lily's doccy who reviews

Season 2, episode 36 - 3rd July 1965

[id: Steven and the Doctor stand outside the Tardis, Steven holding a horned helmet that the Doctor has just handed him. The Doctor looks at him and says “What do you mean, maybe? What do you think it is? A space helmet for a cow?” /end id]

Ah, this so episode was the source of everyone misquoting the Tardis’s initials as “dimensions” instead of “dimension.” It was all Vicki’s fault.

Fun: 5/5, this serial generally strikes a better balance between the comedy and the drama than The Romans did, and I already love that story. In particular, the way that most of the humour is driven by the Tardis team’s interactions with each other and the environment, rather than being an inherent part of the world for this episode, works really well, and there’s a reason that style is often the default for the show from this point onwards.

Production: 4/5, the historical setting is surprisingly good here, but there’s not really much to say about that.

Pacing: 5/5

Character Writing & Use: 4/5, from the very first scene, I love Steven and Vicki’s dynamic so much, and this story primarily acts as a showcase of that pairing while Dr Who does things to do with the plot and the Monk elsewhere.

Depth: 3/5

Not Ageing Horribly: 4/5, a historical set in England means less opportunity for massive amounts of racism, however it also allows for no people of colour at all, which, given this is the 1960′s, is probably good, but worth pointing out.

Season 2, episode 35 - 26th June 1965

[id: Ian stands outside the Dalek timeship, holding his nose and pointing a finger out. He says (mimicking a Dalek) “Exterminated.” /end id]

Personal tip from somebody who would have a panic attack at the thought of being lowered off a cliff hanging by a single rope: if somebody is having a panic attack at the thought of being lowered off a cliff hanging by a single rope, blindfolding them probably won’t help to calm them down.

Fun: 5/5

Production: 3/5, the big exciting battle between the Mechanoids and the Daleks is confusing and bizarre and I love it, it gets across exactly what it needs to and honestly I wouldn’t have it any other way. I mean, it isn’t great, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Pacing: 5/5, I like how it takes its time on the ending, much like Dalek Invasion, to make sure that the main characters leaving get scenes exploring that, and it doesn’t just happen in the last thirty seconds for no reason. This is something that the show will soon get very bad at and until the reboot it will never quite recover.

Character Writing & Use: 5/5, Ian and Barbara’s departure is one of the most thoughtfully executed in the entire run of the show so far. It’s set up well within the episode, Dr Who’s reaction works particularly well in contrast to Vicki’s, it makes sense that they’d choose to leave at that point, and also, London Nineteen Sixty Five.

More than that, though, it presents the most radical change in the Tardis dynamic until Barry Letts takes over. Previously, there’s been a sense of three generations to the Tardis team, with Susan or Vicki, then Ian and Barbara, then Dr Who. Removing Susan meant an increase in the alien and unknown nature of Dr Who, but even with Vicki, the four-person team often meant that, due to Ian and Barbara’s familiarity, Dr Who and the youngest companion would spend more time together, and those pairs, or further divisions thereof, became the standard structure. Removing that key established relationship means that instead, two younger companions will have a strong bond, and they each will have a strong relationship with Dr Who as well. The three-companion setup, with both being on the younger side (not that Ian and Barbara were old, but Vicki and Susan were both explicitly children) would remain through Katarina, Dodo, Ben, Polly, a slight change with the addition of Jamie, but then with Victoria and Zoe as well. The main change to this will be the expanded recurring cast of the Pertwee era with a focus on one young female companion across every episode, but for the next five years of the show, this structure will be more or less maintained as it ends up when Ian and Barbara leave.

Depth: 3/5, Steven’s backstory is really interesting for something that they never actually go into in much depth ever again. The sci-fi concept behind the Mechanoids is also really fun, and even if it makes not that much sense it’s a really cool concept that they then also do absolutely nothing with. Terry Nation strikes again.

Not Ageing Horribly: 4/5

Season 2, episode 34 - 19th June 1965

[id: The Doctor and his robot duplicate fight. One stands over the other, and their sticks clash as each tries to attack the other. Both faces are partially obscured, and it is impossible to tell which is Hartnell and which is the stunt double. /end id]

The idea of the duplicate Dr Who is so good, and I really wish Terry Nation had the capacity to stick to one idea in a story for longer than half an episode. I can imagine getting a full modern series episode out of a concept like that, but nope, just throw it in there and then forget about it. Thinking about it, actually, the instructions the robot was given were “infiltrate and kill” but once he’s successfully infiltrated he doesn’t really do much killing does he?

Fun: 4/5

Production: 3/5, I am not the first to point out that Dr Who and his duplicate look nothing alike, and the dubbing over with Hartnell’s voice is absolutely awful consistently. The planet itself looks nice, though, I like the weird plants that eat you (even if it is once again incredibly funny to hear “living plants!” likee what do you think a plant is)

Pacing: 3/5, once again, we’re exploring a setting and the Daleks are also there doing the same exploration of the setting a few minutes after we’ve already learned what it is. The duplicate shifts the formula a little, as does Vicki being on the Dalek ship initially, but it’s mostly just more of the same

Character Writing & Use: 5/5, Dr Who going to try and pretend to be the robot and immediately failing, Barbara making “pew pew” noises, Vicki mistaking Dr Who for the duplicate in what’s probably one of the most effective bits of genuine character drama we’ve had in a while, it’s all so good in this episode. I’m gonna miss this variation of the Tardis team.

Depth: 2/5, yeah, not much going on innit. The more I watch Terry Nation’s other episodic location-hopping stories, the more I think that the thematic throughlines of The Keys of Marinus were almost entirely accidental.

Not Ageing Horribly: 4/5

Season 2, episode 33 - 12th June 1965

[id: A corridor of what appears to be a gothic house, with a staircase leading off one side and the Dalek timeship parked on the other side. A Frankenstein’s Monster animatronic lifts a Dalek over his head to smash it open. /end id]

The best part of this episode isn’t the concept. It’s not the Daleks eating shit immediately when animatronics attack them. It’s not the main cast’s reactions to vaguely spooky shit happening. It’s the fact that at no point do any of them learn what was actually going on. Dr Who leaves this episode 100% convinced that they entered a realm of human consciousness and never learns otherwise. I love this fucking show.

Fun: 4/5

Production: 2/5, the vibes are so fun and it all being a bit crap makes sense given what’s actually going on, but the disjointed nature of the whole thing means that none of it is really as effective as it could be in terms of being convincing as a bit of camp horror. Some of it I’m not even sure what it’s meant to be, really. That being said, once the Daleks arrive and start blowing shit up, the whole vibe starts to come together and the chaos created through these established things going off is fantastic. It’s just that it was all built more for that than the creepy first half, so that part isn’t as effective as it could be.

Pacing: 3/5

Character Writing & Use: 4/5, separating Vicki from the others is great, and will play more into the next episode, but it is a bit weird that none of them notice for a fucking while.

Depth: 3/5, this episode reminds me in a way of Inside the Spaceship, in that there is an absolutely fascinating episode concept suggested, but it is then revealed that something far more simple is actually going on.

Not Ageing Horribly: 3/5, this is less of the typical vibe of this category, but it’s interesting that at the time, the horror characters and tropes used here were more familiar and recent and current, and if an episode like this was made now it would either be even more of a deliberate throwback than this is, which to an extent it already is (I could even see a modern version of this episode mimicking that Werewolf By Night film and doing it in black and white), or it would feature whatever the equivalent iconic horror of this century is.

Season 2, episode 32 - 5th June 1965

[id: a man wearing a cowboy hat, played by Peter Purves, circles a Dalek, and says “Howdy, mister! Say, you sure are an ugly-looking friend!” The Dalek swivels its eye-stalk to look at him stood behind it. /end id]

Thank fucking god Peter Purves didn’t keep that accent as Steven.

Fun: 5/5, what this story may lack somewhat in substance, it makes up for in entertainment. This is much further towards the ‘childrens adventure show’ end of things than even this era of the show, but it succeeds admirably at it.

Production: 3/5

Pacing: 3/5, the two seperate sections of this one don’t quite work together as well as they could, and it’s more like two ten-minute episodes. It does keep some of the pace of the chase aspect of the serial, but the Daleks don’t share any screen time with the main cast, so there isn’t much tension in that regard.

Character Writing & Use: 4/5, the personalities of the leads are still on top form here, and while none of them really get that much to actually do, they hold up the fun.

Depth: 2/5, the nature of the structure of this episode means there’s not really much depth to speak of, and even the historical side of things is sparse. We don’t get any elaboration on the Mary Celeste except for the fact that it disappeared, although the implications of that scene are odd. This is, as far as I can tell, the first time that time travelling causes a significant event in history that had already happened. The next serial will also shake up how time travel is used within the show, but this more subtle use of it for an extended joke is also interesting.

Not Ageing Horribly: 3/5,

Season 2, episode 31 - 29th May 1965

[id: Vicki peers over a ledge, one hand holding onto the edge /end id]

I’m beginning to think that it’s just Terry Nation who has the meaningless titles. I cannot think of any moment in this story where time dies in any way, in fact that’s more the territory of the next Dalek story than this one.

Fun: 4/5, despite many issues with this episode, it’s a lot of fun. The pace is mostly kept up fairly well, throwing the Daleks into a completely different generic sci-fi planet exploration type story halfway through is a great idea, and the writing of a lot of this maintains an energy that allows me to somewhat ignore the fact that not much is really going on with the rest of it.

Production: 3/5, another inexplicable Terry Nation monster, once again weird and blobby and not doing very much. It really feels like he didn’t trust that the Daleks would be enough of a threat, and wanted to throw in a bizarre monster just cause. To be honest, though, some of the effects while Vicki and Ian are in the tunnels are pretty good, it’s just when it arrives in all its blobby glory that I cannot help but laugh at it. Can’t fault them for trying again. Maybe the next Dalek serial will have a good one of these.

Pacing: 3/5

Character Writing & Use: 3/5

Depth: 2/5, the problem with interrupting a story with Daleks is that no matter how fun that idea is, it then means that the story is interrupted. In this instance, that means that any potential exploration of the society depicted in this episode is cut short, and they seemingly all die in one sequence and stop being relevant to the episode at all. Ah well, the Dalek stuff is still fun.

Not Ageing Horribly: 3/5, again, the Daleks interrupt the story about the aliens, so we never really get much of a sense of them and they really don’t have much going on. They also seem to be intelligent and sympathetic, and they apparently consider carefully before deciding to hand the main cast over to the Daleks. That being said, they do hand the main cast over to the Daleks and are then massacred and instantly forgotten about, and while that’s not playing into the normal tropes that this show plays into with the indigenous populations of planets, it feels weird and I don’t like it.

Season 2, episode 30 - 22nd May 1965

[id: a single Dalek emerges upwards after being buried by sand, a caption reading “(DALEK GRUMBLING)” /end id]

It is an absolute fucking tragedy that some American releases of this story cut out the Beatles entirely. Ian dad dancing to the Beatles is the most important moment of Doctor Who history. Worse still, apparently the Beatles got edited out of Evil of the Daleks in some releases too. Criminal.

Fun: 3/5, this episode is carried almost entirely on the strength of the main cast, and they’re absolutely delightful as always. That being said, though, some of the space-time visualiser segments are just confusing, and

Production: 2/5

Pacing: 4/5, within the scale of the entire serial, having the breathing space here is really nice. The opening tracking Vicki through the Tardis is nice, and the character dynamics spread really well throughout. It’s particularly nice to see Vicki and Ian alone, as that’s a pair that we don’t get so much of this season, and of course it also leaves Dr Who and Barara together which is so fun as always. Teasing the Daleks at the end of last episode and the beginning of this one also adds dramatic irony to the building tension, and in fact we almost forget about them until Barbara sees them on the scanner, and the ensuing panic culminating in the inevitable cliffhanger revelation we get in every single Dalek story is well played, even if the sudden sandstorm comes out of nowhere and the passage of time with that is kinda badly communicated.

Character Writing & Use: 4/5, the fact that the character dynamics are so well used here, especially with the opening but through the whole episode, really makes it so much more impactful that it’s going to be shaken up so severely at the end of the story.

Depth: 2/5, yeah, there’s not really much to the first half of the Aridius portion of the serial. We don’t even get the inhabitents of the planet in this episode, so really it would be impressive if any of that came through.

Not Ageing Horribly: 4/5

Season 2, episode 29 - 15th April 1965

[id: the Doctor saying “I must confess I didn’t enjoy the refrigeration.” /end id]

I had forgotten how directly this episode leads into the next serial - both in the Dalek cliffhanger at the end, but also the establishing of the space-time visualiser. These were presumably added by script editor Dennis Spooner, and probably provide more of a promise for the next episode’s content than most of the other inter-serial cliffhangers (the worst example I can think of is finding giant footprints at the end of The Brink of Disaster, but a lot of them are still just a bit silly without outright lying)

Fun: 4/5

Production: 3/5, yeah the scenes of the revolution itself are a bit crap, and while it could be argued that it’s part of the point that the empire is so crap that the rebels can take over the museum really quickly... the scenes still aren’t that interesting to watch and the serial’s value is much more in what the script is about than how it’s presented on screen.

Pacing: 4/5, the fact that none of the leads are involved in the climactic fight at the end would be a problem, if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s the entire point of the serial. If they’d got out of the museum through their own actions directly, the whole message about revolution and about the consequences of our actions on others would be thrown completely out of the window.

Character Writing & Use: 4/5, Barbara and Dr Who are back in the story again, and I really love how their attitudes are all contrasted in that scene as they await execution - Vicki’s optimism contrasting against the defeatist perspetives of the others, which is particularly important as it was her broader perspective and the help she gave the rebels which ultimately saves them.

Depth: 5/5, this serial has a lot to say about the nature of free will, how we should consider our choices, the nature of stagnant empires obsessed with their own glory without having earned any of it, the importance of solidarity between different people oppressed by the same system and the fact that they should all rise up in revolution together... good shit all round.

Not Ageing Horribly: 5/5

Season 2, episode 28 - 8th May 1965

[id: Vicki stands in front of a light which casts a shadow across the wall behind her. A bank of computers whirs next to her, and behind her is the door to the armoury. She grins and says “Revolution.” /end id]

I enjoy how revolution is almost seen as an inevitability in this story, both within the narrative, but also in the sense that when this story is making fun of generic sci-fi Doctor Who, the revolution of one group of aliens against another is just naturally a part of it, of course. But of course, this show has never ever been political at all.

Fun: 4/5, it’s fun, I don’t know what to tell you. There’s a reason that last episode was the source of both my header and my icon for this blog, it’s just filled with great moments and gags that you often don’t get in this show to that level.

Production: 3/5

Pacing: 4/5, making this plot into a three-parter with a prologue episode really works wonders, as even when only two characters are the ones driving any of the story forwards, it doesn’t outstay its welcome and become tedious, as the plotlines make their way towards their respective conclusions relatively swiftly. In part, this is also to make sure the thematic resolution and the final tension can play out next episode, but we’re not there yet.

Character Writing & Use: 2/5, Dr Who is out of action for the whole episode because presumably Hartnell was on holiday again, and Barbara is also relegated to stumbling around corridors for almost the entirety of the rest of the story after the party splits up in this episode. Vicki and Ian do all of the plot work and while their parts of the story are interesting, it doesn’t make up for the fact that Barbara has absolutely nothing to do.

Depth: 5/5, Ian and Vicki present the two main options for stopping a fate dictated for you by the ruling classes. Ian’s individualistic approach is to strike out on his own and demand to be taken to the top of the chain, which results in him discovering the details of what will happen to him, and while he manages to momentarily save Dr Who next episode, this doesn’t make a difference overall. This gets contrasted with Vicki, who works alongside the rebels, arming them for their revolution and encouraging them to take a stand together and fight for all of their futures. This also works on the metafiction level that this story also leans into, as Ian’s fear and anxiety leads him to fall back into the tropes that he has always emulated, in the same way that Dr Who laughing in the face of authority, normally the thing which saves him from trouble and endears him to the audience, resulting in his capture and absence from this episode.

Not Ageing Horribly: 4/5