So, in an effort to provide slightly more regular and engaging reading, I'm going to begin by reviewing some of the things I'm watching at the moment and right now that means Doctor Who, both the classic and revived series. What better way to begin this than to review a story from each.
First up, we look at a story from 1967, The Macra Terror.
The Macra Terror, was the seventh story of Doctor Who's fourth season and was the fifth story to feature the second Doctor, Patrick Troughton. His companions at this stage were Ben Jackson, Polly Wright and Jamie McCrimmon.
This era of the series was markedly different from the first three seasons, not just in the presence of a new Doctor, but also in the style of the episodes. Whereas the stories of the first Doctor's era tended to be long and relatively slow-paced, focusing on atmosphere and mystery more than anything else, the second Doctor's era had the hallmark of shorter, faster-paced adventure stories. The character of the Doctor had changed to match this, moving from the thoughtful, often grouchy first Doctor of William Hartnell, to a more whimsical, chatty but also less human second incarnation.
As it happens the style of the episode plots and the character of the second Doctor really appeal to me. I grew to love Hartnell's Doctor as I watched my way through the first three seasons, but Troughton won me over far quicker and it is his charm, more than any other feature, which makes The Macra Terror entertaining.
By modern standards the plot is fairly cliché, but then Doctor Who often is and it is not always that much of a problem for the quality of its episodes. The Doctor and his companions arrive on a planet with a human colony that quickly turns out to be too happy to be true. We soon meet the crab-like Macra (who will later hold the record for the longest gap between appearances on the show when they reappeared, super-sized and super-stupid in the revived series three episode, Gridlock) and it becomes apparent that they are running the colony behind the scenes for their own benefit. The Doctor bumbles around in his slightly insane way, his companions get caught, escape, get caught again, turn against each other and generally achieve very little and then, in his continued bumbling, defeats the Macra and frees the colony.
It's all fairly prosaic and the Macra themselves are fairly ridiculous - not because of the quality of the special effects, which seem fine for the time (as much as one can tell from soundtrack and telesnaps only), but simply because they are apparently super-intelligent, lumbering crab monsters.
I have no idea why they had to be crab monsters!
Despite all this the story is perfectly entertaining and it's all because Patrick Troughton has such charm as the Doctor. His unravelling of the equation that controls the gas which the Macra need to stay alive is hilarious, as is his confounding of the gas flow process. The rest of the story could disappear and it really wouldn't matter all that much. We pay to see the Doctor, or so it seems.
Another actor who's charm redeems a great many sins in the role of the Doctor is David Tennant, however even his skill does not do quite enough to make me like my second story: The Waters of Mars.
Written by Russell T. Davies (who seems to think that good science fiction is spouting nonsense and covering it in a thin veneer of Coronation Street) and Phil Ford (who belongs to the same school of thought as those writing Doctor Who in the era of Patrick Troughton), The Waters of Mars is one of the series of specials which made up the gap between seasons four and five of the revived series and the end of Tennant's tenure in the role of the Doctor. It has won awards. I'm not entirely sure why.
The premise of the episode is an interesting one, albeit one we have seen many times before: first colony on a new world, terrible menace, everyone destined to die, struggle for survival, etc. etc. etc. The twist is that the Doctor is there and that he knows what is going to happen and that he cannot change it. The events that are supposed to unfold are somehow to shape humanities future in a profound way and the Doctor knows he cannot interfere. So along come some monsters which are supposed to be creepy (and so nearly are) but which look too rubbery around the mouth and patently ridiculous when they start spouting water and the Doctor prepares to leave the crew of the base to their fate.
But he changes his mind and the scene which follows is a familiar moment of awesomeness - the Doctor defying fate and saving the remaining crew in flamboyant style. Tennant's flair for the part really shows off here and the combination of music and visuals is really exciting - the best part of the episode so far.
And then we hit the epilogue and we learn that characters who had been facing death moments before actually kinda wish they had died (although they give no good reason as to why) and the Doctor, who, admittedly at this stage is starting to sound overly arrogant, is forced to realise that he was wrong to change their fate.
It all fits in very well with the classic series story The Aztecs, where the Doctor was constantly saying the history could not be changed, but at no point do Davies and Ford give us a convincing reason that the people of Bowie Base One had to die, or that the Doctor could have convinced them that and when Adelaide Brooke, the commander of the expedition and fulcrum of humanity's apparently great future, tells the Doctor that no-one should have the power to decide that future, she seems to forget that everyone has that power every day with every choice they make.
Okay, sot he Doctor knew what was going to happen in a way no ordinary participant of history could, but still, it's all just too much nonsense trying to be profound. Tennant plays it all very well, but it's the one episode of the revived series that, on re-watching, actually makes me angry. I feel insulted by it!
The fact that it then follows on to The End of Time parts one and two, probably only adds to that insult, but that is another review for another time.
Until next time...
