Relative Dates: 19th June 2012 - 1st August 2012
The Dominators
The TARDIS lands on the peaceful planet of Dulkis. Unfortunately they are not the only visitors, the Dominators have also arrived!
The two Dominators in this story have an odd relationship with each other. Sometimes they seem like squabbling siblings and other times like husband and wife. The one Dominator's intense desire to "Destroy! Destroy!" everything he comes across only to be commanded to stop by his fellow Dominator leads to some quite amusing scenes..and yes you are correct in surmising that I have completely forgotten the bloody names of these characters! But look at their shoulder pads! Now they're impressive!
The Dominators have little square robot servants known as the Quarks, yet another attempt to generate the same success as the Daleks. Unfortunately they look like that they can very easily be pushed over and they're so damn cute that it's hard to feel any genuine threat from them.
This story demonstrates the drawbacks of pacifism as one of the Dominator's storms into a meeting of the council of the Dulcians who are completely unprepared for such a threat and simply agree to roll over since they are dead set against fighting.
Zoe does quite well in her first proper story after her debut. Here she teams up with one of the main Dulcians, Cully, who seems to take a bit of a shine to her.
The Dulcians have an even odder dress sense than the Dominators. All of them, even the men, wear dresses that look remarkably like a set of curtains.
This is quite a good story but at five episodes it does feel a little padded out at times. Quite a lot of time seems to be spent in travelling via rocket car to the Dulcian city and then back to the island where the Dominators have landed.
There are some amusing scenes when the Doctor and Jamie are captured by the Dominators who are assessing their intelligence leading to the Doctor and Jamie acting dumb when given even the simplest of tasks to perform.
We also get to see the Doctor's sonic screwdriver again (that's not a euphemism!) when he uses it to burrow out a tunnel so that they can intercept the bomb that the Dominators intend to drop into the core of the planet...for some reason.
The Mind Robber
This isn't the best picture to demonstrate the awesomeness of the The Mind Robber but it just made me giggle because the instrument that the Doctor is caressing looks a little rude. When I googled this story to find an appropriate picture there was one picture that was repeated over and over again, that of Zoe in a skin tight cat suit, lying on top of the TARDIS console as it spins through space after the TARDIS has exploded. Oh what the hell, here it is...
It's strange how this picture is so popular..
So to the story itself:
The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are trapped in a world of fiction, complete with clockwork soldiers and unicorns (a brown horse with white powder all over it and a horn stuck on). In control of this world is The Master but not THE MASTER, he wouldn't show up for another couple of years.
The Doctor makes a good friend in the form of Gulliver from Gulliver's travels and this is one of the brilliant things about this story. I believe that every line spoken by Gulliver is actually one of the lines from the novel. It's all very clever stuff.
I'm jumping ahead of myself a little anyway. Episode one is very different to the rest of the story. The TARDIS lands in a white void in which both Jamie and Zoe get themselves lost after being tempted out of the safety of the ship by visions of home. The Doctor soon rescues them but the malevolent force has already got into the ship as we see it apparently explode leaving Jamie and Zoe spinning off through space. This is one of the best cliffhangers ever, especially when Zoe looks up to see the Doctor spinning off in the opposite direction. Her scream is blood curdling!
So then we find ourselves in the world of fiction where another bizarre incident occurs. Jamie gets turned into a cardboard cut out with a missing face and the Doctor has to choose from a set of eyes, noses and mouths to reassemble his face. He gets it completely wrong leading to Jamie reappearing, not as Frazer Hines but as another actor! The reason behind this was because Frazer Hines had contracted chicken pox so needed to take the week off. It was just fortunate that it came in the middle of such a strange story that they could do something like this and get away with it.
Along the course of the story we meet many fictional characters which leads me to a rather troubling thought..bear with me because this hurts my brain to think about. If all the characters in this world are fictional then is this some kind of acknowledgement that the Doctor himself is a fictional character?? It all gets very metaphysical and I'm probably reading way to much into it!
A good story overall. It's five episodes long again but it doesn't feel too padded as episode one seems to stand as it's own story as it's so different from the remaining four episodes. Additionally these are some of the shortest episodes ever! Traditionally episodes were about 23 minutes long but some of these episodes barely reach the 20 minute mark and I think episode five is something stupid like 18 minutes long. By this point it felt like a nice break after over 200 days of episodes!
The Invasion
The Cybermen are back...again! The fourth Cyberman story for the second Doctor. By this point they had truly replaced the Daleks as the main monster in the show.
However the Cybermen take a bit of a back seat here. In fact I don't think they even talk! They are allied with the director of International Electromatics, Tobias Vaughan. This guy has to be one of the best human villains in the show! He is played to perfection by Kevin Stoney who had previously played Mavic Chen in The Daleks' Master Plan. He speaks so calmly and coldly and is one of those villains that just seems so damn charming that you can't help but like him. He's clearly not a man to cross however as demonstrated in some of his less calm moments when he completely loses it!
All good villains need a hench man and we have him here in the form of Packer. A very nervous man, understandably.
Good God! I look Vaughan! He's just bloody amazing. And if you ever see me, ask me to do my impression of him, it's rather goof. Of course you probably won't know what Vaughan sounds like have never seen this story but trust me, it's spot on. Unfortunately I can only say "Packer!"
Another reason why I was excited to see this story was that it was eight episodes long with two of those episodes animated! No this wasn't some kind of follow on from the fictional pursuits of the The Mind Robber, it was done because two of the episodes were missing. Obviously this is a tragedy but for my purposes it was actually beneficial as it felt quite different and therefore was appreciated after watching over 200 episodes. These episodes were animated ages ago and at the time gave fans hope that all the other missing episodes would be animated. Unfortunately this has not been the case although there has been another surge in the amount of episodes they are animating. They have recently done episodes 4 and 5 of The Reign Of Terror, as well as episode 4 of The Tenth Planet and episodes 2 and 3 of The Ice Warriors. It's all very exciting.
Anyway, I'm going off topic. As if all this wasn't exciting enough, Lethbridge Stewert is back, now promoted to Brigadier! As mentioned before the character of the Brigadier is one of the most enduring in the show's history, having met most of the Doctors. In fact it was only the other day that I was watching The Wedding Of River Song which includes the heartbreaking scene of the eleventh Doctor learning of his old friends death as he realises that time catches up with all of us. Anyway that will be talked about in much much later blog entry!
So the Brigadier's back and this time he is with his specialised team that he has set up. UNIT (The United Nations Intelligence Taskforce). Again this is another big moment for the show. UNIT would feature a lot in the future and most heavily in the third Doctor's era.
I've just noticed that I've hardly mentioned the Cybermen. That's probably because they don't seem to be the main focus of the story. It's more about Vaughan and his manipulation of the Cybermen to help him achieve global domination. We do get to see some classic Cybermen scenes though as shown above when we see them popping up out of the sewers and invading London.
As the story comes to a conclusion and the cyber fleet approaches Earth, Zoe has a moment to shine as she swiftly calculates the optimal missile pattern to destroy every ship. Its obvious that the UNIT soldiers are impressed by her. Especially the one guy who blatantly checks out her ass as she walks past. Disgraceful!
The Krotons
Just when I was doing so well, I come to The Krotons. Another story that I can barely remember having only seen it once. I'll try my best anyway...
The Doctor meets a civilisation who is being oppressed by the Krotons. The Krotons are never seen by the normal people on the planet (the name of their race escapes me!) and only the cleverest are selected to enter the Krotons' ship. This is seen as being an honour but really they are being killed..I think.
The Krotons speak with a slight South African accent I think. It's a pretty strange thing to make up so I don't think I can be misremembering it.
Basically it's a pretty crappy story which is odd because its written (and this was his first story for the show) by Robert Holmes who would go on to write some of the best stories ever! Everyone has an off day I suppose. We also get to see Philip Madoc in his first Doctor Who role (not counting his role in the Peter Cushing Doctor Who movies as they don't count!). Philip Madoc is a spectacular actor who would appear in several future stories. Unfortunately he seems a little wasted here.
The Krotons are very "wobbly" robots and as such we don't see them move around all that often.
Jamie is a little sidelined too as he is considered too unintelligent for the Krotons needs. Of course brain box Zoe is around to impress and there are some fun scenes where she and the Doctor are competing for who is the most intelligent.
Overall conclusion: Not recommended!
The Seeds Of Death
The Ice Warriors return for another attempt to conquer the Earth. This time we get to meet "The Ice Lords" who appear to be superior to the normal warriors and more importantly speak a lot quicker! I don't think I motioned the voices in the review of the previous Ice Warriors story. They are quite creepy as they speak in a slow hiss but unfortunately it has the side affect of sometimes making them difficult to understand and extending the length of even the simplest conversation to mind numbing levels!
The Earth has become heavily reliant on the new form of instantaneous transportation known as T-MAT which has its central control on the surface of the moon which is unfortunately where the Ice Warriors land and turn this technology round on the humans by transporting seed pods to all cities of the world which eventually explode and cover the world in a poisonous foam.
With T-MAT being under the control of the Ice Warriors, the Doctor has to resort to using an "old fashioned" rocket to reach the moon. There is a nice little side plot here involving Professor Eldred who has always insisted that rocket travel should never have been replaced by T-MAT. As such when the T-MAT operators suddenly becoming reliant on his rocket, this makes him feel vindicated for his strongly held beliefs.
I also don't think I mentioned how cool the Ice Warriors guns are! .....I've just been sat here for the last 10 minutes trying to work out how to describe them! It's a very distinctive sound effect. I recently listed to an audio drama featuring the Ice Warriors and it was really cool to hear they had kept the same affect....another 5 minutes have passed and I still can't think how to describe the sound effect, you'll just have to trust me that it's good.
As the seeds explode, covering the Earth in a deadly foam/fungus we get some great scenes of the Doctor fighting his way through the foam to reach Jamie and Zoe. Patrick Troughton is clearly loving this and to be honest I don't blame him, it looks like the best foam party ever! In what is meant to be a dire situation for the Doctor we unfortunately see Wendy Padbury who plays Zoe pissing herself laughing at Patrick Troughton covered in foam as he falls through the door into the weather control centre. To be fair, it is quite funny.
I'm all Ice Warrior-ed out to be honest after seeing the fantastic Cold War this weekend, but more on that on Day 896. I'll get there one day..yes I shall get there...
The Space Pirates
Well what can I say about The Space Pirates? In fact what the hell CAN I say about The Space Pirates??
This was my final missing story to endure. Actually "endure" sounds like to harsh a word as some of the missing stories had been fantastic and the reconstructions done so well that it was almost like watching the actual episodes. Still, it was good to get to the other side of them as I knew they would be difficult.
This six part story with only one episode in existence was one of the hardest ones to get through. I can't say for sure whether it was because it was a poor story or because it was at the back of my mind that this was the last reconstruction that I would have to get through.
From what I can remember, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe don't turn up in the story for a very long time! I'd almost forgotten I was watching Doctor Who! The character in the picture above has a very strange accent. There's a lady with strange metal hair and lots of piratey shenanigans.. beautiful word that "shenanigans".
There are many scenes of ships flying through space, chasing each other etc which is a shame we can't see because I'm a sucker for old model shots.
I really should re-watch this one but...hmmm.. it wasn't that good. Don't get me wrong, if it's discovered I'll watch it! But maybe not bother with the reconstruction. Unless I start this quest all over again *shudders* No! I must not think of that! Besides I've got all of Blake's 7 to do next!
The War Games
Now this is a story I remember very well! Absolutely-bloody-brilliant!!
So many things to talk about here so lets get cracking.
First of all it exists which already makes it good! Its a ten episode story which would immediately make me think that it was going to drag along terribly but it really doesn't. It absolutely flies along!
The TARDIS lands in the middle of the first world war only for the Doctor to be declared a German spy by the rather suspicious British office, General Smythe. Smythe further arouses our suspicions when he is seen to put on a pair of small glasses that he uses to hypnotise his soldiers into believing everything is ok and that they have seen nothing out of the ordinary. He then proceeds to contact some kind of higher power via a television screen hidden behind a painting. Clearly something is very out of the ordinary.
After escaping, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe find themselves in the middle of a Roman war and then the American Civil War. This is certainly not Earth. Humans have been kidnapped from various different eras of history and have been set down in various time zones in order that their actions can be monitored and they can be trained up to be the ultimate army.
Soon, the Doctor stumbles across a time travel capsule which has worrying similarities to that of his own TARDIS. Using this, he travels to the central command centre and we meet the people in charge of the whole thing.
The War Chief is overseeing the operation and we get a fantastic scene when the Doctor and him first meet when it becomes clear that they recognise each other. This is actually quite a big turning point in the series as the Doctor's species gets named for the first time. Both the Doctor and the War Chief are Time Lords! The War Lord (who is NOT a Time Lord despite his name) is the head guy in charge and has recruited the War Chief in order to utilise his time travelling knowledge.
The other main character in the central command is the Security Chief who has a very confrontational relationship with the War Chief and it is clear that they do not trust each other. This is exacerbated when the Security Chief realises the the Doctor is from the same planet as the War Chief so he suspect that there is some kind of plot going on.
The War Lord is played by the fantastic Philip Madoc. He plays the super criminal brilliantly. He understands that it's not always necessary to shout and rave to assert his power and can be quite soft spoken at times which is all the more creepy.
By the end of the story, Jamie and Zoe have managed to band together a group of soldiers from the resistance who storm the central command and take over. However the Doctor realises that taking everyone back to their correct times in history is far beyond his capability as he is still incapable of correctly steering his TARDIS. He has no alternative but to call for help from his own people, the Time Lords.
Now this is when the shit really hits the fan! It's clear from the way the War Chief reacts that he is terrified of his own people and even the Doctor tries desperately to escape once the message has been sent. The Time Lords arrival in the story still makes me shiver now. They appear pretty much like the hand of God. As the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe try desperately to get back to the TARDIS we hear the howling winds that signal the Time Lords arrival.
After a bit of a run around in the TARDIS it is clear that the Doctor is not going to get away this time and he is forced to return home.
TIME LORD:- "You have returned to us Doctor....your travels are over"
At this point in the shows history, the ratings had slipped a little and this would have been a perfect opportunity for the show to come off the air. Luckily this did not happen.
Taken back to the Time Lords' home planet (the planet itself was not named until the era of the third Doctor), Jamie and Zoe are forced to return to their own times. The tragic part of this is that they are to have their memories erased.
TIME LORD:- "They will be returned to a point in time just before they went away with you. They will remember their first adventure, but nothing more"
As companion leaving scenes go this is definitely one of the most heart breaking.
With his companions gone, all is left is for the Doctor to face his own trial for interfering in the affairs of other worlds. The Doctor puts forward a passionate case.
THE DOCTOR:- "All these evils I have fought, while you have done nothing but observe! True, I am guilty of interference. Just as you are guilty of failing to use your great powers to help those in need!"
And the Time Lords pass their final judgement.
JUDGE:- "We have noted your interest in the planet Earth....For this reason you will be sent back to that planet...in exile! And for this time the secret of the TARDIS will be taken from you"
After the Doctor pleads that he cannot be expected to live on only one planet and attempts to use his notoriety on the Earth as an excuse the judge deals a further blow
JUDGE:- "Your appearance has changed before, it shall do so again. That is part of the sentence"
And with that the Doctor is banished to Earth and a forced regeneration is placed upon him. Next time we would see the Doctor would be in a very different series. Jamie and Zoe had gone, the Doctor's appearance had changed, the Doctor was stranded on Earth and for the first time the series would be made in colour. Season 6 was over! And so was the era of the second Doctor!
So that wraps up Season 6. It took me quite a while to finish this blog entry! Must press on as there is a long way to go. My next "retrospective" blog entry will be my overview of the second Doctor himself as well as all his companions. Come back soon!
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