The Time Meddler

So the Doctor has a new companion, Steven Taylor. He starts off being kind of bossy (no good when that happens around the Doctor). I like the character of the Monk, he’s pretty well imagined and is a decent adversary, if only because he’s so feisty when dealing with the Doctor. He’s also the owner of another TARDIS, which is rather cool! We haven’t seen a different TARDIS yet. It’s also another time-sensitive story; I’m glad to see time travel topics being taken advantage of. The Doctor ends the serial being a bit mean towards his fellow Time Lord and maroons him on Earth in 1066.

 

The Chase

Watched The Chase. Like the Tenth doctor’s travels, the first episode shows Shakespeare. Unlike the later story, this gives quite an uninspired explanation for the authoring of Hamlet. Also the episode manages to pander to the fan base by including a video of The Beatles’ television appearance (the song being played, Ticket to Ride, was released just a month prior to the show’s airing date). It really is a good thing that The Beatles ended up being a long-term success with enduring popularity; otherwise, this would have been a reference to a long-forgotten band.

The TARDIS finds its way to the top of the Empire State Building, along with some Daleks. Later in Tenth Doctor times we’ll be seeing some Daleks working on the very same building. After Manhattan, the crew lands on a moving ship (the Mary Celeste); this would probably be the first time they’ve landed on a moving object, so far. The ship moves on to a haunted mansion exhibit (note: the writers could have known about the Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion since it was already under construction and had been publicized).

I really liked the fact that the Daleks’ time machine is much like the TARDIS, i.e. bigger on the outside, and the Doctor vs. Robot Doctor fight. Very nifty.

Finally, we say farewell to the original companions — Barbara and Ian. I don’t know yet what the other companions will bring: when I started watching the old series my only frame of reference for companions was Rose Tyler and Martha Jones, who are quite different in attitude (and age) from Barbara and Ian. I didn’t really know what to expect, and thus was surprised by the somewhat formal style of Ian and the fear often exhibited by Barbara, plus by the patronizing relationship the Doctor had with Barbara. Some things were the same: the Doctor needs his companions, just as they need him, and he depends on them thinking on their feet and never really losing hope. Over the course of the first two seasons our Barbara and Ian matured and became more fun, more interested in their travels, more inclined to get involved in local affairs in the places they visited. I have high hopes for the upcoming companions.

 

Moving on for now; The Crusade; The Space Museum

I still haven’t watched the Netflix DVDs that I have out (incidentally, they are Labyrinth and Xanadu), and so decided to just move on to the next serials and to watch The Web Planet when I get to it.

I successfully watched the parts of The Crusade that were available on YouTube. This happens to be episodes 1 and 3, with 2 and 4 being available as photo montages and the original audio track plus a narrator to connect what was happening to the audio track (i.e. explain what’s in between the photos). It’s a palace intrigue serial, but a rather good one at that. It was rather hard to follow, since I wasn’t in the mood to watch the photo montage and thus missed vital parts of the serial. Basically, since our crew (Vicki, Barbara, Ian, and the Doctor) is still alive and well at the end of the last episode, all is well.

The Space Museum is continuing a trend from the episode that introduced us to Vicki (namely, “The Rescue“) — that is, a world with 60s-looking rocket ships. The whole theme of the Doctor visiting (being stuck in?) a museum of alien stuff, only to be surprised by a Dalek being kept in the exhibit, will be repeated in the episode “Dalek” in the New Series’ Season 1.

The show itself is built on a somewhat non-linear basis, taking advantage of the time-traveling aspect of the overall premise for once. At one point the Doctor gets frozen in a scene vividly similar to Han Solo being frozen in carbonite…  The serial ends on a great cliff-hanger, a set up for the next show.  Overall, it’s actually been a pretty interesting story!

 

The Romans

Finished the very next serial, The Romans. After watching The Rescue I really started worrying that the production budget has dropped: The Rescue’s monsters and props really left a lot to be desired. The Romans, however, immediately show a much higher quality: mass scenes, good clothes and props, scenery. Immediately the plot starts smelling of being another palace intrigue variation.

The crew, though, appears to have taken a rest, which is probably a good thing: they were go-go-go all along before, and had a rather wretched time in The Dalek Invasion beforehand. And though Vicki spent a lot of time on a stranded ship, in hardship, she seems to already be bored.

As the serial progresses, the crew is getting split up. The Doctor and Vicki are on the way to Rome; Ian is an oarsman on some boat; Barbara is enslaved and is on her way to be sold at an auction. Things aren’t looking too great for them, but of course the serial has to start and end on reasonably similar terms between everyone, so the crew starts coming together over time. Now the Doctor, Vicki, and Barbara are at the same palace (even if they don’t know it yet), and Ian is heading towards gladiatorial combat in front of the caesar.

Finally in the third episode, we enter the land of palace intrigue with an episode called Conspiracy (doesn’t get more obvious, does it?)…

After much additional intrigue — poisons, tricks, fighting, defiance of authority, and crypto-Christians — the crew finds its way back to the TARDIS and gets on its way. Kind of.

 

The Rescue

Watched “The Rescue” (serial #12). Susan is gone now; too bad, I liked her character. And the Doctor is rather grumpy. However, the monster-man from the first episode is just about as unfetching as the non-bug-eyed crab-like monster that poses a challenge for Ian and the Doctor. The pace is pathetic.

The second episode speeds up somewhat, as it kind of has to in order to resolve the serial in the next 20-odd minutes. It’s interesting that the Doctor once again refers to his past when he mentions that he’s been to this planet — Dido — before. Also, for once, in this science fiction series, we have an honest-to-goodness rocket ship! On the other hand we counter-balance this positive development with the simplicity (may I say near-stupidity?) of the Vicki character. I genuinely hope that she gets better over time, since we’re going to be stuck with her for a little bit, it seems.

 

Planet of Giants

Into season two now.

It really seems like I’ve seen this before: an eccentric scientist, an accident, people getting smaller, turning up in a front yard of a house and negotiating their way amongst giant insects.  Sounds like a plot of Honey I Shrunk the Kids?  Sure does to me. Though partially also the plot of “The Extraordinary Adventures of Karik and Valya” by Yan Larri, which was published (only in Russian?) many years prior to this serial.  Some borrowing going on?  Or just a very obvious plot device?  Probably the latter…

Either way, this show rapidly turned into a murder mystery.

Unusually, the YouTube videos did not sudivide this serial into episodes.

 

The Sensorites (ep 3-6)

Susan is being more rebellious and wants to not be treated like a child. I feel really sorry for the people in the Sensorite costumes. Also, are the Mon Calamari inspired by these aliens? I’m also noticing that there is trend in the serials so far to have funky doors to differentiate one culture from another — no doors are normal door-shaped openings so far: the Daleks had weird triangle-shaped doors that recede into the wall, there’ve been circular doors that recede, and the Sensorites have strange semi-circular doors that swing out.

The Doctor is surprised that Susan can read the Sensorites’ minds. And the serial quickly becomes a story about the internal politics of the society being visited… I suppose throughout the series we’ll see quite a bit of this “palace intrigue” genre.

Susan gets to reminisce and describe Gallifrey. Like Earth, burnt orange sky at night; silver leaves on trees. I wonder how this compares to future descriptions of the planet. It appears that Susan also wants to settle down somewhere — she will, of course, in the next season.

 

The Sensorites, episode 2

Continued watching The Sensorites, getting through Episode 2 despite YouTube trouble. Sensorites are actually shown this time. Susan speaks about her past travel, and proposes a method for fighting the Sensorites — having multiple people think the same thing at the same time, in order to have an effect on the Sensorites. Interestingly, the Tenth Doctor would have Martha use a similar method to give energy to the Doctor to fight the Master.

When the Sensorites decide to communicate with the human crew, they choose to communicate with Susan.  It is interesting that they choose a Time Lord for the communication — of course, the Time Lords have the ability to read minds of some sorts.  Is this just an accidental connection, or is this actually predictive exposition of this ability before it enters the canon?

Interesting to see where the serial is going, though, as Susan surrenders herself in order to save the rest of the crew.

 

The Sensorites

The quality is pretty low, but I’ve started on The Sensorites (serial #7).  The impenetrability of the TARDIS gets tested right in the very beginning, as the Sensorites steal the lock to the front door.  Interestingly this is a refreshingly science-fictiony serial, which comes on the heels of The Aztecs and other historical fiction interspersed with the sci-fi shows, setting the pattern for future seasons.  I’ve only watched the first episode of The Sensorites so far, so this isn’t really a full review just yet.

 

The Keys of Marinus

YouTube to the rescue: the entire serial #5 — The Keys of Marinus — is online, in 18 parts.  I had a reasonably enjoyable though longish evening of watching the entire serial, all six episodes.  The plot involves the doctor and his companions arriving on the planet Marinus (a land with acid lakes and sand converted into glass), and being sent on a quest to recover the five microchips — keys — for some machine that will bring justice and peace to the planet.  The story really has little to do with hard science fiction, but at least it’s not like the purely historical approach of The Aztecs serial that follows.  The characters didn’t change much, and exhibited the same traits as before: Ian the Brave, Susan the Frightened, Barbara the Investigative.  Notably, Ian was condemned to death at one point in the serial, and didn’t really do much on his own to get out of the predicament: perhaps that’s fine, he’ll have a chance to show off later, but he’s definitely one to get into trouble without a good plan, lately.  The Doctor was a bit Sherlock Holmesy here, but wasn’t really the star of the serial as much as the companions.

Also I continued filling out the spreadsheet, getting some of the basics filled out through season 4.