Relative Dates: 8th December 2012 - 27th December 2012
Time for a new Doctor. By now I was getting used to this steady flow of changing Doctors but I was very much aware that I was now going to be entering a tough time for my challenge as Tom Baker was the Doctor for such a long time that I would be seeing him every day from December 2012 to June 2013! I don't even see my best friends that often!
Robot
Tom Baker's era starts with a story that feels very much like a familiar Earth-bound third Doctor story which I guess is a good idea as it eases us into getting to know the new Doctor whilst still being around familiar characters such as Sarah Jane, the Brigadier and Sargent Benton.Whereas the third Doctor spent much of his first episode in bed as he recovered from his regeneration, his fourth persona pretty much springs straight into action after a few brief scenes of manic behaviour where he ties up poor Harry Sullivan and bundles him into a cupboard.
The Doctor picks his new outfit from the TARDIS after a "comedy" routine where he emerges from the ship wearing various assortments of inappropriate clothing, from a Viking costume to a clown costume, before finally settling for a red jacket, hat and incredibly long scarf.
Apparently the scarf came about when the production team asked a lady to knit them a scarf for the Doctor and provided her with a sample of wool to use. It seems she misunderstood her brief and ended up using ALL the wool leading to the now famous scarf seen on screen.
The story itself is a fairly standard story. A group of elite scientist who want to take over the world so that they can run things their way are using a giant robot to achieve their ends. There are some similarities to King Kong here, with Sarah striking up an unlikely friendship with the huge metal beast. The King Kong references are pretty much rammed down your throat in the final episode when the robot grows to gigantic proportions and picks up Sarah Jane and starts carrying her round.
This leads to some pretty poor visual effects including an attempted forced perspective shot when a toy tank is pushed into shot in the vain hope that the angles used will convince the viewers at home that it is a real tank. I'm sorry guys, there is no way that that fool anyone!
The story ends with the Doctor tempting Sarah Jane into joining him on his travels with the help of a bag of jelly babies. (That sounds far more sinister than I meant it too!) Joining them on their travels is UNIT's medical officer Harry Sullivan who gets quite a surprise when he steps inside the police box.
The Ark In Space
Now I was moving on to one of the more popular stories, although it's one that I've always found a little boring. The TARDIS lands on a space station that is holding a group of humans in suspended animation who have been sent to the ark in order to survive some disaster on Earth. I think it was a solar flare but I may be wrong. Unfortunately an insect-like creature called the Wirren has got on board the ark and has laid eggs in the sleeping humans. It's basically Alien before Alien was made.
One thing I noticed about the early Tom Baker stories is that he tends to find some interesting uses for his long scarf. It's almost like now that they have been stuck with this incredibly long scarf the writers are at least trying to come up with good uses for it. Here he attempts to use his scarf to deactivate a sensor within the ark which is firing at him and Harry whenever it senses them move.
Additionally, during the same scene we get to see the sonic screwdriver actually being used to unscrew something! The Doctor unscrews a table that is screwed to the floor in order that he and Harry can use it to safely cross the room where the sensor is.
The model shots of the ark are pretty ropey and the DVD does have the option to watch the story with CGI effects instead but for some reason these just seem even worse! Therefore this was one of the rare cases when I decided to stick with the model shots.
The Doctor gives a great speech early on about Homo Sapiens being indomitable and surviving everything which is now quite famous and was actually pretty much used again by the tenth Doctor in the story Utopia.
There is also some great character moments between the Doctor and his companions. I've always thought Harry was great. He doesn't appear in many stories as he was only really brought into the show when they believed the actor who was going to play the fourth Doctor was going to be much older and therefore they needed a younger man as a companion in order to be in more of the action scenes in a similar set up to Ian Chesterton with the first Doctor. As such when Tom Baker was cast it became clear that this was no longer necessary which is a real shame because Harry is a great companion in both his scenes with the Doctor and his rather chauvinistic attitude towards Sarah Jane which causes some quite funny moments.
The pairing of the fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane has always been seen as a classic pairing and an example of why this is considered to be the case can be seen here. During the last part of the story when Sarah Jane is required to climb through some narrow conduits in order to transport a cable from the escape rocket to the main incubation chamber, she becomes stuck right near the end and starts to panic. The Doctor begins to yell at her claiming that he always knew she would let everyone down and that she is being whiny by crying. This gets her so angry that she manages to push her way out just to get at the Doctor which was of course the Doctor's plan all along. Brilliant stuff!
Instead of the story ending with the Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry returning to the TARDIS, the Doctor instead decides to teleport down to the now refreshed Earth in order to help fix...something which I've forgotten. This is why I should have kept up with this blog ages ago! But anyway, further adventures would now continue on Earth. It's cool to have stories run into one another like this.
The Sontaran Experiment
A nice two parter! Whilst on Earth the Doctor discovers a Sontaran who is performing horrible experiments on the few human inhabitants of the planet. These experiments are apparently to detect human weaknesses in order that an eventual invasion of the Earth can be planned.
An interesting feature of this story is that it was filmed completely on location with no sets. It was all filmed outside on some moors in Dartmoor. This is a good contrast from the very set heavy story of The Ark In Space.
There's not much I can remember to say about this one really. Some of the experiments that the Sontaran performs are pretty gruesome, including stimulating the fear centres of Sarah Jane's brain until she starts to believe such things as the ropes binding her are in fact snakes!
I heard a funny story about the making of this one too. Kevin Lindsay who played Styre, the Sontaran was not a well man when this was made and as such instead of march up and down the moors whenever a lunch break was called he decided to stay up there on his own and have his break up there. On one such occasion, when the crew returned and asked him if he was okay he replied that "I am, but some woman walking her dog has just had the shit frightened out of her!" This poor woman had clearly been innocently walking her dog and had happened upon Kevin Lindsay in full Sontaran make up!
I liked this story. There are some pretty poor fight scenes though. Near the end of the story, the Doctor and Styre are involved in some fisticuffs but unfortunately Tom Baker was injured in an earlier scene and as such a stunt man was forced to put on a curly wig and act out the scenes with Kevin Lindsay. Unfortunately it's not very effective and you can clearly see that it's not Tom Baker involved in the scenes. The various close ups of Tom Baker's face that they cut in to the action aren't fooling anyone sadly.
Genesis Of The Daleks
Now we're talking! This story is a bone fide classic!
Having pretty much repeated himself over and over again Terry Nation was challenged to write a truly original Dalek story. As such he decided to tell the origin story of the Daleks, something which had only ever really been hinted at in previous stories.
On route back to the ark in space (known as the Nerva Beacon) the transmat beam is intercepted by an unknown Time Lord who gives the Doctor a mission. The Time Lords have foreseen a time when the Daleks will have wiped out all other lifeforms and become the dominant race in the universe. As such they wish the Doctor to return to the Daleks' home world of Skaro before the Daleks evolved and either avert their creation or somehow change them so that they evolve into less aggressive creatures. What a set up for a story!
It's in this story that we first meet the Daleks' creator, Davros! Davros is the chief scientist of the Kaled race (guess what "Kaled" is an anagram for??) and is doing research into how the radiation fall out from their never ending battle with the Thals will eventually mutate the Kaleds' bodies. However, Davros is a megalomaniac, who is tampering with the mutated creatures in order to create the perfect life form which he christens a "Dalek". The Kaled scientists believe that Davros has created the travel machines for the Daleks so that when their race eventually mutates to this stage that they will have someway of getting around. However Davros is making his own modification, fitting weaponry etc.
There are clear reflections here of Nazi Germany with Davros's desire to create the perfect life form and the Kaled soldiers are pretty much dressed like Nazis to further emphasise this similarity.
What is also cool about this story is that some of the Thals are shown to be pretty nasty too. It would have been easy to have simply the Thals as the "goodies" and the Kaleds as the "baddies" as in most previous Dalek stories but here we have some not so nice Thals and some good Kaleds. For example when some of the Kaleds realise how Davros is abusing the Dalek experiment for his own ends they try to put a stop to it. This leads into some great scenes where Davros' right hand man (oh dear, that's a poor choice of phrase to use in relation to a man who only has a right hand!) Nyder starts to wheedle out the traitors. Finally Davros completely turns on his own people as he helps the Thals to destroy the Kaled dome because he knows the Kaled government want to investigate his experiments.
Near the end of the story we have one of the greatest moments in the entire series. The Doctor has rigged the Dalek "nursery" with bombs and is standing outside with Sarah Jane and Harry knowing that all he has to do is to touch two wires together and the Daleks will be finished and centuries of time rewritten as the Daleks are wiped from history. As he stands there holding the wires he debates with himself and his companions whether he has the right to do it. Just brilliant stuff!
Revenge Of The Cybermen
As is tradition, the Cybermen have been redesigned yet again. I guess it makes sense for them to change every so often as it reflects how they are constantly striving to improve their systems etc.
This is also the first Cyberman story where we discover their vulnerability to gold which is used to much effect in later stories. The plot of Revenge revolves around this fact as they intend to destroy the planet Voga which is rich in gold resources and was the main source of gold during the Cyber Wars when humans more or less wiped the Cybermen out.
We also see the return of the Cyber-mats, the cute little Cyber..rodent things..They don't look anywhere near as good here though I'm afraid.
There still some fun stuff going on despite the story being pretty dull. Poor Harry inadvertently causes a rock slide which nearly kills the Doctor. As the Doctor springs back to life he screams "HARRY SULLIVAN IS AN IMBECILE!!!" which echoes around the cavern. Poor Harry. Funny though.
Also, and I don't think I've ever heard anyone mention this, but I swear the CyberLeader sounds just like Morgan Freeman! I know its not Morgan Freeman though. At least he is not credited as such but who knows who is actually beneath that costume. Now that would be a turn up for the books if Morgan Freeman had secretly appeared in an episode of Doctor Who way back in the 1970s!!
So that was the end of season 12. There would be many more seasons for the fourth Doctor though, I had barely begun to scratch the surface!
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