Format: DVD
Warts & All: Colour Separation Overuse
Quote: Nonsense. What you need, Doctor, as Miss Shaw herself so often remarked, is someone to pass you your test tubes and to tell you how brilliant you are.
Review: Word to the wise: if you ever meet the Third Doctor, do not give him any grounds for suspicion or he will attempt to pull your face off. It’s a bit extreme, but if you’ve met the Autons once before you just can’t be too careful. Here, Holmes takes the same basic scenario of Spearhead (naturally) and steps up the pace and the ante with the introduction of the Master and a riotously colourful cocktail of ideas that lend this adventure a definite Avengers bouquet. It fairly rattles along with a lot of quickfire cuts and short scenes, quite an inventive array of murders or attempted killings – with shrinkage and placement in a lunchbox, ugly rubber troll dolls, inflatable comfy chairs, telephone flex (cue more Pertwee gurning opportunities) and plastic daffodils. And the carnival masks adopted by the Autons for the distribution of the deadly flowers have a surreal and eminently creepy quality.
Terror is an apt title, because you can really imagine a lot of young viewers especially carrying some of the imagery off to an early bedtime for a wealth of nightmares. The use of CSO is not as extensive as in some stories, but what makes it stand out here is the way it’s deployed for scenes that you’d think wouldn’t need it at all – a simple enough museum backdrop and an ordinary kitchen. This along with a couple of odd plot quirks – like, why on earth do alien artefacts get loaned out as museum exhibits? And a very swift and convenient change of mind on the part of the Master to facilitate the ending – qualifies as something of a glitch in an otherwise tour de force dash of classic Doctor Who. Other questions would include why UNIT consider a Morris Minor (?) a worthy military vehicle; does that telephone engineer bloke count as one of the actors to have played the Master? and oh dear, are big strong taciturn types the only role available to black actors in Doctor Who? but these are momentary wonderings before you’re generally drawn back into proceedings by the combination of the momentum, the quite vibrant palette and the variety of engaging performances.
I absolutely love Delgado’s Master, such a scintillatingly sinister gentleman, the perfect Moriarty foil to Pertwee’s Doctor, and great fun is had by the writer in having the Doctor complain of traits in his arch-enemy that he is, if anything, more guilty of himself – ‘vanity is the Master’s great weakness’, for one example. Jo, is a bit of a comedown from Liz Shaw for me, but she has her charms and – as the quote illustrates – serves a role. The UNIT team is joined by Captain Yates and it’s great to see Michael Wisher returning so soon after Ambassadors in the role of Farrell Jr.
The realisation of the Nestenes is a bit disappointing – an energy blob between two radio telescopes – compared to the mighty octopus-crab-spider beast depicted on the old Target novelisation, but hey, can’t be helped if the fx budget was blown on that CSO backdrop for Mrs Farrell’s kitchen. Generally terrific stuff, tailed off with a marvellously bizarre battle between UNIT troops and the carnival Autons, images that will not likely give you nightmares past a certain age but will nevertheless endure in the memory for all the right reasons. Plastic fantastic.
