Category: Complete Review
Doctor Who episode 495: The Androids of Tara – Part Four (16/12/1978)
Doctor Who has never been as swashbuckling as it gets here. Tom Baker looks the part, long coat swirling as he locks swords with Count Grendel, crashing the midnight wedding of the King and Romana in an eleventh-hour rescue. This looks as good as anything since Graham Williams took over: the night filming is a lot more effective than The Stones of Blood’s day-for night, the use of Leeds Castle for Castle Gracht helps sell the setting, and – perhaps aside from the intimate throne room – nothing in studio is beyond the bounds of the BBC budget.
Doctor Who episode 494: The Androids of Tara – Part Three (9/12/1978)
This is a rare example of the third episode of a Doctor Who story improving on the first two. Mainly, it’s because the stately pace of the first half, which allowed David Fisher to set up some of the plot convolutions and characters, all begins to coalesce here, and what might have been final-episode pay-offs, like Madam Lamia’s death, instead become part of events spiralling out of Grendel’s control.
Doctor Who episode 493: The Androids of Tara – Part Two (2/12/1978)
Wisely, for a story with so many doubles, David Fisher keeps the fairytale plot very straightforward. Less impressively, some of the dialogue seems to have been duplicated – the Archimandrite (yay, Cyril Shaps!) has the same conversation, about having to choose another king should the Prince not show up, twice in quick succession with Count Grendel: even making allowances for the “casual viewers” this feels a bit like overkill.
Doctor Who episode 492: The Androids of Tara – Part One (25/11/1978)
While the Prisoner of Zenda references are well documented (not that I’d know Zenda from Zelda), Doctor Who’s 15th anniversary episode also owes a predictable debt to Star Wars. It’s got Mary Tamm cosplaying Princess Leia again (although, tantalising the dads, she dangles the possibility of wearing Tahitian costume), futuristic swords, a furry Chewbacca creature, the original Jabba the Hutt, and an advanced, android-building civilisation clothed like an operatic version of the 19th Century.
Doctor Who episode 491: The Stones of Blood – Part Four (18/11/1978)
‘You have been tried and found guilty of the following charges: impersonating a religious personage, to wit, a Celtic goddess…’ If only the Megara had been around in the Pertwee years they would have cleared up most of UNIT’s cases in record time. This is immense fun. I’m a sucker for a courtroom drama, so turning this final episode into Crown Court in space was always going to float my boat. But when it includes the Doctor calling Romana ‘Miss Dvoratrelundar’, Vivien feyly consenting to the mind probe, and the Megara being incredibly stuffy and pompous and accusing Romana of incompetence, I’m completely sold.
Doctor Who episode 490: The Stones of Blood – Part Three (11/11/1978)
Geekily, the most exciting thing about this episode was the surprise appearance (I think the first in the show) of BBC Micro style graphics to display the prison ship hovering above the stone circle. As a staple of the show (and schools) through the 1980s, it’s like seeing the future arrive. It’s also a great illustration of the central twist of The Stones of Blood: a story that, up until now, has been full of ancient stones and antique oil paintings veers into the cleanest white space corridors this side of Nerva (fittingly, there’s a Wirrn in one of the cells).
Doctor Who episode 489: The Stones of Blood – Part Two (4/11/1978)
Everyone talks about Emelia Rumford, who is one of the triumvirate of brilliantly batty old ladies in the Tom Baker years. But Susan Engel’s performance is superb. In a series that – to this point – has had vanishingly few female baddies, she sets the benchmark. Vivien Fay is playful and teasing, even flirtatious, but with a brutal streak and the sense that, like Richard III, she really rather enjoys being evil. Missy is basically Vivien Fay turned up to 11. The scene where she half-botheredly tries to nix Romana’s plans to investigate the Nine Travellers while sipping tea is brilliant.
Doctor Who episode 488: The Stones of Blood – Part One (28/10/1978)
After Season 15 offered up Image of the Fendahl for Halloween, Season 16 gives us another Dennis Wheatley horror thriller set in contemporary Britain. So far, this is preferable, largely because the villains are more vivid (I love that De Vries smokes a cigarette and sips sherry during his interview with the Doctor: it’s so gloriously stockbroker-turned-Satanist) and there’s an oppressive, ominous atmosphere of empty countryside and haunting music that makes for an excellent contrast with the garrulous sci-fi of The Pirate Planet.
Doctor Who episode 487: The Pirate Planet – Part Four (21/10/1978)
‘A bit crude but immensely satisfying.’ Being cold about it, this ending isn’t quite as good as the set-up. Partly it’s that the execution isn’t quite snappy enough so some of the repartee doesn’t sizzle as much as it might, and the Mentiads’ destruction of Zanak’s engines looks fairly drippy. Mainly it’s because, having criticised Xanxia’s bafflegab the Doctor spouts a great deal of it himself, and Adams doesn’t quite give the villains the exits they deserve (Xanxia, in particular, literally just fades away).
Doctor Who episode 486: The Pirate Planet – Part Three (14/10/1978)
Again, the dialogue makes this sing. The Captain has a poetic turn of phrase that hints he isn’t simply the bellowing bully he appears to be: ‘I built [the ship] with technology so far advanced you would not be able to distinguish it from magic’; ‘Do you not see how my heart burns for the dangerous liberty of the skies?’; ‘I come in here to dream of freedom’. His confrontation with the Doctor in the trophy room is rightly celebrated, but it’s only part of an ongoing verbal duel between the two of them.
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