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selenakAlso watched during the last week, and it makes for an interesting contrast in styles:
First of all, I'm aware that Maedwryn Undead is the first part of a trilogy and so shouldn't really be judged by itself, but here's my reaction anyway. This one has some good character stuff for the Fifth Doctor, touches on ongoing themes in DW down to the current incarnation and of course brings the Brigadier back, all of which is good, but there are some serious drawbacks. One of which is Turlough as the world's most ineffectual assassin wannabe. And an obnoxious entitled schoolboy to boot. I've seen Turlough before in later Five era adventures, so it's not that I'm anti-Turlough per se, but I'm still startled to think someone thought introducing a new companion as Draco Malfoy (book version, not fanon version) was a good idea. Seriously. Turlough here = Draco, which I guess makes the Black Guardian Voldemort. Now I have a visual of the Doctor reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and feeling nostalgic for some reason. Which must be based on later Turlough (who was alright as I recall), because here I can't see why the Doctor lets him join team TARDIS. (Though perhaps the later parts enlighten his reasons.) Or why Nyssa at the start thinks he's quite nice after they barely interacted and during said interaction Turlough didn't anything other than spout technobabble and suspiciously disappear.
(I'll add this as yet another reason why Nine's "I only take the best; I take Rose" annoys me to the nth degree in The Long Game: previous companions were so not "the best" at anything but came for all sorts of reasons, and now that I've seen he took in freakin' Draco Malfoy, Adam looks like a star by comparison.)
Other then Turlough endlessly running through corridors being ineffectual, and one version of the poor Brigadier also condemmed to endlessly walk through corridors, this story had quite a lot to offer, though. Our aliens of the week(s) are really interestingly morally ambiguous, and Five's behaviour towards them offers a fascinating compare/contrast to Ten and the Family of Blood. (Or Lazarus.) Like the Family of Blood and a couple of other Who villains), Maewdryn & Co. were after immortality, or rather, Time Lord style extreme longevity. As opposed to the Family of Blood, they didn't kill others to achieve this, but experimented on themselves, with the result that they condemmed themselves to an endless cycle of deaths. Like the Family, they then are after the genuine article, i.e. a Time Lord, but not to become genuinenly immortal but to die permanently. Letting Five, arguably the most soft-hearted of the Doctors, refuse them because he could only help them at the expense of his own life (or rather, giving up all his future lives), surprised me and yet didn't; he's not a saint, and though he was visibly torn, I could see why he didn't want to die so they could die. Then of course Nyssa and Tegan get infected, and this ends the moral dilemma, as the Doctor being willing to die to save companions is pretty much expected standard characterisation. (And then we get the Brigadier(s) ex machina as a solution that allows both Maewdryn & Co. to die and the Doctor to live.) As I said, I found it fodder for thought and wonder whether it informed what he does as Ten several regenerations later, both the initial mercy and the final crossing-the-line inhumanity, because the whole hiding and living as a human (which btw risks permanently dying as a human, and of course since John Smith is a separate being it's temporary self annhilation) is a somewhat extreme effort on behalf of three villains-of-the-week. Coupled with the Maewdryn backstory, however, he could very well be thinking of that earlier incident, what the quest for being like Time Lords had resulted in then for these people, and also that if not for Nyssa and Tegan, he would have left them to their endless cycle of deaths. And then at the end of the story of course follows the darkest messed up thing he's done, for many reasons; could one of them have been that memory as well?
Aside from the interesting aliens, the best thing about Maewdryn Undead was the Brigadier, though I wish they'd given him more active stuff to do. Still, the reunion in '83 with the Doctor triggering his memories was love, so was the shared tea afterwards, and I had to grin when while Nyssa and Tegan, for understandable reasons from their pov, were all "possible regeneration omg drama!", the late 70s' Brigadier was basically "here we go again". It's a bit odd to see Nicholas Courtney without the (fake) moustache, and somehow it helped selling the whole school teacher existence even more to me. And I had to grin at the remark about English school boys being more destructive than all the monsters UNIT ever encountered. Still, I'm not surprised he left the school life again later.
Nyssa and Tegan were pretty much standard companions here, not getting outstanding moments. Final verdict: a mixed affair of an episode, with bits that really dragged, but also very interesting stuff. Still, Five era DW never will be a favourite epoch for me. As opposed to...
Three era! I'm really sad I've now seen nearly all of you, which makes me sad. Invasion of the Dinosaurs was one of the adventures I postponed, because, well, I thought it would basically be DW Does Jurassic Park, but no. (Though we do get some of that; it's just a very minor part of the story.) Malcolm Hulke, he who gave us The Silurians and The Sea Devils, once again comes through splendidly with an ensemble story where all the players shine. This was Sarah Jane Smith's second outing, after The Time Warrior, and it showcases her journalistic investigative skills splendidly. (Sidenote: and I still think each time I see Three era Sarah Jane how incredibly young she looks, not just compared to New Who and SJA era Sarah Jane - who makes me wish I'd look that good - , but to Four era Sarah Jane. Especially her face. If she weren't so slender I'd say "the baby fat hasn't quite vanished yet", but she really looks so very, very young.) The script does a good job of making her contribution non-generic, i.e. it makes sense that Sarah would think of the "who financed the power source, who made headlines by experiments directed at time changes?" questions because that's how a reporter thinks. Jo also wouldn't have stayed out of it once told off by the Brig and the Doctor, but that wouldn't have occured to her; she probably would have tried to follow the general or talked with his aide. Liz would have approached the question from a scientific angle, together with the Doctor. Sarah tracks down the sources.
Coming directly after a Five era episode with poor Peter Davison operating under the directive of never ever touching his female co-stars, I thought they could never have worked that one with Jon Pertwee. It's arms around shoulders, hands under chins and general tactileness all the time, and this with someone the Doctor in show continuity terms has just met a few days ago. And at the end, when Sarah Jane announces this is it for her, he gives her the full "stay with me and I'll show you the stars" spiel, seducing her by describing the beauties of planet what's-its-name. You, sir, are a bad, bad man. Considering you're going to cut her off one day of those promised wonders of the galaxy, I mean.
Malcolm Hulke can be relied upon to deliver great Brigadier-and-Doctor scenes, and so he does. An early one illustrates subtly a change four years together wrought. As in The Silurians and a lot of other Three adventures, you get the situation where an official shows up, the Doctor promptly pisses him off, and the Brigadier is in the unenviable position in between. However, at this point in their relationship, when the Brigadier pointedly introduces General Finch, the Doctor makes an effort to make up for his earlier brush-off by being nice in order to make things easier for the Brig. Aw. (Not that it does, of course, with General Finch being a villain and all.) Later highlights include the Doctor dragging the Brig in a closet and the two of them driving under a brontosaurus. I also love that when the Doctor wants UNIT to capture a brontosaurus for him, the Brigadier's reaction is such a great mixture of "only you..." and "okay, let's suit up".
In terms of recent events in the Whoverse, the Mike Yates subplot offers a precedent (and complete contrast, of course) of how UNIT reacts when one of their employees betrays them. Mike Yates doesn't have Tosh's excuse of the whole "family member got kidnapped" thing, though I suppose he could point to both the minister and General Finch as giving orders, and both of them outrank the Brig. However, the way the story presents it he's acting out of genuine conviction, not because of pressure. (And at any rate contrasted with Sgt. Benton, who when Finch gives him a morally objectionable order goes against it, twice, the second time physically.) If the Guantanomo Bay stuff from Fragments was so stark that I really want an on screen explanation of how UNIT got there or I'll curse Chibnall for the rest of eternity, the reaction here is the other extreme - unbelievably lenient. Basically Mike Yates gets a slap on the wrist and the option to resign quietly. Given that the little Utopian experiment he betrayed his organization for could have resulted in the non-existence of most of the human race, this beggars belief. Since I already saw Planet of the Spiders, I know a Buddhist retreat is next for him, and he does make up for his behaviour there somewhat, but the Brigadier couldn't have known that. At any rate, the extreme leniency towards Yates belies the argument used in the Fragments debate that the Brig would have had Tosh shot back in the day; not looking at this precedent he wouldn't.
Speaking of the Yates subplot, the villains being extreme Utopians (I can't resist a Lost joke there - do they remind anyone else of the Dharma group and/or the Others?) whose ideas the Doctor understands even if he thoroughly disapproves of their means was a refreshing storytelling choice; early on I expected another evil computer or invading force or what not. They're also individualized: we getSecretary Rontane Peter Miles as yet another snide scientist, General Finch as a military villain who isn't a bloodthirsty dunderhead but an idealist gone rancid, and Grover as the avuncular and convinced-of-acting-for-the-greater-good minister throughout. And then there is the group of wannabe exiles, with slight 1984 overtones, displaying 70s ambiguity and conviction that idealism and ideology, with unwillingness to tolerate dissent, can be dangerously close; this year's revolutionaries as next year's oppressive establishment. As the Silurians DVD informs me Malcolm Hulke used to be a party member, one can say he knew what he was talking about.
The dinosaurs are just a distraction from the main villanous plot, but they offer some great moments: deserted and evacuated London is genuinenly spooky, the Doctor facing the brontosaurus with that mixture of admiration and wonder he has for (many, but not all) of the monsters he encounters reminds me of both other Three moments like that (say, with the giant caterpillar) and of Ten's "oh, but you're beautiful" moments with both the werewolf in Tooth and Claw and the automatons in Girl in the Fireplace. Plus as I said, loved and adored the Doctor and the Brig in their jeep when faced with one of the beasties.
Lastly: the Doctor when arrested responding to the mugshots by grinning while they're taken, thus showing up the idiocy of the whole process, Sarah taking her cue and doing the same, and then the Doctor asking for a shot of the two of them together? Is an illustration of how Three, while working for a human organisation, is so not a tool of the establishment.
First of all, I'm aware that Maedwryn Undead is the first part of a trilogy and so shouldn't really be judged by itself, but here's my reaction anyway. This one has some good character stuff for the Fifth Doctor, touches on ongoing themes in DW down to the current incarnation and of course brings the Brigadier back, all of which is good, but there are some serious drawbacks. One of which is Turlough as the world's most ineffectual assassin wannabe. And an obnoxious entitled schoolboy to boot. I've seen Turlough before in later Five era adventures, so it's not that I'm anti-Turlough per se, but I'm still startled to think someone thought introducing a new companion as Draco Malfoy (book version, not fanon version) was a good idea. Seriously. Turlough here = Draco, which I guess makes the Black Guardian Voldemort. Now I have a visual of the Doctor reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and feeling nostalgic for some reason. Which must be based on later Turlough (who was alright as I recall), because here I can't see why the Doctor lets him join team TARDIS. (Though perhaps the later parts enlighten his reasons.) Or why Nyssa at the start thinks he's quite nice after they barely interacted and during said interaction Turlough didn't anything other than spout technobabble and suspiciously disappear.
(I'll add this as yet another reason why Nine's "I only take the best; I take Rose" annoys me to the nth degree in The Long Game: previous companions were so not "the best" at anything but came for all sorts of reasons, and now that I've seen he took in freakin' Draco Malfoy, Adam looks like a star by comparison.)
Other then Turlough endlessly running through corridors being ineffectual, and one version of the poor Brigadier also condemmed to endlessly walk through corridors, this story had quite a lot to offer, though. Our aliens of the week(s) are really interestingly morally ambiguous, and Five's behaviour towards them offers a fascinating compare/contrast to Ten and the Family of Blood. (Or Lazarus.) Like the Family of Blood and a couple of other Who villains), Maewdryn & Co. were after immortality, or rather, Time Lord style extreme longevity. As opposed to the Family of Blood, they didn't kill others to achieve this, but experimented on themselves, with the result that they condemmed themselves to an endless cycle of deaths. Like the Family, they then are after the genuine article, i.e. a Time Lord, but not to become genuinenly immortal but to die permanently. Letting Five, arguably the most soft-hearted of the Doctors, refuse them because he could only help them at the expense of his own life (or rather, giving up all his future lives), surprised me and yet didn't; he's not a saint, and though he was visibly torn, I could see why he didn't want to die so they could die. Then of course Nyssa and Tegan get infected, and this ends the moral dilemma, as the Doctor being willing to die to save companions is pretty much expected standard characterisation. (And then we get the Brigadier(s) ex machina as a solution that allows both Maewdryn & Co. to die and the Doctor to live.) As I said, I found it fodder for thought and wonder whether it informed what he does as Ten several regenerations later, both the initial mercy and the final crossing-the-line inhumanity, because the whole hiding and living as a human (which btw risks permanently dying as a human, and of course since John Smith is a separate being it's temporary self annhilation) is a somewhat extreme effort on behalf of three villains-of-the-week. Coupled with the Maewdryn backstory, however, he could very well be thinking of that earlier incident, what the quest for being like Time Lords had resulted in then for these people, and also that if not for Nyssa and Tegan, he would have left them to their endless cycle of deaths. And then at the end of the story of course follows the darkest messed up thing he's done, for many reasons; could one of them have been that memory as well?
Aside from the interesting aliens, the best thing about Maewdryn Undead was the Brigadier, though I wish they'd given him more active stuff to do. Still, the reunion in '83 with the Doctor triggering his memories was love, so was the shared tea afterwards, and I had to grin when while Nyssa and Tegan, for understandable reasons from their pov, were all "possible regeneration omg drama!", the late 70s' Brigadier was basically "here we go again". It's a bit odd to see Nicholas Courtney without the (fake) moustache, and somehow it helped selling the whole school teacher existence even more to me. And I had to grin at the remark about English school boys being more destructive than all the monsters UNIT ever encountered. Still, I'm not surprised he left the school life again later.
Nyssa and Tegan were pretty much standard companions here, not getting outstanding moments. Final verdict: a mixed affair of an episode, with bits that really dragged, but also very interesting stuff. Still, Five era DW never will be a favourite epoch for me. As opposed to...
Three era! I'm really sad I've now seen nearly all of you, which makes me sad. Invasion of the Dinosaurs was one of the adventures I postponed, because, well, I thought it would basically be DW Does Jurassic Park, but no. (Though we do get some of that; it's just a very minor part of the story.) Malcolm Hulke, he who gave us The Silurians and The Sea Devils, once again comes through splendidly with an ensemble story where all the players shine. This was Sarah Jane Smith's second outing, after The Time Warrior, and it showcases her journalistic investigative skills splendidly. (Sidenote: and I still think each time I see Three era Sarah Jane how incredibly young she looks, not just compared to New Who and SJA era Sarah Jane - who makes me wish I'd look that good - , but to Four era Sarah Jane. Especially her face. If she weren't so slender I'd say "the baby fat hasn't quite vanished yet", but she really looks so very, very young.) The script does a good job of making her contribution non-generic, i.e. it makes sense that Sarah would think of the "who financed the power source, who made headlines by experiments directed at time changes?" questions because that's how a reporter thinks. Jo also wouldn't have stayed out of it once told off by the Brig and the Doctor, but that wouldn't have occured to her; she probably would have tried to follow the general or talked with his aide. Liz would have approached the question from a scientific angle, together with the Doctor. Sarah tracks down the sources.
Coming directly after a Five era episode with poor Peter Davison operating under the directive of never ever touching his female co-stars, I thought they could never have worked that one with Jon Pertwee. It's arms around shoulders, hands under chins and general tactileness all the time, and this with someone the Doctor in show continuity terms has just met a few days ago. And at the end, when Sarah Jane announces this is it for her, he gives her the full "stay with me and I'll show you the stars" spiel, seducing her by describing the beauties of planet what's-its-name. You, sir, are a bad, bad man. Considering you're going to cut her off one day of those promised wonders of the galaxy, I mean.
Malcolm Hulke can be relied upon to deliver great Brigadier-and-Doctor scenes, and so he does. An early one illustrates subtly a change four years together wrought. As in The Silurians and a lot of other Three adventures, you get the situation where an official shows up, the Doctor promptly pisses him off, and the Brigadier is in the unenviable position in between. However, at this point in their relationship, when the Brigadier pointedly introduces General Finch, the Doctor makes an effort to make up for his earlier brush-off by being nice in order to make things easier for the Brig. Aw. (Not that it does, of course, with General Finch being a villain and all.) Later highlights include the Doctor dragging the Brig in a closet and the two of them driving under a brontosaurus. I also love that when the Doctor wants UNIT to capture a brontosaurus for him, the Brigadier's reaction is such a great mixture of "only you..." and "okay, let's suit up".
In terms of recent events in the Whoverse, the Mike Yates subplot offers a precedent (and complete contrast, of course) of how UNIT reacts when one of their employees betrays them. Mike Yates doesn't have Tosh's excuse of the whole "family member got kidnapped" thing, though I suppose he could point to both the minister and General Finch as giving orders, and both of them outrank the Brig. However, the way the story presents it he's acting out of genuine conviction, not because of pressure. (And at any rate contrasted with Sgt. Benton, who when Finch gives him a morally objectionable order goes against it, twice, the second time physically.) If the Guantanomo Bay stuff from Fragments was so stark that I really want an on screen explanation of how UNIT got there or I'll curse Chibnall for the rest of eternity, the reaction here is the other extreme - unbelievably lenient. Basically Mike Yates gets a slap on the wrist and the option to resign quietly. Given that the little Utopian experiment he betrayed his organization for could have resulted in the non-existence of most of the human race, this beggars belief. Since I already saw Planet of the Spiders, I know a Buddhist retreat is next for him, and he does make up for his behaviour there somewhat, but the Brigadier couldn't have known that. At any rate, the extreme leniency towards Yates belies the argument used in the Fragments debate that the Brig would have had Tosh shot back in the day; not looking at this precedent he wouldn't.
Speaking of the Yates subplot, the villains being extreme Utopians (I can't resist a Lost joke there - do they remind anyone else of the Dharma group and/or the Others?) whose ideas the Doctor understands even if he thoroughly disapproves of their means was a refreshing storytelling choice; early on I expected another evil computer or invading force or what not. They're also individualized: we get
The dinosaurs are just a distraction from the main villanous plot, but they offer some great moments: deserted and evacuated London is genuinenly spooky, the Doctor facing the brontosaurus with that mixture of admiration and wonder he has for (many, but not all) of the monsters he encounters reminds me of both other Three moments like that (say, with the giant caterpillar) and of Ten's "oh, but you're beautiful" moments with both the werewolf in Tooth and Claw and the automatons in Girl in the Fireplace. Plus as I said, loved and adored the Doctor and the Brig in their jeep when faced with one of the beasties.
Lastly: the Doctor when arrested responding to the mugshots by grinning while they're taken, thus showing up the idiocy of the whole process, Sarah taking her cue and doing the same, and then the Doctor asking for a shot of the two of them together? Is an illustration of how Three, while working for a human organisation, is so not a tool of the establishment.
