Day 427: The Seeds of Doom Part 6

Earlier in the story I posed the question of whether this should be considered a Doctor Who story. It's frequently violent and dark, something which continues throughout the rest of the story as Scorby is drowned by some pond scum, and Harrison Chase is fed into a compost mixer. Eventually the Krynoid is dispatched not through the Doctor using his wits but through a full aerial assault from UNIT (and even they don't feel right, with it lacking the regulars that we know and love). The end result is something that feels more like a James Bond film than a Doctor Who story.

But there are two things that make this feel like a Doctor Who story regardless. Those two things are Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen. Both represent the very core of their characters beautifully, with Baker showing the alien side of the Doctor and Sladen showing the human side of the companion. An example can be found near the climax of the story as they fight Chase, ending with some Chase shaped compost. Sladen reacts to this with a degree of sadness, because someone has died. He may have been despicable and he may have cost several people their lives through his actions, but Sarah Jane is able to remember that he was once a human being, and to mourn his death. It's a tiny moment, but a good moment nonetheless, and representative of so many good things about this story.

And this is a good story. I may have issues with it, but on the whole it would be remiss of me not to think of it as something that was well produced. A lot of this, of course, comes down to the director Douglas Camfield, who makes his final entry to the series with this story. He has brought with him a natural talent for directing, creating an awful lot of tension in The Web of Fear, giving us some fantastic action sequences in The Invasion, getting good performances out of actors in The Crusade, and several more besides. It's a shame that we won't get to see more of his work, but that's not to say that there won't be directors just as good as him, because there's a long way to go on this odyssey and We've Got Work To Do!