The 47th Doctor Who serial is called The Krotons and it's one of those stories about a society being controlled by some outsiders. The 4 part serial aired December 28 1968 to January 18 1969 and we find the Tardis on a planet where the Gond live under the thumb of the Krotons. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are exploring when they see someone come out of a door and get vaporized. Damn, huh. They run into more Gond and nearly get killed for being strangers. The Doc works out what's going on and helps the Gond revolt. Familiar plot idea for the show so you know they will eventually destroy the Krotons and free this weeks enslaved people. There's the usual running around and yelling. The sets are ok. The story is about average, the dialog isn't always the best but it moves forward fairly quickly. The Krotons are an interesting alien monster, they steal power from the Gond's minds to operate, but they are pretty poorly executed. That's them below on the left.
Laughable, I'm afraid. Still what they lack in looks they make up in cold hearted killery. They blast anyone who gets in their way. The thing to put in context is that they don't look any better or worse than some of the crap CGI effects you see on tv shows and movies made for cable or video today. Someone is always looking to put out a low budget product and the public is ready to buy it, as long as they like the charactors or the story. I did like the light on a hose effect. No wires. The picture looks pretty good and the sound is nice. A big shout out to the people behind the scenes who clean everything up.
The disc has commentary with many minor cast and crew people who aren't all commenting on every episode so the variety of voices, and the moderation, helps make them rather lively and interesting. Lots of fun stories about life at the snooty ol' BBC of the 60's. I'm sure a lot has been written about that. We don't get exposed to that sort of thing much over here. I don't read many books about the Brititsh Tv industry, and it's players, to know much about it. There's a nice 52 minute overview of the Patrick Troughton years through to serial 50, The War Games, which came at the end of the sixth season. That would be the last serial in B&W and the last serial for Wendy Padbury and Frazer Hines who played Zoe and Jamie. The dvd has a nice interview with Frazer Hines and a bit about the making of the Krotons. No one is very happy with them but there they are. The serial is better than the Krotons, even with their spinning heads, but it's not that great. Much like the others with pretty much the same characters doing the same things. In the overview of the show various producers, writers and editors all talked about wanting to move on because the pace of the work burned you out and ate up all your story ideas pretty quickly. Many ideas were pitched and rejected. I, like Frazer, would have enjoyed seeing the serial set on the space prison for women. The guards were to wear leather miniskirts and jackets. We can always dream.