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