The Time Monster

Masquerading as Professor Thasceles, the Master is using a university research programme to devise a time machine known as TOMTIT (transmission of matter through intersistial time) as a means to control a mythical creature called Kronos. The Doctor recognizes the creature by name and reveals that it is one of a race of Chronovores, creatures that live outside of the space-time continuum and feed on temporal energy. With the help of Jo and UNIT, the Doctor frustrates the Master's plans enough to drive him to journey back to Atlantis to capture a crystal that will give him power over Kronos. The Doctor and Jo follow and must face many threats, amongst them the mythical Minotaur, and the wrath of Kronos itself.

Whoa, I say. There is far too much going on in this story. My precis doesn't really reflect that, but here we have another 6 episode story where episodes 1 through 4 all take place in the university grounds and then inside two TARDISes, and in episodes 5 and 6 we get the whole Atlantean thing crammed in. Don't get me wrong: this is a fun story complete with all our favourite UNIT people, the Master, and some fantastic dialogue, but I personally would have enjoyed less of the lead-up in modern times and more time spent in Atlantis, an approach I suppose I have become used to with the new novel and CD audio ranges. This is, incidentally, the third time Doctor Who has destroyed Atlantis: the first was back in 1967 with The Underwater Menace, and then it was alluded to in The Daemons as one of Azal's failed experiments that was destroyed. So okay we have a slight continuity issue to deal with. But who cares about that; I'm sure Atlantis was a big place, it's possible that Azal's experiment was done before the events in The Time Monster. And as for Professor Zaroff and his fish people, who is to say what might have evolved out of the Atlantean ruins after Kronos smashed it to pieces. And then comes a very significant moment in Doctor Who history: the Doctor tells Jo about his past, alluding to living in a house halfway up a mountain and seeking the advice of a wizened hermit under a tree. The last time the Doctor spoke of his past directly was in Tomb of the Cybermen, telling Victoria about his family, who we assume would be dead the way he spoke. Tidbits like these are few and far in the televised series; the next significant mention will not come again until 1989.

The Time Monster gets a bit ambitious with the design and effects departments, creating a whole new TARDIS console room in some funky retro white plastic roundel scheme (that is, by the way, never seen again) and an impressive set for the Atlantean temple in episode 5. Episode 5 itself suffers from some bad editing when the TARDIS materializes, and the effect of the Doctor's TARDIS separating from the Master's.. well.. I can see strings.

There are some acting alumni worth mentioning here: Ingrid Pitt as Galleia, Queen of Atlantis (and a bit of a power mad one as well, willingly chucking her ageing king for a fling with the Master), and Dave Prowse as the Minotaur. For the uninitaited, or those who live under rocks in the sci fi community, Dave was the body of Darth Vader in episodes IV to VI of the Star Wars movies. And, let me say, Dave has FANTASTIC pectoral muscles. Or, at least, he did. One of the best chest moments in Doctor Who, although I can hear others shouting that there is a better one in 1984's Planet of Fire.

And here endeth the season. The Doctor has limited control of the TARDIS again, but he's still not free of his exile. So he's stuck on Earth for a while yet. So before we carry on to the 10th season of the show, let's stop and read a book.

NEXT EPISODE : DEADLY REUNION

The Mutants

Earth's empire is in decline. Unable to sustain a vast empire anymore with her own resources exhausted, Earth is slowly cutting its colonies free. The planet Solos has been in the empire for 500 years and on the eve of its independence, an Earth official is assassinated by the Marshal of the conoly and the blame thrown on the natives. The Marshal has plans to keep Solos as his own world, but first he has to contend with the fact that the astmosphere is poison to humans, the natives hate humans and want them all to leave, and there is a startling amount of mutation in the native population, turning humaniods into insectoid monsters that are hunted and killed as sport. Into this situation come the Doctor and Jo on a mission for the Time Lords to deliver a special package to Ky, a Solonian leader, and they are caught up in the Marshal's insane scheme, their own lives at risk.

As timelines go we have already this season seen Earth as a member of the Galactic Federation, so that would place The Mutants and any of Earth's imperial era stories somewhere before the events on Peladon. Why Earth was wasting time trying to colonize a planet with a poisonous atmosphere, though, is anyone's guess. No wonder the empire never held if this is any indicator of how it was being run. The Marshal is not exactly the kind of man you want running things as governor of your planet either; he's prejudiced and only out to perpetuate his own needs and hold onto whatever power he has. The title charcaters, the mutants themselves, are not pretty and rank as some of the scariest monsters in Doctor Who history, even if they are not as motivated and powerful as Daleks or Cybermen.

The Mutants marks the third time the Time Lords have seen fit to send the Doctor on an errand for them, and this one will have all sorts of repercussions down the road once it is over, which makes one wonder how many other Time Lord agents are out there on missions for them. And how do they equate this sort of thing with a policy of non-interferance - something they themselves put the Doctor on trial for and exiled him to Earth as a result. He doesn't seem to mind though, and Jo doesn't mind charging along with him to the unknown after getting used to her first off-planet experience in Colony in Space.

So we've seen another alient planet, one that looks not like a gravel pit, but the scrubby brush that grows around a gravel pit. Maybe it's progress, but we all know that gravel pits are what made the Doctor Who universe what it is. And corridors. Lots and lots of corridors. And failing corridors, some pretty cool location work in some funky-lit caves.

Ahead, though, is not a gravel pit, but modern Earth. And ancient Atlantis...

NEXT EPISODE : THE TIME MONSTER

The Sea Devils

The Doctor and Jo pay a visit to the Master at the high security prison that has become his home. Located on an island, it is the perfect escape-proof facility, with a naval base as a neighbour across the quay. A series of mysterious sinkings prompts the Doctor to assist the navy with their investigations, and it is revealed that the Master has coerced the prison warden to assist him in contacting the Sea Devils, underwater cousins of the Silurians, who are behind the attacks. The Master seeks to ignite a war between the Sea Devils and the humans, but just as the Doctor tries to broker peace once more, the navy attacks and drives the Sea Devils further down the road to war. Once again, there can be no peace between the two races, and the end result is another massive loss of reptilian life.

As the title suggests, a lot of this adventure happens in and around the sea, and with the co-operation of the Royal Navy this ambitious plan was realized. A lot of stock footage was provided of course, but there is extensive location work on a naval base and on a ship equipped with a diving bell. In a show of what was high tech for it's day, a hovercraft is also used to aid Jo's escape from the base, and her return with armed reinforcements to counter a Sea Devil incursion. Why the Royal Navy had two sea-doos standing by is a bit of a mystery but they provided a good high speed chase for the Doctor and the Master.

The idea of the Silurians having undersea counterparts is an interesting one, seeing as most alien menaces have one look, one species, one mode of dress, and everything else that is homogenized. The Sea Devils are designed to appear aquatic as opposed to the land-based look of the Silurians, complete with impressive fins on their heads (which were actually made as hats to make them appear that much taller) and some funky mesh wear. Only the chief Sea Devil actually speaks, in tones that one would expect from a giant reptile, the others just scream when they are shot or blown up. We don't get much of a look at their technology though; with the adventure being 6 episodes long and including so much location work it's possible there wasn't time or budget to build something for just a couple episodes, for the Sea Devil threat is not brought forward until the end of episode 4.

Prior to then, the plot is more concerned with the Doctor and the Master crossing swords (literally at the climax of episode 2) and the bluster and bull of Trenchard trying to keep the goings on at his prison a secret. Trenchard gets replaced as the annoying man in authority by a private parliamentary secretary, who does nothing more than demand food and give orders, and just to make you hate him more, there's a close up of his mouth while he's eating. In Claws of Axos we were treated to the wheedling Chin as government representative, and now this, which makes me wonder if the Doctor Who production crew had some big axe to grind with the British government at the time.

I keep saying this more and more, but I really want this one on DVD sometime soon. It's a classic Jon Pertwee adventure, even if it does suffer from what the late producer John Nathan-Turner said was the problem with 6 episode stories, being that the plot develops in such a way that it feels like a 4 episode story with another 2 thrown on for the heck of it. 3 of Jon Pertwee's 5 seasons follow the format brewing here: 2 adventures of 4 episodes, and 3 epic 6 episode stories, which efectively reduces the amount of scripts to 5 per season, as opposed to the 13 we enjoyed in the 2005 season.

So next up, 6 more episodes. With the Master escaped and on the loose, he's going to pop up again sometime soon.

But not just yet.

NEXT EPISODE : THE MUTANTS

The Curse of Peladon / The Face of the Enemy

The troubled planet of Peladon stands on a pivotal moment in its history; the King has applied for his planet's admission to the Galactic Federation to better his people's lives, but supersition and terror are standing in his way. While delegates from the Federation arrive to negotiate, an apparation of the planet's royal beast, Aggedor, stalks the passageways of the palace. The Doctor and Jo arrive on a test flight with the TARDIS, and after the ship is sent crashing down the side of a mountain are mistaken for the Federation delegates from Earth. Amongst the committe is the many tentacled Alpha Centauri, the truncated Arcturus, and a pair of Ice Warriors, who the Doctor immediately suspects of treachery. But in the future, the Ice Warriors are no longer an agressive race bent on conquest, and Mars is a founding member of the Federation. It becomes apparant that the trouble is an internal matter, with a faction of the royal court fearing Peladon's admission to the Federation as a threat to their soverign ways, and the Doctor must uncover the traitors on both sides while Jo dodges the earnest romantic overtures of Peladon himself.

This story should have started the season, not that farce of a Dalek tale. We are presented not only with a complex and rich culture on Peladon, but with a cluster of aliens; two new creatures and an old enemy changed their ways. For a monster, Centauri is not at all agressive or intimidating but a gentle, nervous creature that wants only peace, even if it is a little hung up on details. The Ice Warriors are incredible as always, noble and proper, but this time without vicious intent, making then perfect allies for the Doctor. This would be the only time the Ice Warriors appear in the show as good guys, but later adventures with them in print would pick up this thread again - even seeing them as guests at companion Bernice Summerfield's wedding. I like the Ice Warriors as benevolant aliens rather than marauding monsters; in science fiction television it is too easy to take something inhuman and make it evil and bent, rather than develop it as something good, and not misunderstood.

With all these aliens comes a challenge to the wardrobe and costume department, one they rose to with great flair. The attire of the people of Peladon is primarily a royal purple, robes on the noble, battle kilts on the soldiers. David Troughton (son of Patrick) gets a bit shortchanged as the King, though; he's either wearing shorts or a short kilt but with high boots that look like... umm... stockings. Wierd. But hey he's all man, chasing Jo about and wanting to marry her. Maybe it's his cross-dressing ways that really put her off, not her budding romance with Mike Yates that is mentioned in episode 1 and then never again. Well, she has effectively stood him up on a date by going off with the Doctor, so no wonder the whole relationship is going tits-up.

Curse of Peladon has a fun Canadian connection to it. For a while the BBC archive didn't have a copy of the adventure at all, but all four colour episodes were at TV Ontario and were returned in one lot. It's on VHS right now but would make a good additioon to the DVD line in 2006, I think.

Meanwhile back on Earth, Mike is fuming over Jo having stood him up, and the Brigaider finds himself in need of scientific advice in the Doctor's absence. Drafting from the scientific community worked before with Liz Shaw so UNIT calls on a noted scientist and his wife: Ian and Barbara Chesterton. Events around UNIT are taking a nasty turn with criminal warfare on the rise, and a threat apparantly outside of Earth itself growing, the Brigaider is forced to also turn to the imprisoned Master for assistance as well.

Adventures without the Doctor were commonplace by the time The Face of the Enemy was published in 1998. The Brigadier and UNIT had already been used in a more contemporary setting in the ReelTime pictures VHS movie Downtime, but having a UNIT adventure running parallel to the Doctor's absence is brilliant. Involving Ian and Barbara is nothing short of genius, bringing back two of the original companions to show that their lives did indeed have a happy ending, and that they have a son and were able to get back to normal after their years in time and space with the Doctor. Their son was already mentioned in the prologue of the novel Byzantium and this is set some time after that vingette. With the Doctor on Peladon, his former companions never do get to meet him and have to go through the whole regeneration explaination, which would just detract from the story itself. The Master works well without the Doctor as a foil, matching wits with the Brigadier and the Chestertons but never overcoming them; their association with the Doctor has changed them all, and they are able to keep his old enemy in check while trying to work with him.

The other continuity note I will make is something of a spoiler, but as this book is listed as out of print now it's unlikely anyone is reading this right now and looking forward to getting their hands on a copy. Mind you, if you ARE reading The Face of the Enemy or plan to some day, stop right now. Close your browser. Thank you. Right. I was not a fan of author David A McIntee's work when he first penned the seventh Doctor new adventures novel White Darkness, but as he produced more work I found myself going from non fan to big fan, and it's because of novels like this that I like his work. McIntee pays such strict attention to continuity it's like he is on some mission to interwaeve his own contributions to Doctor Who so tightly with others that we accept his as official and discount lesser works. McIntee's forte was the historical adventure until he hit the sci fi payload with Lords of the Storm, and with Face of the Enemy he ties together elements from his second Doctor missing adventures novel The Dark Path (which I did not mention because I dopn't have a copy to go back and check anymore) and the apocalyptic television serial Inferno to create this story's central plot device: a benign alternate universe Master captured by the people of Inferno's Earth, and his TARDIS being used to allow the desperate people from that reality into ours to escape and plunder. Amazing. And brilliantly presented on page. And there's even a quick nod given to Miss Hawthorne and the people of Devil's End.

It's not often I am impressed to this length with a BBC novel; I find the bulk of them to try to achieve too much, and their authors not disciplined enough to know when to stop. But this one... wow. Perfect. PER-FECT.

Now back to television.

NEXT EPISODE : THE SEA DEVILS

Day of the Daleks

A high ranking diplomat attempting to broker peace in the face of a new world war is attacked in his home by a man who vanishes into thin air. The Doctor and Jo investigate and encounter soldiers from the future who have come back in time on an assassination mission which they believe will change the future. And in that future, Earth is dominated by the Daleks. After a series of wars the planet was left defenceless and wide open to invasion, and all remanining humans were sent to work for the Daleks under the watchful eye of turncoat humans and fierce Ogrons. The Doctor realizes that the freedom fighters who are attempting to unseat the Daleks have created a temporal paradox and actually started the chain of events that will lead to their own subjugation - a chain that must be broken to free Earth from the Daleks once more.

I don't always like stories like this, but only because they never end properly. By definition a temporal paradox does not end but keeps playing through time like a loop, and if that loop is broken there would be no trace of it at all in the end. That said, if we remove the reason for going back in time in the first place, then no-one should actually go back in time, and the whole chain of events should never happen. I saw this happen once on an episode of Star Trek : Voyager and was pleased that they of all production teams got it right. Here, though, we get a resolution (and a pretty limp ending too) and in future there will be reference made to it where no-one should actually remember anything.

The other interesting point in this whole "alternate" timeline take is the time it takes place in; UNIT stories are all pretty much accepted as taking place in the year they were broadcast (in this case 1972), aside from a few references that leave people wondering if maybe UNIT was in the 80's as a vision of the future. Either way, the Dalek-occupied Earth in this story is set 200 years in the future, so call it 2172. The original Dalek invasion of Earth from the Hartnell era was set in or around 2164, and came about under completely different circumstances. None of this is mentioned in the script of course but I just thought it would be fun to point out.

I don't know why the Daleks were used for this. Terry Nation had taken away the Dalek rights following The Evil of the Daleks and came crawling back to the BBC when his dreams of franchises in the United States never materialized, so someone must have decided it would be a good time to use them now that they had been missing for 4 years. I have this feeling the script was actually written for a completely different alien menace and adjusted to fit the Daleks. The thing is, they don't actually do much. It's painfully obvious that there are only three of them being used for filming - two grey and one gold "chief" Dalek and for the most part they sit in their control room and bully the waxy-faced humans who are serving them. In episode 4 they finally go on the offensive, but by then it's too late to impress, and they're just plain boring. Their voices are not the best either; two completely new performers provided the voices this time around, but they're not very good.

As season premieres go, this was pretty weak. Thankfully the rest of the season ahead is going to be good, and the next few appearances of the Daleks (there will be a Dalek story each season for the next 4 years) are going to be better than this. I'd like the Restoration Team to get on this one please, only to get it on DVD so I can retire the old laserdisc I watched this on (there were only 2 Doctor Who adventures put on laserdisc in the 90's, the other being The Five Doctors from 1983).

Next, the Doctor goes back into space at last, while Earth is put in peril again in his absence...

NEXT EPISODES : THE CURSE OF PELADON / THE FACE OF THE ENEMY

The Daemons

At a small village called Devil's End, an archaelogist is getting set to cut open an ancient barrow called The Devil's Hump. BBC 3 is there live, broadcasting the dig across the country, and it raises the ire of not only the local white witch, Miss Olive Hawthorne, but it grabs the Doctor's attention as well. The Doctor rushes to stop the dig but is too late, and an ancient alien force is unleashed, sealing off Devil's End with a heat barrier and trapping the Doctor, Jo, Benton, Yates, and the villagers of Devil's End together - with the Master! The Hump is actually the final resting place of a spaceship belonging to Azal, last of the Daemons, and opening it has caused Azal to arise at the Master's call. Armed with the stone gargoyle Bok and hostile villagers, the Master intends to persuade Azal to hand him his power; the Daemons gave knowledge to mankind all through the ages and now view Earth as an experiment destined for the bin. The Doctor realizes that Azal will destroy the world if he does not act, but it is Jo who saves the day with an act of self scarifice, even though she doesn't die.

This is Jon Pertwee's favourite story, and I can sort of see why; it is a good example of a hidden evil and dark power in a place where you wouldn't expect it. The regular cast is at their best, Roger Delgado giving us a totally malevolant Master, which is made all the sweeter when he is finally captured and arrested by UNIT. Of course, Jay and I find all sorts of fun where normally one wouldn't; like the fight scenes between the UNIT men and the posessed villagers. The Brigadier's "date" with the woman who may one day be his wife. Azal the hairy Daemon who should by rights be at O'Grady's bear night on Fridays. We're not quite sure when Jo became an animal rights activist, running to interrupt the Master's sacrifice of a chicken to Azal. The spectacle of the villagers attempting to perform their May Day celebrations amid all the horror around them is surreal at best, especially when they turn on the Doctor and spank him with a bladder on a stick. Lucky they're superstitious though and accept Miss Hwthorne's claim of the Doctor being a wizard. "Daughter of light," Jay cackled, almost rolling off the couch. Maybe that's why she blinks so much; she likes the strobe light effect it creates. We're not sure if she can even see; she's always looking in the wrong direction when she speaks, but she's got her limited strobing sights set on Benton, appearing to ply him with booze in episode 3. "What's the witch doing behind the bar?" Jay asked. "Helping herself, it seems," I observed. Must be nice. And why, I ask, is the lightning in episode 1 timed right with the thunder? Anyone knows that is never the case. And the sound of BBC lightning... "All the same," says Jay. Not so much a thunderclap but someone waving a sheet of metal around in front of a microphone. And maybe dropping something down the stairs as well.

We've noticed something about the third Doctor. He has his own lexicon of insults and barbs. Everyone who displeases him is an idiot. A buffon. A numbskull. A nitwit. We love it. One night we're going to go to the bar and try to use all these terms, although they just seem so natural coming from such an elegant, stylish character as the Doctor; they just roll off his tongue. Again, though... "Daughter of light,"

The Daemons was actually the first adventure to be colourized for it's home video release, and it met with better success than others have. Episode 4 is still in its orginal state, so we get some perfect clarity, but the rest if downgraded from the merging of colour with black and white. This makes the shimmering edges of bluescreen effects even worse though, and the sequence of Azal materializing and growing to gargantuan size at the climax of episode 4 and opening of episode 5 suffers from it. And it's an odd length as well; 5 episodes, the only story of this length ever in the classic series. The show does succeed in the atmosphere of fear in the small village as things begin to go wrong; I was tempted to pair this with a viewing of a movie called Gargoyles just for fun, their culture melding with that of Azal. Mind you, Gargoyles is no Daemons and should apparantly "just be thrown away" according to my buddy Joe Bifolchi. (Whose name I have included in full should he ever want to Google himself and see what comes up... HI JOEY!!!)

And that's the end of season 8. The Master in custody and locked away, the Doctor and Jo dancing gaily around the May Pole with the good people of Devil's End (and I ask you - if the village was named that, how could they NOT see disaster looming). Enjoy the rest, Doctor; you're about to meet some old enemies...

NEXT EPISODE : DAY OF THE DALEKS

PS See my blog for The Chase from March 2005... it's been updated.

Colony in Space

The Master is at it again; this time he has raided the secret files of the High Council of the Time Lords and found the location to a long forgotten doomsday weapon. Realizing he must be stopped, the Time Lords temporarily grant the Doctor a reprieve from his exile and send him to the planet Exarius. The Doctor and Jo discover a fledgling colony of humans in the far future, but the colony is failing, unable to grow crops to sustain themselves. The humans exist peacefully with the local primitives, but lately there have been rumours of giant lizards attacking the settlement. Behind the attacks are none other than the Interplanetary Mining Corporation, who have also been granted rights to Exarius and want to exploit its mineral wealth. Mediation is sought and an adjudicator arrives to hear the case, but it is really the Master in disguise, hoping to locate the doomsday weapon on Exarius and hold the universe to ransom.

Why anyone would think settling on Exarius would be a good idea is beyond me. It's a ball of gravel and mud. Okay if you want to mudwrestle with an IMC guard as is seen in episode 6, you're laughing, but to establish a colony and a new life? The primitives inhabit an underground city which houses the remnants of an advanced society and the doomsday weapon itself, although for the most part it is made up of a lot of corridors carved from rock. The colony run by Ashe is a bit more spread out, with domes scattered across the area to serve as family living units, but no sign of the crops they were supposedly trying to grow.

This is an interesting story of big business and money trampling all over the rights of the individual; the colonists have been working for a year to get themselves established but the slightest whiff of mineral wealth and it is all shoved aside by IMC's mandate. Make it about oil and voila it'd be comparable to anything the Americans would do to get their hands on it. IMC Captain Dent is a cold cold man surrounded by thugs out to make themselves rich, with the exception of Caldwell, who feels his loyalties start to waver when the first colonists are killed. Colonial leader Ashe, with his daughter Mary (a very very young Helen Worth a long time before she arrived on Coronation Street) is the embattled man trying to hold his colony together against internal problems, the arrival of IMC, and their shaky truce with the primitives. But for a spunky young woman Mary is seen serving dinner a few too many times to be credible, and as soon as Jo arrives and is left behind while the Doctor goes exploring, she is also drafted into kitchen ptarol duty, and makeshift nurse after one of the many gunfights between the IMC people and the colonists. The Master doesn't really show up until halfway through the story, his TARDIS disguised as a spaceship, and he is accompanied by the "Master theme" which has been in every story to herald his arrival. I'm getting tired of it though. I'm getting tired of him, honestly. So is the Doctor; in the early moments of episode 6 he karate kicks the gun from the Master's hand and almost beats him to a pulp. At last!

Now this I have to mention in Jay's absence; the materialization of the TARDIS is not done with the usual slow mix of shots, but as the sound of the engines reaches its crescendo, there is a wobbly cut and "whump" the TARDIS is there like it was dropped from the sky. Not the same magic we've come to expect from the ship at all. Thankfully this is the only time we see that happen.

Speaking of Jay, he'll be on hand for the next adventure when we reconvene on Saturday. I just need to take my own VCR with me. Oh well, hopefully the plight-ridden McDonald's is still where we left it...

NEXT EPISODE : THE DAEMONS

The Claws of Axos

Earth is about to be visited by aliens once more. An organic spaceship called Axos arrives on the planet, its crew begging for help. Their homeworls has been destroyed, they claim to be the last survivors of their race and their ship needs to be repaired and fed before they can move on. Like any good guest they propose a trade for the services they require: they will give Earth the miracle element Axonite which will eliminate hunger, and create new forms of energy for the planet. The Doctor is suspicious of the Axons, realizing that if Axonite is as good as they claim, they should not need the help of the people of Earth. A fat bastard civil servant doesn't want to know and greedily makes a deal with Axos, going over the head of the Brigadier in his quest for power and placing the UNIT forces under arrest. Things get even trickier though when it turns out that the Master is a prisoner on board Axos, having brought it to Earth in exchange for his freedom. The truth of Axos is that it is a parasite organism and if Axonite is spread across the planet it will feed on all the energy of Earth and leave it a dry dead husk in space, and the only way the Doctor can stop it is with the Master's help.

There's nothing like a good vampire story, is there? And this is pretty much what we have here, although not a conventional one with fangs, cricifixes and "I'm going to suck your blood!". The Axons present themselves as perfect golden humanoids, but their real form looks like a rampaging pile of Heinz spaghetti - a very organic look to go with their ship. Axos appears to breathe; it has gills contracting and expanding while in flight, and the inside is a mass of wet surfaces, tentacles and walls of muscle and fibre. Being 1971 though this was not realized to the best extent and Axos' guts are achieved through a lot of CSO (colour separation overlay) effects which do not always look as good as they could. Still, it's not fair to compare the effects to those of today, with 34 years having gone by, but there are some that could have stood to be completed; the sequence where Sergeant Benton and Captain Yates are attacked by Axons while in their jeep has a lot of terrible shots, with a blue screen around the vehicle and no background.

This is the first time we see the third Doctor inside the TARDIS, with the original console still being used but with a new time rotor installed. This new centre column is green as opposed to the clockwork inner workings that we saw in years past. The console room has gotten a lot smaller since it's first appearance, and it feels almost claustrophobic now. The scanner is no longer mounted high on a wall but blue-screened onto one of the wall roundels, which makes for a shaky image when the camera moves.

A lot of Doctor Who stories have been criticized for being UK-centric; in the early days when I was a child watching the show I was always asked why everyone had a British accent. Well, this is probably because the show was made in England, dontcha think? And why every alien menace only seemed to threaten either London or a British gravel pit? Well, again, made in England, and on the equivalent of a public broadcaster's budget, so rampaging over to the States or such places was not going to happen. In Axos, though, the scope goes international with the inclusion of an American character named Bill Filer; seems even the Americans are taking the Master seriously as a threat and have sent one of their best men to gather intelligence on him. There is a heightened sense of the UK in this one as well with the fat bastard civil servant, Chin, making sure that the British government gets exclusive rights to the Axonite being offered. Chin's the kind of man you really just want to punch; a little authority goes right to his head and he's waving his special powers in everyone's face the minute he gets them.

The Claws of Axos gets the DVD treatment in a few weeks, but as timing went I had my old VHS copy to view. The DVD is not going to offer any kind of new CGI effects package, which is something it could really use, but seeing as the whole show would need massive rejigging it's best to not do any of it and be left with a consistent effects package as opposed to some looking great and others looking... well.. less so, shall we say. I'll probably view it again when the DVD arrives in November; I have been trying to avoid backtracking or leaping forward but after this past weekend showing some episodes to friends, I say why not; I'll listen to the commentary and hear what the assembled surviving cast have to say about the show.

NEXT EPISODE : COLONY IN SPACE

The Mind of Evil

A revolutionary new process in reforming hardened criminals is being tested at Stangmoor Prison. Intregued, the Doctor and Jo go to observe and discover that the Keller Machine - named after its creator, Emil Keller - does not exactly function as promised; the latest prisoner is reduced to the mental level of a child, and the machine itself begins to operate on its own and cause mysterious deaths. Meanwhile, the Brigadier and UNIT are charged with not only the security of a tense world peace conference, but with the safe disposal of a nuclear powered nerve gas missile. Both situations appear unconnected until the Master arrives on the scene; creating a prison break to supply him with an army of thugs who will help him steal the missile and threaten the peace of the world. The Doctor finds himself fighting not only the Master, but the evil mind parasite that has began to grow in the Keller Machine, its appetite for human minds growing beyond all control.

Well, Jo seems to be settling into her role nicely as companion and a valuable member of UNIT. Her bumbling from the previous adventure left behind, Jo takes a bit more charge, even foiling the first attempted prison break and holding a gun on the ringleader. The Doctor grow a bit here as well; he's enjoying having Jo as his assistant - that's obvious - and he demonstrates his range of language skills by speaking Hokean to the Chinese ambassador and dropping Mao Tse Tung's name to get past bureacracy. He is still haunted by the spectres of his past as well; the mind parasite attempts to use the memories of his old enemies such as Cybermen, Ice Warriors and Daleks to frighten him and kill him, but it picks out the Doctor's recent visit to parallel Earth in Inferno and uses the fire against him as well. The Doctor's tough, but even this almost kills him. And the Master. Well, he's still evil. And he's now bent on destroying Earth by one way or another; having lost his Nestene allies, he's going to try to plunge the planet into war. Just because he can.

My friend Miriam joined me for the second half of the adventure (episodes 4, 5 and 6) and was puzzled by the episode's lack of colour. Yes, again we have another story with no colour footage save for a few snippets used in the documentary More than 30 Years in the TARDIS and a bit that gets tacked onto the end of the tape; not enough to warrant the same treatment that was rendered for The Ambassadors of Death. Alas, Miriam was a bit on the delerious side from a cold she had and probably thought she was hallucinating most of what she saw. Mind you, when the Doctor examines the mind parasite inside the machine, she suggested poking it in the eye to put a stop to it.

The Master escapes again, taunting the Doctor at his exiled status and promising to return to destroy Earth as he goes. What a charmer. And he's back very soon...

NEXT EPISODE : THE CLAWS OF AXOS