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.

 

Getting organized

So a cursory search of Google Video shows that a whole bunch of old episodes that aren’t at Netflix are readily available (not sure if the complete serials are, but it’s better than nothing). So I think my decision to follow through with option 2 stands from now on.

So in order to get started, I’m putting together a spreadsheet (“live” view) where I will keep track of all episodes, where it’s available, and whether I’ve seen it. Red for “not available”, green for “all good”, and yellow for everything else or when info isn’t available or I just haven’t gotten it yet. I’ve only documented through Season 2, so it will obviously need much more work.

 

Three paths to the Doctor

I still haven’t decided how to continue watching the episodes. Of the old series, so far, I’ve watched the first three serials, plus The Azteks serial from the first season, plus the Dalek serial from the second serial.  It seems that Netflix is truly out of disks up through season 5 or 6 (by which time we get to the Second Doctor already).  So my choices appear to be:

1. Watch just what Netflix has, in rough sequence, even if it means jumping very rapidly through time.
2. Try to find the easy-to-find episodes (youtube, google video, and a couple of the better independent video stores can help here), and watch these in rough order.  Only jump time when spending a half-hour of searching per serial yields no results.
3. Go very slowly, acquiring an episode from tough-to-find sources if necessary, preserving the time jump only in cases of great difficulty or serious expense.

I’ve not decided, but I’m leaning towards the second option.  This will necessitate building a spreadsheet of all episodes, probably, so that I can keep track of theoretical availability and my attempts to find the episodes.

 

The Dalek Invasion of Earth

Just finished the 6-episode series from Season 2.  Apparently it exists as a two-disk set that Netflix was going to send me, but the second disk just contains the extras.  With 700 episodes, I don’t think I want to jump into watching all the extras just yet: if the time comes and I’m still interested in more Doctor Who things, I can always go back and re-rent the disks to watch all the extras.

I’m immediately facing a dilemma: go with the next chronologically available DVD on Netflix (something from the second doctor), or try to track down another few of the First Doctor episodes.  My watching plan needs further study.