Episode #97 : The Invasion of Time

Borusa : "You have access to the greatest source of knowledge in the universe."

The Doctor : "Well, I do talk to myself sometimes."

Episode 97:   The Invasion of Time.
Companions: 4th Doctor, K9 and Leela.
Air Date:       Six episodes. 4th February to 11th March 1978.

After a meeting in space with a group of unseen aliens the Doctor returns to Gallifrey and claims the presidency of the Time Lords. Leela meanwhile tries to work out why he is behaving out of character. At his induction, the Doctor is 'crowned' with a device giving him access to the Matrix. He then arranges for the transduction barriers around Gallifrey to be put out of action by K9. When this is done, his alien 'friends' materialise. They are telepathic invaders called Vardans. The Doctor finally springs his trap and the Vardans are banished. Then, however, Gallifrey is invaded by Sontarans who, unknown to the Doctor, were using the Vardans to enable them to conquer the Time Lords. The Doctor uses knowledge extracted from the Matrix by K9 to construct a forbidden de-mat gun, activated by the Great Key of Rassilon. He then uses this to kill the Sontarans, although his memory of recent events is wiped in the process.

The Invasion of Time is in my opinion one of the worse if not THE worst story in the classic series. The production values are just truly shocking in this one. The Vardans appear initially as floating sheets of tin foil and then solidify into space age British colonial soldiers complete with pith helmets. Then the Sontarans arrive and the make up for them is absolutely terrible. Finally, during a chase sequence through the corridors and rooms of the TARDIS brick corridors and warehouse looking sets are used, completely destroying the mystique. Just shockingly bad.

The only positives that come out of this adventure are more information on the Time Lords and their political ways, more time with Borusa - setting him up for his next appearance and some hints about Rassilon, the founder of Time Lord society on Gallifrey. But that is it.

Sadly we see the departure of Leela and the K9 mark 1 at the end of this. Leela elects to remain on Gallifrey to marry someone who hardly knows and K9 decides to remain with her. It does make me wonder why Leela is allowed but the Doctor had to abandon Sarah Jane Smith at his last visit. I do miss Leela though. As the primitive/noble savage type companion I felt that she added a bit to the show that more capable companions lack.

The Invasion of Time is so dreadful that I recommend avoiding it altogether.

Episode #96 : Underworld

"There are no gods but me! Have I not created myself? Do I not rule? Am I not all-powerful?"

Episode 96:    Underworld.
Companions:  4th Doctor, K9 and Leela.
Air Date:        Four episodes. 7th to 27th January 1978.

The TARDIS arrives on a Minyan space craft, the R1C, commanded by a man named Jackson. Jackson and his crew are on a long quest to recover the Minyan race banks from a ship called the P7E which left their planet centuries ago. The Doctor helps to free the R1C after it becomes buried in a meteorite storm, but it then crashes into another newly-formed planet.

The plot behind Underworld is essentially a new take on some of the myths of ancient Greece. In this case it conveys elements of Jason & the Argonauts and the Odessey. I give bonus points because the look of the costumes and the way the episode plays out give a sense of that same quest of myth and legend that you would expect.

The story itself is fairly simplistic. The companions arrive on the Minyan ship and become caught up in their quest to find and secure the race banks of their almost dead civilisation. The survivors of the ship bearing those records now lies at the heart of a newly formed world but have been taken over and ruled by their ships computer which has gone somewhat mad. With a story about an insane computer already in recent stories (The Face of Evil) it feels a bit of a let down. Move along nothing to see here. However, the rest of the story flows well and is rather enjoyable if lacking in elements.

The only real issue is with an overused CSO (colour separation overlay) where the actors are cheaply green-screened into a series of CGI cave tunnels. It was done in this case to save budget for the following story but it does make it laughable at times.

We do get something for continuity out of Underworld; the reason for the Time Lord's policy of non-interference. It turns out that thousands of years before, the Time Lords had encountered the Minyans and given them advanced technology, including limited regenerative technology. The Minyans rebelled against their "gods" for some reason, driving the Time Lords out and destroying their planet in a massive war.

Even though this review may seem negative I actually find the story entertaining and watchable.

Episode #95 : The Sun Makers

Leela: These "taxes"; they are a sacrifice to the Gods?

The Doctor: Taxes are much more painful.

Episode 95:   The Sun Makers.
Companions: 4th Doctor, K9 and Leela.
Air Date:       Four episodes. 26th November to 17th December 1977.

The TARDIS arrives in the future on the planet Pluto where there are now six suns, a breathable atmosphere and a large industrial community. The Company controls the planet and exploits the workers, pays them a pittance and then taxes them on everything imaginable. The Doctor and Leela join forces with an underground band of rebels to overthrow the corporation.

The Sun Makers is written as a parody of the UK's Inland Revenue and it's taxation. Even today you can get the same feelings about taxes as they must have done back in the 1970s. The story deals with the last of humanity's colonies in the solar system, now living on Pluto under the governorship of an alien corporation. Everyone works too hard and the taxes are too high. I think we can all feel something towards that. The Doctor and companions find themselves drawn into the growing rebellion and become the spark needed to give mankind that boost to rebellion.

The concept of the story is fair but the execution leaves much to be desired. The sets look worse than normal and there is something off that I can't quite put my finger on when you see on-location locations that does actually spoil things a little. The acting from the extras is a little too over the top and also adds to the dislike of the story. Everything feels a little off.

Most of the time you can come away from an episode of Doctor Who with no problems at all. With this one however, I get a nagging sensation that the Doctor may have brought about the doom of all on Pluto. The alien corporation has abandoned the planet and left everyone to it. As mentioned in the story, the artifical suns need constant maintenance and I guess that means they eventually go out. So unless the survivors have access to space travel (unlikely) or the ability reach and maintain those suns sooner or later everyone on Pluto is going to freeze to death. Meanwhile the Doctor and friends have vanished and left them to it. We know the Doctor tends to vanish once everything is done but the end of this story leaves me with an uncomfortable feeling because of it.

The Sun Makers is a very weak and uninteresting story from my point of view. Typical of this point in the show.

Episode #94 : Image of the Fendahl.

"There are four thousand million people here on your planet, and if I'm right, within a year, there will just be one left alive. Just one."


Episode 94:   Image of the Fendhal.
Companions: 4th Doctor, K9 and Leela.
Air Date:       Four episodes. 29th October to 19th November 1977.

The present day: just as the Fourth Doctor and Leela arrive in Fetchborough, England, Professor Fendelman prepares to experiment on a fossilized skull which science says should not exist. The skull is actually an artefact of the Fendahl, a god-like being who feeds on the life force of others. It has begun to awaken and kill. Worse yet, others seek to exploit the Fendahl's dreadful power.


With the Image of the Fendahl we come to a close on the classic horror stories that made Tom Baker's run as the Doctor so good in the 1970s. We have another great story that with the right eye also fits the Lovecraftian genre, perhaps more so than any other story. In this case we learn that an ancient horror that once dwelt on the fifth planet of our solar system, now an asteroid field, has set in motion throughout human history the means to revive itself and escape a prison created by the Time Lords.

In some ways the story resembles the Jon Pertwee adventure The Daemons. It deals with an ancient foe thought by the locals to be an emination of evil, a sinister cult turned to the worship of the evil by an outsider, a good "white witch" type figure and heaps of superstition translated into science by the Doctor. But you shouldn't watch this thinking it is a rip off of the early story. Image of the Fendahl is an excellent story in its own right.


Both the Doctor and Leela are back on top form this time around. The Doctor is very much the grinning curiosity seeker again and Leela is back to being the noble savage still finding her way around science. She has her violent moments but they are not as blunt as in previous stories. Unfortunately K9 barely gets a look in with this story. I have read it that the writers and staff were not 100% sure that he would be brought onboard as a companion at this time so they just tacked him into the start and end of the adventure.

The Fendahl itself appears as a gold-skinned woman with eyes painted on her eyelids. The dress and appearance resemble somthing from Greek mythology to me. To some it is disappointing but not to me. It's the Fendahleen that I rather like however. Resembling tentacled slugs, though in rubber suits, they fit the feel of the story excellently.



If you've been reading this reviews you'll know that I believe that the show under Tom Baker starts off well and slowly begins to decline. Well, from my perspective this truely is the last of the great stories. Nothing else comes close to what has gone before. Perhaps Tom Baker did stay too long? Most other Doctors stay about 3 years and then move on. Maybe there is a reason why that formula works?

Episode #93 : The Invisible Enemy

"The Age of Man is over. The Age of the Virus has begun!"

Episode 93:   The Invisible Enemy.
Companions: 4th Doctor, K9 and Leela.
Air Date:       Four episodes. 1st to 22nd October 1977.

The TARDIS is infiltrated by the Swarm - a space-borne intelligence that wishes to spread itself across the universe - and the Doctor is infected by its nucleus. The ship then materialises on Titan, one of the moons of Saturn, where the human occupants of a refuelling station have also been taken over.

The Invisible Enemy is a pretty awful story with a weak story with some really bad effects and costumes. The only good thing about it is the fast pacing which keeps it going along nicely. The story deals with a cloud of intelligent virus cells seeking to overrun everything in the universe, to place themselves at the top of the food chain. When the Doctor becomes infected, he clones himself and Leela, having them injected into the Doctor's brain to do battle with the virus nucleus. You can see definite references to Fantastic Voyage. It isn't enough to save this one though.

We see the arrival of K9, the Doctor's tin dog. He is a creation of Dr Marius on the medical station and at the culmination of the story is given over to the Doctor as a new companion. K9 is another companion popular with those of us who remember the classic series and to those newer generations who see him in the Sarah Jane Adventures.

There is little good to be said on this story and I don't consider it worth a watch.

Episode #92 : The Horror of Fang Rock

The Doctor: Got it. You're at last losing that interminable war with the Sontarans.

Rutan: [offended] That is a lie!

The Doctor: Is it? You used to own the whole of the Mutter's Spiral once. Now the Sontarans have driven you to the farthest fringes of the galaxy.

Rutan: The glorious Rutan army is making a series of strategic withdrawals

to selected strongpoints.

The Doctor: Rutan, that's the empty rhetoric of a defeated dictator,

and I don't like your face either.

Episode 92:   The Horror of Fang Rock.
Companions: 4th Doctor and Leela.
Air Date:       Four episodes. 3rd to 24th September 1977.

The cursed island of Fang Rock off the south coast of England is a place of rumour and tales of beasts from the sea. Three lighthouse men at the turn of the century face their fears when something comes from the sea to bring death to all it touches.

One of my absolute favourite episodes from the classic series, The Horror of Fang Rock is a perfect atmospheric horror story with or without the science fiction elements. The story takes place in the early years of the 20th century on a remote island off the south coast of England where a lonely light house stands. The three keepers are soon joined by our time travelling companions, the survivours of a boat crash and worst of all, a shape changing killer from outer space. Stuck on the island together who will survive to escape when dawn comes?

The monster of the story is a Rutan, a race of shape changing jellyfish who are waging a vast war against the Sontarans for control of our galaxy. They were first mentioned in The Time Warrior. This Rutan has crash landed and must find safety as well as a means of contacting the rest of the Rutan fleet. The appearance of the Rutan is a bit odd and I'm not sure really what they used for it as it looks like a squashed gooseberry. I hope that at some point we'll see a return of the Rutans in the new series of Doctor Who.

There is a lot of good acting in this story. The Doctor and Leela are fantastic, and the supporting cast really seem to get into character. All of which makes the story that much better. The only downer is the appearance of the Rutan but I can happily live with that as the rest of the story makes up for it big time.

The Horror of Fang Rock is the first episode where I feel it appropriate to give it a five star rating. The story, the atmosphere and a little bit of Lovecraftian influence really make it that good in my book.

Aye: though we hunted high and low,

And hunted everywhere,

Of the three men's fate we found no trace

Of any kind in any place,

But a door ajar, and an untouch'd meal,

And an overtoppled chair...

Episode #91 : The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Leela: What's the tribe here?

The Doctor: Cockneys!

Episode 91:   The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
Companions: 4th Doctor and Leela.
Air Date:       Six episodes. 26th February to 2nd April 1977.

The Fourth Doctor brings Leela to Victorian London to see how her ancestors lived, but is rapidly drawn into a fiendish plot involving Chinese Tongs, disappearing women, an Oriental stage magician, a murderous ventriloquist's dummy and giant rats in the sewers.

The adventures of the 4th Doctor come back to their horror roots with another classic adventure in The Talons of Weng-Chiang. The setting for this tale of mystery and terror is the fog wrapped streets of London of the 1890's. The atmosphere for this story has been piled on thick and it serves to present a really top notch tale.

The story has it's science fiction elements as always. In this case the villain posing as the Chinese god Weng-Chiang (A made up deity I believe) is a renegade and war criminal from the future, the 51st century to be exact. We get a little bit of details about that time in this story, specifically the Doctor mentions that the Earth is in a grip of an ice age and the villainous Greel speaks about Time Agents (of which future companion Jack Harkness was once a member as we know) looking for him. We know about the ice age in the future from The Ice Warriors. It's nice to see some continuity linking from the past and the future of the show.

While the story itself is excellent the episode has some issues. My main grumble is the length of it. At six parts it is close to a three hour story and that is just too long even at the time when production and scripts were much better than the dawn of the series. The second is some truly poor effects. A couple of times we see an experiment of Greel's, a giant rat which hunts the sewers under London. The giant rat is simply a man in an oversized and painfully obvious rat costume. It is so bad as to be laughable.

This story has garnered controversy for some of its Asian roles being played by white actors in "yellowface", especially John Bennett as Chang. Most of this controversy is in the US and Canada, where the use of yellowface fell out of practice earlier than it did in the UK. Indeed, TV Ontario refused to air it after consulting with local Chinese-Canadian groups, and multiple stations in the US and Canada also declined to air it.

Episode #90 : The Robots of Death

"There was a Voc therapist in Kaldor City once. Specially programmed, equipped with vibro-digits, subcutaneous stimulators, the lot. You know what happened, Borg? Its first client wanted treatment for a stiff elbow. The Voc therapist felt carefully all round the joint, and then suddenly just twisted his arm off at the shoulder. Shoompf. All over in two seconds."

Episode 90:   The Robots of Death.
Companions: 4th Doctor and Leela.
Air Date:       Four episodes. 29th January to 19th February 1977.

The TARDIS materialises on board a massive sandminer vehicle combing an alien world for precious minerals. The miner is run by a small human crew with the aid of numerous robots split into three classes: Dums, Vocs and a single controlling Super Voc. The crew are being picked off one by one by an unseen killer.

The Robots of Death is an excellent adventure combining elements of science fiction, horror and murder mystery genres. You can also tell that elements of this story were inspired by Issac Assimov's I Robot and Frank Herbert's Dune. A good combination of elements that make for one thoroughly engrossing story.

After an excellent introduction for Leela in the previous story, she gets dropped to the side somewhat in this one with the Doctor getting almost all the limelight. However you get some good interaction as she attempts to adapt to technology and the larger universe. There is a very nice scene at the start of the adventure where the Doctor tries to explain how the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than the outside which helps us, the viewer, understand how it works more than it helps Leela.

 

 

The story is well written and has you guessing who the culprit is pretty much throughout. The only let down (somewhat) is the motivation but I tend to find that with most murder mysteries. The setting, that of a moving sand crawler mining craft, is delivers a small claustrophobic feel in keeping with the story. Whatever happens no one can simply just leave and everyone is trapped on board with the killer. Robots of Death is another story well worth the watch. Enjoy.

 



Episode #89 : The Face of Evil

"Now drop your weapons or I'll kill him with this deadly jelly baby."

Episode 89:   The Face of Evil.
Companions: 4th Doctor and Leela.
Air Date:        Four episodes. 1st to 22nd January 1977.

The TARDIS arrives on a planet where a savage tribe called the Sevateem worship a god called Xoanon. The Doctor discovers that Xoanon is in fact a spaceship computer that he tried to repair at some point in his past and inadvertently drove mad by giving it a multiple personality.

The Face of Evil is another classic science fiction trope. In this case it is a deranged computer with multiple personalities caused by the fourth Doctor in a previously untelevised story. I'm guessing there is a big gap of adventures following the Doctor departing Gallifrey in the previous story as I can't see when he could have done it otherwise. Although the insane computer backstory is central to the adventure, it also deals with the power struggle in the Sevateem tribe and their struggle against the Tesh who serve the computer. All in all, not a bad little story.

The Doctor is joined by a new companion, Leela, a primitive female warrior of the Sevateem played by Louise Jameson. I like Leela quite a lot. She is another strong female companion but with the right amount of vulnerability to be believable. Unlike Sarah Jane Smith, Leela remains a strong figure throughout her tenure on the show. I think she was included, skimpy outfit and all, to keep the dad's watching after the Saturday afternoon football.

Leela is quite a violent character for an afternoon tea time family show. She kills two members of her own tribe very early on in the story. It is kind of nice to have such a character as normally the Doctor and companion are so nice - not counting the amount of Venusian Akido that the third Doctor used to do. It's just a very different approach.

As I said earlier, this isn't a bad story but at the same time it is missing a little something to give it that push towards a good story. It floats along at a nice pace with some good character interaction and humour but I am sure there is something that could have made it a better story.