Doctor Out of Order

Friday, March 27, 2015

Rose

The Doctor enters 19 year old Rose Tyler's life explosively as the Nestene Consciousness returns to Earth, bringing murderous mannequins to life in a new effort to claim the planet for itself.

Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith
Contemporary London, 2005
New Series 1
1 episode
3/26/2005

Comments with major spoilers:

This is the first episode of the new version of the show and in short order it introduces us to a new Doctor, a new companion, and a new single story per episode format. It's an important episode of the program and was actually the second episode of the new show that I saw. Thing is, had it been the first I would have been a little bit disappointed. I don’t find it a particularly strong episode and I didn't like the character of Rose that much.

Not being a Rose fan is not exactly a big a deal now, but during the first couples of seasons, it rapidly became near heresy for a large portion of fandom to not obsessively love her. These same fans would have issues when the character eventually left. But that was later down the road. This is the beginning, although even back then for whatever reason something never quite clicked with me about Rose. Instead of being the "best ever!" I thought of her as "only" a better than average companion.

Introductions:

Beyond Rose, the story introduces the general gist of Doctor Who to a new audience via the old series plastic villains The Autons, essentially living plastic mannequins animated by the Nestene Consciousness, a sort of alien, bodiless, gestalt intelligence with a history of trying to conquer the Earth.

I was never a big fan of the Autons so while the images of mannequins clambering around killing people was visually pretty cool it didn't exactly excite my interest. Well, other then to wonder just how crazy skinny the stunt people in the Auton costumes were that is, because those killer mannequin costumes were very very thin.

Part of the reason I was sort of underwhelmed by the story was that for the most part it is an introduction to the ideas of Doctor Who, and already having been a fan of the show for decades much of this introduction time seemed redundant, so I spent a lot of the intro info dump going "yeah, yeah, I get it, Doctor shows up people die, blah blah, get on with it already."

Although, there are some lines designed to grab the interest of even grumpy "old timers" like me, such as mentions of a war, and the Doctor fighting in it and failing.

Picking nits:

When the episode first aired continuity obsessed fans were concerned with the scene where Conspiracy Clive shows Rose pictures of the Ninth Doctor at various places and times including the eruption of Krakatoa and at JFK's assassination. "Facts" introduced in the very same episode that reveal the Doctor doesn’t even know what he looks like, implying that this regeneration is very new (or that he's somehow been avoiding mirrors).

Some fans fretted at an apparent mistake, claiming the show was doomed if it couldn't avoid a simple 'mistake' like this. Some proposed that these pictures were evidence of future adventures he would have later, and some threw out the wacky idea that at the end of the episode when the Doctor initially takes off without Rose, he goes off and has some adventures lasting several days or weeks, including visiting Krakatoa and such. It then occurs to him that he never told Rose the TARDIS was a time machine, so he came back seconds after he left and uses this to successfully entice her to come along with him.

I prefer the last theory because It's a totally goofy idea.

Mickey:

One of the many things I'd forgotten about the episode was how immediately mean the Doctor is to Mickey. Granted, as presented in the episode Mickey goes from largely useless guy that Rose has obviously settled for (since she is so out of league), to totally useless coward endangering her life, so some antagonism is warranted. But the writing perhaps goes overboard with it, to the point that the Doctor's heckling is easily read as his being jealous of Mickey for being Rose's boyfriend. A "fact" that was deeply embraced by the Doctor / Rose shippers.

As is, while this is not exactly a great introduction for him, it does set Mickey on the road to be a character that successfully completes the arc from goof-head to hero. Well, more or less amyways.

Death rate:

Very high, not surprising considering there's a homicidal mannequin driven massacre in the middle of London. Much higher then I remembered. London massacres, especially around the holidays will become a recurring theme for the new show.

Random bits:

Poor doomed conspiracy Clive illustrates another recurring theme: The safest place place to be in a Doctor Who story is as his companion. This idea, that it's minor characters / people not with the Doctor who die first and most often, is played with in the 11th Doctor story: Closing Time.
The first look inside the Tardis was certainly a shock to us old timers. All decayed, open spaced, banged together with junk, and no roundles, only hexagon shapes reminiscent of the idea of them.

Friday, February 27, 2015

Dragonfire

In the very far future the Doctor and Mel go to the trading colony of Iceworld, where they meet a time lost young waitress from 20th century Earth named Ace and run into Sabalom Glizt, who is there after the dragonfire, a treasure supposedly hidden under the colony and protected by an actual dragon. But what does this dragon has to do with Kane, the cruel ruler of Iceworld and his plans for building a mercenary army of what are essentially frozen zombies?

Seventh Doctor, Mel (Melanie Bush), and Ace
Iceworld, a trading colony on the dark side of the planet Svartos, 2 million years in the future
Series 24
3 episodes
11/23/1987 - 12/7/1987

Comments with major spoilers:

I rather like Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, finding him interesting and engaging, though for the most part his Doctor is not really considered one of the better incarnations. Mainly because he was stuck with embarrassingly bad stories such as Dragonfire. Although in re-watching it, the story was nowhere near as bad as I remembered.

Not that it's particularly good, because it isn't. The plot can't stand up under even the slightest of scrutiny. It tilts and sways unevenly from goofy comedy to unfriendly grim. The sets and effects look aggressively 80's cheap. All of this to the detriment of the story. Still, there are some bright spots.

Sylvester McCoy is rather good here. Things such as his boyish glee at the prospect of exploring the caves below Iceworld, or the simple act of turning his back in disgust at Glitz when it comes out that he sold his crew into slavery, both work to show he's a much better actor than normally given credit for.

Ace, a strong outgoing teenager that the Doctor takes on as student/protege is introduced here. She is the final companion of the old show, and is one of the best. Some elements of her story are eventually echoed with Rose when the show restarts.

Sabalon Glitz manages to be a fun character here, not an easy achievement considering he's a murderous amoral mercenary.

Even with all this however, there are still problems. So many problems.

Space Mall:
From the very first image you see of Iceworld, it's a weird place, all oversized crystal/ice towers that loom huge over the top of a planet. So either Iceworld is gigantic, or the planet is really small. Despite the relatively impressive large sets used, it ends up feeling tight and claustrophobic, so tiny Little Prince sized planet seems to be the case.

Iceworld is described as a trading colony, but from what little of it we see, cheap bargain basement supermarket is a more accurate description. A supermarket with alien customers leading to the first of the many movie rifts that the story plays with, the Doctor Who version of the Star Wars cantina. Although instead of a bar full of scum and villainy, we have a pink ice cream parlor filled with cheap looking aliens drinking milk shakes.

Cheap looking is a constant here. Many of the sets are unconvincing. Not surprising considering several involve sheets of clear or colored plastic sheets as walls of ice. Walls that move anytime someone runs by them.

Literal Cliff Hanger:

One of the reasons for the story's poor reputation is the first episode's unfortunate literal cliff hanger, when the Doctor decides to climb over the edge of a cliff and hang off of his umbrella in danger of falling to his death. Cue closing music.

Supposedly there is an explanation given in the script, that he'd reached a dead end and the only way left he could go was to go down. Unfortunately this does not make it into the actual episode leaving us with a bad visual pun that looks silly, and has no real impact because the Doctor intentionally puts himself into danger for no reason at all.

The dangling Doctor scene is used in the modern series episode The Name of the Doctor when Clara Oswald splits herself along the Doctor's timeline in order to save him. This implies that somewhere in Iceworld there was a Clara "clone." For her troubles she gets to watch her hero climb over a cliff like an idiot. As is, if there was a "Clara" present, she was likely one of Iceworld's customers, so odds are she ended up blown up dead by the end of the story. Actually, considering the high mortality rates for incidental characters in Doctor stories, the majority of the Clara's probably ended up blown up.

Kryptonian jail sentences:

One of the many, many weird parts of the story involves Kane's exile. It is revealed that Kane is a criminal, and as punishment his people do a very planet Krypton thing and punish him in an extremely overly complicated and jerky way. One that accidentally results in him outliving his people.

They send him off in a spaceship (which turns out to be Iceworld itself), disable it, then leave the key to it's repair with his jailer, the dragon that lurks around under Iceworld and pretty much leaves Kane alone.

Thing is, this isn't even the weird part yet. The weird part is that Kane decides to turn his dead spaceship jail into a supermarket. An extremely successful one. So much so that thousands of years later he is rich and powerful enough to buy any number of battle ships and go back home. Except he doesn't. He becomes very myopic about the situation and obsesses that he can only return home using the Iceworld space ship.

Beyond myopic, he's just a strange villain. Edward Peel who plays Kane spends a lot of time chewing up the scenery. This isn't as bad as it sounds. In one scene especially, one of the best of the story, he comes off as very menacing when he temps Ace with the opportunity to join him.

But for the most part, that scene is an exception. He spends the majority of the story asleep in his deep freezer as if he were sort of a frozen dinner Space Dracula asleep in his high tech coffin. The Dracula idea is reinforced when Kane meets his end by standing in sunlight in a scene that rifts off of the Indiana Jones melting nazis. For a kids show his melty death is rather gruesome.

Coming and Going:

Besides introducing Ace, the story sees the departure of Mel. Poor Mel never really had a chance at being a good companion. As written her only real function was to be annoyingly chipper, scream, and get into trouble.

For example, in Dragonfire, when she's not screaming, she sits around doing nothing, or she helps Ace explore caves, with Ace visibly in charge rather than the other 'round. At one point she even manages to knock herself unconscious while trying to run up some stairs. About the best thing she ever does is suddenly leave the show letting McCoy give a great speech about the nature of time.

The randomness of her sudden departure has caused loads of fan speculation and theories. It never really bothered me though because in the old show it was fairly common for companions to leave the Doctor quickly without much fanfare (or logic in the explanations that the writers came up to explain actors leaving the show). As is, deciding on a whim to hang out with a corrupt mercenary is a much better send off then the standard explanation of having a female companion falling in instant love with a boring, just introduced, minor male one-shot character.

While her leaving never bothered me, there is a part of the ending that does. Having the character of Glitz present means that Dragonfire takes place a couple of million years in the future (his time was established in his introductory story Mysterious Planet).

This a little confusing because Glitz offers to take Ace back home to Earth, specifically to her home town of Perryvale using the Iceworld spaceship. But her home is 20th century Earth. So is he implying that the Iceworld spaceship can time travel? And if it can time travel, why did Kane care that his home planet is dead, when he could just go back into the past when it was still alive? It makes no sense.

The truth is that I'm reading far too much into a couple lines of dialogue that were not meant to be thought about too much. Most of the story is like that. No thinking allowed. But despite this and the other faults, cheapness and weirdness aside, it's surprisingly not too bad and at three episodes long not to lengthy.

Death Rate:

Extremely high. Other then the Doctor and friends, almost everyone present ends up dead. Unfortunately among the survivors are the annoyingly cute little girl and her equally annoying mother, who seems to have been so busy shopping she never bothered to notice there was a massacre going on.

Random bits:

Kane's preferred method of killing people, freezing them to death with his touch is cool, pun unintended, but is yet another thing that shouldn't be thought about too much, mainly because if a warm patch of sunlight is enough to kill him, how was touching warm blooded humans not boiling him to death or at least causing his hands to melt off?
It wasn't until rewatching the episode and seeing Kane die in a batch of bright light that I realized that the new show had borrowed this idea of fatal unfiltered sunlight for the episode The End of the World.
While most of the movie references vary from cute to insignificant, I do really like the "ANT HUNT" scene that is pretty much lifted straight from Aliens when two of Kane's lackeys hunt the Alien, er Dragon.
The character of Mel is currently my least favorite companion. I even prefer Adrich to her. There was at least some depth and characterization to his annoying personality. The ornery side of my personality though has me half tempted to take my disdain for her and try to write some fan fiction with one solitary goal. To make her interesting.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Robot

Suffering from fatal injures sustained during his last adventure, the Doctor has regenerated yet again. Right when UNIT must deal with a string of strange robberies involving a top secret weapon and mysterious goings on at Think Tank, a group of Britain's best scientific minds, but is this new curly haired Doctor up to the task?

Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan
Contemporary Great Britain, 1970's or 80's
Series 12
4 episodes
12/28/1974-1/18/1975

Comments with major spoilers:

Robot was the first Doctor Who story that I saw way, way back in the day when I was a teenager. It aired on the local PBS station and was preceded by a special announcement. A short commercial of sorts explaining what the heck the show was, because apparently American audiences would be lost, dazed and confused at a British show that was not a period piece drama or a low brow sitcom. This was different. This was science fiction. It was great and I was very quickly hooked and still am to this day.

Transitions:

Robot is Tom Bakers first story and it quickly becomes clear that he is going to be quite different from Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor. Gone is the stylish dandy action hero spy who claims to only begrudgingly assist UNIT, but seems in fact to rather enjoy it (when they being idiots that is). In his place is a new scruffy bohemian Doctor who has to be cajoled into remaining on Earth.

Interestingly, compared to some of the later regeneration stories, especially in the new show, the "post regeneration crisis" is taken care of relatively fast. It's "oh no he did it again, we have a new actor playing the Doctor, er the Doctor has a new body!" followed by the now standard let's make fun of my new face jokes. Then he's on his game again ready to solve mysteries and fight monsters before the first episode is over.

Nerd nazis:

The story introduces a top secret scientist group, the Think Tank (the National Institute for Advanced Scientific Research). They last for about a minute before being exposed as fascists who aspire to have scientists rule the world with an iron fist. The Think Tankers end up being not so much a metaphor for nazis as much as they are just out and out nazis. Nerd nazis at that. All the dweebs and geeks who were bullied in school have become scientists intent on global domination because only they have the smarts to know how to do the job.

Except that they don't. For all their intellect, they are a bunch of idiots with delusions of grander. Also, just in case science nazis threatening the world with nuclear holocaust didn't make it obvious that they were bad guys, there is a scene where they disapprove of Sarah Jane Smith because she was wearing trousers instead of a skirt. So remember, despite her frequent decent into very bad 70's fashion, dissing on her clothes is a sign of evil nazism.

Reading stereotypes:

Professor Kettlewell, the creator, the father, of the titular robot visually "reads" as an Einstein stand in. So in essence he is Jewish in feel if not fact. This adds an interesting wrinkle to the big reveal about his involvement with Think Tank, which to be frank is about the only interesting thing about them.

Kettlewell is not the only coded character in the story. Intentional or not, Hilda Winters, the female director of the Think Tank reads as a lesbian. It's not overtly implied, but given her 'severe' appearance and her constant belittling of the men under her control, she ends up sort of reminiscent of a bad stereotype of a villainous man hating lesbian. Well, at least as much that would be allowed in what is still technically a 1970's kids show. Even so, it wouldn't be too hard at all to picture the character as a women's prison warden in a low budget exploitation flick. This interpretation could be potentially offensive, but I'm jaded enough that I find it more silly than anything else.

Silly is a good word for the reasons that another character could be perceived as gay, that is experimental robot K1, himself.

As designed, he has heavy clamps for hands at the end of long thin arms. This has the effect of making him seem limp wristed. Given the existential angst he goes through towards the end of the story where he goes around wailing and flailing his arms about, he comes off as a big drama queen.

While it sounds like I don't like the design of the robot, I actually do. It hits that "sweet spot" of low budget science fiction show clunky but cool. Not so cool is the final King Kong homage sequence, where he becomes gigantic, and clumps around a village killing soldiers and carrying Sarah Jane Smith as the Beauty stand in. Unfortunately given the finances and skill level at the time, nearly all the special effects end up being rather embarrassing looking.

Bad giant robot visuals aside, over all the story is better then not. It's a bit of a confusion of styles, which given the show was in a period of transition, both on screen and off, it's not surprising it ends up being a frothy mix of a Third Doctor UNIT / abused science story combined with a Fourth Doctor monster movie homage. Still again, it's not a bad story. More of a average tale.

Death rate:

Several, though not especially high. There are multiple onscreen deaths, mainly UNIT soldiers, but for the most part people aren't dying wholesale.

Random bits:

We get to meet Dr. Harry Sullivan who becomes a companion by the end of the story.
Hilda Winters is aptly named, given that Hilda means "Battle woman" and her world blackmail threats would have resulted in a nuclear winter.
I like how the show uses the point of view of the robot at the beginning of the story. It makes it clear the "culprit" is mechanical, yet it so strange looking that it still manages to add to the mystery.