The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: The Seeds Of Doom
The Seeds Of Doom: Part One (31/01/16)
A pretty good start. Realised it was likely to be a good one when Robert Banks Stewart's name was on the titles - the guy who wrote 'Terror Of The Zygons'.
Set at an isolated base in Antarctica, three members of a World Ecology Bureau have found a seed buried in the ice. They alerted their superiors in London who brought UNIT in, specifically the Doctor, who recognised the seed and headed straight out there.
However, the team's botanist had sat it under a UV lamp and the seed grew, awakened and opened, infecting another of the group. The WEB informed the Doctor en route, and when he and Sarah arrived they did some Mulder and Scully stuff while pondering what to do.
Unfortunately, one of the people in charge at the WEB has contacted fey millionaire and Plant Lover Harrison Chase and offered him the seed pod in return for lots of money, and Chase has sent a couple of his Heavies out to collect it.
Apparently, the pods travel in pairs (through space - though the Doctor for some reason knows this but not how they got there!) and the Doctor has dug up the second pod. I feel this was probably a stupid thing to do, but not doing so would doubtless result in the story being a lot shorter. Chase's men, Scorby and Keeler, arrived at the base claiming they were lost in the storm that's preventing a medical team from reaching the base just as the Doctor had decided to take action by amputating the infected man's arm in a bid to stay the infection. However, the man infected by the Krynoid pod overheard the plan (well, they did discuss it in front of him!) and has just killed the group member who was going to perform the operation.
Really quite good, but didn't really feel like Doctor Who. It was more like 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.' or 'The Saint' with the Doctor and Sarah as special agents. Sarah didn't turn up for ten minutes and they didn't even take the TARDIS to Antarctica, flying there instead! Nevertheless, very good and a different take on the series.
The Seeds Of Doom: Part Two (07/02/16)
A brilliant episode this week. The Doctor, Sarah and the survivor from the base looked for the Krynoid after they found the body. Meanwhile, Scorby and Keeler pieced the situation together and ended up tying the others up and taking the other pod. Then they took Sarah hostage and tied her up in the generator plant with a bomb which would cause a chain reaction and blow up the entire base.
The Doctor escaped and went to rescue Sarah as they flew off with the pod, but the Krynoid entered the base and killed the last expedition member before going after the Doctor and Sarah at the generator plant where they trapped it just before the bomb went off and spectacularly blew the base to bits!
A really atmospheric episode, overall, with lots of character development - Keeler really doesn't want to be involved with any of this but is being held to ransom by the psychotic Scorby. Really interesting and really enjoyable, and almost a set piece. Looks like it's going to relocate back to England next week but we've definitely been left with a 'how do they get out of this one?' cliffhanger!
The Seeds Of Doom: Part Three (14/02/16)
A huge change of pace this week. Having been rescued by the crew of a nearby base who saw the explosion, the Doctor and Sarah returned to England where Scorby had delivered the pod to Harrison Chase who's set Keeler on to (reluctantly) wake it up.
Reporting back to Sir Colin Thackeray, the Doctor quickly deduced that there was a mole in the department who'd leaked information about the pod, and that Scorby and Keeler were lackies for someone else. However, the other person at the meeting was Dunbar (the mole) who arranged for Chase's chauffeur to take the Doctor and Sarah to the Botanical Institute (the middle of nowhere) and kill them. He was unsuccessful (during a cool fight at a sand quarry) and the Doctor and Sarah escaped with his Daimler and a clue in the form of a painting by Amelia Ducat in the boot.
Quickly tracking her down and finding out she sold said painting to one Harrison Chase, the Doctor and Sarah used the Daimler and the chauffeur's hat to infiltrate Chase's high security estate. They were, however, caught by Scorby and his guards and taken before Chase who, frankly, is FUCKING MENTAL! Wonderfully played very subtly, he could easily have been yet another ranting madman with some of his dialogue, but I found myself so frustrated at times by his single-minded insanity that I wanted to throw things at the TV. It also gave Tom Baker the chance to spit out some very contemptuous sarcasm and be totally unsubtle with his performance which contrasted brilliantly with Chase's unfazedness. Tom had some great lines about Guided Tours and terrible music. However, Chase was pulled away from his 'Green Cathedral' when the pod started reacting to Keeler's Nitrogen stimulation.
The Doctor and Sarah escaped again and split up, but Sarah was caught and the cliffhanger had Chase getting Scorby to hold Sarah down as the pod began to open. The Doctor is watching from a skylight, though, so I can guess the resolution.
Nevertheless, the story is wonderfully acted - not one person is off and each portrays a very real character. And it's quite violent with punches, machine guns, and Scorby very happy to hold a gun to Sarah's head. Oh, and the Doctor did something very nasty to Scorby's neck at one point which made me wince. Excellent.
The Seeds Of Doom: Part Four (21/02/16)
Another really good episode, despite the Doctor spending most of it tied up in the composting shed. He started off, though, by leaping through a skylight, punching out Scorby and rescuing Sarah. Unfortunately, this meant that poor Keeler was got by the Krynoid seed and spent the episode turning into one (a lot faster than the first guy!).
The Doctor told Sarah to hide and went back for the pod but was caught by Scorby and tied up in the composting room ready to be fed into the composting machine. Meanwhile, night fell, Sarah went looking for the Doctor in the mansion and Amelia Ducat turned up requesting payment for her painting. It was all a ruse, however, as she was being a spy for Sir Colin Thackeray. Amelia bumped into Sarah who asked her to get a message to Sir Colin confirming Chase's involvement and, upon informing him, Dunbar (also waiting in Amelia's car) went in to try and put a stop to Chase's madness. He failed and had to leg it, but by this point the Krynoid had grown and escaped the cottage Chase was keeping it in. It killed Dunbar as he tried to escape through the grounds, pursued by Scorby and his men, and was found by the Doctor, by now freed from the composting machine by Sarah.
Unfortunately, the cliffhanger was a shot of the large, wobbly, latex and rubber Krynoid suit jiggling toward the Doctor and Sarah in an incredibly humorous way! But aside from that, the episode was quite gripping and surprisingly violent. Both Scorby and the Doctor engaged in a lot of fist fighting, and Scorby and Chase were very detailed in their plans to grind up the Doctor in the composting machine and feed him to the garden. And poor Keeler! Desperately begging Chase and his butler to take him to hospital as they tied him to a bed in the cottage and fed him to accelerate the mutation.
This story has much more in common with 'The War Machines' and 'The Invasion' than anything else recently and in a very good way. And it looks like next week UNIT are being brought in. Yay!
The Seeds Of Doom: Part Five (28/02/16)
Exciting once again this week. The Doctor and Sarah were inadvertently saved by Scorby and a couple of his guards and they all hid in the cottage. While there, Scorby tried to talk sense into Chase via his walkie talkie but failed because Chase is an utter loon. Then, at dawn, Scorby made a Molotov Cocktail (!) and used it to distract the Krynoid while the Doctor made a run for it. Then, while it chased him, Scorby, Sarah and the guards made for the house.
The Doctor took a car and went to get UNIT, convincing them to attack the house with reports of Krynoid-controlled plants killing people within a mile of the mansion. Meanwhile, Chase was out photographing the Krynoid and ended up communing with it and falling under its control as well. Going back to the house, he holed up in his Greenhouse where Sarah, Scorby and Hargreaves the Butler found him and again tried to talk sense. So Chase had his plants attack them.
Fortunately, the Doctor and a UNIT soldier turned up with some super-weed-killer (too late for Hargreaves) and they proceeded to remove all Chase's plants from the lab (eyes and ears of the Krynoid). However, while they were outside, Chase locked the door as the now house-sized Krynoid loomed over them.
I'm actually wondering why they didn't just leg it in the first place and get the army straight in. But there's still an episode to go, so that's probably why. Some great scenes with Sarah and Scorby this week, really developing Scorby's character from just a sadistic monster, and Sarah is more likable than I've ever known her! Oh, and there was a brief, throwaway scene early one with Amelia Ducat again being satirical about politics for the grown ups.
This is turning out to be a great finale after a turbulent series. It's just a shame the Brigadier is in Geneva!
The Seeds Of Doom: Part Six (06/03/16)
Well, this series has ended as fantastically as it started with two utterly brilliant stories by Robert Banks Stewart! Lots of body horror in both, some great characters and clever plots. I don't know which I prefer! 'Seeds...' was much more gruesome.
The Doctor, Sarah, Scorby and Sgt. Henderson managed to get back into the house (rather than face the murderous garden) when Major Beresford attacked the Krynoid with a laser gun. It didn't kill it, though, so the RAF were called in with missiles. Unfortunately, Chase was still on the loose and KO'd Henderson while he was fetching timber to board up a window. Quite horrifically, he then put the Sergeant's unconscious body in the mulcher - one of the most shocking ends to a character I think there's been!
Scorby made a valiant run for it but stumbled into a pond and was drowned by pond weed, then Sarah, looking for Sgt. Henderson, reached the composting room and was beaten unconscious by Chase, who put her in the mulcher. Luckily, the Doctor turned up and freed her, having a fight with Chase inside the machine whilst it was on (Sarah, her hands tied, couldn't stop it) and, quite satisfyingly, Chase ended up ground to bits and chucked onto his own garden. The Doctor and Sarah managed to escape with the help of some steam just before the RAF blew the Krynoid and the house apart.
Really, really good - the stakes were high as the Krynoid was about to seed, sending pods all over the world, and everyone played at the right pitch. It's just a shame the epilogue saw the Doctor take the TARDIS to Antarctica because he hadn't reset the coordinates, when he never used the TARDIS in the first place!
I was a little disappointed that the Brigadier didn't turn up as well, and especially Harry and Benton after their cursory involvement in that Terry Nation story. But overall it's been a pretty good series with, surprisingly, no returning monsters, most notably the Daleks! Sarah was good in this last story, but altogether is a bit dull and annoying and should have left at the end of this one - since they're still on Earth, maybe she won't be back next series! Fingers crossed.
The series dipped in the middle with neither 'Pyramids...' nor 'Android...' fulfilling their potential, but overall it was almost as good as the better Pertwee years. Tom Baker is okay, but not a patch on Hartnell or Pertwee. Maybe a change of companion will do him good. Nevertheless, an enjoyable series.
A pretty good start. Realised it was likely to be a good one when Robert Banks Stewart's name was on the titles - the guy who wrote 'Terror Of The Zygons'.
Set at an isolated base in Antarctica, three members of a World Ecology Bureau have found a seed buried in the ice. They alerted their superiors in London who brought UNIT in, specifically the Doctor, who recognised the seed and headed straight out there.
However, the team's botanist had sat it under a UV lamp and the seed grew, awakened and opened, infecting another of the group. The WEB informed the Doctor en route, and when he and Sarah arrived they did some Mulder and Scully stuff while pondering what to do.
Unfortunately, one of the people in charge at the WEB has contacted fey millionaire and Plant Lover Harrison Chase and offered him the seed pod in return for lots of money, and Chase has sent a couple of his Heavies out to collect it.
Apparently, the pods travel in pairs (through space - though the Doctor for some reason knows this but not how they got there!) and the Doctor has dug up the second pod. I feel this was probably a stupid thing to do, but not doing so would doubtless result in the story being a lot shorter. Chase's men, Scorby and Keeler, arrived at the base claiming they were lost in the storm that's preventing a medical team from reaching the base just as the Doctor had decided to take action by amputating the infected man's arm in a bid to stay the infection. However, the man infected by the Krynoid pod overheard the plan (well, they did discuss it in front of him!) and has just killed the group member who was going to perform the operation.
Really quite good, but didn't really feel like Doctor Who. It was more like 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.' or 'The Saint' with the Doctor and Sarah as special agents. Sarah didn't turn up for ten minutes and they didn't even take the TARDIS to Antarctica, flying there instead! Nevertheless, very good and a different take on the series.
The Seeds Of Doom: Part Two (07/02/16)
A brilliant episode this week. The Doctor, Sarah and the survivor from the base looked for the Krynoid after they found the body. Meanwhile, Scorby and Keeler pieced the situation together and ended up tying the others up and taking the other pod. Then they took Sarah hostage and tied her up in the generator plant with a bomb which would cause a chain reaction and blow up the entire base.
The Doctor escaped and went to rescue Sarah as they flew off with the pod, but the Krynoid entered the base and killed the last expedition member before going after the Doctor and Sarah at the generator plant where they trapped it just before the bomb went off and spectacularly blew the base to bits!
A really atmospheric episode, overall, with lots of character development - Keeler really doesn't want to be involved with any of this but is being held to ransom by the psychotic Scorby. Really interesting and really enjoyable, and almost a set piece. Looks like it's going to relocate back to England next week but we've definitely been left with a 'how do they get out of this one?' cliffhanger!
The Seeds Of Doom: Part Three (14/02/16)
A huge change of pace this week. Having been rescued by the crew of a nearby base who saw the explosion, the Doctor and Sarah returned to England where Scorby had delivered the pod to Harrison Chase who's set Keeler on to (reluctantly) wake it up.
Reporting back to Sir Colin Thackeray, the Doctor quickly deduced that there was a mole in the department who'd leaked information about the pod, and that Scorby and Keeler were lackies for someone else. However, the other person at the meeting was Dunbar (the mole) who arranged for Chase's chauffeur to take the Doctor and Sarah to the Botanical Institute (the middle of nowhere) and kill them. He was unsuccessful (during a cool fight at a sand quarry) and the Doctor and Sarah escaped with his Daimler and a clue in the form of a painting by Amelia Ducat in the boot.
Quickly tracking her down and finding out she sold said painting to one Harrison Chase, the Doctor and Sarah used the Daimler and the chauffeur's hat to infiltrate Chase's high security estate. They were, however, caught by Scorby and his guards and taken before Chase who, frankly, is FUCKING MENTAL! Wonderfully played very subtly, he could easily have been yet another ranting madman with some of his dialogue, but I found myself so frustrated at times by his single-minded insanity that I wanted to throw things at the TV. It also gave Tom Baker the chance to spit out some very contemptuous sarcasm and be totally unsubtle with his performance which contrasted brilliantly with Chase's unfazedness. Tom had some great lines about Guided Tours and terrible music. However, Chase was pulled away from his 'Green Cathedral' when the pod started reacting to Keeler's Nitrogen stimulation.
The Doctor and Sarah escaped again and split up, but Sarah was caught and the cliffhanger had Chase getting Scorby to hold Sarah down as the pod began to open. The Doctor is watching from a skylight, though, so I can guess the resolution.
Nevertheless, the story is wonderfully acted - not one person is off and each portrays a very real character. And it's quite violent with punches, machine guns, and Scorby very happy to hold a gun to Sarah's head. Oh, and the Doctor did something very nasty to Scorby's neck at one point which made me wince. Excellent.
The Seeds Of Doom: Part Four (21/02/16)
Another really good episode, despite the Doctor spending most of it tied up in the composting shed. He started off, though, by leaping through a skylight, punching out Scorby and rescuing Sarah. Unfortunately, this meant that poor Keeler was got by the Krynoid seed and spent the episode turning into one (a lot faster than the first guy!).
The Doctor told Sarah to hide and went back for the pod but was caught by Scorby and tied up in the composting room ready to be fed into the composting machine. Meanwhile, night fell, Sarah went looking for the Doctor in the mansion and Amelia Ducat turned up requesting payment for her painting. It was all a ruse, however, as she was being a spy for Sir Colin Thackeray. Amelia bumped into Sarah who asked her to get a message to Sir Colin confirming Chase's involvement and, upon informing him, Dunbar (also waiting in Amelia's car) went in to try and put a stop to Chase's madness. He failed and had to leg it, but by this point the Krynoid had grown and escaped the cottage Chase was keeping it in. It killed Dunbar as he tried to escape through the grounds, pursued by Scorby and his men, and was found by the Doctor, by now freed from the composting machine by Sarah.
Unfortunately, the cliffhanger was a shot of the large, wobbly, latex and rubber Krynoid suit jiggling toward the Doctor and Sarah in an incredibly humorous way! But aside from that, the episode was quite gripping and surprisingly violent. Both Scorby and the Doctor engaged in a lot of fist fighting, and Scorby and Chase were very detailed in their plans to grind up the Doctor in the composting machine and feed him to the garden. And poor Keeler! Desperately begging Chase and his butler to take him to hospital as they tied him to a bed in the cottage and fed him to accelerate the mutation.
This story has much more in common with 'The War Machines' and 'The Invasion' than anything else recently and in a very good way. And it looks like next week UNIT are being brought in. Yay!
The Seeds Of Doom: Part Five (28/02/16)
Exciting once again this week. The Doctor and Sarah were inadvertently saved by Scorby and a couple of his guards and they all hid in the cottage. While there, Scorby tried to talk sense into Chase via his walkie talkie but failed because Chase is an utter loon. Then, at dawn, Scorby made a Molotov Cocktail (!) and used it to distract the Krynoid while the Doctor made a run for it. Then, while it chased him, Scorby, Sarah and the guards made for the house.
The Doctor took a car and went to get UNIT, convincing them to attack the house with reports of Krynoid-controlled plants killing people within a mile of the mansion. Meanwhile, Chase was out photographing the Krynoid and ended up communing with it and falling under its control as well. Going back to the house, he holed up in his Greenhouse where Sarah, Scorby and Hargreaves the Butler found him and again tried to talk sense. So Chase had his plants attack them.
Fortunately, the Doctor and a UNIT soldier turned up with some super-weed-killer (too late for Hargreaves) and they proceeded to remove all Chase's plants from the lab (eyes and ears of the Krynoid). However, while they were outside, Chase locked the door as the now house-sized Krynoid loomed over them.
I'm actually wondering why they didn't just leg it in the first place and get the army straight in. But there's still an episode to go, so that's probably why. Some great scenes with Sarah and Scorby this week, really developing Scorby's character from just a sadistic monster, and Sarah is more likable than I've ever known her! Oh, and there was a brief, throwaway scene early one with Amelia Ducat again being satirical about politics for the grown ups.
This is turning out to be a great finale after a turbulent series. It's just a shame the Brigadier is in Geneva!
The Seeds Of Doom: Part Six (06/03/16)
Well, this series has ended as fantastically as it started with two utterly brilliant stories by Robert Banks Stewart! Lots of body horror in both, some great characters and clever plots. I don't know which I prefer! 'Seeds...' was much more gruesome.
The Doctor, Sarah, Scorby and Sgt. Henderson managed to get back into the house (rather than face the murderous garden) when Major Beresford attacked the Krynoid with a laser gun. It didn't kill it, though, so the RAF were called in with missiles. Unfortunately, Chase was still on the loose and KO'd Henderson while he was fetching timber to board up a window. Quite horrifically, he then put the Sergeant's unconscious body in the mulcher - one of the most shocking ends to a character I think there's been!
Scorby made a valiant run for it but stumbled into a pond and was drowned by pond weed, then Sarah, looking for Sgt. Henderson, reached the composting room and was beaten unconscious by Chase, who put her in the mulcher. Luckily, the Doctor turned up and freed her, having a fight with Chase inside the machine whilst it was on (Sarah, her hands tied, couldn't stop it) and, quite satisfyingly, Chase ended up ground to bits and chucked onto his own garden. The Doctor and Sarah managed to escape with the help of some steam just before the RAF blew the Krynoid and the house apart.
Really, really good - the stakes were high as the Krynoid was about to seed, sending pods all over the world, and everyone played at the right pitch. It's just a shame the epilogue saw the Doctor take the TARDIS to Antarctica because he hadn't reset the coordinates, when he never used the TARDIS in the first place!
I was a little disappointed that the Brigadier didn't turn up as well, and especially Harry and Benton after their cursory involvement in that Terry Nation story. But overall it's been a pretty good series with, surprisingly, no returning monsters, most notably the Daleks! Sarah was good in this last story, but altogether is a bit dull and annoying and should have left at the end of this one - since they're still on Earth, maybe she won't be back next series! Fingers crossed.
The series dipped in the middle with neither 'Pyramids...' nor 'Android...' fulfilling their potential, but overall it was almost as good as the better Pertwee years. Tom Baker is okay, but not a patch on Hartnell or Pertwee. Maybe a change of companion will do him good. Nevertheless, an enjoyable series.
Not that I have anything against Pyramids, Planet of Evil, Android Invasion or Brain of Morbius, but I would have been very happy with an entirely Robert Banks Stewart-penned series of Who. Or at the very least for him to have written more for the series, before or after. I'm with you in that I'm not sure which of the two stories I prefer on the whole: the cast is stellar in both, and Douglas Camfield gets the best out of everyone both times. Terror of the Zygons probably edges it though for being slightly more iconic and in the traditional mould, although the excursion here in Seeds of Doom into slightly more Avengers (or, indeed, as you say, X-Files) territory is a brilliant success.
ReplyDeleteAs I've mentioned elsewhere, my only grumble is that the story is really a two-parter followed by a four-parter and I wish they'd rejigged things to separate the two strands; even just plonking Brain of Morbius between them would have worked. It would also have forced them to clear up the confusion as to how the Doctor and Sarah got to (and back from) Antarctica. Actually, my other grumble of course is the lack of any recognisable UNIT characters, but at least they do a better job here of covering up for the fact than they did in other stories.
I think I agree that Zygons just about beats Seeds, but only by a tiny margin. And an entire season written by Banks Stewart would have been incredible! He had a perfect grasp on how to write for the characters and his scripts are well plotted and paced. And it's a massive shame that a last appearance for the Brig, Harry and Benton didn't happen here, although I suspect that if they had it may have been Benton in the mulched instead of Sgt. Henderson. Speaking of which, I think the way he dies is the first time (in my marathon) that the death of a character really shocked me. Katarina's death was sudden, unexpected and upsetting, but it wasn't quite as horrific. Being knocked unconscious and put in a composting machine where you're ripped apart whilst still alive is incredibly unpleasant, and for it to happen to a minor character who was helping the Doctor is unexpected and not particularly tea time viewing, but then the show was getting more violent at this point. I think the worst thing about it is that it's relatable. Being jettisoned out an airlock is nasty, but it's never likely to happen to you, but there's a realism to Henderson's death, the fact that it could easily happen with industrial equipment in every day life.
DeleteIf Benton had been in the story there's no way they would have killed him off - it's the simple fact that Henderson's, ahem, disposable that makes him perfect, ahem ahem, fodder for the composting machine.
DeleteSir Colin is a nice character, well written and well played, but you still don't have to scratch at the surface for long to see that it was originally the Brigadier in that role. (And with Lethbridge-Stewart eventually being 'split' into Thackeray and Major Beresford.)
I do wonder if there was ever a proper version on the story that had UNIT in it - by which I mean the first-draft script or something - or whether the unavailability of the actors was known sufficiently far in advance that their parts were reallocated before the first script was ever completed. It'd be fun if someone did a reimagined novelisation of it featuring the Brigadier, Benton and Harry. (Or something similar for The Hand of Fear.) (And then something similar for Mawdryn Undead, featuring Ian Chesterton as originally intended!)
It would certainly be interesting to see an original draft, if one still existed, of a Brigadier-starring Seeds, and indeed a version of Mawdryn Undead with Ian. I'd certainly be up for reading a version of The Hand Of Fear which rounded of the UNIT era, but my thoughts on that story are yet to come - as JNT used to say, 'stay tuned'!
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