The Claws of Axos

I think the best way to describe ‘The Claws of Axos’ is an experiment. Is it one that succeeded? Some would say yes, some would say no. Personally, I would call it a success.  It’s far from perfect, for sure, but it is an interesting, entertaining and different four episode tale.

An Axos

We have the idea of an organic space ship to start with, and with the concept of Axos – which is in fact the ship, the Axons on board and a substance called Axonite as well that Axos tries to use to suck Earth dry so it can keep on moving and surviving. It’s a tale about greed, double crossings and at times sheer stupidity.

Written by first timers Bob Baker and Dave Martin, ‘The Claws of Axos’ is not only innovative in ideas and writing, but also in direction. Michael Ferguson deserves a lot of credit for this story, the way it looks, the way he has presented the writers’ vision with remarkable originality and at times genius. His use of multi-camera here is fantastic,

A soldier fights an Axon.

the location shooting wonderful, it’s a triumph of imagination and a great example of a director taking a bizarre script that many would have given up on and letting it inspire and turn into something visually quite brilliant. For the time, I should hasten to add.

Every aspect of the production needed clever thinking – from the different weather conditions thrown at the team each day they shot. The interiors of Axos are a combination of strange material-based walls coupled with overlays to disguise the rough edges, the Axos have at least two forms, the more human form where they wear tights and the monster version featuring tentacles which do look rather good. The tight-version has zippers clearly showing which is a shame, and they attempted so much in this story we couldn’t expect everything to be perfect.

The Doctor and Chin.

Our regular cast, including the Master, is back for the story. The Doctor seems to be at the centre of a little controversy in this tale, people have argued that he isn't very likable. I would argue that the third Doctor is on the whole a bit anti-authoritarian – definitely anti-civil servant, although occasionally he presents the opposite way in some stories. The presence of the character ‘Chinn’ begins the story wanting to find out exactly who the Doctor is. He is precisely the sort of pen-pushing annoying ignorant and greedy man that the third Doctor can’t abide. So we start with an outraged Doctor.

The Master at the controls of the Doctor's TARDIS.

This leads into his offer to the Master to escape before Axos destroys Earth in his TARDIS – the interior being seen the first time since the Troughton era. Of course, this is all part of a trick to trap Axos in a time loop – a rather clever and original idea at the time! But then he is quite happy to try and escape Earth on his own. Of course, the limitations set by the Time Lords on his TARDIS won’t allow that.

But the Doctor wants to be free – should the viewer feel bad that he wants to leave the Brigadier and Jo? No, it’s seems a natural want to me, although by now they have become somewhat close. It’s an interesting thought. Does it spoil the story? Well it didn’t for me.

8/10

Terror of the Autons

The Autons return in another four-part Robert Holmes story. It’s fair to say that so far his two Jon Pertwee

Roger Delgado as the Master.

stories have been much better than his Patrick Troughton stories – although that wouldn’t be hard! This time we are treated to a brand new character, and arch-villain, ‘The Master’, deftly played and perfectly cast, Roger Delgado has a wonderful stillness and arrests the viewer’s attention straight away. I too have an arch-foe, perhaps you know of him? His name is Peter O’Feild, and he is always up to some mischief. He even stole my body print and for a time was walking around looking just like my first incarnation! The cheek of him! In fact, I believe a visualised retelling of the adventure will soon be available to watch on Youtube... but I digress!

Harry Towb about to pull a chair over himself!

‘Terror of the Autons’ has some wonderful characters, fast becoming Robert Holmes’ forte. Michael Wisher, who appeared as a TV presenter in ‘Ambassadors of Death’, plays Rex Farrel with aplomb. Slowly being hypnotised by the Master, but regaining a sense of self by the end of the story. There are several notable smaller parts well played too such as Harry Towb as McDermott, partner to Farrel who has a wonderful scene pulling a black plastic chair over himself in one of the strangest death scenes in Doctor Who thus far. Interesting cameos also from David Garth as a Time Lord with a bowler-hat, and Stephen Jack as Farrel Snr.

UNIT gets a new Captain, Mike Yates, portrayed by Richard Franklin. Andrew has met Richard apparently and says he is a splendid chap! Not only that, but we have a new companion in Jo Grant – played by Katy Manning. I’m not sure what to make of her – she is the very opposite of Liz Shaw, who I really liked. Jo Grant is rather ditzy, a young woman recently out of High School it seems. Quite headstrong, but not the smartest cookie in the jar. She starts by ruing the Doctor’s work on his dematerialisation circuit, then getting hypnotised by the Master and trying to set off a bomb to destroy the Doctor’s lab, the Doctor and Yates and Benton. All in Episode One – not the perfect start!

The Master arrives at Rossini’s Circus, his TARDIS disguised as a horse float. I have to confess to thinking this is all a bit of a red herring, as the plastics factory is again where the Master’s operations are based. I like the circus as a setting, but it seemed to be irrelevant to the actual plot. I would love to see a story fully set in the circus – a great location for a Doctor Who story. I’m it will happen in the next few seasons or so.

Autons dressed to sell flowers.

The Autons are used less than in ‘Spearhead from Space’, but when they are used they are quite effective and scary. Particularly distributing the lethal plastic daffodils, central to the Master’s plans. The story cleverly uses plastic as a weapon by animating it. The use of the telephone wire to strangle the Doctor is well done, less well done is the use of the black plastic blow-up chair to suffocate McDermott. It is so obviously the actor pulling the chair down on himself sadly that no-one could be convinced.

Mike Yates (Richard Franklin) wonders if the 'dafs are dangerous'.

Then there is the abrupt and frankly strange ending, the weakest element of the story in my opinion. Stuck with the story needing to end pretty quickly, Holmes decided the Master would suddenly change his mind about the Autons and send the Nestene back into the farthest reaches of space. The only impetuous for this change of heart is the Doctor suggesting the Nestene wouldn’t be up for sharing the power with the Master. He is opening up the gateway via satellite dish, and just changes his mind. Personally I would have been more convinced by a fight sequence involving the Brigadier and the Doctor turning everything around. But this is what Holmes and presumably Dicks went with. It was an odd choice.

Katy Manning is the new assistant, Jo Grant.

But we can’t complain too much, it’s an exciting adventure, like the previous two it has a offering of action and stunts. Wonderful shot of an Auton falling down a cliff, getting up and continuing on at the bottom, perhaps my favourite moment in the story. A very enjoyable story.

8/10

Spearhead from Space

Jon Pertwee is the Doctor!

Bam! I’ve hit colour! And wow it really does make a difference. ‘Spearhead from Space’ not only introduces us to colour, but also a brand new Doctor in Jon Pertwee, and into a new format of being exiled on Earth and being part of the UNIT team. He cuts a dashing and somewhat different figure to the two previous Doctors with frills and a cape, a great contrast to Troughton’s Doctor immediately.

The UNIT team for Spearhead from Space.

This story has quite a unique feel. Completely shot on film, the DVD release has wonderful picture quality – hard to imagine it being that enhanced by the blu-ray which has not been released yet as I write this blog entry. The feel of this story is like no story before because of all the factors already mentioned. The musical score, provided by Dudley Simpson, is orchestral and quite understated compared to the sort of score used in today’s television and movies, but even for a show produced in 1969 does sound a little dated, or not quite right. Perhaps better suited to a show like ‘The Avengers’. Still it’s not BAD.

It’s a pretty well done story, and benefits from not being shot on video, which provides a more washed out feel. This clearly feels like a film! Which is why it was chosen for blu-ray release. We see the Doctor almost at the start, falling out of the TARDIS, and then he is taken into a local hospital where he spends much of the next two episodes bar one escape. To be truthful, I felt a bit disappointed that he doesn’t feature so much in the first half of this story.

Caroline John

Caroline John is the new ‘companion’, or perhaps ‘assistant’ is the more apt term in her case. A scientist herself she is very good in ‘Spearhead from Space’, offering a sceptical view and even a little cynical humour to role. Nicholas Courtney is back as the Brigadier, but we don’t see any other people from UNIT that featured in ‘The Invasion’.

Where the story excels is in being creepy and scary. Manikins or shop-dummies coming to life was a brilliant idea from Robert Holmes (or possibly it was Derrick Sherwin), and it was something that didn’t cost an arm and a leg to do. They even had the chance to film in Madame Tussaud’s which was a nice touch. Andrew tells me he remembers the scene of the figures coming to life there as one of his earliest Doctor Who memories. Again the music is understated, which is not a bad thing at all. As the Autons walk down the road shooting people, we have a rather well directed scene that adds to the fear of the audience. A very real threat.

Autons invade London!

Finally, the story concludes at the plastics’ factory. Simple dolls have never looked creepier! John Woodnutt plays Hibbert, controlled by the head Auton, Channing, a wonderfully creepy performance given by Hugh Burden. In fact think it’s not until episode three that he actually speaks on camera. Kudos for Holmes for this, and kudos to him for a far better script than his previous two.

The real let-down is the finale. Firstly the Doctor builds a machine to destroy the Nestene Consciousness, which isn’t very dynamic. Then the story ends with a very comical fight with some very poor tentacles coming out of the machine which houses the Nestene. As the foam tentacles are desperately pulled around his neck by Jon Pertwee, not fooling anyone, Liz Shaw operates the machine. It doesn’t work. The reason why is not given. Then she fiddles with it a bit, and it does work. The Autons looked great throughout the story, wonderful ideas, but the final confrontation needed better scripting and effects. Otherwise it was a fantastic start to the third Doctor, and the colour era of Doctor Who.

7.5/10

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 Space Pirates

On the face of it, the title ‘The Space Pirates’ conjures some exciting images in one’s mind. Pirates in space? Brilliant! Oh and treasure, there must treasure right? Pirates without treasure is like Mork without Mindy, Troughton without Hines, or Morecombe without Wise, right? There’s going to be sword fights – maybe laser sword fights, in space, it’s going to be a swashbuckling non-stop adventure.

Swash-buckling pirates? Maybe not....

Well, I’m sorry but after such a title it’s hard not to be disappointed with Robert Holmes’ second story. I’d be very surprised if he writes another script after the two duds he’s served up thus far. What exactly is wrong with ‘The Space Pirates’? Well, it’s more a matter of asking what is right about it, and the answer is simply – not much.

Alpha One, where the Doc and co spend the first two episodes.

The first two episodes in particular are very slow, and it never really speeds up all that much. With no pace it’s immediately a hard story to get into considering the subject matter. It should have been a good story. But the realisation is just so poor. It seems more akin to Somali pirates stealing oil than swashbuckling pirates in the mould of Blackbeard and John Sparrow. Which, in all fairness, is the way it should have gone.

One annoying thing is that the Doctor and his companion are hardly relevant for the story. Especially Jamie and Zoe who don’t appear to do anything for six whole episodes. The Doctor defuses a bomb in episode six, and apart from that they just get captured, escape, recaptured, blown up but not actually contribute to the narrative. Instead the story is driven by a somewhat pantomime character in Milo Clancy, with a cowboy costume, a handlebar moustache and a somewhat dubious and over the top southern accent.  Milo Clancy is played by Gordon Gostelow, as whacky a character they have had in Doctor Who to this point, so a strange choice to be the main character for the six-parts.

Milo Clancy

The accents are a feature in this one, and they seem to have gone mostly for American accents. Donald Gee plays Warne, he’s American like many characters. The pirates are led by Caven, played by Dudley Foster, who is really a gritty character I guess, happy to kill and be brutal at will. It just doesn’t gel with all the other characters with bizarre accents and strange costumes.

General Hermack, played by Jack May, is the perfect example. He and Warne spend the six episodes mostly in their space ship looking for the Argonite pirates, but don’t ever meet the Doctor and his companions and only have a brief encounter with Milo Clancy. They feature heavily in Episode Two, the only episode to still exist, an episode where the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe spend the whole 25 minutes stuck in part of a beacon away from the TARDIS. Hermack doesn’t have an accent I can place, but he does have a ridiculous voice. I doubt whether it was the actor’s natural voice but I suppose anything is possible.

The sets are pretty poor too. Doctor Who, at least at this stage of its evolution, does not do space craft well, especially not the interiors. The use of cathode-ray TV sets everywhere is laughable, and all the switches and buttons look so dated and lacking in imagination that they are completely unbelievable and the audience knows for sure that they are watching something made in a studio.

The Doctor’s journey begins halfway through episode one when he, Jamie and Zoe arrive on the beacon. They are chased very briefly, pirates attack and leave them there and blow up the beacon. Episode Two they are in the beacon, alone, for the whole episode. Episode three they meet Milo Clancy and travel with him, episode four they are locked away by the pirates, episode five they escape, get captured again and are thrown into a room (rather than a cell). Episode Six they talk a bit and the Doctor defuses a bomb. That’s the journey for our three characters who sadly get little to do in the second Doctor’s penultimate story. They basically just want to be reunited with the TARDIS, stuck on a different piece of the beacon that was blown up in episode one. However, being reunited with the TARDIS happens after the story is finished!

It has a strange feel, very different to any other story I can recall. The first Doctor met pirates in his penultimate story too – ‘The Smugglers’. Real proper treasure-hunting pirates in a cracking adventure. 3 years later, pirates in space failed to have nearly as much impact.

3/10

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 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

The Invasion

We go from a very strange, otherworldly story in ‘The Mind Robber’ to an Earth-bound, invasion story featuring a lot of soldiers and the Cybermen, called simply ‘The Invasion’. For the first time we have an eight-part adventure, with two missing episodes thankfully animated for the DVD release. It is an interesting story.

It differs from previous monster stories of Season Five in that it is a proper invasion, it’s not a base-under siege story, rather a world under siege! Nicholas Courtney returns as Lethbridge Stewart, recently promoted to Brigadier in charge of the newly formed UNIT. We are told some time has passed since ‘The Web of Fear’, where we met the character. The inference is that the story is slightly in the future of when it was first shown (1968-9) so it is presumably early to mid 1970s.

Troughton and Stoney, Episode 8. 

Derrick Sherwin wrote the script. He found himself script editor one week and producer the next, swapping roles as Peter Bryant was slowly moving on from his producership. It’s a mostly functional script with some great characters. The two most interesting and presumably fun characters to play are the chief villains of the piece (bar the Cybermen) Packer, played by Peter Halliday, and Tobias Vaughn, played by Kevin Stoney.

Stoney appeared in Doctor Who as Mavic Chen, the evil dictator of Earth in ‘The Daleks’ Masterplan’, a role not dissimilar to Vaughn. At least we could see his face properly in this one. Vaughn is truly mad in this story, and Stoney approaches the role with relish. He has fits of anger and madness, and at one point allows Professor Watkins (Edward Burnham) to shoot him revealing he has been part Cyber-ised. Packer is in charge of Vaughn’s security and spends most of his seven and a bit episodes desperately wanting to hurt someone, and yet never gets around to it much to his frustration.

Sally Faulkner as Isobel.

Sally Faulkner and Wendy Padbury.

Sally Faulkner appears as Isobel Watkins, a real sixties ‘it’ girl, and could have made a decent companion. Jamie disappears around episode seven and isn’t seen in episode eight until the farewell scene, which is captured on film so I presume he had a week or two holiday during the making of this story. Again though, Hines and Troughton work magnificently well together in parts of this story. There is a wonderful scene in a lift shaft where they scurry to the top. Jamie asks the Doctor what will happen if they don’t get out in time, the Doctor replies that’s simple – they will get squashed!

Wendy Padbury instantly made a good companion, but in this story she really shines. Zoe is given a lot to do, calculating missile trajectories and confusing computers, and this story shows how well a smart companion can be used. Troughton himself has some great moments, especially when he poses for photos mid the big battle in episode eight!

The story is long yet light weight in fairness. It’s perhaps predictable, and not very fast moving, and not filled with a lot of plot twists. However it is very solid and features chases, battles, scary moments in the sewers and helicopters and planes. The Cybermen don’t appear until episode four, although there are a few giveaways before then that they are coming. The Cyber-suits are disappointing. It is clear they are painted wet suits. I don’t mind the wider heads featured but the zip in the middle of the suit only partly obscured by the chest unit is very poor in my opinion. I think the costumes of the previous couple of stories were better.

The Brigadier leads the way.

Despite these minor quibbles, ‘The Invasion’ is a lot of fun. A highly enjoyable 8 parts of fun, with some quality acting.

7/10

The Mind Robber

‘The Mind Robber’ is an example of ideas coming together and working well. Far away from the ‘base-under-siege’ formula common throughout the previous year, ‘The Mind Robber’ is a fresh, interesting and well played out story, and one of the very best of Patrick Troughton’s era.

Jamie and Zoe face the White Robots in Episode One.

We start with the intriguing Episode One, written by Derrick Sherwin to make up for the shortfall of an episode in the previous serial, and with no sets to call on bar the TARDIS and no actors to emply but the regulars and a couple of extras playing white robots, we get an episode reminiscent some ways of the first episode of ‘The Space Museum’. It’s eerie and atmospheric and the regulars are great.

Wendy Padbury has stepped into the role of Zoe and from the get-go it’s like she was always there. She’s a different companion to Victoria, although she also has a decent scream on her. She works very different with Jamie compared to Victoria – she is very smart and from the future and so patronises Jamie at times, but the dynamic is great.

There are some great images conjured in Episode one, including Jamie and Zoe holding onto the TARDIS console as it spins through space. The director has come up with clever ways to achieve a lot of shots through the serial and mostly they pay off. It’s the sort of creativity sadly missing from ‘The Dominators’.

Zoe about to fight the Carcus (Christopher Robbie)

With Frazer Hines sick during the shooting of the second episode, Sherwin came up with a great idea to use a different actor in Jamie’s place – when the Doctor miss-assembles Jamie’s face as a test. Hamish Wilson steps into the role of Jamie effortlessly. We have a story set in a world of fiction. It’s a step into fantasy, and a step away from Science Fiction. It’s the opposite of a story like ‘The Wheel in Space’ and it works very well. There are some wonderful comic moments, it’s well paced across five episodes, and the cast seem to enjoy this story a lot.

It’s still rough at the edges. Wendy Padbury to this day bemoans the fact that they didn’t have time to shoot her fight with the Carcus properly. It’s great to see her throwing a big superhero around, but unfortunately at times it’s clear he is just jumping over Zoe.

The sets are well done, and there are some nice touches of humour, especially in the final episode. Bernard Horsfall is a great Emial Gulliver, and Emrys Jones as the ‘Master’ was a wonderful piece of casting. In the final scene when he says ‘oh you mean I’m going home?’, he’s a joy. That set is rather good too. Jamie and Zoe have doubles at some stage, and they are truly creepy. This story has a lot of creepy elements to it.

Bernard Horsfall as Gulliver.

Peter Ling, the writer (bar episode one) came up with a truly imaginative story. Sometimes it might feel like it’s really aimed at a very young audience, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. The only downside is the ending, which is a bit flat, a bit simple. When everything appears lost for the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe just press every button on the computer console, the world goes crazy, the TARDIS reappears and everything is ok again. Still, it’s a minor quibble on an excellent story.

8.5/10

Hamish Wilson as Jamie - Episode Two.

The Dominators

So nice to know I have only one story that is (mostly) a recon to go. The season six opener was a curious beast to watch, if very cringe-worthy at times. A script originally by Mervyn Haismen and Henry Lincoln, responsible for the two Yeti stories, Derrick Sherwin, now producer, rewrote it extensively and cut out an episode as he felt the material didn’t warrant six parts. The original writers weren't happy and went with the pseudonym ‘Norman Ashby’ as the writer.

Quark alert!

Educator Balan (Johnson Bayley), a typical Dulcian/

Although astonishingly embarrassing at times, ‘The Dominators’ shouldn't be merely written off as rubbish. It deals with some really interesting ideas which is fails to convey in an engaging manner. The idea of a planet of pacifists is no doubt a reaction to the hippy movement of the sixties. What if everyone on the Earth became a peace-loving hippy? What if everyone in one country did? The writers theorise that they would then be open to being conquered with no form of retaliation. It is only the Doctor and his friends who think fighting is an option on Dulkis.

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe explore the 'Island of Death'.

I would have loved to see these ideas fleshed out better. In some ways the story is already a bit silly, but perhaps the comedy angle could have been pushed more. The problem is that none of the Dulkins are particularly interesting in ‘The Dominators’, because of this non-violent approach. Perhaps another angle that could have fleshed ‘The Dominators’, which had an episode cut from it as the producer, Derrick Sherwin, felt it didn’t have enough material to go the six episodes, was that behind everyone being nice to each other was a different, malevolent force. Anyways, ‘The Dominators’ is what it is.

Zoe ends up in Dulkis' gear with Cully (Arthur Cox)

Aside from scripting and character issues, the design of this story helps in no way at all. The costumes are, I hate to say, ridiculous and embarrassing. The poor actors who had to wear them must have so embarrassed they probably didn’t watch it when it was broadcast. The men running around in high dresses are particularly poor. The two Dominators themselves have these bizarre shoulder humps and the rest of the costume appears to be made out of ticker-tape. I don’t know what the costume designer, Martin Baugh, was thinking.

There’s a lot of quarry filming, which is appropriate for the story, and it’s interesting to see that Patrick Troughton must have been excused from the location shoot as the brief shots featuring the Doctor obviously have a double. The sets work well for the most part, probably the best aspect of the design, and then there are the Quarks. I like the heads. They don’t look very menacing though let’s be honest even with their firepower. Their voices are hard to understand and strange.

Inside the Dominator Space craft.

There are quite a few model shots in this story, and they are pretty poor. They couldn’t convey the idea of the fast moving travel capsule at all, and I still don’t know where it travelled – presumably in the outer atmosphere of Dulkis. The capital was under-utilised and completely forgotten in the final episode. The ending lacks visuals and is very very rushed. A real quick ‘goodbye’, oh, volcano? Quick into the TARDIS. It’s a real surprise when suddenly the credits start rolling, it felt like there was more to play out.

Ultimately the problems of a story start with the script and should end with the director. Morris Barry was probably hard pressed just to get the thing finished, but it really lacks energy at places and the actors look very uninspired for most of it. I think the ideas behind the story are very interesting, and it’s a real pity it couldn’t result in a much better final product.

3.5/10