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FishyFish

By FishyFish
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NEG

NEG

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Tenth Planet apparently has a coming soon dvd trailer like the rest, wonder whats coming because they certainly haven't said anything yet, right?

If not blu-ray releases, I'm hoping for season sets, myself. Or at least 2-3 stories at a time.

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Sprite Machine

Sprite Machine

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Been enjoying your posts sprite, so now that you've seen a few what's your verdict on Davison? As far as I was concerned he was my Doctor when I was growing up.

He's okay so far, there's not been anything to dislike about him. Compared to Baker, he's a bit bland, but he's more down-to-earth and human about a lot of things.
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Sprite Machine

Sprite Machine

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Mawdryn Undead

(Blog has pictures)

I'll be honest: after part 1, I had decided this story was going to be rubbish. The annoying schoolkids stealing a car, the cheesy villain and awful-looking video effects, Lethbridge-Stewart working at a school for some reason..? What's going on?! Thankfully, the story does develop and it turns out to be one of the most interesting I've seen so far.

[Picture: Dance, boy. Dance!]

Certainly, Doctor Who doesn't deal with local time phenomena very often, and the revelation that Nyssa and Tegan are six years back in the past is a good one. Of course, the Brigadier is always great to have on screen, and two of them is twice as nice. His memory loss seemed like a lazy conceit at first, but it makes sense in the end and the story comes together well. He's a terrific character to have alongside the Doctor, and it almost made me nostalgic for the Pertwee years again (heaven forbid!).

[Picture: The timeframes aren't quite right, but that's mostly because the 1970s pretended to be the 1980s. Now that is really is the 1980s, the Brigadier retired in the 1970s. Perhaps they should have set the present day bits in the future to avoid this whole mess!]

It's the nastiness and horror that is most surprising, though. Mawdryn and his brothers in exile, doomed to torturous immortality, is a tragic tale in itself, but the make-up designs are something else. Heads split open, pulsating brains poking out, not to mention the horribly burned skin earlier on - it's all rather grotesque. Excellently grotesque! I liked how he pretended to be a regenerated Doctor as well. This one really surprised me, I had no idea what to expect, and that's a good thing.

[Picture: Mawdryn, posing as the regenerated Doctor, is treated with suspicion.]

I suppose the weak link is really the Black Guardian. He's played like a pantomime villain stuck in a pop video, and even after it's all finished, I don't entirely know what he was after, whether he just wanted the Doctor dead or if he was in on Mawdryn's plan to drain his regenerations first. Turlough is even more confusing, with seemingly none of the crew bothering to question what an alien is doing posing as a schoolboy on Earth. Since he's sticking around on the Tardis for a while, I suspect we'll learn a lot more about his plan in the next story. It makes a change to have a secondary character with an ulterior motive, at least.

[Picture: The Brigadier nearly runs into his other self, an act that would turn out to be not as catastrophic as first feared.]

This was surprisingly good, then. One of the most memorable, unusual and intriguing stories so far; well paced, horrific and humoured in equal doses, and complemented by a distinctive synthy soundtrack. And from the looks of things, it's far from over.

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Sprite Machine

Sprite Machine

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Terminus

(Blog has pictures)

Turlough is inducted rather easily into the Tardis crew, despite continuing to act suspiciously. Tegan's fears are soon dropped and everything goes on as normal. Occasionally, Turlough hears from the Black Guardian again, telling him to kill the Doctor, but it has almost no bearing on this story, which is disappointing.

[Picture: I like how their helmets have to be massive to cover their eighties perms.]

Terminus is a futuristic version of a leper colony, in space. It also turns out to be a time-travelling ship that caused the big bang and is inhabited by a large dog man robot creature thing. All of which raises more questions than it answers, like "if the ship's engine explosion is what created the universe, where did the ship come from?" And "why is there a large dog man robot creature thing roaming around the ship anyway?"

[Picture: Just... what?]

Things have not aged well. Quite aside from all the big perms on show, the sets are repetitious and not really large enough to give the sense of scale of the the facility. At one point, one of the raiders, Olvir, is standing in a small area after having a fight and doesn't notice Nyssa being abducted by the giant Garn two feet behind him. It's quite bad.

[Picture: Arse literally kicked.]

There are some good elements. The actual industrial design of the place is quite appealing, and there's a cool hull breach sealant used by the raiders early on, which is unusually good attention to detail. The hydromel medication the soldiers have to implant into their suits reminds me a bit of Ketracel-White from Star Trek DS9. The armoured uniforms are also very elaborate and ornate, like something out of mythology. The core concept of an engine explosion causing the big bang is intriguing, the sort of "big idea" I tend to like, but it doesn't make a second explosion destroying the Universe any more believable, and it really doesn't need to be such a catastrophic event to provide dramatic tension. It's overkill.

[Picture: Nyssa and Olvir are approached by a drone.]

And then there's Nyssa, who is routinely useless throughout, getting captured, infected and captured again, until the end, when she finally decides to follow her true calling and stay behind to develop a cure for the disease. Hopefully she remembers to put some clothes back on too, the silly girl. Thus the Tardis crew loses another and I'm left none-the-wiser as to what Turlough is up to.

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Davros sock drawer

Davros sock drawer

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Isn't Liza Goddard in that one? I seem to remember she delivers some sort of ludicrous "FREEEEEEEEZE!!!!!" line.

Nyssa was a bit rubbish really wasn't she? At least Janet Fielding got some meat to her role as Tegan in the Mara stories. She's really quite good in those. But Nyssa's just a boring swot. Not an offensive swot like Adric, just...boring. Their attempts to sexy her up didn't exactly work either.

Mark Strickson's performance as Turlough is quite fun I think. He turns everything up to 11.

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Sprite Machine

Sprite Machine

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Enlightenment

(Blog has pictures)

Enlightenment brings the Black Guardian 'trilogy' to an imaginative and surprisingly satisfying close. What first appears to be a simple Edwardian sailing ship is actually a space vessel that's been modelled after one, as part of a space race around the solar system against others ships crewed by people pulled from Earth's history by a group of bored 'eternals'.

[Picture: The space race, redefined! The ships are equipped with solar sails and vacuum shields, so although it's fanciful, it's not completely magical. How cool is that?]

The Eternals might as well be gods, since they usually exist outside of time and space, can read the minds of mortals and create anything from nothing. What the Doctor quite rightly reveals is that being all-powerful isn't actually all that, and mocks the Eternals for their reliance on mortals to keep them amused, to give their lives meaning and purpose, even while they consider themselves superior beings. But we are made to feel sympathetic towards them, as the First Officer develops feelings towards Tegan, becoming enthralled by her mind but failing to understand why.

[Picture: In spite of everything else, I couldn't help wonder how Tegan grew her hair. Did she put a wig on? Did an Eternal magic some new hair for her? This is clearly of vital importance.]

With the Black and White Guardians pulling the strings, we have a rather high concept situation here, not unlike something Douglas Adams might come up with. The gods controlling the mortals, while the gods of gods control them. The Doctor is just a small part of a bigger picture, and yet his involvement is humble and believable. The resolution, although a bit schlocky, is quite sweet, with Turlough earning his 'enlightenment' through making the right choice, and seeing the Black Guardian off into a burst of flame.

[Picture: Winner takes all.]

Speaking of Turlough, he does spend a lot of the story either sucking up to win favour or crying to the Black Guardian for help, but there's something rather entertaining about how over-the-top he is. He's far more engaging than Nyssa was, although it remains to be seen if he mellows out now that he's free of his contract. The Black Guardian continues to be a bad pantomime villain, but somehow this fits in with the godly chess game theme. The Eternals range from emotionless to crazy, with the pirate captain Wrack overacting in all of her scenes. It's never less than fun, though.

[Picture: Turlough is picked up by the pirate ship after a spectacular space jump.]

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Davros sock drawer

Davros sock drawer

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Sounds like overall you rather enjoyed the guardian trilogy. I don't remember them that well, perhaps I should give them a watch. Season 20 isn't considered one of the best, and in fact Davison had such an unenjoyable time that it prompted his resignation (something he later wondered if he'd made a mistake about following his experience on his final story, but we'll come to that). I finished Snakedance though and thought it was rather good overall. Great performances, scary, and only dragged a bit in the third episode when they padded it out with the usual "oops we've been captured" schtick. So maybe the season's not so bad after all.

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Fireproofradiator

Fireproofradiator

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Sounds like overall you rather enjoyed the guardian trilogy. I don't remember them that well, perhaps I should give them a watch. Season 20 isn't considered one of the best, and in fact Davison had such an unenjoyable time that it prompted his resignation (something he later wondered if he'd made a mistake about following his experience on his final story, but we'll come to that). I finished Snakedance though and thought it was rather good overall. Great performances, scary, and only dragged a bit in the third episode when they padded it out with the usual "oops we've been captured" schtick. So maybe the season's not so bad after all.

Why did Davison have an unenjoyable time, Mr Sock Drawer? Was it all the Saward/JNT arguments?

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Davros sock drawer

Davros sock drawer

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Spoilers about Davison's swan song:

Behind the scenes

Androzani saw the return of the great Robert Holmes, but it also marked the debut of another legend of Doctor Who in young producer Graeme Harper. He would go on to become the only director to work on both classic and new Who (helming a slew of David Tennant's highlights), but incredibly, this was his first time directing anything. And it's a staggering piece of work, bringing in a grimy, naturalistic tone to things, and using then-pioneering single and handheld camera techniques.

Speaking at the BFI, Peter Davison was rapturous. "I would say he was like a breath of fresh air, but actually it was more like a hurricane of fresh air," he said. "He came in, it was my last season, and he just had such a different approach to it. At first I thought: 'This man's nuts, this won't work you can't do that shot there.' I'd got quite used to figuring out where shots would be, in the normal way of shooting Doctor Who and he would do bizarre things. He had a handheld camera at one point I remember, I just thought: "This is not gonna work," and he just managed to enthuse us, and we were all swept along on this Graeme Harper whirlwind of brilliance."

In fact, Davison has repeatedly said that the experience of making Androzani made him question his decision to go. Patrick Troughton had advised him in a BBC corridor to do three years and get out, but having been frustrated with his second series, he also said that if his second series had been more like this third, he would probably have ended up staying for a fourth. Yet in the end, it was still difficult to let go. Of filming the regeneration he said: "There is something very painful about seeing Colin Baker come I and lie down in your place. I know that David Tennant felt the same; he made the decision to move on, but it's very difficult when it comes to it because you have a thought deep down in your head of: "they can't really continue after me; they'll have to stop."

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davidcotton

davidcotton

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Two good stories and one slightly duff one, I reckon. And the actual bits with the Guardian are pantomime levels of bad. But yeah, I kinda did. :)

Did you see the special edition of enlightenment where they had redone the effects?

I remember having the target book of this as a kid at boarding college. It got read and re read rather a lot I seem to recall.

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