There’s no doubt Douglas Adams had seen Star Wars, is there? It would have been extraordinary if he hadn’t. I think there’s a hint of it in the psychic-powered monks who take away a young man as his Force awakens; the cyborg villain and his cowering military, who dress like the Death Star crew, and obviously the planet-sized, planet-killing spaceship. If this were post-Return of the Jedi you could even draw a semi-convincing analogy between Emperor Palpatine and the decrepit Queen Xanxia.

Continue reading →

When I was much younger, I didn’t get all the fuss about Douglas Adams. And if I squint I can sort of see why this didn’t impress me much: there’s not really a monster (well, Polyphase Avatron, I suppose), and there’s not a great deal of action. What went over my stupid child head is both the wittiness of the script and the cleverness of the delivery. Watching it now, I can see the whole 21st Century series coming into focus. Romana is River Song, piloting the TARDIS. The Doctor plays the fool, but there are centuries of wisdom behind it, with a burning curiosity and moral authority (he cares about Calufrax, even having dismissed it as boring). The Doctor’s backstory is almost casually revealed (he stole the TARDIS 523 years ago). They’re pitched as equals: Romana even gets to offer around the jelly babies (lifted from the Doctor’s pocket – she must have been learning his technique since The Ribos Operation).

Continue reading →

This ends more satisfyingly than Holmes’ previous scripts largely because the plot is so light. A character comedy, this perfectly pays off its three central partnerships. The Graff and Sholakh go out as warriors, albeit in the Graff’s case as a ranting tyrant who engineers his own downfall. Garron and Unstoffe lose the Graff’s money and their jethrik, but land on their feet because Garron always has something else up his sleeve. And the Doctor and Romana seem to have reached a grudging mutual respect as they unveil the first segment of the Key of Time.

Continue reading →

For all it’s a comedy, Holmes inserts a great deal of pathos into this. The scenes with Binro are rightly praised, with his touching delight in Unstoffe’s validation of his beliefs. But I also think Tom Baker gets some weightier material that plays against the slightly conceited comedy of the earlier episodes (e.g. getting caught in a net), when he does something clever to convert Garron’s bug into a communicator, and when he stops joking about with Garron to remind him, ‘A lot of people are going to die if we don’t get out of here.’

Continue reading →

This is one of the great comedy episodes of Doctor Who, with Holmes extracting a huge amount of witty mileage from Garron and Unstoffe’s long con on the singularly humourless Graff. Unstoffe’s delight in his own improvised story of the ‘scringe stone’ is brilliant, and highlights how well this is performed: had everyone been doing things as broadly as in some of Season 15, the comedy yokel wouldn’t have worked nearly as well. And while no-one could accuse Iain Cuthbertson of giving an understated performance, it’s completely right for Garron, who’s one of the slipperiest customers the Doctor’s met. His lapse from Jagoish master of ceremonies to Cockney villain is wonderful, especially because the implication is neither is the true Garron. He’s always playing to the audience.

Continue reading →

The show’s new mission statement is introduced with considerable style as the Doctor and K9 MII’s plans for a holiday are interrupted by crashing organ chords announcing the arrival of the White Guardian. With the Time Lords comprehensively debunked, apparently Graham Williams felt the Doctor needed a new “higher authority” he was accountable to. What we get is an ageing white man who feels that things have gone too far into permissiveness and chaos, and that order needs to be restored – a back-to-basics approach for the universe, which can only be achieved through assembling the six segments of the Key to Time (or ‘of Time’, the script isn’t sure).

Continue reading →

I’m coming to the conclusion that Doctor Who isn’t very good at endings. This is easily the weakest episode of the story, with far too much wandering about, the Doctor solving everything with a massive gun, and then forgetting all about it. It’s very “that’ll do”. And it’s bizarre that the De-Mat gun should be the solution to the Sontaran threat, when constructing it relies so much on secret presidential knowledge. If there had to be a particularly boring and secret super weapon, it might have been a better pay off to the long game with the Vardans rather than improvised off the cuff.

Continue reading →

Derek Deadman is no Kevin Lindsay. He whispers like an Ice Warrior and sounds like Ian Dury (cue laboured Ian Stor-y and the Potato Heads’ Hit Me With Your Swagger Stick joke). The Sontarans are generally a good choice for this though, having assessed Gallifrey’s military potential as far back as The Time Warrior and, with their endless clone army, being a more credibly formidable threat than the Cybermen, and a more thuggish contrast to the genteel Time Lords than the Daleks. This lot look suitably robust and solid as they march through the Capitol.

Continue reading →

‘Disappointing, aren’t they?’ Like The Invisible Enemy, this makes a joke of its rubbish “monsters”, although unlike The Invisible Enemy there are better monsters waiting until the end of the episode to make an appearance. I really like this: if the Vardans had just been rubbish it would feel a bit contemptuous to the audience, but it’s all part of the build to that rug-pulling climax and the return of the Sontarans.

Continue reading →

Looking past some of the design deficiencies (the green plastic furniture on Gallifrey is horrid, and makes this look like Bi-Al’s Kasterborous branch) this is pretty good. I really like the location filming, which – intentionally or otherwise – has the burned orange sky Susan mentions in The Sensorites, and has become the template of Gallifrey for the new series in a way that the blasted heath of The Five Doctors hasn’t.

Continue reading →