Category: Doctor Who
Doctor Who episode 682: Silver Nemesis – Part Two (30/11/1988)
‘Are we having fun?’ It’s almost as breezy and charming as Part One, with a very new series approach to throwing out convenient exposition on the fly to keep things moving – like validium being attracted to other validium, and only being dangerous when it reaches a critical mass.
Doctor Who episode 681: Silver Nemesis – Part One (23/11/1988)
‘This may qualify as the worst miscalculation since life crawled out of the seas on this sad planet.’ The new series of Doctor Who begins here, with an episode that opens like it was written by Steven Moffat or Chris Chibnall. It jumps between global locations and times like The Pandorica Opens or Once, Upon Time as we’re introduced in quick succession to De Flores in 1988 South America, Lady Peinforte in 1638 Windsor, and the Doctor and Ace enjoying the jazz stylings of Courtney Pine. As it unfolds, the Doctor nips between locations like he’s walking between rooms – something that’s previously only really happened in City of Death. It’s dizzying, relentlessly bombarding us with images like the Doctor with a fez and mop, a meteor crash-landing in a post-industrial wasteland, Walkman-wearing assassins taking pot-shots, and Queen Elizabeth II taking the dogs for a walk.
Doctor Who episode 680: The Happiness Patrol – Part Three (16/11/1988)
‘Everything’s beginning to fall into place.’ Oddly prescient, this, given Thatcher’s own astonishingly rapid betrayal and defenestration by her own people following the Poll Tax riots. As the Killjoys march on the capital and the ‘drones’ in the factories she’s built turn against her, Helen A is brought down by dissent in the Happiness Patrol ranks before she’s savaged by her own dead sheep of a husband. ‘A little local difficulty’ quickly turns terminal. All political lives end in failure.
Doctor Who episode 679: The Happiness Patrol – Part Two (9/11/1988)
‘I am what I am.’ So, yes, it has got a gay subtext. ‘Night-time’s when they come out,’ says Priscilla P of the Killjoys, with a delighted shudder, and Susan Q “comes out” to Ace. Generally, though, I think it’s just wrapped into a broader sideswipe against Conservative politics (the workers are forbidden to enter the city, the Killjoys go on protest marches). I suppose Helen A having ‘controlled the population down by 17 per cent’ might be a comment on AIDS but probably isn’t. I’ve seen criticism that no-one on the Happiness Patrol actually smiles or seems to be happy, but for me that seems to be the point: no-one in power ever thinks the rules apply to them.
Doctor Who episode 678: The Happiness Patrol – Part One (2/11/1988)
‘Tonight’s the night.’ It looks like we’re back in Paradise Towers, complete with dismal corridors, bewigged women talking in strange jargon, and terrorised residents. And I thought Paradise Towers was the best story of Season 24 so you can imagine how I feel about The Happiness Patrol.
Doctor Who episode 677: Remembrance of the Daleks – Part Four (26/10/1988)
‘I can do anything I like.’ It features the Doctor’s most complete victory over the Daleks since 1967, the most spectacular (and toy-free) Dalek-on-Dalek battle (including the hugely memorable Special Weapons Dalek), and some of the best practical effects the show’s ever done (the landing of a full-size Dalek shuttle). However, it ends at a funeral and a doubtful Doctor unable to reassure Ace that they’ve done good. This makes some sense of the obscure title: Remembrance Day comes with the implication “never again”, and of terrible and unconscionable sacrifices made for future generations to live in peace.
Doctor Who episode 676: Remembrance of the Daleks – Part Three (19/10/1988)
‘We’re reliant on the Doctor because only the Doctor knows what is going on.’ This is a great Part Three – often they’re the ones with the exposition and a pause in the action, but this gets the balance right. There’s exposition, including some intriguing bits of Time Lord history, but it opens and closes with two Dalek attack sequences at the school, plus a fun Dalek hunt in the middle.
Doctor Who episode 675: Remembrance of the Daleks – Part Two (12/10/1988)
‘I’m beginning to wish I never started all this.’ The script does a good job of balancing the Doctor’s newly proactive approach with much self-doubt, notably in the cafe scene between McCoy and Fresh Prince‘s Joseph Marcell. None of this is original in the scheme of things (it’s essentially a play on “Do I have the right” from Genesis of the Daleks), but it has been rare for the Doctor to spend a scene pondering his own choices. It would be tiresome every week, but here it adds some weight to the story, the idea that he’s dragging the Earth into the middle of his war with the Daleks. Maybe that explains why he’s so maudlin and snappy. John has the right idea: ‘Just get on with it.’
Doctor Who episode 674: Remembrance of the Daleks – Part One (5/10/1988)
‘That’s the point Group Captain. It isn’t even remotely human.’ The 25th anniversary series begins with a story that, like The Day of the Doctor, presents a different perspective on familiar events with hints that the first Doctor was up to something more than lurking about in the fog inspecting picture frames when he last visited 1963. He left something called ‘the Hand of Omega’ behind, and now two factions of Daleks have converged on the Earth to claim it.
Doctor Who episode 673: Dragonfire – Part Three (7/12/1987)
‘Don’t come all clever dick with me.’ Ian Briggs’ script is full of allusions that sound clever but don’t quite add up to anything substantial. Here, there’s a lengthy sequence that plays like a pastiche of Aliens, except this time it’s the xenomorph that rescues the little girl from the tough woman with a gun. It’s nice to have another Doctor Who story where the “monster” turns out to be one of the good guys and it’s people who are the real threat – it’s been done, but not so often it’s boring and the difference between Dragonfire and something like The Creature from the Pit is that here the dragon is pretty much established as something to be protected from the beginning.
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