Day 94: The Traitors

We should probably talk about the Doctor's latest companion, Katarina. She's a handmaiden from Troy, has been hastily introduced, and is quite obviously a massive mistake. For a start, being from ancient times, she needs everything explained to her. Not just the futuristic stuff, but more mundane things like keys. It's annoying, and what makes it worse is that she just airs about the place thinking of the gods, and showing the audience just how much of a wonderful character Vicki was, because she was able to take situations and make them fun, lighten them up, and provide a wonderful viewpoint for the audience. Honestly, Katarina is an awful, awful mistake.

And within 5 minutes of this episode, she is ejected into space. It's a shock, because we assume that she is a companion, we assume that we will get to know her better over the course of the series. But suddenly, she dies. It's the first time that we see a companion, someone explicitly in the Doctor's care, die. And so we realise the true horror of this serial. Because we now know that this is unlike anything that has ever come before, because we always knew that the people in the TARDIS were safe. We didn't know how they would survive, but we knew that they would. And so to see a character die so suddenly, it goes to show that things are different now, this is what the Daleks bring. They don't have to be directly involved, but they lead to death and destruction, and we have just learnt that here is nothing that they will stop at for complete power.

Day 93: Devil's Planet

This episode sees the Doctor and co. attempt to escape from the clutches of the Daleks, and in the course of this, they find themselves crashed on the prison planet Desperus. It's described as a place where they dump convicts to go off and make their own society, free of any influence, no guards, no borders, nothing. Which is an interesting, but depressing concept. Prisons are intended not just as a place to put misbehaving members of society, but also as a place for rehabilitation, so that people can learn the error of their ways, and become functional members of a better society. And we have now been told that it is easier to just pick all the baddies up and put them away where we don't have to think about them. But isn't it right to actually care for these criminals, to give them hope of a better tomorrow? Or should we just leave them to their own devices, even if that means that they disrupt other people on this planet who perhaps want to make a new life for themselves? The case here is interesting, and one that is not dealt with too strongly, instead just being used as a simple plot related excuse. But even in excuses, gems of interesting concepts can be found.

Day 92: Day of Armageddon

Another thing that's wonderful is the way the villainous Mavic Chen,
about whom we will deal with later, holds his pens.

Once again, we find ourselves in the middle of an episode that has been mostly wiped from the BBC archives. And as such, we must cherish what little survives, as is the case with this episode, one of three to survive from this 12 part serial. Take for instance, the subtleties of the performance from Nicholas Courtney, the actor who would play the Brigadier in the future. Here, he plays a character who is subtly different from the Brig, Bret Vyon. Like the Brig, he's a military man, and he will fight if he needs to, but they're both different characters. Bret Vyon is a man who is secretly afraid, and whilst he manages to hide it in his voice, his eyes show the discomfort that he is facing. He looks on in horror as the Daleks begin to burn down the jungle, and he acts as a contrast to the regulars, who are far more used to this sort of thing, and are able to remain reasonably calm in these situations. It's a decision that allows for our main cast to become safer for us, and to remind us of who the real heroes are in this situation. We've already seen that the Daleks could theoretically have their own programme in Mission to the Unknown, but they don't, they're still in Doctor Who's territory and the main cast are the heroes here, not some deranged pepperpots. This is not the Dalek show with Bret Vyon, this is Doctor Who, with the Doctor, Steven and Katarina, who is jumping straight into the deep end with her first trip in the TARDIS. Hopefully, things will turn out better for her.

Day 91: The Nightmare Begins

This episode has an apt title, as The Nightmare does indeed begin today. The Daleks have now threatened to take over the Solar System, as hinted at in the previous Mission to the Unknown, and they mean business. These Daleks aren't the Daleks who are riding the wave of their own popularity that we saw on their last adventure, here they mean business. Their first appearance within the episode is striking, for instance. We encounter two space security agents, they spilt up, and one of them is terrified, he turns around, and a Dalek immediately kills him. What's striking is how swiftly this happens. You doubt for a brief second as to what has actually happened before your eyes, whether the Daleks really have come back. Indeed, most of this episode is spent with everything in the shadows. We know that the Daleks are going to dominate the Solar System, but we don't know how, and there's a mysterious character called Mavic Chen, in league with the evil metal creatures, and we don't know much about him either. Indeed, the one thing that we do know, is that the TARDIS has landed in a place where terrible things are about to happen. The nightmare, has indeed, begun.

Day 90: Horse of Destruction

I suppose that I was predisposed to like The Myth Makers. Because for all its gags and hijinks in Ancient times, the final episode is where things really start to happen. If you were expecting the culmination of the Siege of Troy to be a farce, you are wrong. It is a war. People die. It is shocking and disturbing to see Paris, Cassandra and King Priam, three characters that have previously been figures of fun in the story, get killed, because this is how history plays itself out. Odysseus is no longer the comical straight man, he is instead a soldier, fighting to kill all who get in his way. It's nice to see Doctor Who tell stories like this, where they do not talk down to the audience and make it into a simple case of goodies vs baddies, it instead allows for sympathetic characters to play their part in history, and if that means that they'll be brutally killed, then so be it. This is partly down to the writer, Donald Cotton, but also due to our new script editor, Donald Tosh. He won't be with us for very long, and we'll deal with this concept more when we reach his final story in a couple of weeks, but he has been able to help make Doctor Who more adult, while still keeping the children's programme status, and all the fun and adventure that it implies.

We also, this episode, bid farewell to Vicki, as played by Maureen O'Brien. Vicki has been a wonderful character, more fun and light hearted than Susan ever was. She was the first new companion that the show has seen, and she has been able to take to travelling in the TARDIS well, and form a much missed double act with the Doctor, where she was able to act as granddaughter figure for him, where Susan, due to being mostly paired off with Ian or Barbara, was unable to. Vicki has been a wonderful character, fun and full of energy,nand has helped the show survive theough the loss of three of the four original regular characters. Her replacement is Katarina, a Trojan handmaiden, and as the TARDIS flies off to a new adventure, she is left questioning her own fate, particularly as it was prophesied that she would die. But that won't happen surely, the Doctor will save her, won't he?