Robot
This is a baton-passing episode. Barry Letts is still the
producer. While Robert Holmes is in place as script editor, Terrance Dicks (in
an instant bit of tradition as outgoing script editor) crafted the story. It’s
set on Earth and UNIT is around for a last Jon-Pertwee-like hurrah.
It’s also clear that this is a new show. Tom Baker’s fresh
energy is present from his first upright scene, where he makes some allusions
to the past (finding the Tardis key in his shoe, for example, just as Jon Pertwee had done five years before) and sets up the
future and he talks rings around the sturdy-if-dim companion Harry Sullivan.
Like a lot of Jon Pertwee serials, the story doesn’t make
complete sense and goes off the rails in the fourth episode as a
plot about scientists wanting to take over the Earth and create a perfect
society (wait, didn’t we do this last season with Invasion of the Dinosaurs?)
ends without much resolution and turns into a pure King-King homage as the big
Robot becomes a giant 50-foot-tall Robot carrying around a Sarah-Jane-Smith
doll.
The Ark in Space
Philip Hinchcliffe starts his three-year reign as producer
with a story that features the hallmarks of his era. It’s a bit of outer-space
gothic, with a seemingly abandoned space station, an ancient terror that is
still present and waiting to strike, and some pre-David-Cronenberg body horror
as one of the characters is transformed into a slug and then a
super-intelligent space insect thing.
In fact, the first episode is just our three main characters
exploring the Nerva Beacon. They solve a couple of crises and discover a bigger
one. The remnants of humanity are onboard in deep sleep, waiting for the Earth
to be ready for human life again. Our team’s presence means that they start to
wake up, but so do the giant space insect things. The effects are a bit dodgy
(the show was popular and cheap; a network’s dream), with the slug phase
monsters brought to life with bubble wrap that has been painted green, but the
sense of unease and horror still come through.
The Sontaran Experiment
As a way to stretch that tiny budget, the producers tried
some scheduling experiments. The Ark is Spacewas shot completely in the
studio, using the time for a six-episode block. The scheduled location time for
those episodes went to this two parter, which – thankfully –moves away from the
quarry to the moors. Shot entirely on location, the short piece brings back
Kevin Lindsay as a Sontaran – named Styre this time (they’re clones you see).
He’s doing some, well, experiments on a hapless crew of humans (the flares only
killed life on Earth; the colonies survived and thrived).
It’s pretty dark stuff, with tinges of Nazi-style
experiments along the way, but the Doctor is able to solve it all and stop an
invasion to boot. Things didn’t go so well for Tom Baker, however. He broke his
collarbone on the moors early on in the shoot. He was able to finish (with his
scarf hiding his neck brace and providing support for his arm), but his stunt
double had to do extra duty for the rest of the filming.
Genesis of the Daleks
With a new Doctor and production team coming in, Barry Letts
and Terrance Dicks planned to bring back some classic foes to ease into the new
era. It ended up working 50-50. Genesis of the Daleks is rightfully considered
at the apex of Tom Baker’s – and the classic program’s – stories. We have six
episodes that keep the story going. We have an unrelentingly grim vision of a
planet, Skaro, on the brink of complete destruction. By story’s end, only a
handful of the characters we’ve met along the way have survived, and they are
facing a life on a barren, scarred world.
And we have Davros. Terry Nation refreshed the somewhat
tired Dalek concept by providing the maddest of mad scientists as their
creator. Michael Wisher was the first, and really the best, actor to sit in
Dalek-like chair, acting the hell out by really only using his voice, his lower
jaw (the rest of his face was in a mask that also obscured his eyes) and one
arm and hand.
Tom Baker also comes into his own here, providing a character
who can be charming, fiery, and inquisitive – often all in the same scene. His
moments along with Davros are remarkable, while his doubt at destroying the
Daleks before they evolve into perfect killing machines.
And while the show was created on a shoestring like the rest
of the season, the team was able to mostly hide the limited resources. The
film-like lighting gives the show a dark, moody vibe, while the fact that there
is only a trio of working Daleks works when you consider that they are at the start
of their existence. Even the BBC quarry and BBC corridors work well in this
one.
Revenge of the Cybermen
Here’s the yang to Genesis of the Dalek’s yin. This is a
terrible story where the cheapness can be seen in the awful effects, the use of
obvious showroom dummies instead extras as corpses to the quartet of strutting
Cybermen who plan to do – I don’t know, really what the ultimate goal of all
the plotting is here. Our favorite humans-turned-cyborgs hadn’t been seen since
The Invasion in 1968, and wouldn’t be back until Earthshock in 1982. It’s easy
to see why.
While the episode is painful to watch, the DVD version
contains an intriguing documentary about what it was like being a British
Doctor Who fan at the dawn of the video age. Repeats were rare and fans would
latch onto any bit of video they could find, sometimes paying hundreds of
pounds to watch a legendary serial of yesteryear. We actually had it a lot
better in the Untied States than our British friends, as we got to see all of
the existing complete serials during the decade.
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