PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 670

 

Doctor Who 0051 Spearhead From Space Four part story that aired January 3 to 24 1970. Written by Robert Holmes and directed by Derek Martinus. For some reason the BBC packaged DW DVD reissues in set boxes, this one has two serials, the second being Terror Of The Autons. I already had a US DVD of Spearhead In Space but the set was cheaper to buy than the US DVD of Terror Of The Autons and that's including the shipping from the UK. Now I have both the UK and the US version in the box and the other disc is in place in release order as it should be.

I watched this back in April 2013 and enjoyed it. There's a link to the post in the title above. I feel about the same as I did then. On second watch, my main thought was how nice it was that the new Doctor, Jon Pertwee, wakes up in a bright and colorful world. The whole serial was shot on 16mm film and in color. They would go back to the studio, and the usual combination of video and film, the next episode.

The Doctor has been exiled to the Earth by the Time Lords. The Tardis arrives in the UK in 1970, the Doctor stumbles out of the police box and collapses. He's found and taken to a small hospital. Eventually the Doctor winds up in the hands of Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, played by Nicolas Courtney, and he gets a new assistant, Liz Shaw, played by Caroline John.

The story was entertaining the second time around and it's a good reminder why I like the 4 part story.

Doctor Who 0052 Doctor Who And The Silurians Seven part story that aired January 31 to March 14 1970. Written by Malcolm Hulke and directed by Timothy Combe.

I watched this in April 2013 and you can read that post by clicking on the link in the title above. Another longer serial with a bit of padding. I still enjoyed it.

Science Fiction Sunday 264

The Hand Of Fear is the 2nd serial of the 14th series. It aired October 2-23 1976 and it was the last regular appearance of Sarah Jane Smith on the original series. She'd return in the 20th Anniversary special The Five Doctors and eventually have her own show. Sadly Elisabeth Sladen would pass away before finishing the 5th series of The Sarah Jane Adventures. There was a plan to kill Sarah Jane off in her last Doctor Who serial but the writers, Bob Baker and Dave Martin, couldn't do it. Lucky for us. Also lucky was Nicholas Courtney being unavailable to return to the series. His character, Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, was to be killed saving the Earth in that earlier version of the script. The Brig and Sarah Jane would turn up again in the future.

   

The show starts with some hooded aliens blowing up a spaceship. The Doctor and Sarah Jane pop out of the Tardis in a quarry where some men have just set some explosives. It goes off and The Doc and SJ are knocked out and covered in rubble. The Doctor wakes up and with the aid of a worker digs Sarah Jane out. She's clutching a stone hand with a ring on it. The Doc and SJ wind up at a hospital. The Doctor meets a real doctor who tells him that Sarah Jane will be ok. Sarah Jane awakes with a voice in her head. "Eldrad must live." She grabs the hand and runs off. She breaks into a local nuclear electrical power station where her intrusion causes a huge hubbub.

     

The hubbub continues when the Doctor and that real doctor from the hospital show up. They're arrested but quickly escape their guards and go looking for Sarah Jane. The real doctor tries to kill the Doc but fails when he falls to his death. The hand takes over a technician and he takes it down to the reactor. After the reactor is opened the director evacuates the place. He calls in a nuke strike by the RAF. The hand gobbles up all the radiation and turns into a shapely woman like creature, covered in metallic bits, named Eldrad. Judith Paris plays the female version of the character. She talks the Doctor into taking her back to her home world. They figure out that she's been gone for 150 million years. Luckily it's only a bit dusty on Kastria. Some of the dust turns out to be the Kastrians and they've been walking in them. Ewww!

   

Eldrad turns into his real self and plans to take over the planet again. Sadly all the Kastrians are dead and Eldrad hasn't anyone to rule over. No matter, he'll take over the Earth. The Doc tricks Eldrad into falling into a bottomless pit. Ha ha. Soon after the Doctor gets a call from Gallifrey. He has to return and he can't take Sarah Jane with him. They have a bit of a goodbye and he leaves her in what he says is South Croydon. It's really Aberdeen. That Tardis, huh. Not a bad episode for the most part. It moved along briskly and there was a fairly good villain who gets a good doom.

 

The commentary has Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, Judith Paris, co-author Bob Baker, and producer Phillip Hinchcliffe. It was recorded in 2006 and it's fairly good. There's an info track that drops facts on the screen while the serials plays. I didn't read it. The 50-minute featurette, Changing Time, talks about the Doctor and Sarah Jane. It was entertaining. There's a nice 10 minute clip from Swap Shop with Noel Edmonds. It's a kid's show that seems like Blue Peter from the limited info. There's a photo gallery, a PDF of the Doctor Who listing in the Radio Times, a PDF of the 1977 Doctor Who Annual. I glanced at the Annual but there are a lot of words and I didn't read them. The pictures are a mixed lot, some of the art is pretty good and some not so good. A pretty good bunch of extras.

Science Fiction Sunday 263

 

The Masque Of Mandragora is the 86th serial and the first of the 14th season. It first aired September 4 1976 and there were 4 episodes. They were written by Louis Marks and directed by Rodney Bennett. Marks had written a Doctor Who back in 1964 when he penned Planet of Giants. He wrote a 2nd serial in 1972 with Day Of The Daleks and his 3rd in 1975 with Planet Of Evil. He was picked for today's serial because he knew a lot about the Renaissance. He didn't write any more stories for the series after TMOM.

  

When the first episode opens we see the Doctor and Sarah Jane are walking about the Tardis. Lots of hallways and a gag or two. They come upon the back up control room, a much smaller space with wood paneled walls and a smaller control system. In the reality of the program producer Philip Hinchcliffe had wanted to downsize the sets to save space. One of the results was to a redesigned control room. It would be used for the rest of the season and the old one restored after that. The Doctor turns on the system in the back up room and they see a Helix in the view screen. They accidentally get into the Helix and a bit of it gets into the Tardis when they pop out into the void for a look round. They leave, the Tardis drops them off in 15th century Italy, the bit of Helix escapes. There's some court intrigue, and murder, going on and the Doc and SJ get right up in that.

  

The castle location shooting was done at the resort of Portmeirion in Wales. They mostly shot in the wooded areas. In the village the camera angles were very carefully selected so you can't see the more modern stuff. They disguised a lot of the location with props and small fake walls. Portmeirion is probably most famous for the Patrick McGoohan show The Prisoner. I hadn't ever hear that Doctor Who was shot there and I didn't know that Siouxsie & The Banshees used the location for their video, The Passenger. It's not that good a version of the song and as a video it's a bit uninspired. For a better version of the song you'd want to listen to the Iggy Pop version. Producer Philip Hinchcliffe hadn't known that The Prisoner had been shot there until he was talking to the people at the resort. He had been a guide for American tourists when he was college age and Portmeirion was one of the stops.

 

Those columns are fake and not part of Portmeirion. The owner wanted the production to leave them, at least until he found out they would just fall over in a slight breeze. The Doc and Sarah Jane dash about getting up in everyone's grill. They find a bad cult that had been taken over by the escaped Helix. That needs setting to right. There's the usual getting caught and escaping. The court stuff is pretty old hat but it's a nice change from the endless alien invasions. The effects are fairly good and the studio sets look pretty good. The villains are fairly evil and they get crushed like bugs so that something. All in all a bit of fun.

I enjoyed the commentary by Tom Baker, actor Gareth Armstrong, Producer Philip Hinchcliffe and Production Unit Manager Chris D’Oyly-John. Poor Tom is showing his age, he complains about his eye sight going and his forgetfulness. There are the usual gang of featurettes: The Secret Of The Labyrinth talks about the serial with several of the cast and crew. There's a short on the Tardis called Bigger On The Inside. The Now And Then short has a nice visit to modern day Portmeiron. Beneath The Masque is short fluffy bit on the serial. I could use less of those types of shorts and would like ones packed with more info about the show. There's Trailers, Radio Times Billings, Production Subtitles and a Photo Gallery.

Science Fiction Sunday 262

 

The Seeds Of Doom was the last of the 13th series and it aired from January 31 to March 6 1976. The story was written by Robert Banks Stewart and directed by Douglas Camfield. They both had the same jobs on The Terror Of The Zygons which appeared at the beginning of the 13th series. Camfield had directed 10 previous serials. Stewart had only written the two serials. Neither of them would work on the series again. It's a tough job for a director what with the low budgets, the location shooting and the studio work. The cast and crew members talk about this subject on several of the making of shorts and commentaries. Not all the BBC directors could take on the job and many turned down the work. 

 

The story opens in Antarctica with two scientists finding a strange pod or seed in ice that is 20-30,000 years old. They bring it back to their station and poke at it. It opens and infects one of the men. The government call in UNIT and the Doctor and Sarah Jane come calling. Turns out the Doctor knows that the pod is an alien and that they usually travel in pairs. He finds a second one in the ice and brings it to the station.

     

One of the men in the government sells the knowledge of the pod to a rich business man who's gaga over flora. That rich guy sends his goons all the way to Antarctica to get the plant. They trick their way into the station but soon show their bullyboy colors. They get the unhatched one and nearly kill the Doctor and Sarah Jane. The whole complex is destroyed in a huge explosion. The model shots, done at Ealing Studios, were fairly good. They even had a remote controlled helicopter.

  

That's the rich man who collects plants in the grey suit. He's pretty much a dick, willing to kill for his collection. He's perfectly happy to infect Sarah Jane but strangely not ready to get some alien DNA on himself. The Doc jumps through the skylight and saves her. The white coated guy in the pic above gets infected. Rich dick won't help him or take him to the hospital. The rich guy's house is really the Athelhampton House in Athelhampton, Dorset. It's quite a nice place. They make a model of it for the giant plant to munch on. The films Sleuth and From Time To Time were shot there.

  

There's plenty of running about, the Doc and Sarah Jane get captured and escape several times. The infected man keeps getting larger and larger as he looses his humanity. Pretty soon he's as big as a house. He controls the plants in and around the estate causing them to kill the local citizens. They attack the house and people die. Eventually UNIT shows up but they prove to be rather useless with their laser bazooka. The government calls in the Air Force to fire missiles into the giant plant monster. That puts an end to the latest alien invasion of the Earth. Popular place, huh. Considering that the bulk of the universe's aliens seem to be rather dickish, it's nice that we don't have to put up with that in real life.

The serial comes as a two disc set with all the extras on the second disc. Podshock is a making of short, Playing the Green Cathedral looks at the music of Geoffrey Burgon, there's a short on the Doctor Who comic strip and the creation of Doctor Who Magazine, a Now and Then look at the locations, a short on the roles of Production Assistant and Production Unit Manager, a photo gallery and a trailer. There's usually some PDF material on each dvd and this one has  Radio Times listings and Douglas Camfield's Paper Edit. The serial disc has a fun commentary with Tom Baker (The Doctor), John Challis (Scorby), Kenneth Gilbert (Dunbar), Michael McStay (Moberley), Philip Hinchcliffe (Producer), Robert Banks Stewart (Writer), Roger-Murray Leach (Designer) and Joggs Camfield (son of Douglas Camfield, Director). It juggles most of the people around from episode to episode but Tom Baker appears on them all. He's really entertaining on the commentaries he does and this is no different. Plus you learn a lot about the BBC at the time and what happened to many of the actors and crew. There's often several good stories per serial. There's an isolated score but there's so little music that you sit waiting in silence for the majority of the serial. I did like the story though I would have prefered it to be a 4 part story. It meanders around from time to time and there's a lot of the usual running about, getting caught and escaping to pad the thing out. The last shot of the story has the Doctor and Sarah Jane arriving back in Antarctica in the Tardis. During the shooting the Tardis collapsed on Elisabeth Sladen. It was the same Tardis used for the whole 13 years. A new Tardis was commisioned. You can read more about all the Tardis props here.

Science Fiction Sunday 260

 

Yeti's in the London Underground, Yikkes! That's what Doctor Who serial 41 is all about. The Web Of Fear first aired February 3 and ran through March 9 1968. Until recently the only episode that was available was the first one. It's on a compilation dvd set I watched earlier this year. This year 4 of the missing episodes were discovered in Nigeria. They have shown up on iTunes and Mike was nice enough to loan them to me. There's a episodes only dvd due next year. The missing 3rd episode was recreated with stills and an audio recording. Many of the Doctor Who episodes in the 1960's were recorded off the tv by fans on the earliest home tape recorders. Many of these recordings have turned up at the BBC and they're the only record left of some of the many missing episodes. I remember I had a small reel to reel tape recorder that I used to use to tape songs off the radio, with a microphone. It was not the best quality but neither was the radio at the time.

 

The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria are brought by the Tardis to London's Underground. They stop near the Covent Garden station where they find soldiers, scientists and Yeti's. They meet Colonel Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart for the first time. They have a return meeting with Professor Edward Travers whom they met 35 years earlier in The Abominable Snowmen serial. Of course he's aged and they haven't. The gang battles the Yeti's and the soldiers take a huge loss but the Yeti's are finally done in. It wasn't a bad serial, a bit yakky yakky because it's 6 episodes, but mostly entertaining. They Yeti's are kind of lame, they are robots controlled by the Great Intelligence. The Doc almost destroys the GI but the gang screws up his plan and it's left floating in space to cause havoc again. Here's a stamp cover for The Web Of Fear. You can find tons of Doctor Who stamp related material by searching Google.