The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: The Dead Planet - The Ambush
Doctor Who - The Dead Planet (21/12/03)
What a brilliant episode! It started off very oddly with a panning shot of the petrified jungle they've landed in filmed in negative, then turning normal as it arrived on Barbara, Ian, the Doctor and Susan walking out of the ship. Great atmosphere and emphasis on Ian and Barbara coming to terms with arriving on an alien planet and the possibility of not being able to get back home.
The exploration of their surroundings was wonderful, with them encountering the strange bit by increasing bit: first the petrified, stone-like trees, then a preserved alien flower, then a weird metal lizard which was dead but not fossilised , then a huge, gorgeous alien city shown in a composite shot of the travellers viewing it from the top of a cliff. The Doctor obviously wanted to have a closer look but it was getting dark so they went back to the ship, and on the way 'someone' touched Susan's shoulder - but no one believed her. The Doctor showed everyone the food machine, which was quite cool, and tried to establish their location with little success, and Barbara tried to calm Susan down. Then they heard noises of someone outside the ship and everyone bar the Doctor voted to leave. So the Doctor sabotaged the ship, tipping mercury out of the Fluid Link without anyone seeing and immobilising the TARDIS so they'd have to go down and find some in the city. Very stupid given they have absolutely no proof there's any there!
They left the next morning, finding a box of phials outside the TARDIS which Susan took inside so that the Doctor could study them later. They reached the city, all feeling ill and unaware that they're all succumbing to radiation sickness, then split up to have a quick recce. However, Barbara got lost in a building (watched by CCTV), was trapped in a lift and taken underground where she encountered a 'thing'!
An absolutely wonderful episode of the Doctor and Susan doing their thing while Ian and Barbara encounter the truly strange for the first time. The sets and model work were fantastic and the music eerie and atmospheric. The show is really stepping up its game!
Doctor Who - The Survivors (28/12/03)
Another good episode. Entering the city, Ian, Susan and the Doctor found a Geiger counter and realised they all felt ill because they had radiation sickness. The Doctor confessed that he'd lied and there was nothing wrong with the Fluid Link - he'd just said so so that they'd have to stay and explore the city (dick!), then they were caught by the same aliens who caught Barbara. They were all put in the same cell and the Doctor was interrogated. The aliens - Daleks, who are shaped like bollards with an eye-stalk, a gun and some form of plunger to operate things with - are one of two races (the others being Thals, who are now horribly mutated and seemingly left the box of phials for the travellers, probably anti-radiation drugs) who had a war half a millennia ago and destroyed everything with a neutron bomb, hence the jungle and the radiation. The Daleks want to test the drugs, so Susan goes out to fetch them.
Ian has been half paralysed (temporarily) by the Daleks, and the Doctor and Barbara have been badly affected by the radiation. Susan was well up for going to begin with till she realised she'd be on her own. Anyway, she ran through the jungle being tailed by some tall, scaly creature (probably a Thal) and reached the TARDIS and got the drugs. But the others are very ill and the Daleks expect the Doctor to die soon!
Some of the dialogue wasn't great this week, and there was some very silly business about having to get the TARDIS key in the only correct one of 21 holes in the lock to avoid the lock melting as a defence mechanism! But the Daleks are an interesting design - they look like weird robots, but Barbara thinks there's someone inside and it seems she may be right. A very tense episode and quite claustrophobic.
Doctor Who - The Escape (04/01/04)
Well, a hell of a lot happened this week!
Susan encountered the Thals in the forest - they're bland Humanoids who wear PVC, and one of them (Alydon) gave Susan his scaly cloak and some spare drugs. Skip forward a few hours and Susan is back in the cell with the others having had one set of anti-radiation drugs taken by the Daleks but the other set left with her (so everyone's much better). Cue lots of stuff to do with escaping (obviously - look at the title of the episode!). The Daleks learnt that the Thals are starving by listening to Susan relay what Alydon told her on CCTV. Then they got Susan to write a note saying the Daleks have got food and will help the Thals, but they still kept everyone prisoner and left the note (signed by Susan as she believes them) by the city gates for the Thals to find. Which they do (bit of luck!) and they can apparently read English, too (another bit of luck)!
Eventually, the travellers noticed the CCTV and staged a fight to rip the camera free. Obviously, the Daleks aren't stupid but decided to leave them be. Then the Doctor figured out that the Daleks travel by harnessing static electricity (like dodgems) through the metal floor, so they formed a plan to disable one with Alydon's PVC cloak and mud from Susan's shoes. It worked (!) and they escaped from their cell, scooping out the Dalek from inside the disabled casing and replacing it with Ian so it'll look like they're being escorted somewhere. I don't see the Daleks falling for it; and the Thals seem to be a wet bunch, slightly sexist and naive (though that's probably the script as we only have one token speaking female Thal).
We seem to be mirroring the plot of the Caveman story, but with Daleks. Hopefully they won't be recaptured by the weird mutant Daleks and the plot can move on!
Doctor Who - The Ambush (11/01/04)
Highs and lows this week. Ian figured out how to operate the Dalek casing and Susan led them to a lift. They conned the guard into helping them access the lift then disconnected the door so it couldn't get through. However, the Daleks were aware they'd escaped and magnetised the floor, trapping Ian. He got free, but there was plenty of tension while the Daleks cut through the door. Everyone escaped in the lift to the top of the building, destroyed the lift with a Dalek in it using a big sculpture (yep, they actually killed someone!) then escaped through a door. Does this mean the Daleks have stairs? Or did they just not disable all the other lifts in the building?
Anyway, Ian stayed behind to warn the Thals of an ambush when they arrived to collect the food the Daleks promised. However, he hung around listening to Thal leader Temmosus give a big long speech then tell the other Thals to collect the food (and, apparently, toilet rolls - them Daleks thought of everything!) before stepping out from behind a corner and shouting "It's a trap!". Cue Thal massacre. Then, upon fleeing and bumping into Alydon, he apologised for turning up late, the lying shit!
Anyhow, Temmosus is dead, Alydon is now leader, the Thals are being very friendly but as they're all massive pacifists they refuse to fight the Daleks, if they ever come up with a way of leaving their city. Which seems a long shot. Fair enough.
It all looked like the end until Ian revealed that the Daleks took the Fluid Link off him when they were captured. You'd think he'd remember something as massively important as that before now! He's having a very bad week. So they're stuck! I don't know why the travellers automatically assumed the Dalek gift of food was a trap. I guess being held prisoner was an indication, but even so...
And after all this, Ian has come to the astounding conclusion that the Daleks "just aren't Human...". No shit Sherlock! So a mix of the entertaining and the downright stupid. I wonder what they'll do next.
Seminal, obviously, but actually pretty tedious. There's enough material for four good episodes, but instead we get one (maybe two) great ones and five (or six) overstretched ones that soon descend into B-movie territory.
ReplyDeleteI've always wished someone would do a brutal edit of An Unearthly Child and The Daleks, eschewing the entire cavemen story and having the TARDIS' first landing being on Skaro, then seriously condensing that adventure. Four episodes total maybe? Now that would be a REALLY taut and gripping introduction to the series.
I think that's an interesting idea, but I feel that the pacing of the acting would be at odds with any re-edit (that said, the version of The Rescue which added the last few minutes from the end of The Ordeal and cut out some of the faffing while Ian's group crawled under a door didn't do any harm when it was transmitted alongside the first uncensored transmission of the Paul McGann TV Movie in the UK a decade or so back!). But you just have to look at the terrible new edits of Planet Of Fire and Enlightenment on the DVDs to see that (with those stories, at least) snappier editing doesn't work with older material.
DeleteI think the first four episodes are a nicely contained serial for the Dalek story, but if we'd had the TARDIS leave and let the Thals get on with it we'd've had an episode of Star Trek. That said, the next three episodes, well... see the next post for that story!
I don't mean modern-style editing, simply cutting the slack out of the existing material (of which there is a lot). I agree that the "directors' cut" versions of the Davison stories were not entirely successful, but that as you say is down to the reason they did it - to make it more 'modern'.
DeleteIt's a while since I watched the first Dalek story, but after copying up my notes I think you could easily cut most of episodes 5-7 and a lot of the Caveman story (though not all) and make a decent 6 part serial (or modern 3-parter) with what's available. In fact, you could even disperse with the whole 'Daleks still have the Fluid Link' bit and skip three full episodes during that last few minutes of 'The Ambush'. Perhaps, given the right equipment, it's something someone could embark on some day!
Delete