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Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord – The Ultimate Foe (Review)

Posted on June 28, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the longest-running science-fiction show in the world, I’ll be taking weekly looks at some of my own personal favourite stories and arcs, from the old and new series, with a view to encapsulating the sublime, the clever and the fiendishly odd of the BBC’s Doctor Who.

The Trial of a Time Lord originally aired in 1986.

In all my travellings throughout the universe I have battled against evil, against power-mad conspirators. I should have stayed here. The oldest civilisation, decadent, degenerate and rotten to the core. Ha! Power-mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen, they’re still in the nursery compared to us. Ten million years of absolute power, that’s what it takes to be really corrupt.

– the Doctor

There really are no excuses for the mess that The Trial of a Time Lord became. I mean, seriously. The producers had eighteen months to plan everything out. The task shouldn’t be that difficult. If you are going to fictionalise the persecution of Doctor Who by the BBC in the form of a trial, you really should have some idea what you plan to do or say at the end of it. If your fourteen episode season-long story arc is about defending a show that is coming close to cancellation, then perhaps it might be a good idea to be able to tell us why it shouldn’t be cancelled. The Trial of a Time Lord is a gigantic mess, and something that makes a stronger case in favour of Michael Grade’s attempts to cancel that show than it does against them.

The Ultimate Foe isn’t as soul-destroyingly horrible as Terror of the Vervoids, but that may be because Pip and Jane Baker only wrote half of it.

Only himself for company…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: arts, Baker, bbc, Cyberman, Dalek, Deadly Assassin, doctor, DoctorWho, Eric Saward, John Nathan Turner, literature, Master, Michael Grade, Robert Holmes, science fiction, Sixth Doctor, Sontaran, tardis, Time Lord, Trial of a Time Lord, Ultimate Foe, Valeyard | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: Warriors’ Gate (Review)

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Darren

Warrior’s Gate originally aired in 1980. It was the third instalment of the E-Space Trilogy.

We found it.

Yes, well, that’s one of the advantages of living in a rapidly shrinking micro-universe.

What are the others?

Other what?

Other advantages?

Ah, well, it’s difficult to say.

– Adric, the Doctor and Romana discuss modern living

I’m actually very, very fond of Warriors’ Gate. It’s a piece of bold science-fiction that actually manages to accomplish what a lot of these stories in Tom Baker’s final season try to do. It offers an effective bit of speculative fiction while playing to the theme of entropy, decay and collapse. Both Stephen Gallagher’s fine script and Paul Joyce’s direction come together to produce a very thoughtful and clever Doctor Who story that manages to avoid a lot of the problems facing this era of the show.

More than that, though, it turns some of those disadvantages into advantages. After all, when else is the show’s tiny production budget going to produce something this beautiful?

Shades of grey…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: arts, bbc, christmas, doctor, DoctorWho, fiction, Graeme Harper, John Nathan Turner, Lalla Ward, literature, Online Writing, Romana, science fiction, Stephen Gallagher, Story arcs in Doctor Who, tardis, Warrior, Warriors' Gate | 2 Comments »

Doctor Who: The Armageddon Factor (Review)

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Darren

The Armageddon Factor originally aired in 1979. It was the sixth and final part of The Key to Time saga.

The Key to Time was perhaps the first conscious attempt to tell a season-long story in Doctor Who. Sure, we’ve had elements of an arc before. The first season, for example, gave the Doctor himself a character arc where he evolved from cowardly curmudgeon into an unlikely heroic figure. Jon Pertwee’s second season was given the Master as a linking element. Tom Baker’s Doctor embarked in a pretty much unbroken series of adventures from Robot through to Terror of the Zygons, with the ending of one serial seemingly leading directly into the next. None of these were necessarily that ambitious and you could argue they evolved more by chance than by design.

So, The Key to Time represented a bit of a learning curve, an attempt to tie a season’s stories together using an over-arching concept. As I’ve discussed quite a bit in my reviews of the season, the result was a little clunky, with those concepts seemingly clumsily shoe-horned into a separate bunch of adventures. That leaves the finalé, The Armageddon Factor to do the heavy-lifting with regards to The Key to Time saga. Unfortunately, the pay-off feels a bit jumbled, over-wrought, disorganised and non-sensical, as it juggles a wealth of elements that never add up to more than the sum of their parts.

While a great many Doctor Who six-parters suffer from being too long, too padded, too stretched for their story and concepts, The Armageddon Game feels curiously over-stuffed, lacking a tight focus on the interesting elements and too many distractions clogging up the story.

The problems are crystal clear…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Armageddon Factor, arts, bbc, Black Guardian, Cold War, doctor, DoctorWho, fiction, Jon Pertwee, Key, literature, Power of Kroll, science fiction, Story arcs in Doctor Who, tardis, Time Lord, White Guardian | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: Colony in Space (Review)

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Darren

Colony in Space originally aired in 1971.

Are you some kind of scientist?

I’m every kind of scientist.

– Caldwell and the Doctor

Colony in Space is an interesting story for many reasons. For one thing, it’s the first colour adventure to travel to another world. It was the first time since Jon Pertwee took over the title role that the character had been allowed to leave the surroundings of modern-day Earth. Even if he did land in a quarry. Colony in Space demonstrated the possibilities to tell futuristic and extraterrestrial stories in the new and remodelled version of Doctor Who, and the show began to slowly venture further and further afield over the next few years, with the Doctor finally regaining control of his TARDIS in The Three Doctors a little under two years later.

However, Colony in Space is also interesting because it is a script from Malcolm Hulke, who has really become one of the more Doctor Who script writers more inclined to pepper his scripts with political and moral philosophy. Colony in Space is an interesting exploration of those themes, even if it does run a little bit long in places. (That said, Hulke is one of the better writers of the six-part format in the show’s history.)

Go on, try to fight the urge to pronounce the episode title like “colony… IN SPACE!”

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: arts, Auton, bbc, Charles E. Wilson, Colony in Space, Dicks, doctor, DoctorWho, Earth, fiction, Jon Pertwee, literature, Malcolm Hulke, Master, Online Writing, Planet of Evil, science fiction, tardis, terrance dicks, Time Lord, War Games | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: The Claws of Axos (Review)

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Darren

The Claws of Axos originally aired in 1971.

Are you trying to tell me you can absorb the total output of this complex in a police box?

Yes.

– Hardiman and the Master discover that self-confidence is a genetic Time Lord trait

The Claws of Axos tends to come in for a fair bit of criticism for pretty much being the quintessential Earth-based Jon Pertwee story, with very little exceptional to distinguish it from the pack. Personally, I’m actually quite fond of it, perhaps precisely for that reason. I think you’re hard-pressed to find an adventure in the early part of Jon Pertwee’s tenure that so effectively and so efficiently captures the spirit of the show – both good and bad. That kind of makes The Claws of Axos stand out if only because it so perfectly embodies those early Pertwee years.

Eye see you…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Alien invasion, art, arts, bbc, Bernard Holley, Brigadier, Claws of Axos, Colony in Space, doctor, doctor who, DoctorWho, fiction, Jon Pertwee, literature, Master, Online Writing, Paul Grist, Philip Hinchcliffe, science fiction, Time Lord, Tom Baker, United Nations | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: Tooth and Claw (Review)

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Darren

Tooth and Claw originally aired in 2006.

I want her to say “we are not amused.” I bet you five quid I can make her say it.

Well, if I gambled on that, it’d be an abuse of my privileges of traveller in time.

Ten quid?

Done.

– Rose and the Tenth Doctor are “cute”

There’s something quite interesting at the heart of Tooth and Claw, which might be the best “historical celebrity + monster” mash-up of the Davies era. It’s a wonderful pulpy genre hybrid run-around with Queen Victoria, ninja monks and a werewolf, but it’s also a quite interesting vehicle to explore the way that the show deals with historical characters. After all, Queen Victoria is a British icon, a monumentally important part of the British Empire. It would be tempting to reduce her to a bunch of catch-phrases and a stiff upper lip. It’s a testament to Davies as a writer that he can flesh her out a fully-drawn character.

However, there does seem to be something quite strange about a show that opens with a cheap shot at Margaret Thatcher only to wallow in the iconic status of Queen Victoria.

This year’s Bad Wolf is in Torchwood…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: arts, bbc, British Empire, Dalek, Davies, doctor, DoctorWho, Ian Hanmore, John Conroy, literature, margaret thatcher, Muppet Movie, Parting of the Ways, Pauline Collins, Queen Victoria, rose, rose tyler, russell t. davies, science fiction, tardis, thatcher, Unearthly Child | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: The Unquiet Dead (Review)

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Darren

The Unquiet Dead originally aired in 2005.

What the Shakespeare is going on?

– Charles Dickens

It feels appropriate that Mark Gatiss should script the first episode of the revived Doctor Who not written by Russell T. Davies himself. Davies wrote the bulk of the first season’s thirteen episodes, and you could argue that he occasionally spread himself a bit too thin. However, I would argue that the first year of the revived show also had the strongest string of secondary writers on the bench, including Rob Shearman writing Dalek, Steven Moffat writing The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, Paul Cornell writing Father’s Day and Gatiss writing The Unquiet Dead.

Gatiss and Moffat are two of the most prolific writers for the new series, with Moffat even succeeding Davies as showrunner. It’s also worth noting that both Gatiss and Moffat are fans of the classic show with considerable writing experience in television. It’s very clear that Davies isn’t just recruiting fans of the classic show, even those who may have written material while it was off the air (Gatiss wrote spin-off novels, Moffat wrote The Curse of Fatal Death), but recruiting those with practical experience about how television today works.

And that was a very shrewd decision.

Ghosts of Cardiff…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: arts, bbc, Charles Dickens, Davies, Dickens, doctor, DoctorWho, literature, Philip Hinchcliffe, rose, rose tyler, russell t. davies, shakespeare, tardis, Unquiet Dead | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: The Talons of Weng-Chiang (Review)

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Darren

The Talons of Weng-Chiang originally aired in 1977.

Ah! Eureka! Do you know what that is?

You ask me so that you can tell me.

That’s right. It’s a trionic lattice, an integral part of a time cabinet. It’s impossible to open it without it.

You mean it’s a key.

Yes. He’s not only a scientific fool, he’s an absent-minded one.

Perhaps he has another eureka.

No, eureka’s Greek for “this bath is too hot.”

– the Doctor and Leela

The Talons of Weng-Chiang is generally agreed to be one of the (if not the) greatest Doctor Who adventures ever produced. It tends to hover around the top of various official polls, with only Caves of Androzani and City of Death coming close to it in public opinion. As such, I feel a little bit guilty when I confess that it doesn’t rank as one of my absolute favourite adventures. I like it a great deal, I think it embodies a great deal of what works about the Philip Hinchcliffe era of the show. However, if I’m looking for a dark pseudo-historical adventure, I am more likely to pick either The Pyramids of Mars or The Horror of Fang Rock.

I can see why a lot of people respond to The Talons of Weng-Chiang, and it has a lot to recommend it, but there are a number of minor problems that hold the serial back from the cusp of perfection, in my opinion.

Read it at your (Yellow) Peril…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Arthur Conan Doyle, arts, bbc, bride of frankenstein, Caves of Androzani, Chang, doctor, doctor who, DoctorWho, fiction, Giant Rat, Horror of Fang Rock, Leela, literature, Online Writing, Philip Hinchcliffe, Robert Holmes, science fiction, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Weng-Chiang | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: Robot (Review)

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Darren

Robot originally aired in 1974 and 1975.

There you are. Now come along, Doctor, you’re supposed to be in the sick bay.

Am I? Don’t you mean the infirmary?

No, I do not mean the infirmary. I mean the sick bay. You’re not fit yet.

Not fit? I’m the Doctor.

No, Doctor, I’m the doctor and I say that you’re not fit.

You may be a doctor, but I’m the Doctor. The definite article, you might say.

– Harry meets the Doctor

Robot feels a bit like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole, or a Tom-Baker-shaped peg into a Jon-Pertwee-shaped hole. At the time that Baker assumed the role as everybody’s favourite time-travelling phone-booth dweller, Pertwee had just finished the longest stint as the character, portraying the Doctor for five years. Of course, Baker himself would go on to break that record, playing the part for seven years, but it gives you a sense of just how big of a transition it was. As such, it’s easy to understand why outgoing producer Barry Letts felt the need to essentially cast Tom Baker in what feels distinctly like a Jon Pertwee story. As a concept, the central character aside, Robot feels like it would have fit in quite well as part of Pertwee’s last season, which is – I think – part of the problem here.

Tom Baker is a lot of things, but he’s not Jon Pertwee. As a result, Robot feels a little clunkier than it really should, as if the show is actively working against the character who should be driving it.

The Doctor will see you now…

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: arts, Baker, Barry Letts, bbc, Brigadier, doctor, doctor who, DoctorWho, Fourth Doctor, Harry Sullivan, Ian Marter, Jon Pertwee, literature, Online Writing, Pertwee, Peter Davison, robots, Sarah, science fiction, second doctor, State of Decay, tardis, terrance dicks, Tom, Tom Baker, UNIT, War Games | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: Spearhead From Space (Review)

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Darren

Spearhead from Space originally aired in 1970.

Oh well, at least he won’t get very far.

You mean, before your men shoot him again?

I don’t find that funny.

– The Brigadier and Liz discuss the Doctor’s (second) escape

Looking back now, it’s hard to believe that Spearhead from Space had so much riding on it, if only because of the deft combination of Robert Holmes’ sharp script and Derek Martinus’ confident direction. Indeed, the serial served as something of a second pilot for the show, demonstrating that the survival of the series during the transition between William Hatnell and Patrick Troughton had not been a fluke, broadcasting in colour for the first time, and setting up an entirely new status quo set primarily on present-day Earth. It’s a miracle that it all works so well, let alone that fact that it remains one of the most accessible adventures featuring the character.