I don't completely hate this era. There are some qualities to it that I appreciate. It is great, for instance, for the Doctor to finally have an arch-nemesis. The battles we first see between Three and the Delgado Master would echo on for the rest of the series. While I do have some issues with how this incarnation of the Master is actually treated by the writers, I still love watching the first shots being fired in this great, ongoing war between the two bitterest of foes.
I will confess: I was pretty damned harsh with Season Eight. Which may have been upsetting for some fans who read it. Many do see it as one of Pertwee's better seasons. But, since it was the birthplace of many of the tropes I would greatly dislike about this period, it was hard for me to be kind.
Season Nine is less difficult for me to get through. There are substantially more things about this run of stories that I like. There will still be some problems, though. So, if you're like most Doctor Who fans, you're not going to like some of the things I'm going to say, here. But this should, at least, be easier for you to digest than my Review of Season Eight.
OFF TO A GOOD START
I'm very happy with Day of the Daleks. If you go back to my Season Seven Review (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2022/10/doctor-who-season-by-season-season-seven.html) this story uses a convention that I felt would be very helpful in stopping the show from becoming too repetitive under the restraints it had imposed upon itself. The Doctor's exile would have worked much better for me if he had still been allowed to make the occasional jump in time while still remaining trapped on Earth. This is what Day gives us. We still have a good chunk of the action going on during the 20th Century, but we also dip into the future (or, more accurately, into an aborted timeline). This finally gives us just a little bit of variety to the formula that has been lumbering the show down for the last few years. It's a bit of a Too Little, Too Late scenario. But still, it's better than never getting the variety at all!
The complexity of Day of the Daleks' plot is also quite refreshing. Unlike most Classic Who stories, it's actually taking a serious look at time travel and it's various ramifications and consequences. And it does this quite nicely. Aside from never giving us the follow-up to the Doctor meeting himself in Part One (it would have been nice to have a scene later in the story where the Doctor and Jo head back to the lab and meet themselves again!), all the tangled plot threads that a good time travel adventure creates are neatly tied up.
There is a subtler quality to this tale that I also quite like. Doctor Who, at this point, is still in a stage where you can really "feel" the episodes in each story. Oftentimes, an episode tells its own smaller plot with a proper climax (usually somewhere near the cliffhanger) that will, along with the parts both before and after it, tell a larger adventure. You can really see this when you watch a story from the 60s or early 70s in its entirety. Things feel almost disjointed as tension flows and recedes within the context of almost every episode. This is due, largely, to the fact that the whole format of the show was partly inspired by the old adventure serials people used to watch in movie theatres when film was first invented.
Day of the Daleks is one of those stories from the early days of the show that feels a lot more cohesive. It's more like four parts coming together to form a whole story. The plot contains just one real solid climax in Part Four with the other three episodes steadily building up to it. The show would eventually evolve into doing this on a regular basis. But this is one of the first times that it does it. There are other stories from earlier days that work in a similar manner (The Krotons would be another example of this) but Day of the Daleks stands out because it accomplishes the task extremely well.
Curse of Peladon is also quite the curiosity. It should feel herrendously dated by this point. The whole plot is an allegory of a situation that was going on in European politics at the time. To add to the "datedness", most of the creature costumes now look like something you could buy from the bargain bin at a Halloween costume store. And then of course, there's the actual pace of the story. It doesn't move all that fast and has little action in it besides the pit fight with "Pertwee" (in quotation marks cause it's mostly a stunt man) and Grun. For the most part, Curse is just a lot of characters talking.
And yet, I quite adore this story. I wouldn't even consider it a Guilty Pleasure. All the standing around in the Royal Court of Peladon is very well-executed on every level. Good writing, acting and direction. It all makes for some very compelling drama that I am quite happy to watch again and again. I might even say this is one of my favorite Third Doctor stories. It really is a great little treat. I can see why Peladon gets revisited in a later season (even if that effort doesn't go quite as well!).
So the first eight episodes of Season Three make it look quite promising. Sadly, that's all about to change.
A TURN FOR THE WORST
The Sea Devils reminds me of The Daemons. Both of these stories baffle me. I often wonder if I am viewing a special edition of these stories that only I ever see and everyone else is watching a much better-made version. Most fans speak fondly of both these tales. I actually think they're both pretty awful.
I've done a sufficient rant about Daemons in my last Review, of course. So let's focus on Sea Devils. As a sequel to The Silurians, it's a bit of an abomination. The first of these two tales dealt with complex issues and well-crafted characters who weren't entirely good or evil but had valid motivations for the things they were doing. The Sea Devils, on the other hand, is just a silly little monster romp. Aside from a brief period in Part Five where the Sea Devil Leader contemplates the Doctor's offer for peace, the titular creatures are completely two-dimensional. All the beautiful groundwork Malcolm Hulke creates in his first story with this species is, pretty much, thrown out the window.
The storyline involving the Master feels a bit rubbish, too. For a man who was deemed so dangerous that they considered executing him, his "maximum security prison" seems more like a charming holiday spot! It's especially ludicrous when Jo can wander in and out of the building so easily during a latter episode and rescue the Doctor from the chair he's handcuffed to.
Just to make the prison seem even less credible: we have Trenchard. He is the absolute worst possible person to be the head of such a facility. I mean, I get that you might not, necessarily, give the job to the brightest, most promising candidate. It's not a particularly illustrious position to hold. But the Master is still a very dangerous criminal. The person running the operation needs to have something more than the mental competence of a squirrel!
But these sort of ridiculous conventions need to be in place to get the plot to move along in any kind of way. Although we can barely call it a plot. Moreso it is just a series of those abused tropes that have plagued the era so much, already. Once more, for instance, we get a bumbling minister who comes along and creates enough complications in the story to get all six parts filled. There's another ridiculous chase scene, too. This time on sea-doos! The Master crafts another difficult-to-believe escape at the end. By this point, these types of plot devices have almost become a sort of list that needs to be checked off before you wrap the story up. It's quite the pitiful mess.
I could go on endlessly about the problems I have with this story. But I will simply conclude by saying that there is little that I like about The Sea Devils. I sincerely hope Malcolm Hulke left this one off his resume!
FREEDOM FROM EXILE DOESN'T GO SO WELL, THIS TIME
For the second time this season, the Time Lords have a mission for the Doctor. This is great news, of course. At this point, the more the Doctor gets away from Earth and UNIT and suchlike, the happier I am. I don't claim to completely despise the Earthbound stories of this period, but there are certain elements of them that I am getting quite tired of. Having just gotten through The Sea Devils, moving away from Earth in the 20th Century is a welcome break!
While Colony in Space was quite decent and Curse of Peladon excellent, our third excursion offworld doesn't go so well. Like The Web Planet many years ago, The Mutants actually looks quite good on paper. The plot is fairly solid and plays with a lot of interesting ideas. The Solonians are an interesting alien species. I do love that they appear to get a cameo in Brain of Morbius! I also really like that humanity isn't particularly pleasant in this tale. It's always interesting when science fiction goes in that direction. Rather than always making us the good guys.
Like Web Planet, The Mutants tends to fall apart in its execution. Right from the first scene, we're off to a bad start. We appear to be getting the "It's Man" from Monty Python's Flying Circus rather than the dark, morbid hunting scene that we're meant to have. It doesn't bode well when your dramatic opening sequence looks comical when it's meant to be serious..
The biggest problem with The Mutants is just how flat so much of it feels. There is an abundance of really wooden acting, here. Without naming anyone specific (I try to be nice to actors since I am one, myself), I'll just say that about 80% of the guest cast seems almost stoic in their delivery. I'm not sure if the director wanted everyone to be holding back so much or if he just intentionally assembled a lot of actors that don't emote much! Whatever his choice, it made much of the story feel largely uninteresting.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have a few cast members who go really over-the-top in their roles. Having the OTT actors thrown into the mix makes the whole thing feel very skewed and off-kilter.
The Mutants also shows off another prominent problem that occurs in Pertwee-Era Who from Season Eight, onwards. I haven't really discussed much, yet. So I'll bring it up, now:
I always found it particularly odd that Season Seven produces multiple seven parters that, for the most part, hold together quite well. But most of the six-parters that come after tend to sag all over the place! Quite often, the third or fourth episode of a Pertwee-Era six-parter is just a useless runaround that fills time and accomplishes nothing. I really do think it would have served the show better if they had just produced more four part stories.
Impressively enough, The Mutants resists padding itself with a lot of captures-and-escapes or other tricks like that. There is enough plot to fill the six parts. But, overall, the story still feels too drawn out. As is often the case with six parters in this period, I'm just losing interest as we get to Parts Five and Six.
The Mutants did show a lot of great potential with some interesting ideas at work within it. But it comes together very poorly and would have done much better had it been trimmed down an episode or two. It doesn't stink quite as badly as The Sea Devils, but it still means we've spent twelve episodes suffering, now. Those eight episodes that went so well at the beginning of the season are becoming a fading memory...
I REALLY SHOULD HATE THIS ONE!
And then, finally, we get to The Time Monster: The type of Pertwee-Era story that I should be dragging through the mud. Those much-maligned tropes are there in great abundance. The Master is meddling with powers he can't control. The Brigadier is exceedingly dim. Sargent Benton is having some of his worst luck ever. I should completely and utterly hate this one.
A lot of folks aren't fond of this tale. But there also seems to be a weird undercurrent of fans that have a strange love for it. Oddly enough, I am part of that second group. After all the bitching and moaning that I've done about how much the formulaic nature of the show irritates me, I actually find myself enjoying most of The Time Monster.
I think it's the earnestness of the story that impresses me. It is milking the whole UNIT family premise for all its worth and is unabashed about it. Somehow, I can actually respect that.
There is something about the way the UNIT family works in this story that feels more comfortable. The chemistry between the Doctor, the Brig, Jo, Benton and Yates is way better than usual. Interactions among UNIT characters in previous stories could, sometimes, feel strangely forced. Whereas, here, it really does feel like they've become an actual family! Many of their scenes together have a lot of charm.
Time Monster is also one of those rare 6 part Pertwee Era stories that fill up half-decently. Episodes Three and Four do have a bit of a drag to them but it's not as bad as usual. The techniques used to fill time are less obvious than on other occasions. The Master using TOMTIT as a time scoop to try to slow down Captain Yates' caravan, for instance, is far more interesting and entertaining than the usual trick of just locking a few main characters up for a bit, then having them escape and get re-captured.
Finishing up the last two episodes in Atlantis was also a very good move. Introducing a different location and establishing several new characters gives the story a nice tonal shift. Again, my desire to see the Doctor travel in time but still remain on Earth is fulfilled. It's a great way to give us some variety in the story-telling. The whole adventure becomes a sort of Classical Greek Myth rather than just being a total UNIT runaround for the entire six parts.
Is Time Monster an absolute classic? Not particularly. As mentioned, there is still a drag to it in places. And, while its shamelessness to abuse formulas has a bit of a charm to it, the tropes do still grate a bit.
But, overall, I think it's a decent little yarn. After some significantly weak adventures like Sea Devils and Mutants, it gets the Season back on track and finishes things off quite solidly.
Fortunately, the days of the Doctor's exile are about to end. While there will still be some problems in the narrative once he is free, things still improve significantly.
I agree with you that The Sea Devils is overrated - just because there's a couple of good shots of them emerging from the sea doesn't make them interesting as opposed to a one-dimensional rehash of the Silurians. I do like the first half of the story though with the Master in prison. My theory as to why things seem so lax and why someone as inept as Trenchard is in charge is that while UNIT and the Doctor, argued for maximum security someone somewhere in the Home Office didn't see what the fuss about this one prisoner was and wasn't going to commit those kind of resources to guard him.
ReplyDeleteI have a similar sort of head cannon going on to explain Trenchard. But, in the end, I feel it's just some bad story-telling!
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