third doctor – Movement Point

Doctor Who Project: The Five Doctors

October 2, 2023September 2, 2023 by Chris Baer

Splendid fellows, all of you.

For a series about time travel, Doctor Who focuses on its own past almost as much as the historical past. From Season Eighteen on, under producer John Nathan-Turner and script editor Eric Saward, continuity references, those canonical recollections of various events and dramatis personae, have come to predominate, sometimes to the detriment of the storylines and befuddling more casual viewers who can’t tell an Omega from an Ogron. When faced with a marquee event such as the twentieth anniversary of Doctor Who, then, the danger is that the self-referential aspects will predominate, overwhelming the plot with a long string of cameos and call-backs. Thankfully, veteran Doctor Who hand Terrance Dicks provides “The Five Doctors” (Story Production Code 6K) with a script that neatly balances reverential appreciation of the series’ long tenure with a genuinely well-paced story that creates just as many memorable moments as it summons up from the show’s history.

Airing as a single ninety-minute episode on November 25, 1983, two days past the actual twentieth anniversary of the initial episode of “An Unearthly Child” first appearing on screens throughout the UK, “The Five Doctors” brings all five of the Doctor’s incarnations together in a story that plays to their individual strengths while still respecting the primacy of the current inhabitant of the role, Peter Davison. Well, sort of all five, with Richard Hundall standing in as the First Doctor for William Hartnell, who died some eight years earlier in 1975, and Tom Baker being represented solely through clips from “Shada,” which remained uncompleted and unaired due to industrial action at the end of Season Seventeen. Baker withdrew from active participation after originally agreeing to appear, but as much as it would have been nice to see that curly mop of hair back in action as the Fourth Doctor, his absence gives more room for Hundall, Patrick Troughton, and Jon Pertwee to strut their stuff upon the crowded stage.

Dicks’ story breaks very little new ground, being ultimately a rehash of “Arc of Infinity,” with its focus on Gallifreyan politics, and, curiously, the much maligned “Time-Flight” and “Death to the Daleks” in the exploration of an ancient—and lethally guarded—sanctum by the Doctor(s) and companions. His structuring of the story, though, contrives to keep the first three Doctors separate, each having been kidnapped, along with a companion, by a “time scoop” and deposited into a different part of the subtly-named Death Zone on Gallifrey, home of the long-abandoned Game of Rassilon that saw “lesser” beings forced to fight to the death. The Fourth Doctor and Romana (Lalla Ward), meanwhile, are plucked from punting the River Cam and trapped in the Vortex by a failed time scoop, the better to sideline them for the entirety of the story.

The Fifth Doctor painfully suffers the loss of each of his prior selves as they are removed from the time stream, and as he slips in and out of consciousness, he sets the TARDIS to find them. The blue box takes him, Tegan (Janet Fielding), and Turlough (Mark Strickson) to “nowhere, in no time,” in the latter’s words, a fine description of the Death Zone, which itself is a foggy plain of rocks, dominated by the Dark Tower, host to the Tomb of Rassilon. The scene, replete with the Third Doctor’s beloved Bessie driving down dusty slate-lined roads, very much calls to mind the antimatter world from the tenth anniversary story, “The Three Doctors,” and in truth, could any celebration of twenty years of Doctor Who fail to feature a quarry?…

Doctor Who Project: Jon Pertwee Retrospective

July 20, 2023December 2, 2018 by Chris Baer

In more ways than one, Jon Pertwee brought a touch of color to Doctor Who.

Beyond the obvious switch to color broadcasting (or, perhaps more properly for the source material, colour broadcasting) in his inaugural season, Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor stands as a bright figure, sartorially resplendent in velour overcoats and equally as boisterous in manner, whether under the spotlights of Television Centre or floodlit on location in some quarry. He commands attention, always seeking (and usually claiming) the camera’s eye, earning him a well-deserved reputation as a bit of a ham.

Indeed, once we saw Pertwee wrestle with a tentacle in his very first story, we knew that more had changed than just the black and white filming. This willingness to indulge in the over-the-top, from the wardrobe to the acting to the plots themselves, announces a signal shift in the series, with a more “modern” sensibility.

Yet, unlike the rather jarring tonal change from William Hartnell’s bristly First Doctor to Patrick Troughton’s impish Second Doctor, the Third Doctor amalgamates the two prior incarnations seamlessly—he is at once given to brooding and moralizing while still quick with a Venusian karate chop and a cutting bon mot, often simultaneously. He is an old soul in a new-ish body.

As a result, long-time viewers see that the Third Doctor comes directly from this lineage; the character makes sense as a scion, so to speak, of this illustrious Gallifreyan family, even as all else seems to change around him on Doctor Who. So where the shift from Hartnell to Troughton required transitional figures (Polly and Ben) to shepherd the audience into the strange, new regeneration, the Third Doctor arrives alone.

Doctor Who Project: Planet of the Spiders

January 11, 2019October 11, 2018 by Chris Baer

Never mind the dratted coffee. What about the spiders?

Though much of Doctor Who‘s eleventh season feels somewhat rote, ticking off the boxes and moving the plots along, never let it be said that the production team skimps on finales. For the Third Doctor’s final story, “Planet of the Spiders” (Story Production Code ZZZ), Robert Sloman, who scripted, in whole or in part, three prior season-ending stories (“The Daemons,” “The Time Monster,” and “The Green Death“) ably assumes the writing duties. While the Doctor’s co-stars here mostly take the form of dodgy arachnoid puppets (and their human puppets), Sloman nevertheless delivers another character-driven piece, focusing on meditation, the Doctor’s greed, and the, ah, transmigration of souls.

The titular arachnoids have conquered the titular planet via exposure to the mind-enhancing Metebelian crystals first introduced in Sloman’s last tale. Though tempting to suggest that the spider’s planet, Metebelis 3 (mentioned as far back as “Carnival of Monsters“), and the blue crystals found there were deliberately planted as plot seeds a year prior, more likely the crystal served as a convenient hook for the story on offer here. (Indeed, the implication that the Doctor was aware of the crystals’ ability to amplify intelligence and thus chose to give one to Jo Grant as a wedding present does not bear contemplation.)

By elaborate narrative happenstance, Jo sends the crystal back from the Amazon, where she and Professor Jones are mushroom hunting, to the Doctor at the very moment that the Metebelian spiders, far in the future, have found a gateway through time and space to contemporary Earth that has been opened by power-hungry novice meditators in a Tibetan lamasery recently opened near UNIT HQ. It’s just one of those coincidences. The Great One, eldest and most powerful of the eight-legs (as they prefer to be called), requires the perfect crystal to complete a powerful crystalline web-circuit that will give her the ability to shape the universe. In his confrontation with the Great One, the Doctor must confront fear, as well as the knowledge that he has brought all of this upon the universe—and upon himself.

(Fair warning: pictures of animatronic spiders, plus a non-animatronic hovercraft, after the break.)

Doctor Who Project: The Monster of Peladon

October 11, 2018September 13, 2018 by Chris Baer

Didn’t I tell you about my first visit to Peladon?

While monsters and villains have often made encore showings on Doctor Who, the series’ first return to a particular planet—well, one not named Earth or Skaro, at any rate—only comes in Brian Hayles’ “The Monster of Peladon” (Story Production Code YYY), reprising his “The Curse of Peladon” from Season Nine. Hayles took more than just a setting, though; he also carried over the essential plot of his earlier tale, right down to an alien scheme co-opting old Aggedor, the god-beast worshipped by the Peladonians, to acquire the feudal society’s minerals.

The original story stands out mostly for Hayles’ ingenious decision to recast his fearsome Ice Warriors as upstanding, honor-bound members of the galactic Federation, causing much consternation on the part of the Third Doctor, who has all his frankly shoddy detective work undone by their sudden bout of pacifism. Here, the Martian menaces aren’t on hand to help vouch for the Doctor after he re-appears on Peladon some fifty years after his first visit. Luckily for the Doctor, who once again is accused of rank blasphemy for entering the Temple of Aggedor (using the same secret tunnels and doors from five decades prior), the lovable mono-eyed green hexapod Alpha Centauri does show up just in time to recognize his old friend.

Along with Alpha Centauri (who hails from, um, Alpha Centauri) are the Earth engineer Eckersley and the Vegan mining specialist Vega Nexos, all overseeing the exploitation of Peladon’s precious trisilicate deposits; the mineral, used extensively in Federation technology, must be procured in great quantities to assist the Federation’s war effort against the fearsome foes of Galaxy Five (not to be confused with those from Galaxy Four). The constant, and deadly, reappearance of the “spirit” of Aggedor riles up the miners, who, no better treated now than fifty years prior, rebel against Federation influence.

Where before the young king of Peladon fought against the influence of his High Priest, who was being tricked by a Federation envoy into driving away the Federation—the better to allow the envoy’s own planet, Arcturus, to claim Peladon’s rock-bound riches—here, the young queen of Peladon fights against the influence of her Chancellor, who is being tricked by a Federation envoy into attacking the rebelling miners—the better to allow the envoy to traitorously sell the trisilicate to Galaxy Five.

But just to spice things up ever so slightly (and to fill out six long episodes), the traitor this time turns out to be…oh, you’ve probably already guessed.

Doctor Who Project: Death to the Daleks

October 11, 2018August 11, 2018 by Chris Baer

Tell me, have you ever tried Venusian hopscotch?

This time, the Dalek story title wheel lands on an alliteration, but at a stretch, it’s possible that Terry Nation’s “Death to the Daleks” (Story Production Code XXX) actually could apply to the story itself, since the dozen or so Daleks in the story do perish at the end. Alas, as with most things Dalek in the early 1970s, the title, and the story, aim for the grandiose and provide the pedestrian.

In keeping with one of Nation’s favored themes, a terrible plague threatens the outer colonies of almost all species. Only one planet, Exxilon, inhabited by a Stone Age civilization, possesses the cure in quantities sufficient to save the millions who suffer from the disease. Both the humans of the Marine Space Corps and the Daleks (of, um, the Daleks) want this miracle substance, parrinium, and would gladly fight each for it, if only their spaceships and energy weapons worked once they neared Exxilon.

For even the TARDIS succumbs to the energy-draining powers of the “forbidden city” of the Exxilons’ ancestors, who were old when the universe was young. Their city, imbued with a form of bio-technological sentience, was meant to be their crowning achievement, but in standard science fiction fashion, it realized they were an impediment to its efficient functioning and killed off most of them. The remnants worship the city, reduced to chanting and incense-heavy sacrificial ceremonies in its name.

Terry Nation must hold some grudge against the TARDIS, as for the second story of his in a row, the TARDIS runs out of a vital component (here energy, previously oxygen) and remains useless to the Doctor. Even in “The Daleks” back in 1963, he sees fit to render the blue box hors de combat, with the Doctor pocketing the fluid link to force everyone to investigate Skaro to find a replacement. The notion of the inviolable TARDIS never quite took with Nation, it seems, and he uses whatever plot device he can to get the Doctor out of its safe confines. At least the Doctor has an oil lamp handy with which to guide his way out of the blacked-out TARDIS, as one does…

Doctor Who Project: Invasion of the Dinosaurs

October 11, 2018July 13, 2018 by Chris Baer

Planet? Spaceship? What are you talking about?

Doctor Who has never been accused of subtlety, but Malcolm Hulke’s “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” (Story Production Code WWW) manages the closest thing: misdirection. From all the evidence on display, one expects the six episode story to be what it says on the tin, a tale of dinosaurs rampaging across London. Taking a page from Robert Sloman’s book, though, Hulke brings us an extended diatribe on pollution, zealotry, and nostalgia. Plus, yes, dinosaurs. So many dinosaurs.

At the start of the story, the scenes of deserted London streets summon some of the series’ most striking visual moments to date: Daleks crossing the Thames with Big Ben in the background, Cybermen marching in front of St. Peter’s Cathedral, and Autons smashing forth from a high street window. Here, director Paddy Russell paints an eerie, desolate setting with a few deft strokes. But then, she has to add the prehistoric stars to the mix.

For a variety of reasons, the dinosaurs never actually appear threatening. In part, the combination of puppetry and green screen/CSO effects, though executed with great audacity, doesn’t work to great effect. Soldiers fire their weapons away from the beasties superimposed behind them, and the puppets jerk back and forth, particularly the Tyrannosaurs Rex model. Even when the seams aren’t showing, the Doctor insists to all who listen that they are (mostly) pea-brained vegetarians anyway and not to be feared. By the final episode, where the Doctor and the Brigadier drive a jeep under a Brontosaurus, the effects begin to come together, but at that point, the saurians have been relegated to plot nuisances.

Rare amongst Doctor Who stories, the true villains in “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” take up most of the character list, such that everyone seems in on the conspiracy: a Minister of Parliament, a British Army general, a mad scientist, and…Captain Mike Yates?