Category: Doctor Who
Doctor Who episode 430: The Masque of Mandragora – Part Three (18/9/1976)
While Count Federico’s power grab plays out, the Helix, through Hieronymus, is making its own move. I like the convergence of the two strands here. The torture of Marco (very homoerotic) is meant to force a false confession that the young Duke is, in fact, the leader of the Cult of Demnos, discrediting him and paving the way for the Count to take over. That the real leader has been lurking under the Count’s not inconsiderable nose for ages is ironic, and the final face to face (well, not quite: in a very Sapphire & Steel effect, Hieronymus’ face is now a blank glowing sphere) confrontation between the two allies turned rivals inevitably comes off worse for the human than the super-powered alien.
Doctor Who episode 429: The Masque of Mandragora – Part Two (11/9/1976)
More than any other colour story (even Genesis of the Daleks), this feels like a Hartnell historical brought into the 1970s. It has the same grounding in period research and interest in the thinking of the time. The Count, a tyrant of the old school, versus the enlightened despotism of the Duke plot is pretty much a straight historical so far, and it’s only the Hammer Horror Satanic cult and the sparkler from space that introduce supernatural horror into the mix.
Doctor Who episode 428: The Masque of Mandragora – Part One (4/9/1976)
This Season 14 opener suddenly feels like a prestige BBC production rather than the superior quality Doctor Who of Season 13. The new, elegant serif font for the credits is the first indicator. Then there’s the new TARDIS control room (or the old one, according to the script) in wood and brass, and a new Police Box. And the amount of location filming, the number of extras and the quality of the costumes and sets mean this is absolutely the lushest-looking episode so far in the colour series.
Doctor Who episode 427: The Seeds of Doom – Part Six (6/3/1976)
I’m very unconvinced by this episode. Sarah Jane sums it up: they’re all stuck waiting until Z-list UNIT solider Major Beresford comes up with something. The Doctor warns Scorby ‘bullets and bombs aren’t the answer to everything’ and not to try to escape the house, as he’ll never make it through the killer veg. Then, the Doctor decides bullets and bombs are, in fact, the answer to everything: Major Beresford calls in the RAF and blows up the Krynoid while the Doctor and Sarah Jane escape the house and make it through the killer veg. I’m afraid this just won’t do at all. And the final, Avengers-style tag scene is rubbish.
Doctor Who episode 426: The Seeds of Doom – Part Five (28/2/1976)
The first part of this episode is genuine base under siege stuff, with strong Night of the Living Dead overtones as the Doctor, Sarah, Scorby and some toughs spend the night in a cottage while the Krynoid prowls outside, and tensions grow between the survivors. It’s tense: Baker practically spits half his dialogue, but I think it’s a bit of a shame they jumped the gun and gave the Krynoid a voice. Its bargain with Scorby for the Doctor’s life doesn’t go anywhere, and it would have been better to have it as a horrible, unknowable presence in the darkness rather than a standard Doctor Who whispering villain.
Doctor Who episode 425: The Seeds of Doom – Part Four (21/2/1976)
After the last episode had to pivot the story from a claustrophobic base under siege to a quirky thriller, this feels a little more focused and compelling. Interestingly, having opened the story out last week, it now begins to narrow focus again, with Chase’s mansion promising to become a new base under siege from the Keeler/Krynoid (which develops more rapidly than the first version, to the point where this ends with a Slyther-like blob lurching towards the camera).
Doctor Who episode 424: The Seeds of Doom – Part Three (14/2/1976)
This serial often gets compared to The Avengers, which Robert Banks Stewart also wrote for. It frequently included eccentric villains with peculiar fixations, such as cats or the planet Venus. It also featured an episode called Man-Eater of Surrey Green (written by Philip Levene) which had an alien vegetable controlling people, an eccentric, horticulture-obsessed millionaire and a batty old lady who loves plants, so it’s not hard to see why people make the connection. But to me this more resembles The New Avengers, with a brutal streak quite different from the cartoonish violence of Peel-era Avengers, or Pertwee-era UNIT stories.
Doctor Who episode 423: The Seeds of Doom – Part Two (7/2/1976)
The scenes with Tony Beckley as the brilliantly disdainful Harrison Chase, icier than the Antarctic, are really the only thing that makes this tautly effective little horror story feel like part of a bigger narrative. The Doctor and Sarah Jane could almost as easily have blown the base up, saved the world and flown off for more adventures in space and time, and this would still have been a more satisfying and complete story than The Sontaran Experiment.
Doctor Who episode 422: The Seeds of Doom – Part One (31/1/1976)
If The Brain of Morbius felt like the companion piece to Pyramids of Mars, this makes a neat pair with Terror of the Zygons: same writer, director, composer and contemporary Earth setting. It recaptures the slightly eerie quality of the earlier story, the sense of the uncanny intruding into the real world, taking its time to establish its characters without over-burdening the audience with too much plot. Broadly, this all works so effectively B-movie lines like, ‘It’s as if he’s turning into some sort of a hideous monster’ just wash over us.
Doctor Who episode 421: The Brain of Morbius – Part Four (24/1/1976)
This wraps up the story with all the appropriate efficiency of a Hammer Films finale, and a lot of violence. The body count isn’t particularly large, but each death – even hapless Sister Kelia, throttled by Morbius while out for a stroll – seems to count. Condo gets to sacrifice himself to save his pretty Sarah Jane (although he’s denied the irony of being choked to death by his own hand). Maren sacrifices herself so the Doctor might live, ruefully wondering if he wasn’t right about endings after all.
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