doctor who – Page 30 – Movement Point

Doctor Who Project: The Dalek Invasion of Earth

August 9, 2023August 14, 2011 by Chris Baer

What’s worse? The alligators down here or the Daleks up there?

At last, they return! The Daleks appear once more after their resounding first season success in “The Mutants,” invading Earth in Terry Nation’s “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” (Story Production Code K). This time, the Daleks want nothing more than to, um, empty out the core of the planet and replace it with an engine of some sort.

But whatever! It’s the Daleks! And they’re in London!

This story, which Howe and Walker claim “surely ranks as one of the series’ all-time greats” in their Doctor Who: The Television Companion, starts in familiar enough style, which is to say that our travellers leave the TARDIS, become separated from it because of Susan—this time she brings an entire bridge down upon it—and then become separated from each other. Even Ian comments upon the party’s tendency to split up: upon realizing Barbara and Susan are missing from the landing site, he exclaims, “Why, why do they do it?”

Still, the separation works to good effect in this six-part story, as Susan and Barbara are spirited away by the human resistance to the Daleks and Ian and the Doctor are captured by the Robomen, the human semi-cyborgs enslaved as footsoldiers by the Daleks, who are few in number on Earth. The development of the resistance figures adds depth to the story, as thus far in the series, our sympathies have been almost entirely on our travellers finding their way back to the TARDIS. Very few secondary characters have been roundly developed in the series so far, and as will become obvious, the development of one resistance figure in particular takes on real significance.

The capture of the Doctor and Ian gives good reason to explore the Dalek saucers and to see lots of Daleks rolling around. There’s probably a good ten minutes of scenes showing nothing but Daleks moving back and forth in this story. The audience wants what the audience wants.

That said, Terry Nation wisely holds off on revealing the Daleks until the very end of the first episode, where one rises ominously from the murky Thames…

Doctor Who Project: Planet of Giants

August 10, 2023June 14, 2011 by Chris Baer

Oh, please don’t keep talking on the twentieth century level. I’m talking about time travel!

Having escaped the French Revolution with his head (if not his fancy hat), the Doctor tries yet again to get Barbara and Ian back to the twentieth century. Given that they’re so close, just a few hundred years off, he attempts to “sidestep” into the 1960s with a simple frequency change on the TARDIS controls. And it works! They’re in England even. Of course, they’re about an inch high when they leave the ship, starting the second season of Doctor Who on the “Planet of Giants” (Story Production Code J), but hey, it’s a start.

Because the TARDIS door opens mysteriously upon materialization—a time Susan declares “the most dangerous moment” in the operation of the TARDIS—the “space pressure” exerted upon the TARDIS at this point shrinks the Doctor and his three companions, a fact they finally realize when they confront giant ants and earthworms and matchboxes.

The travellers split up upon arrival, with Barbara and the Doctor going one way and Ian and Susan the other. This particular grouping allows both Susan and the Doctor independently to come to the realization that they have landed on Earth in a shrunken form.

Indeed, this story presents Susan as a canny and calm time traveller, piecing together clues about their predicament, showing knowledge of TARDIS operations, clambering up corroded drain pipes, striking oversized matches, and even reminiscing with her grandfather about that time they suffered through a World War I zeppelin air raid together.

Until, of course, she screams and screams when she sees the dead giant ant and the not-dead giant cat. In her defense, it is a very giant cat.

Doctor Who Project: The Reign of Terror

August 10, 2023June 3, 2011 by Chris Baer

I get the impression they don’t know where they’re heading for. Come to that, do any of us?

And so the first season of Doctor Who concludes with a six-part story set in far off and fantastical…France?

Revolutionary France, to be precise, during the period of Robespierre’s rule that gives our story its title, “The Reign of Terror” (Story Production Code H). The Doctor has brought Ian and Barbara “home,” as he promised (or rather threatened) to do after dealing with the Sensorites. France seems to be close enough to England for the Doctor, but by the time he realizes he’s off by two hundred years, he’s already been knocked unconscious, dragged out of a burning building by a French ragamuffin, and forced to work on a chain gang. And then he winds up looking like this:

Not entirely sure which is the greater indignity…

The Doctor has the sensible notion not to leave the TARDIS at the beginning of the story, but then, persuaded by Ian’s offer of a drink to make their parting amicable, off they go. Once Ian realizes that they’re not in England (or even the twentieth century), it’s his turn to wish to return to the TARDIS:

Ian: You know, I think we ought to get back to the ship while we still can.

Doctor: Nonsense. It was your idea to explore, anyway. Besides, that might be very interesting. Walk will do us good.

Once again, the writers contrive to split up the travellers, with Ian, Susan, and Barbara (who instinctively change into period clothing they find alongside bread, wine, maps, and daggers in a trunk in an abandoned house) captured by revolutionary soldiers and dragged off to await the guillotine; the Doctor, meanwhile, has been knocked senseless by royalist sympathizers hiding the house and remains undetected by the soldiers, who set the house ablaze. Then you get the kid, then the long walk to Paris, then the chain gang (from which the Doctor escapes by smacking the road works overseer over the head with a very large shovel). It’s a six-part story for a reason.

A Companion to the End: Elisabeth Sladen

August 10, 2023April 20, 2011 by Chris Baer

The BBC has announced that actor Elisabeth Sladen, who played companion Sarah Jane Smith on Doctor Who alongside the Third and Fourth Doctors (and appeared again with the Tenth Doctor), has passed away.

Just as many people claim to have their own Doctor, the one who pops into mind when the Doctor is mentioned, Elisabeth Sladen’s portrayal of journalist Sarah Jane Smith is surely the most iconic of all the companions.

Her riveting performance in the Tenth Doctor episode “School Reunion,” early in David Tennant’s run, solidified my appreciation of the new series. Ever since Fourth Doctor Tom Baker dropped her off in what he thought, wrongly, was her native Croydon, Sarah Jane Smith had been waiting for the Doctor to return. He never did, until a chance meeting decades later brought them together again. The pain and wonder Elisabeth Sladen brought to her portayal of Sarah Jane Smith in “School Reunion” encapsulates the dilemma of all the Doctor’s companions: a few moments of wonder balanced against a lifetime that seems mundane in comparison.

Tor.com has a small appreciation of Elisabeth Sladen, as does Fourth Doctor Tom Baker on his website.

(Image detail courtesy of alun vega via a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike license.)

TARDIS Database Printout?

August 14, 2023July 20, 2010 by Chris Baer

Given the vast numbers of foes the Doctor has encountered over his almost as vast number of regenerations, one wonders if he’s kept track of them.

Early episodes of Doctor Who emphasized the TARDIS’ powerful computing power, with rows of mainframe-like cabinets and whirring data tapes, and it’s not hard to imagine Hartnell’s Doctor inputting data in the brief lulls between random jumps through time and space.

The Guardian’s Datablog has taken on the task of enumerating all of the Doctor’s many foes, enlisting the hive mind’s assistance by creating a Google Docs spreadsheet, complete with motivations, number of appearances, episode titles, and which Doctor(s) they opposed:

Here’s a list of all the Doctor Who villains there have ever been since the very first episode in 1963. Whether it’s to help you put your bet on what will make a reappearance next series or just to satisfy hard-core Whovians, hopefully this will help you out.

The chart however doesn’t include villains exclusively in Doctor Who books, audio books and spin-off shows.

Definitely worth checking out the entire data set. The Daleks are, of course, tops in appearances, which is sure to annoy their rivals, the Cybermen…

(Image courtesy of Fredde Cooney Ahlstrom via a Creative Commons Attribution license.)

Happy 46th, Doctor Who

August 18, 2023November 23, 2009 by Chris Baer

Wired points out that today, November 23rd, marks the 46th anniversary of the first airing of Doctor Who, with BBC viewers tuning in at 5:15 P.M. to catch “The Unearthly Child,” the first episode of the first story, “100,000 BC,” in which two schoolteachers unwittingly stumble upon a Time Lord and are kidnapped for their curiosity.

Logo from 1963 to 1967

According to Howe, Stammers, and Walker’s Doctor Who: The Handbook: The First Doctor, only 4.4 million people can claim to have been with the Doctor from the beginning, the first episode coming in at 114th out of 200 shows that week. A repeat airing of the pilot, shown as a lead-in to the second episode the next week, did marginally better, climbing to 85th and 6 million viewers.

The show’s continued existence was, indeed, in doubt after this disappointing debut, the combination of poor ratings and high effects budgets potentially dooming the Doctor to be a footnote in the BBC’s broadcast history, until the Dalek’s appeared and decided to, ahem, Exterminate! all doubts…

So, happy anniversary, Doctor Who! Here’s to many more.

(Image from the BBC Doctor Who site.)