PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 669

Doctor Who 0050 The War Games A 10 part story that aired April 19 to June 21 1969. Written by Terrance Dicks And Malcolm Hulke, directed by Derrick Sherwin. The last story of the 6th series, the last story in B&W, and the last appearance of Patrick Troughton, Frazier Hines and Wendy Padbury.

I watched this back in 2013, link for post in the title above, and still feel about the same about the story. It's still too long even thought it has some interesting stuff going on. Like meeting the Time Lords. I thought the forced regeneration scene didn't look that interesting. I am looking forward to watching the Jon Pertwee series that's coming up.

Science Fiction Sunday 668

Doctor Who 0048 The Space Pirates. Six part story that aired March 8 to April 12 1969. Written by Robert Holmes and directed by Michal Hart. Audio CD linking script by Micheal Stevens, read by Frazier Hines. The last of the missing serials, only the second episode remains in the archives. Hopefully they'll get around to making an animated version. I had seen the second episode back when I watched the series the first time. Today I listened to the audio CD.

The Tardis gang winds up on a space beacon that's blown apart by space pirates for salvage. The Earth Space Corps are after the pirates. The Tardis gang is separated from the Tardis and works to get to it. 

There's the usual running about and yelling. There's plenty of entertaining characters. I enjoyed it for the most part and wished I could see the video.

Science Fiction Sunday 667

Doctor Who 0036 The Evil Of The Daleks Seven part story that aired May 20 to July 1 1967. Written by David Whitaker, directed by Derek Martinus. Only the second episode survived, I had watched that back in 2012 when I went through the series for the first time. I listened to the audio version of the story just a few weeks ago. Here's that post.

The new 3 disc DVD from the BBC has plenty of material to get through. The 7 episodes are animated and presented in color and B&W. There's commentaries on the episodes, episode 2 has 2 commentaries. The Telesnaps version of the story is on the third disc as well as more making of material.

I watched the color version first, then the B&W version with the commentaries on, then the Telesnaps version followed by all the extra material. It took most of the day and well into last night. I enjoyed the animated versions well enough but more enjoyed the Telesnaps version. At least you can see the real actors.

The extras are up to the usual standard of the BBC. Sadly there aren't many of them still alive from the 60s and they have to fill in some material from other sources. Still, it's nice that they collect what they can and save it with the episodes. All in all entertaining.

Science Fiction Sunday 666

Doctor Who 0047 The Krotons Four part story that aired December 28 1968 to January 18 1969. Written by David Maloney and directed by Robert Holmes.

After watching the serial today I read my old post from 2013, link above, and I still think the story is about average. There's nothing too astounding about any of it and the big alien robot guys are still pretty funny looking. I'm happy to sit through the episodes without bothering to look at all the extras. I'd looked at them in the past and they really eat up the time, still I'm glad they are there. Next time I watch the series I'll do the extras too.

Doctor Who 0048 The Seeds Of Death Six part story that aired January 25 to March 1 1969. Written by Brian Hayles, directed by Michael Ferguson. Script editor Terrance Dicks rewrote episodes 3-6 but is uncredited on the episodes. Terrance is credited on the VHS and the US DVD but not the UK DVD. The Wikipedia says that Terrance thought the script needed some punching up and the delay in Frazier Hines leaving the show caused some rewrites. The Tardis trio will call it quits at the end of the 6th series, only two more serials to go.

The return of the Ice Warriors is a bit more entertaining than the previous serial. There's certainly more going on, not that it couldn't have been a 5 or even 4 episode story. It seems more padded than I remembered. Nice big sets though.

I see from my old post that I hadn't listened to the commentaries on the episodes. Sometimes I skipped the commentaries, some busy Sundays I didn't have time to get to it all, occasionally I had to get the disc back to the library on a Monday, Doctor Who DVDs often had a wait list and that meant no renewals. I'll be getting to those commentaries tomorrow, too late now.

Science Fiction Sunday 665

Doctor Who 0045 The Mind Robber Five part story that aired September 14 to October 12 1968. Episode 1 written by Derrick Sherwin, episode 2 - 5 written by Peter Ling, directed by David Maloney. I watched this serial in March 2013 and blogged about it. See link in title above.

After rereading my own post, and watching the episodes, I certainly feel I'm still annoyed by some of the stuff in the scripts. Especially stuff Jamie does, he's so prone to rush right into danger. Both of the companions are prone rush into danger. In the first episode of The Mind Robber Zoey runs off into the white mist surrounding the Tardis. Jamie follows.

I skipped all the extras and watched a second serial.

Doctor Who 0046 The Invasion Eight part story that aired November 2 to December 21 1968. Story by Kit Pedler, screenplay by Derrick Sherwin, directed by Douglas Camfield. This is the 2nd last of the incomplete serials, episodes 1 & 4 have been recreated in animated form. I saw this serial back in 2013 and posted about it. Link in the title above.

I enjoyed The Invasion more than The Mind Robber, even though it's pretty long. I do like seeing the return of Lethbridge-Stewart. I enjoyed the UNIT stories with him and Jon Pertwee. There's only one more serial with missing episodes ahead and only four more serials until the new Doctor arrives.

Science Fiction Sunday 664

Doctor Who 0043 The Wheel In Space Six part story that aired April 27 to June 1 1968. Story by Kit Pedler, screenplay by David Whitaker, directed by Tristan de Vere Cole. Episodes 1, 2, 4 & 5 are missing, the two remaining episodes are available on the Lost In Time DVD set, the entire serial is available on audio CD. Linking script by Michael Stevens, read by Wendy Padbury.

 

The serial starts with Jamie lamenting Victoria leaving the Tardis. A malfunction in the Tardis strands Jamie and The Doctor in a spaceship near a space station. The ship is empty except for that robot with the big knobs. The Doctor is hurt and Jamie destroys the robot. Back on the space station the Controller is worried the spaceship could be a danger to the station, he wants to destroy it. Luckily, Jamie figures a way to contact the station, the pair are rescued. The Doctor gets some medical help on the station. He pretty much remains unconscious through the 2nd episode, a body double in a bed was used as Patrick Troughton was on holiday for the week.

It slowly becomes apparent that the Cybermen are attacking the station. They've got a complicated plan that's pretty much unsuccessful with the Doctor in the house. There's plenty of running about and yelling. Some people are killed by the Cybermen but the Doctor manages to defeat them with the help of Zoe, played by Wendy Padbury, and she stows away on the Tardis when the guys leave.

I thought it was a fair story and it would be better with the visuals. There was a version shot from the Telesnaps but that was only released on Netflix. Maybe someday they'll have that on DVD with the animated missing episodes.

Doctor Who 0044 The Dominators Five part story that aired August 10 to September 7 1968. Screenplay play by Norman Ashby (Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln), directed by Morris Barry. I watched this story before and pretty much feel the same about it. Here's that post from 2013.

Science Fiction Sunday 663

Doctor Who 0042 Fury From The Deep Six part story that aired March 16 to April 20 1968. Written by Victor Pemberton and directed by Hugh David. All episodes are gone, there was audio released in 1993 and repeatedly there after, the tiny bit of footage remaining was released on VHS and DVD, the animated episodes were released in 2020.

Not the best picture but one of the few color images that have turned up. Quite the sight to see on the beach. The three disc set has all episodes animated in color and B&W, the episodes all have commentaries. There is a recreation of the episodes using the available soundtrack and the telesnaps made at the time of broadcast. I watched the color animated episodes first, then the B&W with commentary on, last I watched the telesnaps version. With all the "making of" extras it took ages to watch, I didn't finish everything until this morning, it was the first time I was watching this story so there was a lot to see. I'm not planning to watch and listen to all the extras on the upcoming stories that I've already seen.

 

All the beach scenes were filmed on 16 mm film at Margate in February. Everyone says it's beastly cold, you can see their bare legs. The Tardis lands on the North Sea and the gang has to row ashore in a rubber dingy. They find a lot of foam on the beach and a big gas pipe, the Doctor messes about with both. This episode introduces the sonic screwdriver for the first time. According to the commentaries Patrick dropped the original prop in the foam and they couldn't find it. A piece of Deborah Watling's life jacket was used instead.

   

The gang are knocked out remotely and brought to a gas production building. The gas comes from a group of oil drilling rigs out in the North Sea, they're all connected to a central rig that connects to the mainland pipe. The gang wake up to the sound of the yelly Mr Robson, he's the head of the project, he's a real pain in the ass kind of guy.

 

The Doctor tells Robson he heard something in the gas line but he's not believed. What Robson believes is the Doctor and the others are suspicious and should be locked up. Robson's main problem is the drop in pressure in the feed pipe and the lost of communication from the rigs.

   

Robson's second in command Harris thinks they should look into this drop in pressure and the possibility of something blocking the flow. Robson's having none of that. Mrs Harris is pricked by some seaweed and falls ill, Harris tries to find the stations doctor but he's out on a rig and no one's heard from him. Mrs Harris gets a visit from two technicians from the base who breath noxious gas at her. When the Doctor and party arrive they find Mrs Harris unresponsive. The Doctor finds some of the seaweed and takes it back to the Tardis for a look see.

 

The Doctor discovers the seaweed has some odd properties. Back at the base Mrs Harris has disappeared and Robson is infected by the seaweed. Mrs Harris walks into the sea while Robson watches. Harris arrives and Robson tells him he'll see his wife soon.

   

Mrs Jones is the head of the project, she arrives with her assistant and starts trying to find out what's going on, she takes the Doctor's advice to shut down the flow. It's a bit too late, the seaweed has bust through and into the base. There's chaos for a while, everything is covered with foam.

   

The commentary mentions that there was about £20,000 worth of damages at Elstree Studios, this is where the chose to shoot the foam scenes because there was little space in the BBC studios and all the gear had wires on the floors. They put plastic down and continued on.

   

Eventually the Doctor figures out a way to fight the creature and the infected human's return to normal. This is the story that put Victoria over the edge of her fear. She decides to leave the gang and stay with the Harris family. She doesn't want any more adventures. Jamie can't seem to understand why but the Doctor says it's her decision and they leave. Deborah Watling thought it was time to move on. Patrick and Frazier were really sorry to see her go.

A fairly good story for the most part, it holds up after repeated views. Mind you, I decided I didn't need to listen to the audio CDs. The extras include commentaries for each episode, production subtitles, surviving footage, episode 6 film trims, episode 6 behind the scenes footage, animating Fury From The Deep, teaser trailer, episode 1-6 reconstruction, info text subtitles, making featurette, effects featurette, photo gallery and PDF content. There's also an audio program called The Slide, a story by Victor Pemberton what was originally written for the first series of Doctor Who but never produced. I didn't listen to that, it was 3.5 hours, I might get to it someday.

Science Fiction Sunday 662

Doctor Who 0041 The Web Of Fear Six part story that aired February 3 to March 9 1968. Written by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln, directed by Douglas Camfield.

 

Only the first episode survived the Great Wipe, in 2013 the rest of the serial was located in Nigeria but the 3rd episode disappeared in transit to the BBC. The four new episodes were released, along with a photo recreation of the third episode, on iTunes that same year. I watched them back then. I have the DVD now and have ordered the Special Edition DVD released last August. It has an animated version of the missing episode and some other extras. The photo recreation of episode 3 is fairly good for the most part. I was waiting for the US DVD to be released but it seems to be taking a while, there's no release date on Amazon so I ordered the British DVD. It won't be here for a while. I'll watch the extras then and amend this post.

 

This story has the Tardis halted in space and covered with a web like material. After sitting still for a while the Tardis the drops the gang underground in the London Underground. They find out that the city had been attacked by Yetis under control of the Great Intelligence.

 

The scientist aiding the Army is Professor Travers who was part of the expedition that encountered the Yeti, and the Doctor, back in 1935. They gang meet Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart for the first time. The small group battles the Yeti but it's futile and many die. The Great Intelligence reveals his plan to suck the memory out of the Doctor's head and put all that knowledge into his own. He's doomed to failure of course, it's not his show. The gang exits stage left.

Enjoyable but like a lot of the six parters it seems a bit padded. I look forward to the extras and that animated episode.

Science Fiction Sunday 661

Doctor Who 0040 The Enemy Of The World Six part story that aired December 23 1967 to January 27 1968. Screenplay by David Whitaker, directed by Barry Letts. This was Barry's first big directing job, he would direct a few stories and later become a producer for the series from 1969 to 1974. Some great stories happened during those years, as well as the introduction of color filming and larger budgets. He cast Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor. Barry continued to direct on the show after he left the producer job in 1974, he took a turn as the executive producer of the 18th series in 1980.

After that he continued to work in TV as a director or a producer. He produced the BBC Sunday Classic Serials for 8 years, working with Terrance Dicks as his script editor. Barry and Terrance had worked together on a good number of episodes of Doctor Who when Terrance was script editor for that series.  Both of these guys are a couple of my favorite people behind the scenes, they did a lot of great stuff for DW. Barry passed away in 2009 and Terrance passed away in 2019.

When I watched the series for the first time in late 2012 the only episode I had to watch was the existing 3rd episode from the Lost In Time DVD Box Set. On October 11 2013 the BBC released the news that the 5 missing episodes had been found in Nigeria. The episodes were released on iTunes and someone was nice enough to copy them and pass them on. Here's that post.

 

I did not see the 'episodes only' DVD that came out November 2013, the Special Edition 2 disc DVD set I have came out in 2018 and it features plenty of extras and enhanced picture quality for the episodes. They look fine to me.

 

I liked the story even better than the first run through. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria land on a beach and get involved with the locals. Turns out the Doctor is the spit of Salamander, a politician who has some Machiavellian plan to rule the world by creating natural disasters. He moves into the area to help, making the local leader look bad, and winds up running that sector.

 

The Doctor and companions join forces with a group that is against Salamander and helps defeat the evil mastermind. Patrick does a good job as both characters and as usual the rest of the cast is quite good.

  

Salamander had created a secret lab underground, he locked the workers in and created a fiction to keep them there. They believe that the world had gone to war and the surface was heavily radioactive. He keeps them alive to run the machinery to cause the natural disasters. That Salamander is a real baddie and he'll get his soon enough. An enjoyable story for the most part.

 

The commentaries have appearances by Frazier Hines, Mary Peach, Milton Johns, Gordon Faith and Sylvia James. Tobey Haddock is the host for the commentaries, he also hosts a documentary where he interviews people looking for a new bit of information about the story. He interviews some of the people that appear in the commentaries and a few others. He finds some nice bits of info and a nice heart warming story. 

 

There's a nice tribute to the late Deborah Watling. An interview with Philip Morris tells the story of his finding the missing episodes in Nigeria. That same TV relay station turned up copies of the missing Web Of Fear story. I'll watch that next week. The rest of the special extras include a 1991 introduction by Jon Pertwee, a photo gallery, some PDFs of scripts and Radio Times listings, and the 1967 BBC trailer for the story.

Science Fiction Sunday 660

Doctor Who 0039 The Ice Warriors Six part story that aired November 11 to December 16 1967. Written by Brian Hayles and directed by Derek Martinus. Linking story by Sue Cowley, read by Frazier Hines.

Episodes 2 and 3 are missing but have been replaced by animation. This was the third serial to be completed with animated episodes. After watching the series the first time I thought it was a darn shame that so many of Patrick Troughton's episodes were missing. He is one of my favorite Doctors.

 

This is a story that I missed the first time I watched the series.  The library didn't have this 2013 DVD, nor the earlier Audio CDs. Today I listened to the audio CDs first, then watched the DVD with the 4 remaining episodes and the 2 animated episodes. After the episodes played through I listened to the commentary track and all the Special Extras.

     

One of the bits of commentary was on the cost of a spool of tape used by the BBC. It was £90 in 1967, that's about $1896 in today's US dollars. That's a lot of cash to sit on a shelf. Makes it less surprising that so many episodes were wiped. A couple of serials back Frazier Hines said he salary was £65 an episode and they speculated that Patrick's salary would be more than a couple of hundred pounds an episode.

 
 

The Tardis drops into a snowy area, the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria pop out and lave a look around. They find they are next door to a large plastic dome.

 

They enter and find it's home to some people working on a project to slow and stop the current ice age. The base is on the verge of being evacuated to Africa.

 

One of the field teams finds a humanoid frozen in some ice and bring it along to the base. The humanoid revives and it turns out he's an alien. His ship and some of  his pals are stuck in the advancing glacier. The alien knocks out Jamie and takes Victoria prisoner. The alien speaks English, he tells Victoria he's from Mars and he's called Varga. 

Bernard Bresslaw plays Varga, he's an old favorite of mine. Some might know him from the many British movies and TV shows he's been on. I first saw him in some of the Carry On... films that played on Canadian TV when I was a boy, he was often a sidekick for Sid James. Bernard was 6 foot 7 inches tall and he made a formidable alien.

 

Scavengers live in the area, that's a couple of them, the guy on the right is Penley and he's played by Peter Sallis. Some might know him from The Last Of The Summer Wine or many other British films and TV shows. The other guy is Angus Lennie, he got a broken arm earlier in the story. Penley helps him to their hut. Scavengers hate the scientists and technology, even though Penley used to be a scientist.

 

Penley goes to the base for medical supplies and he see's Varga and Victoria leave the dome. He follows them and sees Varga attack the head of the project, he stops to help and along comes the Doctor. Back at his base Varga revives 4 more ice warriors. They begin work digging their ship out of the ice.

 

Jamie and Arden go after Victoria. Near the Martian dig site Arden is killed by an alien's ray gun but Jamie is only knocked out. Jamie's body is carried away by Penley. He takes him to his hut where they get a visit from one of the scientists asking him to come back to help with the Ionizer.

  

Victoria manages to escape before the Doctor gets there to rescue her. She gets caught by the Martians again. Penley meets the Doctor and takes him to Jamie. The Doctor visits the Martians and rescues Victoria. Varga is going to attack the base with his sonic cannon. The base is rocked by the blast.

  

The head of the human base offers a truce but one of his men tries to kill Varga and fails. Varga raids the Ionizer for mercury isotopes for his own ship. The glaciers step up their stroll through Britain. Back at the Martian's ship the Doctor uses their own sonic cannon against them, then he breaks it.

 

Back at the base the Doctor helps Penley fix the Ionizer, they blast the Martian ship and it explodes. The blast busts up the ship and the Tardis gang exit stage right for a new adventure.

Another serial I enjoyed. Same for the extras, plenty of good info and entertaining stories there. Sadly so many of the cast and crew have passed away.