Planet of Fire

Nicola Bryant as Peri, with Dallas Adams.

And the irony of it all is, Tegan left in the previous story to little fanfare or interest from the writer, and here we have Turlough’s final story and it truly is HIS story. Two companions getting very different treatment.

‘Planet of Fire’ is Peter Grimwade’s final story for the show as director or in this case writer. It’s very solid. It features the best use of Anthony Ainley’s Master bar none. It was well directed by Fiona Cummings and shot partially in Lanzarote. Turlough ends up meeting up with his own people in the end, and saving a small settlement from dying when the planet Sarn explodes. It’s a good way to finish for Turlough and was written by the writer who introduced him.

Peter Davison climbs the hot hills of Lanzarote

It’s interesting that a line had been put through Peter Grimwade as a director more than a year before this story, thanks mostly to his autocratic style. When you consider the stories he directed are some of the strongest from seasons 18 and 19, sometimes you have to think ‘it’s the result that counts’. Still, he was able to give us this story with his type-writer.

Lanzarote was a perfect place to film. It features as Lanzarote at the start, and then as the location for Sarn with amazing alien looking landscape and the feel of volcanoes being present. Despite some of the costumes somehow looking very 80s (strange when you consider the costuming had a distinctive middle eastern feel), it’s all fairly convincing. Add the star Peter Wyngarde as Timanov to the mix, and it’s looking great.

The sublime Peter Wingarde

Turlough in shorts, though, is somewhat dubious to say the least! Then Nicola Bryant enters as American student Peri, and to be fair to her she was very young at the time (possibly 19) but the accent is not consistent. If an American companion in waiting wasn’t bad enough, we have the return of Kamelion, the crazy non-functional robot introduced in ‘The King’s Demons’ and completely ignored for every story since. That’s five stories he’s been in the TARDIS without appearing on screen or being talked about! There was, however, a scene in ‘The Awakening’ which didn’t make the final cut.

Despite these things, the story turns out pretty

Peri discovers the Master's control box.

strong with some lovely effects work to create the different coloured fires from blue to red. Very well mixed in. I watched the original version again of this as the omnibus version, which my good friend Andre tells me is excellent, was far shorter than the original thing and I felt I might miss something. The effects in the shortened ‘director’s cut’ are apparently very good and the pacing excellent.

Not that this one gets particularly slow at all. The Master brings Kamelion (and the Doctor, Turlough and Peri) to Sarn because an

Is this the end of the Master? Probably not.

experiment has gone wrong and he is now an inch tall, operating things from a small control box in his TARDIS. Kamelion changes from robot to silver man to Howard, Peri’s step-father to the Master throughout the tale. He makes a strange request when freed from the Master’s power of the Doctor – to kill him. Stranger still, the Doctor obliges which left me a little concerned because it barely affecting him.

Grimwade has given us a far more linear plotline than before, and it certainly helps. Sad to see Turlough go, Mark Strickson did a great job with the part despite the dodgy shorts. Cummings’ direction is excellent, you can never fault her at all.

7.5/10

Resurrection of the Daleks

Davros is back - Terry Molloy.

‘Resurrection of the Daleks’ is a rollicking, fast paced, stylish piece of Doctor Who. I am very torn after seeing it because for me it was both good and bad at the same time. Let’s start with Mathew Robinson who directed it then, because he did a mighty fine job and my hat is raised to him. On a Doctor Who budget he really made something that if shot on film in widescreen almost looked as if the production values were good enough for a movie.

The script, by Eric Saward, though, has massive holes in it and is very derivative to be honest. It’s not that it’s not well paced, plotted or that the characters are poor, in fact I think the character writing is excellent in this one, but the ideas are just a bit convoluted and pointless? I’m trying to find the right word but that’s all I’ve got right now – never good when you’re criticising writing.

Rodney Bewes guest stars.

So we have a time corridor from the Daleks’ space ship to Earth, 1983. Okay. Why? That seems pointless – the Dalek time ship is hundreds of years in the future. They are holding canisters of a virus that has been destroying them in an abandoned warehouse in London. But wait there is a point to this all, the Daleks are planning to trap the Doctor with the Time Corridor in said warehouse. Well that’s all a bit too much for me.

They have also taken to duplicating humans left right and centre, but employ an apparently non-duplicated human to run them (Lytton). Ok.

Why again? It’s a secret plot to duplicate the Doctor and his companions and send them to Gallifrey to defeat the Time Lords of course. Yet at the same time the main strand of the plot involves rescuing Davros from his cryogenic prison in space, so that he can stop a Movellan virus which has caused the Daleks to lose the fight with these enemies. So basically, exactly the same reason as in ‘Destiny of Daleks’, more or less.

Davros has a little thing he uses to inject people and Daleks with and they become his servants. Hmmmm that’s another wobbly plot device right there. As you can see the plot, at least in my eyes, is very weak. However, the story is enjoyable and exciting despite those issues.

The direction is noticeably snappier than usual, it’s very well cast with Maurice Colbourne from Gangsters as Lytton, Rodney Bewes as Stien, and the recasting of Davros this time to be played by Terry Molloy who really pushes the shouting and craziness. It’s strong performance, but I can’t help but feel that somewhere between this performance and the understated performance of David Gooderson would have been the way to go with Davros. Still, when you play a megalomaniac, you shouldn’t really hold back should you?

The Doctor can't quite kill Davros.

The sets and locations are perfect. The space prison is suitably dark and simple, it looks like it could easily be deconstructed and reconstructed to make different rooms. We see the Doctor’s past lives and companions as the Daleks take a print of his mind too which is good. The Doctor and his companions are at times quite secondary to the story, which I know a lot of people don’t like but I think it works well. Perhaps Peter Davison’s best performance thus far, a great moment when he could kill Davros, doesn’t, gets distracted, the door closes and he doesn’t get another opportunity. Would he have? We see Davros contracting the virus right at the end, but somehow I don’t think that will do him in.

Goodbye Tegan

Mark Strickson as Turlough gets a decent amount of action too, and although still a bit cowardly, he has one of his best stories to date. Which leaves Tegan. Sadly this is Janet Fielding’s last story, but I’m sure she was happy to leave. Even in her final story, she doesn’t get to do much and then just decides she’s had enough at the end, which to be honest doesn’t seem THAT out of the blue, but as it was her last story it would have been nice if it was a story where Tegan took a good chunk of the plot, like Adric and Nyssa before her. I like Tegan, but as is almost always the case with the companions, she was woefully under-utilised and that’s sad because Janet Fielding is an enormously talented actress. Brave heart Tegan, I will miss you!

So it’s a mixed bag this story, and a tough one to give a mark too. I’ve shaved off half a mark for the poor use of Tegan.

6.5/10

Frontios

The Doctor with Platagenent (centre)

Christopher H. Bidmead was asked back by Eric Saward to write another story, and it was his best story by far. A more traditional Who-tale than ‘Logopolis’ and ‘Castrovalva’, ‘Frontios’ again is a strange, single word title stemming from the location of the story. Whilst the similarities don’t end there, at least there’s a decent story here rather than four episodes of exposition of a scientific concept.

Turlough at work

A rust-proof, solid cast adds to some pretty good design work (bar the Tractators), and it all comes together to make an exciting adventure which pace and energy. The production got off to a horrific staff when the actor booked to play Mr Range was brutally murdered the day of his costume fitting, and the actors recall that hanging over the production, which it surely would. However the whole team deserve kudos for pulling it all together in the wake of such a tragedy.

Bidmead’s fascination with the TARDIS hadn’t waned, it plays an important role in this story. I’m trying to think of a single Peter Davison story which doesn’t feature a TARDIS scene, and at the moment I’m coming up blank. So there’s some phaffing about going on at the start as the TARDIS gets pulled down towards Frontios. And then the TARDIS ends up in pieces scattered around the tunnels of Fronitos.

The Doctor is trapped!

The plan of the Tractators is a little like the Daleks’ plan to pilot Earth around as a big space ship. Which is their plan for Frontios too. They use a strange machine to make the tunnels, and they require a human operator which is merely a plot device I guess. The Tractators are presented as burrowing insects (albeit not the most convincing ones), so I think making the machine responsible for the tunnelling was a strange choice by the author.

Tractators at work.

He uses Turlough very well, and Mark Strickson turns out a fine performance as a companion losing their mind. He’s a decent foil for the Doctor, with an added pinch of cowardice yet displays bravery at times too, especially in ‘Frontios’. It is a bit convenient plotwise that Turlough has a race-memory of the Tractators which slowly reveals the way to defeat them and their leader, the Gravis, but it’s easy enough to overlook.

It’s a very moody piece and there are some great, strong characters such as Plantagenant (Jeff Rawle), the colony leader, and his 2IC, Rudge, played by Onedin Line and Carry On veteran, Peter Gilmore. Sadly Tegan’s character is getting lost with no development whatsoever. Janet Fielding always puts in a good performance, but they never write any changes in her character, nothing since ‘Snakedance’.

The sets are rather stylish in places, and generally good. The stuff which is supposed to be ‘outside’ on

Frontios is done better than say ‘Snakedance’, the lighting is worked to better suit the location. The mixing of tunnels and the TARDIS is great. The only disappointment is the Tractators, bigger than humans but shelled insects. It’s fair to say that they were never going to be well realised, it was asking too much. Their arms are just basically hands which look terrible and are the worst part of a bad costume. The movement is hampered by the costume two, with no legs – or should I say one? But they don’t hop, they shuffle everywhere. Hard to take seriously a monster which if you pushed over – and that looked pretty easy to me to do, they wouldn’t be able to get back up.

So that is ‘Frontios’, a well written, exciting piece with just a couple of issues.

7.5/10

The Awakening

Glyn Houston

As two-parters go, this is the best of the ones from this era by a long shot. It was originally a four-parter, and that becomes obvious in the final ten minutes where things move like lightening, but nevertheless Eric Pringle’s script is solid and we are given a good ‘filler’ story far better than ‘The King’s Demons’ or ‘Black Orchid.

Denis Lil with more hair than last time...

Not only that, but Glyn Houston (‘The Hand of Fear’) and Denis Lil (‘The Image of the Fendahl’ and the show ‘Survivors’) make good guest appearances. It’s got an interesting concept – a creature made strong by the evil of a man, the Malice itself I think looks ok even if it clearly is a big polystyrene face, and considering the story was allocated barely any budget at all (there are very few sets you will notice) it is a pretty successful attempt at a short story.

They could have well made it three parts I think, because the ending is difficult to understand and very rushed, and ‘Warriors of the Deep’ could have had an episode cut I think, but the budget wouldn’t have worked out that way I expect.

Janet Fielding dressed as the May Queen.

The village where it was shot was perfect, rather like the one in ‘The Android Invasion’. It was a great chance to wear period costumes in a modern day setting I imagine! I am unsure why the power of the Malice didn’t affect everyone in Little Hodcombe, other than that would have put pay to the whole storyline I expect because they’d be no resolution possible!

The Malice

Some of the effects weren’t great – but yet the little blue pixels dotted around the place were reasonably effective. I disliked the ending, where the whole village basically was bundled into the TARDIS, although watching green slime spew out of the Malice was a highlight. It was all very rushed so I’m not 100% sure how the Doctor defeated the Malice in the

end. The main evil in Little Hodcombe was destroyed, and that was feeding the Malice who was then in turn

All aboard the TARDIS!

controlling many of the villagers. I think. Or were some just over zealous and listened to everything Sir George Hutchinson said? As I said, in two parts it doesn’t get explained very well. Very similar situation to ‘Snakedance’ which ended similarly, with a hasty expansion of the explanation added to the next story.

Still, it holds up ok without shining overly brightly.

6.5/10

Warriors of the Deep

Jokingly called ‘Warriors of the Cheap’ by fans, ‘Warriors of the Deep’ actually, for the most part, looks like a good deal of money was spent on it, but it just wasn’t quite enough to cover the bad bits – the wobbly rubber door, the Myrka and to a lesser extent the Sea Devils and Silurians. We have a large set, though overlit and maybe not exactly right for the story I think it’s a good set that works. For me, the greatest issues are with the story, as always. Johnny Byrnes is not my favourite writer, as I have alluded to in the past. The thing is - I think this is his best story.

Maddox in the Sync machine with Ian McCulloch

Doesn’t mean I think this is a good story, mind you!

So what did I like? Well, two power blocks poised to blow each other up in 2084? The cold war was still very much alive when the story was written, and I wouldn’t have a hard time believing we could end up there again. I liked the idea of the ‘sync operator’ and the character Maddox, the espionage, and I feel that if Byrnes had concentrated on that and got rid of the Silurians and Sea Devils, it would have been a great script. But, he didn’t.

Not convinced by these Sea Devils

The Silurians are written even more one-dimensionally than in their first story. Apparently Ikhtar, the leader, survived which seems unlikely. So all the story is essentially about is a very slow invasion of an underwater base, a declaration of war and a very bad monster. The two power blocks are merely a setting for the story and little else, and mores the pity that they are. The costumes for the Silurians are ok, the ones for the Sea Devil, with added armour, are a bit dodgier and it’s twice as obvious as it was in ‘The Sea Devils’ that the actors’ heads are in the necks.

Solow (Ingrid Pitt) and the Myrka

Why did they decide to bring them both back? Well, JNT was in the mood for bringing things back – he had been since ‘Earthshock’. It’s just a pity they didn’t use them in an interesting way because the idea behind the Silurians and Sea Devils is interesting. Instead we have over an episode of them just slowly taking over the sea base. The direction is so rushed by Pennant Roberts, because they lost two weeks of production time thanks to a general election at the time, that these long sequences look ridiculous. It’s basically ‘stand in a line two metres from the Sea Devils. Shoot at them. They shoot at you. Eventually most of the humans die and one or two retreat’. And then it gets repeated scene after scene.

I won’t go into the Myrka. I feel for

the effects team and Marr Irvine because with no time or money (they were still adding paint as filming went on) it was never going to work. And then it was shot out in the open in bright white corridors. It could not have possibly worked. Some bits just needed to be scrapped altogether. Byrnes asked a lot of the production team, and then two weeks were taken from them. It’s a real pity because so much of ‘Warriors of the Deep’ looks really good, slick and like money was spent on it. We have some underwater scenes and ripping end to episode one when the Doctor appears to have drowned. A lot of the model work is good too.

Then we have a guest cast featuring Ian McCulloch, from ‘Survivors’ fame, who gives a great performance, balancing out Ingrid Pitt’s return to Doctor Who where she has no idea what she’s saying half the time and dies inexplicably trying to karate-kick the Myrka. Now that is definitely one of the most bizarre (and to be honest, bad) sequences in Who-history. Peter Davison is in full control as the Doctor by now which is nice, Janet Fielding doesn’t get a lot to do, Mark Strickson as Turlough gets a bit more. He’s quite cowardly in this one actually, but that flip flops a bit.

I just think there was an opportunity missed here to make a really interesting futuristic political thriller.

4.5/10

The Five Doctors

Tegan and the Doctor at the Eye of Orion

Carole Ann Ford as Susan with a NEW First Doctor.

After twenty years, it was time for a one-off special, and in the vein of ‘The Three Doctors’, ‘The Five Doctors’ provides an entertaining, fun story to celebrate a very special milestone. The fact that Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee were in it is a little bit magical. Tom Baker declined (in the end), and I must admit I think it might have been a little strange if he was in it. The use of the ‘Shada’ clips was a clever way around it and allowed the story to be called ‘The Five Doctors’. Add to that Richard Hundrell’s First Doctor, (Hartnell sadly passed away in 1975), and the thing works brilliantly. Hundrell is NOT William Hartnell, but similar in many ways whilst putting his own mark on the part as well.

Then Carole Ann Ford, Lis Sladen and Nicholas Courtney came back to reprise their roles, with cameos from Caroline John, Richard Franklin, Wendy Padbury and Fraser Hines. Plus Daleks, Cybermen, Yeti and Athony Ainley as the Master. It really was a celebration of all that had come before in the previous 20 years. A tough task for Terrance Dicks, but one he did a great job with considering all the things he had to include. His writing is very natural, and whilst it feels quite different from recent stories, it was a true ‘Doctor Who’ tale from a man who knows the show as well as anyone.

Jon Pertwee is also back.

I won’t go into the behind-the-scenes issues with Robert Holmes and the likes here, I will just look at this 90 minute special, which was slightly extended on the version I saw on the DVD. To the short comings firstly. It was sad to see Borusa turned into the bad guy, and Peter Moffat cast him with the fourth actor in as many stories (Philip Latham) who seems evil from the get-go to be honest. So this turn to the dark side was telegraphed and with the Borusas we have seen previously, it is rather hard to believe as well. Paul Jericho is back as the Castellan, getting brutally

And Pat Troughton!

shot on Borusa’s orders, and the garish Gallifrey/capitol sets are also back with a vengeance. Borusa also gets some crazy headwear at one point. A couple of dodgy direction points here and there – Susan spraining her ankle was perhaps more a nod to this oft-used plot device rather than anything else, but it’s not done or directed convincingly. When the Third Doctor meets Sarah, he pulls her up a slight incline using a cable and Bessie. To be frank it looks ridiculous and something else should have been done in my opinion if they couldn’t convince.

A couple of old companions cameo.

Aside from that, what’s not to like? Okay, the script isn’t amazing, ground-breaking stuff, but it didn’t need to be. It needed to provide something for all appearing Doctors to do, which it did admirably, and it needed to wrap things up nicely. It also did

that. The principle location, Wales, was a good choice. Certainly better than a quarry! Then we have a new TARDIS console, a huge step up from the previous one which had been used, I think, since Graham Williams took the reins, and to be honest was a poor cousin to the original console first seen in 1963.

It’s a wonderful nod to the past, Peter Davison gets a good run as ‘the Doctor’, as he should have. I agree with some disappointment that it would have been nice to have the Doctors sharing more screen time together. Pertwee and Troughton again are great together but they don’t  get that much of a chance. They both still retain what they originally brought to the role brilliantly, even if Troughton is a little more understated than he was in ‘The Three Doctors’. He is ten years older of course.

What else is there to say? This ticks a lot of boxes for me. Much better than the general feel of Season 20 too, which was rather bland at times despite the Guardian stories being rather solid.

8.5/10

The King's Demons

Gerald Flood as bad King John

Some stories don’t need as many words to sum up as others. This is one of those stories. ‘The King’s Demons’ is Terence ‘it’s only Doctor Who’ Dudley’s last script for the show thankfully. It’s starts well enough, King John (Gerald Flood) is visiting a castle in the north of England somewhere even though he is also in London. The King is in fact Kamelion, a robot the Master found of Zeraphax who can change his appearance. Hence the name.

Can you see through the disguise?

It’s a two-parter, which don’t appear to work very well in the Davison era. Come the 15-minute mark of the second episode the writer seems to realise that there’s very little time left and everything gets wrapped up as quickly as possible. The Master spends most of the first episode disguised (badly) as a the King’s (French) champion. So far in every Davison story he’s appeared in he’s had a disguise. Groan. Gerald Flood hams it to the max. Tegan complains how cold it is for pretty much the entire story. The locals hate then like then hate the Doctor again. But no connection with any character is made by the Doctor or his companions. Turlough does very little.

The Doctor and Master grapple for control over Kamelion.

It’s not the worst of the season, it has a good look, sets are solid, costumes fantastic, but at two episodes and a very weak plotline – the Master wants to change history by preventing Magna Carta from being signed, so he’s trying to discredit King John by having Kamelion do wacky things, this story falls far short of what it could have been. In fact it still has me going until the reveal of the robot, which was a real robot, albeit one that didn’t work very well.

Characters are somewhat one-dimensional, but solidly played except for flood who goes too far

camping it up like crazy. As the Master’s only appearance this season, and his previous story ‘Time-Flight’ (which this story references without explaining how the Master escaped) I would have hoped for better for Anthony Ainley. Very hard it seems to tell a good story over two parts.
4/10