30 Discs Hath November #7: Time In Office disc two

Doctor Who (Main Range) #230

Time in Office episodes 3 & 4

written by Eddie Robson

History Repeating

And we start off with yet more agency and fun for Tegan. The basic set-up of this episode is that the Doctor is making a speech at Pyrdon Academy about some reforms he wants to make and a bored Tegan accepts an offer of a drink from another Time Lord, one who intends to steal a TARDIS in imitation of the Doctor and take (kidnap) her as his companion. As with the last episode it puts Tegan in a position of knowledge for a change, the experienced traveler to the naive young Time Lord who doesn't know what he's getting in to.

The Doctor, meanwhile, contends with the lightest plot of the set so far as he's confronted by a rather incompetent student revolutionary who, it turns out, has a list of grievances the Doctor was going to tackle in his speech anyway.

Its the least biting bit of satire Time In Office has to give, especially after the last episode was all about the sins of the past and colonialism, but by Doctor Who third episode standards its far from the depths of filler that have been served up in the past even from Big Finish.

There is also a part of me that loves the idea of Tegan going on a date with a Time Lord and maybe even starting off a casual thing with them. Maybe I'm hoping too much of this sudden turn towards agency for the character but I hope that some of what Robson has been writing for the character gets built on down the line.

Architect of Destruction

In all seriousness, Eddie Robson needs to write more Tegan stories, he has such a fantastic grasp of what makes her a great character. Her desire to take no crap from anyone, even a race of immortal time travelers millions of years more advanced than her, is the sort of trait that should have made her one of the most influential companions in the classic series. As it is she was written off as unsympathetic and we didn't get a companion with as much character or agency until Ace.

On a larger scale Eddie Robson has a wonderful twist on the conspiracy that anyone listening to this would have known was going to end the story even before the end of episode reveal in the previous episode. There are also some fantastic “visuals” described as the Doctor and company tour the new Capitol. I particularly liked the idea of statues whose faces change to represent all the incarnations of the famous Time Lords they depict.

Davison continues to enjoy the chance to get up to comedy antics and I hope Big Finish take this as an indication that they can do more with the character from here on out than light exasperation. I also hope it puts to bed forever the fan myth that, to misapply a quote from Jim Cornette, “funny don't make money”, a myth that has been with the series ever since fandom hailed the departure of Douglas freakin' Adams as the best thing to ever happen to the show.

No, seriously, that happened and whilst this story was nowhere near a Douglas Adams in quality it does show that BFP can afford to have a little more fun with the license. 

30 Discs Hath November #6: Time In Office disc one

Doctor Who (Main Range) #230

Time in Office episodes 1 & 2

written by Eddie Robson

Its the annual Big Finish short story collection and this time its a comedy with the Fifth Doctor taking up the role of Lord President Of Gallifrey. Its a comedy, thank goodness, because I'm the sort of fan who finds Gallifrey painfully dull unless its either not the main focus of the story (The Three Doctors, Heaven Sent) or a vehicle for Romana and Leela to kick ass. Giving Davison, a brilliantly funny actor, a chance to stretch his comedy chops in this po-faced setting with Tegan and Leela on hand to puncture any remaining pomposity seems like as good an idea as any.

So, on to the episodes:

Period of Adjustment

The lack of Leela in The Five Doctors is something of a longstanding grudge. Apparently Louise Jameson made it known she was available for the filming but JNT decided there was no way to include her, which just goes to show either the man's lack of imagination or the weight of his inferiority complex about Philip Hinchcliffe. Finally, though the accounts are being balanced as Eddie Robson uses old friend and longtime Gallifrey resident Leela as the bridge between the Fifth Doctor and Gallifrey's bureaucracy.

For those concerned: Andred is away from the capital with the Chancellery Guard moping up the mess in the Death Zone, you can listen to this without fear of encountering the wettest man on Gallifrey. Let's face it, the romance of Leela's departure only works when you don't think too hard (or at all) about the fact she chose to stay with Andred and not the Outsiders or Rodan.

Anyway, the first episode is mostly what you'd expect: a couple members of the High Council trying to get a square peg Doctor into the round hole of the presidency and a secret Time Lord agency trying to stop him making any reforms whatsoever who he has to outsmart. More innovative and satirical is a subplot where Tegan is refused residency on Gallifrey because she's been involved in toppling alien governments, a plot point that considering the Doctor is President comes off as subtle as a brick. Sadly, Leela's suggestion that Tegan marry the Doctor to gain residency isn't pursued even though it clearly has so much more comedy potential than just the Doctor's muted horror at the idea.

There's also a rather nice framing device of a Gallifreyan political debate show, which is such a charming idea and never more so than when the host declares he has nothing against women because he used to be one a couple of regenerations ago.

Past Indiscretions

I adore Tegan Jovanka but even these days its rare for the character to get the sort of agency she deserves. She is brash, headstrong, stubborn, determined and almost always, always wrong. This episode, by contrast, has her do the heavy lifting on defusing a diplomatic situation whilst the Doctor, Leela and their babysitter/bodyguard Castellan Lowry are trapped in a very uncomfortable situation.

The Doctor and company are representing Gallifrey at a war memorial ceremony but it turns out that back in the day the Doctor and Leela killed the alien ambassador's brother when the guy was trying to conquer feudal Japan. Sadly, they couldn't stretch the budget to getting Tom Baker in for the flashbacks but its a fine story of consequences, again something we tend to give presidents and the like a pass on.

Aside from some fantastic comedy moments of running away (such as Leela speculating on weaponising a ride-on lawnmower) the best bit of this story of Tegan Jovanka 007. From impersonating a god to questioning the logic of her plausible deniability where it comes to “stealing” a TARDIS, Fielding is fantastic. There's also a wonderful moment where, having read the briefing pack, she gets to talk over the Doctor during the big infodump which sounds like a moment of profound catharsis for both actress and character.

Castellan Lowry, meanwhile, slowly reveals hidden depths as she vents her frustration about her charges and confesses to not liking time travel for some reason. I'm looking forward to seeing how that resolves but that'll have to wait for tomorrow as its almost time to post this and, given the story's format, I can do this in two parts. 

The Grand Redemption of the Davison era

On reflection, there isn't a lot of the Davison era I'd actually recommend. Its a hard thing to admit because Davison himself is one of my favourite Doctors and he can wrestle anything into watchability, at least. There are so many great moments but as to whole stories I would recommend without having to attach a few caveats when I hand over the DVD?

Caves of Androzani, maybe? Even then I'd absolutely say “Please never watch the story that pays off the final episode cliffhanger” because domestic abuse apologism. Everything else just has too much riding against it, even the usually safe stone cold classics of that era. Enlightenment and Snakedance are hands down some of the best stories the classic series ever managed but one caps off an otherwise crap trilogy and the other is less of a sequel to Kinda and more of a second chance to pay off all the lofty intentions that never quite landed the first time.

The other day someone on a Big Finish Facebook group asked whether The Waters of Amsterdam was worth a listen. I was one of a bunch of commenters chipping in to say yes and in the process I called it one of Big Finish's “Do it again but better” stories.

And then I realised that has been one of Big Finish's chief strategies with Davison.

Its no secret that Big Finish has done some rehab on every Doctor they've worked with. They broke down the Sixth Doctor and reassembled him into something sympathetic; they took the Seventh Doctor further down the manipulative road than the TV show ever could; they had to build the Eighth Doctor practically from the ground up; and, whilst Tom Baker's better working relationship with those around him is his own doing, providing a late-Fourth Doctor era where star and co-stars aren't actively at war with each other is a pretty significant shift.

With Davison, again and again, Big Finish have returned to ideas and even specific stories, tapped their conductor's baton on the edge of the lectern and said “Once more, with feeling.”

The Waters of Amsterdam as an example. The story takes place directly after Arc of Infinity, a story partly set and filmed in Amsterdam that did relatively little with the setting aside from a fairly generic “tourist gets kidnapped and concerned cousin (Tegan) investigates” plot. Otherwise it was a pretty bland story about a poorly explained Omega doing something with an almost unexplained space phenomena to return to our universe and somehow the Time Lords are getting shirty about it because reasons.

The Waters of Amsterdam, by contrast, is a story set in both “present day” (read: 1983) Amsterdam and the Dutch Golden Age where the Doctor wants to talk to Rembrandt about some painting that have actual spaceships in them. It also features a character from the present who is Tegan's ex-boyfriend, establishing a relationship and a life for the character between her being left behind at the end of Time-Flight and her re-introduction in Arc. Jonathan Morris writes a story that actually uses the characters to craft a story, which you'd think an era obsessed with soap opera would have done more often.

And Waters isn't alone in this. Spare Parts gives Davison another Cybermen story with all the emotional gut punches Earthshock tried to deliver but failed because Eric Saward could only kill off the least popular character on the show; Psychodrome is a whole story set just after Davison's debut that hinges on the fact that no one on the TARDIS knows anyone else all that well; The Five Companions is presented as a missing scene from The Five Doctors that is all about using a reunion of First Doctor companions to comment on the 1960s era and even to dispell a few myths about how those characters were (there's a fantastic scene in which Davison assures Polly she was never, ever just there to make the coffee); Kiss of Death is a story that explores Turlough's past on the losing side of a war which literally never came up outside his debut and his final story; and, The Gathering actually follows up on Tegan's emotional and abrupt exit from the series.

That's not even a complete list, just a few examples I picked out scrolling through the Big Finish website. There's more to their Fifth Doctor offerings than just reheating old plots and doing them better, of course, but I do take it as “part of the service” that they've polished off the hidden (and sometimes willfully squandered) potential of that era to show what could have been done with just a little more thought.

Oh, and The Church and the Crown is probably the best comedy historical the series has ever done. 

The Grand Redemption of Peter Davison

There was a time when this was considered high drama.
That time was in the producer's office, not on transmission.

(SPOILER WARNING for Doctor Who: The Fifth Doctor Box Set: Psychodrome and, I suppose, Earthshock).

Last night I listened to Psychodrome, the first story in Big Finish's The Fifth Doctor Box Set, and it really drove home how much Big Finish and others have done to actively rehabilitate the Fifth Doctor era.

In a way this has happened with every Doctor Big Finish has worked with. Their Sixth Doctor is less abrasive to his companions than he was on TV whilst still retaining his hard edge; with the Seventh Doctor stories push the boat out on his scheming and questionable morals; their Eighth Doctor has darkened to flatter Paul McGann's talents; and their Fourth Doctor series benefits greatly from a less arrogant Tom Baker who doesn't feel the need to steal every scene.

A lot of that is character, though, whereas with Peter Davison I feel what's being rehabilitated is the whole era.

Take Psychodrome: the elevator pitch on this one was to create a new second story for Peter Davison. The story is set right after Castrovalva and a lot of it is about the four regulars and their impressions of each other after having been together a very short time. As Tegan points the two stories she features in before this point take place over less than two days and she hasn't had a moment to stop and mourn the death of her Aunt Vanessa. Nyssa's whole world was destroyed and the Master is walking around in her father's corpse. Adric has seen “his” Doctor die shortly after Romana left them and the TARDIS is no longer the same environment he “signed up” to travel in.

None of this was dealt with on-screen. These four characters skipped from Castrovalva Part Four to Four To Doomsday Part One with little continuity. Nyssa does have another encounter with the Master in Time-Flight with no mention is made of the whole “Dad's corpse” business and Tegan meets several members of her family over the years with no mention of poor Aunt Vanessa's fate.

This is the era, lest we forget, that sold itself on its “soap opera” elements and continuity yet never really invested in a sense of character. The season this story is set in ostensibly has one “focus” story for each companion but they aren't focus stories as we understand them: Tegan's story sees her possessed by the villain; Nyssa's has Sarah Sutton playing another character more than she plays Nyssa; and Adric's story gives him little to do beyond die dumbly.

Psychodrome makes liberal use of elements from the stories it takes place between: the unreal environment of Castrovalva gets the added twist of being influenced by everyone's perceptions rather than being under the Master's control. The opening scenes are also reminiscent of the exploration phase of a Hartnell first episode that was used in Four To Doomsday and this is really my point:

With the other Doctors characters get reworked using modern techniques but for the Fifth Doctor stories from his era are actively re-written. One of the most acclaimed Fifth Doctor audios is Spare Parts, in fact it was (very, VERY) loosely adapted for television as Rise Of The Cybermen/Age Of Steel. Spare Parts used the same basic idea of Earthshock: a Cybermen story hugely bound into their on-screen history but instead of re-enacting old set pieces its a story about the history of the Cybermen, even going so far as to re-use the singsong Cyber-voice from The Tenth Planet.

Its not only Big Finish, either, one of my favourite Doctor Who novels is David A. McIntee's The Lords Of The Storm. This book is very much Warriors Of The Deep but done with Sontarans and done well. McIntee uses elements from every Sontaran story, including the fan made VHS story Shakedown, but does it with fidelity and also thinking about how the concept could be modernised. Like Warriors, Lords features a future society but McIntee gives it far more depth than the one from Warriors and uses it as more than a background for the monster story to happen against.

(The actual ultimate example of this pattern I would love to recommend but since the villain of the piece and therefore story it “replaces” is a huge revelation I really, really can't because the internet would hate me forever. It really is one of those twists fandom swears you to secrecy over. Its one of the Fifth Doctor Lost Stories, that's all I can say, and don't read the copyright blurb on the back cover).

Now, I love the Davison era but I have to admit it is one of Doctor Who's most flawed runs. It crackles with potential but that potential never truly breaks through. Turlough is a great idea for an untrustworthy companion but aside from Barbara Clegg and his creator Peter Grimwade everyone just writes him as a coward; killing a companion was a good dramatic idea but using it as an excuse to get rid of the unpopular one was cheap; the Black Guardian trilogy was a good idea but needed a middle story that actually said something relevant to the overarching plot; and why the hell does it matter that the robot prop doesn't work properly when the robot is a bloody shapeshifter?

So I'm grateful, is what I'm saying. The wasted potential of those three seasons is a huge bugbear of mine. You can point to just about every regular character and say they were wasted and that we can finally see how Turlough and Tegan and Nyssa and Peri would work if written well and directed patiently can only be a good thing.

And yes, if Psychodrome is anything to do by, there's hope for Adric yet.

Season 21 Marathon (2) The Awakening

written by Eric Pringle

directed by Michael Owen Morris

Continuity Announcement

Two episodes originally broadcast on BBC One on the 19th and 20th January 1984 featuring Peter Davison as the Doctor, Janet Fielding as Tegan and Mark Strickson as Turlough. Aside from that the story has no continuity with Doctor Who's past or future except for a passing reference to the Terileptils and their tinclavic mines on Raga from The Visitation (1982).

Boxing Clever

Doctor Who DVD box sets are an exercise in compensation. This was released in the almost theme-free box set Earth Story alongside the Gunfighters, the logic going something like this: neither story is a classic, one of them has a particularly poor reputation (The Gunfighters, undeservingly) so slap them together on some pretext and release them together, offering fans a nice discount on the pair. Earth Story is an extreme example but most of the themed box sets work like this.

Thoroughly Modern Who

I watched this DVD one evening straight after the new series episode The Bells Of Saint John and it struck me that, adjusting for the production values of the era, this story would sit pretty well in modern Doctor Who. The most obvious point of comparison is that an old two-parter, minus the credits and titles in the middle, runs to roughly 45 minutes. The comparisons to New Who goes rather deeper than that.

For a start the explanation behind the supernatural Malus is that it's an alien probe that crashed in the village in the 1640s whose purpose was to psychically stir up violence to soften up the population for invasion. The consequence of this was that the village was levelled in the Civil War and the probe somehow damaged so it stopped functioning until Sir George Hutchinson decides to re-enact the battle in 1984. For those playing along at home this is the stereotype Steven Moffat plot of “alien computer pursues its original programming causing dire unintended consequences”.

Our entry point into the story is that Tegan's grandfather lives in the village of Little Hodcombe and she wants to visit. This is, of course, an utterly typical plot device nowadays with whole episodes having been written about Rose's mum, Rory's dad and Martha's whole family amongst others. True, Andrew Verney's disappearance is a minor plot element in the story and is used pretty much just to provide an info-dump at the beginning of the second episode but by classic series standards this gives unusual depth to the life of a companion.

The emotional through-line of the story comes not from Tegan and her grandfather but from a supporting character: Colonel Ben Wolsey. Wolsey is basically a henchman for Sir George Hutchinson. He's played as a reasonable man in counterpoint to Sir George's increasing mania but, crucially, he continues to go along with the games. He voices muted protests now and again in the first episode but takes no action until Sir George orders Tegan burnt at the stake as Queen Of The May.

In the second episode he changes: admits his misgivings, joins the Doctor's side, frees Tegan and in the end takes responsibility for his complicity in the games and confronts Sir George. Crucially, it is this confrontation that puts Sir George in a position to be defeated. Again, we're looking at unusual levels of emotional content here, especially for a supporting character.

The final point of comparison is that there are continuity errors you don't notice because the story moves so fast as Turlough and Jane both comment on conversations they couldn't possibly have overheard (see also the disappearing pirate in The Curse Of The Black Spot).

Who on Earth is Vislor Turlough?

Okay, so next to all this praise for the writing I should mention the one point where the script (and script editing) falls down: Turlough. This is Turlough's seventh story and the first one to be set on contemporary Earth since his introduction in Mawdryn Undead. Turlough is an alien exiled to Earth from an unknown planet for unknown reasons and reacts not at all to being back on the world of his imprisonment, let alone that the agent who used to keep an eye on him might find him. In fact, in the final scene he joins in the chorus of wanting to stay in Little Hodcombe for a while.

It's a small failing in an otherwise very good script, speaking of which...

A Lady of a Certain Age (and a Young Man from Another One)

Mention should be made of two other supporting characters: Jane Hampden and Will Chandler. Jane is the local school teacher and Peter Davison's effective companion for much of the story. She's played as a sceptic in the first episode: she's the only opposition we see to Sir George's war games and she disbelieves the Doctor until she's confronted by the appearance of the Malus. Just as with Todd in Kinda we see how well Peter Davison plays off a more mature female character better than he does with the younger women usually playing his companions. There's an absolutely wonderful scene where the Doctor reaches for the TARDIS door control and Jane casually beats him to it with a smug smile.

The other character is less successful: Will Chander, a man transported forward in time by the Malus from 1643 (not quite sure why, I'll be honest). He's there for info-dump purposes and to resolve the Sir George plot but he and the Doctor have some scenes together. The character was apparently considered as a companion, which might have been interesting if not for the awful Mummerset accent the character is lumbered with as a concession to being from the past, one of the odder BBC tropes. There is also gurning, which is even less fortunate.

They are both well-realised characters who seem to have life beyond their plot functions. There isn't much room to explore that life but you do get a sense of it

Malus Aforethought

Okay, so the Malus itself is pretty poorly realised. It is very static: apart from moving forwards slowly it can only move its lower lip up and down and its eyes from side to side. In the final episode it seemingly kills a man by blowing smoke onto him when the man falls down in front of it. It has a second manifestation as an emaciated looking rubber prop stuck to the wall of the TARDIS whose sole point of articulation is its neck and that dies oozing green fluid but otherwise not moving.

Last time I went to town on the Myrka as a crap effect that acted as the living embodiment of everything that was wrong with the production. The Awakening, by contrast, is a pretty good production so it just about pulls off the trick of having the Malus in it and still being good.

It isn't possible for the script to make the Malus a good effect but it does make it salvageable and that's an important distinction. Special effects date so whether they were good or not on first transmission they'll always need to be saved by the other production values in the end.

Next Episode

The TARDIS faces the only enemy that could possibly destroy it: woodlice from SPAAAAACE!

Season 21 Marathon (1) Warriors of the Deep

written by Johnny Byrne

directed by Pennant Roberts

Continuity Announcement

Four episodes originally broadcast on BBC One from 5th - 13th January 1984 featuring Peter Davison as the Doctor, Janet Fielding as Tegan and Mark Strickson as Turlough. The story is a sequel to Doctor Who And The Silurians (1970) and The Sea Devils (1972).

Then And Now

It's not a new observation that we don't watch these stories the way they were originally intended. Whole fan projects have been based on this observation: TARDIS Eruditorum and Running Through Corridors being the cream of the crop. This story was originally shown over the course of a fortnight and was a sequel to two stories much of the audience would not have seen, which weren't commercially available and so the producers could readily assume no one would accurately remember them.

This DVD, which I watched straight through in a quiet afternoon, was sold in a box set with the two 70s' stories.

So there are two versions of Warriors Of The Deep: the 1984 version that stood on its own supported in some cases by fuzzy memories and the 2013 version where I know every detail that came before in digitally remastered clarity. Even Johnny Byrne didn't have that luxury: he was provided with markedly inferior copies of the two Pertwee stories that he found exceptionally hard to follow.

So, which version is better?

The Bête Vert

Whatever version we eventually settle on the Myrka is not going to come out smelling of roses. The Myrka isn't just a bad special effect, it's a famously bad special effect and as such exerts a gravity on all criticism of the serial. A cut in pre-production time (due to the surprise 1983 General Election) meant it was made in a rush, famously the green paint rubs off on several other actors.

And it is bad, there's no denying it. It is wobbly, it has googly eyes, it sways dizzily from side to side as it walks, it has humanoid arms for no discernible reason and there is an absolutely hilarious scene of Ingrid Pitt fighting it karate style where the cumbersome costume stops the Myrka from reacting to her at all.

In short the Myrka is rushed, poorly designed and a staggering misjudgement of what the series could do with the time and budget available. In many ways there couldn't be a better metaphor for Warriors Of The Deep as a whole.

Just Like Old Times (Only Different)

There can be no mistaking that this story was made for fans: who else could be expected to appreciate a sequel to two stories from over a decade ago? The continuity at least we can assume worked better then: without a DVD to hand probably no one would spot that Ichtar wasn't a character in The Silurians or that there was no Myrka in The Sea Devils and so wouldn't ask how the Doctor recognises both. This is the 1984 version of the story.

Here in 2013 I have shiny DVDs of both original stories. I know full bloody well that Ichtar doesn't appear in The Silurians and nor did “the Silurian Triad” of which he is apparently the last survivor. This is not a problem, I'd like to make that clear. This is how monsters come back now: the central concept is dusted off and retooled with new ideas grafted on. Sontarans might gain football chants but they still have the potato head design and clone warrior background, in short all the iconic cues everyone remembers spruced up with modern technology.

The problem with this resurrection is that the iconic elements of the concept is almost invisible. Malcolm Hulke's two stories positioned these creatures as the aboriginal inhabitants of the Earth. They were sympathetic, written as individuals (more so in The Silurians than The Sea Devils) and with a genuine prior claim to the planet and forced to drastic action by human xenopobia. Half the drama of both stories comes from the Doctor having a genuine chance at negotiating peace before an outside influence (the Brigadier in one, the Master in the other) scuppers his chances and a bloodbath ensues.

The Silurians in this story are plotting genocide, will not listen to any of the Doctor's peacenik claptrap and the Sea Devils are portrayed as identical soldier drones like any other monstrous minions.

So this story doesn't work as a sequel but does it stand on its own?

Doctor Who and the Massacre

The whole structure of the story is a base under siege plot building towards a big set piece ending: the Doctor standing over the bodies of everyone (human and reptile) that he has met over the last 100 minutes and saying “There should have been another way.”.

The problem with this is, despite the Doctor continually talking about the honourable and advanced society of the Silurians, they don't want peace. This honourable and advanced society has apparently outlawed all war except in self-defence, which one would assume would prohibit genocide. Their way around this is to take over a human undersea base which has a bunch of nuclear missiles pointed at the unnamed enemy in a future cold war. They are going to fire the missiles, trigger the nuclear holocaust and then sit back to rule the Earth after all the pesky “ape primitives” have killed one another.

Why would anyone try to make peace with these peoples? The ending makes no thematic sense because at no point was an alternative seriously possible.

All that said the base that is under siege has some good stuff going on inside it. It's 2084, there's another Cold War (or the same one, they weren't too optimistic on this issue in the early Eighties). There are secret military bases under the ocean, of which this is one, and the crew live in constant tension because of a series of random unannounced drills to make sure they really will push the button when it comes down to it. Even better the final failsafe on this system is the “synch operator”: a human being mentally linked to the targetting computer without whom the missiles cannot be fired.

On this base there is a conspiracy going on: two enemy agents embedded as the base's first officer and doctor (the latter played with a wonderfully over the top accent by Ingrid Pitt) have killed the synch operator and now the post is being covered by an inexperienced and psychologically unstable student. They fully intend for this poor young man to have a breakdown from the stress so they can move in and use the technology in his head to reprogramme him and use him to take out the base.

The base has a pretty good crew: well-cast, well-realised characters. There's some odd dialogue, not least in the self-consciously apolitical decision not to name either of the parties in this war, but by and large the base scenes work very well. Unfortunately this isn't what the story is about. The base and the conspiracy are window dressing. Notably the conspiracy goes nowhere and the conspirators are amongst the first casualties in the early stages of the climatic slaughter.

What the story is about, what the series will increasingly be about over the next two seasons, is the return of old monsters to please the fans and not about creating a dramatic setting and exploring it. A compelling story could be made from the base personnel and their world, a statement I'm confident in making because for much of the first two episodes that is exactly what happens.

In conclusion, neither version of the serial is entirely satisfying on its own merits and the serial I like is the one that gets walloped over the head late in the second episode when the Silurians fully intrude on the plot.

Next Episode

A bijou adventurette in which Lovecraftian weirdness brings the English Civil War to rural England in 1984.