The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: Carnival Of Monsters
Carnival Of Monsters: Episode One (27/01/13)
Well, that was a decidedly odd episode that became more and more interesting as it went on. At first it seemed there were two unconnected storylines going on; one on an alien planet populated by grey men with male pattern baldness and a worker species with the most ridiculously unconvincing alien masks I've seen on the series, dealing with a Humanoid couple who are basically Carnies; a second where the Doctor and Jo arrive on a ship in the Indian Ocean taking a Major Daly and his daughter Claire (along with some chickens) to Bombay when the ship is attacked by a Plesiosaur! The Doctor and Jo were caught, accused of being stowaways and locked in Major Daly's cabin.
And that's where it became interesting. The Doctor's convinced they can't be on Earth, having set the TARDIS for Metebilis III, but everything we see indicates it's Earth on the 4th of June 1926. However, there's a big silver hexagon in the floor outside Major Daly's cabin that only Jo and the Doctor can see, and the ship they're on is the SS Bernice, which disappeared on June 4th 1926!
They escaped the cabin using Jo's skeleton key set and made their way back to the hold where the TARDIS was to retrieve some equipment to open the alien hexagonal hatch when they realised that everyone was reenacting events preceding the Plesiosaur attack (which they witnessed whilst hiding behind a sofa). This was preempted by Jo noticing they entered the cabin at 7.35pm and finished discussing the history of the SS Bernice at 6.40pm!
Anyhow, they made it to the TARDIS only for a massive hand to come along, Monty Python-style, and pick the TARDIS up! Really very good and quite original. Since Vorg and Shirna, the Carnies, have a faulty machine with them I reckon it's got something to do with that. All in all, a really good episode!
Carnival Of Monsters: Episode Two (03/02/13)
So, the Doctor and Jo have landed on a boat from 1926 that went missing in the Indian Ocean but is now miniaturised inside an alien machine with a Plesiosaur, an Ogron, a Cyberman (yay!), and a section of East Anglia housing some giant, man-eating, six-eyed caterpillars called Drashigs, which is owned by a couple of alien Carnies that have taken it to the Planet of the Grey Bureaucrats! Only in Doctor Who!
Very good, this week. Vorg took the TARDIS out of the machine as it was interfering with a circuit but put it back again, only for one of the grey people to take it out later and let it grow to normal size. The Doctor and Jo did a bit more running around and Mr Pertwee got to do his boxing action-hero bit fighting Claire's fella who's a sailor on the SS Bernice. Then they escaped through hexagonal hatch and crawled around the rather good sets of the interior of the machine. They broke into another circuit (it seems the Doctor carries a length of razor wire in one of his pockets!) and encountered the gorsey marshes of East Anglia, where a Drashig made a rather impressive appearance for the cliffhanger.
Meanwhile, Vorg and Shirna got accused of being spies and of importing alien species in their machine which the grey guys tried to eradicate with their big gun. Fortunately, it only made the interior a bit hot.
This one's very well written and well paced, so far. Love that the bureaucratic aliens are grey and talk endlessly of Politics, and the location work on the ship and in the marshes are excellent. This is another Robert Holmes script, and possibly the best he's done so far, or at least as good as 'Spearhead From Space'. Hope we see more from him. All very entertaining! And I hope the Doctor and Jo bump into the Cyberman/men next week! That would be cool!
Carnival Of Monsters: Episode Three (10/02/13)
Again rather good. One of the grey men (the President's brother) persuaded Vorg to help Jo and the Doctor escape after learning that the Drashigs never give up on a scent and once ate an entire battle cruiser! But he only did this in order to get the Drashigs to follow the Doctor and Jo out the machine so something terrible could happen and give him an excuse to depose his brother.
Lots of really good model shots of Drashigs bursting through walls and crawling through marshes. A rather good explosion effect of the Doctor igniting the marsh gasses, too. Anyhow, the Drashigs followed the Doctor and Jo into the workings of the machine (which is a Miniscope, which the Doctor helped get banned, apparently) and they found a way out, but needed a rope to climb down, so returned to the SS Bernice. Jo got caught and the Doctor found some rope, but then a Drashig turned up and Major Daly and Lt. Andrews fought them off with a machine gun and some dynamite. Jo tried to get everyone on the boat to remember their previous encounters but to little effect, then the Doctor climbed down the vent and exited the Miniscope, giving Shirna a fright.
Some uncertainty as to how big the Drashigs are regarding some of the close-ups with the Doctor compared to the model shots and holes in the ship's hold's wall, and also Vorg's hand - how small are the things in the Minoscope? And how come dynamite and a 1920s machine gun killed the Drashigs, yet a battle cruiser with 50 crew were defenceless? I can only imagine they were set upon by hundreds of the buggers! Anyhow, rather nicely plotted, though the cliffhanger was a bit odd. Roll on Episode Four!
Carnival Of Monsters: Episode Four (17/02/13)
Well, that was a rather entertaining story. The Doctor grew to full size and started having a go at the Inter Minorans about allowing an illegal device be used on their planet. They squabbled about what was going to be done to the Doctor giving him time to work with Vorg (who thought the Doctor was a fellow Carny) on getting back into the Miniscope to help Jo.
Meanwhile, Kalik plotted to release the Drashigs to cause an incident which would put his brother, the President, out of favour and allow him to take over. The Doctor retrieved Jo, Kalik released the Drashigs but was eaten (I assume - that's what it looked like), Vorg killed the Drashigs using the Eradicator Gun (which Orum had disabled by removing the power unit and hiding it in Vorg's toolkit - Shirna then found it while they were trying to retrieve the Doctor from the Miniscope after Pletrak shot the machine that got him back in there) and everyone - Drashigs, Major Daly, etc. - were returned to where they came from. Somehow.
Good final episode, though if the crew and passengers of the SS Bernice returned to 1926, what does that mean? Has the Doctor rewritten time? The last you saw of them was Claire saying goodnight to her father, so did the ship subsequently sink after all? It's possible, I guess. The Drashig did leave a bloody great hole in the hull!
Anyhow, well written with some great comedy and lots of well-rounded characters; well acted and some decent effects. This anniversary year is going rather well. Still a shame we didn't get to see anything more of the Cybermen, though!
Well, that was a decidedly odd episode that became more and more interesting as it went on. At first it seemed there were two unconnected storylines going on; one on an alien planet populated by grey men with male pattern baldness and a worker species with the most ridiculously unconvincing alien masks I've seen on the series, dealing with a Humanoid couple who are basically Carnies; a second where the Doctor and Jo arrive on a ship in the Indian Ocean taking a Major Daly and his daughter Claire (along with some chickens) to Bombay when the ship is attacked by a Plesiosaur! The Doctor and Jo were caught, accused of being stowaways and locked in Major Daly's cabin.
And that's where it became interesting. The Doctor's convinced they can't be on Earth, having set the TARDIS for Metebilis III, but everything we see indicates it's Earth on the 4th of June 1926. However, there's a big silver hexagon in the floor outside Major Daly's cabin that only Jo and the Doctor can see, and the ship they're on is the SS Bernice, which disappeared on June 4th 1926!
They escaped the cabin using Jo's skeleton key set and made their way back to the hold where the TARDIS was to retrieve some equipment to open the alien hexagonal hatch when they realised that everyone was reenacting events preceding the Plesiosaur attack (which they witnessed whilst hiding behind a sofa). This was preempted by Jo noticing they entered the cabin at 7.35pm and finished discussing the history of the SS Bernice at 6.40pm!
Anyhow, they made it to the TARDIS only for a massive hand to come along, Monty Python-style, and pick the TARDIS up! Really very good and quite original. Since Vorg and Shirna, the Carnies, have a faulty machine with them I reckon it's got something to do with that. All in all, a really good episode!
Carnival Of Monsters: Episode Two (03/02/13)
So, the Doctor and Jo have landed on a boat from 1926 that went missing in the Indian Ocean but is now miniaturised inside an alien machine with a Plesiosaur, an Ogron, a Cyberman (yay!), and a section of East Anglia housing some giant, man-eating, six-eyed caterpillars called Drashigs, which is owned by a couple of alien Carnies that have taken it to the Planet of the Grey Bureaucrats! Only in Doctor Who!
Very good, this week. Vorg took the TARDIS out of the machine as it was interfering with a circuit but put it back again, only for one of the grey people to take it out later and let it grow to normal size. The Doctor and Jo did a bit more running around and Mr Pertwee got to do his boxing action-hero bit fighting Claire's fella who's a sailor on the SS Bernice. Then they escaped through hexagonal hatch and crawled around the rather good sets of the interior of the machine. They broke into another circuit (it seems the Doctor carries a length of razor wire in one of his pockets!) and encountered the gorsey marshes of East Anglia, where a Drashig made a rather impressive appearance for the cliffhanger.
Meanwhile, Vorg and Shirna got accused of being spies and of importing alien species in their machine which the grey guys tried to eradicate with their big gun. Fortunately, it only made the interior a bit hot.
This one's very well written and well paced, so far. Love that the bureaucratic aliens are grey and talk endlessly of Politics, and the location work on the ship and in the marshes are excellent. This is another Robert Holmes script, and possibly the best he's done so far, or at least as good as 'Spearhead From Space'. Hope we see more from him. All very entertaining! And I hope the Doctor and Jo bump into the Cyberman/men next week! That would be cool!
Carnival Of Monsters: Episode Three (10/02/13)
Again rather good. One of the grey men (the President's brother) persuaded Vorg to help Jo and the Doctor escape after learning that the Drashigs never give up on a scent and once ate an entire battle cruiser! But he only did this in order to get the Drashigs to follow the Doctor and Jo out the machine so something terrible could happen and give him an excuse to depose his brother.
Lots of really good model shots of Drashigs bursting through walls and crawling through marshes. A rather good explosion effect of the Doctor igniting the marsh gasses, too. Anyhow, the Drashigs followed the Doctor and Jo into the workings of the machine (which is a Miniscope, which the Doctor helped get banned, apparently) and they found a way out, but needed a rope to climb down, so returned to the SS Bernice. Jo got caught and the Doctor found some rope, but then a Drashig turned up and Major Daly and Lt. Andrews fought them off with a machine gun and some dynamite. Jo tried to get everyone on the boat to remember their previous encounters but to little effect, then the Doctor climbed down the vent and exited the Miniscope, giving Shirna a fright.
Some uncertainty as to how big the Drashigs are regarding some of the close-ups with the Doctor compared to the model shots and holes in the ship's hold's wall, and also Vorg's hand - how small are the things in the Minoscope? And how come dynamite and a 1920s machine gun killed the Drashigs, yet a battle cruiser with 50 crew were defenceless? I can only imagine they were set upon by hundreds of the buggers! Anyhow, rather nicely plotted, though the cliffhanger was a bit odd. Roll on Episode Four!
Carnival Of Monsters: Episode Four (17/02/13)
Well, that was a rather entertaining story. The Doctor grew to full size and started having a go at the Inter Minorans about allowing an illegal device be used on their planet. They squabbled about what was going to be done to the Doctor giving him time to work with Vorg (who thought the Doctor was a fellow Carny) on getting back into the Miniscope to help Jo.
Meanwhile, Kalik plotted to release the Drashigs to cause an incident which would put his brother, the President, out of favour and allow him to take over. The Doctor retrieved Jo, Kalik released the Drashigs but was eaten (I assume - that's what it looked like), Vorg killed the Drashigs using the Eradicator Gun (which Orum had disabled by removing the power unit and hiding it in Vorg's toolkit - Shirna then found it while they were trying to retrieve the Doctor from the Miniscope after Pletrak shot the machine that got him back in there) and everyone - Drashigs, Major Daly, etc. - were returned to where they came from. Somehow.
Good final episode, though if the crew and passengers of the SS Bernice returned to 1926, what does that mean? Has the Doctor rewritten time? The last you saw of them was Claire saying goodnight to her father, so did the ship subsequently sink after all? It's possible, I guess. The Drashig did leave a bloody great hole in the hull!
Anyhow, well written with some great comedy and lots of well-rounded characters; well acted and some decent effects. This anniversary year is going rather well. Still a shame we didn't get to see anything more of the Cybermen, though!
There is indeed a lot to like about this story, but one black mark is that the budget clearly went on the Drashig and other model and CSO effects - almost everything about the unnamed planet and its denizens looks horribly cheap, from the costumes to the ill-fitting masks and wigs to the conveyor belt props. Great juxtapositions though between the 'period drama', the schlock fiction of the Drashigs and the dinosaur, the typical Holmes politics and the runaround on the Top of the Pops set, with memorable and well-played characters.
ReplyDeleteIt was really odd reading my journal back for this one as it's a story that I don't watch that often because I'm a bit meh about it, but I clearly really enjoyed watching it in order and the things I'm usually put off by (Shirna and Vorg and much of the stuff with the Inter Minorans) seems to have gone down pretty well. It is a shame about those masks, though. They really are incredibly rubbish!
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