and round in circles and does not feature much humour either. The result is a very dry and unengaging story sadly.

John Woodnutt - always good value

Tom Baker of course is always great, and Adric (Mathew Waterhouse) quickly forms a strong bond with Nyssa, you wonder if he’s found a girlfriend at one point! Every story in Season 18 seems to have a fair bit set in the TARDIS. ‘The Keeper of Traken’ features a little less, especially compared to ‘Warriors Gate’ and ‘Meglos’. I wonder if it was a directive to use the TARDIS a lot more before the start of the season? Perhaps they felt the set was under-utilized. Whilst I enjoy stuff set in the TARDIS, it often prevents the story from moving on or even starting. Here a lot of the first episode is rooted in the TARDIS, which

Kassia looks up at Melkur

means we are waiting for the story to start properly. Perhaps the story was just not meaty enough to last four episodes. I think ‘The Keeper of Traken’ would have worked quite well as a single 45-minute episode.

It’s not bad per se, not at all, but it didn’t hold my attention either. It’s back to the dryer sort of feel of ‘The Leisure Hive’.

4.5/10

The Masque of Mandragora

The Mandragora Helix. Perhaps not a tourist spot?

If they finished off the previous season in fine form, the production team didn’t miss a beat starting off the next season with this wonderful four-part story by Louis Marks. Set before the renaissance in 15^th San Martino, Italy, but filmed in Portmeirion, Wales, this is the perfect mix of the historical and the science fiction, in a fun and cracking story. What more could you ask for?

Our two villains. Who can outdo the other?

Portmeirion is the location where ‘The Prisoner’ was shot, and doubles beautifully as Italy. Even the surrounding forests have an Italian/Mediterranean air about them. Coupled with the palace sets which take use of every little studio square inch there would have been, and stunning simply stunning costumes and masques, the overall design of the story is simply stunning.

The cast is bloody good too. One arch-villain is not enough for this one, so Marks has two. John Laurimore is absolutely wonderful as the despotic Count Frederico. The perfect example of an man used to getting his own way and living an opulent life which he probably doesn’t deserve. Seen as being very powerful, many if not most of the palace guards are sworn to him rather than the rightful Duke, Gulliano (Gareth Armstrong).
BUT he is outdone by Norman Jones as the Cult of Demnos leader, Heironymous, who by the end

The Count is concerned.

of the third episode has lost the most amazing beard in Doctor Who history and has a yellow circle with a red halo around it for a head. The voice continues on though, and Norman Jones, veteran of three stories now, uses it to great effect. Then we have the wonderful case of Tom Baker mouthing the words as he speaks. “I wouldn’t even say no to a salami sandwich”. Right up there with ‘Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!’.

New/Old TARDIS control room.

The plot is good, then a letdown at the end proving again the difficulty of wrapping up three episodes with a great fourth. It’s confusing more than anything else, and perhaps lacks a bit of POWEE! Instead it’s a reveal that the Doctor has tricked the brethren into being zapped to oblivioin by Mandragora which... disappears. The idea is that a coil of wire draws out and drains all of the power, it’s a little baffling and not very well portrayed.

Heironomous's blank look.

What is well portrayed is the new, mahogany-style control room. Loved it. It’s darker and more mysterious than the very open very white and bright and quite garish at times. Loved it though in the early Hartnell stories, and quite exciting on the brief glimpses we got in the Pertwee era. Not used very well though it has to be said bar the odd occasion like ‘The Three Doctors’ or the really early stories. My console room is darker, often with black curtains. Sometimes it looks like a normal room.

My TARDIS is at times a little more casual. And I have had three consoles.

Tom Baker at his best.

For the murky ending, I subtract a point, but overall I just loved this enthralling adventure. Tom Baker is just wonderful, with some great flippant lines (“You can’t count, Count!” on the top of the list) and that deeply serious mode he goes into as we head into episode four. The violence is downplayed compared to stories like ‘The Brain of Morbius’, BUT that’s not a bad thing. The

torture is not seen on screen too, which is a good thing. Instead we have a swather of horse-chases and sword fights keeping this a very exciting adventure. Basically, this story of story is unique to Doctor Who. And why not? I doubt any TV show could do it better!

9/10