Grab Bag Reviews: Tomb of the Cybermen

And I'm back from holiday hiatus. And what better note to come back on than a Second Doctor story?

"Tomb of the Cybermen" was originally considered as the final episode of the 1966-1967 season but the decision was quickly made to push it back to become the opening of the 1967-1968 season. As such "Evil of the Daleks" became the season finale for '66-'67 and "Tomb" would become the first regular episode for the new companion Victoria Waterfield, played by Deborah Watling.

One of the biggest things "Tomb" is notable for is that it is one of the few "lost" stories to be found in whole. Due to the BBC's tape wiping destruction program (which I've mentioned elsewhere) "Tomb" was one of those stories which had been destroyed. In 1991, however, complete film copies were found in storage at a Hong Kong TV station and returned to the BBC. "Tomb" would also be the last complete story to be found. Single episodes of some serials have been located and some surviving clips have cropped up in the years since but "Tomb" was the last serial where all parts of the story were located.

So now shall we venture into the Tomb of the Cybermen?

The Plot: An archaeological team on the planet Telos uncovers the remains of a Cyberman civilization. The Doctor arrives with his companions Jamie and Victoria and insists on joining the expedition -- afraid that the Cybermen may not be as long gone as thought.

It soon becomes apparent that there is a saboteur among the team -- someone with an ulterior motive. When that motive is finally revealed the Doctor finds himself the last line of defense against the Cybermen and a madman. Will even the Doctor's intelligence allow him to save all the lives in his hands?

My Take: Okay. Elephant in the room. Let's get this out of the way first. Toberman. Toberman is a black, nearly mute, servant to Kaftan, one of the members of the archaeological expedition. To American audiences in particular Toberman checks off the boxes on a number of uncomfortable stereotypes. I am not, however, familiar with race relations in Great Britain so I am going to reserve judgement. Also, reportedly, the character of Toberman was supposed to be seen wearing a hearing aid -- indicating that he might have had some other physical disabilities. We'll just leave it that Toberman is likely to make most viewers cringe. Including me.

Now that we're past that....

The story itself is nothing particularly new but script writers Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler give viewers a story packed with wit and one liners and the Doctor getting to really do what he does best -- be the smartest guy in the room effortlessly. They also showcased something new from the Cybermen -- a new leader known as the Cybercontroller. Bigger, stranger, and harder to stop, the Cybercontroller became like the villain in a horror movie -- no matter what you throw at him he keeps getting back up.

Davis and Pedler also didn't forget the heart of the story either. There is a scene between the Doctor and Victoria that is rightfully heralded as one of the best bits of Classic Doctor Who. The Doctor comforts his companion who has recently lost pretty much everything she has ever known and at the same time offers one of those rare revelations about himself. The scene is not only perfectly pitched to tug on the heartstrings, it does so without becoming overly sentimental or schmaltzy. It is also played with a light touch by both Troughton and Watling.

The script also rather favors Victoria. Too bad it would be the last time viewers would ever see her so spunky. True, she does some boneheaded things but that is balanced by a determination to prove that just because she's a girl doesn't mean she can't handle herself, a little bit of snark, and even the ability to handle a gun (although it is strange that this sheltered Victorian girl could shoot so well right out of the gate). After this story, though, the character of Victoria would start a long, slow, slide into being mostly a screaming damsel in distress. Here, though, Watling manages to convey a young woman who is an odd mix of innocence and spirit. She also makes the viewers believe that, despite a wardrobe change, Victoria is and remains a Victorian lady.

And speaking of performances... Troughton, after a year on the job, is completely comfortable as the Doctor -- as is Fraser Hines as Jamie. The two actors present some of the best of their comedy double-team here with puns and jovial insults flying fast and furious. The rest of the guest cast has some problems, however. Actor George Pastell as Eric Klieg is delightfully smug and superior but Shirley Cooklin as Kaftan is a bit too much. She seems more like a femme fatale character who wandered onto the set of the wrong TV show. Plus the character is basically named after a loose, flowing article of clothing. It's impossible to be dignified and taken seriously when your character is named after an outfit. Most of the rest of the actors are serviceable and not particularly outstanding. A special place of ire, however, is reserved for George Roubicek who plays Captain Hopper. Roubicek's American accent isn't horrible in and of itself but he definitely is trying too hard at it and that makes it rather wince inducing.

The set design and special effects for "Tomb" were also pretty well done. Sure, the Cybermats are a bit more cute than frightening (seriously, I think I want a remote controlled Cybermat toy) but the Cybermen base and the tombs below have an alien look to them and the bas reliefs and other art decorations on the wall lend an air of looming menace. The tombs themselves are strange and intimidating but it has to be said that the Cybermen emerging through saran wrap is somewhat less than stellar. But who cares? Overall, the set design team really went above and beyond for this story.

Even with the uncomfortable stereotype of Toberman, "Tomb of the Cybermen" is still a fun romp and one of the Second Doctor's best stories. There is action and adventure, intrigue, madness, and high stakes all around. Who could ask for anything more?

Doctor Who Grab Bag Reviews: "The Two Doctors"

It's an open secret that my favorite Doctor is the Second one and my favorite companion is Jamie McCrimmon (what?! Dude went into action wearing a kilt AND he had the legs for it too -- you don't get better than that) so, of course, a story that reunites by favorite Doctor-Companion duo should be at the top of my list right?

Wrong.

"The Two Doctors" is one of my least favorites... a train wreck of a story in which nearly everything that could go wrong did go wrong...

It all began two years earlier with 1983's "The Five Doctors". Jonathan Nathan-Turner, seeing the boon that a multi-Doctor story could be to the ratings was almost immediately interested in producing another one. In addition to that he had been impressed with both how well the Patrick Troughton had slipped back into his character of the Second Doctor and the easy working relationship and genuine camaraderie between Troughton and Fraser Hines who played Jamie McCrimmon. At the time of "The Five Doctors" Hines had only had time for a small cameo but J N-T hoped to lure him back to do a full episode alongside Troughton.

By the mid-1980's the Doctor Who veterans had discovered the American fan base and vice-versa. The show had become a minor cult-hit in the U.S. thanks to a combination of syndication and showings on American PBS stations (which is where I discovered the show way back when). Doctor Who conventions were starting to spring up in the States and many of the people who had been or were currently involved with the show had begun traveling "across the pond" for the conventions. J N-T began to see this as the perfect time to propose a joint effort between the BBC and the American company which was syndicating the show.

In 1985 J N-T managed to secure an assurance from the American company that they would be able to cover expenses for Doctor Who to fly to the United States and film an episode set in New Orleans, Louisiana. As such, J N-T hired long-time Doctor Who writer Robert Holmes to write a script to match. In point of fact, J N-T gave Holmes a laundry list of things to squeeze into the script -- the current Sixth Doctor and his companion, Peri, the Second Doctor and his companion, Jamie, a new alien race that had some connection to New Orleans, and Holmes was also to throw long-time villains the Sontarans in for good measure... just because. Needless to say, Holmes was not really pleased at being hampered by all of the elements he had to add.

Meanwhile, J N-T got both Patrick Troughton and Fraser Hines on board. Troughton had reportedly had a wonderful time filming "The Five Doctors" and was eager to do it again and he and Hines were old friends and co-workers and both were also looking forward to working together again.

Holmes, being a vegetarian, decided to focus the story around food and carnivorism and apparently planned to die this into the cuisine of New Orleans. As such his new alien race, the Androgums, was an anagram for gourmand.

At the last minute, however, it turned out that the American money would not be there after all and the BBC could not foot the bill for a New Orleans filming. Having filmed in Amsterdam for the Fifth Doctor story "Arc of Infinity" and in Lanzarote for "Planet of Fire" also for the Fifth Doctor, J N-T was reluctant to let go of the idea of filming somewhere other than Great Britain. After several ideas fell through Seville, Spain was settled on.

The change in setting required some adjustments to the script and caused several things to not come off as well as they might have otherwise. Also, the shoot ended up with limited locations to choose from and many of the crew ended up on-camera acting as extras in several of the scenes.

And in the end... it really wasn't worth it and now we get to delve in and see why...

The Plot: The Second Doctor and his companion, Jamie, are sent by the Time Lords to the science research space station Camera in order to discuss the worrying experiments of two scientists who are studying time travel. The Doctor argues with his old friend, Camera's head of research, Dastari over the potential dangers of the time travel experiments. While there the Doctor encounters the station chef -- a member of a race known as Androgums, who tend to be nasty, brutish, violent, omnivores -- and another Androgum named Chessene, whom Dastari has genetically altered and augmented to become a genius -- something else that worries the Doctor. He has a right to be worried because Chessene has made a deal with the warring Sontarans to turn over the space station to them....

Elsewhere, the Sixth Doctor and Peri are trying to enjoy a little peace and quiet for a change when suddenly the Doctor has some kind of seizure. Feeling strange, the Doctor decides to visit Dastari to see if the scientist can detect anything wrong.

The Doctor and Peri arrive on Camera only to find it a charnel house -- all of the personnel have been slaughtered. The computer indicates the Time Lords were responsible but the Doctor cannot believe this and is determined to discover the truth. As he and Peri search the station for clues they find the sole survivor of the carnage... Jamie.

The Doctor soon realizes that his previous self has been kidnapped and he knows that it can be for no good purpose. Fearing that someone is planning on using his earlier incarnation to unlock the secret of time travel, the Sixth Doctor, Peri, and Jamie follow the trail to Seville, Spain and set out to rescue the Doctor. Little do they realize they are up against the brilliant mind of Chessene which has been wedded to an insane ambition. Chessene wants to rule the universe and she will use and discard anyone along the way -- Sontarans, Dastari and even Time Lords...

My Take: And that right above is just one reason why this episode doesn't stand up. Four paragraphs just to explain the plot and that's with me actually leaving out a lot of the subplots! At this time Doctor Who had shed the tradition of four half-hour episodes in favor of two 45 minute episodes per story but "The Two Doctors", being a 'special' episode, runs to three 45 minute episodes. Even with the extra time there's more plot here than is strictly necessary.

Then there are the Androgums. I have friends who are vegetarians and I myself often cook and eat vegetarian fare (although don't you dare try to take cheese from me -- I will stab you with a fork) but Holmes' script, with it's depictions and descriptions of meat eating and cooking are really just bad. If he intended it to be an advertisement for vegetarian eating he failed grandly because it is so blatant and over-the-top in it's indictment of meat eating it has the opposite effect. I almost want to sit and eat a raw steak just to spite the memory of Robert Holmes when I watch this story. Doctor Who has taken on vegetarianism in the past -- "The Green Death" for example is about not only environmentalism but healthier eating as well -- but without being this... derogatory about it.

On top of all of that Holmes seems to have caught the 'bickering bug'. Not only do the Sixth Doctor and Peri do their usual round of whining and picking on one another but there's quite a bit of it between the Second Doctor and Jamie -- something that really did not happen very often in the original run. There is probably more bickering between the Doctor and Jamie in the first 20 minutes of this story than there was in the whole three year run of the duo in the 1960's.
The tone of the story is also so far off the mark it could cause an earache. The Sixth Doctor's tenure often was criticized for excessive violence. To be fair, many of the criticisms laid were unfounded or uncalled for but here the story veers wildly from comedy to violence without warning and it just isn't handled well. There is also at least one death which serves no earthly purpose except to just be a death and there is also quite a bit of blood which is really uncalled for. Also, many criticize the Doctor's callous killing of the Androgum Shockeye but that is actually reasonably within character... the problem is the Doctor's casual, James Bond-like witticism about the killing. That's just not the Doctor -- he'll take a life if he has to but he shouldn't seem to enjoy it or crack jokes about it.

Perhaps the worst sin of all is the fact that, after J N-T went though all the trouble to get Hines and Troughton back together for this story, the duo spend the bulk of it separated. Hines's Jamie spends most of the story running around with Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor and there just isn't that much chemistry between the two actors. Not necessarily their fault -- after all chemistry is often something that is either there or it isn't and nothing can make it appear if it isn't there but to bypass Hines and Troughton's proven chemistry for this is bad plotting.

The plot aside, the story is also hit and miss on the special effects. The work for the space station Camera is actually pretty good overall. A lot of times the more futuristic sets don't age well but the work done for the sets here still looks fairly futuristic twenty-five years on. Many of the locations in Seville also look pretty good and do allow the show to get out of it's British focus for a while. The costumes for the Sontarans, though are just awful. For one thing the Sontarans are too tall and slender -- they were established a long time ago and rather short and squat -- powerfully built warriors -- here they just look like lanky, potato heads. As if that were not bad enough, the masks were ill-fitting and therefore muffle the actors' voices so they sound like they're talking through dish towels and on close-ups it is clearly visible that the mouths do not move on the masks and you can see the actors' lips moving behind the masks. Even by Doctor Who standards this is poor. Also, pity Nicola Bryant who is stuffed into more revealing clothes than usual, not to mention the fact that they are VERY 1980's and not in a good way, and has to run around on uneven ground in high heels... again. In the commentary Bryant also explains that the shimmery top she was wearing initially had no lining in it and under the hot Spanish sun it conducted heat like aluminum foil and burned her skin. And the less said about Dastari's Elton john-influenced glasses the better.

On the acting front... well, despite the poor script, Troughton and Hines do a bang-up job with what they have. The bickering aside, J N-T was right in that the rapport and real-life friendship between the two actors just comes through the characters beautifully and one might be fooled into thinking that virtually no time at all had passed since they last worked together.

The actor playing Shockeye is a bit too over-the-top to ever really take seriously. He's supposed to be menacing and creepy but instead he seems laughable and silly. Chessene, played by Jacqueline Pierce, is far better. She projects a perfectly haughty character and she pitches Chessene's ambitions well also. Pierce's casting, however, was something of a "stunt", however, as Pierce was well known to British sci-fi fans for playing the villainous Servalan in the series Blake's 7. Many cannot help but compare the two roles and so her Chessene often comes across as lacking to those who have seen both. Dastari is little more than a cypher and the actor emotes about as much as cricket and does little to try to add anything to the character.

As for Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as the Doctor and Peri... eh... They're very 'meh' here. Baker and Bryant have turned in worse performances but the script doesn't do them any favors and the bickering has, by this point, gotten rather old.

"The Two Doctors" is interesting in that it is one of only a handful of stories where the Doctor met up with other incarnations of himself, it would also be the last multi-Doctor story to air on TV and it was also, sadly, the last Doctor Who Patrick Troughton did. Troughton had wanted to come back and do another story -- only this time he wanted to do the story secretly -- appearing under mask or heavy make-up as an alien but he passed away of a fatal heart attack in 1987 before he had the chance to return.

There is little here to recommend the story but it stands up to at least one viewing out of either curiosity's sake or nostalgia for the Troughton - Hines era. There are a few scenes which work well and showcase all of the talents involved and once you figure those out you can pretty much just view "The Two Doctors" for the "greatest hits" portion of the story. If, however, you choose to skip it you won't be missing much.

Trivia: WARNING: Curse word used in the following trivia note. Turn away if it bothers you...


In the second episode a little over 18 minutes into the episode after the Doctor insults Peri you can clearly see Nicola Bryant mouth the word "asshole" at the Doctor.

Grab Bag Reviews: "The Ice Warriors"

And now we have yet another audio story. Unlike "The Daleks Master Plan" where most of the story is missing, "The Ice Warriors" is only missing two episodes out of six. In the 1990's the story was released on VHS with shortened reconstructions in place of the missing episodes. In the 2000's though the BBC chose to release the story to audio rather than DVD... so far (there have been rumors that the BBC may be going to try replacing the missing the installments with animation but only time will tell). Also as with "Master Plan" "The Ice Warriors" uses descriptive narration to fill in the action which is not visible. In this case, though, the narration is provided by actor Fraser Hines, who played companion Jamie McCrimmon.

There was never much trouble or controversy with this story. By and large the time of Patrick Troughton's run as the Doctor went fairly smoothly. The casts and crews meshed well and in interviews most usually speak highly of Troughton's professionalism which was tempered with a sense of humor and a genuine liking for his co-workers. "The Ice Warriors" fell pretty much bang in the middle of Troughton's second season with the show and so everyone was settled and working together like a well-oiled machine.

The Martian Ice Warriors themselves were, as with the Cybermen, introduced in hopes of creating alien baddies with as much popularity as the Daleks. The producer at that time was eager to get past using the Daleks since creator Terry Nation had been guarded of their use as he was trying to convince American TV and/or film to pick up the rights for a Dalek based TV show or movie. The Warriors actually did become minor fan favorites. They would be used in one other Second Doctor story and would appear in a Third Doctor story before being retired. They got a bit of a mention in the Tenth Doctor special "The Waters of Mars" but so far they have not reappeared although fans of the older series continually hold out hope...

The Plot: In the distant future the Earth has fallen prey to a new ice age. The world's governments have come up with a plan to destroy the advancing glaciers by hitting them with a device, powerful enough to melt rock, called an ionizer. The Doctor and his companions Jamie and Victoria arrive at the Brittanicus Base in time for the Doctor to prevent an accident with the ionizer. They are also in time to witness the arrival of a strange, prehistoric figure found in the ice.

When the ice melts, however, the figure proves to be an alien who crashed on Earth millenia ago. Now reawakened he intends to thaw out his shipmates and conquer the planet!

The humans of the base are caught in a squeeze between the implacable Ice Warriors and the crushing, advancing glacier. The Doctor will need to use all of his cunning and cleverness to prevent wholesale destruction.

My Take: Yet another variation on the 'base under siege' motif. And while the writer ended up going the wrong way on the results of environmental catastrophe (global warming instead of the global cooling here) it is yet another sign of the topicality which had been creeping into the show for years. There is also elements of that good, old, stalwart Doctor Who theme of humanity vs. computers.

In point of fact, there's actually quite a lot going on here; the Ice Warriors are villainous villains not least because they are repeatedly offered peaceful solution but their stubborn mistrust and devotion to conquest ultimately doom them. Then there are the issues of naivete.

The scavenger, Storr, believes the enemies of his enemies will be his friends. He learns to his detriment that this is not the case. His naive view of the situation is a lesson to always consider all the facts instead of just one.

Of course Storr also fills a role in one of two extreme viewpoints presented throughout the story. Storr represents the "natural man" -- a hunter-gatherer with no use for science. Opposite him on the scale is Clent and the members of the the base -- men and women who have given up their own free thinking to computers. People who believe is science above their own ability to reason. Standing in the middle is Penley, who represents the blending of the two -- a man who knows how to use science as a tool without turning it into a god. The Doctor, as agent of change, tries to help Penley's model become the dominant one but at the same time he does not tell the people what to do -- the ultimate decision must be their own.

All of these themes and ideas are fun to explore, even now, over 40 years later. The problem is that they're presented in such a heavy-handed way it is a little hard not to giggle at the obviousness of it all. Of course, it must be remembered that at this time Doctor Who still thought of itself as "children's programming". And despite the diversity of themes running throughout they all manage to fit together well and nothing feels necessarily packed in or tacked on at the edges.

The Ice Warriors are, as I mentioned before, lovely villains. More than just their attitude, the decision to give them hissing, whispery voices adds to their menace and makes them work well in the audio format when you cannot see their lumbering, reptilian bulk. That reptilian nature, though, was wonderfully realized by the special effects team considering the limitations of the time. Their obvious intelligence and cunning teamed with their intimidating appearance and sinister voices make for truly impressive alien villains.

The guest cast does a nice job as well with the arrogant and superior Clent being one of those kind of "annoying allies" which tend to show up in Doctor Who while Penley comes off as actually good-natured at heart and there is just a tiny little hint of romance between himself and base technician Miss Garrett which humanizes both of them and keeps them from being such stock characters.

The real star here, though, is Patrick Troughton's Doctor. There are a wealth of great lines of dialogue all delivered with Troughton's usual panache. His insults ring with humor and a dash of snark, his moments of determination come across strongly and of course, as always, there are those moments where he walks right into the enemy's teeth without fear and gives them a chance to surrender. Once they ignore that offer all bets are off the table.

Fraser Hines's Jamie is also full of humor but his character lacks some of the good lines and good moments he has in other stories. There are a few moments, though, where he gets in a few digs at the Doctor and one endearing bit where he flirts shamelessly with Victoria.

And that brings us to Victoria. Ugh. This is NOT her shining hour. Deborah Watling would eventually leave the series feeling that she had done all that she would be allowed to do with the character and, like many women before her, tired of scripts where all she was allowed to do was scream and be helpless. While there is some small justification for the characterization considering that Victoria was supposed to be just that -- a sheltered, wealthy girl from the Victorian era -- she is at her worst here. Victoria does little except get captured, escape and get recaptured and to scream annoyingly. The. Entire. Time. It reaches the point where you would like to slap the character and tell her to knock it off she's being an embarrassment to women. It gets so bothersome that it actually ruins some scenes.

Victoria aside, the story as a whole is wonderfully entertaining and, as with "The Daleks Master Plan" one finds that visuals are not necessarily needed as imagination paints the scenes. The story really works even in it's audio format and there are still some lessons to be taken away from the whole affair. And even if all of that were not true this is Patrick Troughton at some of the top of his came -- whimsical, mercurial, and magical.

Grab Bag Reviews: "The Mind Robber"

Okay, a couple of things right out of the gate.

First, yes, there was a time when Doctor Who was rather unabashedly geared towards kids. Over time this changed and the show became much more 'family viewing' but there was a time when it was very obviously playing towards kids. This doesn't mean that the stories were not good, just that they were a bit different than the fare viewers get today... or in the 1970's and later as well.

Second, I love Patrick Troughton, the 2nd Doctor. Even the stories he did that were crap were great simply because he was playing the Doctor. Troughton. Is. Awesome. That is all that needs to be said. So there's my bias on the table.

Now for one of my FAVORITE Doctor Who stories.... "The Mind Robber".

The Plot: While trying to escape the lava flow from an erupting volcano (picking up from the previous story, "The Dominators") the TARDIS malfunctions and the Doctor is forced to take drastic measures -- moving the TARDIS out of space and time entirely! While trying to make repairs the entire crew comes under the influence of a powerful mind. Companions Jamie and Zoe are lured out of the TARDIS and the Doctor comes under psychic attack. The Doctor manages to get his companions back but when he tries to return the TARDIS to normal space-time mysterious forces pull it apart!

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe awaken separated in a strange wood. Jamie and Zoe fall into traps and the Doctor soon begins meeting with some of the strange denizens of this world. Wherever they are the usual laws of physics seems not to apply and the Doctor soon discovers that imagination and words seem to hold all the power here.

After rescuing his companions, the little group sets out and begins encountering strange, wind-up, toy soldier robots and characters from myth and story come to life. The Doctor soon realizes that they are trapped in a land of fiction and their only sure defense to to keep telling themselves that the things they encounter are not real.

The TARDIS team eventually makes their way to the "master" of this land and discover the sinister plot behind it all -- a computer brain creates the world but it needs imagination to give it the shapes of things to create! Having taken a writer from Earth decades ago the man is growing tired and now wants the Doctor to take his place since the Doctor is much longer lived. The Doctor refuses to become a slave to the machine but there are consequences as Jamie and Zoe are absorbed and become nothing more than fictional characters! Can the Doctor find a way out of this and save his companions or are they all destined to become a writer's toys?

My Take: It has long been argued among fans that Doctor Who is more Science-Fantasy than Science Fiction and this is pretty true -- certainly some eras more so than others -- but "The Mind Robber" is very, VERY firmly in the Sci-Fa rather than Sci-Fi camp. Despite this (or maybe because of it) what viewers get is a delightful, creative, imaginative and unique adventure story. It also created a story that was able to be delightfully stretched when the production ran into trouble.

You see, quite a bit of Patrick Troughton's era was rife with problems. Scripts were continually late and this, in turn, caused rushed productions and sudden shifting of story order. As a result, "The Mind Robber" had very little wiggle room -- it had to be filmed quickly and there were no other scripts ready which could be put in it's place if something went wrong. And something went wrong.... 23 year old Fraser Hines, who played Jamie, and one of his brothers, were renting a house together in London and decided to play host to their nephews over a weekend. What no one knew was that the nephews were contagious with Chicken Pox. Hines showed up on Monday for filming and soon broke out and was ordered home to quarantine. Since Jamie was in too many scenes to film around Hines's absence the only solution was to temporarily recast Jamie. A young, Scottish actor was found for the part and a clever bit of writing created a scene in the script in which the Doctor has to reconstruct Jamie's face and gets it wrong and then later has to reconstruct it again and gets it right as Hines was well enough to rejoin the production.

While all of this was a 'work around' for an ill cast member it ends up adding a delightful bit of fun to the overall story. It highlights and brings home the idea that this is a world where anything can and will possibly happen.

The cleverness of the script is also shown in much of the imaginativeness of the writing. For example, the character of Gulliver from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels speaks only lines from that story. Rapunzel turns out to be quite used to people using her hair as a rope all the time and we are even introduced to a comic strip superhero from the future. A 'forest' turns out to be made of giant letters instead of trees and the letters all spell out common sayings, wind-up toy soldiers chase our heroes throughout the story, and Jamie and Zoe are pressed inside a giant book like flowers and become "fictional" characters. This is another part of the charm of the story; watching as an adult you become aware of the irony of the fact that the Doctor and his companions are already fictional characters.

For the most part all the performances are also just delightful. Of the supporting cast the "Master" writer is a bit too plummy at at times and his attempts to use a different voice when speaking as the computer brain don't always come off well but the script does a good job at keeping his true nature hidden until the very end. Also, throughout the story the viewer is led to think of him as the villain of the piece only for it to be revealed that he is not the bad guy we have thought him.

Bernard Horsefall would go on to guest star several times in Doctor Who but he makes a lovely Gulliver here. His voice and delivery of the lines made me wish there was an audio book of him reading Gulliver's Travels. He delivers the old-fashioned language without flourish or embellishment -- making it seem downright conversational.

Of the main cast, there are a few moments where Fraser Hines overacts a bit and Wendy Padbury's screams are sometimes over the top and are also done for no good reason at times. Aside from that, though, Hines makes Jamie charming, brave, and exasperated by turns and Padbury's Zoe presents viewers with the prototype of the modern, female companion -- intelligent, quick-witted and actually a bit tough. It must be said, though, that Zoe's fight with the superhero Karkus looks a bit bad on-screen. In the cast commentary Padbury explains that there was very little time to rehearse the fight, she had never done a fight scene before and there was no time to re-shoot the scene to cover some of the worse gaffes.

Troughton is also his usual, solid self here. His Doctor is a mercurial sort -- going from defiant to befuddled, to fearful in split seconds. There is also a slightly chilling moment as the Doctor refuses to take the writer's place -- not even to save his companions. We see, in a later scene, that the knowledge that his companions are lost to him pains him deeply but he refuses to give in even for them. The battle of imagination between the Doctor and the writer is also fun as famous characters from myth and legend appear and disappear to battle at the very thoughts of these two determined people. There are also some great lines of dialog as the Doctor baits and insults his opponent.

With an extremely inventive script, witty dialogue, nice acting performances all around, "The Mind Robber" is Doctor Who at it's best. The story shows just how malleable the format could be -- stretching the bounds of the series to date. Sure, some of the story seems a bit simplified and appealing to kids and some of the special effects don't hold up as well but the sequence of the TARDIS breaking up is still shocking today and provides one hell of a cliffhanger for the first episode and there are moments taken very seriously -- like where we see the Doctor seemingly defeated and out of options. Overall, while I wouldn't necessarily want a steady diet of stories like "The Mind Robber" as it stands it is a breath of fresh air, a view askew of the Doctor's world, and a look at what the show could potentially pull off.

Fans of Steven Moffat's current run on the show should definitely check this one out -- I think they'll find a lot in common.

Grab Bag Reviews: "The Five Doctors"

The thing about the "grab bag" review format is that it does produce some weird results. I've reviewed one First Doctor story and one Fourth Doctor story and suddenly I've got to review a special, anniversary episode from 1983!



Oh well, I obey the rules of the "bag" and so.....

THE FIVE DOCTORS

I have to say that this story had such a long, involved incubation that I could actually write a Master's Thesis length document just on what went wrong (and right) about the genesis of the episode. I will, however, spare whoever is reading this that and try to keep things simple while still giving some idea of the scope involved.

A little background: 1973 marked the 10th anniversary of Doctor Who and the event was commemorated then by gathering the (then) three actors who had played the Doctor into an adventure called "The Three Doctors". The story seemed to "have it all" -- Time Lords, three incarnations of the Doctor, and even a Time Lord villain.... who was NOT the Master.

Even before 1983 rolled around, producer Jonathan Nathan-Turner was planning for the show's 20th anniversary and he wanted it to be bigger and better than the previous one. To that end he set about securing a script writer and lining up casts. He wanted to get every single surviving actor who had played the Doctor (William Hartnell, the First Doctor, having passed away in 1975) and several of the more popular companions who had been associated with the various Doctors.

Almost immediately there were problems. The original writer was having trouble with the story and eventually bowed out. He was replaced by show staple writer Terrance Dicks. Also, a great many of the original proposed cast members ended up either being unable to participate or else were forced to bow out before filming. Almost fatally, there was, apparently, a miscommunication between Nathan-Turner and actor Tom Baker in which Nathan-Turner believed that Baker was a lock for reprising his role as the Fourth Doctor while Baker has claimed that he had initially responded that he wanted time to think it over and eventually decided to opt out. Baker had, after all, only left the role about three years earlier and in those intervening years had found himself typecast.

With the Fourth Doctor out this put a strain on the script. One of the original ideas for the script was that the main villains would be the Cybermen and that they would create an android duplicate of the First Doctor and his granddaughter Susan and this would explain away the changed appearance as they hired a different actor to play Hartnell's role. They also felt that since this First Doctor would, in essence, be an impostor, it would still honor the memory of Hartnell by NOT actually recasting the role. With the Fourth Doctor out, however, the story was now shaping up to be more like "The Three Doctors and the Android Impostor Doctor". Nathan-Turner had discussed matters with Hartnell's widow and, to his surprise and delight, she actually gave permission for him to go ahead and recast the role. As such actor Richard Hurnall was approached to play the First Doctor. As for Tom Baker's part Nathan-Turner was still set on having all five Doctors appear in the story and as such he used a few clips from the unfinished and unaired Fourth Doctor story "Shada" to represent the Fourth Doctor in the story.

Finally, there was the matter of scheduling. With the way Doctor Who seasons were running at that time the previous series ended in March of 1983 with Fifth Doctor Peter Davison filming a sitcom during the off season before coming back to Doctor Who. In order to fit everything in Nathan-Turner received permission to film "The Five Doctors" as a movie-length episode and push back the start of the next season to fit it in. As a final flourish, he decided to have the movie debut during the BBC's annual telethon "Children in Need" -- a telethon to raise money for various children's services and charities.

As time approached for the story to air the episode was heavily advertised. Nathan-Turner planned a series of publicity photographs for the story and wanted all of the Doctors to appear in them. Tom Baker's refusal to participate left something of a noticeable gap so, rather infamously, Nathan-Turner arranged to borrow Baker's wax figure from Madame Tussuad's wax museum in London and the rest of the cast members posed with this.

Five years after the story originally aired the decision was made to "remaster" the story, adding some cut scenes and "improving" some of the special effects. Some fans, however, were not pleased with the "improvements" and as a result a special edition of the DVD was eventually produced which contained BOTH the original 1983 transmission as well as the longer, and improved later version. This review will actually consider both versions.

MY TAKE:

Well. There is something to be said for the fact that, until the abysmal "Dimensions in Time" special in the 1990's (I'll get to that one later) this was the last multi-Doctor story featuring as many of the Doctors as possible. With the passage of time Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee have joined William Hartnell in the Great Beyond and Tom Baker, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy no longer look so well, nor is their health always so great. I'm NOT saying they're going to pop off the mortal coil anytime soon, I'm just saying they aren't the Doctors they were. There was "Time Crash" but that's another thing I'll get around to later. Let's just leave it at "The Five Doctors" was pretty much the Last Great Multi-Doctor Story.

It does indeed seem to have everything fans could want -- iconic companions like Susan, Sarah Jane, Jamie, Zoe, K-9 and the Brigadier, iconic enemies like the Master, Daleks, Cybermen, and Yeti, and iconic places like Gallifrey and it's culture and history. The story is drenched in nostalgia both old and new -- everything from the Second Doctor's fur coat to the Third Doctor's yellow roadster Bessie, to the Doctor's friend and mentor Borusa -- not seen too long before. Upon the first airing in November 1983 it must have been like a fans' early Christmas and even for subsequent generations there is a magic in the first viewing -- it feels like everything fans love about Doctor Who.

Unfortunately, subsequent viewings over time seem to rub the shine off. Once one gets past all the bright, shiny, fan-y stuff it is too easy to start seeing all the plot holes left in a script that was sadly written and re-written. Things such as the First Doctor referring to his age and implying he is old when he is, in fact, the youngest of them and the Fifth Doctor being called a "young man" by his other selves when they know good and well that he's older than each of them. There is also the fact that we know the Doctors are being taken out of their relative places in the timeline yet the Third Doctor greets the Brigadier as if he hadn't seen him in a long time. This makes no sense since, by the Third Doctor's timeline he had probably seen the Brig not that long ago. And I could go on... but that would get nitpicky. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of things that don't add up. And then the [fill in the blank] of Rassilon gets a little laughable after a while... Black Scrolls of Rassilon, Coronet of Rassilon, Harp of Rassilon for goodness sake! It's all a bit too much.

Also, after "The Deadly Assassin" the show increasingly went to Gallifrey so what was once a mysterious and seemingly cold, hidebound society became something more familiar... and govenmentally bureaucratic. With "The Five Doctors" it feels almost as if all the alienness has been worn off of Time Lord society and the whole thing bears the stamp of modern, human politics.

As for the rest of the story -- most of the performances are delightful. Carol Ann Ford (Susan) is not given very much to do, really, but in her cries of "Grandfather!" viewers can hear the young Time Lady she once was. Although throwing in her twisting her ankle JUST to have her do a ankle twisting scene as a tribute to the past is eye-rollingly bad. Likewise, Mark Strickson, who played the Fifth Doctor's companion Vislor Turlough, gets sidelined throughout most of the story and given some of the most inane and pointless lines of dialog. This is doubly sad since his character had only recently polished off a big character arc. Janet Fielding as Tegan manages to hold her own, Elizabeth Sladen recaptures the different relationship she had with Jon Pertwee's Doctor and it works well and warmly, and Nicholas Courtney is a Brigadier-y as he ever was.

In regards to the Doctors... Richard Hurndall turns in a decent performance but he is simply not William Hartnell and seeing him just seems like a poor copy of the original... something that is a disservice to both Hurndall AND Hartnell. Peter Davison holds his own amongst such a famous and talented bunch of actors and really projects a sense of his version of the Doctor as the 'peacemaker', trying to keep the more fractious among his past selves from starting fires. Too bad he never gets to interact that much with the other Doctors -- it would have been delightful to see him get to do whole scenes with Pertwee and Troughton as he does with Hurndall. Troughton... Troughton just slips back into being the Doctor with the same ease as he slips into the fur coat. He bickers humorously with the Brigadier and with a genuine warmth and ease and yet there is also the dark side to him. It is Troughton's Doctor who admits that Rassilon may not have been the lauded hero Time Lord history has made him out to be... and he implies that he seems inclined to believe these darker tales. Jon Pertwee is ever the man of action and it is fun seeing him face off against the Master... even is it isn't the version of the Master he once knew.

The story also falls down a bit on the villain. It is supposed to be a shocking twist to fans but really it feels more like a sudden and inexplicable heel turn for the character. There is also the fact that viewers are being so obviously led to think this might be the Master that it does the opposite... viewers know it CAN'T be the Master because it's so obvious.

There is also the sequence where the Cybermen are decimated by the Raston Warrior Robot. Okay, so the robot costume hasn't aged well -- it looks like what it is -- a dancer in a silver bodysuit with a zipper up the back. But the robot itself is still a really good idea and the scenes of it slicing through the Cybermen like a hot knife through butter are chilling. It's made even more chilling by the rather graphic violence of it. Cybermen get arms snapped off, heads lopped off, chests blown open... one even actually looks like he vomits before expiring... it's all a bit terribly disturbing even today.

For the story itself, it must really be viewed on two levels. One level, as a fan in which critical thinking flies out the window. The performances are spot-on and it is a delight to see the past Doctors having a romp again. It also puts a smile on your face to see and hear some old familiar favorites such as Bessie and "You've redecorated.... I don't like it." The other level, as a logical, more critical viewer in which it must be admitted that the story is thin and filled with more plot holes than a piece of swiss cheese and in which several characters which deserve to be treated better basically get benched.

I did say as well that I was going to look at BOTH versions... Well, all things considered, the later version doesn't differ all that much from the original transmission. The extended scenes really don't add all that much to the story and, in most cases, the improved special effects are not so great. In the 1983 version each Doctor and companion are pursued by a black, trapezoidal shape and, when captured, their faces appear inside the trapezoid, frozen in expressions of fear and/or panic. It is actually a scary moment because, not only do we not know what is going on, it looks as though the act of taking the Doctors and their friends might actually be painful to them... this is hurting them. The later version replaced these black trapezoids with swirling, spiral cone shapes in which the images can vaguely be seen inside but not with any degree of clarity. On the one hand, they look better but on the other hand they do not convey the menace of the original.

Likewise, the original ending in which all the Doctors and their respective companions seem to enter the same TARDIS to go home only to see TARDISes split off and fly away was sweet even if the special effects for it look a little clunky today. Having the spiral cones take them all back home in the remastered edition does not seem to have the same charm.

The DVD is also absolutely packed with extras. The also interestingly split up the commentary tracks with the actors who played the companions providing an often irreverent commentary on the 1983 edition while Peter Davison and script writer Terrance Dicks provide a more technical commentary on the remastered version. There is also a lovely, lovely Easter Egg (and no, I can't tell you how to find it) of Tenth Doctor David Tennant, new series producer Phil Collinson and

new series script writer Helen Raynor providing commentary on the episode from the viewpoint of having been fans and actually watched the story when it first aired. There are also the other goody bag extras like outtakes, bloopers, a documentary on how the story came about (really interesting stuff there), publicity interviews and much more.

Overall, if you're a real fan then the 25th Anniversary Edition of "The Five Doctors" is a must have. Just make sure you turn off the critical and logical portions of your brain before you sit down to watch it. Put yourself in fan mode and enjoy the ride as this would be the last time we would see some of these actors working together as their wise, weird, and wonderful versions of the Doctor.