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!

Day 426: The Seeds of Doom Part 5

Easily one of the best things about The Seeds of Doom is Amelia Ducat. She's an artist who sold a picture once to the villainous Harrison Chase, and is now being used by the World Ecology Bureau to discover more about what Chase is up to. Where she succeeds as a character is in the way in which she has fun with the entire thing. Everything and everyone around her is being deadly serious, but she is content to just treat all of this as a little amusement. This is partially due to the writing from Robert Banks Stewart and Robert Holmes, but also due to the performance of Sylvia Coleridge, who injects such an awful lot of charm into the proceedings. It's an absolute highlight of the story, and perhaps of the series so far, meaning that I can only recommend seeking out her scenes to fully get to know and thoroughly enjoy her character.

Day 425: The Seeds of Doom Part 4

There's a fantastic thing about The Seeds of Doom that leads into a disappointing thing. It's the design of the Krynoid, the alien that menaces the planet Earth this story. The Krynoid starts off as a pod, before infecting a human host and forcing them to go through a series of evolutions, with varying degrees of believability. The first can be seen to the left, and is my favourite of the designs. This is because you can see the actor's eye within the costume, both giving them more to act with and acting as a reminder that the creature used to be human.

 The second design is essentially a repainted Axon costume from The Claws of Axos. It still works as a monster design to some extent, and is something that would probably fester in the minds of children to make them more terrified of brocolli or the like. At least, it would do so more than the final iteration of the Krynoid.








The final Krynoid is a blob. It doesn't come across as particularly frightening, although the direction from Douglas Camfield does give it some credit through shooting some of its scenes at night, leaving it in the shadows and creating an air of dread about it. But at the end of the day, it's still a blob and doesn't quite work. It's a shame as well because the design had an awful lot of potential, it just loses that potential as the story continues.

Day 424: The Seeds of Doom Part 3

Doctor Who has an ability to change and adapt to different genres. In the past series we have had a typical UNIT story, a space horror story, a mummy movie, a science fiction adventure and a gothic horror story, and now we have something based more around action in The Seeds of Doom. 

The setting of the story has changed from the Antarctic base to an English country house, and so too the mood. Where once it was closed and tense, here it is open and sprawling. There's more action with guns being fired, punches being thrown and so on. It's enjoyable enough, with the characters all being well written and performed and it all being well directed, but there's a lingering question of whether this is right.

There's a scene, for instance, where the Doctor and Sarah Jane are attacked by a chauffeur. They respond by running into a quarry and ambushing him, with the Doctor giving him a knock-out blow to the face at the climax. We're not used to seeing the Doctor engage in violence like that, even Pertwee's Doctor was more refined when using violence and tended to use such techniques only in self defence. There are moments that make The Seeds of Doom feel more like a Doctor Who story, and we shall delve into those over the latter half of the story, but for the moment this comes across as one of the more atypical Doctor Who adventures.

Day 423: The Seeds of Doom Part 2

The nature of this story means that we get only a few characters that we will see consistently for the entire story. Two such characters are Scorby and Keeler, who make a wonderful, if unsettling pairing. Both have been hired by the villainous Harrison Chase to capture a Krynoid pod from the Antarctic base where it has been found. Scorby comes across as a ruthless gun for hire, not afraid to kill or cause damage as long as it will get the job done. Keeler, on the other hand, is a botanist, who seems remarkably out of his depth in this situation, particularly when he is surrounded by the violence of Scorby. This makes Scorby seem all the more ruthless, whilst making Keeler more sympathetic with the audience, on the whole creating two characters that will entice the viewer to come back to the story over the next couple of episodes.

Day 422: The Seeds of Doom Part 1

I remember when I first watched this story it was when I was a teenager. My sister had borrowed the video version of it from our local library on the grounds that the name sounded kind of stupid, which it sort of does. Seeds are normally associated with plant life, not oncoming doom. However, doom is an appropriate word for this story,

The first episode is laced with atmosphere and dread, again mainly through the performance of Tom Baker who becomes deadly serious within a few minutes of learning of the situation, realising that the fate of the entire universe is at stake. The decisions that could be made to save the Earth also now have added degrees of weight with them, as seen when a man who is not explicitly trained in the medical profession is asked to amputate a limb, something which he doesn't feel comfortable about but everyone knows could be their only option. We spend time mulling over this decision, giving us both a sense of knowing the characters and realising the gravity of the situation. It's moments like this that rise this story to the high standard that has been set over the past few weeks and make us look forward to how the Seeds of Doom shall manifest themselves.

Day 405: Terror of the Zygons Part 4

December 31st and January 1st are traditionally times when we can look back on the past and look forward to the future. It's particularly apt then, that we come to to the end of Terror of the Zygons as this marks the beginning of a turning point in the history of the series.

Doctor Who, since Spearhead from Space, has been mainly based around modern day Earth. We have had alien invasions of several different types, mad scientists trying to take over the world, et cetera. All of this has been prevented by the Doctor, with the help of the Brigadier and UNIT. But over the past few series we have slowly moved away from this concept, to the point where the last series only had one story on modern day Earth (Robot). The series is going to become more about space adventures, and travelling back in time than it is about alien invasions.

So this story marks the beginning of the end for UNIT. The Brigadier makes his final appearance for quite some time in this episode, with Benton and Harry (who leaves the TARDIS crew without much fanfare in this story, a shame as he has been a delightful companion and will be greatly missed) due to make their final appearances in a little while and UNIT itself in a little while longer. It is a shame to lose this part of the series, as it allowed for an awful lot of things. Shorthand could be developed such that the Doctor wouldn't have to explain himself to the people in charge, as he was already in charge. Similarly, these people aren't going to be skeptic of alien invaders and will instantly believe the Doctor or his companion (as seen in Part 2 of this story where a Zygon disintegrates leaving no trace of a body yet the UNIT soldiers recognise that Sarah Jane is in the right and continue to help her). Add on top of this a splendid cast of regulars who provide consistency and comfort to the programme and you have a recipe for some solid stories.

But, it has to be said that there have been constraints to the format, and that it might be more beneficial to have the Doctor and his companion(s) go free to explore the cosmos without having to worry about Earth. So it's with a heavy heart that we must recognise the need to say goodbye to UNT and we thank it for all that it has done to make the series what it is today.

Day 404: Terror of the Zygons Part 3

The design of this story is rather splendid, with thanks going to Nigel Curzon the designer, James Acheson the costumer and Douglas Camfield the director. The titular Zygons, for instance, look wonderfully distinct, with their enlarged heads and blobs covering them, to increase the 'frighten factor' as they look rather weird and alien.





This then continues to the design of their spaceship, as seen to the right. Everything is consistent with the design of the Zygons, giving an organic look as the ship feels like it was grown by the Zygons on their home planet, making the entire thing feel memorable.

The same, sadly, cannot be said of the spaceship exterior, which looks rather generic after seeing the wonderful design work through the rest of the story. However, this can be forgiven as the rest of the design is memorable enough that we can look over forgettable spaceship designs and focus on the important things in the story.

Day 403: Terror of the Zygons Part 2

The Zygons are shape-changing aliens, able to take the forms of any human that they have stored with their body-print. This is nothing new, it's a classic idea that we've seen tonnes of times before in various pieces of media, even in Doctor Who with The Faceless Ones. This time, however, the story is being produced by Philip Hinchcliffe, script edited by Robert Holmes and directed by Douglas Camfield all of whom have shown that they can make things truly terrifying. This is no exception, as a Zygon takes the form of Harry, one of the Doctor's companions. Sarah Jane, his other companion, sees that he is acting oddly and chases after him. He ambushes her in a barn, and we get a frightening sequence as Harry, the character whom we have grown to trust over the past series, becomes a figurative monster as he attacks her with a pitchfork. All of this horror comes from the writing of the story, by Robert Banks Stewart, however it gains an extra dimension on screen, thanks to the direction of Camfield.

The scene is set up such that we have two camera angles, one focussing on Harry and the other focussing on Sarah Jane. We cut back and forth from Harry menacing her with the pitchfork and Sarah Jane's reaction. This creates a strong amount of tension, particularly as the two are rarely in the same shot and so we see the action of the pitchfork stab before we see the reaction of Sarah Jane. It also means that the viewer gets to gain the perspective of Sarah Jane in the situation and feel her fear as Harry attacks the (from that camera's perspective) unseen figure. This comes to a head as the sequence ends and Harry lunges towards her. For a split second, it appears that he has actually hit her, due to the pitchfork moving towards the camera with some force, before we swap to a third camera angle where we see Sarah Jane dodge the attack and Harry fall off the platform that they were fighting on. The scene is frightening, tense and well created by all involved from the writing to acting to direction, showing that this team can and have produced great things.

Day 402: Terror of the Zygons Part 1

This story sees the return of an old favourite to Doctor Who. I'm not referring to UNIT though (although they are certainly welcome and we will look at their role later), instead we are looking at the director Douglas Camfield. Absent from the series after heart problems that afflicted him during the filming of Inferno, he has now returned and brought with him an amazing eye for suspense. Take, for instance, the revela of the titular Zygons. He starts by having close-ups of their eyes, holding on them for longer than normal as they stare into ypur very being, making them seem intimidating as a result. Then, we move onto the hands, allowing the audience to form a pucture in their minds of what the creature looks like, showing them the other-worldly nature of the aliens and creating more suspense. This is helped by the dissolves between shots of the hands working, creating more of a sense of unease, due to this being an unfamiliar technique on the programme. Finally, when the decision is made to reveal the Zygon fully, it is done at the very end of the programme, present for only a handful of seconds thus leaving much of it as an imprint of fear in the audience's mind and not allowing them to pick flaws in the costume (which is actually incredibly good). All of this goes to show that Camfield knows how suspense works and is very good at using it. It's been a while Mr Camfield, but we're glad to have you back for a little while.

Day 278: Inferno Episode 7

As mentioned before, this story features a trip to an alternate universe. Also as mentioned before, the story is about a scientist going possibly too far, and engaging in forces that man was perhaps not meant to meddle with. At the start of Episode 5, things come to a head. By which I mean, in the alternate universe the forces that man was perhaps not meant to meddle with come through in full power and begin to cause widespread destruction. And the cliffhanger to Episode 6 is the Doctor hurriedly trying to get his TARDIS working as lava begins to flow towards him, along with his new friends from the alternate universe. The next we see of the Doctor is him in his normal universe. But without his friends. Everyone else from that Earth died in flames. We got to know and care for some of these characters and now we suddenly realise that they all died horrifically. And to make matters worse, the Doctor, the man who is meant to make things better, was unable to save them.

There's comfort in the fact that the Doctor is able to save the normal Earth from the destruction that occurred in the other universe, but it's not strong enough. This one moment is the most dark and terrifying moment in all of Doctor Who. Because it reveals to us that sometimes not even the Doctor can save us, and that everything might come to an end because the people who are trying to save the day aren't able to make things better.

Day 277: Inferno Episode 6

When I was about 15, I began to rewatch a bunch of Doctor Who episodes that I had lying around. I then made the decision that the time had come. I was finally going to rewatch Inferno after 6 or 7 years. I was impressed by the quailty of it, the tenseness of the story, the fact that it still remained somewhat frightening to a teenager and for so many other reasons. But there was a part of me that was disappointed. Because there was something missing from when I watched Inferno for the first time.

There was a scene that was in balck and white, probably due to the varying picture quality of the VHS tape that I watched it on, which featured a giant Primord attacking the research complex. Granted, it was a model of the research complex, but the sentiment reamined the same. These things were not to be messed with and they were terrifying.

But people who have watched Inferno will have noticed that this scene is not present in the story. I'd made it up. Or rather, my subconscious had made it up. The night after I finished watching Inferno, I had a nightmare about Primords. My first nightmare about Doctor Who. It's one of the earliest memories that I have of seeing the programme, being terrified of it. So terrified that I wouldn't watch it for years because it was such a traumatising experience. But the fact that my memory had failed me was a little disappointing, showing me that it wasn't as terrifying as I had first thought. Until I saw the ending of this episode. And then I realised why Inferno is one of the most terrifying episodes of Doctor Who ever made.

Day 276: Inferno Episode 5

A Primord (Inferno)

The Grinch (How The Grinch Stole Christmas)

When I was 5, I went to the cinema with my Dad. Before the film that we were going to watch, there were three trailers that would change my life. One was for a film called Chicken Run, which I would later come to adore as one of my favourite movies of all time. Another was for a film called The Magic Pudding, which I would also adore, and come to see as one of my favourite movies of all time. And one was for a film called How The Grinch Stole Christmas. I did not adore this trailer. I was not left with any particular desire to see the film. Or any film for that matter. Because that one trailer left me with a several year long fear of movie cinemas, movie trailer, Dr Seuss, and hairy, green faced creatures.

When I was watching Inferno for the first time, I don't particularly recall being aware that Doctor Who could be scary sometimes. Nothing that I'd seen so far had indicated to me that this series was amongst one of the most terrifying for children to watch. So I watched Inferno and I was terrified to the bone. Because there were Grinches. Tonnes of them. They were terrifying in every possible way, from their design to their way of movement to the sounds that they made as they fought the Doctor. I was invested enough in the story to watch the rest of it, but I was still to frightened to watch it again. Doctor Who had scared me for the first time. And it would be a while until I watched this particular episode again...

Day 275: Inferno Episode 4

It's quite tense on the set of this episode. The director of this story, Douglas Camfield, has suffered a minor heart attack, putting him out of action for the rest of this serial. Camfield likes to cast people that he likes, meaning that the cast has some degree of personal connection to him, thus leaving them all in a constant state of worry over the fate of their director, or in the case of Sheila Dunn, the actress who plays Petra, her husband.

Fortunately, however, the producer has stepped in to take over. Barry Letts is already making a name for himself as an incredibly active producer, production wise. We'll see stories written and directed by him in the future, and it's because he's not afraid to get involved with the actual making of the programme. Instantly, we can see that this era is going to be interesting, with a new Doctor, a new producer and a whole new outlook on the series, we're going to be in for some nice stuff. But tomorrow (in an incredibly rare amount of pre-planning), we'll be looking at some of the not nice stuff in this serial, and how it would affect me in so many ways...

Day 274: Inferno Episode 3

The major reason why this serial is so well remembered is not due to overconfident scientists, or terrifying monsters, but instead due to the fact that the Brigadier wears an eye-patch for a portion of the serial. It's because the Doctor finds himself sent to a parallel universe, where everyone is evil because England is now run by a fascist regime. Which is nice. But the major point of this is that there exists a new feeling of discomfort because we're seeing characters that we know and love twisted beyond all recognition into something completely wrong.

But we have to consider context. This serial comes at the end of series 7, Jon Pertwee's first. The audience will have only known Liz for approximately 5 months, which isn't quite enough time for us to build up a strong enough relationship with her to be uncomfortable with her being evil (although the sentiment still stands). We then get Sergeant Benton, and whilst we will get to know him as a regular UNIT character in the future and it is uncomfortable to see him be ruthless, all of this is retrospectively added as we've barely got a chance to know the character aside from him being in the background a couple of times. It's only the Brigadier who we can claim that the audience has enough of a prior relationship with to be fully made uneasy by, but even then, it's still not been that long that we've known him and we've been uneasy with the character since the Silurians incident. So my hypothesis is that although this twist is rather nice, all of the impact has been retrospectively added by viewers coming to the serial later after already encountering the characters and knowing them for some time, instead of the viewers at the time who would have just seen it as a world where people occasionally wore eye-patches.

Unfortunately, I can't remember what impact this twist had on me when I was a kid. Through cultural symbiosis/Doctor Who: The Television Companion I was already familiar with UNIT and things, and I knew that they were a big deal, so perhaps I wasn't an ideal control to see what impact it would make. Or perhaps my hypothesis was wrong. But one thing that I do know is that this entire concept wasn't the big thing to make an impact on me. And in 2 days, we'll find out what that was...

Day 273: Inferno Episode 2

When I was in high school one of my courses required me to read Frankenstein, watch Blade Runner and then write countless essays on the unchecked nature of science. In some ways, it was a horrible experience (I will certainly delve into why at later points), but in others it was good, because it gave me a topic for today's blog entry.

There's a character in here called Sir Keith Gold. He's the director of the Inferno Project, and he is concerned with how things are proceeding. There are numerous safety issues that have taken place and the nature of the work that is being done (drilling into the centre of the Earth) is too risky to just let things slide. as such, he is trying to put up barriers of red tape in order to keep the world safe. He comes into conflict with Professor Stahlman, who will not accept any delay to his project, to the detriment of his fellow scientists. Whilst the character here is one that we've encountered before, we've never quite encountered this stubborn a scientist, nor someone who is opposed to the discoveries made here that is so easy to sympathise with.

So perhaps instead of watching Blade Runner and reading Frankenstein I should have watched Inferno. Because Inferno is easily able to show that, although science is all about discovery and seeking the future, when unchecked, it can lead to horrible things that can put the entire human race into danger.

Day 272: Inferno Episode 1

This serial begins a new series for We've Got Work to Do called First Experiences. It relates to the first episodes of Doctor Who that I ever saw, watching them on VHS as a 9 year old. There will be 5 entries in this series, and we'll get to them as we come to them. But first: Inferno!

Inferno was either the fourth or fifth serial that I saw. After strongly enjoying some episodes of Doctor Who, I quickly went to the VHS cupboard and went searching for more. Inferno was one of those found, and I want to say that I watched it all over the course of an afternoon or two. Like each of the five stories that I saw on VHS it made a very strong impression on me, for reasons that we'll cover later.

But as a young adult, rewatching this story for the fourth or fifth time, it would appear that the first episode doesn't make as strong an impression. It is remarkably well put together, and very enjoyable, but there doesn't appear to be much that sets it apart from other stories of its ilk. We have an obsessive scientist, the Doctor and UNIT setting up shop in a research base, it all seems intrinsically familiar. But there's hints of something greater. The Doctor travels to a weird limbo area in a nightmarish sequence that shows that this story is hiding something that will make this story unforgettable

Day 227: The Invasion Episode 8

It's worth mentioning how different this serial has been to previous serials. It stands out amongst everything that it is surrounded by, with the introduction of a military presence and an action packed finale, as well as gratuitous amounts of action thrown in throughout the past eight episodes. This means that we have to talk about the future (read: I've decided to not talk about Tobias Vaughn for the umpteenth time this serial). This is unquestionably a pilot. In a television sense, we normally think of pilots as ways for spin-offs to occur, and a widening of the brand of the particular series. This, however, is not a pilot for a spin-off, rather a pilot for Series 7. Doctor Who has been steadily decreasing in viewers, and so a radically different approach has been suggested for the series. There will be less stories like The Dominators, where we fight aliens on alien worlds, and more like The Invasion, where the Doctor and his UNIT friends fight alien menaces on Earth. It's a new direction for the series, and this serial has certainly been incredibly enjoyable. We'll just have to see how things pan out. And let's not forget, Series 7 is still a little while away, which means that We've Got Work To Do!

Day 226: The Invasion Episode 7

The inevitable happens and the Cybermen turn on Tobias Vaughn, proclaiming that he is not required for the invasion and that they will proceed without him. This is positioned at the end of the episode, forming the cliffhanger as we deal with the fallout of this plot development. What's important in this plot development is how little it affects our heroes. We already expect the Doctor to save the day, with or without Vaughn in his way. Jamie's gone off sick (read gone on holidays) and Zoe is busy defeating the Cyber-fleet with the Brigadier. The major person who this affects is Vaughn himself, which indicates that the audience is now expected to care for him and his motives. And despite the fact that he's the villain, we overwhelmingly do. He's charismatic and interesting enough such that when he's on screen, we pay attention. Compare him to the villains for The Dominators, for instance. For a start, I can't actually name them, so that's an indication of how much they've stuck in my mind. When they fight, we instead find it an annoyance, whereas when Vaughn fights with his lackeys, we can sympathise with the lackeys easily because we know that Vaughn is the stronger man. And when we see terrible things happen to the Dominators, we feel glad because the bad guys have been defeated. But with Vaughn, we feel the same sympathy as we have grown to respect him as a character and so we want to see him succeed, despite the fact that he is evil. In short, we are invested enough in the character of Tobias Vaughn that when the cliffhanger rests on him, we overwhelmingly want to discover what will happen to him.

Day 225: The Invasion Episode 6

And it would be foolish of me to ignore one of the most iconic moments in the history of Doctor Who that occurs in this single episode. But which one? Firstly, there's an extraordinary scene where Tobias Vaughn goads his captive into shooting him, only to reveal that he has been partially cyber-converted, and the bullets have no effect on him. It stands out in the episode as a wonderful scene as it shows the extent of control that Vaughn has over the situation. It begins with the audience realising the fear that he can instil in everyone, such that even if they have a gun in their hand, they still are unable to shoot him, due to his power over them. It means that when the gun is fired, we're shocked because it represents a new direction in the story, we as an audience know that the villain cannot die this early and this inconspicuously, so when it is revealed that he is part machine, we're left with realising that this was all a ploy, and we appreciate Vaughn's power afterwards. It's the most definitive villain moment in the history of Doctor Who so far, and possibly of all time.

Another all time great moment occurs as the Cybermen's plan is put into action. We see them burst out of manholes in London, and advance through the streets, most memorably walking down the steps of St Paul's Cathedral. It is the epitome of the idea of the ordinary becoming extraordinary as we see alien monsters walk down an iconic landscape in the public consciousness. These are steps that are well known, and so the audience already has some sort of connection to the place in which the action is happening. This represents the epitome of the idea of 'Yeti on the loo in Tooting-Bec', where suddenly monsters can be hiding in everyday areas, probably causing children to be terrified of the mundane as well as the not-mundane.