Shada Review

Shada

The Doctor and Romana in animation

Story 108.5

Doctor: The Fourth Doctor

Companions: K9, Romana II

After many different attempts at reworking the strike-cancelled Shada, the definitive version finally came out on blu-ray with animation filling in the gaps and not as one long movie but six episodes as God intended.

The Review

Romana and the Doctor

At last, Shada. Written by Douglas Adams, it can’t quite rise to the heights of City of Death, but it is still some pitch-perfect hijinks. Lalla Ward’s Romana is just the perfect foil for Tom Baker’s Doctor, every time he’s trying to think of an idea you can see in her eyes that she’s already thought of it, and is smiling quietly waiting for the Doctor to catch-up. She’s at once the straight man to the Doctor but also a quiet confidant in his silliness, and nobody does silliness like Tom Baker. The animation here suits the Fourth Doctor better than any Doctor previously but it captures his bug-eyed look perfectly. This is a story where the Doctor convinces a computer that he is in fact dead so the computer can accept orders from him. The opening episodes take place at Cambridge, satirized perfectly. “I love the spring.” “It’s actually October.” “I love the autumn.”

Skagra’s impeccable wardrobe

The villain is Skagra, a character not unlike Scaroth, Adams’ other villain of Season 17 in City of Death. With a jazzy white outfit, he wishes to combine every intellect in the universe with his own. To do that, he needs a book the ‘Ancient and Worshipful Law of Gallifrey’, but really the criminal Salyavin who had an ability to step into other people’s minds. It turns out the nice old professor Chronotis who’s been at Cambridge for 300 years and is delightfully bumbling is in fact this criminal who’s escaped. Apparently the original story was going to be about the death penalty, but here the eponymous prison of Shada is ‘left up to the Time Lords’. All in all, it’s good silly fun typifying the Season 17 Adams-inspired style. The real highlight comes at the end as the Doctor and Romana remark that Chronotis couldn’t have been that bad of a criminal as he seemed such a nice old man, and then we see present-day Tom Baker with a giant grin. Can’t help but love that.

Shada is not The City of Death, but what is? It’s a fun story that keeps the plot moving in enough directions not to be a bore. You take those wins in the classic series.

8.5/10 Romana in Season 17 is one of the best Doctor/companion double acts ever

Tom Baker: Doctor forever

Season 17 Review

Season 17

 

Season 17

Doctor: Fourth Doctor

Companions: K9, Romana II

We have a new Romana, a lot more silliness, and some excellent performances from Tom Baker.

The Review

Here’s the scores for the stories:

City of Death: 10/10

The Creature from the Pit: 9/10

Destiny of the Daleks: 8.25/10

The Horns of Nimon: 8/10

Nightmare of Eden: 8/10

Only a five story season, but there were no clunkers thankfully. The more comedic tone of this season certainly did not suit the menace of Davros and the Daleks well, but led to an all-timer in the whimsical City of Death. As good as Tom Baker had been in the gothic horror stories, I think his talents are in fact better suited to more humorous stories such as this season. Romana II is a good counterweight to his ridiculousness, but I feel we miss some of the traditional Doctor/companion interplay having a companion that’s on equal footing with him. K9 is used in small doses, keeping up his effectiveness and his inability to understand metaphorical language never disappoints. Freed from the story arc of The Key to Time, this season was Douglas Adams’ Doctor Who. It was a breeze to watch, and fun to enjoy.

8.65/10 Including a classic and no mistakes, Season 17 is a great outing for the show

The Horns of Nimon Review

The Horns of Nimon

Nimon laughing up a storm

Story 108, Episodes 522-525, Season 17 Episodes 17-20

Doctor: The Fourth Doctor

Companions: K9, Romana II

In a well-paced story, we get a look at how Romana being the lead might look like as well as more textbook Tom Baker action.

The Review

Romana and the Doctor

The Doctor was doing maintenance on the TARDIS when they got pulled in toward a black hole and collided with a ship. Turns out the ship was of the planet Skonnos carrying teenagers from another planet to be sacrificed to the Nimon, who has promised them conquest and power. The Nimon are essentially the minotaur, and this is the Labyrinth in space (again). In actuality the Nimon are monstrous intergalactic travelers that create tunnels through black holes to hop between planets. One Nimon tricks a planet, claiming to be the last of its race, give the planet whatever it wants, in Skonnos’ case their return to a destructive empire, and then mored show up and take over the planet. The Nimon speaks to the tall wizard Soldeed, and this batch of teens to be sacrificed is the last before the Nimon can open their black hole tunnel. We get some time with Romana alone with the teens straight out of a YA novel, and for those of us who were skeptical of a female Doctor it’s quite clear Lalla Ward could’ve handled the role. Still, I think it makes the stories a bit less interesting having a companion who is just as used to all of this space nonsense as the Doctor. Ultimately, the Nimon are all killed, hopefully ending their reign.

Yes, Soldeed is on the left

As has been the case all season, this is Tom Baker’s Doctor at his goofiest, including a hilarious cliffhanger where a planet is hurtling at the TARDIS and he holds onto K9 in terror. The Doctor has some ingenious situations, putting some spin on the TARDIS to ricochet off said planet, channeling the defense shields into a hallway through the vacuum of space. It’s less straightforward than last season, but part of the interplay with Romana is despite the Doctor’s ridiculousness he is practically always in command of the situation. K9 gets some good solo moments to himself, including leading the way out of the Nimon’s labyrinth at the end. The setting is another one of those wild and crazy alien planets with aliens that look exactly like humans (no giant glowing green monsters here), but taken as a sort of parable it is played off well. Again, it is a straightforward enjoyable story, that served as the too-soon finale of Season 17 with its intended finale Shada getting written out. Not a classic story, but there’s little to quibble with. Romana also gets a look at the Nimon’s previous planet and their version of Soldeed who dies to allow her to escape. The sacrifices seemed like a such a small price to pay for the Nimon’s promised peace. Doesn’t it always.

I think The God Complex is going to do a minotaur story better, but the idea of the Minotaur being an evil genius alien is good fun.

8/10 Seriously, Lalla Ward could’ve headlined her own Romana spin-off

Romana and YA protagonist Seth

Nightmare of Eden Review

Nightmare of Eden

The CET Machine

Story 107, Episodes 518-521, Season 17 Episodes 13-16

Doctor: The Fourth Doctor

Companions: K9, Romana II

There are some big sci-fi ideas here at work that the classic series just cannot quite pull off, but it makes for an enjoyable enough mystery.

The Review

Mandrels!

This is one of those stories where explaining the plot takes forever: two ships, the space liner Empress and the small vessel of a man called Dymond become entangled together in an accident. The Doctor works to sort it out and discovers that somebody has been smuggling vraxoin on the ship, the deadliest drug in the universe. There’s a zoologist, Tryst, on the server, played with an unidentifiable accent, who has a CET machine that basically has laser-crystal scans of surfaces of different planets. Tryst’s machine is unstable, allowing people to walk in and out of the projection. One is Eden, which we learn contains giant humanoid Mandrel monsters. I think the Mandrels were probably intended to be terrifying, they’re not, but they do look extremely bizarre and alien. While he is working to decouple the ships, the captain gets drugged with vraxoin and authorities of the planet Azure obsessed with bureaucratic nonsense think the smuggler is the Doctor. When the Doctor finds Mandrels break down into pure vraxoin, it becomes clear that Tryst was behind it all. It’s a story with a few twists and turns, and unclear enemy throughout most of it, but the tension keeps up.

Romana really is just the Doctor-lite

The story keeps you on your toes, with some memorable supporting characters including the stern captain who descends into drug-induced lunacy, and the laser-sharp narcotics agent Stott who had been hiding in the projection of Eden. Still though, this is clearly just a pain-by-numbers classic story, the Doctor remarking he’s simply here for fun. The idea of two ships somehow linked is shown not too convincingly (and very unconvincingly by the shots of the outside of the ship), and is a funky concept I wish there was more time to talk about. Tom Baker’s bug eyes get some good moments, none better than at the end where Tryst pleads with the Doctor that he should understand drug smuggling to fund scientific research and the Doctor coldly doesn’t even look at the man. Even though she’s a lighter presence, Lalla Ward’s Romana does not feel as sketched out and defined as Mary Tamm’s, and I’m finding a companion is actually not terribly interesting when Romana is in a sense a less experienced Doctor. Probably why the idea of having a fellow Time Lord as a companion has never come back. K9 gives the Doctor’s odds of separating the ships at 60%, a high figure for him! The new voice is still noticeable, but completely adequate. Like this story in fact.

Nothing to truly complain about, nothing to praise, a straightforward story.

8/10 The Doctor does get covered in plant juices when he steps into the Eden projection.

The captain listening to Tryst’s BS

The Creature from the Pit Review

The Creature from the Pit

A tender moment between the Doctor and Erato

Story 106, Episodes 514-517, Season 17 Episodes 9-12

Doctor: The Fourth Doctor

Companions: K9, Romana II

Despite having maybe the most anonymous dull name in show history, it turns out this story is actually quite enjoyable, bursting with Douglas Adams-esque humor.

The Review

Organon the absurd astrologer joins the ranks of memorable Douglas Adams side characters

I think Douglas Adams and Tom Baker were a match made in Heaven. It’s not that I didn’t like Tom Baker before, but it seems he ism much more suited to the constantly foolish style in these latter seasons than being deadly serious like the gothic horror stuff. The Doctor and Romana drop in on a planet, and this time K9 gets to go for a ride, but he’s got a brand new voice which is weird when you’re used to John Leeson handing all your K9 needs. The plot is simple, the evil Lady Adrasta has a monopoly on the planet Chloris’ metal. She throws people in a pit for a large bizarre glowing green gelatinous creature, maybe the most definitely alien alien in show history. Turns out of course, this creature is actually a hyper-intelligent Typhonian ambassador who arrived to the planet because his home planet needed chlorophyll resources and Chloris needed metal with their world had in abundance. While City of Death had the physical detective Duggan for the Doctor to rag on, here we get the fraudulent astronomer Organon who is quite an amusing character for the Doctor to play around with. I’ve never seen someone play an intelligent fool quite like Tom Baker.

David Brierley’s voice of K9 is good, but it’s not what I’m used to

After Erato the Typhonian gets his voice back (he speaks with the voice of whoever he is speaking to through an advanced communicator), Adastra is exposed, but the Doctor is still uncertain of Erato. Turns out his people, hearing his distress signal, dispatched a neutron star to the planet and are going to destroy it. The Doctor and Erato miraculously save the day, and there you go. What makes this episode pop are the vividness of the characters, though the metal-obsessed bandits grow tiresome. The design of Erato is effectively real, and the Doctor’s silent interplay with him is quite amusing to watch. Romana does not have much to do at all this episode, and it was a hard to get a read on her. This was the first story Lalla Ward filmed as Romana, and we have already seen evidence that she will get better. Appropriately for its name, Chloris is a planet bursting with life and interesting characters that transform it from another jungle planet into a memorable one. The blandness of the names ‘creature’ and ‘pit’ get ridiculed in-story, you think they could have found a better title. No matter, it’s good fun.

Season 17 has been hitting the right notes, and I was glad to see it continue onwards.

9/10 There really was sentiment cactus-weed controlled with a whip.

In conversation with Adastra

 

City of Death Review

City of Death

Viva Paris!

Story 105, Episodes 510-513, Season 17 Episodes 5-8

Doctor: The Fourth Doctor

Companions: Romana II

There’s something magical about City of Death, on location in Paris, with another wild story. It’s the great paradox, somehow the best Doctor Who stories are the ones not at all like any other story, but break the mold in the way only Doctor Who can.

The Review

An astonishingly accurate portrait of a Time Lady

Seeing the Doctor and Romana running around Paris is a sight to behold, the Doctor and his ridiculously jumbo-sized scarf and Romana looking like the Madonna, her hat so far back on her head it looks like a halo. The stakes are impossibly high: life on Earth itself, but the Doctor could hardly be more relaxed. He insists to Romana that the Louvre is the greatest collection of art in the whole universe, but tells Professor Kerensky that although he’s the leading temporal theorist on planet Earth, that is a rather small area if you think about it. The long-lost first edition of Hamlet hardly phases the Doctor, he recognizes the handwriting: his own. The luxurious setting of the Count’s lavish Paris home feels real in a way few sets of the show do. Location shoots in the classic series always feel like home video, while usually turning an exciting alien planet into a boring old field, here it creates a weird charming realism seeing the wildly dressed Doctor and Romana prancing around Paris. Romana accidentally looks an artist sketching her who throws away the sketch in disgust, he was sketching Romana, but replacing her face with that of a cracked clock.

Moments before the explosion that started life on Earth

The villain is the charming Scaroth, an alien fractured into twelve pieces, one the Count in the 1970s, another version the Captain in 1500s, and more implied to have invented the wheel, built the pyramids, all to advance humanity so Scaroth can stop himself from blowing up his ship 400 million years ago. Julian Glover plays Scaroth as a charming villain, and his violent butler Hermann reminds one of a malevolent Jermaine Clement. In order to finance his forays into time science, Scaroth is acquiring priceless art in the past, hiding them for his future self. In an old bricked up room, Scaroth has six genuine Mona Lisas, and still he endeavors to steal the seventh, because there are seven buyers. The Doctor briefly pops back to Florence 1505 and writes ‘this is fake’ in felt tip on the canvases to be used. When a fire from Scaroth’s death destroys six of the Mona Lisas, it is one of the ‘fakes’ which is returned to the Louvre. It is still genuine da Vinci after all. The scenes on pre-historic earth seem to take place in the background of a painting, with an almost mystical quality. Scaroth’s ship exploding allowed life itself to develop, without it, there never would be Paris. This might be Tom Baker’s best performance because of how completely charming he is. He’s beguiling, befuddling, quite mad, but always in control. This story is truly a work of art.

While Heaven Sent shatters the conventions of Doctor Who for an incredibly focused sci-fi epic, City of Death shatters them for a low-key romp in Paris. Both are genius, both are stories only this show could do.

10/10 Romana really did look like the Madonna.

The collection of Mona Lisas

 

Destiny of the Daleks Review

Destiny of the Daleks

The gang finds Davros

Story 104, Episodes 506-509, Season 17 Episodes 1-4

Doctor: The Fourth Doctor

Companions: K9, Romana II

In Terry Nation’s final script for Doctor Who we return to Skaro and Davros for a story that feels sort of disposable but continues to be enjoyable.

The Review

Hanging out on the Movellan ship

The central problem of this story is that the robotic Movellans are locked into a century-long stalemate with the robotic Daleks, both too logical to make the first move and win. To solve this, the Daleks decided they should go dig up Davros, because he still is organic. Now, Terry Nation, writer of this script, created the Daleks…and has forgotten that they’re not robots? The Doctor has a brilliant display of the limits of artificial intelligence versus the randomness of organic intelligence, the final theme being that he succeeds by being quick on his feet and unpredictable. This would maybe have been a great theme to substitute in the Cybermen and their cold logic (yes they’re not robots), but the Daleks are violent passionate hateful creatures! They’re not robots! Because I’m forgiving, I still found that plot line enjoyable, but it’s a misread of who the Daleks are. You would also think the show would treat the return of Davros as a huge deal, and he’s treated like a joke. I’m fine with some Davros-joking like The Witch’s Familiar but he never really gets to snap into seriousness here. He just hangs around until the Doctor locks him up. So much for Davros!

The Doctor really tries to blow up Davros though. He also flips his hat on a Daleks’ eye-stalk to blind it which I give a pass because it’s Tom Baker as hell

The first episode is atmospheric, but if you put Daleks in the title and expect us to be shocked by the Daleks showing up as a cliffhanger, get a better cliffhanger. (Dalek Invasion of Earth gets a pass because at the time individual episodes had titles and it was a surprise in the 60s). The Movellans are pretty sweet looking designs, and I enjoyed having a foil to the Daleks. I’m here for more weird looking aliens. There’s some prisoners on Skaro, but they’re not that important. The big story is the reveal of Romana II, who we don’t get much of, but is a bit more charming and a bit less book-smart. I don’t think just deciding to change appearance is something Romana I would really do, but when Mary Tamm tried to leave they didn’t have much choice. I think the best for Lalla Ward is yet to come, but she was a pleasant performance. The story itself is really inoffensive, which makes for a fun story because I’ll always enjoy messing around with the Daleks. Again, it’s biggest problem is its inoffensiveness, in that I felt there could be a lot more going on here. You’d have to completely rewrite this episode to upgrade it up to a classic, but as it is, it’s enjoyable. I wonder when Davros will be threatening again, and not just a fun character to have hanging around.

A fun disposable romp where they could have been an epic return of the mad scientist Davros, ah well. I did love the rock-paper-scissors scene, reminded me of the CERN scene in Extremis.

8.25/10 Davros gets perma-frozen and shipped off to stand trial. I’m sure we’ll never see him again.

Iconic.