212: Timelash

212: Timelash

Doctor : 6th (Colin Baker)
Companions : Peri Brown (Nicola Bryant)
Series : 22
Originally Transmitted: 9th - 16th March 1985

I swear this story has been hanging around my neck like an albatross so it feels good to finally get it out of the way. There are a couple of good things about this story, not enough to make it watchable but they are there. The first of those it that during series 22 the BBC made the decision to change the length of time the series ran for. So instead of showing 28 25 minute episodes per series they made 14 45 minute episodes instead. So thankfully fans only had to suffer this story for 2 weeks instead of the usual 4.

The story starts on the planet Karfel where an evil dictator called The Borad rules. He is never seen in person and only appears to the residents of Karfel on moniters as an old man.



At the beginning of the story we see a rebellion that wants to depose him. The Borad wants to use the all the electrical power on the planet for his own personal use depriving the citizens, his No 2 in command known as The Maylin, a man named Renis is angered by this as his wife is in hospital and allows the rebels to storm The Borad's chamber. However they are caught and are killed. Renis is aged to death by a beam from the Borad's chair, the ones that are left are to be sentenced to be thrown into the Timelash, a time corridor that nobody returns from.



If you think the outside of it looks silly wait till you see the inside.

A sycophantic creep called Tekker is named the new Maylin, Tekker is played by Paul Darrow most famous for his role as Avon in Blakes 7. More on this later.



As the Maylin he wears around his neck an amulet that is the key to the power on Karfel. As the remaining rebels are thrown into the Timelash a young woman called Vena who's husband and father were killed during the rebellion snatches the amulet and throws herself into the Timelash.

Also doing the Borad's bidding is a blue android played by an actor called Dean Hollingsworth. The only reason I mention that is because it turns out he only lives down the road from me and he was in an article in the local paper a couple of years ago about being in Doctor Who where he played the blue android here, and a robotic bus conductor in 'Greatest Show In The Galaxy'. You'd think looking rather intimidating as he does he'd have a voice to match but he has such a weedy high pitched camp voice he makes C3PO sound almost butch in comparison.



Meanwhile on the Tardis The Doctor & Peri are arguing where to go on holiday when they are inadvertently caught up in the Timelash. During the commotion Peri sees the ghostly image on Vena with the amulet.



The Doctor tracks the ends of the time corridor/Timelash, one being in Scotland in 1179 the other being Karfel. The Doctor takes the Tardis to Karfel as he has been there before. We know he's been there before because there's a big picture of the 3rd Doctor behind one of the walls. Also one of the rebels has a locket with a picture of the 3rd Doctor's companion Jo Grant inside it.




On arrival they are met by Tekker who despite appearing hospitable knows that The Doctor is his chance to get the amulet so he quickly locks up Peri in a cave with full of Morlox creatures. A giant lizard native of Karfel. The Doctor follows the Timelash but the Tardis doesn't like it and ends up in 1888, where he meets a man called Herbert who believes the Doctor to be from the spirit world because he's just been holding a oujia board.



Herbert has been looking after Vena so all three go back to Karfel in the Tardis where they meet up with the rebels. The Doctor uses a rope to go into the Timelash to collect some Kontron crystals, where we finally see the inside of the dreaded Timelash..........



Yep, if you're thinking to yourself 'Hey this is a kids climbing wall with some Christmas decorations hanging from it' you would probably be right because that's exactly what it looks like.

So anyway the Doctor uses the crystals to make he and his posse to disappear a couple of seconds into the future thus making them invisible to get to the Borad's chamber where he is revealed to be half human / half morlox creature in one of the series better made visual effects for the time.



They confront each other and the Doctor recognises The Borad as Magellan, a mad scientist who's work he had stopped the last time he was on Karfel.
Now if you're wondering what happened to Peri here's a brief rundown.



She's taken for a walk by a beekeeper, tied up in a cave with menacing Morlox creatures, she's rescued by the rebels who in turn tie her up again and interrogate here. The Borad then takes a shine to her and wants her as a mate so he ties her up in the cave with the Morlox creatures again, this time with a cannister of Mustakozene-80, a gas that can fuse tissue together which is what the Borad was experimenting on when he turned into half Morlox creature. After Peri is freed by The Doctor and Herbert the Borad makes one last gasp to take Peri hostage but ends up being thrown into the Timelash when he is distracted by being shown his reflection.

Peri asks the Doctor if he's going after him but the Doctor implies that he'll be fine at the Timelash's destination..... Loch Ness.

But there's still no time to celebrate. It seems The Borad has pissed off the neighbouring planet of the Bandrills. The Bandrills are hilarious because the one we see is so obviously a sock puppet. In fact if Jim Henson had decided to make Kermit The Maggot instead of Kermit The Frog it might look a lot like a Bandrill. They've fired a load of missiles at Karfel.



The Doctor deflects the missiles in the Tardis and everybody lives happily ever after. Herbert asks if he can stay on Karfel but the Doctor says no and takes him home, Peri asks the Doctor why he won't let Herbert stay and so he shows he Herbert's business card with his full name on it .... H.G Wells.

As well as this only being on for 2 weeks there are 2 other good things about this story, 3 if you're a fan of Jon Pertwee era with him being mentioned.
The first is Paul Darrow playing Maylin Tekker. For some reason only known to himself Paul decided to play the role as William Shakespeare's Richard III and in every scene he's in he's practically chewing the scenery, in fact we're talking Gary Oldman as Norman Stansfield in the movie Leon style chewing the scenery. Watching him you forget just how bad this story really is. In fact he even says himself that he wanted to play the role as a hunchback but the production team thought that was going too far.

I also like the subtle H.G. Wells references that are dotted throughout the story, the main 4 of his books that everybody knows are referenced in the story here. The Morlox creatures and the Tardis (The Time Machine) The Doctor using the crystals to evade the guards (The Invisible Man) The Borad, the mad scientist (The Island of Doctor Moreau) and the Bandrill fleet invading (War Of The Worlds).. It's just a shame it's not done in a better script where people just seem to run along in corridors, get captured and then get rescued again only to be captured again, and why even bother having a companion. Peri does nothing whatsoever in this story, which is a shame because at least during the first episode they actually bother to mention that she's a botany student. The plant's she's looking at kill people with a toxic gas and they're taken off her as quickly as she picks them up but that's besides the point , at least they acknowledged something about her which is more can be said for the rest of the story where she just becomes a tripping screaming generic 20 years out of date female companion.

Trying to watch this again was so painful I couldn't even stomach watching the whole thing once more and I just skipped to the pivotal bits of the episode. A total waste of anyone's 90 minutes.
Just awful.

213: Time And The Rani

213: Time And The Rani

Doctor : 7th (Sylvester McCoy)
Companions : Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford)
Series : 24
Originally Transmitted: 7th - 28th September 1987

I was going to do Timelash next but on reflection this story deserves to go before it for several reasons, most notably that according to Amazon I bought this on 2nd January 2011 when it was released on DVD. When I came to look at this story for this I noticed that it was still sealed in it's wrapper. At least Timelash got opened and watched on it's arrival

Also when I went to look at the broadcast dates on wikipedia I noticed that the synopsis for this story, instead of being a full blown essay like on most stories was condensed into one small paragraph. And to be fair it doesn't miss anything interesting out and covers the whole story just fine.

It's also a point to note that even this early on in this list of stories that I am doing half the stories from series 24 have already been included in this list. And trust me you won't have to wait long for the other two that made up this series. Series 24 really was Doctor Who at it's lowest point.

This is of course a regeneration story marking Sylvester McCoy's first outing as The Doctor but this wasn't like any ordinary regeneration.
Back in 1984 after Colin Baker's first series had ended Michael Grade famously cancelled Doctor Who. Anyway I won't get into too much detail about this until I come to write the 'Trial Of A Timelord' entry but the end result was the show was bought back reluctantly, but the show was on borrowed time. After the Trial series went out Grade wanted the show cancelled again but again he relented and told producer John Nathan Turner he would bring it back again.....But with a fresh start and a new actor playing the role.
Needless to say Colin Baker wasn't happy with this news and rightly refused to come in and film a regeneration scene. So after pondering the options of how to do it this is what they came up with.



The Tardis is attacked in mid flight and grounded on the planet Lakertya. A woman and a bat like creature that reminds me of Sweetums from The Muppets walk into the Tardis. The Doctor and Mel are lying unconscious on the Tardis floor. The woman tells the creature 'Leave the girl, it's the man I want' The creature turns The Doctor around to find him in mid-regeneration.



Yes that's right, they put Sylvester McCoy in a blonde curly wig and blurred his face a bit. I should point out that the picture on the left was shot on set during filming and not in the episode itself just to highlight how show how silly it looks without the digital effects.

The woman kidnaps the Doctor and takes him back to her lair.

The woman in question is The Rani, another rogue Time Lord from Gallifrey, played by Kate O'Mara fresh off being hugely famous for playing Joan Collins sister Caress Morell in the American TV show Dynasty.
The original idea of The Rani was to have her as an amoral scientist neither good nor evil, just interested in her own experiments. This was her second story in the series, her first being The Mark Of The Rani with Colin Baker in series 22.
Sadly in this story the whole 'amoral' thing seems to have got lost and she just comes across a a generic evil scientist.

When at her lair she tries to get the confused newly regenerated Doctor to help her by dressing up as his companion Mel and telling him that it was him who built the set up around him. Rather than doing this The Doctor decides he'd rather play the spoons on her chest.



Meanwhile Mel wanders around the planets surface trying not to be killed by The Rani's traps and meets up with the native Lakertyans who are your typical boring subservient alien of the week enslaved by the Tetraps the muppet like creatures who in turn are the servants of The Rani. About the only interesting thing about the Lakertyans is that one of them is played by Wanda Ventham.



You don't know who Wanda Ventham is?
Oh well, her son just happens to be this man



Anyway, I'll cover her more when I get around to doing 'Image Of The Fendahl' which she is also in because it's a lot better than this rubbish.

Anyway back to the story. The Rani and the Doctor go back to him Tardis to pick up some equipment. He decides that he's sick of Colin Baker's coat (Who can really blame him) and goes into the Tardis wardrobe to pick out a new outfit while a bored unimpressed Rani looks on. Rather than just have a couple of bits of costume from old doctors this time after dressing up like Napoleon The Doctor decides to wear every other Doctor's outfits with the exception of the first.



The Doctor eventually figures out that Mel isn't really Mel at all and sets to work discovering the Rani's plan which involves going through time kidnapping all the geniuses from human history including people like Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein and errr... Elvis Presley (No really The Doctor actually says he's there). The Rani then takes their minds and absorbs them into a giant speaking brain voiced by Peter Tuddenham who was also the voice of Zen in Blakes 7 doing pretty much the same voice.



Once that is done her plan is to place the brain inside the hollowed out planet Lakertya, fire a rocket at an asteroid to blow it up to release a gas that'll make the brain grow in size and then fly this brain filled planet around the universe to do God knows what.

Anyway Mel who has already joined up with the Lakertyan rebels reluctantly begins to accept that the fat shouty bloke she's been travelling around with has turned into a small prat-falling clown with an umbrella and they thwart the Rani's plan. He frees the geniuses from their little pods and fixes the rocket to miss the asteroid thus saving the Lakertyans. The Rani self destructs her base killing the Lakertyan leader and her giant brain escapes in her Tardis and the Doctor files all the geniuses into his Tardis to send them all home. Sadly despite being told he was there we don't see any hint of Elvis Presley among them.
Albert Einstein takes an interest in the Tardis console and The Doctor tells him he'll explain how it works later.



Meanwhile inside her Tardis the Tetraps decide to hang out with the Rani, take her back to their own planet and have her work for them instead.



The interesting thing about a actor's first Doctor Who story is that as the original series progressed they gradually got worse. The first 3 Doctor's stories 'An Unearthly Child', 'Power Of The Daleks' & 'Spearhead From Space' which are all rightly considered classic Doctor Who stories. Doctors 4 & 5 had 'Robot' & 'Castrovalva' which although not great were not anywhere near as terrible as this. Then we had Doctor's 6 & 7 with this rubbish and 'The Twin Dilemma' which I already covered here.

In fact the only thing that really pushes this story above 'The Twin Dilemma' is Kate O'Mara pretending to be Bonnie Langford. Watching her pretending to be this prissy annoying girl when the Doctor is looking and then seeing her real self annoyed at having to play this charade with plenty of eye rolling and dirty looks every time The Doctor's back is turned is hysterical to watch. If it had been 4 episodes of that this story would have been much higher.

As for Sylvester McCoy, when he came into the show he was wanting to play The Doctor as a much darker and much more mysterious character. The seeds of that would be sown in series 25 and really bear fruit in series 26 with incoming script editor Andrew Cartmel vision for the show following that of McCoy's own, but at this point Cartmel was new on board and was using scripts already commissioned before he got the job being forced to work with what he had.

McCoy doesn't really have anything to work with here and just ends up prat-falling around the set doing lots of visual gags that just become annoying after a while. He also spends the whole story mixing up metaphors as if to show his confused state. Thankfully that was dropped straight away.

God, having to watch anything from series 24 is like water torture, the sad thing is at the end of this story at the time this was broadcast little did the general viewing public know that for the following four weeks they would have to sit through 'Paradise Towers' which is even worse.
Poor bastards, thank God I had an evening job at the time and wasn't at home to see how low this once great show had sunk.

We Could Have Been Bigger Than The Daleks

My copy of Timelash is MIA here's a little something extra to tide us over..

We Could Have Been Bigger Than The Daleks

Ever since the Daleks became a worldwide smash around 50 years ago to the day both the BBC and the writers have been trying to find the next Daleks.
The next robot that would rake in a fortune with merchandise sales and have kids running around playgrounds pretending to be them.
Sadly nobody ever matched that popularity, but here are some of their attempts anyway.

.........

The Mechanoids



The Mechanoids only ever appeared in one story, 'The Chase' in June 1965 and even then they only ever appeared in the final episode. Written by Terry Nation, the writer that had created the Daleks he was looking to find a way of cashing in on another robot so for this story he created the Mechanoids.

Sadly their appearance in that story was overshadowed slightly by some of the other appearances in that story. Such as Queen Elizabeth I, Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Empire State building, The Marie Celeste & The Beatles. As well as the Daleks.

The Mechanoids were from the planet Mechanus, were about twice the size of a Dalek, were spherical, covered in triangular segments topped off by what looks like buddhist prayer wheel. Instead of a sink plunger they had two rather pathetic looking arms that look like a couple of bits of bent metal tubing, mostly used for gesticulating wildly and hugging daleks, although they did have another arm with a disc on the end that would shoot out fire.



When they spoke they basically sounded like slowed down stoned Daleks meaning that the climactic battle with the Daleks at the end of the story had some of the clunkiest slowest dialogue for an 'exciting battle scene' I think I've ever seen.

The Mechanoids were given a slight chance to match the Daleks popularity, a handful of Mechanoid action figures were made in the 60s and they also appeared in some comic strips shortly after the episode aired but they never really took off in popularity. Also after this story aired Terry Nation never wrote for Doctor Who again until 1972's Day Of The Daleks after he spent several years in the United States trying to launch a Dalek TV Series. So I guess he gave up on the poor Mechanoids too.

......

The Chumblies



The Chumblies were the robot servents of the reptile like Rills. The Rills were confined to their crashed spaceship due to them breathing ammonia instead of air so the Chumblies would scoot off onto the planet's surface and do the tasks that the Rill's were unable to do themselves.

Due to the BBC losing all 4 episodes of their one and only story 'Galaxy 4', originally broadcast in September 1965 the Chumblies bleeping & blooping on audio track was most Doctor Who fans only exposure to them. However in late 2011 Episode 3 turned up from a private film collector and the whole world got to see The Chumblies in all their crapness.

The Chumblies weren't actually named that by the Rills, the Doctor's companion Vicki names them that when she first sees them and once the Rill's translation devices start working they just go along with it.

The Chumblies don't actually do much other than follow you around, occasionally nudging you in the direction they want you to walk in. Basically they just follow you around bleeping like R2D2's retarded clingy younger brother.

When fame never came knocking and they were never used again they went on to form their own steam cleaning company to pay the bills



.........

The War Machines



Now the War Machines were impressive, or at least they were supposed to be anyway. Their only appearance happened during the story The War Machines in June of 1966.

The War Machines were the tool of the giant super computer Wotan, which stood for Will Operating Thought ANalogue which meant that it was a computer than can think for itself. Wotan was either pronounced 'wo-tan' or 'vo-tan' depending on whichever actor was saying it at the time.

The computer was the brainchild of one Professor Brett. Being a thinking computer Wotan decides that he doesn't need humans after all and so brainwashes a bunch of people to get them to build the War Machines. So
in a dingy warehouse in London an army of War Machines are built mostly by a bunch of 60s London spivs who wear flat caps & would say something like 'It's a fair cop, guv' if they ever got caught.

The War Machines had a gas jet thing just like the Daleks, but at well as they they had two massive mallet like crushing arms that could...... um menacingly knock over a pile of empty boxes and very little else.
They would make this whirring noise at you like every single computer you have ever seen with massive tape spools in any movie from back then.

Sadly all you needed to defeat them was a couple of skipping ropes and they would get confused, lose power and then they were done.



OK so it's electrical cable not skipping ropes, but the point still stands.

.........

The Quarks




The Quarks were the deadly (cough) robots used by The Dominators, a race of evil beings who liked to um, dominate, wear fancy outfits with giant shoulder pads and harass planets full of hippies.



The Quarks were devised by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln who had previously successfully created the Yeti as an iconic Doctor Who monster the year before. Unfortunately a walking giant rug that's roar is the sound of a slowed down flushing toilet isn't really marketable in the toy world unless you're George Lucas. So they created the Quarks for the story The Dominators in August 1968.

The Quarks problem was they were just not threatening, sure they had guns but because of their little legs you could probably outrun them by breaking into a gentle stroll. They also made extremely non threatening high pitched bleeping noises. In fact you can pretty much sum up the Quarks as being a toddler.

Whenever they were dispatched by The Dominators to do anything, they would just tend to wander around aimlessly occasionally firing at things and then run out of power after about 10 minutes, just like a toddler who's give you the runaround for a while and then fall asleep.

In fact this episode was so bad that the production team cut the number of episodes from 6 to 5 and wrote the ending themselves, which annoyed Haisman and Lincoln who asked for their name to be taken off the script. They were also pretty annoyed when they found out the BBC were going to bring out a load of Quark toys & merchandise without their knowledge. Needless to say the general public couldn't care less about the Quarks, the BBC never made a penny in merchandise sales, Haisman and Lincoln refused to work for Doctor Who ever again and so the Quarks were consigned to the dustbin of history.

..........

The Security Robot



Terry Nation is back, and this time he has his own series. After trying to flog the Daleks to the Americans & Hollywood (And failing) Terry Nation comes back to the BBC, writes a few Doctor Who scripts (Genesis Of The Daleks being the standout), then writes the hit series 'Survivors' about a plague wiping out most of the human life on Earth. Because of the success of these he is allowed to start his pet project. A TV show based on the movie the Dirty Dozen only set in space where a band of various criminals would battle against the corrupt Earth federation. It's name ... Blakes 7.

What Nation decided was that for this series to get the attention it warranted it needed something as big as the Daleks to make the series take off. With Blakes 7 being about criminals against a corrupt government it made race of robotic aliens that would destroy everything in it's path rather unworkable so he came up with the Security Robot.

The Security Robot would just hang around a few military bases defending them from intruders. It had a really powerful flamethrower, not like a short burst of flame but a real life flamethrower although not as powerful.The biggest problem with them was they made so much noise, you could probably hear one whirring towards you 10 minutes before it actually arrived meaning by the time it got there everybody had either hidden or legged it.

They appeared in a couple of early episodes of the series run but they were slow, cumbersome and a bit silly. When it was decided that having a couple of actors play guards it made the scenes so much easier to shoot and they were dropped for good.

........

The Cybermen



It took them a while to get it right but finally someone succeeded.
 

214: Arc Of Infinity

214: Arc Of Infinity

Doctor : 5th (Peter Davison)
Companions : Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding) Nyssa (Sarah Sutton)
Series : 20
Originally Transmitted: 3rd - 12th January 1983

Originally I was going to do Timelash next but having done Time Flight this pitiful excuse of a story was bundled with Time Flight as a DVD double pack. After a quick look through it I thought 'Yeah, let's do this one next' It was due to come up sooner rather than later anyway.

So at the end of Time Flight we get a lame kind of cliffhanger where Tegan runs out of Heathrow Airport just in time to look on disappointedly as The Doctor and Nyssa leave in the Tardis without her Which is all the more ironic when you consider than she spent the entire previous series moaning and complaining that The Doctor couldn't get her to Heathrow so she could start her new job as an air hostess. What's even funnier is neither The Doctor nor Nyssa even bother to say goodbye to her.

So we have the Doctor & Nyssa travelling in the Tardis both doing some repair work when suddenly a strange energy force attacks the Tardis & tries to bond with The Doctor.



The Doctor concludes that this could only be possible by someone who has access to his Bio-data (Kind of like a Time Lord DNA) and heads for Gallifrey. The Time Lords are already aware of this already and have decided that The doctor is a threat to Gallifrey and on his arrival is shot by the head of the Gallifreyan guard Commander Maxil, played by Colin Baker.



Now you may be wondering why Maxil spends the whole story carrying his hat around under his arm, that's because they made it too big for him to be able to walk through doors. Baker would walk around the set stroking it pretending it was a chicken called Esmerelda and make chicken noises wondering why Peter Davison was giving him funny looks.



Meanwhile in Amsterdam two backpackers Colin Stuart & Robin Frazer decide that rather than stay in a backpacking hostel the best place to spend the night is a creepy old crypt which just happens to be the base of the source of the beam of energy that attacked the Tardis made by a renegade Time Lord.
During the night Colin is captured by The Ergon, a creature created by The Renegade that can only be described as looking like the worst chicken you've ever had the misfortune of meeting. He is turned into a zombie like state to work for the Renegade.



Anyway it turns out the Doctor was only stunned so that he could be bought in front of the High Council of Time Lords. It's established that the energy comes from a renegade Time Lord from another universe made from Anti Matter and that he is being shielded in this universe by the Arc Of Infinity. Unbeknownst to The Doctor one of the high council is in collusion with The Renegade secretly. It's not hard to work out which of the Time Lords this is as although they hide his face they make no effort whatsoever to disguise his voice.

After discussing the issue the Time Lords then decide rather than let The Doctor do something about it that the best thing to do is execute him by hairdryer before the bond is complete.



Back in Amsterdam Robin decides to go to the airport and meet up with Colin's cousin. who just happens in a bizarre twist of fate to be Tegan Jovanka. He tells her that Colin has gone missing and they go to the crypt. they find Colin but the chicken captures and stuns them before they can do anything.

The Time Lords then discover than The Doctor isn't dead after all and he is having a game of Pong with The Renegade in The Matrix, a kind of super computer made up of all the brains of dead Time Lords. The Renegade decides to show The Doctor that he's also playing Pong with Tegan. She yells out that The Renegade's base is in Amsterdam



The Doctor pops up again and tells the Time Lords that The Renegade has control of The Matrix and can take over Gallifrey. The Time Lord in collusion with The Renegade reveals himself to be the traitor to everybody, and then reveals who The Renegade is.... Omega, the man who gave the ability of time travel to the Time Lords but was blasted to an anti matter universe during the process.

The Doctor slips away from Gallifrey, goes to Amsterdam and tracks down Omega's base and frees Colin & Tegan. However the Doctor is too late to stop Omega bonding is now complete. Omega reveals that he has taken form of the Doctor in a new body so that he can leave his anti matter universe.



The Doctor tells Omega that the Arc is not stable and his body will not last long. Omega runs away. The Doctor picks up Omega's anti matter gun in pursuit. We then get a long drawn out chase through the streets of Amsterdam with Peter Davison chasing Peter Davison with green slime & rice krispies all over his face as Omega's body decays. Eventually they catch up with him, shoot him with the anti matter gun and thus sending him back to his anti matter universe.



The Time Lords celebrate, Tegan checks on her cousin in hospital and then tells the Doctor she was fired from her job and would like to carry on travelling with him, as if the poor sod hasn't suffered enough already.

............

Arc of Infinity was a part of the series 20th anniversary year. During that years it was decided that each story during the 20th series would have a returning monster from doctor Who's past finishing at the end of the year with The Five Doctors special anniversary show.

The First Monster to be bought back in the series for this story was the renegade Time Lord Omega, last seen during the 10th Anniversary story The Three Doctors back in 1973.
While it seemed a good idea in practice none of the appearances really ever went anywhere save for that of the Black Guardian (Last seen during Tom Baker's series long Key To Time adventure) who was used as a tool to bring in a companion who wanted to kill the Doctor (Turlough), and even then that got dull rather quickly.

Arc of Infinity could have been a good story but it's just too slow paced and suffers from the usual Doctor Who trait of having people being captured, then escape, run along a load of corridors and then get captured again whilst not progressing the story one iota. The Time Lords just sort of sit around talking and not doing very much other than sentencing the Doctor to death and just generally being stupid. If you watch this story you could well understand why Russell T Davis wanted the kill the whole bloody lot of them off. They're boring. And damn you Moffat for bringing them back.

There's also the annoying level of coincidence. A couple of backpackers just happen to enter the one place where Omega's base is and one of them just happens to be related to a friend of the guy that he's trying to use. Oh and she just happened to leave the Doctor in the previous story. It's just lazy lazy plotting.

 Also if you decide you want to read the Target novelisation of this story rather than watch the episode, don't bother as shows you who the traitor in the High Council is on the front cover pulling a gun on the Doctor.

Stupid Stupid Stupid

215: Time Flight

215: Time Flight

Doctor : 5th (Peter Davison)
Companions : Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding) Nyssa (Sarah Sutton)
Series : 19
Originally Transmitted: 22nd - 30th March 1982

We've gone back in time to late 1981 ,back to the Doctor Who production office to listen in on a conversation between Doctor Who's producer at the time John Nathan Turner and script editor Eric Saward on the planning of the series finale of Series 19.

...

JNT: Well everything seems to be going well, People like Peter Davison as the Doctor, the viewing figures have gone up, we just bought back the Cybermen and killed a companion. What we need now is a really spectacular ending for this series.

ES: Did you have anything in mind?

JNT: Concorde



ES: Concorde?

JNT: Yes we'll have a story that's about Concorde being hijacked by aliens and taken back in time 140 million years to prehistoric Earth.

ES: OK, and how much money do we have left to do this with.

JNT: Nothing

ES? Nothing?

JNT: Yeah it's all gone, We've blown the lot.

ES: So how are we going to do this?

JNT: Well we could film them all running up & around Heathrow Airport, maybe outside and on the roof as well. That'll fill an episode or two.

ES: And when are we going to do this

JNT: How about in February during the middle of an ice storm?

ES: Hmmm OK, and so are British Airways on board with this?

JNT: Oh yeah, they totally love the idea. It's free advertising for them.

ES: So we can film on board the aircraft?

JNT: Well not exactly, but they say we can film around it outside on the runway. We'll just mock up a cargo hold in the studio, stick the Tardis in it sideways and have the Doctor travel with it like that.



ES: OK then so how are we going to film Concorde on prehistoric Earth and how are we going to get it to the location?

JNT: Location?

ES: I assume we're going to some chalk quarry for the prehistoric Earth scenes?

JNT: No we'll just stick a few rocks and bushes in a brightly lit studio like we normally do, nobody will be able to tell the difference.



ES: OK and what about Concorde?

JNT: Well for main shots we'll just stick a great big aircraft undercarriage in the middle of the studio & have all the action revolve around that, for the long shots we can buy a model Concorde while we're at Heathrow. I think the budget will stretch to that.



ES: So these aliens, what's the deal with them?

JNT: Plasmatons, they're like humanoid blobs of energy psychokinetic field. They attack people with bubbles



ES: Bubbles?

JNT: Yeah it'll look great, They're not the main villain though.

ES: No? Is it Wendy O Williams?

JNT: You're thinking of The Plasmatics

ES: Oh, sorry

JNT: No, the main villain is Kalid. We'll give him a middle eastern sounding name. Trust me in 20 years time western Europe be petrified of other people with arab sounding names.



ES: Right, OK. Who's this Kalid guy?

JNT: This is the genius bit

ES: It is?

JNT: He's The Master.....



ES: The Master?????

JNT: In disguise

ES: In disguise?

JNT: Yes

ES: Why?

JNT: It'll be a big surprise to the audience

ES: But why is he in disguise when he's on an uninhabited planet with nobody around?

JNT: That doesn't matter, think of the ratings

ES: So I assume The Doctor defeats the Master, how do they get back to the present day.

JNT: Well the Doctor takes them back guiding Concorde with the Tardis

ES: How are we going to do that?

JNT: We'll get some stock footage of it taking off from British Airways, cut off the lower half of the film so you can't see the runway and superimpose our studio set over it instead.

ES: What about the birds flying in the background, they didn't have birds on prehistoric Earth.

JNT: F*ck the birds, not my problem. Anyway think you can find someone to write all that up



ES: Um OK, I'll see who's available

JNT: Great, this is going to be awesome. Anyway I'l leave that with you I have more important things to do like appear at a convention in Los Angeles this weekend & I have a pantomime with Sue Pollard & Bobby Davro to organise in Milton Keynes. Any problems phone my secretary I'm sure she'll be able to get hold of me for you in a couple of weeks, see ya.



ES: Bye then

216: A Town Called Mercy

216: A Town Called Mercy

Doctor : 11th (Matt Smith)
Companions : Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill)
Series : 7 (New)
Originally Transmitted: 15th Sept 2012



What did I say about Doctor Who and westerns not mixing?

I know a lot of people think that Curse Of The Black Spot was the nadir of Matt Smith's tenure as the Doctor but I much prefer Pirates to Cowboys so this story gets the wooden spoon.

But is it really fair to say this is Matt Smith's worst story?

Probably not, I can think of a few Christmas specials that are worse than this but after several years of disappointment & boredom at most of these specials I'm kind of used to them being sentimental fluff pieces that you watch with the whole family with a belly full of turkey while you pick at a tin of Quality Street. (Did I mention I got a 'big big purple one' this past Christmas from my mother. A giant plastic purple Quality Street with 35 of the purple ones inside. Anyway enough about chocolate, back to the episode.

As this episode doesn't have the luxury of being a Christmas special I have no hesitation in awarding it the title of Matt Smith's worst episode. I feel bad for Matt Smith because in preparing this I had no real inkling of just how many of his episodes really suck until I really analysed it. So by the looks of things there may well be a run of Matt Smith stories coming up in the near future which is a shame because he is my favourite Doctor since the series returned, although some of the pratfalling can become grating after a while.

In this story the Doctor is taking Amy & Rory to Day of the Dead festival in Mexico. The Tardis being the Tardis doesn't quite arrive in Mexico & ends up taking them to a small American frontier town called Mercy instead.



They notice 2 strange things about the town instantly. The first is that there is a ring of wood & stone around the whole town.



The second is that the town seems to have electricity 10 years too early.
They meet up with the town Marshall, he informs them that the ring is there to protect them from The Gunslinger, a cyborg who stops anyone from leaving the town and also stops any supplies being bought into the town.
The Gunslinger shows up looking very much like Yul Brynner in the fantastic movie 'Westworld'.



In fact go watch Westworld instead of this, it's about a theme park where a bunch of androids go haywire and start killing people. Much better than this story anyway.

The Doctor discovers that The Gunslinger is looking for another alien called Kahler-Jex.



Jex crash landed 10 years earlier and saved the townsfolk from an outbreak of cholera and also giving them electricity and that the townsfolk don't want to hand him over to the cyborg. The town is becoming short of food. Using Rory & the Marshall as a decoy they distract the cyborg long enough for the Doctor to leave by horseback to get back to his Tardis. On the way he discovers Jex's crashed ship.



In Jex ship the Doctor discovers that Jex built the cyborg to fight in a war and that he was responsible for experimenting on people to achieve this. He accidentally sets off an alarm and the cyborg finds him leaving the ship, he tells the Doctor he wants revenge on the people who did this to him and that Jex was the last of the people he wanted revenge on.He also didn't want to harm any innocents which is why he built the barrier around the town. He gives the Doctor an ultimatum, the next person to cross the line must be Jex.

The big confrontation happens & the Marshall is killed saving Jex, As he dies The Marshall gives the Doctor his badge & tells him to look after the town. The Doctor comes up with the idea of having all the townspeople wear the same facial markings as Jex to confuse the cyborg.



Jex escapes in the confusion and then instead of launching his ship to escape decides to set it to self destruct instead saying that the cyborg will follow him everywhere he goes and that he didn't want any more innocent people to suffer because of him. The cyborg knowing that his revenge is over attempts to destroy himself but the Doctor convinces him to become the new Marshall of Mercy.

The biggest problem I had with this episode was boredom, I just didn't really care about the outcome. Several times I found myself looking at the clock wondering how much longer the episode had left to finish. It's supposed to be a morality tale but that's difficult when you don't really care about either side. It also has Amy Pond questioning the Doctor's morality telling him he's changed since he's been travelling on his own and not for the better. Coming from someone else this would have been effective but coming from Amy Pond, a woman he's done so much for and risked his life to save countless times it just comes across as her being a bit whiney. Donna Noble questioned the Doctor's morality much more effectively in The Fires Of Pompeii. I put that down to Russell T Davies being able to write that stuff much better than Steven Moffat ever could. Moffat is more of a 'big epic space battles and the doctor stopping the end of the universe type guy' while Davies was more of a 'the doctor makes a difference on a personal level no matter how small.' Moffat is better at writing big complicated concepts, Davies is better at writing characters, people & emotions. Not knocking either guy for that every writer has their strengths & weaknesses. I know Steven Moffat didn't write this story but you get the feeling that had Davies been in charge he would have made the characters emotional standpoint much easier to write for.

It has to be said while this episode isn't great story wise it looks amazing, being filmed in the same part of Spain where all the classic spaghetti westerns of the 50s & 60s were filmed. Also I have to say I don't blame any of the shortcomings of this story on Matt Smith who tries his best to make this story move along and be interesting by giving it his usual energy & charisma, but in the end it just sort of falls flat and about half an hour after watching it you've kind of forgotten it ever happened.

Still I have to admit the line 'Everyone who isn't an American, drop your gun' did make me laugh, but that was during the trailer of this story so basically I need not have bothered watching the whole thing for this one highlight.
Oh well, watch Westworld instead.