A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 22. The Velvet Web (The Keys of Marinus, Episode Two)

In this episode, Barbara kicks a lot of ass--including Ian’s.

But first things first.

The crew finds that Barbara is a guest of Morphoton, a fancy, hedonistic, vaguely Roman city whose handful of people seem awfully eager to serve her and her friends.  In fact, the apparent leader of Morphoton, Altos (Robin Phillips), claims they can give the quartet anything they desire--in Susan’s case, a new dress; in the Doctor’s, a comprehensive new lab....

...and in the case of the disembodied brains that are the real rulers of this city, a fresh batch of human bodies to feed and serve them.  Unfortunately for them, the mesmeric device that saps their wills and provides the illusion that this is actually happening accidentally falls off Barbara’s forehead and she now sees the true shabby nature of the place and decides to fight back...and locates Sabetha, Arbitan’s daughter, and one of the keys.

Now, don’t get me wrong--we’ve seen that Ian was intended to be the muscle of the show, and we’re coming up on William Russell wrestling with an Aztec warrior and heaving him off a pyramid in the next serial.  But this is Barbara’s show.  She escapes from the Morphotonians, she breaks the hypnotic spell that’s keeping Sabetha in thrall, and she breaks free from Ian’s stranglehold and fucks the alien brains’ shit clean up.  This particular sequence was pure joy to me because I just did not expect Action Barbara at all. 

As I mentioned in the last episode, however, there’s a...sloppiness to Terry Nation’s writing here.  It seems awfully convenient that Sabetha is found here at their first stop given the emphasis she was given in Arbitan’s ‘here’s what you have to do’ soliloquy, and that she has the actual key as opposed to--as everyone else seems to have--a nasty old piece of junk the brains tell her is the key.  I almost get the nagging feeling that Nation had ideas for four stories he didn’t want to bother fleshing out and created a fifth story to act as a wrap around.  Yes, Graham Williams does this during the ‘Key To Time’ sequence, but each segment was its own serial.  Here it feels like ‘here’s the premise, here’s Barbara reigning down her Schoolmarm Vengeance on the villains, now let’s move on’....I’ve seen a review that claims this episode stuffs a lot into it, but it feels more rushed than anything else.

And then there’s the final scene, where the Doctor decides that with three keys remaining, they should split the party (joined by Altos and Sabetha) into....two?  It would seem natural to split the group into three given there are now six people in the party, with the Doctor and Susan going off on their own and Ian and Barbara each teaming with one of the newcomers.  But instead, Nation has the Doctor go off to the location of the fourth key while everyone else seeks out the second.  That seems a bit silly, given how even at the point the series is portraying Hartnell as particularly frail.   Granted, it could just be that ego has replaced crotchitiness as Hartnell’s primary personality trait, but still....

I should mention that until I got a real close view of the disembodied brains, I thought the villains were cartoon snails with extremely long eyestalks, and that their ‘screams’ as Barbara literally brings the hammer down on them aren’t the most convincing.  I also wondered if Dave Gibbons was having flashbacks to Altos’ costume in this episode when he designed Ozymandius.

I am still in on this serial.  So far, we’ve gotten some fun stuff.  But I am beginning to see what my friend Jeff Smith said about Nation not being the strongest script writer--or, as I suspect, that he’s got a tendency to not think through or fully develop the ideas he has.  I’ll have to see how this serial develops before I can make up my mind on this.

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 13.2. E is For... Part Two (The Companion Chronicles: The First Doctor Volume Three, Big Finish, 2019)

Remember how I said in my discussion of the first part of this story that writer Justin Richards consciously references 70‘s and 80‘s X-Men comics?  Well in this part he goes full-on Chris Claremont.  The second half pretty much amounts to a backdoor pilot for a X-Men inspired spin-off....and I don’t necessarily mean that in a negative light.

Having reached the secret S.P.E.A.R. base that Virgil called home upon the discovery of his ‘gift,’ Susan must contend first with Weapon A, an artificial intelligence with Maria Rage’s voice (Lisa Bowerman) who sends the other three Weapons (B, C and D, naturally) after them to put Virgil ‘in his room.’  Virgil and Susan evade these creatures long enough for them to double back on Weapon A with the intent of using her to find The Doctor.  Instead, Weapon A reveals the extraterrestrial origins of ‘The Gifted.’  This leads to a final confrontation with Rage and Virgil’s decision on his future.

You’ll notice that I didn’t mention Susan much in that summary--that’s because she’s not all that involved.  She does play a role in subduing Weapon C (for Cyborg) and D (for Dead), but this is all about Virgil and his transition from Tool of The State to Symbol For The People.  It’s a super-hero origin (something Richards does not deny in the supplementary interviews that play after the story) which just happens to have some Doctor Who content in it...and it shows.  It’s very, very well done--I marvel at how well Richards diagetically integrates the narration into the bulk of the story so that when he does ‘pure’ narration, we’re used to hearing these gouts of description and don’t realize he’s made the transition into prose.  This is simply the best Companion Chronicles I’ve heard to date in that it is true to the ‘dramatised reading’ format while coming off seamlessly as a full audio.  It is not fish nor fowl; it is a fish that has taken wing and flies through the air, luxuriating in its accomplishment.

I still think that Richards’ structure and background for this story isn’t refined enough from its inspiration, which results in it not feeling like the Hartnell tale it’s supposed to be.  Its elements of paranoia, institutionalized prejudice and governmental tampering are more in line with the 80‘s--I wonder if the story would have played better if, let’s say, its narrator was Nyssa or Romana.  But that’s just nitpicking.  It’s an enjoyable story, and that’s mostly what matters.

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 21. The Sea of Death (The Keys of Marinus, Episode One)

Notice the big jump.  The serial that immediately follows ‘The Edge of Destruction,’ a ten parter called ‘Marco Polo’ is lost to time save for some still photos*.  So I guess I’ll never learn how Ian got that truly ginchy Asian-inspired outfit he’s wearing in this episode.

The crew finds themselves on an island of glass surrounded by, as Susan learns when she drops a shoe into a tide pool, a sea of acid.  They find evidence of glass submersibles and a black outfit that indicates there is life on this planet.  Oh, and there’s also this big-ass pyramid-like structure (in more ways than one--Barbara and Ian determine the builders of this structure used the methods employed by Egyptians and Meso-Americans in building their pyramids) that is home to Arbitan (George Coulouris), who is maintaining a device that used to dictate the actions of his fellows.  But a rebellion occurred, and a group of brigands called ‘The Voords'--the gentlemen in the rather ornate scuba-suits that the crew discovered--are trying to seize control of it.  All Arbitan needs is the four micro-keys that he scattered across the planet, and that he sent his daughter to find.  And since his daughter hasn’t returned, Arbitan decides to recruit the Doctor to obtain these guys and rescue his daughter...whether The Doctor wants to or not.

We’re now in the phase of Hartnell’s run where his character emphasizes the ‘grandfather’ aspects than the ‘alien’ aspects.  That enigmatic aspect, that unpredictability, is all gone....but his hooty owl chuckle remains.  All the tension between him and Ian is non-existent.  Ian seems to have taken the center stage, even though Barbara has her moments and Susan...Susan’s there to act all scared and stuff.  The Voord don’t do much but skulk around and, in the climax of this episode, stab Arbitan, but their outfits look...intriguing.  I keep wondering what they looked like under the vaguely Tokasatu-style helmet....were they just humanoid like Arbitan or somehow mutated?

The one thing that kept sticking in my craw, however, involves the machine that I guess is this serial’s MacGuffin.  Maybe it’s because I started my life as a Whovian with Tom Baker, maybe it’s because my exposure to Hartnell is limited (this is the first episode I have not seen before), but I can’t get used to the Doctor being blase’, let alone complimentary, to what amounts to a mind control machine.  I expected Hartnell to be more upset at what Arbitan did.  It seems weird to me, especially since his being appalled by the device would fuel the crew deciding to leave, which would prompt Arbitan to do what he does to get them to search for the keys.  Since starting this journey, I’ve heard some criticism of writer Terry Nation, and in this case I think he doesn’t bother to structure this half-hour as well as he could.

I also have to wonder if this serial wasn’t influential to future producer of the show Graham Williams, whose crowning glory was the season long ‘Key to Time’ arc during Tom Baker’s run....this set up is very similar.

There is a lot to like here, even with the sloppy writing that nags at me.  As this is the first serial I’ve never seen before, I am hella intrigued to see where it goes.

*--If you have the box set that covers the first three serials that the BBC put out some years back, there is a short summary of ‘Marco Polo’ accompanied by many of these photos.

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 13.1. E is For... Part One (The Companion Chronicles: The First Doctor Volume Three, Big Finish, 2019)

This is a much more recent edition of the Companion Chronicles, at a point where Big Finish has begun to phase out individual stories for ‘box sets’ that contain three to four separate stories, sometimes linked by a theme or overarcing subplot.  And listening to the new Companion Chronicles as opposed to the earlier examples, I can make a couple of statements.  For one, they’ve managed to evolve the ‘dramatized reading’ format to a point where they feel more like full audios; like The Beginning and Hunters of Earth, this features a main reader and, in this case, two other actors who provide dialogue for specific characters, but the integration between the narration and the dialogue is a lot smoother to the point where the disconnect between the two is gone.  For another, it doubles down on the ‘Companion’ part of the line’s title; during this two part story, Susan is front and center, and the other members of the Tardis crew at this time don’t appear at all.

This particular story, which is performed by Carol Ann Ford, Mark Edel-Hunt and Lisa Bowerman (who is something of an icon to Whovians for being the voice and physical model for Bernice Summerfield, a fan favorite companion from the Virgin ‘New Adventure’ novels that carried over into Big Finish and generated a line of her own adventures that are being produced to this day), takes place in the capital city of the planet Malkus*.  Roughly thirty years ago, Malkus began experiencing an explosion of births where the children display fantastic powers.  When Susan’s telepathy flares, she is mistaken for one of ‘The Gifted,’ separated from the others, and goes to a special facility.  There she meets ‘Weapon E’ (Edel-Hunt),a.k.a. Virgil Winters.  Virgil has uncontrolled power to absorb and redirect energy, a power so great he has to wear a containment suit.  Susan and Virgil escape the facility, to the chagrin of Colonel Maria Rage (Bowerman).  Virgil leads Susan to a place where the computer might be able to help them locate the Doctor and the others.  But for them to reach that place, Virgil has to release his power on a pursuing helicopter....

You may find a lot of similarities with a certain comic book franchise, and it’s very intentional; ‘E is for...’ consciously references the X-Men, which like Doctor Who began in 1963. What’s weird, though, is that this story seems to be more beholden to the X-Men of the 70‘s and 80‘s (in particular the stories ‘Days of Future Past’ and ‘God Loves Man Kills’) than the 60‘s....a strange choice for a line that’s very concerned with keeping the period flavor consistent with the time frame of the series it emulates.  It doesn’t hurt the story, being structured as a two-handed dialogue between Susan and Virgil, but it still rang funny with me.

That aside, I enjoyed this episode a lot better than the previous Companion Chronicles I listened to.  I really appreciated how writer Julian Richards worked the narration into the story in such a way that it comes off as diagetic--so that stop-and-start nature of earlier Chronicles is smoothed over.  I’m curious to see if this item sticks the landing with the second part.

*--the reason I place this story as coming after ‘Edge of Destruction’ is Susan’s reference to the Doctor wanting to explore the city despite the troubles that caused last time, which could be interpreted (generously) as a reference to the Dalek city in ‘The Daleks.’

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#674

This week, in honor of the video release of close friend of the show Greg Lamberson’s cinematic adaptation of Widow’s Point, Des sits down with the star of that film, Craig Sheffer!  Then Des gives us a Dread Media Top Five Obscure Schaeffer Performances!

The trailer is below, as is one for the Cabal Cut of Nightbreed, a behind the scenes featurette on Lamberson, a view of a recent Clive Barker art show, and music from Snatch Magnet and, ummm...Pia Zadora.

Listen to Dread Media #674 here

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 13. The Brink of Destruction (The Edge of Destruction, Episode Two)

The character work in this wrap-up of the first Who Bottle Show is so wonderful.  Admittedly, it can be seen as the first step in smoothing out the rougher, darker edges of the Hartnell Doctor I’ve been enjoying so much.  But there’s still lots to love.

As the Doctor gets more and more paranoid--going so far as to announce he’s going to kick Ian and Barbara off the ship--Barbara begins to figure out that all these weird happenings are falling into some sort of pattern.  Good time for her to figure it out, as the central rotor is rising, which means the energy that powers the Tardis is threatening to escape and incinerate them all.  The Doctor looks at all the clues and speculates that somehow the Tardis is heading back--back towards the Big Bang.  The crew has to band together quickly to figure out what went wrong with the Fast Return Switch to avoid a grisly fate.

Like last episode, this half hour belongs to Barbara--to the point where I would say it’s her story.  And the fact that the respect the Doctor has for her, something that was teased in the previous serials, goes to the forefront.  There is a wonderful scene with the Doctor apologizing to Barbara and making peace with her that is one of the best moments in the series so far.  The only problem I have with this character arc is how it seems like everyone’s relationship with each other seems improved after the problem is solved, with the Doctor and Ian palling around together in a way that doesn’t jibe with their interactions in the last two stories.

The other amazing moment is a soliloquy Hartnell delivers when he pieces together what exactly the Tardis is trying to tell them.  Delivered in what is basically a spotlight, it shows us the Doctor’s enthusiasm and excitement when it comes to scientific discovery that’s been hinted at in ‘The Daleks’ but given full flower here.  The sheer joy in Hartnell’s voice and face as he described the beginning of a new solar system is so powerful, it stops the show.  If Hartnell was beginning to suffer from dementia at this time (Ford recalls that he confused her and her character throughout her time on the show, sometimes lecturing her as if she was his granddaughter), he certainly doesn’t show it and makes us understand why he was cast in this role.

There is, of course, the teaser leading into the next serial, ‘Marco Polo,’ which sadly is lost to time...but there is more than enough in these two episodes that make watching what is usually considered not a big deal to be a big deal.

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 12. The Edge of Destruction (The Edge of Destruction, Episode One)

Since I don't have a screen grab of the episode title, here's
the cover of an audiobook adaptation.

Bottle shows--shows which only use the standing sets, thus saving money for the producers to spend on other episodes--are very rare in the history of Doctor Who.  This is the first one, and may be the only one in the Classic run...I certainly can’t recall another serial that takes place solely in the control room and the two bedrooms of the Tardis.

And boy, is it creepy.

The crew wakes up from last episode’s disaster to find things have gone...wonky.  All of our quartet have some form of memory loss, the Doctor has a nasty gash on his head, and both we-don’t-know-they-re-Gallfreyans-yet have a pain in their neck.  The Tardis has stopped but they don’t know where; the video monitor is only showing photos from their past travels.  The doors are open, but close when one of our heroes approaches them.  Any attempt to look at some representation of time--a countdown clock, a watch, what have you--is difficult.  And the Doctor and Susan are acting more erratic, paranoid and aggressive.  Susan, in particular, is convinced that something has entered the Tardis....something that may be hiding in her teachers.

This episode is so effective because it takes full advantage of the enigma surrounding the Doctor and Susan.  I mentioned in the past that I find Carol Ann Ford’s features a little...off, and boy, does her moments of derangement take full advantage of her look.  There’s one moment where she is ranting at Barbara where she looks positively demonic...and the moments of her threatening Ian with a pair of scissors is prime slasher-movie nightmare.

And Hartnell gets to really let loose, taking full advantage of his enigmatic status to come off as legitimately terrifying.  There is no doubt that Hartnell believes Barbara and Ian are against him, and there is no doubt that he might be doing something malicious in the cliffhanger.  But the real star of this half hour is Jacqueline Hill.  Barbara is the first person we see in the episode, she’s the one that is most lucid throughout...and she is the one who gives the Doctor a great defiant response to his bullying.  I find it intriguing that in this rewatch Barbara is the character that’s standing out, even though Ian has most of the action.

For a serial that was apparently made on the fly, this is a great piece of work that illuminates the characters in a way we haven’t had a chance to see.  I like it.  I like it a lot.

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 0.75. Hunters of Earth (The Destiny of the Doctor, Big Finish/AudioGO, 2013)

We’re back to the Audio Dramas celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the series, and the first in a linked set of ‘Dramatised Readings’ Big Finish did in collaboration with the BBC’s audiobook arm, AudioGO.  Once again, Carol Ann Ford is reading the story by Nigel Robinson, this time assisted by Tam Williams (who appeared in the Classic Who serial, ‘Remembrance of the Daleks, which takes place in the same time and neighborhood as this story!).

It’s four months after the Doctor and Susan have arrived in Coal Hill, and Susan is trying to convince her grandfather to buy the parts to repair the Tardis rather than stealing them.  She’s fitting in pretty well thanks to Cedric (Williams speaks all of this character’s dialogue), who she crushes on and who seems to like her as well.  However, during these last four months, there’s been a rash of youth gang violence directed at people like Rosa, the German immigrant who runs the local coffee house.  And Susan keeps getting these headaches at roughly the same time her classmates get super-hostile towards her....and one of her teachers, the former military man Mr. Rook, is asking some really uncomfortable questions....

Ford seems a lot more confident in her reading here than in The Beginning and she proves herself to be quite a mimic given the number of characters she has to portray.  The thing that makes it kinda wonky to me is that the transitions between the reading itself and the dialogue scenes.  I never quite settled into the flow when Williams’ Cedric would show up to converse with Susan.  This is something that improves with later ‘dramatised readings’ but here it doesn’t mesh for me.

The entropic element in this story involves a Nazi ‘miracle weapon’ and a villain-but-not-really who has sussed out the Doctor and Susan’s secret.  The thing I like about the latter aspect is that it does attempt to fill in a blank--you can see the seeds in Rook’s operation blossoming into first the Countermeasures crew, then UNIT--without being overt about it.  It’s an element of the larger story, not the reason for the story.  And even though there is a coda that reminds you that this is part of a larger tale, it can be easily ignored and treated as a stand-alone.

I’m still not a fan of the ‘dramatised reading’ format, but this one--being literally a done-in-one story--is a lot more satisfying, even if it’s not great.

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 5A. Dr. Who and The Daleks (1965)

Given the way the Daleks took over the British imagination, it’s not surprising that a big screen adaptation of ‘The Daleks’ was in the offing.  A large portion of the British film industry was supported by making big screen adaptations of television serials--while we know Hammer for its great Gothic blood-and-cleavage horror reimaginings, they made their bread and butter with a series of films adapting British sitcoms like On The Buses*--and adapting this particular story was a natural.  The film studio that got the rights was Amicus...although since it couldn’t fully finance the production, it got funding from AACU as long as AACU was the only organization credited.

And...it’s really, really a Family Film.  And it sort of proves what I said earlier about ‘The Daleks’ serial being a little understuffed.  After all, this film effectively covers the last three half-hour episodes in twenty minutes!

The script was written by American ex-pat Milton Subotsky, and it makes several changes to the fundamental concept of Dr. Who that hardcore fans might object to.  After all, there is no mention of the Doctor and Susan being Not From Around Here; the film makes him just an eccentric inventor.  But what we need to keep in mind (something my friend Dave Probert of Jacdaw Meanderings, among other podcasts, reminded me) that the bulk of what we accept as the Doctor’s backstory and mythology isn’t presented to us until the very end of the Troughton era.  Right now, all Subotsky and director Gordon Flemyng know is what they see in that first season, and it’s not much.  As such, I can forgive this change, just as I can forgive making Barbara another grandchild and making Susan markedly younger and making the Doctor more benign and making Ian....

No. 

No, I cannot accept what they did to Ian.  He becomes Barbara’s boyfriend and is a straight up goof, responsible for slapstick 'Komedy' bits--it’s his falling on a lever that’s responsible for transporting ‘TARDIS’ (there is no ‘the’ in this film, folks) to Skaro--and all of the plot points the William Russell Ian initiates in the original are either wiped out completely or re-assigned to the Doctor.  Jazz musician Roy Castle plays this version of Ian, and it’s not his fault--he’s only doing what the script has him doing, but he’s the big gaping flaw in the film.

The big selling point, as you can see from the poster, is that this was the first time we got to see Daleks in color...boy, do we.  These Daleks are blue and black and red,** and their city is a lot busier than the simple corridors of the television version.  The movie Thals get some color as well, as they seem to be greyish-purple with bright golden hair and some unfortunate green eyeliner.  There are some gorgeous matte paintings (one of Skaro at night with its moon shining down on our heroes, is stunning) that take advantage of the Technicolor film stock.  There’s so much use of color that I’m surprised that the Doctor’s costume is so....drably brown and beige and the rest of the crew are similarly unimaginatively dressed.

And speaking of the Doctor, the character is assayed by one of the most British of British actors, Peter Cushing.  For the first half, it seems like the only thing Cushing has been told to do is be infirm, but the script assigns a lot of Ian’s heroics to him, or at least directs Ian to do something like pretend to grab Dyoni (I think; Subotsky’s script doesn’t really assign the Thals things like names) so Alydon can punch his lights out.  This Doctor is something of a cypher in a way that is different from Hartnell--I got no sense of him as a person as opposed to an ever-shifting sense of enigma that Hartnell gives.

As someone who enjoyed the Garantus Crush and the Monsta sighting, I was disappointed that both were absent.  Instead of the distinctive negative effects of the television series, we get the Daleks shooting fire extinguisher foam which is underwhelming--although the one shot of the Dalek gun dissolving part of an elevator floor underneath Ian and Barbara is a great bit that’s one half special effects and one half good editing.

I’ve been told there is a ‘canon’ explanation for this and its sequel, Dalek Invasion 2150 AD (and, I guess, the never-made third film that was planned, to be based on the serial ‘The Chase.’), but I like to treat it as a curiosity.  It’s okay, but it really should just be treated as an odd side thingie that I won’t not recommend, but I don’t think it’s essential.

*--and adapting all three of then-extant Quatermass serials.
**--Those of you who hated the ‘Skittles Daleks’ of the Matt Smith episode ‘Victory of the Daleks’ have this film to blame.

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 11. The Rescue (The Daleks, Episode Seven)

Here’s where Terry Nation realizes he has to wrap things up.

Ganatus’ brother sacrifices himself to save Ian, Ganatus and Alydon’s teams arrive at the Dalek city just in time to stop them from irradiating the atmosphere.  There’s a...fight? scene  (the sight of Thals bopping Daleks with the equivalent of a baseball bat and jumping on top of these Nazi Pepperpots is kinda funny) that ends with the Doctor being Stone Cold Mean in his refusing to help the Daleks survive.  The Thals celebrate, the Doctor declines an invitation to stay because he belongs amongst the stars, the crew Vroops off and then something happens that leads us into our next cliffhanger.

Hartnell really gets the best moments in this half hour.  The moment when the last dying Dalek pleads for his help, only for him to say, icily, “Even if I wanted to, I would not know how” is so effective precisely because we still don’t know what the Doctor’s game is.  I actively like this kind of Doctor, who isn’t positively 100% Good N’ Virtuous.  It might be one of the reason I ultimately soured on Tennant....while the first few episodes of his run promised a Time Lord who gave ‘no second chances,’ he softened almost immediately and kept being forced into a Romantic Angle with his companions until Donna.*  The moments where he declines his invitation to stay with the Thals as their advisor could be seen as genuinely warm...or teasing, given his suggestion he’ll return to live with their grandchildren and the way he ends it with a half-Hootyowl Chuckle.  Even though we get some character moments with the rest of the crew (okay, Susan literally trips and falls to show off the cloak Dyoni gave her, but still...), this is Hartnell’s show.

As someone who was taken with Ganatus’ Crushing on Barbara, we do get a resolution to that, as he says his goodbyes and gets Jacqueline Hill to plant a kiss straight on his lips.  Good for you, Ganatus!

We’re still at the point where each of the serials ends with the lead in to the next.  I personally think the ‘everyone fall down and go boom’ moment is a little underwhelming, but there you go.

As I’ve said before, this is a landmark, essential serial, the serial which literally assured Doctor Who would survive.  You need to watch this serial if you want to understand the mystique of the whole shebang.

Coming up: The first 'alternate universe,' another prequel and....The Edge of Destruction!




* Donna Noble is one of the Best Companions Ever, and the Best NuWho Companion.  This is a hill I will die on.

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 10. The Ordeal (The Daleks, Episode Six)

This episode is almost entirely made up of Ian and Ganatus leading their expedition across a chasm.

You think I’m joking, but it’s true.  About two thirds (maybe a little more) takes place in a cave, and follows Ian, Barbara and our three Thal friends as they traverse it.  It’s obvious very early on that one of the Thals is Not Going To Make It and, since he is the Third Thal who jumps, he follows the Rule of Three in Coming Up Short and endangering Ian in our cliffhanger.  That’s not to say there aren’t any grace notes to this.  I continue to be charmed by Ganatus’ crushing on Barbara (there’s a moment when he asks her ‘Do you do everything Ian tells you to do?’ and it comes off exactly like someone asking ‘Is he your boyfriend?’) and his palatable joy at discovering a possible trail into the city.  But the fate of that one Thal is so telegraphed that I kept wondering why it took so long before he reached his Ian-endangering fate....

...especially since what little we see of the Doctor and Susan is kinda more fun.  You see, with some other Thals consciously tampering with the Dalek’s television with some big-ass reflecting plates focusing sunshine on their cameras, Doc, Susan and Alydon sneak into the city and sabotages some of the power lines.  And when Alydon goes off to tell the other Thals to keep moving and Susan suggests they hightail it out of there, the Doctor is too busy praising his own handiwork to notice the Daleks have snuck up on them.  I like how the Doctor's own failings has caused much of the complications for this story, because it makes him more 'human' and not the super-hero he becomes when the series is rebooted in 2005.

(This is also, incidentally, the first time Hartnell does his weird 'hootyowl' chuckle to himself in a primitive form.  As this chuckle gives me great joy, especially when the Hartnell Doctor's character is softened in later seasons, I was most excited to hear it.)

We also learn that, since that neutron bomb the Daleks want to detonate will take too long to build, they’re just going to vent radiation from their nuclear reactors into the atmosphere.  Not surprisingly, our crew is horrified by what the Doctor insists is murder, but the Evil Mechanical Nazi Pepperpot insists is ‘extermination.’

While watching this half hour, I once again thought about how this serial could be streamlined into four or five episodes.  Yes, there are significant plot points here, but Nation’s script is strolling rather than rushing to its conclusion.  And that’s the only thing that really bugs me in this otherwise Essential Story.

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 9. The Expedition (The Daleks, Episode Five)

After the somewhat leisurely pace of the previous episodes, things really pick up here.  First off, Ian picks a fight with new Thal leader Alydon (John Lee) in the hopes of getting him to agree to help the crew recover the fluid link. 

(Remember the fluid link?  It was the thing the Doctor removed from the Tardis to trick the others into exploring the city.  Well, Ian took it off the Doctor, and the Daleks took it off Ian, so now they have to return to the city to get this vital piece of equipment back....even if, as the Doctor mention, the Tardis actually is low on mercury.)

It’s interesting to note that Alydon doesn’t actually put Ian on his ass until Ian grabs Dyoni and threatens to take her to the Daleks.  And it’s Dyoni who convinces Alydon to consent to the Thals’ involvement in this plan.  Couple that with Barbara’s insistent stand that the Thals need to stand up for themselves, and there’s a little bit of forward thinking going on here.  Hell, we see more of the Doctor’s respect for Barbara, as he admits ‘I may have underestimated you.’

Meanwhile, the Daleks have learned that the anti-radition serum is poisonous to their system.  It seems that those mutations we were introduced to last episode have made the Daleks dependent on radiation...which makes the lead Dalek (the one all the others defer to, even the cardboard Dalek cutouts in the background*) conclude that it’s easier for them to re-irradiate the surface with another neutron bomb explosion that, you know, making nice with the Thals and stuff.

Then Alydon’s right hand Ganatus (Philip Bond), who seems to be crushing a lot on Barbara comes up with an idea--splitting the Thal forces in two, with one group attacking the front of the Dalek city while the other takes a undefended path through the swamp and attacks from behind.  Yeah, the swamp is full of deadly mutations, but still....

Which brings us to a Doctor-less second half, with Ian, Barbara, Ganatus and other Thals traipsing through the swamp, discovering a possible short cut via what amounts to a water main, being threatened by...something and our first Monsta Sighting!

You will soon learn as we continue on this journey that in Doctor Who there are Monsters and Monstas.  A Monsta is a creature that way outstrips the means available to the special effects crew at the time, and the gooey Play-Doh tarp creature with light up eyes that rises up from the swamp to spook Ian is kinda charming in its lo-fi ineptitude. 

There’s some pretty nice moments throughout this episode, and one that may be an indication of Hartnell’s ill health--namely, the famed ‘Chesterman’ moment.  I wonder if the serial’s overall pace couldn’t have been helped by spreading some of these moments both forward and back, as we’ve got two more episodes of this landmark story to go.  Still, this is a key segment.

*--Here’s where I remind you we’re talking about something made over a half century ago on a miniscule budget that the producers never thought would be watched with interest by adults long after some of them were gone in a format that was so sharp we could see such things with startling clearness.  You know, just before I geek out about a Tarp Monsta.

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#673

When you see the phrase ‘Made in Hollywood, USA,’ you think of glamour and riches, right?  Well, this week Dread Media picks up that rock to look at some of the scuzz underneath!  First Des and I check into one of the sleaziest SRO Hotels to examine Paul Bartel’s feature film debut, 1972‘s Private Parts. Then I take you to a sad part of Bunker Hill to visit an even sadder Long Beach carnival to check out Ray Dennis Steckler’s musical masterpiece(?), 1964‘s The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies!

The trailers are below, as are an interview with Bartel, Joe Dante and Barbara Steele conducted by Mick Garris, Jonathan Ross hanging out with Steckler, and music from Murderdolls and Junkyard!

Listen to Dread Media #673 here

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 8. The Ambush (The Daleks, Episode Four)

Don’t be fooled by how the first third of this episode revolves around our heroes trying to get to ground level in a series of elevators, because here is where we get some backstory.

After the Doctor and company make their escape, they’re just in time to try and prevent the Daleks’ planned ambush of the Thals--Ian intercedes but not before the Thal’s leader is killed.  As the pacifistic blonde tribe licks its collective wounds, the Doctor learns that the planet Skaro had been irradiated as a result of a war between the Thal and the Dals, which resulted in both races being mutated.  This has happened so far in the past that the Thals have literally ‘come full circle’ in their mutations and have become the bare-chested Arayans we see now, whereas the ‘Dals’ have not made the full transition yet.

That’s a pretty heady concept for what was supposed to be a children’s serial.  It’s been tinkered with since (it turns out it’s not that the Daleks haven't mutated enough to full circle; it’s that the Daleks were willfully mutated to survive in a hostile environment by a one-armed freak scientist who manages to leech away all their free will so they just become flunkies to him...but that’s a long way off), but it works for the story Terry Nation is telling.  And it’s relatively simple enough for us to absorb quickly and hit the ground running.

As far as the crew dynamics go, I fear that Barbara once again gets the short end of the stick, but at least she doesn’t fall down and go into hysterics.  What’s really remarkable is how Hartnell seems downright gleeful in his scenes at the Thal encampment learning stuff from the designated female with a speaking part Dyoni (Virginia Weatherall).  It’s the first time we see the Doctor excitied--we’ve seen him interested and engaged in the previous episode, but not as filled with joy as he is in this sequence.

And Ian....well, watching it in 2020, it’s strange hearing our science teacher in a sweater and tie advocating the Thals beat the crap out of the Daleks.  Some might look at this as the Old Guard Yelling At Hippies.  But this is 1963, before the counterculture fully developed and less than twenty years from the end of World War Two.  While there’s no explicit connection made, Nation has made Daleks Mechano-Nazis, and Ian is trying to muster the average--albeit very Arayan--man to face up to them.  Seen in that context, it makes a lot more sense.

There’s some engaging stuff in here, but it’s pretty clear that the second half is a breather between acts.  At this point, we’ve passed the halfway mark of this story, but there’s still three more episodes to go.  We’ll see how it resolves itself soon.

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 0.5. The Beginning Part Two (The Companion Chronicles, Big Finish Audio, 2013)

It's an audio drama--it's not like I can come up with different
screen grabs....

As much as I really like Mark Platt, I’ll be the first to admit he’s a strange guy.  And if ‘Ghost Light’ (my favorite classic Who Story of all time) isn’t proof enough, just look at the resolution to this, which is supposedly literally the Doctor and Susan’s first adventure after stealing that legendery Type 40 Tardis.

Susan wakes up in what amounts to a high tech hospital bed after the last part’s somewhat confusing cliffhanger.  It seems that their actions in last episode flung everyone--them, Stoyn, the aliens--millions of years into the future.  Not surprisingly, the experiments the aliens were conducting were unsupervised and, it is implied, led to the creation of humanity, who is just now colonizing the moon.  The Doctor is delighted to learn that there’s a vital, thriving civilization on our little mudball.  The aliens, however, are horrified that this experiment has gone on unsupervised and is now bereft of the ‘order’ they were planning on imposing, so they’re going to purge the entire planet.  And Stoyn?  He’s helping them, in exchange for getting the Tardis, he’s told the alien it’s all the Doctor’s fault and he hopes to bring Susan with him.

On one hand, this answers an unanswered question--namely, ‘Why is the Doctor so protective of Earth?’ 

On the other hand, I don’t think anyone was really asking it, especially after some of the moments in the series’ fifty year plus history.  For me, this question was answered by Tom Baker’s amazing speech in ‘An Ark In Space’ about humanity.  For others, I’m sure it was the strong implication during the Russell T. Davies tenure of NuWho that the Time Lords and Humans are genetically related.  I’m not sure what this story does to replace those moments, and I have to wonder if it’s really necessary; maybe it should have been another ‘Unbound’ story (the range which produces the equivalent of ‘What If?’ stories) instead making it a special edition of the Companion Chronicles that implies that it’s canon.

And maybe there’s something in the next story that justifies it being quasi-official.  I admit, I own the first and the third story of this trilogy (featuring Lalla Ward and Juliet Landau subbing for the deceased Mary Tamm as two incarnations of Romana), but have yet to purchase the second part, a Second Doctor tale featuring Frazier Hines and Wendy Padbury.  But taking it as a story on its own, my overall reaction is ‘Okay, and....?’

This is not Carol Ann Ford’s fault, because she continues to perform the story well, and I don’t think it’s Platt’s fault...entirely.  I suspect that this was one of those special events commemorate the show’s fiftieth anniversary, where a little more content was dictated to the writers than would otherwise be*.  So it’s listenable, it’s okay, but it feels like an incomplete object.

And we’re not done with the fiftieth anniversary, folks....because Big Finish put out another prequel during that time.  And I’ll get to that ditty shortly.

*--which is why I’m awfully suspicious of this ‘Time Lord Victorious’ multi-platform thingie that the BBC is masterminding for the near future, and which Big Finish is doing three linked Eighth Doctor audios and some Master-based Short Trips (Short Trips are a series of short stories released in audio form)

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 7. The Survivors (The Daleks, Episode Three)

"It's Springtime for Thal-dom and Germany..."

Hope you like planning!

Okay, that’s a bit reductive.  But if you take this episode on the surface, it is mostly our crew planning a prison break in their cell.  That doesn’t make it necessarily boring.

For one, Nation has a couple of reveals up his sleeve, starting with the appearance of the Thals.  We’ve been teased with how the Thals are these mutated aberrations only to find that they are....very, very white.  I would go so far as to say they’re quite...Arayan.  All of these characters are tall, well-built, mostly barechested blonde gentlemen and ladies in geodesic cloaks who seem to be vaguely hippie-ish and peaceful who hope to open up a trade relationship with the Daleks so they don’t starve to death.

And the Daleks do the equivalent of ‘Let’s just  pretend to agree, so we can get them into our city and kill them’ because the Daleks are dicks.

And there’s also the big reveal that the Daleks are not mechanical beings but things in what amounts to ambulatory tanks.  Director Richard Martin blocks the revelation until we see the episode’s final shot...where something clawed and decidedly not human peeks out from under one of those Thal Geodesic Cloaks.

But it’s in this episode more than the ones before it that are indicative of the original remit of the series was educational.  The bulk of this episode is composed of our four leads extrapolating, theorizing, planning and carrying out their escape.  Everybody has their part in fashioning the plan and contributes to its execution.  I particularly like how Nation takes advantage of the tension between the Doctor and Ian in such a way that when they fake a fight I’m not quite sure how sincere it is.  Sure, I call bulldookey on big ol’ William Russell fitting comfortably in a Dalek shell and knowing how to operate it almost immediately, but it’s a nit I don’t need to really pick.

Watching the serial like the audiences did, one at a time, no more than one daily, I appreciate how Nation’s script tries to give us one Big Beat per episode.  Sometimes it doesn’t quite work--I point you to how the previous episode degenerated into Susan recreating the Corridor Chase choreography from ‘An Unearthly Child.’  But the story continues to move forward and I see something new snuck into each half-four, I’m sort of encouraged.  I can see why this is the defining serial that made the series into an institution that has lasted over half a century.

Of course, we have four more episodes to go in this story, so there’s a distinct sense of another shoe getting ready to drop.  We’ll see.

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 0. The Beginning Part One (The Companion Chronicles, Big Finish Audio, 2013)

Don’t worry, guys....we will get to episode 7, ‘The Escape’ very shortly....maybe as soon as tomorrow.  But I wanted to include this in my chronology.

You see, I am a big fan of audio drama, and have been ever since I discovered CBS Mystery Theater and old time radio programs as a kid in the 70‘s.  And during the ‘Wilderness Years,’ the decade and a half where Doctor Who was off the air save for a failed TV movie pilot and a couple of charity specials on the BBC, Big Finish Audio (a company that, according to legend, began because a bunch of guys were doing the equivalent of Who fanfiction and the BBC decided to give them the license instead of stifling their creativity) was the one of the few outlets that produced Canon adventures of our favorite Time Lord.  Recently that Canon-ness has become more fluid as NuWho’s history becomes as elaborate as the classic--one could even say ‘accelerated'--but it is Canon.  This was driven home by the Steven Moffat penned 50th Anniversary short ‘Night of The Doctor’ where the Eighth Doctor, Paul McGann, namechecks all of his Big Finish companions (including Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Pollard, whose relationship to her Doctor is a big part of the template Russell T. Davies was following when he fashioned Rose Tyler's relationship to Ten).  At this point, my guess is that as long as it’s not contradicted by anything in the TV show--like the way the recent Chris Chibnall episode concerning Mary Shelly contradicted a trio of Big Finish dramas (dramas that were very good, incidentally) where the Eighth Doctor palled around with Shelly--it’s canon to the BBC.



(And no, I won't be reviewing every Big Finish production in this series--these lines have been going on for so long that there are literally hundreds of them, some of which I don't know if I could fit into continuity, and that way lies madness).

Which brings us to this, a Companion Chronicle (a line that started in 2007 as a way to tell stories with Doctors who were no longer with us) that was released to mark the series’ 50th Anniversary.  It’s a ‘Dramatised Reading’ written by Marc Platt, who wrote my favorite classic Who serial, ‘Ghost Light’ and read by the original Susan, Carol Ann Ford with an assist by Terry ‘Davros’ Molloy.

This serial purports to be the story of the Doctor and Susan’s ‘borrowing’ of the Tardis and their first adventure, which takes place mainly on The Moon.  The biggest problem is that by taking that particular Tardis, our protaganists also take Quadrigger Stoyn (Malloy reads Stoyn’s dialogue) as their unwitting stowaway, something that Stoyn isn’t too keen on.  And when the Doc and Susan find themselves in a strange terrarium on Earth’s moon curated by an even stranger alien race who are helping to cultivate life on this planet.

The bulk of this first part of a two part story is composed of the Doctor’s escape and his and Susan’s adjustment to life on the run.  Ford is engaging in the way she interprets the material.  A somewhat large portion is devoted to introducing Stoyn, who is the villian in two other Companion Chronicles that follow this one which I will get to at the appropriate time in the chronology.  And since it’s a Marc Platt story, the alien race is suitably weird, being globes of shiny, reflective liquid (There’s a moment where Ford describes how these creatures ‘bow’ that actually makes me giggle).

As with many of the other items in the Big Finish range, the drama emulates the show’s pattern.  In the case of this story, we’ve got music cues that seem to evoke the sounds of the early Hartnell episodes.  And it has a cliffhanger--in this case it’s only one, but when we get to the audio dramas based on the later Doctors, they’ll have three or more--although I’m still not sure what is going on in this cliffhanger after listening to it several times.  But I’ll get to that when I come to the second part.

Obviously your milelage may vary--for all I know, most of you reading this can’t stand audio drama--but if you genre, this isn’t too bad a’tall.

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#672

As we all continue to be confined to our own spaces, this week we gain solace in knowing at least we’re not confined to the space of The Platform as Des, Jeff, Brittany, Scott and (the mostly silent) Stacy review this Netflix original.  Then we discuss Paul Von Stotzel’s Lovecraftian short film The Curse of Yig....which, because we couldn’t find a trailer, we present in its entirety below!

Also to be found are the trailer for The Platform, a countdown of the worst prisons in history and most disturbing prison experiments, a discussion of Yig’s background, plus music from Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats and Sworn In!

Listen to Dread Media #672 here

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 6. The Survivors (The Daleks, Episode Two)

Let’s be honest--if you take this episode on its own, it’s a variation of the Corridor Chase, with the third act being almost exclusively taken up by shaky close ups of a really spooked Susan running to get to the Tardis so she can retrieve the anti-radiation drugs the others so desperately need.  Outside of a little interrogation session the Daleks subject the Doctor to, the rest of the regular cast spends their time in different phases of swooning from radiation poisoning.

But then there are the Daleks.  We don’t see too much of them, but what we see is memorable.  They’re in maybe three scenes, and they’re all kinda expositional.  But it’s undeniable that they are menacing.  I think a major reason why the Daleks captured the imagination so strongly is because they’re totally inhuman--there is nothing even remotely humanoid about them, and it drives home their alienness*.  And their callousness (when asked if Susan would be allowed to give the drugs to the crew, the Dalek in charge says, “They will die anyway.  We need the drug so we can replicate them for ourselves.”) makes their otherness stand out.  The effectiveness of these foes at this time is that these are not obviously men in suits; we have nothing to relate them to, or to relate to them with.

I think another reason that the Daleks literally held Britian in a pop culture mania that almost resulted in a Daleks-only spin-off and tons of toys is because Nation really drives home how high the stakes are.  We need to remember that the lore of regeneration wasn’t made up until Hartnell became too sick to continue in the role (and you can see him stumbling on his lines and taking the first of his ‘DocNaps’ in this episode; it’s remarkable he maintained enough discipline to successfully assay the role for so long), so there’s the real possibility of death when we see the Doctor weaken and crumble. 

There’s also more of the Doctor/Ian member-measuring contest, with the Doctor admitting to his deception and Ian taking him to task for it.  I really like the fact that this crew has serious tension that isn’t handwaved away.  While I admit I like the oddness of Hartnell’s softer, more family-friendly persona he develops late in his run, I like this enigmatic and unpredicatable version even more.

So this is a landmark episode in a landmark serial.  And it still holds up.  I’m looking forward to the next leg of this journey.

*--I think that if you look at all the alien enemies of the Doctor that really took off (in my mind The Daleks, The Cybermen, The Sontarans, The Ice Warriors and, more recently, The Weeping Angels), that ‘inhumanity factor’ is key.  It’s one of the things that NuWho got wrong under Russell T. Davis--it’s hard to be terrified of something when they’re obviously people in cat or rhino or fly or kewpie doll masks.  Even the Cybermen have those immobile, inexpressive faces that keep us for emphasizing with them one hundred percent.

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 5. The Dead Planet (The Daleks, Episode One)

There are a number of writers in the history of Doctor Who who end up a cut above the average.  Personages such as Robert Holmes, Terrence Dicks and Christopher Bidmead are integral to certain eras of the show.*  But none of these had an impact on the series as much as one Terry Nation.

Terry Nation was a Welsh writer who had some minor success in writing for comedy programs before Verity Lambert brought him onto the writing staff for this show.  He wrote other things during his association with Who, went on to create two other significant BBC series (Survivors and Blake’s 7, the Space Opera for people like me who don’t like Space Opera), wrote some interesting films (I particularly like the collaboration he did with my hero Brian Clemens, And Soon The Darkness), but even if he did nothing else, his place in the series’ history would be cemented by creating...The Daleks.

This is the first part of the first appearance of the Daleks.  These monstrous pepper-pots (and I say that with utmost respect) don’t technically appear in the episode save for one plunger-arm making its way into the last, iconic shot, but this is where the show gains traction in the minds and hearts of Britions in 1963.

The crew has landed in the middle of what appears to be a petrified forest.  They know it’s not Earth because of the petrified metallic lizard they find during their exploration...and because there’s also an alien-looking city off in the distance.  The Doctor really wants to explore the city whereas Ian and Barbara want to leave immediately.  So The Doc pretends to take off--but we, the audience, clearly see him kinda...tinkering with the Tardis console, so it stays stuck.  There’s this part that’s run out of the mercury essential for operation and there’s no mercury on the ship and maybe they could find some inside the city.  While searching for the elusive liquid, Barbara gets separated from the others and is confronted by something inhuman.  And that’s not even mentioning the unseen figure who touches Susan and leaves a metal container filled with strange vials outside the Tardis...and the fact that the viewer (but not the crew) knows the radiation level is dangerously high.

To me, what makes this episode work is how Nation continues filling in the dynamics between our lead quartet.  This time it’s Susan doing the Girl’s School Screaming, but the interesting thing is how he develops the way Barbara and The Doctor interact.  Unlike the contentious battle for control the Doctor has with Ian, the Time Lord seems to be respectful of Barbara, admitting that there are things she can communicate to Susan that he just can’t because of the generational gap.  I got the impression that the Doctor is telling Barbara things he doesn’t want to admit, and looks upon her as an authority in the one of the few areas he can’t claim expertise in.

That doesn’t mean the Doctor isn’t a massive Dick in this story.  The direction by Christopher Barry makes it clear that the Doctor’s story about the faulty macguffin is not only willful but defiantly obvious.  It brings into sharp contrast what Susan means when she says the Doctor is a little...insistent on getting his way.

Considering this half hour is pretty much four people wandering around some sets, Nation skillfully keeps our attention...and the bizarreness of the final shot makes it stick in your memory.

*--I know you expect me to mention Douglas Adams, but considering how much of his work on the show was recycled from his Hitchhiker’s Guide radio shows, I don’t recognize him as Who royalty.  Come at me.

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 4. The Firemaker (An Unearthly Child, Episode Four)

This wrap up to our first story will always be remembered for me as the one where we find out that the cave people we’ve been following may not have learned about fire, but they did learn about underpants before meeting the Doctor and his friends.

The deets: The crew is dragged back to the tribe, The Doctor becomes the first lawyer and successfully defends Za from the charge of killing the Old Woman, Ian makes fire by rubbing two sticks together (which would be more effective if the two sticks were actually touching when said fire ignites), Za kills Ka in an...exciting?...fight scene (a scene that clearly displays the briefs and undershirts of the combatants), Susan figures out a way for our heroes to pretend to be dead long enough for them to get to the Tardis and escape to an unknown planet that seems to be safe...or Is It?

Oh, and Barbara...I think she trips once during their escape. Jacqueline Hill really get the short end of the stick throughout this inaugural story.

This is supposed to be the Big Climax, and it is here that we really see how low the budget is, as the tribe chasing the heroes through the forest is portrayed by a series of close-ups with stage hands off camera waving twigs around.  I was also somewhat surprised at how Za and Hur’s personalities change before our eyes--Hur is no longer as scheme-y as she was in the previous episode and Za suddenly becomes a lot shrewder than he was during the story up to then.  I get the sense that these changes are more about wrapping up the story rather than educating the chilluns.

The give and take between Ian and The Doctor still seems to be the spine of the story--Ian chooses to defer to the Doc when asked who leads the trial, but seems to challenge the Doctor when they’re back in the Tardis.  And I still really like the way Hartnell is still not softening his portrayal of the Doctor....once he’s back in a position of relative power, he is willfully deceptive to Ian’s questions.  I like this Doctor’s unpredictability; I suspect one of the reasons I don’t care for a lot of the NuWho incarnations is because there’s no ambivalence to their position as a Savior of Humanity (and also why my favorite Doctor is Colin Baker, who was dwelling in a similar shade of grey during his too-short tenure) and the sense of the Doctor not being necessarily clear as to where he stands brings a real flavor to this crew.

The last few minutes of the episode teases the next serial, and here’s where the true fun begins.  This is a significant serial....but the next one literally threw Britian into a pop culture tizzy and cemented Who’s identity.

Next time, we meet...The Daleks.

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 3. The Forest of Fear (An Unearthly Child, Episode Three)

I am not sure who determined that the default length for a typical Doctor Who serial would be four episode or why.  I do know that right from the start, it’s obvious that one of the biggest--and kind of annoying--tropes was cemented right here in this third episode of the first serial.

This is the prototypical ‘Corridor Chase’ episode.  The bulk of this episode is concerned with our protaganists escaping from the Cave of Skulls, running through the titular forest of fear while enemies (in this case Za and Hur) are in pursuit, and are promptly captured.  There’s other stuff, and some of that stuff is interesting, but the gist of it is the equivalent of running in a circle.

The really interesting thing is how the dynamics of the original Tardis Crew are coming together.  A real tension develops between the Doctor and Ian, with the two sort of struggling over who takes command.  Although I was a little concerned that Barbara was going to be all ‘Girl School Screamer’ this go round, hugging Ian tightly and crying in terror, she ends up being something of the moral center, insisting that they help the injured Za when they could reach safety by fleeing.  And I’m increasingly becoming convinced that if this is a Shakespearean tragedy, then Althea Carlton is Lady MacBething the hell out of this.  I definitely get the impression that she is the smartest of her tribe, and is using those smarts to manipulate Za so she can have a position of power by proxy.  There’s one eyerolling moment of...jealousy?...between her and Susan, but I can forgive that.

The educational element is still there--we learn how to make a improvised stretcher from Ian--but in his way William Hartnell lets us know who’s in command of the show.  I find the way he develops the Doctor in these early episodes fascinating.  He’s continually adding new layers and nuance to his character, and I still don’t have any clear sense of who’s side he’s on.  Even something as standing off to the side stoically while Ian, Barbara and Susan are tending to Za tells us a little about who this Doctor is without letting us know if he’s friend or foe (and that sense will play extremely well in a serial we’re coming up on after this one and next wrap up).

This go around, I’m still not keen on this serial...even though I can see how it acts as a ‘mission statement’ for what the series was supposed to be.  It’s still significant, and should be viewed if only for that.

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#670

Don’t you just hate it when The Dead Don’t Die?  Des and I evaluate the great Jim Jarmusch’s zombie comedy with a real Big, (Quirky) Star Studded Cast!  Then Des gives you his Top Five Zombie Comedies.

The Trailer is below, as is a list of the best Tilda Swinton Performances, an interview with Jarmusch, Selena Gomez discussing Bill Murray, and music from Tom Waits and Sturgill Simpson!

Listen to Dread Media #671 here

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 2. The Cave of Skulls (An Unearthly Child, Episode Two)

Remember I told you that two of the initial companions--William Russell’s Ian and Jacqueline Hill’s Barbara--were teachers?

Well, the BBC had intended the show to be educational (I think the show was under the purview of the Children’s Department during the entire classic run), and the two adult companions were supposed to represent the subjects Doctor Who was going to explore, science and history.

I bring this up because our second episode actually starts the story of that first serial, and that story is....not much.  You see, the Tardis has ended up in what we will learn is prehistoric times.  As the crew is trying to figure out where the hell they are, a local theatrical troupe that are supposed to be a cro-magnon tribe are in the midst of a political crisis.  The son of the tribe’s old leader, Za, is in conflict with new arrival Kal, and the thing that seems to be what will determine who will get the coveted position is the ability to make fire.  While Za is trying to make things ignite, Kal observes the Doctor lighting a pipe with a match--which, to him, makes him believe the old man has fire coming from his fingers.  Kal captures the Doctor, Susan and the others go in search of him, the whole crew is captured and sent to the titular cave with the titular skulls and ordered to make fire....except the Doctor lost his matches.  There is also some intrigue involving the daughter of an elder and much talk about meat and cold.

I can understand what writer Anthony Coburn was getting at in this story, showing the kids of 1963 what life might have been like at the dawn of time.  But the cave dwellers in this episode look like they’re wearing carpet remnants and are speaking like this is some sort of Shakespearean play.  The whole back and forth between Za and Kal, with female Hur (she’s digging on Za, but her dad has promised her to the one who makes fire) acting as a sort of spoiler, gets tiresome very quickly.  I was almost thankful when the main quartet got tossed into the cave, as it spared me more of these actors’ gesticulating.

I will say that I liked the way Russell and Hill flipped the script on what was set up with the first episode, with Barbara being the one to take point once the two venture out and Ian having trouble coping.  Susan shows her capacity to be all aflutter with the panicking for the first time, and Hartnell continues to build an intriguing, mystifying figure, especially in the way he just off-handedly agrees to make enough fire for everyone.  If only he hadn’t lost those darn matches....

We’re still in the shakedown cruise of this series, where the people behind the show are trying to figure out what this damn thing is supposed to be.  As such, I’ll be a little charitable and overlook the flaws with an eye towards watching everything come together.