The Doctor's Diary

8/7/08

120: The Visitation

The Doctor ends up in England in the year 1666, the time of the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London. A pod containing 3 reptilian aliens, called Teriliptils, has crashed there and the aliens have escaped from a mining prison, scarred and damaged. Rather than try to solve their situation, they opt instead to eradicate humanity so that they can survive. Enter the Doctor.

I really enjoyed this story. It’s the first story written by one of my favorite Doctor Who writers, Eric Saward, who went on to write some of my favorite Cybermen and Dalek stories. There’s not too much to say about this. It’s a solid episode, but it’s also really simple. There’s no particularly great mystery, nor is there a scientific concept that requires deep thought. It’s just good old Doctor VS. Monster, just like it had been in days past. It was refreshing after the bad taste left in my mouth by Kida.

We get to see another room in the TARDIS, which is always nice, and Nyssa actually is starting to grow on me. I still want to throw Adric to the wolves, but soon enough….he’ll get his. Tegan actually has begun to grate on me as well. I like her in the stories I’ve seen, but watching her stories in order point out what a whiner she was in those early days.

I’m a sucker for historical stories, and Saward did a great job on this one tying in both the plague and the great fire. The Doctor comes in, does his thing, beats the bad guy (who I felt very bad for…they ended him in a particularly gruesome way) actually starts the fire, and then when questioned, says “this is one fire that must be let burn.” Now, let’s think about that for a second. This fire killed how many? Moreover, the plague killed how many thousands of people? This is a great example of what we have explained to us in the fourth season of the new show as time that is fixed and time that is in flux. Some things can be changed, some things can’t. Clearly, I guess these two events can’t be changed, but the Doctor seems so cold about it all. Now, back in those classic Doctor Who days, there wasn’t any deep characterization, no deep thoughts or feelings, and certainly no time spent on emotional drama. So I’m not surprised that the Doctor seems so blasé about the whole affair, but if this story had taken place in the newer incarnation, we’d have a companion begging him to save some of those people.

*Sonic Shenanigans: I’m very sad to announce that in this episode, the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver is destroyed, and left that way for a very long time. Alas, we hardly knew ye…well, that’s not true, you used it nearly every episode to get out of stuff that writer’s couldn’t bother explaining…but still…I’ll miss it.

I rate this episode 7/10

The Doctor's Diary

8/6/08

119: Kinda

No sir. I don’t like it. What we’re given here is a story that takes place in the mental world just as much as it does in the physical world, and while that may work well on a page, I didn’t like the way it was executed on film. Basically, the concept is this: the Doctor lands on a planet that is more or less a jungle. There is an outpost run by a military organization who monitor the actions of the Kinda, who are the local primitive tribesmen, and who also happen to be telepathic. An evil entity known as Mara is taking over people’s mind and using them, possessing them, in a sense. The Doctor must get to the bottom of it and save the day.

For me, the main reason I disliked the episode was a lack of what I would consider a good plot device. What we are given just doesn’t do much for me, and neither does the plot device of going into the mental plane, which basically means the contrast of the video has been over exposed so that we can barely make out what we are seeing. I thought it was pretentious, but I tend to think that about things when I feel like someone is coming off a bit too big for their intellectual britches. I understand the goal, but I just think it’s flat and boring, and I was constantly checking my watch, being distracted by things around the room, and in general, waiting for it to end.

I read a review of this episode in which the reviewer said that he didn’t understand this story or what it was trying to say until after a couple of dozen viewings. I can assure you, I myself can’t imagine giving it a second viewing.

*Sonic Shenanigans: None. I read somewhere online that one of the writers was making an effort to phase out the Sonic Screwdriver, and that shows in this episode.

Rating: 2/10

The Doctor's Diary

118: Four to Doomsday

Peter Davison’s second story finds him trying to take Tegan back to Heathrow airport but instead ending up on a ship in space that is heading to earth. We encounter three frog-like aliens who are named Monarch, Persuasion, and Enlightenment. Also aboard the ship are samples of humans from earth that date back to 32000 BC and span many levels of time.

Again, this is a solid science fiction story that really captured my attention. I did see some of the twists in the story coming, but not enough for it to take away any of my enjoyment. There was a device used at the end by the Doctor that was pretty ridiculous, though, so when people hold up the classic series as being so intellectually superior, I must challenge them on it. Okay, here’s what happened. The doctor tried to jump through about 50 yards of deep space toward the TARDIS while attached to the ship by a line of rope. The rope gets disconnected and the Doctor is left floating in space, unmoving, halfway between the TARDIS and the large frog alien’s ship. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a cricket ball, throws it at the large ship, bounces it off the hull, and catches it when it returns to him. The momentum of catching the ball carries him the rest of the way to the TARDIS floating in space. It was worth a groan, especially factoring in the terrible 1981 special effects.

Another thing that I didn’t like about this episode was Adric. This kid gets on my nerves like I never would have imagined. He nearly gets the entire crew of heroes killed because he won’t listen to the Doctor. No wonder he’d be dead in a few stories. He’s intolerable.

But the solid and compelling science fiction ideas presented in this episode are very thought provoking, and in this day and age, very timely. It deals with putting the memories and personality of a person into a computer chip so that they may live forever in a cloned or mechanical host body. This theme was similarly presented in the series 4 two parter “Silence in the Library” in which River Song is put into a computer as data. 27 years in between the two episodes, but the idea remains the same.

*Sonic Shenanigans: the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to reverse the magnetic field of hovering video cameras.

I rate this episode a 6.5 out of 10.

The Doctor's Diary

This is the first of my Classic Doctor Who reviews. They may contain mild spoilers, but I'm trying not to give too much away outside of the initial plot setup and my feelings on the episode.

8/4/08

Story 117: Castrovalva

This 5^th Doctor story is the first one featuring Peter Davison after his regeneration from Tom Baker’s 4^th Doctor. You can tell that Davison doesn’t quite know how to play his character, but by the end, he seems to have it more or less decided. The trademarks are there: the cricket uniform, the hat, and the celery on his lapel.

The companions for this story are Nyssa, Tegan, and Adric. The only one of these companions that doesn’t irritate me is Tegan. Adric is precocious, and Nyssa is hard to watch for me because she’s not a very good actress (in my humble estimation).

The story was quite good, though. After watching so much of the Russel T. Davies stories in a row without going back to the classic show, I’d forgotten how concept and plot heavy these shows can be. You really need to pay attention lest you lose some of the details. That’s a good thing, in my book.

We start in the TARDIS as we see Davison trying to come to terms with the regeneration. He’s going mad and making very little sense. He’s unraveled Tom Baker’s signature scarf, which seemed to me to be symbolic of the new direction we were going to go in. Seeing that scarf in tatters made me sad, I must admit. One thing I loved about this episode is that we have almost two complete episodes that take place entirely in the TARDIS, and we get to see LOTS of it. I’m sure it was just the same sets broken down and shot from different angles, but the illusion of the many corridors and rooms we saw was sufficient, and something that I’d love to see on the new series. We also get the Zero Room, which is a place the Doctor can go and not be bothered by the energies of the TARDIS. Also, it was very cool that they jettisoned 25 percent of the TARDIS to get away from the threat early on.

Then they make it to the city of Castrovalva, where the Doctor believes he can finish out his regeneration in peace. You get the usual silly costumes and dodgy sets, but underneath it all you also get some remarkable acting and some true imagination. There’s some gorgeous outdoor filming done here and it doesn’t look like it’s aged a day, much less 27 years, as of the DVD release. There was a big reveal of the Master in this episode that I truly did not see coming. What a testament to the acting talents of Anthony Ainley that he completely fooled me. What a testament to the writer and the director as well. This plot has a few holes that I can’t seem to figure out, but it’s really well done and actually has all the elements of a good sci fi tale without sacrificing it for character.

*Sonic Shenanigans: The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver on screws to unhinge a door. He also mentions using it to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’m giving Castrovalva a 7 1/2.

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