The Macra Terror
At the very end of The Moonbase, the Doctor uses something called the time scanner, which allows him to look ahead at where the TARDIS will next land. A giant claw appears on the screen, warning the crew that there is something nasty waiting for them when they next land. The TARDIS does not appear to land in the tick of danger, though, and it brings everyone to an idyllic colony that appears to be run like a holiday camp. Everyone in the camp is extremely happy, there is a constant stream of music to keep up morale, and the Doctor sums it up oh so politically incorrectly by saying "Well, this is gay!". The crew are treated to a wash and scrub (Polly gets her hair cut really short) and are welcomed by all, and by night they are subjected to the sleep-teachings of the colony. Ben proves most affected by the voices he hears in his sleep, probably due to his military background of obeying orders, and he becomes one of the colony's workers, but the Doctor, Polly, and Jamie discover the truth: the place is a front, all being run from behind the scenes by the Macra - massive land-crabs that depend on a lethal gas the colony slaves to process for them. With everyone so brainwashed to believe and obey the voice of Control, it is up to the Doctor to show them what is really in control and free them and Ben from the Macras' power.
The planet the colony is situated on has no name, and there is very little information given to determine what time the story takes place in (obviously it's the future, but no real date). A similarly-run state will be featured in 1988's adventure The Happiness Patrol, so for the sake of continuity we could place The Macra Terror in the same bit of future history. There is also no real sense of how the Macra got in control of the people of the colony and now they managed to create the elaborate gas workings to keep them alive. Maybe we're not meant to delve that deep, and should just enjoy the creepy atmosphere of the show, heightened by the eerie incidental music. There's no visual record of this episode aside from a few clips of Ben and Polly battling a Macra from episode 2, and that episode's cliffhanger moment of the real Control being dragged off screen by the same massive claw seen on the TARDIS scanner. A clip of the opening titles of the show, however, provides a clue to the evolution of the series itself; the opening title sequence, which had remained the same since An Unearthly Child, had changed. The music was more or less the same, but the sequence itself was redone to include the Doctor's face, and a new logo. Why the production crew waited this long to change things is unknown but one theory is the original opening was retained for a while to keep the show familiar in the wake of William Hartnell's departure earlier in the season.
So with very little visual to go on, I obviously listened to The Macra Terror on another CD set. This time the linking narration was provided by Colin Baker, who would eventually become the sixth Doctor in 1984, and not by one of the original performers from the serial itself. The audio version was released on a cassette tape in the early 1990s, before the full potential of the audio range was realized, and the narration is a bit less than previous discs, perhaps due to Baker not having actually been in the series at the time to remember information that a cast member might have known.
Onward....
NEXT EPISODE : THE FACELESS ONES
The planet the colony is situated on has no name, and there is very little information given to determine what time the story takes place in (obviously it's the future, but no real date). A similarly-run state will be featured in 1988's adventure The Happiness Patrol, so for the sake of continuity we could place The Macra Terror in the same bit of future history. There is also no real sense of how the Macra got in control of the people of the colony and now they managed to create the elaborate gas workings to keep them alive. Maybe we're not meant to delve that deep, and should just enjoy the creepy atmosphere of the show, heightened by the eerie incidental music. There's no visual record of this episode aside from a few clips of Ben and Polly battling a Macra from episode 2, and that episode's cliffhanger moment of the real Control being dragged off screen by the same massive claw seen on the TARDIS scanner. A clip of the opening titles of the show, however, provides a clue to the evolution of the series itself; the opening title sequence, which had remained the same since An Unearthly Child, had changed. The music was more or less the same, but the sequence itself was redone to include the Doctor's face, and a new logo. Why the production crew waited this long to change things is unknown but one theory is the original opening was retained for a while to keep the show familiar in the wake of William Hartnell's departure earlier in the season.
So with very little visual to go on, I obviously listened to The Macra Terror on another CD set. This time the linking narration was provided by Colin Baker, who would eventually become the sixth Doctor in 1984, and not by one of the original performers from the serial itself. The audio version was released on a cassette tape in the early 1990s, before the full potential of the audio range was realized, and the narration is a bit less than previous discs, perhaps due to Baker not having actually been in the series at the time to remember information that a cast member might have known.
Onward....
NEXT EPISODE : THE FACELESS ONES
Labels: Ben Jackson, Jamie McCrimmon, Macra, Polly Wright, The 2nd Doctor
posted by Sean Hoover @ 2:10 PM
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