The Pirate Planet

The next segment of the Key to Time is apparantly on the planet Calufrax, somewhere the Doctor knows to be a cold wet and unpleasant place. Imagine his surprise though when he and Romana emerge from the TARDIS and find instead a temperate climate, and a bright world full of happy people and lots of mineral wealth. Ruling over this land of plenty is the Captain, a yelling blustering bully of a tyrant who every so often announces that they are about to enter a new age of prosperity, and presto the mines are full of jewels once more. It seems that the Captain's planet, Zanak, is actually hollow and leaps across space and materializes around other worlds, smothering them and mining them dry. The mineral weath goes to the people, and the Captain keeps the compressed remains of the mined planets as a souvenir. But how does the ageing Queen Zanxia come into this? And what of the Mentiads, whose psychic powers increase exponentially with the death of every planet?

The Pirate Planet is a bit of an off-the-wall adventure with extreme characters and a casual disregard for the laws of physics as they apply to relocating entire planets, but when you consider that Douglas Adams wrote the script, all is forgiven. Or indeed praised. Tom Baker's Doctor always flourishes when the script is about having fun, so he does an exceptional job this time, despite that dog bite on his face. Romana's naivety is still very much alive and well, staying calm and aloof when she is arrested by the Captain's guards, and not realizing that she is actually in any danger. And I do like the Captain; a loud scurvy swabs kinda pirate who was disfigured when he crashed on Zanak and was rebuilt with mechanical prosthetics to serve Zanxia in her mad quest for immortality. He's even got a robot parrot named Avatron that kills at his command. Until K9 shoots it out of the air that is. The Pirate Planet is one of those few tales where K9 is actually allowed out of the TARDIS as it lands rather than be left behind until he's called for to come and save people.

The Mentiads are an off semi-zombie army; they're not exactly intimidating from a distance in their bright yellow robes, unless, of course, you think they're Hare Krishnas coming to ask you for money. Clever, though; a psychic gestalt made stronger by absorbing the energy released by in the dying throes of a planet. Misunderstood by the people, they live outside the city (again here's another planet with one city on it, and nothing else) and only come in when they detect another of their number about to emerge. The Captain fears and hates them, doing his best to wipe out new Mentiads before they can join the gestalt and be protected.

And what can we say about poor Mr Fibuli? That's a hell of a name actually. He's the closest thing to a friend that the Captain has aside from his flying buzzard-droid. The buzzard deserved to die, though; it was a horrible CSO effect. Serves it right for picking a fight with K9.

Oh yeah and they find the second segment of the Key to Time. Almost forgot that bit.

NEXT EPISODE : THE STONES OF BLOOD

The Ribos Operation

The Doctor and K9 are called away from their plans for a holiday by the White Guardian and presented with the task of locating and gathering the six segments of the Key to Time. The Key has the power to stop time itself when assembled, and to keep it safe the segments have been scattered across the universe and disguised as other objects. The White Guardian provides the Doctor with an assistant, the Time Lady Romanadvoratrelundar (shortened to Romana), a tracer to locate the segments, and a dire warning to beware the Black Guardian, who also wants the Key to Time for his own purposes. The Doctor reluctantly agrees and the TARDIS takes them to the planet Ribos. The first segment of the Key is actually disguised as a piece of a rare mineral being used by con men Garron and Unstoffe to broker the illegal sale of the planet to the deposed Prince of Levithia, the Graff Vynda Ky. Ribos is a cold primitive world and outsiders are viewed with suspicion and greeted with hostility, but the true danger lies in incuring the wrath of the Graff himself, for if he can't buy the planet, he may just kill for it.

So Jay and I reconvened for this viewing and had a good laugh at just about all of it. In a nice way, of course. For starters there's the matter of Tom Baker's face; just prior to the commencing of the shooting of the season he was bitten on the face by a small dog named George, and despite the best efforts of the makeup ladies at the BBC it's very visible in his close-ups. From farther back it just looks like herpes. And if Tom Baker didn't want an assistant when Louise Jameson joined as Leela he certainly gets to externalize all his reservations this time; the Doctor doesn't want an assiant and from the outset he is rude to Romana. He mocks her credentials from the Academy, scorns her youth and outright laughs at her lack of experience outside of the Capitol. Romana is a bit of a snob, though, and goes about psychoanalsing the Doctor's hostility as a retort. Yes, this is going to be a match made in heaven.

As for the other characters, Jay and I think that everyone on the planet is gay. Garron? Gay. Unstoffe? Gay. The Graff? Gay gay gay gay gay gay gay. All of them. Garron's funny bum-kissing accents and attutudes are just too fey to ignore. Unstoffe looks like he's had a sex change operation. And the Graff is a pampered prince used to getting his way. All the time. Even speaks of himself in the third person and swans about in his fine robes and his oh so fetching tiara/crown/hat. Problem is he is kinda hot. Nice teeth. The Seeker isn't a lesbian though. Binro looks like a homeless perv, despite being the only man on Ribos who can think for himself and thus he endures the scorn of the entire community. I mean imagine telling people that the world is round! How dare he!

Maybe the Shrivenzale is gay too. That'd be the big green lizard thing that Garron and Unstoffe drug every so often to sneak into the scared chambers of the city. Jay didn't see it at first when Romana was walking past it; it looked like a big green couch. A breathing one, mind you. The costume was so poorly realized though that when it is seen "walking" in part four it's obvious that the actor inside is crawling, dragging his back legs behind him, no matter how clever the camera angle. And what do we think of the Graff's guards with those garbage can helmets?

"They're hot," Jay said.

Actually they kinda were.

And K9. We can all see he's too wide to get through the doors of the police box. Showing him inside trying to get out is just reinforcing the fact.

First segment found, though, and five more to go. Will Romana loosen up? Will the Doctor kill her? Will K9 ever fit through those doors?

NEXT EPISODE : THE PIRATE PLANET

The Invasion of Time

The Doctor has come home to Gallifrey, and he's pissed. After a meeting with strange alien beings who guarantee him complete power over the Time Lords, the Doctor goes home to claim his right as president of the High Council of Time Lords. Leela does not know why the Doctor has changed so dramatically, shouting and bullying his fellow Time Lords. K9 is in on it but he's not saying. After the Doctor becomes President he then turns on his own people, selling them out to the warlike Vardans in their quest for power and dominion over all space and now time itself. But the Vardans are just a foil, and lurking in the background are the nefarious Sontarans.

More Time Lord continuity in this one, with the Doctor reopening a technical loophole he used to escape immediate execution back during The Deadly Assassin. Borusa has undergone a regeneration it seems, and the Capitol of Gallifrey has seen some slight redecorating, making for some very tight corridors. The guards' uniforms have been preserved, as have the high-collared robes of office for the rest of the Time Lords. And there's a Time Lady in this one, the only one seen so far in the entire series. Gallifrey's outer wilderness is also explored when Leela is banished from the citadel and makes contact with the outcast Time Lords who have chosen to live off the land as opposed to carrying on in the safety of their contained world; people after the Doctor's own hearts.

The story itself is a good one, with the Doctor acting out a massive subterfuge in order to gain the confidence of the Vardans and then move against them. But like so many other six part stories, the final two episodes are almost a new story in themselves with the Sontarans arriving to take advantage of the situation on Gallifrey. A chase through the TARDIS ensues with the slimy Time Lord Castellan Kelner helping the Sontarans. Unlike previous trips through the inside of the ship, the TARDIS interior this time is made up of a lot of Victorian brickwork with the roundelled walls ending at the console room. The console room itself feels smaller, the lighting coming from the side now instead of from above; not sure if this was intentional or not, but the long shadows on the console room walls make for an interesting effect. The different lighting also makes K9's casing look more metallic than before.

This is also the last adventure for Leela and this model of K9. Leela takes her thing for passive-agressive men even farther and takes Time Lord guard captain Andred as her husband (and I get this feeling he was not consulted), and K9 chooses to stay with her to look after her (like she needs it). The Doctor looks a bit put out by this despite his initial reservations about her as a companion, but all is not lost; he has another model he has secretly constructed in a box just waiting to be used. The season ends with the Doctor grinning into the camera, heading off into the unknown. Is he going to be lonely? The gap between the seasons leaves a lot of room for authors to play with the Doctor and K9 on their own before returning them to the TV series continuity. So far no-one has done this, but anything is possible.

NEXT EPISODE : THE RIBOS OPERATION

Underworld

Even Time Lords screw up. In their history, the Time Lords attempted to raise the people of the planet Minyos to a higher state, and the Minyans welcomed them as gods. And then the Minyans rebelled, kicked the Time Lords out and blew their planet to bits with weapons they developed. The Time Lords settled on Gallifrey and swore to never interfere again, and the survivors of the Minyan race went off in search of their lost colony ship, the P7E and the race bank cylinders it carried. The Doctor, Leela and K9 encounter a Minyan ship on its fabled Quest, and together they discover the P7E at the heart of a newly-formed planet. The systems of the ship have gone mad over the milennia and created a personality with god-like delusions; the Oracle, as it is called, rules over the guards who in turn terrorize and oppress the Trogs, their slave class.

Uh. Okay, the good thoughts first. Time Lord history lesson good. Oh yes. Some more insight into the Doctor's people is always interesting, finally justifying the non-intervention policy that saw the Doctor exiled to Earth in The War Games.

AWFUL effects. Was there no budget for this thing? All the caves of the planet are CSO effects. All the extras hired as Trogs are awful. The supporting cast are bad too. Even the regulars aren't given enough to really make them stand out. Mind you, Louise Jameson does carry a guy, even if he is a skinny one with dirty feet. Good thing it is all done as a CSO though; K9 would never make it through real tunnels.

Every now and again a brilliant series can go wrong. This is one of those times. Rack it up with previous clunkers like The Gunfighters and Day of the Daleks. Still, the comforting thing here is it's been a long time since the show produced anything this terrible. I think that if there was some way to swing a deal with the cosmic powers that be and we could trade four existing episodes in for four of the missing ones from the 60's, Underworld would be the first ones up on the block.

I've got to show this one to Jay. I'll update this listing when I have.

NEXT EPISODE : THE INVASION OF TIME

The Sunmakers

The Doctor, Leela, and K9 arrive on Pluto and find that it is no longer a barren cold rock at the edge of the solar system, but it is warm and teeming with life. The entire human population of Earth has been moved and effectively enslaved to the all-powerful Company, and now they toil away under six articifial suns for mere pittance pay. To make it worse, the humans are suppressed with chemicals in the air to break their will, and they are taxed on everything imaginable as the Company attempts to recover its investment. The TARDIS crew fall in with the underground movement and set about starting a revolution against the Company and its evil paymaster, the Collector.

This one was fun. The satirical look at taxes and big business kept me giggling through the entire four episodes, especially the antics of the Collector's immediate underling, Gatherer Hade, as he attempts to get chummy with the Doctor and discover what his mission is on Pluto. The Doctor has no mission, of course, not until he discovers the scale of the oppression, and then he's right in there with the people to help them out. Leela gets off some good lines throughout, one of the best being her comment about seeing the place ankle deep in blood before she dies, but we get another glimpse into the reverence she holds for the Doctor when she proudly announces that he is a Time Lord.

The Collector is a new kind of alien villain for the show; cold and unfeeling, focussed only on his profit margins. His diminutative size coupled with his confinement to his wheelchair evokes thoughts of Davros, but without the megalomania. He just makes money. For the Company. And that is all. He doesn't even seem that content, putting some truth behind the saying that money can't buy happiness. The slightest dip in productivity upsets him, but not into a rage, more along the lines of a child who isn't getting his way.

Sunmakers has some interesting production values with a lot of gloomy dreary tunnels (I suspect it was the Underground in parts) and some very sterile white corridors on location. The studio sets for the Gatherer's and Collector's offices are interestingly realized with grand furniture in the foreground and simple black backdrops evoking a surrealist/minimalist.... thing. I liked it though.

I liked the whole thing. Where's this DVD? It would be a great addition to the 2006 release lineup.

NEXT EPISODE : UNDERWORLD

Image of the Fendahl

A research project that will revolutionize archaeology is being conducted in an old priory house in a haunted wood. The Time Scanner, as it is called, is capable to producing a complete image of an object pulled through time, but the process is highly dangerous and unstable, dragging the TARDIS off course and bringing the Doctor and Leela onto the scene. The Doctor discovers the object of the time scans - a skull that supposedly predates the existence of homo sapeins on Earth, but had actually come from offworld and bears the awesome power of a group entity called the Fendahl. The Fendahl can only be complete with the presence of a priestess and 12 leech-like Fendhaleen, and all can be assembled using a local black magic coven and one of the scientists as raw material. The Fendahl is an entity from the myths of the Time Lords themselves, a vampire like collective that will if unchecked suck the life force out of the planet itself (supposedly it did this to Mars before coming to Earth)and then move on, leaving it as a husk.

First thing to note is after his last minute addition to the cast, K9 is sidelined for the adventure, supposedly suffering from some kind of breakdown. Either that or the script couldn't be reworked fast enough to accomodate him. Take a guess at that. Leela causes a stir as usual running around with a knife and dressed in her skins in "modern" times. She also gets a bit wierd, though, first threatening to kill scientist Adam Colby and then giving him a good luck kiss on the cheek mere scenes later. Some speculate that maybe Leela has some sort of thing for passive-agressive men, which could explain why she's with the Doctor.

Cast notes of interest are Wanda Ventham making her second of three appearances in the series, and Geoffrey Hinsliff who may be better remembered as drunken/gambling/obsessed and eventaully dead (I think) cabbie Don Brennan from Coronation Street.

Let us speak of the glorious visual effects of the Fendhaleen as they slither and slide down the hallways of the Fetch priory. Or of the incredible makeup job that was done to transform Wanda Ventham into the priestess.

Wait. On second thought let's not go there.

It's interesting to note how the demise of civilzation on Mars is blamed on the Fendahl, but no-one actually says "Ice Warriors". Which would have been interesting. Unless the Ice Warriors were already hibernating when the Fendahl arrived and it just wiped out whatever else was left. Maybe. The poor Ice Warriors are always getting a bum deal.

NEXT EPISODE : THE SUNMAKERS

The Invisible Enemy

A space-borne virus attacks a shuttle crew and sends them to Titan to prepare a hive for its spawning. The TARDIS is also attacked and the Doctor in infected, becoming a carrier for the nucleus of the swarm itself. Leela takes the Doctor to a medical facility to be treated by Professer Marius and the virus spreads among the staff, forcing the Doctor and Leela to be cloned and injected into the Doctor's own brain to destroy the nucleus. The virus escapes and enlarges itself to human proportions and plans to spawn and take over the galaxy, but with the aid of Marius's robot dog, K9, the Doctor and Leela destroy the breeding tanks on Titan.

The first thing that comes to mind for anyone who has seen this one is the absolutely awful awful design of the nucleus creature itself. While lodged in the Doctor's head it was pretty shapeless but out in the macro world it looks.... ugh. Big shrimp with claws is pretty close to the truth. The people infected by the virus undergo a scary metamorphosis, growing spiky white hair and their faces erupting with welts that look suspiciously like bubble wrap. Wait... it was bubble wrap.

The journey into the Doctor's head by the cloned versions of himself and Leela is very Incredible Journey, all realized with the cunning skills of the BBC's CSO department. Watching it made the inside of my head itch.

And then there's K9. A hit with the kids, a nightmare for the effects department. A robot dog with a sarcastic edge to him, he was the show's reaction to the success of R2D2 and C3P0 in Star Wars the year before. And in a way he's a good addition to the TARDIS crew, but a bit of a convenience factor since he's the second companion to pack a weapon as a matter of routine. Yes, K9 is armed with a laser under his nose. Of course the nature of K9s design means he's not going to be very good on uneven surfaces, but hey that's the magic of the BBC, they can make anything fly. Do I like K9? Yes. And the news that he is returning along with Sarah Jane Smith in the new series episode School Reunion is good, especially from a continuity point of view.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Back to the series.

NEXT EPISODE : IMAGE OF THE FENDAHL

The Horror of Fang Rock

Lost on the way to Brighton at the turn of the century, the TARDIS brings the Doctor and Leela to an isolated lighthouse where something has just fallen from the sky. The old lighthouse keeper, Ruben, knows the story of the Beast of Fang Rock and sets about terrifying junior keeper, Vince, while ribbing the other keeper, Ben, about the risks associated with electrical generators. But whatever has fallen from the sky has an affinity for electrical power and heads for the lighthouse, killing Ben and trapping the Doctor and Leela with the terrified survivors of the crew and a wrecked ship. The creature stalking them is a Rutan scout, marooned on Earth and waiting for a pickup by its mothership. And in the meantime it's mission to to clear the area and kill anything that threatens its survival.

So we finally get to meet the fierce Rutans that have been fighting the Sontarans across space for so long. and they're... well.. nasty, yes, but not exactly impressive. Green blob with tentacles. "What is THAT?" Jay demanded when we watched the DVD of the adventure, pointing to a bad CSO of a green blob clinging to the outside of the lighthouse. The lighthouse is done proprly as a set, but the backgrounds leave a lot to be desired, and the shipwreck at the end of episode 1 needs a bit of work... I'm actually surprised that the restoration team didn't change it.

Some good characters in this one. Poor Vince, frightened by Leela's casual shcuking off of her wet clothes. Poor Adelaide, going hysterical and screaming and getting slapped across the face by Leela (we watched that bit twice). And those scheming "gentlemen" Skinsale and Lord Palmerdale too entwined in their own personal drama to take the Rutan meance seriously until its far too late and people are dying. The Doctor, of course, is perfect, telling this person off, comforting this person, and relying on Leela to keep her cool and help him out. The Rutan, as an adversary, is a sneaky one, and its powers of transmutation make it a force to be reckoned with. And it's a cocky thing, denying that its species' retreat from the Sontarans is anything but a strategic withdrawal.

The thing I find at odds with the whole story is how at the end, despite there being a whole lighthouse full of dead bodies behind them and Leela's eyes changed colour from brown to blue after a near-blinding, our heros jovially leave with a bit of poetry recited as the TARDIS dematerializes. Um. Okay so the Doctor is used to violence and death, and Leela is a warrior, but come on... you're dead, let's party? That's my only bone of conention with this one - otherwise it's a gripping horror story.

NEXT EPISODE : THE INVISIBLE ENEMY